PocketBible 2024 User Survey

I’m just going with these AI-generated images now. No excuses. Pretend like it’s a game — find the anomalies. Which person is a ghost? Which is part of the furniture? Where is the sun? Why is there a big red violator in the upper left corner? What is it hiding?

We just completed our annual survey of our PocketBible users and I thought I’d share a few results with you. This isn’t everything and it’s not even every important thing. But some of this is interesting and might help you understand who your fellow PocketBible users are, and in some cases, why we might make the choices we do when it comes to the products we create for PocketBible.

Demographics

The majority of you are male, and are 55 or older. To some peoples’ surprise, most of you are not preachers — though about half of you have some kind of teaching ministry.

This is consistent with what we’ve come to know about our PocketBible users. I believe that our age (yes, I’m in that “over 55” group, too) puts us in a generation that trusts the authority of the Bible and therefore wants to know more about it. We also believe there are people smarter than us who have things to say about the Bible from whom we can learn. Younger people tend to value the experience of God. They learn about God through their community experiences with their fellow believers. As a result they have less dependence on the kind of commentary and research tools at which PocketBible excels. Not all of them, of course; we continue to add new users of all ages to the PocketBible family.

Beliefs

Half of you chose the label “Bible-believing” to describe your Christian beliefs. One-third use the term “evangelical” and one-third “nondenominational”. About two thirds selected “Catholic”, “Orthodox”, or a specific Protestant denomination. These terms aren’t mutually exclusive so the totals add up to more than 100% with a lot of overlap.

It’s interesting to note how our ranking of denominations is different than the ranking of these denominations in the general population. Note that these are cherry-picked to match what we asked on our survey; there could be a number of smaller denominations missing.

Church/DenominationRank (In the US)Rank (Among PocketBible users)
Catholic18
Baptist21
Methodist34
Lutheran46
Pentecostal52
Presbyterian63
Episcopal/Anglican75
Seventh Day Adventist87
Orthodox99
Only denominations that got at least 10 responses on our survey are listed. 80% of you are in the US, so only members of these churches in the US were considered.

This is consistent with what we know from being in the Christian publishing business for over 30 years. People who purchase Bibles and Bible study materials tend to be on the more theologically “conservative” end of the spectrum and they tend to describe themselves as neither Catholic nor Protestant. That “Bible-believing” term sums up who they are. This has been true the entire time I’ve been in this business.

And it makes sense. These are the kind of people who are encouraged by the churches they attend to study the Bible for themselves and not to depend on a formal member of the clergy to answer their questions. Even the least leadership-oriented person in this group has a small but useful Bible library, which may or may not be entirely digital.

Bible Reading

90% of you spend time reading the Bible every day (or nearly every day). The majority of those are either using PocketBible’s devotional features or following an external plan but using PocketBible to read the Bible. Those who do read every day spend 17 minutes each day reading the Bible. This is consistent with the 16.5 minutes we got last year.

I find that encouraging. I believe it’s important for Christians to read and understand the Bible. It’s our most direct way of getting instruction from God.

Online Habits

Most of you are still using Google for searches even though it puts your privacy at risk. The next most popular choice is arguably the right one: Duck Duck Go.

A few of you, when asked what search engine you use, told us you use Edge, Firefox, or Safari. Please — these are browsers. A browser is how you access the Web. A search engine is a website you use to perform searches. Most browsers allow you to choose a default search engine. This allows you to type some search words into the address line in your browser and it will automatically invoke your chosen search engine to perform the search.

Use of PocketBible

Most of you use PocketBible every day and almost 90% use it more than just in church on Sunday.

Over 80% of you use PocketBible most of the time on either a phone or tablet. This is consistent with how we target our marketing of what we do — we are a mobile app developer and always have been. That less-than-20% who use it primarily on a desktop or laptop will argue with us about that and point out that Windows is the most popular operating system. Until we point out that Windows is the most popular desktop operating system. If you expand your scope to all computing devices, then Android OS is actually installed on more devices than Windows.

Satisfaction

94% of you are somewhat or very satisfied with PocketBible. You are most interested in the same kinds of resources that we are already producing — commentaries, dictionaries, Bibles, and atlases. You have some very specific recommendations in some cases, and we’ve made a note of those.

2% of you are dissatisfied with PocketBible, so we’re pouring over your criticisms and suggestions. We don’t respond to these of course, but we do read them. We don’t enjoy it, but we do it anyway.

This is just a quick overview of the portions of the survey that I thought might be of general interest. The complete report is 49 pages long, including your comments, suggestions, and complaints in 10-point font.

Thanks to those of you who participated! This is an important part of what we do to make PocketBible into a useful tool.

Your Power Supply is Smarter than You Think

I recently purchased an Apple Vision Pro. I’ll eventually have some thoughts about this platform and its potential for Bible software, but right now I want to talk about that boring little brick you plug your iOS device into when you charge it.

I’ve owned an iPhone since the day it was introduced, an iPad since its launch date, too, and now a Vision Pro 1.0. Just like many of you, I have drawers and computer bags full of those little USB power supply bricks and a variety of the bigger ones that come with MacBooks. I figured out a long time ago that I can plug any device with a USB charger into any USB power supply even if it’s intended for a different device. So I charge my iPhone and Watch with my MacBook charger and have been known to plug my MacBook into an iPad charger just for grins.

When I got the Vision Pro, I saw someone on YouTube put a meter inline with the charging cable and note that it would draw up to 60 watts when connected to his MacBook power supply, even though it ships with a 30 W power supply.

I have just a little bit of experience with electronics, having learned Ohm’s Law for my ham radio license 50 years ago (!) and having built a number of transceivers and other electronic gizmos. I’ve been assuming that all these devices needed 5V at some number of amps — 1.5 A for iPhones and 2.1 A for iPads and many more amps for my MacBook. They are all interchangeable, so they must all use the same voltage, right? Maybe just limit the current?

Wrong.

Turns out these little power supply bricks are smart. They talk to your device and negotiate a voltage the device can use and the current limit the supply might have at that voltage. Between your device and the power supply, they work out the optimum arrangement for operating your device and charging the battery. Voltage ranges from about 5V to about 20V and current is adjusted so as not to exceed the limits of either the power supply or the device.

