E-Sword Module Database Library

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General Information on the e-Sword Bible Program

 What is "e-Sword"?

e-Sword is a Bible study program. It is used for Bible study, and teaching or preaching preparation. It is a robust program that has many options and is very useful in Bible study. It is not specifically a Greek and Hebrew program, but it does have Greek and Hebrew Bibles and Dictionaries that are extremely useful.

 What are e-Sword's advantages?

1. e-Sword is free.

Without a doubt, the popularity of e-Sword hinges on its being totally free. We would put in a plug here for Rick Meyers who created e-Sword. If you use e-Sword, go to his site and donate to him. He has created a great tool for Bible study simply from the love of God in his heart. That in itself should be sufficient for you to give him something.

2. e-Sword is user modifiable.

Perhaps the second biggest "plus" of e-Sword is the fact that it lends itself to users putting new and old material (content) into the e-Sword formats, and becoming immediately useful. I am not aware of all software communities, but the e-Sword community seems very active and strong to me. There seems to be a great number (growing all the time) of people putting classic and new works into e-Sword format. This is a factor that greatly adds to e-Swords "face value". Download the software and play with it, and you will get an impression of its value. But you have no idea of the true value of e-Sword until you start looking for modules for e-Sword and find the great variety and breadth and depth of what people have put into e-Sword format. This is a hidden value that grows way beyond what other software companies can put into their programs.

I should also note that e-Sword has an excellent selection of options in moving the screen elements about, maximizing one panel for work in that thing, and removing and adding buttons and resources and things. It is a very well constructed program in that aspect.

We should not skip the verse lists feature either. These are lists of verses that you can edit yourself and then use in searching through them or using them.

3. e-Sword has a good integration of elements.

e-Sword has various panels (Bible, Commentaries, Dictionaries, and Topic notes) that allows an automatic seeking and movement from one to another. In the Bible panel, you can click on a new verse and the commentary panel is automatically changed to that verse reference. Equally you can click on a word in the other panels and that dictionary panel will seek that word if it is in its dictionary. These options (synchronization) can be turned off, but it is a great boon to have this feature. Also there are Strong's concordances (a Dictionary module in e-Sword) and many different Bibles that are now keyed to Strong's. With a single click on the Strong's number in the Bible, the Strong entry is found in the Dictionary panel.

I would note that some of these Bible-Strong combinations are probably only found in e-Sword.

4. e-Sword has an excellent note system

There are various note systems within the e-Sword program. First there is the "study notes" which has a format parallel with the commentaries avail for e-Sword. Here each verse in the Bible has its own database entry in the commentary file, and you can put commentary notes to make your own commentary. Secondly there is the "Topic Notes" which is a free form file like a book with chapters within the work (Topic Note). There are hundreds growing to thousands of Top modules on the Internet for e-Sword. Besides what you can download, you can also write free form notes like in a making a book or a sermon. The format is a muted RTF format so you can import RTF files into these TOP files. I say muted RTF format because I do not think e-Sword permits the entire RTF code set. Obviously the graphics in a typical RTF file is simply impossible in this TOP notes. e-Sword will strip a RTF file of its graphics on importing.

5. e-Sword has an excellent search engine/interface.

e-Sword still has a few things to work on (such as searching across Topic files), but the search engine and interface is a dream. It allows you to see full context the hits before actually going there. This is implemented in searching Bibles, Commentaries, and Dictionaries. It is very nice and the extended search for all of these allows for searching between various versions of the Bible at one time for example.

The one poor point here is the lack of this ability to search among files in the Topic notes.

6. e-Sword has an excellent Scripture ToolTip function.

We have to put this into the proper context. In the Topic modules, one can create and then copy into one of these modules a book, such as a systematic theology or a sermon, and then convert the Scripture references to have a popup Scripture ToolTip. This is a feature where once converted to a Tooltip, you can hover your cursor over a Scripture reference and a Tooltip bubble will popup with the verse in the tooltip. This is wonderful for checking out a lot of verses without having to open a Bible. (Clicking on the Scripture reference will move the Bible to that reference by the way.) This is excellent for things such as theological works with long lists of verses, or for example commentaries. The work of Treasury of Scripture Knowledge is a commentary that is simply scripture references on each phrase in each verse in the Bible. Sometimes 2 dozen verses are listed for a single phrase. E-Sword has that work and you can skim through cross references lightning fast. This is a great feature in e-Sword.

