Olive Tree Bible Software is famous for being an easy and friendly to use program.[1] What I love the most is their emphasis on the keeping the user connected to the Word of God and deepening their understanding of the Biblical truth. Although you can read various books within your Olive Tree app, the main window is especially designed for Bible use. When you open your preferred Bible and start reading, you can open a resource guide that will show all relevant information to the Bible text you are currently reading, including commentaries, maps, charts, images, outlines, etc. In this review, I will highlight a few features and resources I especially enjoy using. I have been using an Android 11 tablet and concentrating on Bible study in the original languages.
Bibles and Supporting Resources (Resource Guide)
Anyone who studies biblical languages would know that the standard and most used Biblical texts are Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) for the Old Testament, and Novum Testamentum Graece (NA28) for the New. In the Olive Tree Bible App, I have been using BHS which is combined with Westminster Parsings and the BDB Lexicon.[2] I have also been using NA28 which is also enhanced with Mounce Parsings and the Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament.[3] These are great resources. If you need to look up an unfamiliar word, you just need to click on the word and will see a quick overview of the word’s meaning and parsing as well as a few further options for in-depth study. In the resource guide section, you can get access to commentaries and other tools if you would want to explore further the meaning of the passage.
One of the most comprehensive resources I used is The Preacher’s Outline & Sermon Bible (POSB).[4] This resource includes introductions to all the books of the Bible, detailed outlines, commentaries, and even a dictionary. It is perfect for Bible study and sermon preparation. The other resource which would complement The Preacher’s Outline & Sermon Bible (POSB) is the Zondervan Illustrated Collection (3 Vols.).[5] This collection includes the Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, the Zondervan Bible Commentary, and the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary. This is a great visual resource with lots of illustrations, maps and other background information. I especially enjoyed using the Zondervan Atlas of the Bible by Carl G. Rasmussen. In his work, one will find not only a collection of maps and photos but also explanations and comments which help to understand what you can see on those maps and illustrations. For a quick guide to the meaning of the biblical text, one can consult the NIV Study Bible (Fully Revised Edition).[6] This edition includes introductions, outlines, charts, maps, cross references, and study notes. This resource is very helpful when you need a concise commentary to the biblical text.
Audio Bibles and Learning Original Languages
With the Olive Tree Bible app, one can combine reading and listening to the Bible. For example, if you own both the NKJV Word of Promise Audio Bible[7] and the text of New King James Version (NKJV),[8] you can listen to a book of the Bible and read at the same time verse by verse. This way of reading is not only spiritually nurturing since both your eyes and your ears are involved in interaction with the Word of God, but also can be used as a learning tool. When I was learning English, I liked to listen to the Bible reading while following the text at the same time. This method of reading allowed me to hear the proper pronunciation and see the spelling of the words. Since I already knew the content of the text, I could also guess the meaning of the words that I did not know. I wish I had discovered Olive Tree before. If you are learning Greek, you can pair your NA28 edition with audio recording of the Greek New Testament to enhance your learning and understanding of the Greek text.[9] Audio Bibles in the Olive Tree Bible app also have verse-level navigation, which is very handy if you would like to start listening from a particular verse.
Two Minutes A Day Biblical Language Series (5 Vols.) and the Reading plans
In this section of the review, I would like to illustrate one of the features of the Olive Tree Bible app (namely, reading plans) using a resource from Two Minutes A Day Biblical Language Series. This series includes the following volumes: Keep Up Your Biblical Greek in Two Minutes a Day, Volume 1 and 2; Keep Up Your Biblical Hebrew in Two Minutes a Day, Volume 1 and 2; and Keep Up Your Biblical Aramaic in Two Minutes a Day. As the structure of these volumes are very similar, I will use the Aramaic volume as an example to describe my experience with using this Biblical Language Series.