I guess they’ve been doing this since about 2012. Who knew? Not me.


Image by ChatGPT/DALL•E, of course.

Happy Candlemas! (Groundhog Day)

Recently discovered Byzantine representation of an ancient Candlemas celebration, as recreated by ChatGPT

Groundhog Day, celebrated on February 2nd, has its roots in an ancient Christian tradition known as Candlemas Day, which marks the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. On Candlemas Day, clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter, and the candles represented how long and cold the winter would be.

The choice of February 2nd is rooted in early Christian tradition and Jewish custom, which mandated a period of purification for a mother after giving birth, followed by the presentation of the child at the Temple. For a male child, this period was 40 days, and since Jesus’s birth is celebrated on December 25th, the 40th day thereafter is February 2nd.

The weather lore associated with Candlemas, however, has pre-Christian roots.

Pre-Christian Traditions

The tradition of observing weather patterns around the beginning of February can be traced back to pre-Christian times and is linked to ancient Celtic festivals, particularly Imbolc. Imbolc is celebrated on February 1st and marks the beginning of spring in the Celtic calendar. It was a time for weather divination, and the weather on Imbolc was thought to predict the weather for the coming spring and the remainder of winter. This period, falling halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, was a significant seasonal marker in many ancient agrarian cultures.

Candlemas and Weather Lore

When Christianity spread throughout Europe, many pagan traditions were Christianized or absorbed into Christian celebrations. Candlemas became one such feast where pre-existing weather lore was integrated into Christian practice. Sunny weather on February 2nd indicated more winter to come, similar to the Groundhog Day belief that if the groundhog sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter.

This lore found expression in various regional aphorisms:

England

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

Scotland

If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There’ll be two winters in the year.

Germany

For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day,
So far will the snow swirl until May.
For as the snow blows on Candlemas Day,
So far will the sunshine before May.

America

If the sun shines on Groundhog Day;
Half the fuel and half the hay.

Germanic Influence and the Emergence of the Groundhog Tradition

The specific tradition of using an animal to predict the weather on this day is more directly traceable to Germany and surrounding regions. Before the tradition was brought to North America, Germans looked to the badger as a weather prognosticator. When German settlers arrived in North America, particularly in Pennsylvania, they adapted the tradition to use the groundhog due to the absence of badgers in their new homeland.

Early German settlers in America mourn their inability to predict the weather in their new homeland due to the scarcity of badgers. Fortunately, groundhogs were plentiful.

PocketBible for Windows Progress Update #16

ChatGPT attempts to render my Windows programming workspace based on a general description.

I told myself I’d write a progress update after the first of the year. Suddenly that’s where we’re at.

As you recall from updates 14 and 15, we had a bit of a crisis of our own creation happen toward the end of 2022 which required us to update both BookBuilder and PocketBible on every platform. We had to modify our Bible format and make sure all versions of PocketBible (with the exception of the old/current Windows versions) could read the new format.

We started with our BookBuilder and PocketBible apps for macOS, since these two share a lot of code and doing them at the same time gave us a platform on which to test our new Bible format. We held off on releasing BookBuilder in case we discovered anything we needed to fix as we rolled out the changes. We released the macOS version of PocketBible in May with updates following into June.

This allowed us to turn our attention to the Android version, which was problematic because of Google shenanigans. An initial version was released in September to address new Play Store requirements. We spent the next 6-8 weeks implementing the Bible changes and doing updates to fix various problems discovered after the release of the new version. This was our first update in 5 years for the Android app, so there were some issues.

That brought us to the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, which is our busiest time of year. There are two large tasks that I’m personally involved in because they impact code on the website — creating the 2024 editions of the Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Emerald PocketBible Library collections, and implementing the end-of-year “name your price” sale. Because these tasks have to be done every year, some of the process is automated. But it still requires a bunch of my time.

Despite the distractions, progress was made on the Windows app during this time.

The app is very close to being feature-complete, at least for the standard (non-AFS) feature set. One of the next big tasks that, oddly enough, consists of a lot of unknowns is being able to build a Windows EXE suitable for distribution.

As I’ve explained before, we do all of our development and testing on macOS. We’ve done occasional debug builds for Windows, but we’ve never been able to generate a stand-alone EXE like we’ll have to do when we release the product. So even though we’re not quite there yet, I have someone looking into those issues.

This has taken us down two dark alleys. One was compatibility problems with the versions of the Electron and Vue frameworks we’re using in the app. In order to build an executable that works, I think we’re going to need to be running newer versions of those foundational tools. Electron isn’t much of an issue, but Vue has undergone breaking changes in its most recent major update. This requires that we make significant changes just to get our code to build with that version.

The second issue is code signing. Code signing is a process that is supposed to do a couple of things. First, it assures you that the software you download from our website really is from us and not some other company pretending to be us. Second, it assures you that the code hasn’t changed between the time we signed it and the time you downloaded it. This is meant to make you safer (or at least make you feel safer). But if you think about it, code signing is arguably pointless. No malware you’ve ever been a victim of is stopped by a code signing requirement. If this requirement were lifted, all the same malware would continue to work just fine.

Anyway, signing our executable and getting it to work after it is signed has been a challenge. But we’re working on it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been able to get back in my coding chair and have been porting the new Bible format to the Windows code. One unexpected benefit is that I’ve gotten to re-think the way we had ported this code from C++ to JavaScript in the first place and make some changes that will make it easier to maintain. I’ve borrowed some from the C++ (macOS and Windows) implementation and some from the Java (Android) implementation. This gives us good consistency between all platforms and will make maintenance easier in the future.

To sum up, after a detour to do a lot of work on other platforms, we’re back to work; we’re close to feature-complete (at least for the standard feature set); and we’re focusing on tasks that are necessary to move from development to beta to release.

My Favorites

ChatGPT imagines what it looks like when I’m studying the Bible with PocketBible.

I’ve been writing Bible software and publishing Bibles and Bible reference books for over 35 years now. For some reason, people think I’m intimately familiar with every one of the hundreds of titles we publish. Obviously I can’t be and I’m not. But I do have some favorites. I’ve never taken the time to say which ones I like and why, so let’s do that today.

