Let me give you a flavour of some of the commentaries that are available: Kistemaker/Hendriksen (12 vols, £110), Bible Speaks Today NT (22 vols, £70), Calvin (22 vols, £70), Focus on the Bible (coming soon – 32 vols, £200), Welwyn (coming soon – 49 vols, £210), Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (21 vols, £350), Keil & Delitzsch OT (10 vols, £85), Lenski’s NT (12 vols, £210), New International Greek (12 vols, £375), Pillar NT (8 vols, £175), Word Biblical Commentary (59 vols, £490).

Logos has an astonishing array of resources. The screenshot shows just my commentaries on 1 Corinthians!

Of the other resources the best include a set of IVP dictionaries (17 vols, £90), and the Theological Journal Library (500 vols, £240). Those who enjoy historical theology might appreciate the works of Luther (55 vols, £140), John Bunyan (61 vols, £55), Richard Sibbes (7 vols, £55), Thomas Goodwin (12 vols, £125), John Owen (17 vols, £210), John Knox (6 vols, £70), Richard Baxter (23 vols, £125), Thomas Manton (22 vols, £140), or Francis Schaeffer (22 vols, £70). Partial sets are also available of Spurgeon’s sermons (63 vols, £68), Warfield (20 vols, £210), Jonathan Edwards (2 vols, £85), Boettner (8 vols, £55), Berkouwer (14 vols, £230), Philip Schaff (21 vols, £100), A. A. Hodge (10 vols, £55), A. T. Robertson (15 vols, £105), A. W. Tozer (57 vols, £280), A. W. Pink (40 vols, £175), Lloyd-Jones (10 vols, £105), and John Piper (24 vols, £140).

Systematic theologies include Strong (£30), Hodge (£25), Geisler (£85), Reymond (£30), Grudem (£30), and Erickson (£20). Greek lexicons include BDAG (£105), Liddell-Scott (£95), Friberg (£20), Louw-Nida (£30), Strong’s (£18), and TDNT (10 vols, £140). In Hebrew you can choose from HALOT (£110), Brown-Driver-Briggs (£35), DBL (£28), and TLOT (3 vols, £70). Believe it or not, that’s only a tiny fraction of what’s available – literally everything from Max Lucardo’s Travelling Light to The Ugaritic Textbook (revised edition).

If your Greek or Hebrew is less than you’d like, then Logos has some wonderful features that set it apart from other packages. The most useful are reverse interlinears. Usually interlinears focus on the Greek (or Hebrew) text, and have a very wooden translation in English that follows the Greek word order. John 3:16 in a standard interlinear might read ‘Thusly for loved the God the world so that the son the only born he gave…’. Reverse interlinears do the opposite – they preserve the English word order by moving the Greek words around. The great thing about this is that you can work with the English text (ESV or NRSV), but still have access to all the Greek morphology. You can even search for Greek/Hebrew words and have the results come back in English!

The other key aids in Logos are the exegetical guide and passage guide and bible word study. These effectively bring all your resources together – necessary because the sheer number of Logos resources can make them hard to find. The exegetical guide takes a bible passage, and splits it up into its original words, giving you at-a-glance access to all your resources that relate to each word. The passage guide searches all your commentaries, maps and other resources and displays everything that relates to that passage on one easy-to-access page. Finally the bible word study takes a word (Greek, Hebrew, English – even Syriac or Coptic!) and shows links to dictionaries and details about how that word is used and translated in the Bible.

Verdict: Nothing else comes near Logos for breadth of resources. If you want to use your computer to go beyond searching bible texts, Logos is your best choice.

Bibleworks is designed for people who are familiar with the original languages, or you want to become so. There’s no interlinear included, for example, which would display the Greek/Hebrew text, but under every Greek/Hebrew word give an English translation of that word.  There’s also few ‘extras’ to buy (which many people think is a blessing – you get almost everything included for your initial fee). The only ‘extras’ most people would consider would be the BDAG, HALOT and perhaps Liddell-Scott lexicons, which weigh in around £100 each.

Verdict: Perfect for those who are comfortable with the languages and want to focus on exegesis.

Each of the packages I’m going to review offer the Bible in English and in the original languages. They also offer several lexicons (i.e. Greek/Hebrew dictionaries). But simply having the Bible in Greek or Hebrew is of limited value. Most teachers of the Bible know that ἀγαπάω (agapaō) means ‘to love’. But did you remember that ἀγαπήσεις (agapēseis) is finite, second person, singular, future, indicative and active, and is usually translated ‘You shall love’? No, nor did I. That means you don’t just need a Greek text, you need a morphologically tagged Greek text. These texts have tags hidden in every word in the Bible that explain exactly the form of every word, and tell you what the lemma (root word) is.

