Electronic Resources

Several commercial companies have aggregated various books and have created concordance programs that cover the Hebrew Bible (and the New Testament). The three major companies are: Accordance, Bibleworks and Logos.

Details about each program may be found at http://www.accordancebible.com/; http://www.bibleworks.com/ and http://www.logos.com/. Each has slightly different capabilities and functions as a concordance, as well as significant resources such as lexica, grammars, editions and translations of the Bible in multiple languages, texts in Hebrew beyond the BIble, selected Ancient Near Eastern texts, Dead Sea Scrolls, atlases, etc. They also offer features like interactive maps, electronic books such as commentaries and monographs, and a plethora of other features to help students of the Bible. These programs are available in a desktop format, and they also have helpful apps that can be downloaded to your Apple and Android devices. Many come in different packages, with different resources that may be purchased based on the user's need and budget. The electronic versions of resources are often superior to their paper originals since they can be searched more extensively and more easily. The electronic concordances can perform all sorts of complicated searches in second that would take minutes or hours, or would be impossible, using the paper concordances. These electronic resources also allow you to work conveniently with a biblical text, various ancient and modern translations, lexica, grammars and commentaries open at the same time on your desktop.

Brief introductory videos for each product are below:

Accordance

Bibleworks

Logos

In addition, free, limited demo versions of each product may be downloaded at the sites below:

https://accordancebible.com/accordance-lite/

http://bibleworks.software.informer.com/9.0/

http://logos-bible-software1.software.informer.com/5.3/

It is difficult to compare these programs side by side, especially since they are being constantly updated. Many of the on-line comparative reviews are by the companies that produce these products, or are outdated (for example, many do not take into account that a robust version of Accordance exists for the PC), so these must be used with great caution. A recent review that compares the three programs usefulness for studying the LXX is available for download at the bottom of the page*; it is possible to some extent to extrapolate from this review to Hebrew resources. It is also important to consider that some of these products or packages are more oriented for seminary or devotional study, while others (including Accordance, which I use), have extensive resources for the scholar.

*This review is courtesy of The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS).