Customer Reviews

Zondervan Bible Study Library: Scholar's Edition 5.0

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This is quite simply the most complete and exciting Bible study program on the market today. With over 70 different books in the Scholar's edition it is a tremendous resource for anyone engaged in serious Bible Study. The various Bible translations can be linked to each other creating the ultimate parallel translation covering up to 10 versions (New International, King James, New American Standard, Amplified, New Revised Standard, American Standard, Darby, New Living, Hebrew, and Greek ).

Because this library is based on the New International Version there are additional Study Bibles such as the New International Reader's, NIV Study Bible, New Student Bible, and New International Thematic Reference. In addition there are several commentaries, seminary-level textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference books. It includes the ability to do complete research on word meanings and etymologies, archaeological and historical information. Print, search, save study, add notes, make bookmarks, you can do it all easily with this system. With its ease of navigate and ease of use this is one of the most powerful tools available for serious Bible students.

There are currently four versions available (Family, Leader's, Professional, and Scholar's). As you move up the version list each one included the prior level plus additional books. To give you an idea of what you are getting, the Family Version includes all of the following books: NIVBible, NirV Bible, KJV Bible, KJV Apocrypha, NAS Bible, Amplified Bible, NIV Study Bible, NIV New Student Bible, Comparative Study Bible, NIV Nave's Topical Bible, Zondervan Study Bible Cross Reference System, Study Bible Maps, Charts, Full-Color Photographs, Streams in the Desert, Inspirational Readings, Zondervan Quick Reference Series, and The NIV Compact Dictionary of the Bible. Plus you effectively have the best concordance and parallel Bible system around since you can word search any word and can choose any translation or number of translations to view in parallel.

The Leader's Version contains all of the Family version plus these additional books: NRS Bible, American Standard Bible, Darby Bible, All the Men of the Bible, All the Women of the Bible, Fruit of the Spirit Bible Studies, Discipleship Bible Studies, Hebrew Old Testament BHS, Hebrew Text behind the NIV, Greek New Testament UBS4, Greek Text behind the NIV, Zondervan NIV Bible Commentary (2 volumes),
Matthew Henry's Commentary (6 volumes), New International Bible Commentary, Asbury Bible Commentary, Zondervan Quick Reference Series, Understanding the Bible, New International Bible Dictionary, New International Encyclopedia of Bible Words, and the New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties

The Professional Version has everything in the Leader's Version plus these additional books: New Living Bible, NIV Thematic Reference Bible, Hebrew-English Reader's Lexicon of the Old Testament, Greek-English Reader's Lexicon of the New Testament, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, Eadie's commentaries on Colossians, Galatians, and Philippians, Godet's commentaries on 1 Corinithians, John (2 volumes), Luke (2 volumes), and Romans, Lightfoot's commentaries on Paul's Epistles to the Colossians & Philemon, St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, Notes on the Epistles, and Philippians, Wescott's Gospel According to St. John, St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, Epistle to the Hebrews, and Epistle of St. John, Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Ninety-Five Thesis, the Augsburg Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Confession, the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechisms, An Introduction to the Old Testament, Introduction to the New Testament, and the Dictionary of Cults, Sects, Religions and the Occult

The largest and most complete collection is the Scholar's Version which contains all of the books of the Professional Version plus the following: Complete Vocabulary for Biblical Hebrew & Aramaic, Analytical Lexicon to the Hebrew Old Testament, Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament, New Testament Greek Morpheme Lexicon, Groves-Wheeler Westminster Morphology, Morphology of Biblical Greek, Complete Vocabulary Guide for Biblical Greek, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, Biblical Greek Exegesis, New Linguistic & Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament, Hort: The Apocalypse of St. John 1-3, The Epistle of St. James, The First Epistle of St. Peter 1, Prolegomenon to St. Paul's Epistle, Eadie's commentary on Ephesians, A General Introduction to the Bible, Is There Meaning in this Text, New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, New International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology, Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia (5 volumes).

