4.1159 Electronic Bible Texts (3/83)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 14 Mar 91 17:40:12 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 1159. Thursday, 14 Mar 1991.


(1) Date: Wednesday, 13 March 1991 0033-EST (49 lines)
From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS
Subject: Electronic Bible Texts

(2) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 14:03 EST (8 lines)
From: DILELLA <DILELLA@CUA>
Subject: RE: 4.1155 Queries

(3) Date: 13 Mar 91 10:33:28 gmt (26 lines)
From: D.Mealand@edinburgh.ac.uk
Subject: e-bibles

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wednesday, 13 March 1991 0033-EST
From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS
Subject: Electronic Bible Texts

For those who desire to keep up with developments in electronic biblical
texts, "my" OFFLINE column offers a point of departure, or Ian
Lancashire - Willard McCarty's Humanities Computing Yearbook (and for
pre 1987 developments, John Hughes _Bits, Bytes & Biblical Studies_).
OFFLINE is on the HUMANIST FileServer, which is a good thing to learn to
use for just such purposes. It is also available on diskette.

But in our fast paced information glutted electronically connected
world, who has time to check these things? So, off the top of my head
(with apologies for sources I may overlook), the following:

The Center for Computer Analysis of Texts (CCAT) here at
the University of Pennsylvania uses a network of "secondary
distributors" to make available at reasonable cost these
materials (among others) --

Hebrew Bible (BHS)
Old Greek/LXX (Rahlfs) -- also with morphological analysis
Greek NT (UBS3) -- also with dictionary and morph analysis
Vulgate with variants (UBS-Beuron)
selected Aramaic Targum materials
much of the Sahidic Coptic biblical materials
sample Syriac Peshitta
sample Armenian Bible
King James (AV) with Apocrypha
RSV with Apocrypha

We are working on adding the NewRSV to the group, although it is already
available through a couple of the official publications group, including
the American Bible Society's new CD-ROM (see the current OFFLINE).
Other English translations such as NRV and NIV are available elsewhere
(e.g. Zondervan Publishers has an active electronic wing), and more
could be made available if it seemed anyone cared, or if we had time to
process them from the typesetters tapes. German and French Bibles are
also available from various European sources (e.g. Maredsous). I'm not
sure about Spanish, etc.

For specific followup information, price lists, addresses of secondary
distributors, etc., you may contact me. Oh yes, lots of these and
related materials are on various CD-ROMs as well, some of them quite
slick -- see Tzvee Zahavy's review of such CD-ROMs in OFFLINE 30, and
especially the CDWord project from Dallas. CCAT and other developers
have sometimes licensed their materials to such projects.

Bob Kraft, UPenn (CCAT, Religious Studies) KRAFT@PENNDRLS.upenn.edu
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------11----
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 14:03 EST
From: DILELLA <DILELLA@CUA>
Subject: RE: 4.1155 Queries (6/99)

Re: Dale Patterson's query, Zondervan will publish in a week or two
macBible NRSV Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books, a separate module similar
to macBible NRSV, macBible Hebrew, and macBible Greek (New Testament)--all
superb find and search programs.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------40----
Date: 13 Mar 91 10:33:28 gmt
From: D.Mealand@edinburgh.ac.uk
Subject: e-bibles

I had expected floods of answers already. There have long been many
versions of the Bible in several languages esp the original languages,
but also English translations. To catch up with a large field reading
J.J.Hughes, _Bits, Bytes and Biblical Studies_ (Zondervan, c.1988) is
essential despite the fact that this is a fast moving field and a lot
has happened since 1988. There is an RSV on the PHI-CCAT cd-rom but I
forget if it includes the apocrypha as I would normally go to the LXX
which is also on that cd-rom and elsewhere. The RSV can also be
obtained separately. There is an excellent multi-lingual biblical
resource called cd-word - see reviews in Offline in recent months.
Offline is in backfiles of Humanist. There are many other systems
offering Bibles in English some of them simplistic packages based on KJV
but others full of valuable scholarly material both from an academic and
from a literary computing perspective.

In fact I have just used the phi-ccat cd-rom and found its RSV, it does
indeed have the Apocrypha and I have learned that the RSV Wisdom uses the
term Hades four times.

David Mealand * Bitnet: D.Mealand%uk.ac.edinburgh@ukacrl
University of Edinburgh * Office Fax: (+44)-31-220-0952
Scotland,U.K. EH1 2LU * Office tel.:(+44)-31-225-8400 ext.221/217