Read the Bible: Greek and Hebrew Reading Experiment

Commitment:

Words: 317
Sentences: 15
Grade level: 10.3-13.4
Read time: ~1.6 min @ 200WPM

4 Apr 2009

For 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,

Go to http://bible.johndyer.name/
Enter the reference you need
Select only the features you need to read
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)

Tags: bible, books, reading, tools

156 Responses to Read the Bible: Greek and Hebrew Reading Experiment

Mike Helverson

April 6th, 2009 at 4:42 pm

Hello, my name is mike helverson and I found the Greek and Hebrew readers Bible site, but something seems missing. Where do I enter the reference into. There does not seem to be a location to put the reference in at. Thanks for the help. Mike

John Dyer

April 6th, 2009 at 4:47 pm

Mike, Just click the reference at the top and type over it.

Reply

Nick Hill

April 6th, 2009 at 4:50 pm

John,

Thanks for doing this. It is a real blessing to the body of Christ. I just printed off Mark 2-3 to work on as I will be preaching sections from these soon.

Thanks!

Nick

Scott

April 6th, 2009 at 6:17 pm

Just wanted to say thanks for the effort and work.

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 9:02 am

Thanks Scott. I appreciate it!

Reply

ben w.

April 6th, 2009 at 6:25 pm

John, this is a terrific tool. I agree with Mike that changing the reference wasn’t clear to me either, so maybe it would be helpful to have something point that interface. Two other points to consider: 1) what about an RSS feed or a few possibilities? (3 verses per day, 1 paragraph, or 1 chapter) and 2) I find the Hebrew font a bit difficult to read and I see it lacks the accents. I have no idea what options you have, but I think moving to a different font w/ accents would be a good long-term goal. But again, this is a great tool and I can see myself utilizing it often. You better watch your back though because you may put a serious dent in the sales for some non-web-based programs…

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 9:07 am

Ben. I love the RSS idea. I’ll contact Lee Irons to see if his reading program is available for use in other sites.

Right now, to view the Hebrew you need to download and install the Ezra SIL font. I have contact the maintainers of the Westminster Leningrad Codex to see if I can get a more accurate copy, so for now it’s a little off on word counts and such.

Reply

Adam York

April 6th, 2009 at 7:29 pm

John,

Fantastic site. I agree with ben w. Is there a way for visitors to view the page with different Greek and Hebrew fonts?

Thanks for all the work!

Adam York

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 9:07 am

Adam, I’ll take a look at letting users change fonts at will. Thanks for the suggestion. Right now it’s using Ezra SIL and Gentium.

Reply

Albert Garlando

April 6th, 2009 at 8:46 pm

Found your site through JT’s blog.
Very impressed and very appreciative of your efforts.
God Bless!
Al.

Suzanne M.

April 6th, 2009 at 9:06 pm

Its very smooth. Lovely and fast. Congratulations. I have to ask a silly question though. What lexicon is used in the mouseover? Are those Strong’s number? Did I miss your reference?

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 9:09 am

It’s a combination of Strong’s and Thayer’s. Those are the only real things available in the public domain, though I am looking at a few additional sources that might be better down the line. However, the main goal of the site is to provide a printable, reader’s version of the text.

Reply

J. B. Hood

April 6th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

Thanks John. FYI for whatever reason this is not working on a PC in Explorer, but does work in an I-Mac using Safari. Never thought I’d type those words, but there they are.

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 9:09 am

We web developers prefer to not to say, “It doesn’t work in IE” but rather, “IE doesn’t run this site.” :)

Reply
- Martin Flores
  
  May 1st, 2009 at 6:40 pm
  
  Hi John!!!! first a huge THANK YOU for such a great page! I find it very useful.
  Any hopes that your site will run in IE?
  
  Reply
  - John Dyer
    
    May 1st, 2009 at 9:21 pm
    
    Martin, IE8 will run the tool, but unfortunately IE7 still will not run it.
    
    Reply
    - Martin Flores
      
      May 4th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
      
      John you are right! it runs in IE8… however, the coloring words and background in the “parts of speech” does not work… maybe I have some configuration to make in my IE8?
      
      Thank you!!!

Patrick Fowler

April 6th, 2009 at 11:19 pm

Been searching for a use-able bible reading website for SO LONG now…it’s a blessing to find a good one. I agree that there is too much clutter on most sites, and that the views certainly don’t lend themselves to helping the Greek or Hebrew Student.

Your site will be a great supplement to the only other good one I have found: http://www.biblos.com.

Any chance you’ll make this into software? I need a Greek/Hebrew Bible for my phone too!

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 9:10 am

Patrick, believe it or not, the site actually works on the iPhone!

