Biblia 5.0
Budapest: Arcanum Kft, 1997
Ever since it was first committed to parchment some two thousand and
something years ago, the Bible has preserved its content unchanged, although
its form has reacted sensitively to changes in media. A Bible stands at
each changeover from oral tradition to writing: the Prophetic Writings
of the Jews after the Babylonian Captivity, the Septuagint of the Alexandrine
tradition, the Gospels written down on the basis of various traditions,
and the Bibles of the Goths, Syrians, Armenians, and Slavs in their conversion
to literacy and to Christianity. The Bible opens the Gutenberg era also,
since his Forty-Two Line Bible (1455) was the first book to be printed
in Europe. And in 1984, at the dawn of the electronic age succeeding the
Gutenberg era, and ten years before the appearance of the Internet in Europe,
Michael Hart, a daringly imaginative young American, included the Bible
among the first books selected for the Gutenberg Project, which he himself
started. Since its inception this project has put hundreds of books annually
on the Internet, in electronic form (the total will be 10,000 by the year
2000, it is hoped), where they are accessible free of charge.
The new medium suits few books better than the Bible, around which,
during the last two thousand years, a secondary literature has grown up
richer than that of any other book. The baroque Vulgate with glosses in
the margins and a commentary at the bottom of the page, with interlinear
interpretations, and cross-references, indexes and its concordances; and
the Talmud in its Renaissance form, where Mishna passages in the middle
of the page were in numerous periods hemmed in on all sides by commentaries
like some thick castle wall, long ago outgrew the representational possibilities
of the traditional book, and are crying out for a medium which allows texts
to be read in conjunction with the main text. Even the simplest computerized
Bible text, merely by virtue of its accessibility, includes a complete
concordance, and the various electronic Bible editions offer an almost
overwhelming supply of dictionaries, encyclopaedias, commentaries and other
auxiliary texts aiding the interpretation of each verse. It is not by chance
that the number of Bibles that can be downloaded or read free on the Internet
now exceeds 100, and that even in the 1991 edition of the American CD-ROM
Yearbook the list of Bibles and texts pertaining to Bibles ran to seventeen
pages.
If what I said about the Bible’s role in marking changes of era is
true, then in Hungary the post-Gutenberg age began in 1995. It was then
that Arcanum Kft. published the first Biblia-CD-ROM (Version 3.0), which
was followed in 1997 Version 5.0. This latter is the subject of this review,
but since this series seeks to follow the tradition of examining Hungarian
and East European CD-ROMs in the wider context of similar European and
American publications, I shall first of all look at the aims and principles
of various electronic Bibles.
Even a quick overview suggests that these publications, as regards
their objectives and achievements, are easy to classify. It is merely a
step from the largest category, texts which have simply been keyed or scanned
in, to the “multilingual Bibles” which group together a number of such
texts. Collections of this kind are, in spirit at least, the direct descendants
of pious works of the “The Bible in Ten Languages” and “The Lord’s Prayer
in 101 Languages” type, popular in the Baroque era, which were motivated
by evangelizing zeal and which, in wonder at the sheer variety of the created
world, spread the Good News in every possible language. A good example
of this is the Russian ÁcáëcŠ CD-ROM published in 1996,
which collects twenty-two complete Bibles—with Quechua and Tamil versions
among them—most of them downloaded from the Internet, presenting them to
the reader as separate, unconnected texts.
Different in type are those CD-ROMs which present the Bible in one
language, but in many versions. Alongside some other English and German
publications, the most prestigious of these is The Bible in English published
by Chadwyck-Healey, which includes twenty-six translations of the Bible—from
the earliest Anglo-Saxon Gospels to the 1976 “Today’s English Version”,
with the emphasis on the Renaissance translations. It is a publication
of great importance from the aspect of linguistic and literary history,
and structures its enormous material in an easily searchable way. The texts
of the various versions can be run in parallel with one another and are
beautifully illustrated; they show how the language has wrestled for a
thousand years to obtain the best possible rendition, and therefore appropriation,
of the thoughts they contain. This CD-ROM also differs from the multilingual
publications in that its price does not suggest any kind of missionary
selflessness. (This is in line with our expectations of Chadwyck, who is
believed to top the CD-ROM price lists.) The above CD-ROM is currently
the most expensive electronic Bible, although at nearly £1,500 it
is far behind the absolute record, the Patrologia Latina, also from Chadwyck
at £27,000.