A morphological text means that you can jump quickly to a lexicon in one click from any word, without resorting to looking up reference numbers. You will also be able to parse any word, usually by just hovering your mouse over it.

A morphological text also allows you to search for every instance of every word, regardless of its inflection. You can also do more complex searches, such as searching for every time ἀγαπάω (agapaō) is given as a command. If grammar scares you, skip to the next paragraph, but for those who are interested let me give you an idea of the power available. You could find all instances of a dative or accusative participle not immediately preceded by an agreeing article, and followed by an agreeing article and noun, excluding cases where a word from a specified list intervenes. I’m struggling to think of why you might want to this, but the point is that if you want to search for something – anything! – these programs will make it possible. You’ll be glad to know that they all come with tutorials that help you find your way through the complexities.

In other words, software like this should replace all your bibles (English and original language), your concordances, your interlinears, your lexicons,  and most of your grammar books – perhaps even your commentaries. You’ll never have a messy desk again!

At this end of the market, the choice of software is actually quite limited. Although there are plenty of software packages that include Greek/Hebrew texts (see the previous review), most of them are dated and unreliable. If you want to refer to the original languages you should be using Logos Bible Software 3, Bibleworks 8, or Accordance 8. Choosing between them is actually quite easy:

• If you’re a whizz with the languages and are only interested in exegeting the text (in other words, using the software for morphological searching and lexical analysis), then put Bibleworks (PC only) at the top of your list.
• If you want to do all that, but also want to use your software to consult a wide range of commentaries and theological dictionaries, then Logos (PC or Mac) will be just right for you. Logos is also perfect for those whose Greek or Hebrew is not up to scratch, so if you didn’t understand the previous bullet point, choose Logos!
• If you’re somewhere in between, and want to focus on searching in both English and the original languages, but occasionally consult a commentary or dictionary, then consider Accordance (Mac only, PC via free emulator).

Over the next four posts, I’ll be looking at each of these excellent programs in more detail.

There are also an increasing number of online tools, so if don’t have your only access to a computer is at the library or a friend’s home, they could be very helpful. The best are The Sword and The Blue Letter Bible. If you just want to read the Bible in many versions, try BibleGateway.

Finally, one further package deserves a mention: Ilumina Gold. It’s marketed as a “digitally animated encyclopaedia suite”. It’s good for bringing the Bible to life through animated sequences of Bible stories, virtual reality tours of important Bible places (e.g. the temple), and photos and maps of Bible lands. It’s therefore potentially helpful for families wanting to encourage children in Bible study. It’s available for Mac and PC.

That just about wraps up this little mini-series on the best Bible study software. In a future mini-series, I hope to be able to make some recommendations about software for pastors and preachers.

Logos Bible Software 3

Logos is to Bible software what John Lewis is to shopping – wonderful choice, but sometimes bewildering. It has far more than you could ever need, and often more than you can really afford. In fact, Logos has almost every resource offered by all the other publishers combined (except Pradis), and plenty more besides.

There are two major downsides. One is cost. The most expensive “base” package in Logos is Scholar’s Library Gold, which costs almost £1,000, and even that includes ‘only’ 700 of the 9,000 titles available. The rest have to be added at additional cost. Having said that, few users will need Scholar’s Library Gold. A far cheaper option is the Bible Study Library at £180. This still includes 18 English Bible versions, and over 150 other resources, which are a nice mix of contemporary and historical.The second downside is complexity. To get the most out of Logos you have to understand how best to use it, and this will require an investment of time. Don’t misunderstand me. Logos have made the software incredible easy to use ‘out of the box’. You can just type in a bible verse, topic, or even a Greek/Hebrew word, and very soon all your resources will be searched, with the results presented in a very readable format. There’s plenty you’ll be able to do with Logos without learning all its quirks and powerful features – it’s just that if you do learn them you’ll be able to do a whole lot more. Thankfully Logos offer a great deal of help through their excellent telephone support and online tutorials.

Verdict: If your budget will stretch to it, and you’re willing to commit some time to learn the software, Logos is about as good as it gets. It’s particularly suitable if you think your study will deepen in time and you will later want access to more thorough resources. But if you struggle with computers, or aren’t able to commit the time to learn, you may be better off with one of the alternatives.