Reply

Will Briggs

April 7th, 2009 at 12:30 am

Hi John, Fantastic site. I’m one of those who have been on the look out for a replacement for regreek.com/zhubert.com and this does a lot of what I was looking for.

How are you licensing the source code? How is the content licensed? Would love to be able to run a copy on a local server and tweak and augment.

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 9:12 am

Will, the site is mostly JavaScript (yeah, jQuery!), but the back end is ASP.NET and MS SQL Server. It would be fun to try to make it downloadable and installable, but I’d rather not try to support that for now.

Reply

David Reimer

April 7th, 2009 at 3:34 am

What an excellent initiative! Thanks fo ryour work on this John. The site is not only useful — it looks nice, too!

I checked the Hebrew side of things. As you develop the OT offerings, perhaps you could use the SBL Hebrew Unicode font. It is even more reliable than the fine SIL Ezra font. I have put a link in the “Your URL” slot to one site that shows it at work in a web setting.

Looking forward to this growing! :)

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 9:13 am

David, thanks for the link. I’ll put SBL Hebrew in there when I get a chance.

Reply

JohnO

April 7th, 2009 at 7:23 am

That is a well-executed reader! I’m going to guess you used Rails to execute? I’ve wanted to do a project like this, but never got off the ground, due to the sheer amount of data to obtain and questions about how to best store it. I’d love to contribute to this project somehow, I’m a web developer! (I’ll be learning Greek this summer before I go on for my MTS)

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 9:15 am

JohnO, it’s actually ASP.NET, not Rails, but in the end it’s all HTML and JavaScript anyway! I started with the texts available from http://files.morphgnt.org and sort of made it up as I went along :)

Reply
- Matthew
  
  May 15th, 2009 at 7:52 am
  
  Hey, a Mac guy doing ASP.NET! Will wonders never cease?
  John, I am still in mourning over zhubert.com. Got the link here from the openscriptures.org “redeeming…” post. Very nice.
  
  I have an old copy of Accordance on an old iMac that someone gave me. But there is just something about being able to work on something for a few minutes online using a Web application, usually away from home. Thanks for doing this. “May you live to be a thousand years old, sir.”
  
  Reply
  - John Dyer
    
    May 21st, 2009 at 9:30 am
    
    Matthew, that’s funny – I actually primarily use a PC, but I prefer not to think of myself as either a Mac or PC guy.
    
    Glad to hear you find a web app useful in some Bible study situations.
    
    Reply

Samuel Sutter

April 7th, 2009 at 8:25 am

wow… i’m in shock – what a great resource!!!

Justin S

April 7th, 2009 at 10:28 am

Great site! Thanks for all your work…

You are right, the site does work on the iPod Touch/ iPhone (!), but there is no way to initiate a search for a new text. You can enter the new reference over the old, but there is a problem when trying to hit return. Maybe it is something to do with the limitations of a touch screen/virtual keyboard. Any suggestions?

Are there any other possibilities for new text searches for mobile devices?

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 10:50 am

Justin, a mobile site sounds like a lot of fun as does a site that performs searches. Perhaps down the line, I can work on such a site.

But it seems like there are several excellent resources that do that already. The goal of this site was to build something entirely unique – a way to help people print and read offline with minimal helps.

Reply
- manthano
  
  April 24th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
  
  First off, this is an awesome resource! Thanks so much!
  
  However, I am having the same problem that Justin S has. I can view the site fine on my iPod Touch, but when I tap on the reference and enter a new one, tapping the enter soft key doesn’t take me to the new reference. My guess is it has something to do with how you trap hitting the enter key.
  
  Reply
  - John Dyer
    
    April 25th, 2009 at 10:30 am
    
    Thanks for bringing that up. I’ll look into it. Perhaps an iPhone specific version would be good.
    
    Reply

John Dyer

April 7th, 2009 at 10:53 am

I’ve updated the site to allow font and size customization for those that needed it. Just type in the font you want (needs to be already installed on your computer) and select a size. Also, the reference input should be a little more obvious now.

Adam York

April 7th, 2009 at 9:47 pm

John,

Thanks so very much for adding the ability to specify fonts. I think it makes a huge difference on the readability of both Greek and Hebrew.

Blessings,

Adam

Reply

caleb

April 7th, 2009 at 10:54 am

john, this is awesome. we have a really stinky connection here in beirut (slower than dial-up), but i haven’t had any “patience-building” moments using the reader. i love how simple this thing is. trying not to eat the fruit…but i can’t help it, it tastes so good! thanks for developing such a simple, really helpful tool!

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 9:44 pm

Glad to hear it’s fast out there!

