I’m planning to write a few posts on how to study a bible, but before we reach that point you’re going to need a few resources. One of them is a computer bible.
Before there were computer bibles, there were concordances. A concordance is a big fat book that consists of every single word in a translation of the bible (except the ridiculously common words like a, an, in, on, the, and so forth) sorted by word. When you look up “love,” it gives you a list of every single appearance of the word “love” in that bible, and a link to the original Hebrew or Greek word that it translated. Very useful books. But we live in the 21st century. We use computers.
We still use a lot of the features that those old concordances introduced. For example, Strong’s numbers. James Strong, the fellow who put together one of the first concordances, the Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, for the King James Version, created a number for every single Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek word found in the bible. (Yahweh,
And of course, Strong’s lexicons—that is, his Hebrew/English and Greek/English dictionaries—are now in the public domain, so you’re going to find that a lot of computer bibles and websites use them. There are better lexicons nowadays, but Strong’s are still very good.
Well, let’s begin with the bible websites. You don’t need to own a computer bible if you have Internet access and a fast enough connection. You can hop on over to BibleGateway.com or Blue Letter Bible, fr’instance, and type in whatever word you’re looking for, in whatever translation you favor. If you wanted to switch to another translation to see its results, you easily can. Way faster than flipping through pages.
Concordances, in comparison, were for one and only one translation: if you were looking for a verse with “love” in it, the more popular KJV concordances would miss Paul’s description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 completely, ’cause the KJV uses the word “charity” instead. So if you can’t find enough “love” in the KJV, you can switch to another translation, like the NIV or ESV, and compare their results. You can even search translations that have no published concordances, like the Amplified Bible.
Where this comes in handy is if there’s a verse you have half-memorized—“Where does the bible say ‘all have sinned’?”—or if there’s a verse that you’re sure is in the bible somewhere—“Where does it say ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’?” Pick a keyword, punch it into the computer bible, and voilá, you’ve found it. (Or not. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” isn’t bible; it’s John Wesley.)
For most people, just being able to find words in a bible is enough. But for serious bible study you’re going to need to get at those original-language words. Don’t worry if you’ve never learned Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek; right now I’m just gonna focus on finding those words. What you eventually do with them will come in my post on learning biblical languages.
Finding original-language words on the Internet requires a website that specializes in them. Most of the sites on the web can’t display Greek or Hebrew text; they were programmed in the ’90s or early ’00s and aren’t set up to work with Unicode yet. (This blog is: іf уоυ саn rеаԁ thіѕ ѕеntеnсе, Unісоԁе wоrkѕ.) They require you to download special fonts, and you shouldn’t have to.
Blue Letter Bible does the job just fine. Next to each verse, on the left, you’ll see buttons:
If you’re using the KJV or NASB, the “C” button will be working. That’s the button for the concordance and lexicon, which will pop up underneath the verse:
Here it shows the Greek text of the verse, and a table underneath that lists the English word (or phrase); the Strong’s number for the Greek word it translates; the word as you’ll find it in the lexicon (and conveniently reprinted in our alphabet); an audio button that will tell you how it’s pronounced (in a heavy American accent); and tense buttons that will show you the verb tense.
Now, for bible software. Three things you have to have in your bible software:
1. A fast search engine. If the Internet is faster, your software sucks.
2. Original-language resources. It had better use Strong’s numbers, or at least a good equivalent (like the Goodrick-Kohlenberger numbers invented for the NIV Exhaustive Concordance, and used in a lot of NIV resources). It should also have Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek lexicons. And, if at all possible, it should have an original-language bible text: a Hebrew Old Testament and a Greek New Testament.
3. Decent English resources. It’ll likely come with the King James Version. It should include at least one other translation you’ve heard of, published after 1950; and you should be able to get any of the other popular translations—if you want The Message, the publishers should be able to get you The Message. You shouldn’t be limited to just public-domain literature and donated bible translations.
And the software—at least at its basic-level, functional version—shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg either.
In fact, there is such a thing as free bible software. There’s e-Sword or theWord for Windows; Bible Explorer for Windows and Macintosh; and Online Bible for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Of course, the speed of their search engines depend on your machine and how compatible they are with it, and their free resources are public domain—if you want the current stuff, it’ll cost you. (Recent bible translations are usually $20 and up.)
I know: you’re probably wondering what I use. I have a Macintosh, and I use Accordance. I’m very happy with it. It is not cheap software. The usual argument is that if you bought all the books, they’d cost more… and they probably would, if you weren’t cheap like me and buy used books. But they do offer some amazing reference materials, and then some.
Before I got my iMac, I had (and still have, on a CD somewhere) the electronic version of the NIV Study Bible for Windows, which also worked great. (The Mac version was bundled with Accordance, which is how I got into that program. That’s how they hook you… but I don’t mind.)
Fellow Christians will probably tell you all about their bible software, and how great it is. I leave it to you to figure out how much they really like it, and how much they’re justifying the outrageous amount of money they spent on the software. I prefer bargains, but that’s just me.