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BEREAN
1.0
"And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and
Silas by night unto Berea... who... were more noble
than those in Thessalonica, in that they received
the word with all readiness of mind, and searched
the scriptures daily..."
Acts 17:10-11
Introduction to BEREAN
BEREAN is a great Bible search and concordance program that will help you
to search the Scriptures daily for yourself. Verses that you know are
"in there somewhere" can be located in seconds with the help of BEREAN.
And verses that you never imagined were "in there" will fill your screen
(and hopefully your heart!) as the computer searches the entire text of
the Bible - IN JUST SECONDS!!
At this point in time (February of '89) there are three versions of
BEREAN available:
VERSION DISK SPACE MEMORY REQUIRED
-------------------------------------------------------
The 4 Gospels 330k 107k
New Testament 675k 166k
Whole Bible 2.5 meg 389k
Why I wrote this program
I'm the supervisor of the computer department and chief programmer at a
major christian ministry based in east Texas. I originally started to
write BEREAN for our own use here at the ministry (we produce a magazine
and a lot of tracts, among other things). I wanted people here to have
an easy to use Bible research tool since a lot of our time is spent
teaching the Bible and writing christian growth and discipleship
literature. BEREAN was designed to speed up the time consuming process
of searching through concordances so that we could concentrate our time
and efforts on WHAT the Bible says instead of spending hours in the
mechanics of WHERE the Bible says it. I wanted people to have a valuable
tool that would help them to "redeem the time because the days are evil."
(Eph. 6:5)
BEREAN is a tool that will help you to spend more quality time in
Bible itself and less time in a technical reference book.
BEREAN IS SHAREWARE - WITH A NEW TWIST!
BEREAN has helped so many people down here at our ministry that I want
everyone to be able to use it to speed up their study of the Bible. I've
decided to release BEREAN as a new kind of SHAREWARE so that anyone who
wants it can take advantage of the benefits it provides.
BEREAN took a huge investment of my time (just ask my wife) and my money
(for the programmers development software and tools, which aren't cheap!)
- and it took literally hundreds of hours to complete and debug. The
text of the whole Bible had to be restructured in a way that a computer
could understand, and then checked thoroughly for accuracy to make sure
no misspellings, deletions, or additions had accidentally crept in (see
Rev. 22:18-19). Then I had to write the blazingly fast code that would
search through 2.5 megabytes of text in just seconds to find every
instance of a particular word or words. Pretty amazing stuff!
Here's a brief explanation for those of you who don't know what SHAREWARE
is. SHAREWARE is a great concept in software distribution which believes
in quality software at reasonable prices. This is possible because there
is no middle man, fancy packaging schemes, or space on dealers shelves
that must get paid for through the markup cost of the package.
The SHAREWARE revolution allows you to test and use the program for
awhile to see if it will meet your needs before you pay for it. If you
are still using, or are ever intending to use the program after about 15
days you should pay for it. SHAREWARE believes that if a program is
worth using, it's worth paying for.
You can also make as many copies of BEREAN to pass on to your friends for
evaluation or to upload onto bulletin boards AS LONG AS NO CHANGES ARE
MADE TO THE PROGRAM OR ANY OF THE FILES THAT COME WITH IT. Pass it
around!
IF YOU DON'T READ ANYTHING ELSE, READ THIS SECTION!
I want people to be able to use BEREAN so much that I've come up with a
new way to make it available as SHAREWARE to anyone who wants it -
WHETHER THEY CAN AFFORD IT OR NOT. Here's the scoop:
IF YOU'RE ABLE TO PAY THE PRICE
I would ask you to send in the full suggested price as soon as possible
if you're using BEREAN or intending to use it after about 15 days. I'll
mail you a set of disks and keep you informed of any enhancements,
revisions, or new versions as they become available.
IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD THE FULL DONATION
If you can't afford the suggested donation all in one lump sum, please
send in WHATEVER you can afford WHENEVER you can afford it. You can make
as many partial donations as you need to whenever you're able to. I
don't have the time to keep track so you'll be on the honor system. I'll
mail you a set of disks and keep you informed of any enhancements,
revisions, or new versions as they become available.
IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD ANY DONATION EVER
If you honestly can't afford any donation but you still want to use
BEREAN please do so as a gift from me with a clear conscience. I'm
blessed to be able to share my skills for the sake of the Kingdom of God.
If you want a set of disks I'll mail them to you if you cover the cost of
the disks and the mailing which is about $1 per disk for 5 1/4" disks and
$2 per disk for 3 1/2" disks.