I’ve intentionally not linked these to our online catalog, as I don’t want to give the impression that I’m promoting any of these titles over others we might carry. Feel free to list what you think are indispensable Bibles and reference books for your own study in the comments.

Bibles

At the risk of offending those who think there’s only one English translation of the Bible with God’s imprimatur, here are my faves.

Modern English: The World English Bible

The WEB is an updated version of the 1901 ASV text. It doesn’t go out of its way to be overtly “modern” but rather just updates the language to sound more natural to today’s readers. I especially like that it uses “Yahweh” for the name of God in the Old Testament, which I believe “personalizes” God and makes him more of an active character in the narrative instead of a distant and disconnected force that meddles in human affairs in ways beyond our understanding.

Because I use this Bible in my 7-Minute Bible devotional, I’ve read through it a few times and have been happy to have been able to suggest some corrections to it in a handful of verses.

“Literal” Translation: The New American Standard Bible (2020 Edition)

When the 2020 NASB was introduced, I started in Genesis and read it cover-to-cover. I was expecting to be disappointed, as I had always been when trying to read the 1995 edition. While the latter was good for word studies, it didn’t read well. It was rather jarring to the ears. The 2020 edition seemed much smoother without resorting to paraphrase or functional equivalence.

I tend to use the version of this Bible that includes Strong’s numbers when I need to reference the original languages. I like the literal translation better in that case.

When I Can’t Remember a Verse: The King James Version

As a new Christian, I attended churches that taught from the KJV for about 25 years. I’m one of a shrinking number of people that don’t find the KJV, which mixes a little Middle English grammar into its Early Modern English text, to be off-putting. When I remember a few words of a verse and need to do a search to find it, I tend to do that search in the KJV, betting that the dark corners of my memory are recalling its particular wording.

As you know, back in 2014 Laridian switched its KJV text to the 1910 Cambridge version to bring it into line with what most modern KJV readers expect. We then added Louis Klopsch’s original red-lettering to the New Testament to make ours a very special edition of the text.


Commentaries

This is where we really get into differences of opinion. But I’m the one writing this article, so I get to express mine here.

Whole-Bible Commentary: Constable’s Bible Study Notes

Dr. Tom Constable from Dallas Theological Seminary does an outstanding job of presenting a conservative, evangelical point of view while making room for alternative explanations. He backs up both his own opinions and alternative opinions with quotes from third parties who champion those points of view. Since these are literally just his own personal notes collected over the years, they don’t suffer from having been over-edited by a publisher and a marketing department.

Because the book hasn’t been overly edited, it doesn’t contain anything superflous, like random color images of sites in Israel. But it does contain charts and maps when appropriate to understanding the text.

New Testament Word Studies: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

This is an update to Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament, which is also a recommended book. You would think a book on word studies would be a dictionary in PocketBible, but Robertson presents his work verse-by-verse, which makes it easy to find what you’re looking for while reading.

This book is intentionally written to people like me with an interest in the original languages but not the expertise to study word origins and learn how to parse nouns and verbs on my own. I feel like I get the benefit of knowing the languages without having to learn them.

Expository Commentary: The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (full edition or abridged)

I tend to keep the full edition of this commentary on my devices, but the abridged edition is an affordable alternative that doesn’t lose much in the abridgement. I like this commentary for its deep, scholarly treatment of the subject matter and its willingness to discuss alternative points of view.

We used to be able to sell this 12-volume set for a very reasonable price. But recent changes at the publisher make this one hard to discount. It’s worth every penny, but if you ever catch it on sale, you should scrape together the shekels to buy it.

Old Testament Commentary: Keil and Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

This is not for the faint of heart. You don’t have to be able to read Hebrew, but it might help. This commentary isn’t for everyone, but it’s one place I look when sussing out nuance of meaning from Hebrew.

Most of the time, almost any other commentary will do when studying the Old Testament. But if you really want to get into the meanings of words and how they’re used, this is the tool you need. It’s not something you can give a quick read and learn everything you need — it takes some effort to figure out what they’re talking about and where they’re going. But if you want that level of detail, this is the place to find it.


Dictionaries

In PocketBible, atlases are often categorized as dictionaries, so I’ll cover those here as well.

Strong’s Numbers: Complete Word Study Dictionaries

These dictionaries (OT and NT volumes) are ideal companions to any of our Bibles that contain Strong’s numbers. They provide significantly more detailed definitions than do the default dictionaries that come with those Bibles.

For each word you’ll see its Strong’s number, Hebrew or Greek spelling, transliteration, forms, synonyms, antonyms, and definitions of every usage of the word. There are many links to verses where the word is used and links to related words in the dictionary.

Atlas: Deluxe Bible Maps and Timelines or the Holman Bible Atlas Bundle

Deluxe Bible Maps is a thorough atlas of every region, battle, time period, people group, etc. The maps themselves are pretty simple, but the place names are linked to short descriptions in the accompanying dictionary of Bible places.

The Holman Bible Atlas Bundle consists of the Holman Bible Atlas and the Holman Book of Biblical Charts, Maps, and Reconstructions. The atlas contains over 130 maps plus hundreds of timelines, charts, and articles. The book of charts, maps, and reconstructions is a perfect supplement, containing dozens of images that are ideal for both study and teaching.

Topical Dictionary: Dictionary of Bible Themes

This is a hidden gem in our catalog. It’s actually two books. The Dictionary of Bible Themes is like Nave’s Topical Bible. The topics are organized like a systematic theology. Each contains links to verses and other related topics. Also included is the Dictionary of Bible Themes Scripture Index, which functions like the Thompson Chain Reference Bible and is organized like a commentary in PocketBible so that it follows along with verses as you read them and links you to topics appropriate to that verse.


Devotionals

I’m more of a read-through-the-Bible guy than a daily-nugget-of-truth guy, so my preferences are going to lean in that direction. I don’t like the plans that scramble the Bible up by chapter or by OT+NT+Psalms+Proverbs each day. I just get lost that way. I strongly prefer to read chronologically. I feel I know the history better that way.

Chronological Bible Reading: The 7-Minute Bible

Yeah, I know — this is my book so of course I picked it. Think of it this way instead: This is how I prefer to read through the Bible in the morning, so I wrote it. The 7-Minute Bible is the text of the World English Bible (WEB) organized chronologically, harmonized where appropriate (i.e. Kings/Chronicles and the Gospels), the edited to remove the things that are going to cause you to stop reading through the Bible (like 9 full chapters of names at the beginning of 1 Chronicles). I find I can read through the entire 7-Minute Bible in 4 months if I read just 15 minutes per day.

