Accordance
Accordance is Bible Study software for Macintosh developed by OakTree Software. Many CMUG members consider it the best Bible software available, whether for private use or academic study.
As well as a standalone program, it is the base software packaged by Zondervan in their Bible Study suites for Macintosh. Although Accordance has been written exclusively for the Mac OS and iOS for iPhone, it also runs on PCs using the Basilisk II emulator.
OakTree Software
OakTree Software, Inc. is based in Altamonte Springs, Florida, USA. The company has focused on areas of special interest, particularly the study of Biblical texts. Its specific goals are:
- Offering innovative and powerful features which cannot be found anywhere else
- Providing the most intuitive, elegant, and easy-to-use interface possible
- Providing a wide range of useful resources like texts, dictionaries, & commentaries, for Bible study.
Program history
Roy Brown, OakTree Software's president and application developer, created one of the first Bible programs available for the Macintosh, known as ThePerfectWord, in 1988. ThePerfectWord was later bought by another company and renamed MacBible. By the early 1990s there were a number of good general Bible study programs for the Mac. However, Brown saw the need for a new program which would make it easy to engage in more sophisticated kinds of Bible study, enabling scholars and pastors to do in-depth analysis of the original Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible. Accordance 1.0 was released in February 1994, and welcomed for its power and ease of use.
A version of Accordance 5.0 rewritten to run natively under Mac OS X was released at the start of 2002. The company has continued to add and improve features, such as the native Quartz rendering system. Version 8 was released in May 2008 and introduced a universal binary for Intel-based Macs. The latest version 9 was released in September 2010.
Accordance for iOS was released on December 30, 2010 for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Modules available
The program is centered on the Biblical text, but has many additional texts. There are many optional modules, detailed study tools for the original Hebrew and Greek, commentaries and reference dictionaries.
Some modules available include:
- Jewish writings including Mishnah, Targums, Pseudepigrapha, Josephus
- Early Christian writings such as the Didache
- Hebraica Stuttgartensia with the Groves-Wheeler Westminster Hebrew Morphology
- Dead Sea Scrolls
- Bible Atlas
- Bible Lands Photo Guide
Although the product has many modules, purchasing is simplified by packaging these into standard bundles e.g. Starter Collection, Library Collection, Scholar's Collection, Jewish collection and Catholic collection.
Discounts
Discounts are available to students, faculty, ministers, missionaries and CMUG members. These are not cumulative, i.e. only one discount can be claimed at a time.
Credits
Shamelessly edited from the Wikipedia article (to which CMUG members had contributed) on June 3, 2010. Updated by Neville Reid in Dec 2010
External links
Reviews
- Accordance 9 is another big step forward in Bible study software, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, September 24, 2010
- Premier Bible Software – A Comparative Overview at Bible Software Review, December 29, 2006
- Accordance 8 - The Best just got Better, August 6, 2009
- Review of Accordance 6 by the Society of Biblical Literature
- Accordance 5.5c review in Macworld, 2003
- Independent reviews listed on Accordance site