Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Free Bible software

There are a couple of good sources of free Bible software for Windows. The price really is right.

One of these is On Line Bible. It has some pretty good reviews. I haven't tried it in a long time so I can't comment on how good it might be (comments appreciated).

The other program is e-sword.

I like e-sword
I use e-sword. It is pretty good. If you tried e-sword in the past and were disappointed, it has been significantly upgraded recently. You can now easily create links to Bible verses in your notes file. This lets you add easy cross references to any notes file. This makes for nice hyperlinked bible study notes.

Features of e-sword
There are more than 35 Bibles, more than 16 commentaries, a number of good Bible maps for e-sword. There are also a bunch of free books (mostly older conservative works such as Keil and Delitzsch's Commentary on the Old Testament).

Why I like e-sword
I like that I can create my own Bible notes. These are connected to each verse so that in the end I have my own Bible commentary.

Importing data
I like that I can easily import public domain text documents and have my favorite works in the same tool for easy search and reference.

How I am using e-sword
I have taken the Bible studies from my website and imported most of them into e-sword. The next step (after this busy Easter season) will be to put the study modules up for download. I will dump the QuickVerse index files since that seems to be a dead end with free e-sword. They are already imported into e-sword as commentary notes.

e-sword is completely free
I created an install disc for e-sword and am sharing it with people at church who want a computer Bible program for free. This is allowed under the copyright. You are free to copy and give away the program. You are not free to sell it. This is nice.

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