BLESSINGS OF TECHNOLOGY: Review of Accordance

by Jared Saltz

Synopsis: The Accordance Bible Study Software provides powerful, primary-language capabilities and a host of other tools and resources for those who want to study the Bible better, faster, and more deeply.

I've been an Accordance Bible software user for almost fifteen years and, when serious students of the Bible ask me if I like it, I have been known to say, "Accordance is like this: there was once a merchant in search of fine resources, who, on finding one resource of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it." I'm being overdramatic, but only a bit. Premium Bible software—whether the now-defunct BibleWorks, Logos, or Accordance—is the best and most valuable tool in a Bible student's toolbox outside of a Bible itself. If you are equipped with a few of the right resources and a little know how, there are things Accordance can do and depths you can plumb that were nearly impossible in the pre-digital age. Even better, you can accomplish these things in the blink of an eye. What I want to do is build off of Steve Wolfgang's article on Logos—there are many similarities!—and talk about what Accordance lets you do, how it will help you, and then get to the nitty-gritty question of how it compares to Logos.

Accordance is a Concordance, but Better.

When I first became a Christian, the congregation gave me a Bible (with my name on it!) and a concordance. I was told that these were the two things I needed to study things for myself. The problem with the concordance was that it was slow. It was also outdated, keyed to English translations, and riddled with errors. However, with Accordance, word searches (like what you'd use a concordance for) are merely a right-click away. Even better, you can specify how you want to search: you can look up only the same lexeme (for example, a noun that matches the noun), the root (any words that are connected to the same stem, whether noun, adjective, or verb), or specify only a specific morphological construct, and all of this still only takes a single right-click. If you want to go beyond this (as you will once you learn how!) you can use very simple commands (like or ) and search a context for a collocation of multiple words, and you can define what your search "range" is (what books to search, such as if you only wanted to search for a term in the gospels, or only in Paul's writings), what the "scope" is (whether the words have to occur in the same clause, the same verse, or the same chapter), and several other options. Once you have right-clicked, all of these individual verses show up in a new tab of the program in whatever translation(s) you specify, and all are highlighted so you can quickly scan the results to see what is relevant. However, if you'd rather see a broader context, you can move a slider and show additional verses before or after the verse in question! If you want to get fancy, you can show all of this in a variety of different charts or graphs, all of which are merely a click away. This is incredible, and it has saved me countless hours and given me more than I can adequately describe.

Accordance is a Library, but Better.

I love my physical resources. Despite what I have written in this article, I still think that physical is better than digital for a lot of resources, but not all resources. Whether you're a new preacher just getting started, a long-time teacher of children's Bible classes, or seasoned elder, there are probably going to be some resources that you have, or wish you had: a good atlas, modern Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek dictionaries, Greek and Hebrew-Aramaic texts of the Bible, and maybe some other stuff (like Bible encyclopedias, language grammars, commentaries, or graphic resources). These are all fantastic resources, but I know a lot of well-meaning folks who sometimes don't get around to using them all the time because it can take so much time. If it's been a few years since you took Greek or Hebrew (or lack such a background), that fancy concordance and/or dictionary doesn't help you much. Maybe you do know Greek or Hebrew, but it still takes you a long time to look up words. Perhaps you don't always know the words you should look up. Accordance fixes all of that. When you double-click a word, it automatically looks up the exact right word in my dictionary (and I already mentioned how easy the concordance functions work). If I'm reading a passage and want to know where a place is, I can right-click the name and look it up in my atlas (or encyclopedia, commentary, etc.).

Accordance is You, but Better.

Accordance doesn't just do those things; it helps maximize your speed and workflow. You can highlight texts, copy and paste verses (or maps or pictures), or import your notes into the app and tag them all, letting you teach straight from the app or else export to Microsoft Word or PowerPoint or whatever else you want to use in Unicode format. It also has a built-in notes feature ("stacks") that helps you grab lots of resources and texts while you figure out how (or if) you want to use them. All of this is stored on an extremely fast, light app that runs on your computer, tablet, or phone. Whether sitting in a Bible class or traveling, the resources and abilities that are present at your office computer are available wherever you have your digital device.

Accordance is Logos, but Better.*

Let me be clear: Logos and Accordance are both incredible programs, and you will not go wrong with either. Although they have significant overlaps, they have different strengths. Logos has a much more extensive library of secondary resources (they also can be cheaper for such resources, run fantastic sales, and give away a lot of great resources for free). If you want to amass an extensive, affordable, searchable, and accessible archive of commentaries, maps, visual resources, etc., Logos is likely your best choice (but I'll let Steve talk about that). However, if you want a program that boots up immediately, can run in the background without hogging RAM, and gives you incredibly detailed and accessible primary-language capabilities—not just searching a word, but a phrase or a grammatical construct or a syntactical unit—then Accordance is unparalleled.

I'm a Luddite. I still like to read my commentaries and monographs in paper form. Yet, I also teach languages and read languages and research in languages. Accordance gives me all of that ability with speed, precision, and value that students of the past (even giants of scholarship) couldn't have imagined. We are living in the future. With all of the dangers that the digital world has brought, praise God that it has also brought such blessings. Accordance has impacted and bettered my Bible study and knowledge more than any other resource or group of resources that I have in my possession, and my advice is simple: buy premium Bible software, invest in the right resources, and learn how to use them.

Author Bio: Jared has worked with the Palmetto Church of Christ in Palmetto, FL, for four years and taught Bible, Hebrew, and Greek at Florida College in Temple Terrace, FL, for the same. He has his wife, Kathryn, have two children. His website is benneviim.blogspot.com. He can be reached at saltzj@floridacollege.edu.