Reading in Bible Order: OT in One Year and NT in 6 Months (Twice)

If I feel I must read ever verse in the Bible, I have done it by reading one day from the Old Testament in One Year plan and one day from the New Testament in 6 Months plan each day. When I finish the New Testament at the end of June, I start over. These reading plans are free when you register PocketBible, so everyone has access to them.


Other Books

There are a few books that PocketBible categorizes as “other” (because they don’t fit in any of the categories above) that I find useful.

The “Lost World” Series

This is a recently published series of books that takes a fresh look at the Old Testament in the light of our best understanding of the Hebrew language and the literature of the Ancient Near East. The goal is to read the text from the perspective of the people to whom it was originally written.

While all “Bible background” commentaries try to provide historical and cultural information, this series focuses on key passages, such as Genesis 1, Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, the Israelite Conquest, etc. to find hints in what we know about Ancient Near East cultures to help us understand how those who may have heard or read what we know of as the Old Testament would have understood it.

Scottish Metrical Psalms

I’m not a fan of the Psalms. It’s an interesting little book of song lyrics but I find it hard to identify with. I’m not pursued by my sworn enemies into caves and crevices on a regular basis. I’m not a song-writer looking for lyrics. But — if I have to read a song book, I need it to rhyme and I need it to be singable in standard meter. This little book translates the book of Psalms into truly singable works. I thought about modernizing the language and using this for my 7-Minute Bible, it’s that good. Maybe in version 2.

The Trail of Blood

This is a fascinating little pamphlet that makes the case that there has always been one true, biblical church fashioned on the principles of the New Testament and not falling under the hierarchy of any denomination. It argues that Catholicism (and subsequently Ortodoxy and Protestantism) split from this true version of the Church and went off in their own direction but that there still exists pockets of real New Testament churches today. Whether you believe that or not, it’s a fascinating hypothesis that happens to be correct. Like I said — my article, my rules. 🙂

Understanding the Bible Collection

This 22-volume collection provides a wealth of historical, cultural, and geographic background on what we read in the Bible.

Each volume covers a different subject and is loaded with photos, maps, and charts.

About the Image

I asked ChatGPT to create a picture of me studying in my home office. Unfortunately I couldn’t get it to make me clean-shaven except for a mustache, give me a knuckle for every finger and a finger for every knuckle, give me an Apple Watch instead of some generic Android watch, give me just one rectangular phone and not an additional trapezoidal phone, make sure my books aren’t bound along two opposite or two perpendicular edges, put any less than 14 or 15 hours on my alarm clock, and give me a spiral bound notebook that wasn’t bound along one edge and also across the middle. Other than that — nailed it.

The Unattainable Quest for a Perfect Bible Translation

It is impossible to translate the Bible accurately. Your English Bible does not say what the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts said. And this isn’t just a problem with English — since Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the original Greek texts of the Gospels didn’t say what Jesus said.

These words might sound outrageous, but they are factual. Whatever we believe about the inerrancy, infallibility, and inspiration of the original autographs, and whatever we believe about the preservation of God’s Word through the ages, we need to come to terms with the nature of language and translation when we read the Bible in a language and a culture outside of that in which it was written.

Language is Rooted in Culture

Each human language is a product of the environment, culture, history, and collective consciousness of a group of people. These factors determine the vocabulary, syntax, idioms, and other features of the language that people speak in a given region at a given time.

Linguists believe that the human brain is wired for grammar and that babies don’t have to be taught to speak as much as taught how the language of their family fills in the blanks in the concept of grammar that they already have in their newborn minds. Despite this, because external conditions are different everywhere, languages develop in ways that make them markedly different.

Consider the Pirahã language, spoken by the Pirahã people of the Amazon. It has no words for specific numbers. It has concepts like “some” and “many”, but not “seven” or “seventy times seven”. If you believe that it is significant that Jacob had 12 sons and Jesus had 12 disciples, how do you convey that idea in in the Pirahã language? If you believe Daniel’s “seventy weeks of years” started on a particular date and ended (or will end) on a particular date, how would you translate that to Pirahã?

Sometimes the problems aren’t technical, but cultural. How do you convey the precise meaning of the Inuktitut word “qaggiq” in English to an American? Yes, it’s a large communal snow-house or igloo used for community gatherings, dances, and traditional celebrations, but are you sure you understand its full depth of its meaning to those who live in a communal culture with social practices very different from your own? Consider a more relatable example: are you sure you can explain to a person with no exposure to any Western religion the difference between a church, synagogue, temple, and a mosque? Even if they understand that these are all “buildings for religious activity”, and that a church is specifically Christian, can you convey the full range of memories and emotions that you recall when you speak of your church? And once you get that down, can you make that person understand that your local church is not so much a building as it is the manifestation of a metaphor?

The point is that the simplest words have meaning that are rooted in the culture in which they are spoken. An American might cringe to hear his British friend say he’s going to put on a jumper before going out in the cold. And imagine the shock to the Brit when the American says he need to change into a different pair of pants since they’re going to a fancy restaurant! Even though both of these people speak English, it’s not the same English because language is cultural. One puts on a sweater, not a sleeveless dress (“jumper”) before going out in the cold in America. And one might change his trousers, not his underwear (“pants”) when going to a fancy restaurant in the UK.

Languages Are Spoken, Not Written

We tend to think of English in its written form. Many or most of the grammar rules we learn in school apply when writing, and when we’re translating the Bible, we’re translating from one written form to another.

But languages are first and foremost spoken. It’s statistically rare for a language to have a writing system. Only about 10% of the world’s 6000-7000 languages have a writing system. And many of those 600 or so writing systems are understood only by the scholars and practitioners who create them — the people who natively speak the language have no need to read or write it.

