Note: Accordance 1.0 was released to the public in April, 1994. Therefore we still have a few weeks to celebrate our 25th anniversary with stories like the one below. If you’d like to tell us your story, please see the instructions at the end of this post.
I first became familiar with Accordance about 7 years ago, during my studies for a BA degree in Hebrew Language at Ben-Gurion University. At a course called “Late Biblical Hebrew” the professor introduced us to Accordance, and made some quick searches in the Hebrew Bible in order to demonstrate some differences between Classical Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew. This was during my third year of BA studies, and up until then I used paper concordances constantly. As you can imagine, I was absolutely amazed by all the wonders that Accordance can do and the major amount of time it can save. When the professor mentioned that it also comes with easily accessed dictionaries like BDB and HALOT, I decided that this is a software I must purchase.
This was in early 2013, before the Windows version was released. I waited eagerly for this to happen; and when the Windows version finally came out in September that year, I immediately purchased Accordance and all the necessary modules I needed. Shortly after I started my MA studies and my dissertation, and started using Accordance constantly for that. For countless times during the work on my dissertation, I thought in amazement how much time I saved by using Accordance, and how behind I’d surely be without it.
Now I’m a PhD student, and the work on my doctoral thesis was no different in that matter: the wonders that the concordance searches can do and the extremely easy access to important tools such as dictionaries and grammar books never cease to amaze me. I am certain that my thesis would have been very different if it wasn’t for Accordance, and I plan to keep using it in all my future studies as well.
Mor Shemesh
Want to tell your Accordance 25 Story? Email it to [email protected]. If we use your story, you could get a $25 credit for your next purchase.