For months now, I’ve been working on a research project which will eventually give birth to a really exciting Accordance tool. As with the PhotoGuide, the Timeline, and the Atlas—all of which I contributed to—my work on this project is teaching me an incredible amount about the world of the Bible. And just as I did with those other projects, I have relied heavily on the wide array of Accordance resources I have available to me. Who needs to travel to a library when you have an entire research library on your laptop?
One of the things I appreciate most about doing research with Accordance is the fluidity that’s possible. For example, in researching the “menorah”, I opened Anchor Yale Bible dictionary and searched for that word. The “Menorah” article pointed me to “Lampstand,” and I was there with a click on the hyperlink.
The “Lampstand” article gave me the Hebrew word מְנוֹרָה. By selecting this word and choosing the tagged Hebrew Bible, I instantly found every occurrence of מְנוֹרָה. I then put my English Bible in parallel and scanned through the results in English, observing the context of each mention of the “lampstand.” The ability to hover over a word in the Hebrew and have the corresponding English highlighted helped my eye track quickly.
When I wanted to cite passages in my own writing, I simply selected the verses I wanted and chose Reference from the Copy As submenu of the Edit menu. If I needed more context for a particular hit verse, I would just click the right edge of the Context slider to add the context I needed and select the desired verses.
This seamless integration among resources within Accordance, and between Accordance and my word processing app, makes working on these kinds of projects incredibly rewarding. Instead of getting bogged down in the process of hunting for information, I find myself jumping from one helpful resource to another, and it helps fuel the creativity I need to be able to process and communicate what I’ve learned. The ability to go from anything to anything without hassle is one of those little things that makes Accordance such a phenomenal research tool.