by Howard Johnson
In August 1985, a handful of early Usenet users were asking a question that now seems obvious: could you get the entire text of the Bible in digital form? The answer, it turned out, was complicated.
Howard Johnson at Cyb Systems in Austin, Texas compiled this summary of what the net had discovered about machine-readable Bible text. It documents the state of digital Scripture at a specific historical moment: commercial PC programs with concordance functions, a BBS in Houston running a modified King James, Omega Software's "Scripture Scanner" (KJV, NKJV, or Living Bible for $273), and the revelation that Thomas Nelson — copyright holder for the New King James Version — would sell the Bible on tape for a mere $20,000. One researcher had already bought the Scripture Scanner and reverse-engineered the text out of it, and was now looking for the original Greek.
This document is a primary source for the prehistory of digital Scripture — the years before the internet made the Bible freely available to everyone, when the text of the Gospels was locked in commercial software and the idea of searching it required paying for a program. The "machine-readable Bible" these engineers were hunting for would eventually become the foundation of every Bible app, concordance website, and digital humanities project in the world.
Well, here's what I have about machine-readable Bible text. There is a phone number for a BBS and two addresses for commercially available software at the end of this article. Both of the companies listed are local phone calls from here, but my friend has already left Austin so I haven't bothered to get in touch with them.
From ...ucbvax!ucdavis!deneb!ccrdave, Wed Jul 24 1985:
We have some optical character reading equipment at Davis. It can't be that unusual. Try bible manufacturers. I would guess bibles are photo typeset, like everything else. Probably they have the bible in some sort of machine readable format. The problem is (a) worming a copy out of them [probably quite expensive], (b) converting the format. (Hopefully it's IBM format or something semi-standard.)
From ...ut-sally!harvard!sesame!slerner, Thu Jul 25 1985:
"The Word" contains full text with special word-processing program to access. Look in mags (Byte?) for advertisement.
From ...ut-sally!ihnp4!uiucdcs!osiris!dgerdes, Thu Aug 8 1985:
There are two programs out that use the Bible. The first is advertised in Byte and is called Bible Research, and they have the King James in a program which is rather slow. You can use the program (I think a modified version) on a BBS in Texas. It is called J. L. Christian and the number is (713) 721-0888. I was looking for the New King James so I gave up on that one and found Omega Software in Round Rock, Texas. They have your choice of the KJV, NKJV, and the Living Bible in a program called The Scripture Scanner. It sells for about $273 and is available for a number of computers. Well that wasn't good enough for me so I called them and asked if I could get the Bible on 1/2 inch tape. They referred me to Thomas Nelson Inc., who has the copyright for the NKJV, and they after many weeks replied and said that they could not sell it in that form and that the cost would be too prohibitive for an individual (we're talking $20,000!). So I went back and bought the Scripture Scanner hoping that I could somehow pull out the text of the Bible. Sure enough they include a little routine that dumps text created from the concordance program to text files. I would not try it on a PC. I am seriously interested in finding the original Greek text and dictionary if you run into anything. I know Bible Research has something like that but it doesn't sound too usable.
Found the addresses for those two companies:
Omega Software — P.O. Box 355, Round Rock, Texas 78680 — (512) 255-9569
Bible Research Systems — 9415 Burnet Rd. #208, Austin, Texas 78758 — (512) 835-7981I would appreciate any information you could get on the Greek transliterator that BRS sells. [On my list of "things to do."]
Colophon
Compiled by Howard Johnson, Cyb Systems, Austin, TX. Posted to net.religion.christian and net.wanted, August 16, 1985. Message-ID: [email protected].
A primary historical document of the digital Scripture project — the years before freely available online Bibles, when the text of the New Testament required purchasing a $273 commercial program or paying $20,000 for a licensed tape. Thomas Nelson Inc. held the copyright for the New King James Version; the King James Version itself was either in the public domain (in the US) or under Crown copyright (in the UK). The Omega Software "Scripture Scanner" and Bible Research Systems' programs were among the first commercial Bible study tools for personal computers. The unnamed researcher who extracted text from the Scripture Scanner and who was looking for Greek represents the beginning of the digital humanities tradition in biblical studies.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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