Institute for Bible Translation, Russia/CIS.

Electronic Bibles for non-Slavic peoples in Russia and the CIS.

http://globible.com/about/

An Open Source version of the Portuguese Bible based on a public domain version of the Almeida from 1819.

I applaud the work of these translators. They have already completed a first revision of the New Testament.

It’s a pity that the Bible Societies don’t allow the best versions of the translations to be used in this way. If their intention is to protect the translations it is having exactly the opposite effect. In Portuguese a proliferation of “illegal” versions of the Almeida has resulted in chaos, the ethical compromise of sincere believers forced to “steal” a Bible and the hindrance of the Great Commission.

Take a hint from the marketers of the ESV. They have shared an authoritative text with almost every online system I can think of. Rather than hindering sales, ESV has become one of the strongest English Bibles in the last decade.

A roundup of online and downloadable Bible resources, most of them free: New ways to Study the Bible. I’m looking forward to checking out these since many are new to me.

I’ve been lamenting the absence of a free version of the NET Bible with all the study notes. But I’ve just discovered that such a version exists. While modules for e-Sword, SWORD, Libronix, etc. will cost you as much as $19.95 for a full version of the NET Bible, Bible.org also offers a “Help File” containing the full NET Bible and all the notes.  I haven’t played with it a lot but it seems to have all the notes as well as navigation and search functions. The search function is pretty basic but it is at least very fast.

To find it, visit this page: NET Bible Download | Bible.org; NET Bible, Bible Study and click on HTML Help version (includes search). Note this only works in Windows (I’ve tested it in Vista).

I’ve also noticed that CTRL-C works for copying text including non-Roman fonts. This is important because the Help file doesn’t have an editing menu.

Unfortunately, none of the currently available programs are able to do this very well. The best program is The Word which has a built in function called My Verse Notes. The downside of this function is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to export these notes. Also, and this is a problem for all the software I’ve looked at so far, you can only make comments on a single verse rather than an entire passage or chapter. http://www.theword.gr/ (Note: the website claims you can make notes on entire passages and chapters so there must be something I’m missing.)

Xiphos (formerly GnomeBible) does promise to have the ability to export and share modules in the future. But it also only allows comments by verse. http://xiphos.org/

The developers of BPible say that they are working on an editing window for creating modules. http://bpbible.com/

I like the interface of BibleTime but it doesn’t have any notes function at this point. http://sourceforge.net/projects/bibletime/

BibleTime and Xiphos have the advantage of being cross-platform and I’ve used them both on Windows and Ubuntu.

As someone who has used Paratext for years, the idea of creating your own notes module (shadow file) seems like such a simple thing to do. Obviously I’m not a programmer so I’ll just wait in hopes that over time one of these software packages will offer the right kind of notes function.

If user SWORD modules were easy to create they would open up the possibility of custom commentaries, Bible studies and even complete Bible translations using a free program that is accessible to the masses rather than the expensive packages like Logos and Accordance that currently exist.

Welcome to BibleTime – Free Bible software.

A very slick desktop app using SWORD modules. Cross-platform. Localization already available in more than twenty languages.

The display for syncing resources with Bible texts and displaying more than one Bible text in parallel is especially nice.

A strange gap. CEV is on every major system except Crosswire. We need to do something about that.

Xiphos — Open Source Bible Study Software — Home.

A promising cross-platform Bible software using SWORD modules.

BibleSpeak 4.0 Released!

Speak Text “Out Loud” or “To a File”

New “Auto-Hide” Windows Increase Viewable Areas

Create your own “Audio Bibles”

Over 75 Free Bible Translations

Over 25 Free Bible Commentaries

Over 20 Free Bible Dictionaries

Many Free Books and Topics

Create Your Own Personal Bible Notes or Commentary

Supports e-Sword Topic Modules

Supports Internet Explorer 7 and MS Vista

Purchase price only $29.95!