theWord is a software program for Bible study. It is a very powerful program that has many advantages and features, and it has a lot of room for people to use it with little knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and yet it is very robust for those who have knowledge of the original languages. It is amazing what you can do with theWord to help you study the Word of God.
What are the parts or elements of theWord?
The program has various parts for presenting information for your consumption, examination, research, and meditation. These parts take the form of mini-windows or “panes” within the larger program window.
Note that I have a dedicated site for learning theWord program at https://www.thewordtutorial.com.
See my tutorial help page: Identifying theWord Panes.
These panes are free form in the sense that they can be rearranged, and any pane can be added (multiply copies, like 3 different Bible panes added with different Bible versions in each one, think, English, Greek, etc.), arranged or placed in different areas of the main theWord program window.
For power users, and on a hardware level, there is nothing like two or more monitors. You can see different programs side by side, with each on its own screen. With theWord, and can easily “float” any pane and move it to another monitor if you have a multiple monitor set up. This is extremely useful. The key is that theWord program keeps these panes connected.
For example, you can link a Bible pane window with a book search pane window. When you move your cursor in the Bible pane to another verse, the linked book commentary will match the move. Think of studying a passage of Scripture verse by verse in a chapter. As you move the cursor in the Bible window to the next verse, the commentary window will move automatically!
While that is time-saving, theWord goes way beyond that. A commentary module is a special module that uses the Chapter and Verse pattern of a book of the Bible for its entries. So you can have just a reference book that you can see in a pane, but in the Bible pane, you can open an option to show specific commentaries (studying John, open specific commentaries on John) or make theWord show all commentaries that have an entry for that chapter and verse.
This option can show a link (commentary abbreviation with popup text, clicking on it will take you in a book pane to that commentary) or it will insert the actual commentaries between the verses in the Bible pane. Excellent options for intensive studying with very little work.
Reading a Christian Reference Work
We (pastors, preachers, Bible teachers, and probably most Christians that are serious about studying the Bible) have all read a Christian reference work. So these paper and ink books are limited in the fact that they cost money to print, and therefore they do not want to grow to thick volumes by actually quoting all the Bible references in them. That would make them very long. At times, it is also distracting. But at other times, a student wants to examine individually EVERY SINGLE BIBLE REFERENCE that an author presents. Some who know the original languages also want to see the Greek or Hebrew behind a text to compare an author’s interpretation with the original languages.
theWord lends itself marvelously to this activity. In creating a theWord module, i.e. with extension twm, we can tooltip the text, and theWord detects the Bible references and makes hyperlinks to each one. Passing the mouse .cursor over the reference will popup a text box with the text of the verse in the popup. What’s more, you can set the Bible version for the popup to whatever Bible version you want. For example, you can set it to KJV and NIV (if those Bible versions are installed). But better than two English versions, you can set it to popup Greek, Hebrew, or foreign language Bible versions. For serious Bible students this is a tremendous help.
Bible Dictionaries and the Bible Text
I personally recommend using the King James Version Bible in English. While there are a lot of arguments pro and con on this issue, I am more pragmatic in insisting on using the KJV. My reason is that the King James, even if at times it is more difficult to understand in modern times, has a one for one correspondence with the original language texts. That is very important.
The KJV version that comes with theWord has Strong’s Hebrew and Greek dictionary numbers with the text (invisible unless you toggle it on or off with clicking in the KJV Bible pane and presenting S repeatedly to toggle it on and off).
What that means is that a non-fluent Greek or Hebrew student can easily see the definition of the original Greek or Hebrew word by simply clicking in the Bible pane (KJV version) pressing “s” once, and hovering the cursor over the English words and the Greek or Hebrew definition is in a popup. That is very helpful even for those of use who had these languages in school years ago, and are “rusty” on some points.
But that is not all. There are Bible dictionary modules (*.dct.twm extensions) which act in a special manner. There are a lot of Dictionary modules that are not Bible dictionaries, like a dictionary of all the popes. These are of a different character.
But a dictionary book module (*.dct.gbk) does not have any hierarchical entries, everything is “flat”. In theWord you can make a reference work that has many levels of text (think I, II, III, etc. with A., B., C., etc.), but dictionaries are flat, only one level.
But if you take a Bible Dictionary ISBE like you can link it to a Bible pane, and when you move the mouse cursor over words (in the KJV version), you will see ISBE’s definition for the word in a popup.
See my Tutorial Guide on how to do this: Bible Dictionary Lookup Popup. With 5 minute youtube.com video plus a guide to follow with instructions on my page.
https://www.theword.net/index.php?downloads.modules&group_id=5&o=title&l=english
The above link is to the theWord download modules page, and you can click on dictionaries tab, and see a lot of free older dictionaries for free download, and more modern one for premium purchase.
But simply mousing over the words in the KJV Bible pane text, you can examine extremely quickly and without much effort definitions for words in the text. Note that with many modern Bible versions, they are actually more paraphrases that accurately representing a word for word correspondence. Satan has inserted many false teaching by emphasizing a concept for concept translation that allows unbelievers to insert false doctrine.
If you like to compare Bible versions, fine. But just realize that you are getting a heavy dose of the translator’s theological views in what you are seeing. You should know and keenly keep in mind when a Bible version’s translator’s doctrine is that he doesn’t believe in the Trinity (Thayer’s lexicon, he was a universalist, even though he is good in other definitions), or in the virgin birth of Christ (NIV?).
A careful Bible student cannot assume everything in print is orthodox or will contribute to people’s spiritual edification. Being able to examine minutely is key.
But this page is only a sampling of topics that will explain what theWord is, and how to use. Go to my theWordtutorial.com site to study more.