There are four versions of tanach available here. First there is the
l'chaim text. This text has mysterious origins and is missing the neviim
rishonim. It is also not the masoretic text, but seems to be based on the
BHS tanach. It is available in its standard form and in a mac version i
made using a utility available in the software archives here. To read it
under ms-dos or unix use the programs available here. To read it on a 
mac is more complicated. If you just use a hebrew font it will be backwards.
i've succeeded in reading it using either the israeli system software,
available via FTP from ftp.apple.com in dts/mac , or worldscript for
hebrew which you'll have to get on your own. Now, thanks to Eric Presser, you
can read them in any word proccessor with a hebrew font. Just get the 
appropriate program(depending on which tanach you want to read) from the 
misc or 'other dos and mac programs' directory. Run the program on the text 
and them read it in any word proccessor with a hebrew font. I recommend the 
fonts in the israeli system software. To avoid all this trouble, get the
online bible which i will discuss later.

  The second text is the chumash from the above text, cleaned up and
changed to the masoretic text by dan rice. Everything said above about
reading it still applies.

  The third text is the actual BHS text(including neviim rishonim). To get it
you have to fill out the user agreement and send it to the address specified.
I've never tried it so i don't know how to read it. it comes with C programs i
believe. 

  Now, inside the BHS text directory, and using a version of the BHS text
is the 'online bible' program. It comes in dos and mac versions. Using this
program you can easily read the BHS tanach that it comes with (including
neviim rishonim). I HIGHLY reccomend that everyone fill out the user
agreement and get this program. just remember that there are some
differences from the masoretic text.

   The fourth text is an ASCII version of the tanach. Steve Gross has 
created a transliterated version of the msoretic tanach. This is readable
by any word processor or text editor.


Inside the misc or 'other programs..' directory there are some programs for
MS-DOS about which i know nothing and programs for the Mac to let you read 
the tanach in any word proccessor.


HERE ARE SOME COMMENTS BY DAN RICE ABOUT THE VARIOUS TEXTS


  Here are some files from an MS-DOS Tanach package mentioned on s.c.j
by Warren Burstein (warren@worlds.com) in message 1164@vaccine.UUCP.
The originals can be found on wuarchive.wustl.edu in the directory
mirrors/msdos/hebrew.  Note that not all books are present.  Also, some
of the books seemed to have some junk (a partial repetition of the last
verse) at the end, which I have removed.  The files on wuarchive were
obtained from the L'Chaim BBS in New York City.  Attempts to determine
the ultimate source of those files met with stonewalling from the BBS's
sysop, Reuven Blau.  Since he demands a membership fee before one can
download from his BBS, I was unable to retrieve the missing books.

  I have thrown out all the specifically messy-dos stuff and written
some extremely simple programs to play around with the so-called
'codes,' so that Unix users can also investigate them.  No disrespect
to the Tanach is intended.  I hope that no one will mistake this sort
of thing for actual Torah study.

  The texts themselves are in the file tanach.tar.Z.  Use the command

 	zcat tanach.tar.Z | tar xvf -

to liberate them.  You can then throw out tanach.tar.Z.

  To compile all the c files, just type 'make'.

  To create a raw copy of the Torah, suitable for use with 'skip',
type 'make torah.raw'.  'make torah.rev_nums' will reverse the numbers
in the file so that they look right on left-to-right displays.

  The file masoretic.tar.Z is my attempt at bringing this Tanach (so
far just the Torah) into line with the masoretic version.  The Qere
readings are still in an anarchic state, except for those in Bereshit,
which are those found in the Koren edition of the Tanach.  The changes
were taken from the book _Keter Aram Tzovah ve-ha-nusach ha-mekubal
shel ha-Mikra_ (The Aleppo Codex and the Accepted Text of the Bible)
by Mordechai Breuer.  The object was to create a text conforming to
the accepted version among the Yemenite Jews, which Breuer argues is
free from mistakes.  The accepted text among Askenazi Jews differs
from this text in 9 places, each single-letter differences.  I cannot
guarantee that this text is free from error, but you may prefer to use
it rather than the text in *.tor.

  The file ENCODING shows the Roman-to-Hebrew alphabet encoding used
by the 'findstring' program.  In general, all of the programs have the
encoding used in the texts (Aleph = 128 decimal) hard-wired into them.
The display program 'hebrew' maps these characters to start at 224,
which seems to be a standard for terminals which display Hebrew.
Corrections to this asumption would be appreciated.

  If you need to make changes to any of the texts (say, to bring them
into line with a particular manuscript of interest), use trans -p to
obtain an ASCII copy, make any needed changes (be careful about the
spelling of the letters -- if you have another prefered spelling just
change the tables in trans.c and untrans.c), and then apply untrans.
Of course if your editor can handle Hebrew none of this should be
necessary.

  Let me know if you discover anything or write any neat filters!

						Dan Rice
						rice@cs.berkeley.edu