Reply

Andy Upton

April 7th, 2009 at 11:39 am

This is unbelievable! Thank you so much. Can’t wait to use it.

Troy A. Griffitts

April 7th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

Nice job John. Very aesthetically pleasing and useful. Great work!

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 9:45 pm

That’s quite a compliment coming from the pros :)

Reply

Joey Cochran

April 7th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

John –

Wow! I’ll say it again, WOW! This is a treasure. I really hope you will be able to support a downloadable version when you get the product to where you want it. This is a great tool. Do you think there is any hope of working with UBS on using the NA27? Do you think you and Burer could get together and bundle his reader with your software interface? Or have it featured on Bible.org? I mean this is a fantastic tool. Have you shown this to Accordance?

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

Joey, lately the UBS has been cracking down on any use of their text. Perhaps it’s in anticipation of their forthcoming NA28 which will be an electronic version of their text. I’d love to see more use and exposure for the tool if it gets people reading their Bibles, but I hadn’t really thought about all those idea you mentioned. Good stuff.

Reply

Chris Coppenbarger

April 7th, 2009 at 3:22 pm

John, thanks for putting this together. I really liked and used zhubert.com. It would be nice if you could click the words and the pop-ups stay in place. I was actually looking at doing something similar to this in Flex, making an Adobe Air app, but alas, time is of the essence.

Anyways, great work. I look forward to additions.

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 9:48 pm

If I ever get to produce a more fully featured Bible tool in addition to his reading tool, AIR might just be the way to go.

Reply

Jeff Mooney

April 7th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

John,

Thanks so much for the great effort and wonderful tool. Just curious, if I find something that could use correcting where might I send that info.?

Jeff Mooney

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 9:48 pm

Jeff, feel free to comment here or send me an email through the contact form at the top of the page.

Reply

Brett Peatman

April 7th, 2009 at 7:54 pm

Thank you for this superb tool. I like the idea of it being downloadable, thanks for the work for now.

Cheers,
Brett

Jonathan Lipps

April 7th, 2009 at 9:08 pm

Hi John,

I’m impressed with both the simplicity and robustness of the tool. The interface design is exactly what I’d want to see! Except for one thing: can you implement some kind of simple session state via cookies, so that on subsequent visits to the site it remembers my choices?

Well done!

-Jonathan

Stephen

April 7th, 2009 at 10:43 pm

Thanks John! Based on this response, it looks like you have hit on a serious need here. I know that I will be coming back to this as I continue to try to keep up with my Greek and Hebrew.

mgvh

April 7th, 2009 at 11:52 pm

Excellent! Thanks for sharing this resource. I just blogged about it here: http://bibleandtech.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-greek-and-hebrew-readers-bible-site.html
BTW, it takes a bit of work, but it is possible to create a graduated reader in Logos. Here are directions (with videos):
http://bibleandtech.blogspot.com/2008/03/creating-graduated-reader-in-logos3.html
Thanks again. mgvh

Bob Lepine

April 7th, 2009 at 11:57 pm

When my old next door neighbor gets mentioned on Justin Taylor’s blog and Tim Challies blog all in the same week, I’d say he’s hit the big time! :-)

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 9:56 pm

Bob, It’s wonderful to hear from you on the interwebs :) If you make it to Dallas, be sure to drop by and meet my growing little family!

Reply

Christoph Fischer

April 8th, 2009 at 1:40 am

Thank you, John! This is a great tool and I’m looking forward to using it a lot. I’ve still got one small suggestion, though: I just read a text where I knew all the words that didn’t have their definition shown — except one. At that moment, I just wished for some possibility, to, say, click on the word and have the definition shown anyway.

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 9:58 pm

Chris, you can turn on mouse over definitions (just check the box on the right) and then you’ll have the best of both worlds (as long as you don’t print it out :)

Reply
- Christoph Fischer
  
  April 27th, 2009 at 1:09 am
  
  Thank you so much. I didn’t notice that option. This is exactly what I’m looking for.
  
  Reply

ARJWright

April 8th, 2009 at 8:54 am

Very cool; remembering your talk at BibleTech, this was one of those pieces that I’m glad that gets a wider public view.

I’ll have to try this on my Nokia Internet Tablet, its not IE and should present some nice fun.

By the way, conference audio is now live on the BibleTech site.

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 9:54 pm

Thanks Antoine. I put my slides together and posted them.

Reply

Peter G.

April 8th, 2009 at 3:09 pm

Merciful. John, this is simply fantastic. You are so right about the need for some minimalistic tools in learning Greek and Hebrew. The Zondervan Reader’s NT is one of the main reasons I’m as good at reading the Greek NT as I am. I wish that some of the Bible software programs would do this sort of thing on the fly. How amazing would it be to pull up the Apostolic Fathers (or Josephus, Philo, etc.) in Logos and create a reader’s lexicon for it on the fly. That would be amazing.

