Okay, I am a sucker for colorful, interactive things – I like my Rosetta Stone stuff, too – but this is a little different. If you look to the right sidebar there is a new ad there, for ScriptureDirect.com, that offers a 15 day free trial. Tonight I signed up for it, just to check it out, and I likee.

ScriptureDirect.com is a useful tool for religion teachers, preachers, discussion group facilitators and those interested in studying the New Testament with the original Greek texts close at hand.

Once you open it (it can register multiple users), you choose the book you want to study, or insert a bit of text and have it opened to you within that book, and you’ll find a map colorful and fascinating map (including way cool animated missionary routes) highlighting where the accounts took place, or to whom the epistles were directed. Here you can also get a summary of who wrote the book, to whom, for what purpose and the literary style. Then you can click to see how the book is structured (helpful for reference) and finally, another click brings you to the text itself, line-by-line in Greek with the translation directly below, then the KJV off to the side.

I see there is room for two more translations, but haven’t figured out yet if those are purchased separately and plugged into the program or something.

Once you’ve opened the Greek, you can color code text to suit your needs; whether you want to do a word-comparison or so forth and there is an excellent tool (very intuitive, even I can use it!) for outlining and writing a paper, sermon, questions for discussion or your own journal-type entries.

I like ScriptureDirect.com a lot, and as it’s not terribly expensive I’m considering taking it on, but I’ll decide about that after trying it a bit more. If you’re kicking around in the winter looking for something new to jump start your brain or your prayer life, give the free trial a whirl!