01.3. Introduction to resources

1.3. Introduction to resources

E-Sword and The Word come with a number of Greek and Hebrew tools. Most of these tools are in the public domain, so they are free. More than 80% of the tools are the product of 19^th century scholarship. That century produced a number of great resources for the biblical languages. These resources have served as the basis for ongoing scholarship right up to this century. The language tools are excellent, and are available for free download on the Internet. In the following sections, some of these resources are discussed for people who do not have in mind training in the languages. Texts, grammars, dictionaries, and commentaries will be discussed, with an explanation in other chapters of how to use them. For now, they are simply listed with a brief background description.

1.3.1. Text 1.3.1.1. KJV with Strong numbers The first text that I would like to discuss is an English translation with codes, the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible with Strong numbers. Dr James Strong (1822–1894), an American Methodist theologian, published an exhaustive concordance to the King James Bible in 1890. His concordance was more than just a list of where each word appeared in the English Bible. Together with other colleagues, he provided every word with a unique number which referred to a root word in the original language.

Let me use English to illustrate what he did. If his purpose was to help readers of the English bible to find the root of English words, he would have done the following. For the English word ‘ate’, he would provide a unique number, let’s say 2000. That number refers to the word ‘eat’, the root form of the word. The word ‘eaten’ would receive the same number, since it is the past participle of ‘eat’. The same is true for the present form ‘eats’. This numbering system allows the reader to see the root form of every word. The root form, also called lemma, is the form that can be found in the dictionary. You will not find the word ‘ate’ in the dictionary; you will find the root ‘eat’.

Strong’s number system allows students of God’s word to find the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek root behind each English word in the English translation of the King James Version (KJV). The numbers also serve another purpose. They allow the student to see how a Greek or Hebrew word was translated by different English words, and how an English word was used to translate different Greek or Hebrew words. The English verb ‘to love’, for example, is the translation of two Greek words, coded as G25 (agapaō) and G5368 (phileō). In the Old Testament the word ‘to love’ is the translation of H157 (’āhab or ’āheb).

Strong’s concordance has been superseded by modern tools, such as ES and TW computer software. Yet, many original language resources are still coded to Strong, and Bible translations in many languages are also coded to Strong. Even though most modern bible readers prefer another translation rather than the KJV, the KJV with Strong numbers allows them to go beyond the English text to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words that are used.

There is also an edition of the KJV text with Strong’s numbers and morphological codes, the KJV + TVM (Bible) and TVM (Dictionary). TVM stands for Tense, Voice and Mood. This edition allows the reader to study the grammar of the original languages, based on the King James Bible. Let me illustrate that with one of the examples given earlier. How do we know the tense of the verbs in Galatians 2:12? This KJV has two codes after the words ‘he did eat’ (G4906 [G5707]). The codes, which will be explained in the next chapter, provide the lexical and morphological information about the verb. They tell us, among other things, that the verb is in the imperfect tense, active voice, and indicative mood. Without memorising the Greek grammar, you are able to parse the Greek verb behind the English translation. In Greek classes, you would have to put the information in the following table.

1.3.1.2. Original language Old Testament Texts The Old Testament was written mainly in Hebrew, with a small part in Aramaic. In the previous section, I spoke about the KJV + TVM. This tool is not only useful for the Greek New Testament, but also for the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament. What you can do with the New Testament, you can also do with the Old Testament.

There is another way in which a student can use the Old Testament text directly. The standard text for the Old Testament is provided in Groves-Wheeler Westminster Hebrew morphology. This module, however, is not free. Users must pay a fee to access it. At the present time it is the best tool, since it comes with morphological codes and reference to Strong numbers.

