The Best iPod Touch Bible App

Sorry about the lack of posts. I have a project coming near completion and have been busy the last several weeks. I can now see light at the end of the tunnel, however, so in the near future I'll be back blogging on what I consider a regular basis (i.e., one or two posts a week).

Anyways, I promised a review of Olive Tree Software's Bible Reader, so here it is.

Before I get to Bible Reader though, I must say that if I didn't know how to read the biblical languages (and if Olive Tree hadn't offered me this free beta!), I would definitely go with BibleXpress since it easily offers the best value for the money.

So far BibleXpress has five English translations: ESV, NASB, NRSV with Apocrypha, KJV, and ASV. Ben Spratling (the developer) is also attempting to get the NIV, the Message, the NLT, and a Greek NT and LXX, which would be added as a free update. All of this for the very reasonable price of $30. Go ahead and compare this value with any other bible program that offers a comparable set of core modern translations and texts that isn't tethered to the Internet in some way.

The same five translations already offered by BibleXpress (i.e., ESV, NASB, NRSV, KJV, and ASV) would cost $62.75 on Bible Reader when purchased individually, and this is without factoring in the additional translations that Ben Spratling will be adding for free at some point. In light of this, I think that those Christians who had the gall to complain about BibleXpress's initial purchase price are simply empty-headed.



Having said all that, since I can read the biblical languages, however, I will be adopting Bible Reader as my main bible app for the iPod Touch. While BibleXpress will eventually offer a Greek NT and LXX, it is highly unlikely that Ben Spratling will be able to offer the morphological data to go with these texts, and besides which, the Hebrew Bible isn't in the plans to this point and of all the potential texts available, that's the most important to me.

It appears that Olive Tree Software has a solution to the problem of combining all the various translations and texts into one program. On my beta version of Bible Reader, there is a way to access the store and my Olive Tree account to download translations and texts. On my beta version of Bible Reader, I have the following translations:

• Bible in Basic English*
  
• English Standard Version
  
• Green's Literal Translation*
• Holman Christian Standard
• JPS Tanakh
• King James Version
• New American Bible
• New American Standard Bible.
• New English Translation (with limited notes)*
  
• New International Version
• New King James Version
• New Living Translation (2nd ed.)
• New Revised Standard Version
• Revised Standard Version
• The Message
• Today's New International Version
• Young's Literal Translation

In order to purchase all these translations individually it would cost you just under $225 (* indicates a free translation). If you omit the KJV and Young's Literal translation which are very cheap ($5 and $2, respectively), the average price for the individual translations runs to about $18 each. The good news is that Olive Tree Software will offer many of these translations in combination in a variety of packages, bringing down the cost considerably (indeed they have already begun to do so).

Overall, this beta version (4.02.024) is remarkably bug free (it's the fourth one I've received). There are still a lot of formatting issues for many of the translations, but they are aware of them and are in the process of smoothing those out.



When I got my first bible app, I didn't really expect to use it much. Initially, I refused to bring it to church, since I thought it would be a distraction to those around me, but I noticed that there were quite a few others around me who actually use some sort of portable electronic device for not only referring to the bible, but also to take notes (there's a high yuppie quotient at my church).

So I started bringing it along with me on Sundays. The great thing is that I now have a lot of different translations at my fingertips. This comes in handy because at my church there is no standard translation used by everyone, though a couple of pastors appear to be partial to the ESV.

This can be rather problematic since it's quite rare for the same pastor/person to preach two Sundays in a row (and forget about three Sundays in a row, which almost never happens). For one thing, we have four pastors at our church. In addition, several members of the congregation have attended seminary (I can think of 6 off the top of my head, and I know there are others I can't think of at the moment) and are often called on to speak (I fall in this category). We also regularly have outside speakers as well. In fact, this past September we had four different outside speakers giving the sermon on four successive Sundays.

This generally means a different translation is used each Sunday, even if it happens to be the same pastor, since I've noticed that some of the pastors like to use different translations on different occasions.

In the past I simply had to follow along in my ESV regardless of the translation used by the pastor. So, for instance, when Eugene Peterson's The Message was used, as is sometimes the case (a couple of the pastors were students of his), trying to follow along in my ESV was next to useless. This is no longer a problem, thanks to Bible Reader.