Alternatives:

• WORDsearch 8, £35 to £350: WORDsearch is simple, has dozens of resources, and is very expandable (though like all packages apart from Logos, few scholarly resources are available). A typical package is the “Thompson Chain-Reference Leaders Library” which can be downloaded online for about £150. It includes 16 Bible versions (including KJV, ESV, NIV and NKJV) and 134 other reference works, almost all of which are out of copyright ‘classics’. There are hundreds more resources available, many of which are recent publications. However, these add-ons can be expensive – the 47-volume set of Welwyn commentaries is £350.
• PocketBible, £35-£135: Despite the name, PocketBible is available for desktop computers, as well as pocket computers (you need a Palm, iPhone or Windows Mobile device), and resources can be shared between the desktop and pocket versions. It offers excellent value – even the cheapest package includes the NIV and 12 other Bibles, though there are not many other resources available. PocketBible is relatively simple to use, partly because it has a fixed display. This makes it easy to find your resources (they’re always in the same place!), but it can be annoying when you can’t stop resources you don’t need cluttering up your display. If you value simplicity above all, it could be the right choice.
• QuickVerse, £20 – £550: A terrific modern interface, and many excellent resources, even the mid-range QuickVerse Deluxe (£65) which has 226 books including the ESV and NKJV. However, it has several annoying quirks and is missing some important resources (including Calvin’s commentaries). As one reviewer put it, “QuickVerse is very much like a few girls I dated in college. Very attractive, but the more time you spend with them the more you wish you were with someone else.”
• PC Study Bible, £35 – £400: PC Study Bible is a reasonably number of resources (between 51 and 147), most of which are actually quite useful. The interface makes it easy to find cross-references between resources, though it is a little idiosyncratic in places. It’s also rather overpriced, though thankfully the publisher often has sales, so if you buy at the right time, you could get some easy to use software at a good price.
• Pradis, prices vary: Pradis is a frustrating product created by Zondervan. It is only averagely competent, and its purpose seems to be largely to keep Zondervan electronic titles in-house. This means Pradis has several exclusive resources, but it also means it is lacking resources from several other publishers (it doesn’t even have the ESV or NKJV, for example). Best avoided if possible.

SwordSearcher is excellent value for money, at just $50 (about £35). It includes 10 English versions, more than 20 commentaries (including Barnes, Calvin, Keil-Delitzsch, Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, etc.) 10 dictionaries, hundreds of maps, and several other books. There are no additional modules available, and no modern Bible versions or commentaries. But although they are all out of copyright, these are high-quality resources, – the publisher hasn’t simply stuffed the product full of light resources you’ll rarely use, simply in order make the product look bigger. It is also excellent value for money. Just adding Calvin’s Commentaries to WORDsearch or Logos would cost you twice as much as buying SwordSearcher 5 with Calvin included.

Another strength of SwordSearcher is the links between the various resources. It is very easy to move between the various resources, and (for example) to find dictionary entries that relate to the verse you are currently studying. Even more impressive is the search facility, which is not only incredibly quick, but also very comprehensive.

Verdict: SwordSearcher is the best of the packages that focus on out-of-copyright resources. It’s cheap, fast, easy-to-use, and has higher quality resources that all of its competitors.

e-Sword is one of the most popular Bible study software packages, and it’s easy to see why. It’s free to download, and has 25 English bibles (including the ESV), plus dozens of commentaries (including Matthew Henry and Keil & Delitzsch), 14 dictionaries, nine volumes of the Church Fathers and several other books. All these are free, but you can also add some paid-for resources such as the NIV (£20), or NKJV (£10).

e-Sword is a little clunky, and if you have lots of resources the display can seem cluttered. Nevertheless, it’s hard to get lost, and everything works fairly intuitively. Unfortunately you can’t search all your resources at the same time, however, each has to be searched individually. On the plus side, there is a Windows Mobile version, so you can take your library with you if you have a Windows Mobile device. There are also several non-English language Bibles available, including the Revised New Welsh Bible.

Verdict: e-Sword is remarkable software. You get an awful lot for nothing, and have the added advantage of being able to purchase in-copyright books such as modern Bible translations for relatively little. If you can live with the dated interface, and only need a moderate number of resources, what are you waiting for?

