Archive for April, 2007
A New Way to View Search Results
Apr 30th
We have added a new way to view search results on the new beta Pocket PC BibleReader which you can download here. You can now view your search results as a book on the main screen. Viewing search results as a book in the main screen has a number of advantages.
- Greek and Hebrew search results display in Greek and Hebrew fonts (see screen shot).
- You can more easily look at verses for the search results since you can work your way down the list clicking on the verse hyperlinks. You no longer have to reopen the search results list to find the next result you are interested in look at.
- There are options for how to display the search results. For example, you can choose to display the entire verse instead of just the context around the search result.
- There are no limits on the number of search results.
- You can open the search results as an eBook in your library and the search results will open to where you where last reading.
You can turn on search results in the main screen by selecting the “Display Options” button in the lower left corner of the search screen and then checking the “Display Search Results In Main Screen” checkbox. This screen also has the options for how the search results are formated.
In case you Palm users thought we were ignoring you with this new feature, don’t worry we are currently implementing this feature on Palm OS! See the screen shot (also notice the customizable secondary toolbar). These features will be in the next beta version for Palm OS 
This screen shot gives an example of some of the other formating options for the search results.
Using Original Language Dictionaries without Understanding Greek or Hebrew
Apr 19th
Many times when reading a passage I want to find out the meaning behind a word that I am reading. I would particularly like to find out the meaning of the Greek or Hebrew word behind the English translation using a scholarly original language dictionary like EDNT (Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament), Little Kittel (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament), or TWOT (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament). The problem is that I do not know Greek or Hebrew. With the right tools from Olive Tree Bible Software this is possible for those that do not know Greek or Hebrew.
First, you need CWSB (Complete Word Study Bible). With the CWSB you can click on any English word in the KJV and get the Greek or Hebrew word behind that English word. For example, lets say you are reading Psalms 12:2, come across the phrase “Kiss the Son”, and you want to find out more about the word kiss from the Hebrew. With CWSB you can click on the word “Kiss” and it will display the Hebrew word and definition in the bottom window.
Second, you need an original language dictionary like EDNT, Little Kittle, TWOT, etc. For the rest of this example I am going to use TWOT.
Finally, you need iLumina Mobile. iLumina Mobile lets you assign a default dictionary and look up words in that dictionary.
To look up the Hebrew word for kiss in TWOT you need to set your default dictionary to TWOT. There are two ways to do this. You can set your default dictionary to TWOT by going to iLumina Preferences,
then clicking on “Default Files”, and selecting TWOT as the default dictionary. Alternately, if you have “Use Last Opened” as the default dictionary then you just need to open TWOT and it will be your default dictionary since it was the last opened dictionary.
Now tap and hold your stylus on the Hebrew word for kiss in the CWSB definition window. This will pull up the context menu. Select “Look up qvn in dictionary”. The Greek and Hebrew words are not displayed in Greek or Hebrew in the context menu. See the side picture for an example of how this is done.
This will pull up the dictionary input window for TWOT with the Hebrew word for kiss filled into the lookup field. You will need to look at the possible matches for the Hebrew word for kiss and pick the one that is the closest match. This will usually be the first match.
Now click on “Go” to lookup the word in TWOT. This will bring up the definition for the Hebrew word behind Kiss in Psalms 12:2. This allows you to look up scholarly definitions for words from the KJV without knowing Greek or Hebrew.
This procedure works exactly the same with the Palm BibleReader as it does on Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) BibleReader.
The Complete Word Study Bible Integrates Several Tools in One
Apr 16th
If you’re looking for a one volume Bible study tool that combines a solid translation (KJV) with Stong’s numbers, inline grammatical data on every word, extensive cross-references, book introductions, footnote commentaries on key passages, Hebrew and Greek dictionaries, word studies, and more, the Complete Word Study Bible, published by AMG and available for your PDA or Smartphone from Olive Tree, may be just what you need. This work is the fruit of 46 years of research by noted scholar Dr. Spiro Zodhiates. Available in bookstores as a four-inch thick hardback, this treasure can now be held in your palm or stored in your pocket.
Let’s take a look briefly at how we can use CWSB to investigate a word, phrase, passage, or book from the Bible. Turning to John 1:1, we read “In the beginning was the Word…” We see the title John, the subtitle The Word Became Flesh, and two links, one to an introduction explaining the authorship, uniqueness, style, and contents of the Gospel of John. The other link pulls up a commentary on the subtitled section, John 1:1-17. In this footnote/commentary, we learn about the eternal existence of Christ as the Logos or “Intelligence” Who originated everything that exits, and we read about His becoming the expression of that Intelligence as a man. We also learn that the first of two Greek verbs for to be used in the passage indicates His eternal pre-existence while the second indicates His entrance into a new state and His continuation in that state. Hyperlinked cross references give us the opportunity to search out these observations. By the time we have read the introduction to John’s gospel and the commentary on 1:1-17, we have an understanding of the context in which John writes “in the beginning.”
