the other Word…

Since it’s Sunday thought I would pass this on…

I saw the TinyApps blog post an interesting snippet this week: Christ On Disk update

Denver Reynolds decided to take on a new programing project and ended up getting the entire contents of the Bible (KJV) crammed down into a 1.29 Mb file size.

The result is a highly portable, and very tiny freeware application for you Word fans out there.  And I’m not talking about the Microsoft Office version!

Alvis has been getting more involved in our church’s youth-group and I’ve been looking for a tool to help her with her explorations and understanding.  So I’ve added this program to her computer profile.

However, she isn’t a big fan of the KJV version so I went looking for other potential candidates.

I found two more that bring even more features to the mix.

The SWORD Project – open source – This project is simply amazing in the number of add-in module resources it provides.  A tremendous number of different Bible translations are available, commentaries, Lexicons/dictionaries, glossaries, devotionals, supporting books, maps, and images.  Setup is very simple, and with a bit of configuration, you can then download the modules you wish into the program directly.  This is a great resource for budding students as well as accomplished teachers and theologians.  I’m going to be sharing this with my former pastor-friend who I’m always doing pc-support work for.  There is also a plugin for Charles Spurgeon’s daily devotionals.  He always fascinated me and I have a multi-volume collection of all his sermons that I go back and read time-to-time.

In the beginning was the Word – freeware – Multiple versions from a “lite” one that is just the application proper…you pick the translations you want..to the standard which comes with a minimal set of texts, to the “full” package which contains all 39 text translations and six Greek fonts.  The full version isn’t tiny but it has many items to enhance your study.  Notes can be kept, advanced searches run, multi-column views are supported and side-by-side text comparisons are possible.  Really neat stuff.

Growing up Mom had a New Jerusalem Bible version that I always thought was really cool as it contained extra material that didn’t make it into most Protestant translations of the Bible.  It was a whopper!

When I was browsing through an old used-books store on the Galveston Strand many, many years ago I found a New Testament copy of the Moffatt Translation. I’m not a Bible scholar and I know it comes with a bit of controversy, but it does have a certain flow that is refreshing.

We also had an old German bible that must have been published back in the mid 1800’s.  It’s all German and has some great illustrations.  Can’t read a word of it. The cover was very brittle and the pages yellowed with time but it always was a source of family pride. Not sure where it is now.  Mom probably has it packed away somewhere.

--Claus