The weblog of Olive Tree Bible Software
Educational
Hebrew and Aramaic Developments
Aug 2nd
Exciting changes are happening here at Olive Tree Bible Software with regard to the handling and display of Hebrew and Aramaic text! A variety of new technologies related to the representation and rendering of complex scripts have been developed over the past few years, and we are looking to take advantage of them as much as possible. These changes will allow us to give a clearer presentation of Hebrew and Aramaic characters. We are moving to Unicode, beginning with the mobile devices that support it, namely Pocket PCs. We are making this switch first for our Hebrew Masoretic Text Old Testament, and we envision switching to Unicode soon for our Hebrew Masoretic Text with Parsing and BDB Dictionary as well. Unicode allows for a more consistent and font-independent representation of Hebrew and Aramaic texts than has been possible in the past, and its adoption is spreading across platforms and applications. Switching to Unicode now will allow us to take advantage of its implementation on the Pocket PC and position us well for the coming day in which more handheld devices will support Unicode. This switch to Unicode allows for better Hebrew and Aramaic font rendering. Now the consonants, vowels, dageshes, cantillation marks (accents), and other Masoretic symbols can all be shown. Moreover, recent developments in font technologies allow the vowels, cantillation marks, and other symbols to be placed appropriately around the consonants in order to promote maximum readability. The results can be quite stunning.
There are currently a variety of obstacles at the level of operating system support for the use of the most advanced Hebrew fonts on handheld devices, but we at Olive Tree are dreaming big. We have set our sights high, dreaming of a presentation that will provide you with an electronic version of the Masoretic text with all of the information in the main body of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) as well as kethib/qere information. Not only will the standard consonants, vowels, dageshes, and cantillation marks be present, but so will be other symbols like maqqephs, soph pasuqs, paseqs, raphes (when BHS prints them), pethuhas, and sethumas. Moreover, we are seeking to make the display aesthetically pleasing and geared toward maximum readability. We are hoping that it can equal the quality we achieved with this screenshot, which begins at Genesis 1:1:
A beta version of the Hebrew Masoretic Text Old Testament for Pocket PC will soon be available from our website for trial. We will look forward to your feedback. If you know Hebrew and/or Aramaic and would like to be notified when the beta appears, let us know at beta02@olivetree.com.
For those of you who are biblical scholars or others educated in Hebrew and/or Aramaic, this is a major step forward in your being able to gain all the information you need about the Hebrew and Aramaic text on your mobile device wherever you are. For those of you who leave intense language study to others but still want to compare your Bible translations to the Hebrew or Aramaic original to gain a better understanding of a particular word or verse, this will make your decipherment of the original Hebrew or Aramaic an easier and more enjoyable experience.
Those of you who read this blog regularly may not recognize my name. I am a new addition to the Olive Tree team, specializing in those areas of Olive Tree’s software that deal with Hebrew and Aramaic. After studying computer science and mathematics at the University of Virginia and working in software development for a few years, I shifted my primary attention to the Old Testament. I picked up a Master’s degree in Old Testament at Regent College in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and I am currently working on a PhD at the University of Chicago in Northwest Semitic Philology in the Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations Department, the department to which the Oriental Institute is attached. (Hebrew and Aramaic are Northwest Semitic languages.) I am excited about improving the quality of the representation and rendering of the Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Old Testament as well as advancing searching capabilities. I am also excited about bringing additional ancient texts to your handheld device as well; look out for a release of a module containing non-biblical texts from Qumran later this summer or fall! Let us know (beta02@olivetree.com) if you would like to be notified when these texts, which are important both for the study of the Old Testament and the New Testament, become available.