When I studied at a seminary I had only one semester of Aramaic which was probably not enough to master the language. An excellent way to improve your confidence in understanding a language is to be regularly immersed into inductive language study. Practically, this means reading something every day in the language that you want to learn. This is when the reading plans feature might be very helpful. For example, you can set up a reading plan in your Olive Tree app for Keep Up Your Biblical Aramaic in Two Minutes a Day. The plan will start with the current date and you can come back to the plan every day for the next reading portion. The pedagogy of Keep Up Your Biblical Aramaic in Two Minutes a Day (as well as others volumes in this series) is in accordance with many findings of Second Language Acquisition research.[10] Usually you will learn only one or two words a day (sometimes more) and read one verse from the Aramaic portion of the Bible. This way in a year you will cover all or almost all Aramaic words used in the Old Testament.
Audio Books
The four loves by C.S. Lewis[11] is a unique BBC recording of Lewis’ early presentation that was published as a book later in 1960. In this recording, you can listen to Lewis’s own voice and explanations as he is exploring the nature of love. He speaks of four different types of love. Lewis points out their characteristics as well as some inherited dangers. In our lives, we inevitably experience these types of love so it is important to understand what to expect and what to avoid. It is also interesting to note that in his other work, Lewis saw God through the prism of these four loves as the ultimate etalon of the perfect love, which
…is not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels himself responsible for the comfort of his guest, but the consuming fire itself, the love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.[12]
This small audio book could help you to understand not only your own expressions and the nature of love, but also to know our Lord better, who exemplifies the perfect love without any perversions so common in our human relationships. As you listen to the book you can bookmark the most interesting moments (I was surprised that I can actually bookmark an audiobook!). You can also skip forward and back 30 seconds at a time when needed.
Theological Resources
One may have heard about the thoughts that some biblical scholars hold regarding systematic theology. Some might think that systematic theology is not biblical or exegetical enough. However, one cannot make such a claim in relation to Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. This book served as an excellent textbook for many years. As a biblical scholar, Grudem responsibly handled the biblical text while explaining the main doctrines of Christian faith. One might disagree with certain views in this book but nevertheless it has the potential to enrich one’s understanding of biblical teaching. The second updated edition of this book was published last year. Multiple additions and updates were made in the new edition which makes this book even more useful for the students of Scripture. In Olive Tree Bible Software, this book is enhanced with the “linked verses” feature, which provides quick access to the content of each Bible reference mentioned in this book. I wonder if Olive Tree would consider “converting” this theology book into theological commentary. So that each time you read a biblical passage that is mentioned in this book the reference to Grudem’s textbook would appear in the commentary section in the Resource Guide.
One of the resources that I have not found in the other major Bible software programs is Ronald Nash’s Worldviews in Conflict.[13] I have listened to the recordings of Nash’s lectures on apologetics, philosophy and ethics and find him a very engaging speaker with an interesting sense of humor. His approach to apologetics in terms of a worldview provides a necessary connection or a middle ground for the Christian witness. It raises up the questions we all ask and then shows these questions can only be properly answered from a Christian perspective.
All of these resources can be downloaded on your device and used offline.
Lastly, I would like to note that I have had a positive experience when interacting with the Olive Tree Bible Software support team. They were always very helpful and replied promptly to my questions and enquiries. I am thankful to the Olive Tree team for providing excellent resources and app for this review.
[1] Having said that I should note that Olive Tree app is capable of doing more in-depth searches as well, see the following article on their blog – https://www.olivetree.com/blog/lookup-search-in-the-app
[2] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=25238&source=et
[3] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=21603&source=et
[4] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=31397&source=et
[5] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=28751&source=et
[6] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=59059&source=et
[7] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=43762&source=et
[8] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=16633&source=et
[9] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=45381&source=et
[10] For more information I would recommend reading Jeremy Paul Thompson, “Learning Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary: Insights from Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition,” DPhil Thesis (Stellenbosch University, 2011), http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/17819.
[11] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=44206&source=et
[12] C.S. Lewis, Problem of Pain (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1940), 14, as quoted in Alister E. McGrath, Bridge-building. Effective Christian Apologetics (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1992), 143.
[13] https://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=34053&source=et