Rich Tatum from Blog Rodent has confirmed that Bible Gateway will be purchased by Zondervan. You can read all the details at Rich’s website, but this is great news for those who regularly use Bible Gateway.
Who knows, maybe Bible Gateway will get even better over the coming years?
Many people are excited that the ESV study bible has been released. I certainly hope I’ll be getting it as a gift for Christmas as by all accounts it is a very high quality study bible.
If you still aren’t sure if you want to buy it (even after reading a few of the free extracts) the ESV team are also allowing you to access to Matthew Chapter 1 free online.
If you purchase the ESV study bible you can have access to the whole study bible online “free”. The ESV blog has a summary of the online features.
Alternatively, you may want to read the comprehensive review of the ESV study bible written by Tim Challies.
Rich at the Tatumweb blog has recently written that Gospel Communications is closing down its online communications. Gospel Communications currently provide Bible Gateway, so it is sad to see this happening. However, hopefully someone else will purchase Bible Gateway to allow it to continue spreading the gospel and helping Christians study the word of God.
Rich says:
Former coworkers of mine have related that some Bible Societies (likely the International Bible Society, copyright holder for the NIV and TNIV) have been bidding to purchase the Bible Gateway to keep it alive in one form or another. There will likely be big news to announce on this front in the next few weeks when the secret corporate handshakes are all done.
The ESV study bible blog has recently put online free copies of some of the chapters from the new ESV study bible. If you are interested in purchasing the ESV study bible or are doing a study on 1 John or Esther. then no doubt these pdfs will be of great benefit The essay titled “Introduction to the Prophetic Books” by Paul R. House (associate dean and professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School) is also provided.
Theses extracts from the ESV study bible show the quality of the ESV study bible. It is very thorough and well laid out and shows the hours of prayer and dedication that have gone into its production.
Click on the links below to go to the relevant page on their website:
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Sword Drill 2
Main website | to Download application search iTunes
Sword Drill 2 is a very simple iPhone application that harnesses the power of Bible Gateway. If you are a big fan of Bible Gateway then this would be a useful application, otherwise you will probably find there are more powerful bible study applications on the iPhone (such as YouVersion’s bible application) that suit your needs.
One of the limitations of the program is that is needs an internet connection to access the verse, so if you are offline it will not work.
When you open the application you are presented with a list of books, and when you select a book you can then type in the chapter and verse. The application then loads the relevant verse from the Bible Gateway site. The typing is done manually, which is probably quicker than scrolling through a list.
Once you select the verse the Bible Gateway website loads in a new screen within the Sword Drill application. This is good as if it moved you to the main Safari application you would need to be switching applications a lot.
One downside of using the Bible Gateway website is tat the font is rather small. You can select a large font at the top of the Bible Gateway website to help mitigate this.
The default application is the NASB, but as the author describes in his notes you should be able to change this to any translation that Bible Gateway provide. This would require a little bit of digging around but it has been set up in the option page to allow it to be changed relatively easily. A future improvement may be to allow the translations to be selected by name
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Mantis Bible Study
Main website | Download application
Mantis Bible study is a feature rich offline bible study application for the iPhone or iPod Touch. There is a large range of bibles, commentaries and dictionaries available however only the KJV translation is packaged as free. Any others would have to purchased (the ESV for instance costs about $20).
Whilst the software is very well designed if you are looking for a free bible application package on your iPhone the lack of translations available is a stumbling block.
Using the iPhone Mantis application is easy. On the top menu you can switch between translations (if you have purchased any) and also choose which book or chapter you would like to read. This works pretty well and allows you to quickly navigate the bible.
How does it look?
The design is good with full customisation of the font that you read the text in. There are various other options too to customize the view. The navigation bars and tab bars are well designed and serve their functions very well.
There are a few features which other free bible applications on the iPhone tend not to have at the moment which may make this a tempting choice.
The first of these is notes, which allow you to write your own notes linked to any verse that you may be reading. As you can see from the image to the right these can then be read “in-line” (you can toggle this option off) as you read the text. This is a well implemented feature for anything that may crop into your head as you are reading. You can also browse through all of your notes by clicking on the Notes option on the tab bar.
You can also make bookmarks in the bible to help you remember any key verses you may be reading. On top of this there is also a histories section which shows you the recent verses you have read. Once again this could prove invaluable if you are hopping around the bible quickly.