Thanks for doing this, John. It really is a wonderful help.

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 9:59 pm

Peter, I hadn’t considered other texts, but I agree that that would be ideal. I supposed I’d need to get some more robust lexicons as well as texts where the root word parsing was available…

Reply
- Peter G.
  
  April 10th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
  
  Right. I wonder what other texts have such parsing available. At least I would think that somewhere, someone has done this for the LXX and Josephus. I might send Rick Brannan (http://www.supakoo.com/rick/ricoblog/) an email about this.
  
  Reply
  - John Dyer
    
    April 11th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
    
    One version of the LXX is readily available from CCAT at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/gopher/text/religion/biblical/lxxmorph/0-readme.txt, but I’m not sure about Josephus. The main tricks would be finding a viable lexicon and figuring out what a meaningful “Reader’s Edition” of the LXX would mean.
    
    Reply

Seumas

April 8th, 2009 at 4:36 pm

John,

This is a fantastic resource. Thanks very much.

I’m wondering, hypothetically more than practically – how adaptable is the code? What if you wanted to process other ancient Greek documents, or Latin documents, against a standardised frequency list? Would that be possible?

John Dyer

April 8th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

Seumas, if someone had a text that included the lexical forms of each word, it would be relatively trivial to do the same thing with those texts. If you have something in mind, let me know.

Reply

Randal Kay

April 10th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

All I need say right now is, SWEET!

Oh yes, and also, THANKS!

Joel Radford

April 11th, 2009 at 5:24 pm

Awesome site! Not to sound greedy or anything, but what about the LXX and Vulgate? :)

John Dyer

April 11th, 2009 at 6:42 pm

One version of the LXX is readily available from CCAT at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/gopher/text/religion/biblical/lxxmorph/0-readme.txt, but I haven’t seen a Vulgate or Latin lexicon available for download. Also, I’m not sure what how you’d handle the word count treshholds for a “Reader’s” edition.

Reply
- Estel
  
  April 26th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
  
  “Also, I’m not sure what how you’d handle the word count treshholds for a “Reader’s” edition.”
  
  Not exactly an answer, but perhaps a point of reference:
  Rodney Decker’s page of LXX resources ( http://www.ntresources.com/lxx.html ) includes a vocab list of frequent LXX words, and estimates that words occurring 100 times or more in the LXX are about equivalent to words occurring 50 times or more in the NT (though he is clear that this is just a guess).
  
  Reply

Adam York

April 14th, 2009 at 9:11 am

John,

I just tested out your Reader on my Nokia n800 internet tablet. It works pretty well. Since I’m now able to use the site on a mobile reader, I’m wondering if there is a way to make page settings persistent. On Firefox on my desktop the book and chapter stay persistent, but not on the n800. Would that be because Google gears is not installed on it? Even on my desktop, however, I lose font selection and font size, as well as lexicon/morphology selection and psarts of speech choices. Is there a way to make these persistent? Also, is there anyway to bookmark the place where I stop reading on a device like the n800? This would actually make reading through the GNT on a mobile device much more feasible. As it is now, every time I return to the page I’m back to Romans.

BTW, for anyone who is using the n800 (and I assume the n810 as well), if you want to add other fonts (e.g. SBL Greek), just copy the fonts to /usr/share/fonts/truetype on your device. You will need to reboot the device before the fonts work.

Thanks again John,

Adam York

John Dyer

April 16th, 2009 at 10:12 pm

Adam, those are some great ideas. I think persisting basic settings is a good start. Then I’d love to add some options for navigating and such down the line.

Reply

John (Human3rror)

April 14th, 2009 at 2:04 pm

money. straight.

Dannii

April 16th, 2009 at 8:26 am

It would be great to be able to link to passages (with or without the settings too)!

John Dyer

April 16th, 2009 at 10:08 pm

Dannii, I knew I forgot something. That’s a great idea.

Reply

Mom

April 23rd, 2009 at 7:10 am

Thank you! I have been so stressed by all the man-made rules about spanking children.

This site has been an absolute blessing for me to read what the Bible says in Hebrew and Greek to see that there is so much more to “discipline” than hitting. (I already knew this, but many bloggers I respect seem to use hitting as their first line of discipline. It felt odd to me, and now I know why.)

I can’t find anywhere in scripture where I am mandated to slap my infant (per Tedd Tripp’s recommendation). Well, okay, I don’t really want to get any more into that.

I just want to thank you for bringing freedom to my parenting. I now can feel free to use words, actions, consequences, etc. when I say discipline. I am not limited to spanking when I say discipline.

2 Timothy 3:16 uses the same word as Ephesians 6:4. It’s also used in Hebrews 5:6-11. What a blessing!

Mom

April 23rd, 2009 at 7:14 am

Oops! Hebrews 12:5-11 That is so cool! Can you tell us the code to get our verse comments in a pop up box like that? Wow!

Mom

April 23rd, 2009 at 8:45 am

I’ve added it to my blog! Thanks! (I figured it out. Pretty easy. Blush.)

Stephen Shead

April 23rd, 2009 at 6:19 pm

Thanks for the tool! It’s fabulous – I’m spreading the word to all my (pastor/theolog) buddies.

Do you want to be told about errors in things like lemma and part-of-speech tagging in the BHS text? I just went to a random OT passage (Deut 6), and just on a quick scan of a few features there are quite a lot of errors – words linked to the wrong lemma, words which aren’t linked to any lemma (at least, nothing pops up), lemmas with the wrong part-of-speech designation.

Most of the wrong part-of-speech lemma tags were with “little” words which don’t fit into any of the listed categories, but which are marked as Verbs – like “not” (לֹא) and “this” (זֹאת, v.1). But the noun “anger” (אַף, v.15) is also tagged as a Verb.

Should I just assume that there are lots of bugs with all that in the Hebrew side, that they’ll iron themselves out, and that I should stop, err, bugging you??

Oh, and thanks again!
Stephen
Santiago, Chile

John Dyer

April 23rd, 2009 at 7:54 pm

Stephen, thanks for the updates!

On the Greek side, the Tischendorf text is well-maintained, but (as the footer suggests), I don’t yet have a reliable Hebrew text. I am contacting the content providers to get a better source, so for now just assume there will be lots of little errors.

Reply

Henri de Solages

April 26th, 2009 at 2:21 am

Mongolia, town of Precious (Эрдэнэт).

Great job. Congratulations and thank you very much for this very. It appears on screen much quicker than Zhubert used to.
+ Maccabees 1:1-10 gave no answer: I guess greek books of the First testament are not there. That’s a pity. Even Luther used to publish it as an annex of what he had decided the Bible contents should be.
+ Colours are hard coded (which is not an excellent idea), except the reference’s colour, which is left at its default value. Consequently if, like me, your browser’s default colours are yellow on marine, you get yellow on white and at first I didn’t even noticed there were something there. You should hard code both the text and the background colours or none of them.
+ Even if one can read the reference, as expressed here above by Mike Helverson and Christoph Fischer, it’s not that clear what one has to/can do. Sentences like “Enter your reference here:” and “Fly over words.” would be welcome.
+ This site requires the user knows exaclty the English name and spelling of Bible books in English, which is not my case (I’m French.), though I can read them. A list would be welcome.
+ How are “words that appear x times or less” counted is not said: in the all Bible, or in that extract?
+ The incitement “Print it out” is not ecological at all. I don’t need you site to get a printed version of the Greek Bible. I need it to work on my computer.

God be with you.

John Dyer

April 26th, 2009 at 11:23 am

Henri, greetings to Mongolia, my brother!

You’ve made some great suggestions – thanks so much. I’ll look into them. To answer your question, the word frequencies in Greek are over the entire NT, and in Hebrew in the OT. I don’t yet have a Greek OT or Apocryphal text, but if/when I do, I’d love to add it.

I should mention that the site is currently designed for reading not really study. For me, reading in a deep way happens best away from the screen with few distractions. However, the need for a study tool like zubert seems to keep coming up, so I’m looking into what it would take to build a helpful resource.

Reply

Henri de Solages

April 27th, 2009 at 12:49 am

Thank you for your answer.
I don’t understand your point in ‘figuring out what a meaningful “Reader’s Edition” of the LXX would mean.’.
As you said, the LXX text is available from CCAT. The LSJ is in public domain even in the European Union (Except in France for the 9th version where Jones where involved, but this doesn’t matter very much.) and this could be, at least as a start, a good lexicon. As in Zhubert, you could allow lexicon correction and addition proposals from the readers. To get a short article, just use the Little Liddell when that entry exists.
God bless you and your job.

chuck white

May 1st, 2009 at 2:55 pm

I’m working with Wycliffe as an exegesis consultant in a couple of languages and find your website so helpful. Your work saves me hours of searching and helps get God’s word to bibleless people. Thanks!

John Dyer

May 1st, 2009 at 9:20 pm

Chuck, thanks so much for your kind words. I hope to make it more helpful in the coming months.

Reply

May 2nd, 2009 at 11:14 pm

Thank you so much! I was really disappointed to find zhubert.com closed. The only thing I really miss is a translation pane: it saves a lot of time (about one third of my translation time) when I can have Greek on one side and my translation on the other.

Daniel Foucachon

May 4th, 2009 at 11:02 am

John, thank you very much for your site!

I’m taking Greek with John Schwandt at New Saint Andrews College, and we were just bemoaning the absence of zhubert.com. I was very glad to see this site, and will share it with the class.

Thanks!

Marc

May 7th, 2009 at 7:41 pm

OWESOME!

Petey Crowder

May 8th, 2009 at 10:27 pm

Hey John,
I forget how I got pointed to this site, but it was through the Bible reader stuff… anyways, I wanted to say kudos on the work.

This reminds me of a very practical example of the kinds of stuff Gabe Lyons, Andy Crouch, and Shane Hipps talk about with Fermi and the Q Conference — being “counter-cultural” for the common good. Rather than just using technology, I think you’ve found a profound way to co-opt it make society better (depending on the way people use the Bible, I suppose).

Nice work.

John Dyer

May 9th, 2009 at 1:24 am

Petey, thanks for your comment. I agree that we sometimes have to knowingly go against the nature of technology for our good.

Reply

Chuck

May 12th, 2009 at 3:01 pm

John, thanks for this resource. At SBL last year I ogled the reader’s versions, wondering why there wasn’t something like this available online. Especially in the wake of the zhubert fiasco, this is very, very welcome.

chuck white

May 12th, 2009 at 7:03 pm

this is a stupid question but how do the frequency numbers work after the footnoted words?

John Dyer

May 13th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

Chuck,
Great question. The first, larger number is the total occurrences in the NT, and the second, lower number is the occurrences in that book.

Reply

Stephen

May 13th, 2009 at 10:13 am

How about adding a “flashcard” app? Thus we could read and then spend a few minutes increasing our vocab…

John Dyer

May 13th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

Stephen, that sounds like a great idea. FYI: There is a great iPhone flash card app that has Koine cards.

Reply

Frances

May 21st, 2009 at 12:25 pm

Thanks John for this. I can open the page but get no text. There is a slightly darker and blank rectangle which I can type into, but otherwise the text area is blank. I have tried typing in a Bible verse (but it gives no indication of required format for that) but then it just says, “Loading” and goes nowhere. At the botton of the page, it says, “Error in the page”.
Any suggestions please,

John Dyer

May 22nd, 2009 at 9:58 pm

Frances, if you’re using IE, you might want to try using Firefox, Opera, Chrome, or Safari.

Reply

Jay

May 22nd, 2009 at 9:58 pm

Great site. I am working in Thailand and would like to make a Greek Bible reader for Thai students. I am not very Web literate. Can you give me some direction how I could create a site like yours, but the lexical data in another language such as Thai?

John Dyer

May 22nd, 2009 at 10:13 pm

Jay,
I could try to send you the source code, but you’d need to have a public domain lexicon. Is there one in Thai?

Reply

Louis Sorenson

May 23rd, 2009 at 8:43 am

John,

Is there any way a person can link to a specific passage? I’d like to be able to link to a chapter of a book?

Ian

May 25th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

Love the resource. I was wondering, just how big a vocab do you need to set the ‘help’ at each level. A bit of shuffling with the NT text and I found out…

http://ntmath.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-much-vocab-do-you-need-to-read.html

So it made the first post on my new blog on doing Math with the NT

John Dyer

May 29th, 2009 at 8:12 pm

Ian, that’s some cool info. I look forward to seeing more from your site.

Reply

Marco Navarro

May 25th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

John,

Thanks a lot for this amazing tool. Such a great site and work for the growing of our knowledge of the Scripture in its original language.

Gracias,

Marco Navarro

David Instone-Brewer

May 27th, 2009 at 7:07 am

A couple of suggestions:

1. It took me a bit of time to work out how to change the reference. Obvious when you know, and I wish all sites followed your example, but till they do…

2. Fonts are easy to change, but it might be good to provide a drop-down listing the academic Greek & Hebrew fonts which can usefully be used, otherwise too many people will ruin your page trying to use Times New Roman or BWHebb!; I prefer the Cardo font, which has Greek, Hebrew & Latin incl specialist early Christian characters, as well as free keyboards for Mac & PC – see here.

3. It would be great if the hover-overs were a bit lower so that they don’t ever obscure the line you are reading.

These are minor points for a great site!

I’d love to add you to the main list of Bibles on the Tyndale Toolbar –
do you have a simple URL-based way I can link to Bible chapters
eg what would be a URL to Matt.1 (whole chapter)?

David IB

John Dyer

May 29th, 2009 at 8:12 pm

David, thanks for the comments. Always appreciated!

