He’s not the only one. Cheap hardware and user-friendly software are creating a new generation of religious computer junkies. An estimated 13 million Christians have computers in their homes, and a slew of companies have sprung up to target the estimated $25 million market. Software programs addressing every need, from tracking church attendance to playing Biblical crossword puzzles and games, are now extending beyond religious bookstores into mainstream retailers like Egghead. “It’s almost like selling pornography,” says Jonh Ellis of Ellis Enterprises, which pioneered CD-ROM Bible study. “People who love God’s word can’t get enough of it.”

Dale Pritchett discovered just how big and enthusiastic the market for religious software was 16 months ago. Pritchett and two former employees of Microsoft who believed it was time to bring the Windows revolution to the Bible formed Logos Research Systems, offering an expanding menu of texts including Greek, Hebrew, English and Dutch. Pritchett expected his customers to be mostly pastors. But half, he says, are archeologists, historians, writers, researchers and curiosity seekers.

There is even a larger market for less scholarly products, according to Jerry Taylor, founder of the year-old Colonnade Technologies, Inc. “We want the Bible to come alive to the masses,” he says of his mission. His company offers, for example, “In His Time,” an appointment book with a Scripture verse for every day of the year and a space for recording prayers and how they were answered (an alternative feature starts each day with a comic note, like embarrassing moments in church). Taylor projects total sales of $4.5 million this year, up from less than a million last year. And that, he says, is only the tip of the market. Consumers spent $2 billion on Christian books last year; Taylor expects half of those sales eventually to switch to Christian bytes.

But the religious computer revolution isn’t limited to Christians. Sound Vision, a nonprofit Muslim education company, offers QuranBase for studying the Koran in translation and Al-Munad, a Macintosh program that announces the five daily prayer times by intoning “Allahu akbar.” A Chicago-based company called Davka Corp. produces Judaic software including animated holiday children’s stories and a CD-ROM Judaic Classics Library. Shamma Friedman of the Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research in New York City is heading an underfunded, 10- to 15-year project to input every version of the ancient Talmud so that scholars can quickly compare religious passages with a key phrase or two.

This is just the beginning. The second bible of the market is Christian Computing, a magazine started on a pastor’s kitchen table in 1988. The magazine will spread the word of even flashier products to come-satellite views of Biblically significant sites in Israel, say, and a fully animated Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount. Logos is already acquiring clips from religious films. Can Charlton Heston receiving the Ten Commandments on CD-ROM be far behind? As John said, first there was the Word. Now, the Hypertext.