At about the same time every summer I feel like a 5-year-old in a candy store. I get to dedicate an extended period of time to playing with the latest and greatest in bible study software, and I get to call it work. When the packages arrive, I usually stop whatever I’m doing, find my laptop and the closest chair, and begin installing. My wife looks on, snickering to herself, eyes rolling, and then graciously helps clear my ‘work space’ and allows me to sit there uninterrupted for the next few hours. I love my wife.
Each year this survey highlights programs of interest to preachers that have been newly released in the past year or have major new updates. There are many great software packages out there that we won’t mention here, because they didn’t come out this year. (Check those September-October issues of Preaching from past years to check out other programs.)
As always, my approach in the annual survey is to highlight features I think will aid preachers in the task of sermon preparation, not to provide a comprehensive and critical review. Space simply does not allow for a full report of features — that’s what software manuals are for (and who reads those?). Hopefully, this approach will give you a feel for the strengths and benefits of each and provide some direction for further investigation.
BibleWorks 7 (BW7) maintains the status of Original Language Tool par excellence that previous versions worked to achieve. If you’re not familiar with BibleWorks, one thing you need to know up front is that it operates from a different philosophy than most other major Bible study software providers. Rather than developing a ‘library’ of resources that might or might not be relevant to your study of the biblical text, BibleWorks provides its users with resources specific to textual studies, especially in the original languages. This both narrows the focus of their objectives and keeps costs down, while at the same time maintaining a high standard of quality for the tool itself and the primary reference works included (BW7 contains all the major original language texts and English translations, as well as translations in 32 languages).
BW7 offers highly sophisticated search capabilities and morphological analysis. Complex searches often take less than a second — a real benefit when compared to the more complex searches of other bible study programs. Past surveys include more specifics about the capabilities and features of BibleWorks. Our goal here is to survey what’s new in version 7.
Probably the most noticeable change (and in this user’s opinion, the most valuable one) to BW7 is the new user interface. The great benefit of the layout is the way it intuitively progresses from searching, to browsing, to analysis of specific words, making your software tool work through your exegesis the way you do. Everything’s neatly organized and easily accessible.