I’ll be sure to add bookmarking soon.

Reply

David

May 28th, 2009 at 6:09 am

Another great website is:
http://www.greekbiblestudy.org

(you have to create an account – only takes 2 secs)

It has quite a few customizable options.

Ryan Douglass

June 3rd, 2009 at 6:20 pm

This is an incredible resource, thank you John. do you or anyone else know if there is a way to get this site to work on a Blackberry? I am going on vacation and it would be a tremendous blessing to be able to take with me.

Thank you everyone.

Bradley Van Uden

June 11th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

I am interested in doing something similar for the perseus greek texts. Is it possible for you to send the source code? Thanks.

John Dyer

June 12th, 2009 at 12:07 pm

Bradley, I’m happy to send you the source code, but it’s pretty rough and Bible specific. However, if you’re willing to give it a shot I’d love to see what you do with it.

Reply

Hebrew Student

June 12th, 2009 at 11:25 am

Thanks for your site! The Hebrew text looks very clear and easy to read. What version of the Hebrew text are you using?

John Dyer

June 12th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

This information is in the footer. We’re hoping to move to a better text that includes morphology soon.

Reply

frdavidelias

June 14th, 2009 at 7:25 am

Hi John;
Great work, very impressive. The site is great, an came in a perfect timing for those of us who were used to zhubert.com.
I think we need to have a way to report lexical mistakes. I think this is very important, so the whole community would be it very accurate.
Thank again and God bless.

Marc

June 21st, 2009 at 5:01 pm

love it, thanks you so much!

Mike Hagedon

June 26th, 2009 at 5:56 am

Wonderful tool! Is there any chance that the code will be made open-source?

Katie

July 17th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

Thanks for your great work on this site! This is a great tool to use in class–one laptop is far easier to haul than the four or five textbooks we MIGHT use. I thank you and my neck thanks you!

K Cross

July 22nd, 2009 at 4:06 pm

Many thanks for a great resource – after a gap I was surprised that zhubert no longer existed, and this does the job brilliantly for those of us who only have elementary NT Greek!

John Dyer

July 22nd, 2009 at 4:11 pm

If you're interested in other Bible web tools, I'm working on them at:
http://biblewebapp.com/

Sing

August 10th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

hi… i love it… thank you… i wish that it would be a program which i can install in the computer and use it every moment even while there is no internet signal… because i am a missionary working around the world… i may not have internet every time… but… anyway… thanks a lot for the great work…

Pap Lőrinc

August 18th, 2009 at 7:39 am

Hello! :)

I am currently writing a Hungarian Bible study software (http://biolka.ro/Upload/Szirt.png) and a daily Bible reading software (http://biolka.reformatus.ro/Images/ScreenShot.png) and for the first one I would need the (Hebrew and Greek) old and new testaments, with all the additional popup information.
Would it be possible for you to send me the SQL dumps by mail, maybe?

Keep up the good work!

God bless,
Lőrinc

John Dyer

August 21st, 2009 at 7:08 am

Pap,
Looks like you’re doing some great work. All the data I used is currently available online. Here are some links
http://unbound.biola.edu/ – has lots of versions
http://files.morphgnt.org/tischendorf/ – latest Tischendorf text
http://groups.google.com/group/open-scriptures/web/strongs-dictionary-projects – Lexicon downloads

Reply

David Grice

August 22nd, 2009 at 11:35 pm

John,

Great bible study site! Thanks for the contribution! I have both versions of the Reader’s GNT and like them both, but this is even more powerful.

Just a couple of comments/suggestions. First, it would be nice if you set some cookies to store setting of word occurrences, fonts, etc., so we don’t have to restore them each time.

Second, I looked briefly at the LXX and it doesn’t seem to use the morphological forms, but the lemma form of each word. I guess you are still working on that.

Anyway, a great looking replacement for zhubert. I especially like that I can set the font and size of the text.

I also saw that someone had inquired about integrating some of the Perseus texts. I’d like to see that as well, especially Homer.

God’s Blessings! David

John Dyer

August 24th, 2009 at 10:09 pm

David, thanks for your comments. Those are all good suggestions that I hope to get to at some point.

Reply

Tommy Bosworth

August 31st, 2009 at 11:19 am

John,

This is an extremely helpful tool. The ability to customize the original language to your reading level is very helpful. You have obviously poured many hours into this.

A few thoughts:

Is it possible to include a ‘print’ tab that will isolate only the text and footnotes to be printed?

If we desire to cut and paste the text into word, is it possible to export a unicode font in order to retain the correct left to right reading in Hebrew?

Thanks again for your work.

