What SESB can do for you
The Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible can be used effectively in different areas – for personal Bible study or a scholarly exegesis, for preparation of a class, in the parish or in an academic setting.
This page offers an overview of the scope of features of SESB and its special advantages over other Bible software programs. For more detailed information see the subordinate pages on resources and functionality.
1. SESB – the Bible Library
SESB offers a Bible library with more than 30 Bible versions in more than 10 languages as only few people have on their shelf. No matter if you would like to open a passage in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, English or French – entering the passage and a click with the mouse get you there. As the only Bible software for PC, SESB provides the text-critical apparatus of the scholarly Bible editions. It is also possible to install an additional 9,000 digital texts through the program platform of the Libronix Digital Library System.
2. SESB – the Computer Concordance
Of course, all text editions in SESB are searchable – including the text-critical apparatus. Here, too, SESB offers more than other programs: the Bible Speed Search already lists the results of an inquiry during the entry. Through a mouse click the results are presented in clear diagrams. With the special Lemma Search you can instantly find all forms of a word by entering the basic form. If you add a certain occurrence rate of the search term as a prerequisite for the search, the program compiles all Bible texts in which the term appears accordingly and in which it is thus of special significance.
3. SESB – the Translation Guide
For each word in the original language Bible texts SESB offers not only the translation but also a grammatical analysis. Furthermore, the Constituency Trees of the WIVU database on the BHS make clear the syntactic structure of all analyzed texts, which makes tedious research and elaborate linguistic analyses unnecessary. Additional insights are offered by the Compare Parallel Bible Versions report. It shows a Bible passage in all translations of a language in parallel columns. Differences are automatically highlighted in colour.
4. SESB – the Copy Station
Copying of Bible passages into other programs is fast and easy with SESB. In contrast to other Bible software it is not only possible through Copy & Paste but also through the special Copy Bible Verses dialog. This allows numerous presettings, which spares you the finishing of the copied text in the target program. Hebrew and Greek text is copied in Unicode format so that it is shown correctly without the use of a special font on other computers with current operating systems and word processor programs.
5. SESB – the Information Center
Through sophisticated functions the information of your SESB library is always presented in the most helpful way: the Exegetical Guide puts together a word-by-word analysis of the information that is relevant for the exegesis of a certain Bible text. The Bible Word Study searches your library for all information on a certain biblical term. With the Reference Browser you find all entries in reference works that refer to a certain Bible passage. And all available information on a certain Bible passage from all text editions is accessible through the Passage Guide. The material is presented in a clearly arranged list. It spares you the searching of single text editions and you can be sure that you did not miss anything.
6. SESB – the Tool for Text Analysis
The entire scope of features that SESB has to offer only opens up if you use the software not just for looking up Bible passages and additional information but learn about its special value as an integrated tool for the text analysis. That is accessible through the use of the linguistic databases, the different variable highlighting functions and the integrated Sentence Diagrammer.
For the first time the WIVU database on the BHS offers the possibility to graphically present and search a Hebrew Bible text in its complete syntactic structure which presents an ideal starting point for every linguistic, exegetical and text-pragmatic analysis. Via the integrated Sentence Diagrammer and the highlighting functions every text can be edited in such a way that its whole grammatical and text-pragmatic structure becomes evident instantaneously. Thus not only linguistic characteristics and grammatical anomalies can be exemplified, but also the functions of certain linguistic elements for the communication process.
Additionally for the first time it is possible to follow linguistic anomalies of the entire Hebrew Bible text through the sophisticated search features of the WIVU database and to draw conclusions from the distribution and frequency of certain stylistic or grammatical anomalies. This new empiric basis for the analysis of Bible texts allows for the immediate review of exegetical judgments and the phrasing of issues from a different angle.
