Jay Palmer has recently updated the files for the Amidah version which was released last year on this blog. The old link has been updated to the new file set.

The following zip file will install two new versions SEE and SEH. SEE is the English translation and SEH is in Hebrew. To refresh your memory as to what the Amidah is all about, check out the post which introduced this release.

Instructions:

1. To install and use these files properly unzip them file in your \databases\ subfolder in the BibleWorks main folder.

2. Also, although not necessary to use the files, you may want to update your Book Names file (books.bna), which is located in the \init\ subfolder in the BibleWorks main folder. You can edit this file with a simple text editor like Notepad. Simply add the following lines to the end of the file:

MED,Meditation,MED,MED
PAT,Patriarchs,PAT,PAT
MGT,God’s Might,MGT,MGT
HLY,God’s Holy Name,HLY,HLY
INS,Insight/ Wisdom,INS,INS
RPT,Repentance,RPT,RPT
FGV,Forgive Us,FGV,FGV
RDP,Redemption,RDP,RDP
HTH,Health,HTH,HTH
YRP,Prosperity,YRP,YRP
IEX,Gathering of the Exiles,IEX,IEX
JGS,Judges,JGS,JGS
HTC,Heretics,HTC,HTC
RTS,Righteous,RTS,RTS
JLM,Restoration of Jerusalem,JLM,JLM
DVD,David,DVD,DVD
ACP,Acceptance of Prayer,ACP,ACP
TSR,Restoration of Temple Service,TSR,TSR
THK,Thanksgiving,THK,THK
PBL,The Priestly Blessing,PBL,PBL
PCE,Peace,PCE,PCE
CLS,Closing Prayer,CLS,CLS

DOWNLOAD!

Whether you’re a current user of BibleWorks 8 or still someone sitting on the sidelines, you might have missed a number of really significant improvements that have been made to the program since it was initially released. These updates are all available through the program’s auto-update feature, but sometimes people don’t pay attention to that. For the record, I wanted to ever so briefly highlight the two most significant updates thus far.

The first has to do with the Phrase Matching Tool (PMT) and Related Verses Tool (RVT). In the initial BW8 release, both of these tools could only be used well for the Biblical texts. With recent improvements, it is now really easy to search across all language versions. What this means in practice is that one can use either of these tools on a corpus like the Apostolic Fathers to see if there are any related verses or phrases that match not simply with other verses in the Apostolic Fathers, but also with any verses in the Bible, Josephus, Philo, or any other user version you have in the program. Both of these tools are really powerful, speedy and incredibly insightful and now even more amazing than before. If you haven’t had a chance to play with this new feature update, give it a whirl!

The second excellent update has to do with tabs in BibleWorks 8. When it was initially released, BibleWorks 8 had tabs that worked just like they did in BibleWorks 7. With the latest updates, you can now name your tabs and quickly toggle back and forth from one to the next with various key-strokes (control-tab or control-shift-tab). Now instead of thinking, gee, was it tab #4 I had my Epistle study in or tab #5, you can create a tab and call it “Epistle Study.” This is a big improvement for the user experience and many people have already been really happy about it on the BibleWorks forums.

So those are two of the biggest improvements (in my opinion) which have come since BibleWorks 8’s initial release. None of these updates cost you the user a penny, they are freely offered as part of the privilege of owning a license and working with this company.

(Another major update which will make users happy is also in the works. Responding to some of their users who were a bit disappointed with the navigation of the Early Church Fathers module in BibleWorks 8, the BW8 staffers went back to the code in order to make it better respond to user desires. The result will be a greatly improved package. While the update is not yet available, it is just one more testament to BibleWorks’ continuing commitment to quality products and responding to users’ needs.)

Okay, so this one isn’t fully polished, but I did want to do something big for the release of BibleWorks 8 and since I don’t have anything else close enough to being ready, this will have to suffice. (**Note this file will work in BW7 as well).

A few years ago I released a Book of Concord HTML module for BibleWorks, which was based on public domain text available. Well since that time, more material has been made available making an update quite necessary. To give you an idea of how major of an update this is, the old zip file was approx. 1.3 MB, the new one is 3.8 MB big. So what’s new?

1. German text of the entire Book of Concord
2. An alternate English translation of the Augsburg Confession
3. Materials considered “source and context” text, things like the 95 Theses, Heidelberg Disputation, the Saxon Visitation articles, etc.
4. Text from Bente’s Historical Introductions to the Lutheran Confessions and more.

I expect there to be a few bad links here or there of the new material, since I did this in haste, so let me know. Also, I expect sometime in the future (though when God only knows) to add BW refs to the additional material as well, but I don’t see this in the immediate future. Nevertheless, I assumed that people might receive benefit of the text the way it is, so I decided to release it. Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD ~ Unzip files to the subfolder “databases” in BibleWorks. If you have previously downloaded the Book of Concord Module, these files will overwrite your old ones.

With the release of BibleWorks 8, there have been new versions incorporated into the main package, such as all the Greek Pseudepigrapha or the Babylonian Talmud. Because of these additions, there has been an overlap of book names between what BibleWorks 8 uses and some of the names adopted in some of the user databases found here. The following updates should fix those problems.

1. This book name file can be saved to your “init” subfolder in the BibleWorks 8 folder. Under the main menu Tools: Options: Bible Versions: Book Names you can tell BibleWorks which book name list to use. By default BibleWorks 8 uses the file “books.bna” Downloading this file called books_2.bna therefore will not write over the original version nor will it work until you tell BibleWorks 8 to use this version of book names by making the change mentioned above. ~~ DOWNLOAD!

2. Because of overlap, changes have been made to the Sophocles-Greek, Tacitus-Latin and Tacitus-English databases. If you have already have these in BibleWorks, it will be necessary to run them through the Version Database Compiler as though you were installing them for the first time in order for this update in book names to work properly.

~~ DOWNLOAD Sophocles-Greek

~~ DOWNLOAD Tacitus-Latin

~~ DOWNLOAD Tacitus-English

Willem Swanepoel has just completed an update to Calvin’s Commentaries, which now include Calvin’s comments on the Old and New Testament as well as the Apocrypha.

If you have previously downloaded the Calvin’s OT commentaries, delete those files before restarting BibleWorks later.

DOWNLOAD (22 MB!!)