Pentecostal Blogger

Accordance 9.5.1, a review.

Accordance is a Bible study program designed for the Macintosh operating system.  The specifications for running Accordance 9.5.1 are as follows:

Accordance 9 is fully Intel native and optimized for Mac OS 10.6 and up. It also runs on PowerPC Macs and OS 10.4 and up (users with earlier Mac OS X or OS 7-9 can install the Classic version).

With the advent of Accordance 9.3, OakTree has created an enhanced user interface designed for new users to immediately jump into using Accordance.  It is called the Assistant Window.

The Read section allows the user to type in a verse or book of the bible and open a window displaying the passage in the user’s preferred bible.  Alternatively, it also allows the user to open a window displaying devotional readings to choose from.

The next section, Find, allows the user to locate word or words in a wide range of selections wether it be the bible, or User add-on modules and texts.

The last section, labeled Learn, includes hyperlinks to Oaktree’s various resources for learning how to use the software including the built in help and the Accordance Forum.

The assistant window is one step in improving Accordance’s usability for the average experienced Mac user who is new to Accordance.  Accordance has been notoriously known as non-intuitive for the average user.  It relies on keyboard commands and menu options often buried in menues.

The main window is known as a workspace.

This is a screenshot of the main view of Accordance.  The focus is on the search features.  At the top of the screen you’ll see a search bar with various options to allow you to search words or verses.  The search algorithm is extremely fast.  In fact it is the fastest search algorithm of any bible software I have tested wether PC or Mac.

Checking the interlinear checkbox immediately opens the English, Greek (Hebrew) the Strong’s number and the parts of speech the word belongs to.  This is very handy for conducting word studies or verse studies.  Triple clicking a word will open the default lexicon and display details of the underlining Greek (Hebrew) word in a separate workspace.

Although this is a very powerful search program, (for example right click and choose search for… lemma, root, inflected or tag in any appropriately tagged or marked bible such as the Novum Testamentum Graece (Tischendorf)), it is sometimes unclear on how to search through all texts and modules you might have purchased, or user created modules you might have made using Accordance’s built in user module authoring system.  To search through everything in your whole entire library, for example, you must go to Amplify>Search>Search all…

The resource pallette as shown on the left provides an interesting way to access your resources.  By clicking the appropriate icon you have access to purchased English, Hebrew, Greek and graphical texts and modules.  One of my favorite resources and one I personally think should be included in the base software package is the timeline module.  A screen capture is shown on the right of the timeline module.  It is a graphical representation of the history of bible people and kingdoms.  Not only that, but it also displays the timelines of contemporary histories of nations such as the Chinese and the Egyptian dynasties.  Another way cool feature of the timeline is the ability to add your own events to the timeline.  There are also alternative timelines labeled ‘conservative’ and ‘critical’ which will shift the dates based on which-ever timeline you believe to be more correct.

The program is well designed with a very active user community who enjoy sharing tips and hints on the Accordance Forums.  If you get stuck with a particular problem, more than likely either Helen, Dr. J or one of the other community users will be able to answer your questions or point you in the right direction.  My username there is fireandsalt, which will probably be no surprise to those who know me as I tend to use that username all over the internet on various bible, theology, and techie forums.

All in all I give this the following ratings: