Reader's Greek and HebrewFor my BibleTech:2009 presentation (“Technology Is Not Neutral: How Bible Technology Shapes Our Faith“), I created an example site to demonstrate what I like to call “technological minimalism” in Bible software. In my seminary Greek and Hebrew classes, I often relied too heavily on my Bible software during translations and my ability to actually read the text suffered. What I needed was some way to turn off all the cool features and only see the help that I really needed. In my case, I was supposed to have memorized all the Greek works which were used 50 times or more, so I only needed definitions for the more rare words. Unfortunately, there is no way to limit this that I know of in Logos.

A few years ago, Zondervan and the United Bible Society started publishing “Reader’s Editions” of the Greek and Hebrew texts. These versions have the original Greek or Hebrew in the top 2/3 of the page and definitions to words used 30 times or less in lower 1/3 of the page. There are some excellent reviews from Rick Mansfield and Justin Taylor that go over the pros and cons of the various versions. Alternatively, Kregel just published Reader’s Lexicon of the Greek New Testament which does not include the text, but includes more information on the words themselves.

I love that those books present you with only what you really need to actually read the original text free from the distractions of additional features.

In that spirit, I created an site that allows you to create a customized reader’s version of the Hebrew or Greek Biblical text. To use it,

  1. Go to http://bible.johndyer.name/
  2. Enter the reference you need
  3. Select only the features you need to read
  4. Print and read :)

Please leave any comments or suggestions here. I’d love to hear them! [Note: the Hebrew is not yet fully functional]

(Thanks to JT for the link)