The “scholarly CD-ROMs”, regarded as the cream of the Bible programs,
make up a separate category; a fine example is Bible Works published by
Hermeneutica Software. Apart from twelve Modern English, six German, three
Spanish, three Dutch, three Italian, and two French complete Bible texts,
the present Version 3.5 includes a Latin (Vulgate), a Danish, a Finnish,
a Hungarian (Gáspár Károli), and even an Indonesian
translation, and the user can select between continuous reading of one
text and the presentation of individual verses in a number of languages.
The strength of the program lies in this, and in its Biblical background
material, and in the fact that the “sacred languages”, Hebrew and Greek,
accompany the translations. In addition to modern languages and the Vulgate,
three Greek New Testaments, two Hebrew Old Testaments, and three Septuagints
are present, the reading of which is made easier by seven authoritative
Hebrew and Greek dictionaries. There is no need to look for entries in
the dictionaries: when the cursor is moved onto a word in the text, the
appropriate entry automatically appears in the lower dictionary window.
Indeed, four modern Bibles—English, German, French, and a Dutch—are prepared
in such a way that, when going through the words of their texts, one sees
the Greek and Hebrew equivalents together with their definitions appear
in the dictionary window. The program contains complete grammatical analyses
of the original texts, with the result that not only exact word forms can
be searched for, but also roots or individual grammatical forms. In addition
to the grammatical analyses, commentaries can be accessed on each verse
in the Bible from five—English-language—Biblical dictionaries and encyclopaedias,
and placing texts in context is assisted by an enormous historical and
Church history chronological table. The program screen resembles an operating
table, where the text field is dwarfed alongside the mass of help tools
held in readiness on different trays.
The other “scholarly Bible CD-ROMs” are similar in structure: their
basic facilities—a number of publications in modern languages, on-hand
processing of the original languages and fast access—by and large resemble
Bible Works, differing only in their auxiliary materials, in line with
the objectives of the various publishers. The material in Logos (Version
2.0), intended basically as a popular publication by Logos Research System,
is on one CD-ROM divided into four levels, levels which can be bought separately
and opened with passwords whose price increases the higher the level. On
the first level there are merely a few modern English translations, the
most basic Protestant commentaries, Biblical maps, and a certain amount
of devotional literature. On the fourth level, however, there are, besides
seven English texts and Hebrew, Greek, and Latin versions, many more English-language
Biblical encyclopaedias and commentaries to assist textual understanding
than are available on Bible Works. Of all the CD-ROM-based auxiliary material,
the Greek auxiliary material is the best—a number of text variants are
available—and only here can be found the full Liddell-Scott Greek dictionary.
However, the Hebrew on this CD-ROM is the poorest of all: except for the
Stuttgart Bible, which is also analyzed grammatically, the reader is presented
with no other Hebrew variant and no dictionary. Despite this, in its compilation
of rich background material this publication is basically intended for
the American Protestant Bible reader of some erudition.
The objectives of Bible Windows (Version 2.2) by Silver Mountains Software,
well established in the field of Biblical software, differ from those of
the Logos production: this CD-ROM almost exclusively contains Bibles in
their original languages which are extremely well analyzed grammatically.
Moreover, the sophistication of the grammatical search facilities surpasses
the other CD-ROMs running on personal computers. Finally, the Gramcord
Institute’s Accordance (Version 3.0), the queen of these scholarly CD-ROMs,
is available in modules or packages (“starter level”, “student level”,
“scholar package” and individual compilations)—Bibles, dictionaries, morphological
analyses, encyclopaedias, commentaries, maps, chronologies, and additional
ancient and Christian literature. Taken together these exceed the auxiliary
material of any other publication. The grammatical analysis and search
program, enriched with inventive visual solutions, allows an incredibly
sophisticated search in the original languages.1 This is reflected in the
price: as opposed to the average cost of around $300, all the modules together
cost more than $2,000, although Gramcord offers a $1,400 price for those
purchasing the complete set. The publication’s regrettable downside is
that it can be run only on Apple computers. The editors admit this with
lofty disdain, justifying their decision in a separate leaflet enclosed
with the CD-ROM.
