It’s no secret that I love Logos Bible Software.
But I also love BibleWorks (BW). I have been using it almost daily since 1999, so I’m comfortable with its layout and features.
BW and Logos complement more than they compete with each other. So I gratefully use both. BW is a tool for biblical exegesis. (It doesn’t offer an extensive library like Logos, and the books it does offer are primarily lexical and grammatical in nature.) Its strengths include its layout, speed, and value.
Earlier this week I upgraded from BW 7 to BW 9, and I’m loving it.
A lot is new in BW 9. Here are my two favorite additions:
- New English translations. These include the CEB (which just released) and updates of the NIV, NET, HCSB, NLT, and NAB. (BW also includes some previous editions if you owned them in previous versions of BW: e.g., the 1984 NIV, 2005 TNIV, and 2011 NIV; both the 2005 and 2009 HCSB; both the 1977 and 1995 NASB.)
- New textual criticism tools. These include high-quality images of searchable and morphologically tagged manuscripts like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and the NT Critical Apparatus from Dan Wallace’s Center for NT Textual Studies.
If you don’t own BW or if you still have an older version, you won’t regret getting BW 9.
Here are two introductory videos:
Related: Mark Ward shares nine initial impressions of BW 9.
