Using E-Sword and The Word for beginners

1.2. Using E-Sword and The Word for beginners
I will not explain how to use these programs. There are manuals which do that. It is assumed that you know how to operate these programs. If not, it is important to go through the manuals before you continue. You should be able to access the resources and adjust your screens. If necessary, you should be able to download additional resources.
The intention is to help you answer the following question: how can E-Sword and The Word help students of the word to make better use of the original languages? The focus will be on the original languages, with more attention to Greek.
1.2.1. First-year Greek
The traditional way of teaching the biblical languages is that in the first year there is a great focus on the morphology of the language. Morphology is the scientific study of the structure and form of words. Students should be able to decline the nouns and parse the verbs. Take the English verb ‘was’ for example. You will not find that word in the dictionary. You need to parse the verb. It is the past tense, third person singular of the verb ‘to be’. This form of the verb, ‘to be’, can be found in the dictionary.
Greek students have to do the same thing in their first year. Let us take the word agapōmen from the Greek New Testament. This word should be parsed as follows: it is the first person plural, present active subjunctive of the verb agapaō. It should be translated as ‘let us love’. In the traditional way of studying the languages the student had to memorise all the endings of the verbs and the nouns. Once he saw the ending ‘ōmen’ as in the example given above, he knew that it is a first person plural, present active subjunctive, and so on.
Let me show you how this can be simplified by using ES or TW. This word was taken from 2 John 1:5. I highlighted the Greek word and the codes attached to it. You will see from this screenshot that the software analysed (parsed) the word. It indicates the ‘tense, voice, mood, person and number’.
[See image01]
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In other words, you do not have to memorise the endings of the verbs or the forms of the nouns to be able to analyse them. The software does that for you. What is critical now is to be able to use these software programs effectively. They can help you to understand the Greek and Hebrew text much better.
1.2.2. Second-year Greek
In the second year, the student focuses on the use of Greek grammar, the syntax, in understanding the meaning of the text. Syntax is the scientific study of the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence or paragraph. Let us take the example of ‘was’ given above. The student needs to find out the purpose of ‘was’ in the sentence. ‘I was there’ is clearly different from ‘I will be there’. If we go back to the Greek verb, the student will ask the following question: what is the meaning of the Greek ‘present active subjunctive’? What is it that the writer wanted to communicate? Let me try to illustrate the use of Greek grammar with two examples from the New Testament.
1.2.2.1. Galatians 2:12
The first example is Galatians 2:12, where we read ‘he did eat with the Gentiles’ in the KJV. The word translated ‘he did eat’ has the following codes, V-IAI-3S, and is analysed by the software as ‘Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd and Singular’. How should we understand the imperfect here? What is Paul trying to say? One of the resources in the software is Robertson’s Word Pictures. It gives the following explanation: ‘it was his habit’. In other words, Paul is saying that, ‘it was Peter’s habit to eat with the Gentiles’. It was not a once-off thing. However, when a group from James came, he did not want to eat with them any more. That was clearly hypocrisy. He stopped doing what he used to do, to please the group from Jerusalem. This message is very timely for our day. I have seen Christian leaders doing exactly that. They changed their habits when influential people visited them. Missionaries suddenly stopped using drums in the church, as they were in the habit of doing, in order to impress foreign visitors who supported them financially, but did not believe in having drums in church.
1.2.2.2. 1 Corinthians 15:4
The second example is taken from 1 Corinthians 15:4. Paul said that Christ ‘rose again’. According to the KJV with Strong’s number, this word is G1453. When we look at the Greek text with morphological codes, it gives us the following grammatical information about this verse: V-RPI-3S. This abbreviation is explained as: Verb, peRfect, Passive, Indicative, 3rd, Singular. This verbal form is different from the one that Paul used before in this passage. Robertson makes the following comments about the verbal form in this verse:
There is reason for this sudden change of tense. Paul wishes to emphasize the permanence of the resurrection of Jesus. He is still risen.
The perfect tense here emphasises the permanence of the resurrection. Christians, according to Paul, believe in a Saviour who rose and is still alive! Christians believe in a Living Saviour. This is the major difference between Christianity and other religions. Whereas other religions knew and know the concept of the death and resurrection of a deity, they do not have the idea of one who died and rose, never to repeat that process again. The god Baal of the Canaanites, according to their tradition, died every year and came back to life every year. In the case of Jesus Christ, he died once, he was buried once, and he rose again to live forever!
The codes are explained in detail later. As you can see, the software programmes and their resources make learning and using biblical languages very easy.