As a result of the fact that language is a spoken phenomena, languages exist and have meaning for very short periods of time. And they naturally evolve. While English has been around in one form or another for about 1600 years, you’d have a very difficult time understanding any English speakers from just 500-600 years ago. Most of us struggle with the KJV, and it’s only 400 years old. And we only understand the KJV when you show it to us in writing, modernize the spelling, and explain to us that ye, yu, and yt should be read “the”, “thou”, and “that”, since “y” in those cases is standing in for the archaic English letter þ (thorn). We’d also need to think hard about “long s” in words like “ſinfulneſs” (sinfulness) and “Goſpel” (Gospel). These don’t affect how the language was spoken, but are evidence of how language (in this case, written language) changes over relatively short periods of time.

Languages Die

The implication of the fact that languages that are primarily spoken rather than written is that when the last native speakers of a language die, the language dies with them. This brings us to biblical Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. These are dead languages. Nobody speaks the ancient dialects of these languages any longer. What we know about them comes from analyzing ancient texts, inscriptions, and manuscripts; comparing with known languages and deciphering through similarities; studying modern dialects; translating ancient dictionaries and lexicographical works; and uncovering inscriptions or writings that shed light on ancient languages. These are imprecise and incomplete efforts.

The fact that the biblical languages are no longer spoken yields interesting problems. For example, we refer to Habakkuk as “Habakkuk” only because the Hebrew word חֲבַקּוּק occurs in two places in the book and it looks like it might be someone’s name. We don’t really know what it means or where it came from so we simply transliterate the Hebrew. Similarly, the last verse of Habakkuk contains the word נְגִינָה, which occurs only in this one place in all of ancient literature. It’s usually translated something like “stringed instrument” or left out entirely, but any translation of it is just a guess.

The word translated “daily” in the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6:11) is ἐπιούσιος in Greek, and occurs nowhere else in Greek literature. We don’t know what it means. The prefix ἐπι- means “upper” or “above”, so we assume “needed” or “necessary”. So maybe “daily bread”. It’s just a guess.

There is No “Right” Philosophy of Translation

These problem in translation don’t necessarily change any major doctrine or invalidate your salvation. But what they do is speak to the issue of the big argument we all like to have about whether our favorite English Bible is better than the others. Does it emphasize “formal equivalence” or “functional equivalence”? Or is it one of these other translation philosophies:

  1. Formal Equivalence:
    • This is another term for the “word-for-word” or “literal” approach, emphasizing maintaining the form of the source text, including sentence structure and words.
  2. Functional Equivalence:
    • Similar to “dynamic equivalence”, this approach focuses on conveying the intended function or meaning of the original text rather than adhering to a strict word-for-word translation.
  3. Optimal Equivalence:
    • This approach attempts to strike a balance between formal and functional equivalence, aiming for a middle ground between adhering to the source text and ensuring comprehension in the target language.
  4. Free Translation:
    • This is a more liberal approach to translation where the essence of the original text is retained, but the translator has the liberty to rephrase, add, or omit text to make it more comprehensible or relevant to the target audience.
  5. Paraphrastic Translation:
    • Similar to paraphrase, this approach involves rewording the original text extensively to explain or clarify the meaning, often expanding the text considerably.
  6. Idiomatic Translation:
    • This approach focuses on translating the ideas into the idiomatic expressions of the target language, ensuring the text resonates with the cultural and linguistic norms of the target audience.

It is a logical fallacy to think you can pick one of these and have a chance of being “right”. That’s not how translation works. There is no “correct” way to translate the Bible. One Christian cannot say to another that the translation he or she is using is “bad” because it is a paraphrase. Or because it is too literal. Or because it isn’t literal enough. You can’t have a preference among these translation philosophies because none can lay claim to being accurate all the time.

So What Do We Do?

It should be obvious that we’re asking all the wrong questions when it comes to choosing an English translation of the Bible. It is literally and objectively the case that no translation of the Bible can be said to be “best” (or “worst”), and that even “better” (or “worse”) is a subjective term. Any translation that makes an attempt to convey the meaning of the source material without introducing bias (such as changing the gender of a person or injecting the translator’s dogma or tradition into the text) is as good as any other.

This leaves you and I in the position of having to use external resources such as commentaries and Bible encyclopedias to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. We should compare multiple English translations and explore the causes for differences when we discover them. We shouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to find The One English Bible that is True and Accurate. It would be nice if such a thing existed, but life isn’t always easy.

This is PocketBible’s very raison d’être, and why we’re not satisfied with doing what other major Bible apps do when they publish dozens or hundreds of translations of the Bible and no reference material.

PocketBible for iOS Updated – Version 4.16.0

On Friday, October 6, 2023 we uploaded version 4.16.0 to the App Store. Apple approved the new version the next day.

This version was released primarily to make PocketBible for iOS compatible with our latest changes to our Bible format. These changes allow us to include data with each Bible that tell PocketBible how Bibles should interact with each other. This data used to be included in PocketBible itself, but that meant that we often had to update PocketBible on all platforms simply to release a new Bible. These changes will help us avoid having to do that.

In addition, several new features, enhancements, and bug fixes were added:

NEW FEATURES

  • Added a “direct keyboard entry” go-to-verse style to better support hardware keyboards on iPad.
  • Added press-and-hold link previews for most types of links in the note viewer.
  • Added ability to link to document fragments in notes. (Use plain text editor to add id= attribute to a tag; link with href=”#id” syntax.)

ENHANCEMENTS

  • Do a better job of managing the toolbox size when using a hardware keyboard attached to an iPad.
  • Support more types of link previews in book and Bible text. Change the way they are displayed to take up no more of the screen than required.
  • Accommodate more types of links being pasted into notes from PocketBible books and Bibles.
  • Added VoiceOver labels and hints to many more buttons.
  • Slight visual changes to the shape and borders of book panes to provide better definition when panes are displayed in tiles.
  • Added the version numbers of the Bible reference data in a Bible to its “About This Book” screen.
  • Users Guide is automatically re-installed on request if accidentally deleted.