The "Zondervan Bible Study Library" is the most comprehensive, easy to use Study Library available today. It gives the serious Bible student the ability to research with a complete study library anywhere they can plug in a laptop computer. This is the most exciting product available from any publisher of Christian products today and is a very highly recommended product.

There are a lot of valuable pieces of software on this CD-Rom. You get about 4 or 5 study Bibles (including the NIV Study Bible), the UBS 4th edition Greek New Testament, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Greek and Hebrew morphologies and concordances, (there are also exhaustive concordances to a number of Bible translations, including the NIV) and lots of good reference books, including Carson, Moo and Morris' Introduction to the New Testament, Longman and Dillard's outstanding Old Testament Introduction, and the 5 volume Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (which is getting a little dated, it is 30 year old scholarship.)

You also get Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek, and other wonderful language tools, including an Analytical Lexicon and a Reader's Lexicon that parses each word of the New Testament verse by verse. That is one of my favorite resources! I also like the Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties and the Encyclopedia of Biblical Archaeology.

There are Bible dictionaries, a wonderful dictionary of the Christian church, and the two volume Zondervan NIV Bible Commentary, and the New International Bible Commentary (which is basically an abridgement of the 12 volume Expositor's Bible Commentary.

This software uses the proprietary Pradis software systen by Zondervan, which I am sorry to report is slow and sluggish, nowhere near as smooth and seamless and fast as the Libronix Digital Library System.

Moreover, I wish that Zondervan would have included some of its more modern single volume New Testament commentaries instead of giving us a bunch of old Lightfoot and Eadie commentaries from the 1800s.

But all told, this is an excellent library. I would splurge and get this piece of software even if you have other pieces of software, because some of the resources on this CD-Rom cannot be found anywhere else. Let us pray that Zondervan will get wise and give us a more user friendly engine to work with instead of the poor Pradis.

Rev. Marc Axelrod

I like the NIV and was looking for something which would help me read through the New Testament in Greek. I specifically wanted (1) parsing word-by-word of the Greek into tense, voice, mood etc (2) a good lexicon which gave both the basic literal meaning and an authoritative discussion of its scope of meaning and (3) the ability to search on both Greek & English simultaneously, e.g. "G1234 AND love" to find out where certain Greek words are translated certain ways.
I got the Zondervan Scholar's edition on appro for 30 days for AUD$200. It performs well on (1) the parsing. I was disappointed with (2) the lexicon as it doesn't make it clear which is the basic root meaning, but generally just gives a list of meanings that translators have given to the word. The morpheme lexicon might have made up for this deficiency if it hadn't had a bug in its links which rendered it virtually useless. The package doesn't contain Bauer's (BAGD), which is generally accepted as THE definitive Greek lexicon; nor can it be bought as an add-on. As for (3), it can't do it.

It would have been nice too if it had contained a Greek-English interlinear, but it doesn't.

In the end I decided to keep it, mainly because it was much cheaper than the alternatives and it did do the parsing nicely. I plan to buy the Libronix version of BAGD also in order to have a decent lexicon, though this won't integrate of course.

This library is trully a treasure. It is one of the more comprehensive study libraries around. I put it on my laptop and I rarely have to be away from my resources, regardless of where I am in the world.

Great Job.

I'd purchased a zondervan bible study program a few years back, and I still love it. But it will not work with Windows 7, as alot of slightly older software doesNOT. This is really a poor thing for microsoft to do, make an operating system where you have to upgrade most of your older software. Anyway, if you can find this program inexpensive, buy it, it's the best Zondervan has to offer.

I spent a fair amount of time looking for Bible software that contained more than one widely accepted translation, preferably including the NIV. Maybe I missed some, but this was the first I found with multiple major translations and good search ability. Just three things to add to some excellent reviews (I bought the Scholars edition):

- It does work with Vista.
- The license agreement allows loading on two machines (though not concurrent use).
- Installation was painless, and I did not have to wade through a ridiculous level of security in the process, as with the software I happily abandoned.

EXCELLENT PRODUCT AT A VERY GOOD PRICE FOR SERIOUS BIBLE STUDENTS.HIGHLY RECOMENTED.