One investment I have yet to make is to purchase one of those $500.00+ Bible software programs. Anytime I have a little extra money in the savings account, I am tempted to finally make this purchase. A year or so ago, I was very close to purchasing the Logos Bible Software, but put it off for some reason or another.Recently, however, I was given the Faith Database as a birthday gift. While not specifically a Bible software product, it does contain 10 Bibles, including the ASV, Darby, Douay-Rheims, ESV, a Greek Interlinear, KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NKJV, and NRSV translations. Most are included on the CD-ROM, while a few of them, accessible via the internet due to copyright restrictions I guess, are linked directly to the program itself. While the Bible study functions of the Faith Database are far less impressive than other Bible study programs like Logos, it does allow you to reference any particular Biblical verse to the early Church Fathers or other Church writings. For example, I clicked on the reference link to 1 Thessalonians 1:6, which provided, along with related Biblical passages, references to St. John Chrysostom's Homily 16 on Second Corinthians and Homily 1 on First Thessalonians. There was additional references to John Paul II's letter On the Laity and a talk given during a visit to Mexico in 1999 focusing on the sick.
In addition to the Bible translations, included in the CD-ROM are Ecumenical Council documents, Early Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church, Christian classics, Bible art, Bible maps, and more. In particular, this product offers:
*10 Bible Translations
*88 Council Documents from all 21 Ecumenical Councils
*400 Early Church writings
*165 writings from the Doctors of the Church
*74 books from John Henry Newman
*112 books from G.K. Chesterton
*1300 Papal writings/encyclicals
*The Old Catholic Encyclopedia (1200 entries and 5000 images)
*Many classics including Gibbons' "Faith of our Fathers," Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation of Christ" and John Paul II's "Theology of the Body"
*1000 Bible Art Images
*Over 100 Bible Maps
*Illustrated Church history
*Search Catechism and Code of Canon Law
As I mentioned above, the Faith Database does not have the tools and applications that are included in many of the more expensive, complete Bible software that one can purchase. However, if you would like to own a very basic Bible study software, with links to Councils, the saints, and other Church documents, then this is a pretty good option. And at $39.95, you really can't beat the price. After purchasing the Faith Database, you can also get a subscription which will allow you to download ten more books each month for a year.
3 comments:
Timothy,
Does BibleWorks 8.0 appeal to you? I think its's far better for original languages exegesis than the the clunky and resource intensive Logos. But if you want all the books, I can see why it may appeal ...
PaulW,
Yes, indeed I love having lots of resources, which is probably why Logos appeals to me. I assume you use BibleWorks? How do you like it?
I find it has a relatively easy interface, and that resources such as modern lexicons and grammars are close at hand - esp Louw/Nida, a very useful resource. E-sword is arguably the easier interface, but the quality of its original languages material is very limited. I bit the bullet and invested in BW 7. I have used Logos on a friend's computer - and this may be due to unfamiliarity - but I found it gobbled up too much memory. Also, as a Linux user I find BW very compatible with Wine; Logos doesn't run through this emulator.
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