B. THE FOUR BIBLE STUDY PLANS
- "Thru the Bible"
- "Thru the Bible" is one of the major sections of Verse Master's library. It was created for the purpose of providing chapter by chapter Bible study with easy access to Bible Helps. These helps are linked to each chapter of the Bible and they aid in biblical interpretation and application. Five main genres of these helps can be accessed. They are Bible History, Sermons, Bible Commentary, Bible Translations and Topical Reference. These five groupings provide everything that is required for a complete Bible study.
- First, open another browser window, so you can follow along with this tutorial. Goto Verse Master's main page, Default.html. Scroll down the page until the heading "Thru the Bible" is visible Look through the list of books available under this heading. Notice that there are five columns of books. Each one represents a certain category topic.
If you move your mouse over the top of each column--small graphic with a cross, you will see a note pop-up that describes the category.
- Now, open the KJV Bible by clicking on its link. Notice the Book/chapter layout of the KJV Bible index page. Scroll down the page and find a chapter that you would like to read, and click its link. You should now see the chapter of the Bible you chose with a picture map at the top. The picture map is your connection to the Bible study helps. Each one of the books listed on the map are a link, and they correlate with the book and chapter of the Bible you are on. This map includes the first four genres listed in paragraph one above. Click one of the book links, browse through the page, and click the back button on the Browser. Now, scroll down the Bible chapter, past the picture map. The Bible chapter text should now be visible. Within this text there are links on many key words. These links throughout the text represent the fifth category that I mentioned above. Click on one of the text links. This will take you to a page that references the word you chose. It lists in ranking order the pages in Verse Master that relate to the chosen word. Click on the browser back arrow. The Bible chapter should be visible again. Notice the previous and next chapter links. These are for your convience, so you don't have to wait until a page fully loads to go to the next chapter. Move to the bottom of the page. Notice that there is a link to the next chapter there too. This link allows you to go to the next chapter without the hastle of moving up to the top of the page.
- When I created the "Thru the Bible" Section for Verse Master, I had in mind a certain process for studying scripture. I thought to myself, why not develop a process that will lead an individual through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, while providing background information on every verse along the way. With a shelf full of books, it would be a difficult to read through the Bible, and look up verse background information at the same time. But with the dawn of the computer, books have taken on a more user-friendly form. Now, it is possible to read multiple books at the same time, with less effort, time and energy. Well, this marks the end of this tutorial. Have fun using Verse Master!
- The "Parallel Bible"
- "Miscellaneous Christian Works" is one of the major sections in Verse Master. Within this major section is a subsection called "Multi-Parallel Bible".
It was created for the purpose of providing in-depth Bible chapter comparison in a user-friendly atmosphere. No more having to have ten Bibles sprawled across your dining room table just to compare Bible texts. Included within each Verse Master Parallel Bible are links to other study helps also. For instance, books with Bible chapter structure found on this CD are also linked by chapter to the Multi-Parallel Bible, so not only is it possible to compare various translations, you can also read what your favorite commentary has to say about a given verse. Also, links to the Optasia Topical Concordance are included within the Bible text as seen within all other books on this CD.
- First, open another browser window, so you can follow along with this tutorial. Goto Verse Master's main index page, Default.html. Scroll down the page until the heading "Miscellaneous Christian Works" is visible. Look through the list of books available under this heading. Notice that there are four columns of books. Each one represents a certain category topic. Move your mouse over the top of first column--small graphic w/ cross--and you will see a note pop up that describes the category "Multi-Parallel Bible".
- Now, open the Darby Bible Version by clicking on its link. Notice the Book/chapter layout of the Darby Bible index page. Scroll down the page and find a chapter that interests you, and click its link. The chapter of the Bible you chose should be visible with a toolbar at the top of the browser screen. The toolbar is your connection to the Parallel Bible and its helps. Move the cursor over the Bible category on the toolbar. Notice a list of all the parallel Bibles appears. Each one of the Bibles listed on the toolbar are a link, and they correlate with the book and chapter of the Bible you're on. This toolbar also includes various helps that have Bible chapter structure. These helps are in the form of commentary, topical Bibles, and word studies. Notice its category to the right of the Bible category. Click one of the help links, browse through the page, and click the back button on your browser. Now, scroll down the Bible chapter, past the picture map. The Bible chapter text should now be visible. Within this text are links on many key words. These links throughout the text go directly to their respective Topic Page. Click on one of the text links. This will go to the page that references the word you chose. It lists in ranking order certain pages in Verse Master that relate to the chosen word. Click on the browser back arrow. The Bible chapter should be visible again. Notice the previous and next chapter links. These are for convience, so there is no need to wait for a page to load before going to the next chapter. Move to the bottom of the page. Notice also that there is a link to the next chapter there. This link allows travel to the next chapter without the hastle of moving up to the top of the page.
- Topical Studies
- To make studying Christian literature by topic a simpler task, we have incorporated many topical reference materials into our library. They are: Nave's Topical Bible, Torrey's Topical Textbook, Optasia's Topical Concordance, Optasia's Topic Links, and The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. All these resources together offer millions of citations to thousands of individual topics indexing twenty-one separate books.
- You might be wondering, "Now that I know the tools, how do I use them?" There are a couple approaches to finding topical information. First, I suggest using the CD Search Engine or the online search. Usually, the search engines are a quick way to find topical data. Just type your word of interest in the search engine and hit search. If this doesn't do the job, choose "Topical Bibles" from the "Book Genre" pull down menu on the online search engine and do a search. For even narrower results, choose a single topical book from either the CD or the online search engine and search. You should then receive the results your looking for. If the search engine approach doesn't work, I would suggest one of two other ideas. First, I would glance at the indexes of the various topic books. Most of them include an index that is ordered alphabetically and you can easily find any word. The other idea is to look for a passage in one of the books that would include the your word of choice. Most topic words have an Optasia Topic Link on them. Then you can click on the topic link in the passage.
- Greek/Hebrew Studies
- Both the Greek and Hebrew Bible manuscripts found in Verse Master contain language aids to help the reader understand its text. These aids are in the form of Strong's Concordance definitions that pop-up when a linked Greek or Hebrew word is clicked. The Greek language aid links are provided within the Greek manuscript itself, so there is no need to reference to another webpage while reading the text. On the other hand, the Hebrew is provided within the KJV with Strongs Concordance and also within Old Testament Bible Maps.
- When using the language aids, realize that every time a new linked word is clicked, it will display in the same pop-up box as the last clicked word. This keeps the Browser from poping-up multiple windows as you are browsing through the text.
- To display the Greek and Hebrew text, two fonts will be needed. In Optasia Multimedia Browser, all you have to do is click View/Encoding/Hebrew ISO Visual or click View/Encoding/more/Hebrew ISO Visual from the taskbar. If you are having difficulties, download this font and place it in the FONTS directory(On Desktop~ Start/Settings/Control Panel/Fonts/): Web Hebrew Monospace. To view Greek in any semi-recent version of Internet Explorer, download this font and place it within the FONTS directory : Koine-Medium. These fonts also work with Netscape, so installing both of them should do the trick. For further font installation information, refer to these online internet links:
i. Windows 95 True Type Font Installation
ii. Installing True Type Fonts(W95, NT, W3.1)
iii. Mac(Apple) Font Help