Trailblazin Ministries

Bible Study Software: Part 1 (Introduction)

Written by LaRosa Johnson
Monday, 31 October 2005

Introduction

As Christians, we are to be students of the Word of God and be diligent in building an ever-growing relationship with the Lord. Just as 1 Timothy 2:15 tells us to "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" and that is exactly what God expects of us. Well, how is possible for us to build a meaningful relationship with God and know more about Him if we don't study His Word? Quite honestly, we can't! That is why it is important for us to read the Word productively, and have resources available to us in order that we might be able to rightly divide the Word of truth (2 Tim 2:15).

Before computers became a household item, if someone wanted to get in-depth with the Scriptures, they would have had to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars at their local Christian bookstore in order to obtain commentaries, dictionaries, Bible translations, and so forth. That means, there was a lot of manual legwork involved in doing any kind of exegesis on the Scriptures.

You couldn't easily read different translations side-by-side unless you had a parallel Bible or several different versions opened up to the same passage. What about looking up Matthew Henry's commentary? You'd have to pull the big book off the shelf and open it up to find what you were looking for. Need a definition? Take the Holman Bible dictionary down, adding yet another book to your desk. Oh wait, what about taking down your own notes in an organized manner? Get out the pen & paper! As you can clearly see, before you even get in too far with your studying, you have a mountain of books covering your desk and hardly any room left to do any work!

Computers to the Rescue!

This is where computers come into play! With the growth and popularity of the personal computer, so has grown the popularity of Bible study software for Christians. Bible software has been around just as long as any other piece of software that you would use on an everyday basis, so it's no surprise to see the number of great software packages that are currently on the market today!

Computers have truly revolutionized the way in which Christians study the Bible, and I don't say that lightly! With the myriad of software packages that are now available to us, it makes studying the Bible more pracitical, and most of all fun! You no longer have to worry about having a workspace cluttered with Bibles, dictionaries and commentaries; you now have everything right in front of you on the computer screen in an easy-to-access format! Now, instead of flipping through hundreds of pages to find a defintion for a certain word, it's not right at your finger tips via the push of a button. Almost everything is cross linked & cross referenced for your convenience; you can look up the same passage in multiple translations; easily search the entire Bible; and so much more!

And it is these software applications that have caught our attention and given us the inspiration to write this series of articles. With the multitude of software that is currently available, we wanted to take some time to look at a few Bible study software applications to give you an idea of what you can expect before spending your hard earned money on these products.

The Software

Now, we know that everyone isn't capable of purchasing the latest & greatest software packages out on the market, so we've broken down our research into three key areas by reviewing three products in three different price ranges. First, we are going to look at freeware (100% free software), shareware/low-priced software (up to $50), and finally high-end software (over $50).

In the first installment of these articles, we're going to look at the freeware software that is available to you completely free of charge. For this particular review, we're going to be looking at the highly acclaimed software package e-Sword. There's a lot of great things being said about this free software package, and we're going to look at it and see if it lives up to its hype, or see if the price-tag matches the quality of the software.

Secondly, for the low-priced & shareware software, we're going to look at SwordSearcher by Akamai Software & Brandon Staggs. Brandon Staggs, graciously supplied us with a full copy of his software so that we could review it and let you know what it's all about. We're going to see what this software package has to offer versus the free software, and see what makes this package worthwhile. Is this software for the beginner, novice, or advanced user? We'll take a look and see in our review of SwordSearcher.

And finally, we're going to take a look at a high-end software package. For this particular review, we're going to be taking a look at WORDsearch 7 by the WORDsearch Corporation. We downloaded their fully functional 30 day trial from their website to complete this review. For this product, we're going to see what sets it apart from the freeware & low-end products, and get really indepth to see what this application really has to offer at such a high price!

Looking Ahead

So, over the next few days, we'll be taking a look at each software package individually. Each day this week, we'll have a review of one of the products. Each review will have several screenshots (from my copy of each) and indepth analysis of each product, doing our best to grade them on the same scale without comparing one to the other.

We look forward to sharing our findings with you!

Part 2 (e-Sword)
Part 3 (SwordSearcher)
Part 4 (WORDsearch 7)