How ironic that the new “Bible for everyone” in Portuguese is only available to those who can afford € 34,90.

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.

SBB – Áudios.

Despite the claims on this site, it is highly unlikely that this Stephen Johnston recording of the NIV is free.

Downloadable PDFs for a considerable number of the minority languages of the Americas.

Languages in the Americas.

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.

Interview with Xiphos developer

Xiphos — Open Source Bible Study Software — Home.

A promising cross-platform Bible software using SWORD modules.