BUG FIXES

  • Changes in the way the iOS speech synthesizer handles empty strings passed to it would cause PocketBible to sometimes repeat a verse or paragraph when reading it.
  • Duplicate notes could be created while changing the name of a Journal note. (AFS)
  • Links to websites in notes could fail if the URL contained spaces.
  • Text in alert dialogs was difficult to read when using a light color scheme while the device is in dark mode or a dark color scheme while in light mode.
  • Book, chapter, or verse numbers could get truncated in the “spinner” go-to-verse style.
  • The “spinner” style go-to-verse dialog wasn’t being displayed the first time it was invoked after having been selected in Settings.
  • The app could crash when a shortcut key was used to open the “today” menu on an iPad with a hardware keyboard.
  • Long-press on a toolbar button in landscape mode on an iPhone activated the wrong button.
  • Long press on go-to button to see list of recent verses would not display correctly if the active book was not a Bible.
  • Selecting a recent search caused the search to be performed but the results were immediately dismissed.
  • Login/Create Account screens now have dark background when dark color scheme is active.

Note on Account Deletion

Apple initially rejected this version of the app because it doesn’t provide a way for users to delete their account. This is a new requirement and we knew about it but didn’t realize it had taken effect. Apple was gracious enough to approve the app, but we’ll have to add account deletion in the next update.

The reason we don’t currently have this in any of our apps is because it is “dangerous”. Consider that account deletion will do the following:

  • Your entire account is removed from the server, including your transaction history. As a result, PocketBible is affected on all platforms even though you’re doing the removal from an iOS device. You won’t be able to download books or have access to Advanced Feature Set features on Android, macOS, or Windows when you delete the account. This cannot be undone.
  • All of your notes, highlights, bookmarks, and devotional reading progress are permanently removed from the server and from your device. This cannot be undone.
  • All books, Bibles, and AFS features are removed from your device except those that came bundled with the app.
  • Since your account and transaction history is deleted, no refunds can be issued for products purchased in the last 30 days that would otherwise be eligible for refund.
  • All settings and user preferences are removed from the device. All search and navigation history is removed. The app will restart and will believe you are running it for the first time.

Even though we plan to give you more than one opportunity to cancel the deletion sequence, once you confirm it twice, we will proceed and it can’t be undone.

We’ve always made account deletion something we do by request to tech support. If we see that a user has a lot of books or a not of notes/highlights/bookmarks, we’ll give them the opportunity to change their mind before automatically continuing. We’re sure we’ll have more than one unhappy user as a result of this Apple requirement.

Fun fact: PocketBible allows you to view your Cloud Library download account even if you refuse to log in. That’s because a few years back there was a reviewer at Apple who could not figure out the difference between “shop for Bibles and books” and “access your download account”. He told us the user has to be able to shop without logging in, then he showed us the error message he gets when he select “access your download account”. We pointed out how to get to the built-in store but he wouldn’t budge. So when you go to the Cloud Library screen without logging in, we give you the opportunity to log in, but if you choose not to, we show you an empty list. That made the Apple guy happy and they approved the app. 🙂

PocketBible for Android Updated – Version 1.7.15

On Tuesday, August 29, 2023 we uploaded a new version of PocketBible for Android to Google Play (version 1.7.9, build 290). This is the first update in quite a while — we’re a little embarrassed to say it’s been about 5 years. Since the end of August we’ve uploaded several revisions — the latest being 1.7.15.

Because of the issues you’ll read about below, it was necessary to get this update released as soon as we could. As a result of jumping 5 Android versions (from version 8 to 13 — that’s “Oatmeal Cookie” to “Tiramisu” for those of you who follow Google’s cutesy naming system for their operating systems), we knew we would discover little things that would need to be fixed right away and so far that has indeed been the case. Updates are documented near the end of this article under “Phase 1”.


Why So Long?

I don’t want to make any excuses but I also want to be honest about what the situation is. You may know that the development team here is pretty small. We don’t have people assigned to each platform. We move from iOS to Windows to macOS to Android as needed. I originally developed our Android app, but pretty quickly passed it off to a more junior person. When that person left, I hired a replacement. About 5 years ago, that person left, too.

By then, the app was in pretty good shape and didn’t need a lot of updates. It had gotten to where I no longer knew my way around the code. And since I’m not an everyday user of the Android platform in the same way I am iOS, the operating system changed to where I no longer knew it either.

So when the Android app eventually needed updating I went to an Android programmer I knew who worked on it as a side gig for a few months. Eventually he took a different full-time job and couldn’t work on it any longer. So I found a really good contract developer who did a lot of the work to bring it into the 2020’s and get us almost up to Android 12.

And then this Bible thing happened…

Why Update Now?

If you’re a regular reader of this blog (that’s about 4 of you I think), you know that earlier this year we discovered a problem in the way Bibles are processed and stored for use in PocketBible. When we first wrote PocketBible, any time a new Bible was released we had to update the code in PocketBible and release a new version. This is because Bibles are very special and form the heart of how PocketBible works. That means any unique aspects of how they interact with other Bibles and with Bible reference books often has to be done directly in the PocketBible code.

So years ago we updated the Bible format PocketBible uses so that these unique aspects could be embedded into the Bible and not require PocketBible itself to be updated each time we released a new Bible. Turns out we didn’t go far enough. We have several new Bibles coming out that are just different enough that they couldn’t be published without updating every version of PocketBible. So we decided to stop what we were doing on the new Windows version of PocketBible and update every other version of the app. Then go back to the Windows version and update it, too, for this new format.

The macOS version with these changes was released a couple months ago. The iOS version is in beta.

And then this Google thing happened…

PocketBible Disabled on Google Play

Google decided late last year that if your app wasn’t built with the latest or next-to-latest version of their SDK, that you couldn’t be on Google Play. (It is more complicated than that, but that’s the net effect.) They said they were going to disable apps starting in May 2023. But they gave us the option to request an extension to August 2023, so we took it.

Then, after acknowledging we had until August, they said they changed their mind and they were going to pull the app in May.

We were right in the middle of macOS and iOS updates at the time and had been planning to get to Android before the end of August, so we have spent about 3 months explaining to people how to side-load PocketBible and bypass Google Play.