SUGGESTED DONATION
The 4 Gospels (cost of disk) comes on 1 disk
New Testament $20 comes on 2 5 1/4" disks or 1 3 1/2" disk
Whole Bible $50 comes on 7 5 1/4" disks or 4 3 1/2" disks
Please send payment to:
Kim D. Geiger
P.O. Box 1030
Lindale, TX 75771
My daytime telephone number is (214)963-8671 if you have any questions,
suggestions, comments, or ridicule.
Installation
Floppy Disks
If you have only a 360k floppy in your computer you'll be limited to the
4 Gospels version of BEREAN. If you have a 720k, or 1.2 meg floppy
you'll be able to search the entire New Testament in one fell swoop. In
either case you don't have to do anything to install BEREAN other than
popping it into your floppy drive and closing the drive door!
Hard Disks
If you are getting BEREAN on multiple disks, BEREAN will need to assemble
itself from all the bits and pieces that I've scattered across the floppy
disks. YOU CANNOT JUST COPY ALL THE FLOPPY DISKS ONTO YOUR HARD DISK AND
EXPECT BEREAN TO RUN. I've written an installation program to make the
process relatively painless and goof-proof. All you need to do is change
to the directory you want the BEREAN files in, put the first disk in your
disk drive and type A:INSTALL or B:INSTALL (depending on which drive it
is). Then, just follow the directions. BEREAN will ask you for the name
of a drive you are copying BEREAN from and then will ask you to put in the
rest of the disks.
How To Start BEREAN
To get up and running you just need to type the appropriate command for
the version of BEREAN you have:
"BEREANGS" starts the 4 Gospels version
"BEREANNT" will get the New Testament version going
"BEREAN" fires up the Whole Bible version
How To Look Something Up
Just type in the word that you want BEREAN to search for and press ENTER.
Your screen will be filled with the verses that contain that word. Page
down will give you as many screens full as there are and page up will
bring you back to the beginning. Everything will be explained in more
detail later on, but for right now you can just have fun.
How To Quit BEREAN
Press the ALT key and the letter "E" at the same time when you're
finished exploring BEREAN.
Using BEREAN to it's full potential
Now lets have a look at all the features of BEREAN. When BEREAN is
executed, it displays a blank screen. The full screen is used for
displaying scripture except for the top line. On the right hand side of
the top line, you will notice the current verse range BEREAN will search.
In the upper left hand corner, the cursor awaits your every command.
This left hand portion of the top line of the screen is for the command
line.
The Command Line
The basic command line is looks like this:
[book chapter:verse-book chapter:verse]+word*>filename.txt
Don't get scared if this looks complicated. It's really very simple.
You can use just the simplest parts of it for a very general search or
use all the parts and get a very detailed search. Let's have a look at
each part of the command line.
[book chapter:verse-book chapter:verse] -- Temporary Verse Range
Whenever you ask BEREAN to search for a word for you, it searches through
a certain range of verses. If no temporary verse range is specified in
the command line, BEREAN will use the global verse range. The global
verse range will generally be the whole text of the scriptures you have,
but you can change the global verse range as we will see later. You may
also change the verse range for just one search by including in the
command line a temporary verse range. The open bracket character ([)
tells BEREAN you are entering a temporary verse range for this search.
Directly after the '[', give the beginning verse of your range. The dash
character (-) tell BEREAN you are about to enter the ending verse of your
range and the close bracket character (]) tells BEREAN you are done
entering the temporary verse range. You need not enter the chapter and
verse. If chapter and verse are not entered, BEREAN will use chapter 1,
verse 1 for the beginning verse and the last chapter and verse of the
book for the ending verse. Lets look at some examples:
[mal 2:2-luk 5:3] Searches Malachi 2:2 through Luke 5:3
[mat-mat] Searches the book of Matthew
[exo] Searches Exodus 1:1 through to the end of the
global verse range
[-mal] Searches from the beginning of the global verse
range to the end of Malachi
[mat 2-joh 5] Searches Matthew 2:1 to the end of John 5
Get the idea? Good, now remember, you never really need to use the
temporary verse range. You can leave it out and always just search the
global verse range.
+word* -- Searching for a specific word
This is were the fun comes in. Type any word and BEREAN will give you
all the verses containing that word in the current verse range
(temporary, if you specified one, or else the global verse range). The
plus sign and the asterisk are optional modifiers for the word for which
you are searching. Either one or both can be left out. The plus sign
tells BEREAN you want to combine this search with the previous search.
In other words, you are telling BEREAN you want to find the verses
containing not only this word but that also contain the word(s) from the
previous search. An example is the best illustration:
jesus Finds all verses containing 'jesus'
+love combines with the previous search and finds all
verses containing both 'jesus' and 'love'
+man Again combines with the previous search and finds all
verses containing 'jesus', 'love' and 'man'. It, in
fact, only finds 2 verses with all three words in
them. John 14:23 and I Corinthians 16:22
Note that if there were no verses in the previous search or there was no
previous search (you just started the program), using the plus sign will
get you no verses.
The asterisk tells BEREAN to search for any word starting with the
letters you type just before the asterisk. lov* will find
lovingkindness, loveth, lover, loving, love, etc. The asterisk will,
however, only work at the end. Now lets see some examples of the two
together:
jesus Finds all verses containing 'jesus'
+lov* combines with the previous search and finds all
verses with both 'jesus' and any word beginning with
'lov'
+world again combines with the previous search and finds all
verses with 'jesus', any word beginning with 'lov'
and 'world'. John 13:1 is the only verse
>filename.txt -- Text file output
This command line option allows you to output your search to a text file
so you can call it up in your word processor, print it, or anything else
you like. If the file exists on disk, BEREAN will give you an error
message. It will only output to a filename that does not already exist.
If you include the redirection symbol (>) in the command line without a
filename, BEREAN will output the search to user defined global output
file (we'll discuss this later). This way you can output several
searches to the same file.
Now lets put it all together and look at a few examples:
>bible.txt will give you the whole bible on your disk in the
file bible.txt. Note: this will take 4.5 MB of disk
and a long time
[psa Displays all verses starting at Psalm 1:1 and ending
with the last verse in the global verse range.
[hos 2:3 Displays all verses starting at Hosea 2:3
[mat-mat] heal* searches the book of matthew for any word starting
with 'heal' (health, healing, healeth, healed, etc)
[gen-mal]go searches Old Testament for verses containing the word
'go'
+world combines with previous search and finds all verses in
the Old Testament containing both 'go' and 'world'
lov*>love.txt Outputs to file love.txt (if it doesn't already
exist) all verse with any word starting with 'lov'
hope> If a global output file has been defined, all verses
containing the word 'hope' will go to that file.
Otherwise, you will get an error message.
Menu System
A pop-up menu system gives you access to some other features of BEREAN.
The key combination ALT-M (hold the alt key and hit 'm') will display the
main menu from which these features can be accessed. The highlighted bar
selecting the option can be moved up and down with the up and down arrow
keys. Any option can also be accessed immediately by pressing the first
letter of the option. Some of the options in the main menu will display
another menu from which other options can be accessed. Pressing the Esc
key will take you back to the previous menu and exit you out of the main
menu. You will notice that each option also has a alt-key combination
listed with it. This is a quick way to use the feature without going
through the main menu. Now, lets look at each of the options.
Display Options
Selecting this option will display another menu from which you may select
one of three methods of displaying the scripture. A check mark indicates
which method is currently selected. Full Text, obviously, displays the
full text of the scripture on the screen. Brief Text displays a
concordance view of each verse. A concordance view is one line of the
verse with the searched for word somewhere near the middle of the line.
References displays a full screen of references.
Colors
Selecting the colors options displays another menu reflecting the current
display colors. Obviously, you can only use colors on a color monitor,
but if you do have a color monitor, you have a wide selection of colors
to choose from. BEREAN allows you to select the background and
foreground colors, a separate color for the word for which you have
searched, and a color for the scripture reference. You can move up and
down between background, foreground, word, and reference with the up and
down arrow keys and you can change the colors for each one with the left
and right arrow keys (space bar will also work). When you exit the menu
system, your new colors will be displayed. BEREAN initially comes up
with the correct colors for a monochrome screen.
Verse Range
We have previously talked about the global verse range. This is where
the global verse range can be set. If you have a lot of searches you
need to do in just a portion of the bible (the minor prophets for
instance), you could set the global range to include only those books or
verses. This would save you the time of having to enter the range each
time you searched for a word. Entering the global range is the same as
entering a temporary one. You don't need to enter the chapter and verse
and if you just hit enter for the beginning or ending verse, BEREAN will
use the old global verse range.
Save Configuration
To make BEREAN even easier to use, I have made it possible to save some
of the parameters you set up so you don't have to enter them every time
you execute BEREAN. When selecting the Save Configuration option, BEREAN
creates a file named BEREAN.CFG in the current directory. This file will
then be used by BEREAN to set the following parameters:
Colors
Global Range
Display Method
RAM/BIOS Flag (whether BEREAN writes to the screen using RAM or
BIOS, see appendix for more info)
The file BEREAN.CFG will not be there until you select this option. If
BEREAN.CFG is not there, BEREAN will use its own preset parameters --
full bible, full text display, and monochrome monitor colors. Also, if
the file BEREAN.CFG get corrupted, it could cause BEREAN to do some
strange things. If, when you execute BEREAN, the colors or the global
verse range are weird, try deleting the configuration file and starting
over again.