There is a Hebrew text, with Strong’s numbers, but without the morphological codes. The Hebrew Old Testament Interlinear (TW) and Hebrew Old Testament (Tenach) with Strong’s numbers (ES) will help the student to do word studies, without a grammatical analysis. What E-Sword has is a Transliterated Hebrew Old Testament/Greek New Testament and a Transliterated Bible (with Strong’s numbers). These texts transliterate the Hebrew and Greek characters into Latin scripts, so that they are easy to read for those who do not recognise these characters. You can put the two types of texts together on the screen, and have the Greek/Hebrew texts on one side and the transliterated Greek/Hebrew on the other side of the screen. This makes reading Greek/Hebrew easy.

1.3.1.3. Old Testament Greek texts The Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Old Testament were translated at an early stage into Greek. This Greek translation, known as the Septuagint (LXX), was the Old Testament of the early church.

TW has a version of the LXX with Strong’s numbers and morphological codes. This allows for an analysis of the text. A transliterated version allows for reading of the actual Greek text. There is an English translation of the LXX available, which was translated by the Plymouth Brethren scholar, Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, in the 19^th century. The student has the possibility of having different texts open on screen, such as the LXX in Greek characters, a transliterated version, and an English translation.

Here is one example of how the LXX can help us study the word of God. Earlier the question was raised about sermons that are based on the alleged differences between the Greek words for love. The word agapaō refers to the divine, sacrificial love, whereas the word phileō refers to affectionate love. Have you heard this before? Have you preached a sermon on it? If so, you are not alone. I did, as did some of the great Greek scholars of the past. You will still find it in their books. We have to admit, however, that that distinction was not clearly made in Hellenistic Greek. Is the word used in that way in, for example, the Greek translation of the Old Testament (LXX)? We can find this out by doing a concordance search. A quick search for the word G25 in the LXX reveals the following. The word appears 196 times in the OT. If we limit our study to 2 Samuel 13, we will find the following. The word appears four times in the chapter (2 Samuel 13:1; 2 Samuel 13:4; 2 Samuel 13:15; 2 Samuel 13:21). This chapter is about Amnon’s love for his sister Tamar. What do we see in verse 15? The English translation of LXX (Brenton) reads:

Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred; for the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love (agapaō) with which he had loved (agapaō) her, for the last wickedness was greater than the first: and Amnon said to her, Rise, and be gone.

It would be impossible to argue that Amnon’s love for his sister was ‘divine, sacrificial love’. There was nothing sacrificial in the way in which Amnon loved his sister. It means that the verb agapaō does not in itself have the meaning of ‘divine, sacrificial love’. He wanted to have sex with his sister, and that was what happened. The LXX helps us to be careful, and stops us making a claim that is not true. It would be better to say that when God is the subject of agapaō, it is divine, sacrificial love. But that connotation is not in the word itself.

1.3.1.4. New Testament Greek texts

Most of the original language resources in both ES and TW are based on the Greek text of the New Testament. For beginners, the most helpful modules are those with Strong’s numbers and morphological codes. These modules allow the student to do both word studies and grammatical analysis. One module comes as an interlinear Greek-English text. After each Greek word an English translation is provided. It is possible to view the Greek text with Strong’s number, morphological code, and English translation.

TW comes with Westcott-Hort with NA27/UBS4 variants (1881), Greek NT with Strong’s Numbers and parsing info. ES has the module Robinson/Pierpont Byzantine Greek New Testament (w/ Strong’s) which also comes with parsing information. As explained in chapter 11, these texts come from different traditions, and it is helpful to have them all.