Anyways, since it is a beta, rather than lauding the numerous things that the Bible Reader does right, I figure it would be far more useful to offer constructive criticism. Here are a list of some modest improvements in the interface that I would like to see:

1. Adjustable margins. I put my iPod Touch in a leather flip case that protects it. However, one drawback is that the protective leather tends to crowd the edge of the screen. This means that the biblical text runs right up against the leather edges, becoming a distraction.
2. Optional red letter text. It's nice that the font color can be changed. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the red letter text. It stays red no matter what color you change the surrounding text to. Of course, you can change the font to Dark Red, and Jesus' words will be indistinguishable from the rest of the text. However, looking at all that red text is simply annoying.
3. I'm not sure the verse chooser (which I like a lot) needs to go down to the verse level. I'd like to see this as an option you could toggle on and off.
   
4. There has to be a better way to switch chapters rather than scrolling downwards through the text to the next chapter. Perhaps a sideways swipe to change chapters could be implemented. Ben Spratling's BibleXpress already has such a feature.
5. There should be an easier way to change font sizes, rather than going to the setup menu. Perhaps a pinching motion on the screen could be implemented. Ben Spratling's BibleXpress already has such a feature.
   

The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh

I love diglots, but have found it difficult to find good ones. Needless to say, Interlinears don't count, since, though they often include an English translation in the outside column, it is more properly a language tool rather than a real bible. For one thing, the interlinear English distracts attention away from the original text, and for another, the English translation in the outside column is usually treated as an afterthought, with no care given to its presentation. It's hardly a bible that one would curl up with and read for either pleasure or devotional purposes.

So when I saw a post by Iyov taking to task Christian publishers for not producing more diglots, and Christians for not making more use of diglots, I not only had to sadly agree with his point, I thought I'd do my part to help remedy the latter by displaying the advantages of one particular Hebrew-English diglot that I've loved ever since I first purchased it in the hopes that a few more Christians will consider buying one.

The New Testament is fairly well-served by the GBS edition that contains the Nestle-Aland 27th and the RSV and now the NET diglot (which I don't have yet, but they don't exactly make it easy, do they?). The former's existence, in particular, is fairly well known among Christian seminarians, I think, so I won't bother discussing the features of that edition. The only thing I'll say about the GBS edition is that I wish those folks would update the RSV and take out all the archaic thee's and thou's, since I doubt it would take much work in this age of computers (the archaic grammar I don't mind at all), or alternatively, use the NRSV as the English translation.

There's also the excellent Greek-English Synopsis of the Gospels reviewed here by Jesus Saenz on Mark Bertrand's blog.

And now that there's a new translation of the Septuagint out, I imagine that it's just a matter of time before we see a new diglot. Anything's got to be better than the old Brenton one.


However, to finally get around to the subject of this post, the best Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) diglot I've seen is the one published by the Jewish Publication Society in four editions: pocket, student, cloth, and leather. I have two of the four (pocket and cloth) and wish that I had sprung for the real leather version when it was still in print (at the time, I was a poor graduate student and couldn't justify the extra dough).

(Addendum: David Stein, the original managing editor and co-designer of these editions left a comment below informing me that these are also available in electronic format--a PDF-based e-book--here.)

These have been around awhile (like the NASB Classic Companion I reviewed here), but since I haven't noticed anyone else giving it the Bertrand/Mansfield treatment, I thought I'd have a go.

The JPS Tanakh (Tanakh is a Hebrew acronym for Torah-Prophets-Writings = Christian Old Testament), for those who aren't familiar with it, is a fairly literal translation of the Masoretic Text (the version of the Jewish scriptures that the rabbis preserved). It isn't as literal as the NASB or even the ESV since it can be rather idiomatic in places (often it simply replaces an original Hebrew idiom judged to be unclear with something more contemporary that approximates it's meaning). I'd roughly equate it to the NRSV in terms of literalness.

Since it is a Jewish bible, it scrupulously follows the Masoretic Text (i.e., the Leningrad Codex, and as such is nearly but not quite identical to BHS), ignoring other texts and textual traditions in the text itself, though it does take note of textual variants, including possible emendations, in footnotes (unfortunately transliterated).


The cloth edition is quite a hefty volume (10 1/4" x 7 1/8" x 2 1/4"), while the leather edition is even larger.

For size comparison purposes, here is the TNIV Reference stacked on top of the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: Cloth edition. You can see the latter is quite a lot thicker.

The dark blue padded cover is very nice. It's essentially a hardback covered in a spongy faux-leather type material. It feels a lot like the covers on those old gi-mongous KJV family bibles that everyone used to own. The page edges are gilded with gold and there is one blue ribbon included.

Here they are side by side. The TNIV Reference is on the left, while the JPS Tanakh is on the right.