Alternatives:

• The Word is very quick and has a nice interface. It has less resources than e-Sword, and no add-ons, but is slightly easier to use.
• Bible Explorer is a cut-down version of WORDsearch (see below). It only comes with a handful of resources, but you can download hundreds more, also for free, or purchase WORDsearch modules. The quality of the free resources is quite mixed, however, and doesn’t include several resources you can get for free (or nearly-free) elsewhere, such as Calvin, Matthew Henry, Vine, etc.

Most software companies produce a range of packages. The cheapest come with a minimum number of resources – perhaps a few translations of the Bible, together with some out-of-copyright commentaries and dictionaries. The more expensive will come with dozens of English Bibles, and perhaps hundreds of other resources, including Bible dictionaries, commentaries, and interlinears (Bibles that have the Greek/Hebrew text printed alongside the English text).

Before we get to the strengths and weaknesses of the various programmes, let me say a few words about some of the features that all the packages will support:

• Reading: You can read the bible and associated resources, and can have lots of resources (e.g. the Bible, a commentary and a dictionary) on screen at the same time. As you move around the Bible, your commentaries will automatically update to the reference you are currently looking at. Some programs allow you to read multiple Bibles at the same time.
• Searching: All the packages listed here will allow you to search for words and phrases in the Bible, and in the other resources you own.
• Notes: You can write your own notes and attach them to a Bible verse.
• Maps: You can view maps of the Bible lands, often with places linked to the verses which mention them.
• Strong’s numbers: These numbers make it easy to look up the definitions of Greek/Hebrew words.

Over the next three posts, I’ll examine the best of the Bible-study packages, from those that are free, right up to those that costs hundreds (even thousands!) of pounds.

“Few of those contacting Bible colleges [to ask for help in finding a pastor] have invested in theological education over the years.  Some will have helped fund a member in training.  Hardly any will have adopted one or more of the theological colleges and systematically invested in the training of a new generation of Christian leaders.”

Those are the words of Kerry Orchard, Development Manager at WEST (Wales Evangelical School of Theology). He’s right, of course. Most churches only realise the value of theological colleges when they need a new pastor.

What has caused this lack of investment in theological training? Colleges must accept their part of responsibility. Many training institutions have not always been as committed to building partnerships with local churches as they perhaps should have been. But before we point the finger too readily, let’s remember that colleges are there to serve the church, not lead the church. The church must take primary responsibility. Perhaps it is fairer to say that many churches have not been as committed to building partnerships with Bible colleges as we should have been. And much more importantly, many churches have not been as committed to training men for the ministry as we should have been. As a result, investment in training a new generation of Christian leaders is very low across independent churches.

We need to put that right. In a previous post, we considered the costs of funding theological education. They’re staggering. With living expenses and course fees, around £50,000 would be needed to train a married man for three years. Where on earth is such a man going to find at least £50,000 from if he feels a call to full-time work?

It doesn’t need to be like this. And solving the problem needn’t involve churches writing cheques for tens of thousands of pounds. Let me show you how.

Whose responsibility?

We saw last time that it could cost around £50,000 to train for the ministry. It is usually assumed that the man’s sending church ought to make a reasonably significant contribution to that cost. But stop and think for a moment. When I was in college, my home church supported me sacrificially. But like many students, when I left college I didn’t return to my home church. I was called elsewhere. Generally speaking, the home church is substantially worse off after sending someone to college. The man and his family were probably giving a fairly substantial amount in financial gifts each year – but no longer. They will have been having an input into the church’s life and ministry – which if he is preparing for pastoral ministry or mission work, is likely to be substantial. The church will lose that, too. So despite the fact that the church has lost one of its best workers, and perhaps most generous givers, they are still expected to find several thousand pounds to encourage the student on his way!

I am not suggesting that sending churches ought not be involved in funding the training of their members – it’s vital that they do, and vital that they remain involved in the training. But what I am suggesting is that the burden needs to be borne not just by the sending church.

So let’s assume that the sending church will contribute £50 a week for the duration of the training (that’s around £7,800 over three years). And let’s also assume that the man is willing to contribute a similar amount, as are his friends and family. Of course, those from small churches, or those whose wider family are on a low-income or are not Christians will probably find it almost impossible to reach that amount. Nevertheless, let’s assume that those from larger churches or richer families give more to make up for this loss, and that the average student is able to bring £150 a week to his studies (a total £23,400 of three years). Even with that very sacrificial triple contribution, there is still £26,600 to find. Where does that come from? We’ll look at one possible answer in the next post.