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Bible Reader
Main website | Download application
Olive Tree have made a name for themselves by providing bible software on various mobile applications, so it is no surprise that they are branching out onto the iPhone. The early versions (this review is based on version 4.0001) are good and are based around providing offline translations. No doubt further updates and improvements will be coming to software.
More translations would obviously be great, and any further improvements to the applications design would help make this a superb iPhone bible application. I’m not sure what the likelihood of additional translations would be, as they do provide an ESV version for £10 (£15 for an ESV study pack).
Olive Tree’s Bible Reader application currently includes the ASV, Darby, French Darby, German Luther Bible, MKJV, NET, SpanishRV, WEY-NT and the YLT.
You can change the translations quickly by tapping on the acronym for the translation you are reading and then selecting your new choice.
The small icon in the middle of the tab bar pulls up a table of all the books of the bible on on screen. This sounds too much for one iPhone screen but it actually works really well and does not feel to small or cramped. This may be more difficult for those whose eye sight is not 100% but I found it a quick way to select the books. You then simply click on the book and verse and you are taken to the relevant verse.
You can also directly type a verse in the top bar (though this would take longer) or search for a specific word or phrase.
It is very easy to use and takes less than a minute to understand.
The simple design generally fits the iPhone well, and there is full customization available for the font and font size. It doesn’t quite look the part as much as the YouVersion bible. Not that it creates a bad experience when using it but it feels more PC than Mac. Whether that is bad no doubt depends on you preference!
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YouVersion iPhone Bible
Support | Main website | Download application
The team behind the YouVersion bible have recently improved their free iPhone bible application to allow certain translations to be read offline. This is great news for iPod Touch users and for those times you are unable to connect to the internet. It will be interesting to see the improvements that this iPhone bible application makes over the coming year.
If your iPhone or iPod Touch is connected to the internet then there are lots of transaltions available including:
Less of these translations are available offline, but they are working on getting more available. To access the offline transaltions you need to have access to a wifi or edge network to download the initial bible text, but then it will work wherever you are. Simply go to the settings menu and choose from the following bible translations: ASV, KJV, WEB, NET RVES, ELB, DELUT, LSG, GUVS, CUV, BG1940, SV1750, FINPR, KAR, IDBAR, NORSK, AA, RMNN, KRVB 1R1927 and RURSV.
A big advantage of having translations available offline is that searching the text is much quicker. It will be great when more translations are added.
You can find verses in a couple of ways with this application. Firstly you can search for a specific word (or words) and the matching verses will be shown. This feature works well and is fast.
Secondly you can search by selecting a book and then chapter. This is probably the only flaw in the layout. It doesn’t feel particularly intuitively implemented. Firstly, this option is not on the tab bar so you have to press at least two buttons to get it (sometimes more). The layout of then selecting the book just doesn’t quite work. It is not bad, but I think there must be a quicker way of navigating. I’m not sure what that layout is, maybe something like the verse selector on Bible Reader. This is far from a deal breaker, but if YouVersion could crack this they would have a very user friendly iPhone bible.
There are no more powerful options such as bookmarking or note-taking available yet. Based on the online version of YouVersion this feature may be coming in a future release. If this could be synchronized with the online YouVersion you would suddenly have a very powerful multi-platform bible study package.
The presentation is very good and the text is easy to read. The images shown in this review are with small text but there are options for larger text or for a screen display which is easier to read in the dark.
There is nothing ground breaking in the design, but it fits the iPhone layout perfectly, and the simple design makes it easy to focus on the text you are reading. This is a good example of “less is more” in design.
A superb addition is the option of a daily bible reading plan (based on Robert Roberts daily reading plan). 3 sections of the bible are included each day, and you simply click on the verses shown to read them. This is a very well implemented feature which fits well with the way many people may read the bible on an iPhone.
Other features include the ability to email verses by double clicking or holding down on a verse. This could be useful either to send yourself a note about what you are reading, or send an email to friend (which is its main intended use). This function does work when you are offline, as it saves any unsent messages and sends them when you are back in range. The verse itself is not shown - but it includes a link to the normal YouVersion website.
There is also a contributions tab, where recent contributions from YouVersion users are included. I did not find this amazingly useful as the contributions are very random and you can’t search for notes on a verse. I expect this functionality will be added in future versions.
