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The Essential IVP Reference Collection. The Complete Electronic Bible Study Resource. Version 2.0. With New Libronix Digital Library System. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003. $144.00.
It seems somewhat of an overstatement to say that the electronic media have "revolutionized" biblical studies -we still need to memorize Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words, master grammatical characteristics, and learn syntactical structures when we seek to interpret the Bible in the original languages. And the need to carefully assess information, inferences, arguments, reconstructions, presuppositions and applications requires a level of competence that cannot be replaced by the internet or other electronic media. There is no doubt, however, that the electronic media have made some tasks quicker and easier, e.g., looking for specific grammatical constructions of Hebrew and Greek texts or comparing Bible translations or researching a particular issue in dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other sources. It is no secret that the sources that have been made available on the internet and in software packages on CD-ROMS are not infrequently outdated and therefore unhelpful and potentially misleading. This is clearly not the case as regards The Essential IVP Reference Collection, which assembles eight Bible and theological dictionaries, four commentaries, one Bible atlas and four pocket dictionaries, a combined 13,000 pages of fully up-to-date and highly competent information on the Old and the New Testament, on biblical history, on the cultural background of the Bible, and on theology, written by several hundred evangelical scholars.
The following titles are included in this software package, all published by InterVarsity Press: J. D. Douglas et al, eds., New Bible Dictionary, 2d ed. 1993 (1326 pp., NBD); T. D. Alexander and B. S. Rosner,...