1.3.2. Dictionary

There are Greek and Hebrew dictionaries available with Strong’s numbers. ES and TW provide the definitions from Strong’s dictionary and two well-known lexicons that are coded to Strong’s. The New Testament has Thayer’s Greek Definitions (Thayer). Joseph Henry Thayer (1828-1901) graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1857, and served as a pastor of a Congregational Church from 1859 till 1864. In 1864, he was appointed as professor at Andover Theological Seminary. He maintained this position until he resigned from it in 1882. In 1884 he was appointed as professor at Harvard’s divinity school until his resignation in 1901. His main publications were translations and reworking of works that had been done by others. These include: A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament, Grammar of the New Testament Greek, and his major contribution A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, published in 1885 with an updated edition in 1889. His lexicon was more than a translation. Thayer spent 25 years working on the lexicon and made thousands of revisions to the translated text. The Old Testament comes with Brown-Driver-Briggs’ Hebrew Definitions (BDB). BDB is a revision of Gesenius’ Hebrew-German lexicon that was translated by Edward Robinson into English (1836; 5th edition 1854). Francis Brown (1849-1916), Samuel Rolles Driver (1846-1914) and Charles Augustus Briggs (1841-1913) reworked this lexicon from 1891 to 1905. The influence of the liberal Old Testament scholarship of the 19th century is seen throughout this work. It served for many decades as the authoritative lexicon for the Old Testament.

These dictionaries provide references to other more advanced modern language tools. These advanced tools, however, are not yet available for these software programs. ES and TW provide the definitions of these dictionaries but not the full discussions of the words. A special dictionary in TW and ES is Robinson’s Morphological Analysis Codes (RMAC). It provides an explanation of all the morphological codes. This is what first-year Greek students normally have to memorise. With this tool, you can analyse the whole bible morphologically.

TW has a module of Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon of Classical Greek (LSJ). The first edition of this lexicon was published in 1843. This is the full 1940 edition of the lexicon, but it comes without Strong’s numbers. It requires knowledge of the Greek characters. After you have worked through this course you will be able to use this lexicon.

Another tool is Synonyms of the New Testament by Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1886). Trench served as an Anglican Archbishop from 1864 to 1884. His Synonyms studies different Greek words which are used to translate a particular English word. It is a great work, but it is based on an old assumption of Greek synonyms. It will, for example, follow the old view about the difference between the Greek words for love. We will return to the value and use of these older works.

1.3.3. Grammar and commentaries

1.3.3.1. Greek The resources listed so far may seem boring. They are like skeletons. These skeletons need flesh. The most helpful resources at present are the commentaries. The New Testament is well served with Vincent’s Word Studies and Robertson’s Word Pictures. Marvin Richardson Vincent (1834-1922) was a Methodist minister who later became a Presbyterian. In 1888 he accepted a professorship at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Vincent published a three-volume Word-Studies in the New Testament between 1887 and 1889. His work became a standard tool for pastors and students of the New Testament. He moves verse by verse through the New Testament, explains key Greek words behind the English translation, and gives their meaning and derivation. The other important commentary is the one by Robertson. Archibald Thomas Robertson (1863-1934) was a Baptist Greek scholar, who served at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as Professor of New Testament Interpretation from 1895 to 1934. He published more than forty books, including a number of works on the Greek text of the New Testament. A Grammar of the New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, which he first published in 1914, is the grandfather of all modern Greek grammars. Robertson is, however, better known to the English reader for his six-volume Word Pictures in the New Testament (1932-1933). In the same way as Vincent, he moves verse by verse through the New Testament, and explains the Greek words behind the English translations. Robertson provides more, by giving insights into the Greek grammar. His work is therefore a dictionary and a grammar at the same time.

There are a few Greek grammars available. Dr James Strong’s Greek in a Nutshell is a beginner’s grammar, and can be used alongside this course. The other grammars, which are classics, may not be useful for the beginner student at this time. These include the following:

·    Ernest De Witt Burton’s Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek.

·    James Hope Moulton’s A Grammar of New Testament Greek (volumes 1 and 2).

·    Archibald T Robertson’s A Grammar of the New Testament in the Light of Historical Research.

1.3.3.2. Hebrew The study of the original Old Testament text is very limited in ES and TW. There is no Vincent or Robertson for the Old Testament. The only advanced commentary which studies the Hebrew and Aramaic text is Keil and Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament (K&D). The Hebrew grammar by Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, which is available, is too advanced for the beginner student. I will say more about Gesenius in another chapter.