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Bible Gateway Search Google Gadget
Main Website
Trey Meier at the TWKM blog has written a great gadget/widget to add the ability to directly search bible verses from Bible Gateway from either iGoogle or you own website or blog.
It works by presenting you with a search box where you tap in the verse you want to read, and the widget then automatically opens us Bible Gateway with the verse that you have requested. You can choose from a multitude of translations (including NIV, ESV, KJV, and many more) and the widget has alos been translated into French and Spanish. You can see an example of the Bible Gateway Search Google Gadget at the bottom of this post…
For those not aware, iGoogle is the personalized home page that you can get with google. It is a great base for a home page and includes widgets for various things from emails to the weather. You can add it to iGoogle by clicking on the “+ Google” button that is on the widget at the end of this review.
If you are adding it to your own website there a lots of options for adjusting the colors, size and some of the text of the widget to ensure it looks professional. The version below is just the default version, which is similar in style to the iGoogle version also.
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Rick Meyers, who produced eSword, the best free PC bible software, has now produced an online version with spectacular results. Whilst not as powerful as the stand-alone eSword package it does mean you can access large parts of the eSword package even if you use a Mac or are away from your normal computer. The online eSword is easy to use, quick at accessing bible verses and commentaries and is also a powerful bible study option. Give it a try, it might just become your online bible of choice!
If you use eSword without creating a free account then the number of translations and extras you have access to are limited. The default translation is ESV, and you also have Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary, the Easton dictionary, the Strong’s lexicon and a selection of topics . This may suit your needs if you like the ESV (which is a superb translation) and just need to quickly look up a verse.
However, if you sign up for the free account, which is very quick an easy to do, you then have access to many more translations. You can pick and choose which you want to have access to from your profile page. At the time of this review you could use the following resources:
Bibles:
Amplified Bible, Afrikaans Ou Vertaling, Contemporary English Version, Chinese Union Version (Simplified, Traditional), Dutch Staten Vertaling, English Standard Version, French bibles x2, Finnish Pyha Ramattuu, German Bible x2, God News Bible, God’s Word, Italian bible x2, various King James versions, Latin American bible, New American Standard Bible, Revised Version, Vietnamese Bible and more!
Commentaries
Albert Barnes, Adam Clarke, Matthew Henry (concise and full), Jamieson Fausset and Brown, The People’s New Testament and Robertson’s Word Pictures.
Commentaries
Easton’s, Fausset’s, Hitchcock’s, International Standard Bible, Smith’s and Webster’s 1828
Topicals
Nave’s Topical Bible, RA Torrey’s New Topical
Lexicons
Brown-Driver-Briggs’ Hebrew, Strongs Hebrew and Greek, Thayer’s Greek.
In other words, you have access to a wealth of different bible study resources. So, Just how easy is it to use? Is it too slow with all the options available?
You can see the layout to the right and it is very logical. On the right you have the selections for commentaries, dictionaries, lexicon and various topics. On the left three quarters of the results section have the selected bible verses, whilst the bottom quarter has cross references.
It is a very good structure, which has both a flexible width and height. This means you can make it fit in to less than half your screen easily without having to scroll around. You can’t adjust the layout within the screen as you can on the PC eSword version. However, this really doesn’t detract from its use as the automatic adjustment always fits well.
The presentation is very clear and easy to use, with a good choice of fonts. It just works, without being anything groundbreaking, helping to keep the design clutter free.
What instantly struck me was just how quick eSword was to use. Even with lots of bibles, commentaries and dictionaries selected the results appear very quickly. You can choose your translation or commentary via a drop down menu, and the commentary will automatically update based on the verse selected.
You can navigate the bible either by typing in the reference or searching for a word. Once again the speed is impressive even when searching for a common word. Searching for ‘hope’ came up with the 164 verses in less than one second. You can then click on any of the verses to read them in context. There is a picture of the search box to the right, which has several different options to help you narrow down your search.
The verses that you have recently used are saved in the history section should you wish to backtrack on your reading.
Using the online eSword is simple, and takes a matter of minutes to know exactly where everything is. Despite this, it is actually a very powerful online bible with lots of resources.
Finally, there is also a help page which shows how to link to specific verses from your website.
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