THE USE OF COMPUTERS IN BIBLICAL RESEARCH EMANUEL TOV BACKGROUND Computers provide us with passive tools that are also active and interactive when used as an extension of our own thinking in the study of Scripture. In both areas, colleagues, projects, and companies have created tools with great potential for searching and researching, but these are greatly under-used for a variety of reasons. There remains a wide gap between the knowledge of the experts creating the tools and that of the scholars for whom the tools are intended. The idea behind these tools is that we scholars continue our investigations as before, but now utilize the additional tools and databases. 1 Computer programs and databases serve active and passive func- tions. As passive tools, they serve us just like books, especially text editions, concordances, lexicons, grammars, commentaries, atlases, and encyclopedias. As active tools, programs and databases can be used to improve and expand the areas of our research. We make a dis- tinction between non-flexible computer-assisted research and flexible computer programs and databases. Some very fine computer-assisted research has been presented to the public in a fixed, printed, form. If perchance a reader wished to retrieve information from the data that the author had not thought of providing, it would be a lost cause, since the reader has no access to the computer data and, in the worst case scenario, the electronic data may no longer be in existence. On the other hand, if a database is available to the public, all questions can be asked at any time. Seventeen years ago, at a computer conference, I stressed that there was a yawning gap between the knowledge of computer experts and that of the public at large, 2 and this is still the case. Colleagues and 1 This paper is dedicated to a dear friend and an appreciated colleague, a man of great wisdom and of unequaled experience in the reading of biblical scrolls and preparing text editions. 2 E. Tov, “A New Generation of Biblical Research,” in Proceedings of the First International Colloquium Bible and Computer, The Text, Louvain-la-Neuve