7. e-Sword has Microsoft Word Macros for inserting into a Word Document and searching for words in the Bible.

This is a free macro for MS Word so that you can work with e-Sword without having it open. Rick Meyers provides these Macros, and they are extremely useful in Bible Study and working with Word and e-Sword together.

 What are e-Sword's disadvantages?

1. e-Sword has some problems with Greek and Hebrew

Having studied Greek and Hebrew in seminary, I personally find e-Sword a little awkward in its handling of Greek and Hebrew. I cannot really put my finger on just what it is that makes it this way for me, but I feel Bibleworks is a little better on the ancient languages than e-Sword. But before you write off the program, let me put that into a context for you. First of all, Bibleworks costs $500+ dollars and e-Sword is free. Bibleworks has some problems of its own (complexity, lack of book modules, etc). You need to understand that Rick Meyers is not a company nor an Bible college nor a church. He is just an individual who has done a fantastic job in his program. Others perhaps have programs that are a little better in one area or another, but these other programs are often out of the common user's economic reach.

Another consideration here is that the modules which handle Greek and Hebrew are often user donated modules, which explains why these modules are perhaps not the "best" or in the sharpest formats. You can work easily in Greek and Hebrew in e-Sword, but it is like any Bible program, some things you don't like at first, some you get used to, and some you may never like.

2. e-Sword has a "busy" interface.

I am trying to useful and informative here. The tab interface gets laborious for me at times. There is an option to make all the resources in tabs on a single line, and I have tried that, but in general I find that as the resources for Bibles, books, commentaries, and dictionaries grow, I have more and more problems finding what I want in the mess of tabs.

I would give e-Sword a break here in that most Bible programs have a desperate problem of interface. Those simple to use have no power, and those with the most power are indecipherable puzzles in how to use (i.e. Bibleworks being a prime example, 6 years I have owned it and I still don't know how to use 90% of it).

All of the Bible programs I have seen and used (some 7 or 8 over the years) seem to be in the same situation of either lacking power or if they have a lot of power, then it becomes very difficult to use it or make it available.

3. e-Sword needs to better handle the growing libraries of Topic files.

To give e-Sword credit, I do not think Rick Meyers (e-Sword's creator) ever envisioned what would happen with the Topic files. I think he created e-Sword Topic notes as a way to make sermons notes for one's own self, and maybe sharing them with a few friends. What has happened is that once it was discovered that this could be used to put existing works into an e-Sword Top module, everybody and their brother is putting Spurgeon, Moody, Pink, Torrey, etc. into e-Sword modules. It is beyond the scope of the program to handle all of these as a library. It's original intent appears to have been a few dozen personal sermons.

Now what is wrong here is that Rick Meyers didn't extend to the Topic Notes Modules the same search abilities he put in the Bible, Commentary, and Dictionary modules. This is needed in future versions of e-Sword and appears very easy to do because it is already implemented in the other module types within the program.

I should also note that a much needed feature of e-Sword is some way to organize, categorize, and control the growing libraries of files available for e-Sword. This is a growing problem that needs to be addressed by Rick Meyers. (As a note, Rick Meyers is apparently the sole "employee" or software writer of e-Sword, and he is very reserved but does personally answer email and write some people in the e-Sword community. Personally I have written him and received several emails from him, and he is active in listening, hearing, etc. to suggestions and problems.)

4. E-Sword needs a multilingual menu and interface.

It is understandable that Rick Meyers is limited in his time and effort in a free program that he really is not getting a whole lot of financial gain off of (just donations that come in about 1 per thousand downloads from what I understand).

e-Sword is positioned basically for those of lower incomes, and this would encompass the entire third world countries, of which few speak English. This being the case, e-Sword is being used by many people who struggle with if they can speak English at all. Perhaps this is not so much a disadvantage as a wish on my part. But for many e-Sword users and potential e-Sword users, this is a problem and disadvantage.