This forced us into a two-phase approach to making the Bible-format updates to the Android app. First, we needed to bring it up to date with the latest SDK. Google required version 31 compatibility, but version 33 is the latest so we went all the way to 33. Until that was done, it was pointless to start into the change for Bible files

Phase 1

Version 1.7.10 (September 2, 2023) addressed these issues:

  1. If you were using an SD card to store your books, they seemed to have disappeared. The method of finding your SD card changed in a recent version of Android OS and PocketBible was looking in the wrong place. It should be able to find them now.
  2. When using the dark UI theme, the list of books open in the active pane was displayed with gray text on a gray background. Similarly, the pop-up list of recently visited verses was similarly gray-on-gray.
  3. The dark mode theme was inexplicably using a dark blue color instead of a black color for the top and bottom action bars. Turns out this change was introduced as a debugging tool by a contract developer and we kind of liked it so we left it in. You did not like it. We reverted to black and very dark gray for the action bar, bottom action/tool bar, pane tabs (AFS), and go-to-verse buttons.
  4. An issue with viewing and saving Autostudy reports (AFS) was resolved.
  5. Resolved an issue that caused the app to crash when “Buy/Apply Upgrade” was selected from the navigation menu.
  6. Books that include the Laridian logo on the title page now use our newer blue and orange logo. In the process of doing this we fixed some previously unreported problems with displaying images.
  7. In the process of doing this upgrade, the minimum supported version of Android OS went from 4.1 “Jellybean” up to 4.4 “Kitkat”.

Version 1.7.11 (September 7, 2023) addressed these issues:

  1. We thought we had fixed Strong’s number searches but we hadn’t.
  2. Title page logo image was not being displayed on newly downloaded or moved books.
  3. Splash screen image was too tall on tablets in landscape orientation.
  4. Changed the image on the login screen to the new Laridian logo.
  5. Made internal changes related to how colors and styles are applied in the dark and light UI themes. There could be minor color changes as we seek to better organize the code in this regard.

Version 1.7.12 (September 20, 2023) addressed these issues:

  1. Re-architected the process of launching the app to get control over the transition from the onboarding slideshow, registration reminders, and registration/login screens to the main book view.
  2. Addressed a problem where deleting a book would remove it from the list but not actually delete the file.
  3. Added new UI color schemes for AFS subscribers.
  4. Minor changes to the default “Light” and “Dark” UI color schemes to improve general appearance.
  5. Treat the legacy AFS and AFS subscription differently, since features are now different between the two.
  6. Revert to “no AFS” if the user logs out of their account.
  7. Show logged-in customer ID, feature set, and AFS expiration date in About box.
  8. Get rid of boxes around bottom action bar buttons.
  9. Style the audio and autoscroll context menu bars with rounded corners and slightly more transparency.
  10. Added an option to control whether or not pane tabs show the book category (AFS). Only show the category when pane is inactive. Active panes always show abbreviation of active book.
  11. Removed “Exit” from the action bar menu. This is a hold-over from when mobile operating systems did a bad job of managing memory when apps were left running. It’s 2023 and nobody exits apps anymore.
  12. Don’t do the navigation menu animation demo. We all know there’s a slide-out menu on the left side of the app.
  13. Updated Help to describe tabbed panes. Include info on turning on/off categories in pane tabs. Document new AFS features.

Version 1.7.13 (September 25, 2023) addressed these issues:

  1. Restore “Journal” to the navigation menu for Legacy AFS owners. In 1.7.12 it accidentally required an AFS subscription.
  2. Make standard “Dark” and AFS “Black” themes darker based on user feedback.
  3. Adjust splash screen blue to match launch icon blue.
  4. Add an option to disable linked-to verse highlighting.
  5. Fixed some problems running on Android 4.4

Version 1.7.14 (September 28, 2023) addressed these issues:

  1. If the user deletes the Users Guide then selects “Help”, it is automatically reinstalled from the app bundle.
  2. Words of Christ could be unreadable or appear be displayed in the wrong color when certain highlight colors were used and “words of Christ in color” option was turned off.

Version 1.7.15 (October 6, 2023) addressed these issues:

  1. Resolved an issue where bottom action bar was getting partially hidden (or over-compensated for) under certain circumstances related to pixel density:
    • Split screen
    • Side panel open
    • Note editor (or any time keyboard was showing)
  2. Addressed several aesthetic issues when font size was set to its largest and smallest sizes in Android Settings and when “make everything bigger/smaller” was set to its extremes:
    • Pane tabs (AFS).
    • Note title above editor.
    • Go-to-date dialog for devotionals
    • Go-to-verse spinner and book/chapter/verse picker for Bibles.
    • Margin preference screens
    • Splash screen
  3. Made the text color used for book titles on the library lists have more contrast.
  4. More correctly position the autoscroll and audio toolbars in more circumstances (AFS).
  5. Addressed further problems with saving and printing Autostudy reports (AFS).

Phase 2

The above just gets us to where we can start doing the work we came here to do. We need to port the C++ code that has already been implemented in PocketBible for macOS and iOS to Java for Android.

Beyond

Once we get this work done, we hope to more actively update the Android app. Admittedly, it has been a bit of a problem child over the years and we’ve let it get away from us. But more importantly, finishing work on this version will let us return our focus to PocketBible 3 for Windows, where we have to do it all again in yet another programming language.

Thanks for your patience.

No Exit

While updating the Android version of PocketBible over the last couple of weeks, we took what we thought would be the non-controversial step of removing Exit from the action bar menu. In the light of some complaints, I thought I’d explain.

History

While the removal of the Exit function from PocketBible for Android seems abrupt and a step backwards in terms of giving users control over what’s going on on their device, the fact is that it’s the presence of the Exit function that is an anomaly.

Back in 1993-94 we experimented with Bible software on the Newton MessagePad. Including an Exit option on that platform was allowed, but the OS did a good job of managing memory without it and it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

Introduced in 1996, Palm OS discouraged apps from having a way to exit. It managed apps itself. Users weren’t supposed to think of “apps” so much as accomplishing a task. The idea of “launching” and “closing” were foreign to the “Zen of Palm”.

At about that same time, Windows CE was telling developers that mobile users didn’t need an explicit way to close their apps; the operating system would handle it. The app didn’t ever terminate itself; it was just told when it was about to be terminated, then it was terminated by the operating system.

iOS came along in 2007. Apple strongly discouraged developers from including any kind of exit functionality. Again, the OS managed memory better than the user could. Keeping apps around meant they launched faster.

Including the ability to exit an app was not recommended in Android (2008). Once again, the OS was better able to manage resources than the user.

So we come into last week’s decision to remove Exit from the action bar menu with a 30-year history of mobile operating systems discouraging or disallowing “exit” or “close” functionality in apps.