NIV Study Notes
Jul 17th
Having done a number of conversion projects for Olive Tree Bible Software in the past year, perhaps none have been as satisfying as finally being able to offer our users the NIV Study Bible Notes. What I like so much about this resource is its versatility. The casual reader can take advantage of these notes simply by looking up a verse and reading the commentary. Those looking for more in-depth study will appreciate the numerous links both directly to cross references as well as links to similar commentary on another verse. Users can find a verse that talks about “God’s grace and peace,” like Romans 1:7, and appreciate the value of God’s unmerited favor toward us and the abiding peace He provides. If I want more verses on “God’s peace”, I can quickly navigate to Romans 5:7, Philippians 4:7, Galatians 1:3, or Ephesians 1:2, and if I want to read more commentary about “God’s peace,” the NIV Study Bible Notes provides links to notes on Philippians 4:7 and John 20:19. The presence of links within the text to other commentary AND links to related Bible verses makes studying the Bible with the NIV Study Bible Notes an enjoyable, easy and meaningful exercise.
I truly believe that this is the most user friendly, useful resource I have had the pleasure of working on, and it takes full advantage of the powerful, customizable capabilities of the Olive Tree BibleReader. Using both the Verse Chooser and the Table of Contents (TOC) Chooser, users are afforded several navigation options. The Verse Chooser allows for speedy navigation to commentary on a specific verse, while the more detailed TOC Chooser provides a more in-depth navigation system that includes detailed navigation to elements of the introductions to each Bible book, 5 short essays, useful indexes and all the notes as well.
One last feature of the NIV Study Bible Notes that I would like to mention is the index system. This resource has two indexes, an Index of Subjects and an Index of Notes. The Index of Subjects has links to Bible verses on a particular subject, and the Index of Notes has links to commentary on a particular subject. Both indexes are topical in nature, and you can navigate to them using the TOC Chooser. Navigating to a topic like “Peace” simply requires going to TOC mode by unchecking the box at the bottom of the Verse Chooser that says “verse mode.” I select Study Helps, choose Index to Subjects or Index to Notes, click on the letter P, and lastly select Peace. Then I have a helpful list of Bible verses or commentary on the topic of peace, and I can continue my Bible study on that topic.
The NIV Study Bible Notes is a powerful resource that I can happily recommend for all readers of the Bible!
Reading Electronic Books Made Easier
Jul 5th
I have been doing most of my reading electronically on a PDA or smartphone for the past 2 years. When I first started reading books electronically I did not like how much I had to scroll. When reading a paper book you can usually read for a few minutes before turning a page. On a PDA or smartphone it usually takes less than a minute before you have read all the text on the screen and have to scroll. This makes for a lot of scrolling to read through a book. The second problem with scrolling is that the text “jumps” by a line or screen when you scroll. Your eye has to do a quick adjustment to find out where to begin reading again after you finish scrolling. This becomes tiring when reading electronically for a long time.
So you may be wondering why I didn’t give up on reading electronic books. Auto scrolling was the reason. Auto scrolling solves both of these problems with reading electronically. On the Pocket PC BibleReader you can turn on auto scrolling by going to Menu->Display->Toggle Auto Scroll. On the Palm BibleReader you can turn on auto scrolling from Menu->Options->Toggle Auto Scroll. When you turn on auto scrolling the text will begin automatically scrolling. The text will do a smooth scroll. This means that the text doesn’t “jump” up the screen which makes it easy for your eye to follow. You can control how fast the text scroll by using the up and down arrows. You can make it go faster with the down arrow and slower with the up arrow.
If it weren’t for auto scrolling I don’t think I would be doing most of my reading electronically. For me, once I start reading a book with auto scrolling I forget that it is electronic. I start enjoying the book and forget about the medium that is being use to present the book. I have even found that reading electronically while riding a stationary bike is much easier than reading a paper book since I can do it completely hands free when I prop up my smartphone.
Happy Electronic Reading!
Stephen
iPod/iPhone?
