Bible study resource: The Sword Project
Here's a treasure I've found and want to share. The Sword Project is an excellent Bible study program available free for downloading. Add-on modules include a good variety of public domain Bible versions (such as the KJV, ASV, ISV, Bible in Basic English, and Westcott-Hort with NA27/UBS4 Greek text). Lots of good, public domain commentaries are also available, including notes from Barnes, Robertson, Scofield, and Wesley. Lexica and dictionaries (including Strong's) are also free. The interface is powerful and easy to use. If you haven't found a good Bible study program, I recommend you look at this one.
The Sword Project is actually one of several good free Bible software programs offered by those who seem to be more interested in encouraging Bible study than in making a buck. Others include the Online Bible and e-Sword (some e-Sword Bible translations require a fee but others, such as the ESV, do not).
The Sword Project is actually one of several good free Bible software programs offered by those who seem to be more interested in encouraging Bible study than in making a buck. Others include the Online Bible and e-Sword (some e-Sword Bible translations require a fee but others, such as the ESV, do not).
posted by Milton Stanley at 9:31 PM
9 Comments:
Between Sword and e-Sword I much prefer e-Sword, but The Sword Project has the advantage of being open source. One of these days I've got some planned modules to write for Sword, I just need the real world to die down a bit. Which means they will probably never be written.
When I saw that it included the ESV, I downloaded e-sword and began trying to use it tonight. We'll see how it goes. Peace.
e-Sword has impressed me several times. My primary Bible software is either Bibleworks and PC Study Bible. e-Sword is very similar to PC Study Bible and personally I think it has several advantages over PCSB, not the least of which is that e-Sword is free while PCSB is quite expensive. But e-Sword has a nice interface, some nice features, and many of the same reference works found in programs like PCSB. Bibleworks is completely different so it can't be compared here.
Chris: I'm not familiar with those two. The only other program I've used is Logos, which is good, but not as much better to justify the price.
Glad you found this program! And thanks for spreading the word. I've been using it for several years now, and it's most excellent MacSword cousin. While they've had a slow start of getting copyrighted Bibles available (I finally converted the ESV and a few others on my own for personal use), there are signs that the NASB and ESV could be available soon as SWORD modules.
It's also very encouraging to see that more and more publishers are willing to make the Word available for use within various software, even without overly cumbersome licensing fees and/or Digital Restriction Management. Now that I would not be guilty of neglecting the opportunity for truly listening through such fine tools and translations!
Yes it is good to see. And thanks for the link about the ESV and NASB. How, pray tell, did you convert the ESV for use on Sword? I'd like to be able to do that myself. Thanks, too, for linking to TS. I've added The Extinguished Scholar to my own blogroll. Peace.
BIBLE VERSIONS WHICH IS THE REAL WORD OF GOD? Find out at www.biblediscernment.com
Just recently, I put some effort into a script suitable for any Linux or UNIX system to grind out Sword-compatible modules from whole texts obtained from www.biblegateway.com. When I mentioned this on the GnomeSword users' list, I induced a bit of worry over whether this is proper; I've put in a query to BG feedback, but without response in over a week now. In any event, I'm standing on the ground that all I've written is a tool to work with the text, which seems freely available (but I don't redistribute). The result is that I've got NASB, NIV, and other versions available for myself now, and others can do the same for themselves, too. See http://www.charcoal.com/~karl/sword/ and catch the scripts link in the bottom paragraph. Now that I see folks mentioning ESV, I'm picking it up to try out as well -- with each version on which I sic my script, I learn new and horrifying variations in the formatting used. *sigh*
Cool. Thanks for the link.
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