Yet another category includes those Bibles which are not intended for
theologians or linguists but for the “educated Bible reader”. In the way
they are put together these also follow the “operating table” pattern,
but here it is generally a Bible in just one language which lies on the
table, with new kinds of tools placed around it: cross-references within
the text, commentaries, content analyses, reflections, and Bible teaching
and meditation programs. These are to be found on the Bible Workshop 97
CD-ROM, which despite its English title provides German Bible readers,
theology students, and clergy wishing to write sermons with auxiliary material
compiled with German thoroughness.
In the final analysis, it is not the quantity of the material, but
the “operating table arrangement” made possible by the electronic form
that is decisive. This is exemplified by the purely Russian-language Hyperbiblia,
which contains nothing more than the text of a single Bible with cross-references
and some notes. This, however, enables the reading of parallel texts of
references and notes in separate windows next to the main text, and to
turn pages in the text, on the basis of a thematic table of contents, in
another window. This is enough to arouse the reader’s interest, and powerfully
helps the collection of material on individual subjects. However, the most
spectacular example of this genre is the Online Bible CD-ROM, which is
related to the above-mentioned polyglot Bibles by its sixty full Bible
texts. At the center of the program stand twenty-five Protestant commentaries
published in four languages, which are supplemented by thematic collections,
concordances, and teaching programs. All these CD-ROMs differ from their
scholarly Bible counterparts in that their cost rarely rises above $50–100.
As has become customary, we should place in a separate category, under
the heading “others”, all those Bibles which stand out from the rest, from
one point of view or another. One such curiosity is the Davka Corporation’s
Bible Codes CD-ROM, a special program of which hunts for cabbalistic combinations
of numbers concealed within the text of the Torah. Another is the Ethereal
Christian Classics CD-ROM, on which there are cross-references back and
forth between the thirty-eight volumes of the Church Fathers translated
into English and the King James Bible of 1611. The latter can be regarded
as “the Bible of the Fathers”, since in it we can study, with almost statistical
accuracy, how the Bible was used during the first centuries of Christianity.
Special mention should be made of the two Davka CD-ROMs, the Soncino Classics
Collection and the Judaic Classics Deluxe Edition. Both contain the Hebrew
Bible, the Tanach, in the original and in English translation, to which
are linked on the first CD-ROM the texts of the Talmud, Mishnah, Midrash
Rabba, and Zohar in Hebrew and English (supplemented with the 11th-century
Rashi commentaries and many other standard notes). The second CD-ROM includes
more than seventy Bible commentaries from the first centuries of the Rabbinical
period and from the Middle Ages. On the Soncino CD-ROM both the Hebrew
and the English text can be regarded as authoritative, being the result
of a major translation and publication project which began in 1930 and
lasted three decades. The program permits highly sophisticated searching,
and its almost faultless finding of the roots of Hebrew words is a unique
characteristic. But its most attractive feature is its graphic design.
If it is unable to recall the appearance of the printed Talmud—although
it even attempts to reflect it in its print-outs—at least in its archaic
letter-types it endeavors to remain true to it, and with different colors,
variable letter sizes, and screen divisions it tries to make the huge material
easily accessible.
To which group does the Hungarian Biblia CD-ROM belong? The publication
contains eight complete Bible texts. First of all, there are three in Hungarian:
the Roman Catholic version (complete with notes) issued by the Society
of St. Stephen in 1973 and revised by them in 1996, a modern version of
Gáspár Károli’s 1594 translation, and a new Protestant
Bible translation issued in 1975 and revised in 1990, (and for some reason
referred to as the “Reformed Church” translation) on the CD-ROM. Besides
the original Hebrew and Greek (the Hebrew is also given in Roman letters
and the Greek in a version without diacritics, obviously as a kind of half-hearted
attempt to facilitate searching), the CD-ROM also features the Latin Vulgate,
the King James English Bible and Luther’s German Bible. (The source of
the latter, and of the modern Károli translation, is not stated
on the CD-ROM.) The texts are primarily for reading and are best suited
to it. Admittedly, every single verse is given references to the parallel
verses in all the other versions, but the transitions are difficult. If
the reader does not wish to lose the initial version, he repeatedly has
to set up and handle together combinations of windows, and has to ensure
the parallel movement of these by synchronizing the references again and
again. At the same time, the great strength of the CD-ROM is its search
facility. If the reader wants to know the occurrence of a number of words
in context, he can put these in the search box, above which there immediately
appears a tree diagram which shows, even before the search starts, how
many times combinations, and combinations of combinations, feature in the
given Bible text.