Jun 27th
Olive Tree is now releasing material in a format for the iPod! We started by posting 8 FREE Bibles and are working on eBooks and devotionals. The format for the Bible is very basic but easy to use. It is organized by book, chapter, and verse. By clicking on a book of the Bible you will be brought to a screen with chapter selection. After clicking on the chapter you wish to view, you will be brought to a verse menu for this chapter. Finally, by clicking on the verse you want to view, you will be brought right to this verse. One thing to note is that the iPod only allows 1000 4 kb notes. Therefore, the whole Bible will not fit on the iPod. Once you have downloaded the Bible you want, you can delete any books of the Bible to have just the ones you want on your iPod. We are hoping the iPhone has the same notes feature with the same formatting. If this is the case, we will release all this material for the iPhone as well! If you bring your iPod with you to work, school, or anywhere else like I do, this material could be a very valuable resource for you. You can read Scripture wherever you are! Anywyay, I think this could be a really cool thing.
You can download the Bibles for you iPod from Olive Tree’s iPod beta web page.
One Handed Navigation on Palm
Jun 5th
You may have noticed that we have not posted anything to the Olive Tree blog for nearly two weeks. A number of Olive Tree employees were out of town last week. I went for a 7 day backpacking trip down the Olympic coast. Now that my “batteries are recharged” I am ready to take on the summer programming projects 
Below is a picture of me by the camp fire.
If you are like me you prefer to not use your stylus when using the BibleReader. This is especially true when I am in church. I find that using the stylus is distracting. Did you know that you can easily navigate the Palm BibleReader without a stylus. There are a number of settings in the Palm BibleReader that you can customize to make one handed navigation easy.
1. You can assign your most commonly used features to shortcut buttons. Go to menu->Options->Preferences. Then choose “Shortcuts” from the drop down in the upper left corner. On this screen you can assign the features that you use the most to the hardware buttons. For example, I always assign the select button (center button of the 4-way arrows) to be the verse chooser since that it is the feature I use the most. If you have a Treo you can add shortcuts to any of the letters on the keyboard by using the “Shortcuts – Alpha” preferences.
2. You can customize how the up, down, left, and right arrows scroll. Go to menu->Options->Preferences and then choose “Scrolling”. From here you can select if you want the up/down and left/right arrows to scroll by line, verse, screen, history, chapter, or book.
3. When you are in the verse chooser you can use the up, down, left, and right arrow keys to move the selection box around on the screen. You can then use the button in the center of the up, down, left, and right arrows to choose the book, chapter, or verse that you have selected.
4. In the Palm BibleReader you can make the up, down, left, right, and center buttons toggle between navigating the main screen and scrolling. This feature is a bit hidden in the BibleReader. This is not intentional, we didn’t want to make this navigation be the default since we wanted the arrow keys to scroll by default. To make this feature work you need to assign one of the shortcut buttons or alpha shortcuts to be “Toggle 5-Way Nav.”. Then when you are on the main screen you hit the button that you assigned to “Toggle 5-Way Nav.” to change between one handed navigation and scrolling. When you turn on the one handed navigation you will see a blue box around the current item on the screen. You can move the blue box around with the up, down, left, and right arrows. You can select the button or window by clicking on the center button.
5. On newer Palm units that support the one-handed APIs all of the preference, search, bookmark, and note screens can be navigated by using the up, down, left, right, and center buttons.
I had to include one more picture
New Customizable Toolbar on Palm
May 9th
We have added a secondary customizable toolbar to the Palm OS beta BibleReader. You can choose what buttons you want on this toolbar and where this toolbar should be placed. When you don’t want the toolbar visible you can even hide it using the blue arrow button on the top of the toolbar. We have had many requests for a popup highlighting palette so that you would not have to always go to the highlighting preference screen each time you want to change your highlighting color. You can now do this with the secondary toolbar. First, go to the secondary toolbar preferences (Menu->Preferences->Secondary Toolbar). Second, remove the buttons from the secondary toolbar that you do not want. Finally, select the highlight colors from the drop down list that you want and click on Add. Now you can use the secondary toolbar to easily highlight with the colors that you want and you can hide the toolbar when you just want to read text.
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.
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.