Thursday, October 02, 2014

e-Sword 10.4 Update

I have been a long time user of e-Sword (alongside BibleWorks) and cannot recommend it highly enough. It is a free Bible study software program that rivals many that you would have to pay for and is better that most. This program also makes basic word studies a breeze and has been of great use to those in my congregation to whom I have recommended it. In fact, they often tell me that they love the layout and how user-friendly the program is. There is not a very steep learning curve with this program, so most anyone can catch on to it quickly. But with its recent update to version 10.4, an already great program has gotten even better. For those interested, here is the rest of the list of updates in the latest version:
New Find on Page button located next to the Search button on each view's toolbar. This Find feature makes locating content easier on large articles, such as those in many commentaries, dictionaries and reference books.
New User Files Location field in the Resources dialog (under the Options menu) for customizing where you wish for your user files to be located. This is very convenient for setting up with backup or synchronizing programs, such as Dropbox. Initially these files will still default to your "My Documents\e-Sword\" directory, but now you can easily change that!
Fixed Editor issue where it could possibly give a formatting error and not save the changes.
Although a number of modules have been developed for purchase by eStudySource, the list of free modules grows daily. There are quite a few free modules already offered at the e-Sword downloads page, such as John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible, Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible, the Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, or A.T. Robertson's Word Pictures in the New Testament. This list has grown steadily over the years. There is also a growing list of free modules available at BibleSupport.com, about which I have previously posted here.

For those interested in finding out more about the program, Christian Computing Magazine has also recently written a series of favorable reviews of the software:
Give it a try, and let us know what you think.

In case you are interested in how I am currently using the program, here is a screenshot of the passage I am studying for this coming Sunday:


Click on the screenshot in order to enlarge it, and you can see that I have purchased a few modules but also that I have many modules that I have downloaded for free from BibleSupport.com.

4 comments:

  1. I noticed on your screenshot of your e-Sword program that you have "NKJV+" as one of the bible modules installed. I assume this is the NKJV with Strongs. Where did you get this module from? Also, in your commentary modules I see "ESV", is this commentary from the ESV Study Bible? If so, where did you get this module?

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    1. Actually, I purchased the NKJV through eStudySource, but I think I got the NKJV+ years ago through a member of the e-Sword Yahoo email group who had developed it and offered it to those who had purchased the NKJV module. Now I don't think I even have the NKJV+ module that I downloaded. The ESV notes in the commentary section are not the ESV Study Bible notes; they are just the cross references and notes that come with the regular version of the ESV. Years ago there was a program that would download translations from one of several free online Bibles (such as BibleGateway.com) and would create both a Bible file and place the cross references and footnotes in a separate commentary file. I don't even know if that program is around any more.

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    2. By the way, I don't think I am in violation of the copyright for either of those modules, but if I am, please let me know so that I can delete them.

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  2. Thanks for the info. If you run across that NKJV+ module let me know. I also purchased the NKJV through eStudySource.

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