iPhone Bible App Comparison

I thought it might be useful to have a feature comparison of all the major Bible apps available for the iPhone. I've attempted to be unbiased, but I do work for Logos on Logos Bible Software for iPhone so take that for what it's worth. If I've made a mistake, please let me know and I'll correct it. If I've omitted a feature that is significant and distinctive, please let me know and I'll add it to the matrix.

(Updated 1/10/2010 8:51 AM PST)

	Logos	BibleReader	PocketBible	YouVersion	Paul Avery Bible	Mantis
Free books	61	150	39	41	20	43
Available books	~3000	500+	256	41	20	190
Free modern translations	x			x
Commentaries	x	x	x			x
Dictionaries	x	x	x			x
Maps/Media	x		x			x
Bookmarks	x	x	x	x	x	x
Notes		x	x	(read-only)	x	x
Notes syncing		Evernote		YouVersion.com
Highlighting			x		x	x
Search	x	x	x	x	x	x
Reading plans	x		x	x	x	x
Original language tools*	x	x
Works offline	reader only	x	x	some books	x	x
Social sharing	x			x
Events				x
Split screen		x			x
Passage Guide*	x
Paging/scrolling	Paging	Either	Paging	Scrolling	Scrolling	Scrolling

* Original language tools are tools to get more information out of original language books or original language data in English books, not just having original language resources. E.g., Logos' Bible Word Study can bring up a lot of information about the original word used from a modern Bible translation. Logos' Passage Guide and Greek and Hebrew word study tools are very powerful study tools that you need really need to see to appreciate.

Prov-a-Day 2.0

Back when I was in junior high, my dad got something called Visual Basic at work, which made it very easy to write Windows programs. I started playing around with it quite a bit. When Visual Basic 3.0 came out, it added an embedded database, so I started playing with that. One of the first programs I wrote with VB3 was Prov-a-Day, which just displayed a random verse that I had typed in from the book of Proverbs. That was 1993. I am please to announce, 15 years later, Prov-a-Day 2.0. This time around, it's a widget that you can put on your blog or other web page and it pulls random verses from Proverbs from Bible.Logos.com, the project I've been working on at work.

BTW, I love my new job.

No wonder the church isn't effective

I heard Michael Zimmerman on a radio program last night talking about the compatibility of Christianity and science. Zimmerman is a scientist who founded the
Clergy Letter Project, a statement that basically reduces the Bible to a book of "moral truths" in an effort to reconcile Christianity and science. Now I think that Christianity and science are 100% compatible, but I don't think you need to throw out the Bible to get there. I think it's a mistake for the Christian community to deny that species change over time -- it just makes us look stupid. But I think it's also a mistake to think that current scientific theory trumps God's word. Zimmerman did have one excellent point: science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. I would add to that that science will never be able to prove or disprove the Genesis creation story because you cannot evaluate the supernatural with natural methods.

Anyway, back to the title point: it's no wonder the church isn't as effective as it should be when you have thousands of Christian leaders willing to throw the idea of the Bible as the authoritative word of God out the window.