The text is presented in two parallel columns with English on the left and Hebrew on the right.

The text lays flat, even at Genesis 1.

The font is a nice size (I'd estimate about 10 pt.) with uncommonly generous spacing between each line. Lines average about 8 or 9 words in English. The Hebrew font is clear and easy to read, even the vowels and cantillation marks.

The Hebrew tends to be more compact than the English so the verses don't quite match up in the bottom half of each page, but I'm glad they didn't chop up the verses to simply match them up. It would have de facto turned this bible into one of those dreaded verse-by-verse editions. The editors have, however, gone to the trouble to re-align the text at each chapter and kept the Hebrew and English within one verse of each other at the bottom of each page.

The overall presentation is beautiful to look at and easy on the eyes, though I often wish that they had devoted each entire page to a single column, paragraph formatted text, English on one page and Hebrew on the facing page (like the GBS New Testament diglot), and that is lined up at every new paragraph, rather than dividing the page into columns and lining it up at every chapter as they did.

One of the few defects that mars this edition is some moderate bleed-through (If you click on one of the above images and blow it up, you can see what I mean). It isn't really any worse than the TNIV Reference or the ESV Personal Size Reference though, so if you can put up with it in those bibles, I daresay you won't find this appreciably worse. Another defect is that you don't get much in the way of margins.

I'm no expert in bindings, but I'd hazard a guess from the above picture that it's sewn, though I can't be sure.

One drawback for Christians, is that the chapters and verses in this edition follow the Masoretic Text and thus won't always match up with what most are used to in the Old Testament. When reading alone this won't be a big deal, but in a group setting (e.g., bible study or following along in a sermon) this could be an annoyance (especially in books like the Psalms). Those who don't mind the KJV might appreciate Aron Dotan's Parallel Bible Hebrew-English Old Testament published by Hendrickson, since it preserves the Christian book order and versification (it's about to be re-printed).

Another feature of this bible that some will view as a drawback, but I view as a huge advantage (especially for Christians) is the order of the books, which generally follows the Leningrad Codex with a few concessions to the order of books found in most Hebrew printed editions. It could give Christians a fresh perspective on the Old Testament (e.g., Daniel is found among the Writings in the Tanakh, and not among the prophets, as in the Christian OT, and the Deuteronomistic History can be found intact, without the intrusion of Ruth).

Everything considered, I don't think you can go wrong with buying this edition, especially if you don't already own a copy of the NJPS translation, which you should have anyways.


If this edition is too large for you, the student edition and the pocket edition are still available for purchase.

However, I'm sad to say that I can't recommend the student edition. I saw it several years ago when it had just been printed (at the annual Society of Biblical Literature convention), and it had a very bad gutter problem. You had to pry the bible wide open to read the text which went right into the spine. I imagine that they've fixed it by now, but I'd have a look first to make sure. I was told by the JPS spokesperson at the exhibit that year that they'd be fixing it in the next print run (at the time, he said it would come in a matter of months), but when I checked again a couple years later, it still hadn't been fixed from what I could tell.

Here's a video I found of what looks like the student edition. At one point he opens it up and shows the text. Either the gutter problem isn't as bad as I remember it or they've somewhat alleviated the problem. To me, it still looks like the binding pinches the text too much in the gutter though. Too bad, since the size represents a good trade-off between form and function.

On the other hand, if you can get past the odd shape (6" x 4" x 1.75") of the "pocket" edition (you'd have to have pretty large pockets), it's quite functional. The layout is exactly the same as the cloth edition, only with smaller print, which is comparable to the print of the original ESV compact editions (not the deluxe compact). It retains the nice line spacing of the cloth edition though this extra space could have been used to increase the font size if they had gone to the trouble of specially formatting the bible for this edition.

The text block itself is almost exactly the same size in both editions since they both have the exact same number of pages. The slight difference in thickness is accounted for by the fact that the cloth edition has a very thick padded cover.

For those with poor eyesight, though, the Hebrew vowels and cantillation marks might be a little tough to make out. Also, the text does tend to run just a bit too far into the gutter (but not as badly as the student edition and just about par for the course in the current bible-making climate) and it still has the same moderate bleed-through problems as the cloth edition. (I tried to take a picture with my crappy camera but I can't get a decent one that isn't one big blur.)

All in all, though, I'm quite happy to have this small edition to lug around as the cloth edition is more or less anchored to my desk.

Oh yeah, one last thing: it doesn't exactly lay flat.

(Addendum: Iyov has posted some related thoughts here. I look forward to his posts on other Hebrew-English diglots.)