Now we can go deeper by looking at the word beginning by tapping on Menu, Display, and Toggle Strongs. Here we see inline grammatical codes and Strong’s numbers in parentheses following each and every word. Tapping on the grammatical data, we see that the word beginning is anarthrous (that is, without an article) and that it is a noun. Rather than being left to ponder on our own what these grammatical facts mean, we can follow hyperlinks to clear and complete explanations of the significance of each fact. Tapping on the Strong’s number, we now see an extensive definition of the Greek word for beginning, including nine points about its usage in various ways in the Bible (complete with hyperlinked references). We also find an explanation of the word’s derivation, a list of synonyms with hyperlinked Strong’s numbers, and a list of antonyms, also with links. There is too much lexical information in this entry to go into in this article. Suffice it to say that the reader is given a rich impression of the eternal pre-existence of the Logos and His overwhelming pre-eminence in this universe along with a thorough knowledge of the word beginning as it used throughout the New Testament.
I hope these comments on the CWSB give some impression of its value to serious Bible students. With a mimimal knowledge of biblical languages, or even no knowledge at all, we can use the CWSB to lead us into a deeper understanding of the wonderful truths about Christ and the Church in the Bible.
Customer Support – How Can We Help You?
Apr 11th
For a number of years now I’ve had the pleasure of serving our users with customer/technical support. Whether through email or a phone call I’ve been involved with helping hundreds if not thousands of dear people getting the BibleReader and a Bible version installed on their PDA or Smartphone. The overwhelming majority of the time it comes to a happy conclusion with the user saying “There it is – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Their Bible is installed and now they can get on with the pleasure of reading it on the device in their hand.
Day by day we get to enjoy these small encounters with people from all over the world. But we’d like to hear what else we might do to make your Olive Tree experience more pleasant. It came to mind that we might use this blog site as a means to ask you for some feedback on our Customer Support or the website in general. We would appreciate any comments or suggestions that you have that would help us serve you better.
So if you have been looking for something and can’t find it, or you find some installation instruction difficult to understand, please let us know because we want to make this as user friendly as we can. Our goal in customer support is that you would be reading the Bible on your device not spending too much time trying to get it up and running.
We look forward to your thoughts and observations. Feel free to email me at support@olivetree.com with any of your comments!
- Kimbobwe
How Do I Get a Concordance for My PDA or Smartphone?
Apr 2nd
Every serious student of the Bible appreciates the value of a concordance, not only for finding a verse one can’t seem to locate, but also for searching out the various places in the Scriptures where certain terms and topics are addressed.
Many users of Bible software for PDA’s and smartphones ask us to include concordances among our product offerings, not realizing that their BibleReader software already contains, in essence, copies of the great concordances by Strong, Young, and Cruden as well as the Englishman’s Hebrew and Greek Concordances. “I don’t remember buying them,” you say? That’s because you didn’t need to. Olive Tree’s search engine does everything any kind of printed concordance can do—actually, far more—and it does it much faster.
Searching for a particular verse? Just select a Bible, any Bible. (You can’t do that with the printed concordances because they are translation-specific.) Type in a word or phrase from the verse you are trying to find. Keep it short and simple because, unless you have the exact wording, you may not find what you’re looking for. I would like to use the New King James Version, NKJV, to look for the verse that says, “The Spirit is life because of righteousness.” I set the search engine to look for an exact match, limit the range to the New Testament, type the words “Spirit is life,” and away we go. In a second, literally, I’ve discovered that the verse I’m looking for is Romans 8:10. By selecting that verse and tapping “Go to,” I’m there in an instant, ready to read. Try doing this with a printed concordance. You’ll probably find that it takes much longer.
Or maybe you would just like to look up the word “faith” in the entire New Testament. Suppose you want to use The New Testament in Modern English by J. B. Phillips. I doubt you’ll find an exhaustive concordance in print for this translation. With your PDA or smartphone, select the translation, go to the search window, type in the word “faith,” choose the “Exact” option again, and search. A split second later you have 304 results. You can read through all of these in sequence, scan the list and find the results that pertain to the aspect of faith you are looking for, or try another search that is more limited. Suppose you want to study the relationship between faith and Christ. Type in both words and select as your search option “All Words Any Order.” You now have 51 results, all pertinent to what you are studying. It might take hours to do this with a printed concordance, and you’d be limited to the King James Version and a very few others.
Can you do this with Greek or Hebrew words? Yes, but you can also search using Strong’s numbers, which is often the best way to search in Hebrew and Greek since these languages are highly inflected. In other words, a single word may appear in many different forms. Assuming you want to see every instance of a Greek or Hebrew word, regardless of its form, just use KJV Strongs or NASB Strongs; find the Strong’s number of the word you want to search for by going to a verse that contains it and toggling the numbers on (if they are not already on); type that number into the search window; and immediately you have the results you’re looking for.
Although printed concordances are wonderful tools in their own right, none of them enables you to do everything that I’ve just mentioned, and I’ve only pointed out a few of the options possible. Moreover, your electronic Bibles, which automatically come with all these search capabilities and more, enable you to do in seconds what may take hours with printed Bibles and a printed concordance. One more very important advantage to the electronic medium is this: all these Bibles and concordances fit in the palm of your hand or, when you’re not using them, in your pocket. Wow!
For additional suggestions on Bible searches, see “The Why and How of Bible Searches” in Olive Tree’s article series Explore the Bible on Your PDA or Smartphone.