This week, we officially kicked off our Accordance 25th Anniversary Celebration. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a quarter of a century since Accordance 1.0 was released on floppy disks! Back then, Accordance was only available for Macintosh computers. Now, in addition to macOS, Accordance can be used on macOS, Windows, Android and iOS. We have lots of exciting news to announce in 2019, our 25th year, but first let’s take a look back at some of the pivotal events since 1994.
(1) February 1994: In cooperation with the Gramcord Institute, Accordance 1.0 released exclusively for the Macintosh on multiple 3.5″ 1.44 MB floppy disks. The relationship with the Gramcord Institute would continue until December 31, 2003.
(2) May 1996: Accordance 2.0 adds the ability to use lexicons, commentaries, and other secondary resources, add user notes to biblical texts; and compare parallel passages such as Kings/Chronicles or the Synoptic Gospels.
(3) October 1996: Accordance begins release on CD-ROMs in addition to floppy disks.
(4) November 1997: Accordance 3.0 adds support for pictures, search all features, and diagramming tools.
(5) July 1998: Release of the Accordance Bible Atlas.
(6) April 1999: Partnership with Zondervan–Accordance-compatible CDs from Zondervan with the NIV Study Bible Basic Library and Expositor’s Bible Commentary for Macintosh.
(7) July 1999: Release of Accordance 4.0 adds tagged texts with Strong’s Key Numbers, integration between the key number texts and dictionaries, the ability to search original languages for exact accented and vowel forms.
(8) July 2001: Accordance 5.0 is released bringing color highlighting, User Tools, and floating icon palettes instead of text buttons.
(9) December 2001: Accordance 5.2 runs native under Mac OS X.
(10) November 2003: Accordance 6 delivers the first major redesign of Accordance and adds organization of work by tabs. Accordance is also localized to Spanish.
(11) March 2004: Holman Christian Standard Bible released in print–the first translation project to use a Bible software program (Accordance!) throughout to create and revise the translation at each step in its production.
Above: members of the HCSB translation team using Accordance.
(12) May 2006: Accordance 7.0 adds the contextual (right-click) menu and support for the Dead Sea Scrolls, Syriac, Uncial manuscripts and Aramaic texts.
(13) May 2008: Accordance 8.0 introduces a universal binary that allows the program to run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.
(14) April 2009: Dr. Timothy Jenney (“Dr. J”) begins the Lighting the Lamp video podcast. 10 years later, there are nearly 200 installments.
(15) September 2010: With the release of Accordance 9.0, Easy Install eliminates the need for physical media for new and updated content. This release also brought syntax and interlinear features as well as Unicode Bibles, expanding the range of languages that could be offered in Accordance.
(16) January 2011: “Bible Study with Accordance” (AKA Accordance Mobile for iOS) 1.0 is released for iOS.
(17) June 2012: The integrated Accordance Help System receives an Award of Excellence from the International Society of Technical Communication. A regional STC award was presented in February of 2012.
(18) August 2012. Accordance 10 completely updates the interface into one integrated workspace.
(19) September 2013: Accordance is released for Windows.
(20) October 2014. Accordance 11 adds the Info Pane, new Library structure, and the much more capable Research tab replaces Search All.
(21) November 2014: Accordance becomes the first Bible software program to use phrase tagging instead of less-accurate single-tagged key number texts. The first Bible version released with phrase tagging was the New International Version. Mounce’s New Testament and the German Leonberger Bibel are also available with phrase tagging.
(22) March 2015: Accordance Mobile 2.0 for iOS releases with support for larger phone sizes, better text selection, social sharing of content, dated devotional readings, and more.
(23) November 2016: Accordance 12.0 adds new document and research features: Papers and Stacks, new analytics features, and support for ETCBC (formerly WIVU) Hebrew syntax.
(24) February 2018: Accordance Mobile for Android 1.0 is released.
(25) Summer 2018: In response to requests from orphaned BibleWorks users, Accordance developers add many BibleWorks-inspired features such as Live Click, Text Browser, BibleWorks notes import, and special Crossover upgrades specifically for BibleWorks users.
Narrowing our list to the 25 most significant events was incredibly difficult. I made a much longer list, and had to cut it down to the 25 you see above. Perhaps I’ll post an “Honorable Mentions” list soon.
But did I miss anything? What did you expect to see on our list of 25 Significant Accordance Events over the last 25 years that’s not above? Let me know in the comments.