As the first electronic Bible—and as the first Bible concordance—in
Hungarian, the program is an important undertaking, and one which fulfils
a need. At the same time it is clear that it is only a start since, when
we compare it with any category of Bible available on the international
market, its deficiencies become apparent. The same comparison indicates
the directions in which the editors could proceed if they are now considering
publishing a new version.
First and foremost, it is a pity that as an electronic publication
the CD-ROM does not employ the “operating table” lay-out, which would simplify
the handling of different versions, of notes and cross-references. Perhaps
only the “polyglot” Bibles eschew this arrangement, but if we compare the
CD-ROM to these, we can ask what criteria were used to select the languages
in which its various versions appear. From the Roman Catholic standpoint
the Italian version would be important, and from a Protestant standpoint
the French and even the Dutch versions would be important as well. But
from the point of view of Hungarians—especially Hungarian users beyond
Hungary’s borders—the inclusion of Romanian, Slovak, and even Russian and
Polish versions would make a great deal of sense.
I am not saying that this CD-ROM should be compared with the “scholarly
CD-ROMs”, in other words with the most sophisticated and international
examples of this genre. The inclusion of the Hebrew and Greek versions
does invite such a comparison, and in itself this is no bad thing. But
one should consider the needs of the users—the theologians for example,
who basically read in Hungarian, but who also study the original languages,
if only in a limited way. From this point of view the inclusion of existing
Biblical dictionaries in Hungarian would not be unhelpful, but just as
important would be the similar preparation of the Latin text (relegated
to the background on Anglo-American Protestant CD-ROMs) which however still
plays a significant role in Hungarian Roman Catholic Bible usage.
Demanding Bible readers could really be the target audience for a subsequent
version of Biblia CD-ROM. Insofar as can be established, this group already
accounts for most of the buyers of this publication, but their need for
background material is obliged to make do with the notes of the Catholic
and the cross-references of the Protestants editions. Besides these, however,
all those standard works could be included which in their printed form
are among the tools of such users, from Calvin’s commentaries through the
Wuppertal Bible to Catholic Bible dictionaries published in a number of
versions and to the different thematic concordances. It would be profitable
to take over the teaching programs, daily Bible readings, even religious
calendars from similar international CDs. This would embed the CD-ROM in
the rhythm of the religious life of such users. In this connection it should
be remembered that in Hungary there are not only Roman Catholics and Protestants
(or only Calvinists), but also Greek Catholics and Orthodox believers.
As regards a “Hungarian Bible CD-ROM” of this kind, their different needs
should not be ignored either.
Finally, let us compare the CD-ROM with a fourth type, the “national”
Bibles as exemplified by the Chadwyck publication. First of all, it is
clear that the Károli translation is not accompanied by the almost
contemporaneous Káldi translation, which was for a long time the
only approved Hungarian-language Bible for Hungarian Roman Catholics. If
the promoters targeted this type, then they would be rendering a very great
service with a publication that would, like Chadwyck, contain every Bible
in the national language, and would facilitate, more easily than at present,
comparison and parallel reading. It would be a dream come true if such
a CD-ROM, outstandingly useful from the standpoints of literary and religious
history, could compare the pre- and post-Council of Trent Vulgates with
their Hungarian-language successors, if possible together with commentaries,
without which no Bible was published up to the Reformation and, in the
Roman Catholic territories, after it either.
I shall not list further desires and possibilities. Biblia CD-ROM 5.0
is a promising start. There is much work invested in it, which will hopefully
soon bear fruit in a subsequent version, containing more of the possibilities
listed here. Something should be retained of the ideas for further development
for a critique of the new version, too.
http://www.c3.hu/scripta