Benefits

The main advantage to the user of allowing the OS to manage running apps is that frequently used apps are more quickly and easily available.

Android facilitates this behavior by being able to intelligently decide which apps it should terminate to make memory or other resources available for the currently running app. It has ways of controlling how much CPU time is used by background apps so they can continue to work if necessary without affecting the responsiveness of the foreground app. (PocketBible doesn’t do any work when it’s in the background, but many apps do.)

Allowing Android to decide when to load and unload apps lets it more effectively manage battery life by minimizing loading activities and controlling background activities.

Android is able to predict which apps a user is likely to launch and keep them ready in memory as part of reducing launch time as described above. Similarly, it can terminate infrequently used apps when you’re done with them.

The Dark Secret

Don’t tell anyone, but that Exit option didn’t actually terminate PocketBible. What we did was programatically press the “back” button on the bottom of the screen while ignoring our own navigation history. So it was as if you had pressed “back” a dozen times to get past all the verses you had visited, then pressed it one more time to go back to the launch/home screen. We maintain your navigation history for your next session, of course, but internally that’s all we were doing.

Android has a “halt” method we can invoke to force the app to stop, but using it is strongly discouraged. It doesn’t allow for a controlled exit of the program and can cause data loss. So, yeah. Exit didn’t exit.

So How do I Exit the App?

Easy. You can exit PocketBible the same way you exit all your other apps, and with fewer screen taps than you were doing before. Just tap the “Home” button (or perform the “Home” gesture if that’s how you have it configured).

In other words, you could say we didn’t remove Exit, we just moved it to the bottom of the screen and made it look like a little circle. Yeah, that’s what we did — we just moved it to make it more convenient.

You’re welcome! 🙂

PocketBible for Windows Progress Update #15

Sometimes the things we think are obvious to the outside world aren’t.

In our last update, we explained in detail a problem we had encountered in the way that we encode Bibles for use in PocketBible. The TL;DR version is that we found it necessary to update every version of PocketBible, plus update the BookBuilder app, in order to accommodate necessary changes to the way we deliver Bibles.

As you know, PocketBible runs on four platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, and Windows. One of our points of pride is that PocketBible is a native app on each of those platforms. That is, we didn’t use a special tool that might allow us to create one app and run it on all platforms — we created separate apps for each. So when something like this comes up, we have to update PocketBible on all 4 platforms, and in this case, we also had to update our BookBuilder app.

We have a very small team of developers. We don’t have people assigned full time to each platform. So to work on one we pretty much have to stop work on others. That has meant that while we’ve been focusing on Windows, we haven’t been able to do much/anything on other platforms. It also means that if we need to work on iOS, macOS, or Android, we aren’t able to do much on Windows.

We kind of thought you guys all understood that, so we’ve been keeping you updated on our progress on the other platforms with the understanding that we would get back to Windows when these were done. Turns out that wasn’t clear. Hopefully now it is. Here’s where we stand on each of the other platforms with respect to this Bible format update.

BookBuilder and PocketBible for macOS

Because BookBuilder needed to be updated (of course) due to the Bible encoding changes, and because BookBuilder and PocketBible for macOS share so much code, we tackled both of these together. We did all the necessary changes to BookBuilder, then tested the output in PocketBible on the Mac.

While we were in the code, we did some necessary bug fixes and a few enhancements. We released PocketBible 1.4.2 on June 7, 2023 and it’s been pretty stable.

We did not release a new version of BookBuilder to the public because it’s possible we’ll discover problems related to the new format while working on all the PocketBible releases, and we’ll want to go back and make changes.

PocketBible for iOS

Version 4.16.0 went to a small group of beta testers about a month ago. Problems have been minimal and I anticipate we’ll approve it for the App Store soon. It incorporates the new Bible encoding changes and has a small number of improvements and quite a few little bug fixes.

PocketBible for Android

Android has been a challenge for a variety of reasons. Google changed the rules on us and required that we rebuild the app with the latest version of their tools for basically no reason. The app was working fine, but after telling us we had until August to upload a new version to Google Play, they decided to invalidate the app in May. This fell right in the middle of what we were working on for the other platforms. We opted to continue on our original plan of updating the Android app by the end of August. In the meantime, Android users were given instructions to side-load the app from our website and that worked fine.

PocketBible for Android has not been updated since 2018 and the changes required to get it compatible with the latest OS have been challenging. We released a build with minimal new features on August 29th and updates to fix some bugs on September 2 and 7. We anticipate at least one more small release to fix some additional issues; probably two more.

Once we get Android up to speed with Google’s new requirements, we’ll need some time to do the Bible encoding changes. This will involve porting a lot of code from the macOS/iOS apps and making sure it works. The Android app handles Bibles slightly differently from the other apps, so it’s not just a line-for-line translation from one language to the other, but rather it’s a concept-by-concept implementation using methods consistent with the way Android does things.

I’d like to tell you how long I think that’s going to take but I know I’ll just be wrong. Shouldn’t be too long, though.

PocketBible for Windows

Remember PocketBible for Windows? This is an article about PocketBible for Windows.

Once we get back to the Windows app I want to do a couple of things. First, I obviously need to port the Bible encoding changes from macOS/iOS into Windows. The JavaScript code in the Windows version follows the way the C++ code in macOS/iOS works pretty closely, so this should be easier than doing it in Android and Java. Second, while we’ve been working on getting the program finished, new versions of both Electron and VueJS have been released. We should refactor the app to use the new code so we’re not starting out already in need of an update.

We’re actually fairly close to having at least the standard features of the Windows app finished once we’re able to get back to it. There are some Advanced Feature Set features that haven’t been touched yet (Autostudy comes to mind).

Moving Forward with the “Native Apps on All Platforms” Plan in 2024

I want to take advantage of the fact that we’ve had to do recent re-releases of PocketBible on every platform and make it a goal to do some kind of small update to PocketBible on each platform every year. It’s easier to keep up with frequent, small changes than to have to absorb a massive number of changes to how to build and release apps when you do it every 4-5 years.

So that’s the status of PocketBible for Windows, told in terms of everything else that’s going on here. Anytime you see a blog article about any of the other platforms, count it as progress on the Windows app. 🙂


Photo by Arif Riyanto on Unsplash