Bible Question: Please let me know what Bible study software is out there and the merits of each. Please feel free to recomend anything that you think is good. But also, more specifically is STEP any better or worse than LOGOS and why? |
Bible Answer: This question was asked earlier in this forum, however I'll add my two cents again. I have tried just about everything on the market and I think I can give a fair evaluation. If your doing simple concordance type searches (one word or phrase) any of the packages are more than sufficient. If you’re using the program to construct sermons, lessons, or research type papers you need look at how they transfer from themselves to a “word processor”. Some simply use copy and paste which works for most. However for research or term papers you need to be able to include credits such as author, publisher and etc. I feel the LOGOS system is superior for this. For sermons and lessons you would probably want to include book, chapter and verse designations. Here Wordsearch, which is in STEP, does what I feel to be superior job. The next area you want to look at is what books each one has available. Beware it is easy to get caught up in buying more and more. I know many people who have spent thousands buying books for these programs and never use more than a few favorites while hundreds of dollars worth of material sit unused. Most of the online or relativity cheap stuff makes extensive use of free or out of copyright material. In others words old books many of which contain old expressions and often-obsolete words. The more expensive programs include new or current material. The question here is what are you going to use. To me the choice came down to the LOGOS family (Logos, Nelson) and the Wordsearch (navigator, Preachers Outline and Sermon Bible). I feel everything else is not as useful, did not offer a good value versus cost or fell short in ease of operation area. I view LOGOS as more for academia and Wordsearch more practical. By this statement I mean Logos is excellent to use to dissect a passage in one of the original languages, prepare a term paper with footnotes, or do an all inclusive in-depth study of the Bible. Wordsearch on the other hand is so easy to use; you can put together a sermon/lesson or study including all references with minimal effort. Books and Bibles are automatically synchronized and scroll together. It is not as flexible as LOGOS but far more user friendly. Both LOGOS and Wordsearch offer a wide selection of books with LOGOS winning hands down in shear numbers. Here ask yourself a question, does your normal mode of study reference every available book or do you rely on some old favorites? I tend to go with the tried, tested and familiar references so I had to shop which author was publishing in which format. I had some favorite authors that published only in Logos and others only in Wordsearch so I ended up with both. If I had to do over I would not have purchased LOGOS and would have used the money to expand my Wordsearch Library and if I really wanted them to purchase hard copies of authors not published in STEP. One passing thing, Wordsearch has two similar features I love. One is called “Easy For Your To Say” and the other “Strong’s Talking Concordance”. These features pronounce over your computer’s speakers any word that you point and click. “EASY For You To Say” pronounces all the proper names of people, places and objects in the Bible. “Strong’s Talking Concordance” pronounces all the Greek and Hebrew words. To me these two features are worth their weight in gold. I hope this helps. |