Last Configuration
This option, very simply, restores BEREAN back to the last saved
configuration.
Text Filename
This is where you can define the global output text file. Here, again,
the file must not already exist on your disk. Scriptures can be output
to this global file in two ways. The first way, discussed previously, is
to use the redirection symbol (>) on the command line with no filename.
The second way is we will discuss in the next section.
Help
This option will give you a few selected screens full of helpful
information for using BEREAN.
Exit
This will, of course, exit you from BEREAN.
Individual Verse Context Mode
One last helpful feature of BEREAN involves individual verses and their
context in scripture. Many times we will find several verses with the
word for which we are searching, but we are not sure which one is the
best verse. Context of the verse can usually help decide which one.
BEREAN can help you! Once a search is completed and all the verses are
on the screen, pressing the down arrow key will take your cursor through
the verses on the screen. Your cursor will be positioned at the
beginning of the verse here you have two features you can access:
Verse Context
Pressing the enter key or 'c' will show you the context the this
verse in scripture. BEREAN will show you three verses before and as
many verses after as can fill the screen. Enter or Escape will exit
the context screen.
Output Individual Verses
Pressing the letter 'O' (as in output) will output this individual
verse to the global text file (assuming you defined one, if you
didn't, expect an error message). This is the second way to output
to the global text file alluded to earlier.
Pressing escape or pressing up arrow repeatedly will bring you again to
the command line for more searching fun.
Appendix
Book Abbreviations
GEN -- Genesis ISA -- Isaiah ROM -- Romans
EXO -- Exodus JER -- Jeremiah 1CO -- I Corinthians
LEV -- Leviticus LAM -- Lamentations 2CO -- II Corinthians
NUM -- Numbers EZE -- Ezekiel GAL -- Galatians
DEU -- Deuteronomy DAN -- Daniel EPH -- Ephesians
JOS -- Joshua HOS -- Hosea PHI -- Philippians
JDG -- Judges JOE -- Joel COL -- Colossians
RTH -- Ruth AMO -- Amos 1TH -- I Thessalonians
1SA -- I Samuel OBA -- Obadiah 2TH -- II Thessalonians
2SA -- II Samuel JON -- Jonah 1TI -- I Timothy
1KI -- I Kings MIC -- Micah 2TI -- II Timothy
2KI -- II Kings NAH -- Nahum TIT -- Titus
1CH -- I Chronicles HAB -- Habakkuk PHM -- Philemon
2CH -- II Chronicles ZEP -- Zephaniah HEB -- Hebrews
EZR -- Ezra HAG -- Haggai JAM -- James
NEH -- Nehemiah ZEC -- Zechariah 1PE -- I Peter
EST -- Esther MAL -- Malachi 2PE -- II Peter
JOB -- Job MAT -- Matthew 1JO -- I John
PSA -- Psalms MAR -- Mark 2JO -- II John
PRO -- Proverbs LUK -- Luke 3JO -- III John
ECC -- Ecclesiastes JOH -- John JUD -- Jude
SON -- Song of Solomon ACT -- Acts REV -- Revelations
BEREAN Files
Berean uses five files:
Berean.exe (or Bereangs.exe or Bereannt.exe) -- the program
Berean.dat (or Newtest.dat or Gospels.dat) -- the text of the
scriptures (encoded to save space)
Berean.ndx (or Newtest.ndx or Gospels.ndx) -- indexes so berean
knows where to search for each word
Berean.hlp -- contains on-line help screens
Berean.cfg -- not a necessary file, but if it is there BEREAN will
use the setup parameters stored to this file.
RAM/BIOS Flag
There are two ways to display things on the screen on IBM PC's. The best
and fastest way is to use video RAM. This is the way I have programmed
BEREAN to display to the screen. However, some of the older PC clone
were not totally IBM compatible and would lock up or do weird things if
you tried to display using video RAM. I have, therefore, made BEREAN to
be able to display through the BIOS. This is slower but at least it
works. If your computer does weird things when you run BEREAN, try
starting BEREAN by typing BEREAN BIOS at the DOS command line. This will
tell BEREAN to use the BIOS to display instead of RAM. If you will save
the configuration, you will only need to enter BEREAN, since the RAM/BIOS
flag is stored in the configuration file. Remember, if your
configuration file gets deleted you will again need to start BEREAN by
typing BEREAN BIOS. BEREAN will always default to RAM display unless you
specify BIOS on the DOS command line or you have saved it in the
configuration file. Most computers sold today are totally IBM
compatible, so this will generally not be a problem. If you have saved
the configuration file to use BIOS display and want to again use RAM
display, you can either delete the configuration file (BEREAN.CFG) or
start BEREAN by entering BEREAN RAM at the DOS command line and resaving
your configuration file.