Review Contents: Accordance Bible Software 6.7
1. Introduction 2. Setup & Support 3. Interface 4. Performance		5. Features 6. Resources 7. Recommendations

Accordance Bible Software features an impressive list of features for users of all levels. The core features are the extensive search and amplify capabilities.

Search Features. Accordance supports a great variety of simple and complex search options:

• simple word, phrase, and verses searches;
• searches using Strong's numbers;
• combine simple searches using <AND>, <OR>, <NOT>, and other Boolean operators;
• proximity and sequence-specific searches, such as David <WITHIN 5 Words> <FOLLOWED BY> Jonathan;
• search within clause, sentence, paragraph, verse, chapter, or book fields to limit searches (with Boolean operators) to those boundaries;
• search within user-definable ranges, such as "Torah," "Prophets," "Gospels," or even more specific ranges such as "Genesis 6:5-9:18," "Isaiah 1-39," or "Matthew 5";
• global and character-specific wild-card searches for related groups of words, e.g., sp?(ao)ke finds "spoke" or "spake" but not "spike";
• grammatical searches with Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic morphologically tagged texts;
• construct searches to define complex word relationships using a graphical interface; and,
• combine search windows to use the argument or results from one window in another.

While most, though not all, of these capabilities are now available in other Bible software programs, such as Logos and BibleWorks, the implementation of these search options in Accordance and the speed and accuracy with which the searches are performed by the program still sets Accordance apart from its competition.

Even so, search features can always be improved. Among the search features I would like to see added to Accordance are the ability to search from within parallel databases, the ability to search the words of Christ or even dialogue in general, a greater complement of morphologically tagged texts with which to conduct Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic grammatical searches--especially the WIVU database for the Hebrew Bible--and the ability to conduct grammatical searches with morphologically tagged Latin and Syriac texts. Also, Tyler Williams recently drew attention in a blog entry to the lack of an option to ignore word order in a grammatical construct search. While it is possible to work around this by repeating the search with the terms reversed, OakTree should implement a setting that allows users to ignore or observe sequence in their searches. Some of these features are already available in Logos and/or BibleWorks.

Amplify Features. The ability to amplify your research is one of the most powerful aspects of the Accordance program. Buttons on the resource palette and the search window allow users to access a tremendous amount of information instanteously. The amplification features in Accordance include:

• analytical tools;
• graphing and statistical tools;
• a concordance tool;
• search tools that allow users to search selections in primary texts, lexical and reference aids, secondary sources, maps, timelines, user notes and tools, and custom tool sets;
• parsing tools for keyed, Greek, or Hebrew text;
• a diagramming tool;
• a speech tool that reads selected text for you; and,
• quick access to six databases that present, side-by-side, the parallels to the selected text.

This suite of features stands relatively unmatched by the competition. In fact, the power of Accordance's concordance and statistical tools are used by professional scholars to create concordances and reference tools from primary texts, e.g., the authors of The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance, published by Brill, used Accordance Bible Software to concord the primary texts.

Still, I have two suggestions with respect to these impressive tools. First, in the analysis details, all the statistics (number, frequency, importance, uniqueness, etc.) should appear together in columns and an option should exist that allows users to sort the results by each column in descending/ascending order. Second, some baseline numbers for the statistics, especially importance and uniqueness, would be helpful to interpret the results.

Other Features. In addition to industry-leading search and amplify features, users can create user tools and notes, import text from .txt, .rtf, .html, and TLG files, highlight and bookmark texts, export text, export Greek and Hebrew text in Unicode or using a variety of fonts including the public domain, cross platform SPTiberian and SPIonic fonts, print from all resources, print to PDF, customize the appearance of the Accordance interface, set various preferences and defaults, and create custom timelines and map layers. As of version 6.7, Accordance also includes an OS X widget that allows you to lookup and import text to other documents straight from the dashboard. Most of these features are fairly standard for leading Bible software products and so not really that exceptional. The ability to import TLG files, however, is a distinctive feature that makes Accordance an extremely useful tool for classicists (see Resources for an expanded discussion of this feature).

Naturally, there are always new features that could be added to Accordance to make it just that much more powerful. Logos Series X offers several nifty features that could be incorporated into Accordance, including a bibliography manager for all the resources (with Endnote compatibility), integrated purchase, unlock, and update tools, internet integration, report tools that combine information from several user-defined resources, a Bible reading planner, and a comparison tool that highlights differences in parallel passages.

Another feature that would improve Accordance substantially would be (Scripture-style) hyperlinks from relevant resources to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew Inscriptions, Greek Pseudepigrapha, Apostolic Fathers, and Mishnah modules. Similarly, hymn titles listed in the "Hymn Writers" module should link to the text of these hymns available in other modules (e.g. Hymns, Watts, and Wesleys).

I would also like the ability to edit or create parallel databases and import text from PDF files.

Finally, one really annoying oversight is the lack of a good export option for pictures. As someone who frequently wants to use export pictures from the BAR CD-ROM or other Accordance resources, I find it exceedingly frustrating that I can't simply cut and paste the pictures into a PowerPoint presentation at their optimal resolution. Instead, I only have the option to save a picture as a PICT file, which basically saves a screen capture so that whitespace is left in the file and/or any parts of the picture not visible on the screen will not be present in the file. For someone like me with a 12" PowerBook, this is maddening.

On the whole though, Accordance provides a strong set of features. Its search and amplify features are second-to-none and its other program features, while not at the forefront of the industry, are adequate for most users.