Tommy

John Dyer

August 31st, 2009 at 11:44 am

Tommy, I updated the print template to remove the header and footer. I also worked around the copy paste problem so that Word recognizes Hebrew as right-to-left.

Reply

Dannii

September 1st, 2009 at 4:25 am

Hey John,

Did you ever add a link function?

I’ve come to a fairly serious bug, when you type in something wrong it has a popup about an invalid reference that immediately opens again when you close it. The only way around this seems to be refreshing the whole page.

Thank you again for this wonderful tool!

Ryan

September 8th, 2009 at 6:04 am

A great resource John. Thanks!

I’m trying to use it on my iPhone, however how do I press enter on my iPhone in order to submit the form to change the passage I want to look at?

And secondly, how do I close the definition & parsing overlay on the iPhone after clicking on a word?

Thanks mate.

John Dyer

September 8th, 2009 at 7:09 am

I just added a button that should help iPhone users…

Reply
- Ryan
  
  October 13th, 2009 at 7:47 am
  
  Thanks mate, that does really help.
  
  Two other things though:
  
  Hovering over the word ἠδύναντο in Mark 4:33 comes up with INI-3P-ATT. Is that a bug or something?
  
  Also, ἓν (with rough breathing) seems to be coming up with the wrong definition (eg: Mark 4:20) – it comes up with ἐν (with smooth breathing).
  
  Good on you mate for this great site!
  
  Reply

Michael Nevarr

September 19th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

Hi John,

Thanks for the hard work! Your site is a blessing to the body of Christ.

John Dyer

September 21st, 2009 at 7:52 am

Thanks for your kind words Michael

Reply

Dave Dozier

September 23rd, 2009 at 5:07 am

John,

I took NT Greek in college in the early 70’s and have kept up with it, making use of the Analytical Greek Lexicon for parsing, and BlueLetterBible for concordance searches. I just discovered your Reader’s Version site – what a great tool! Thank you very much for you work and contributions.

I have a question for you on the text:

What are the textual differences between the Greek NT Testament, 4th Revised Edition UBS and the Tischendorf Greek New Testament you used for that site?

(I also am a software developer and downloaded the Tischendorf files from the link you provided. My goal is to create a stand-alone tool for my Acer netbook so that I can use it in a class/remote setting, without a live internet connection.)

Thanks!

John Dyer

September 23rd, 2009 at 10:36 am

Dave, the best way to answer your question would be to head to http://unbound.biola.edu/ and download the Westcott & Hort with variants. The variants are essentially the UBS4 text, but it is illegal to post the actual UBS4 text since it is copyrighted.

Reply
- Dave Dozier
  
  September 24th, 2009 at 4:06 am
  
  Thanks again for the tip, and your very useful site.
  
  Reply

Fr. David Elais

October 7th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

Grace and Peace;
John;
thank you so much for such a great site.
I know this is not a questions related to the web site, but I’m looking for an online reading group that I can join. I’m already in one, but I probably need to join something extra to get to work on the text more. Are you familiar with any?
If not are you familiar with one not necessary online, but in California… <:)

thank you so much

John Dyer

October 7th, 2009 at 8:32 pm

Fr. David,
I only know of reading classes at the seminary where I am employed in Dallas, but I don’t know of any others. However, my wife used to be in a Latin group with Dr. Dale Grote of UNC, and I think he might also do Greek groups. So give him a shot and let me know how it goes.

Reply

Isaac Hanna

October 21st, 2009 at 11:09 pm

I very much enjoy this site, it is extremely helpful to me in my Greek studies! Thank you for all the work that you put into it!! I was looking for a place to submit corrections if I found an error but couldn’t find any place. It might be a good idea to make such an interface. But I’ll just leave what I found here – it’s really minor but ἀπεκρίθησαν in John 2:18 is an Aorist passive, not an Aorist middle as your site says (6th Principal part, not 3rd) – just minor, but thought you might like to know. Again, God Bless you for all the wonderful work you’ve put into this – I use your site constantly!

John Dyer

October 22nd, 2009 at 7:23 am

Thanks for your kind words Isaac. I’ll pass the correction on to the keepers of the electronic Tischendorf text.

Reply

Willem van Dijk

December 1st, 2009 at 3:51 pm

great site. I use it quite often on behalf of my studies in Hebrew. would it be possible to create a drop down box in whitch You can choose the desired Bible book and verses?

John Dyer

December 2nd, 2009 at 9:16 pm

Willem, I’d love to find some time to make this easier to use, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make any major changes until the Spring.

Reply

jack

December 2nd, 2009 at 1:21 am

Any chance of adding the Scrivener’s TR? Thanks for your awesome work!

John Dyer

December 2nd, 2009 at 9:01 pm

Jack, could you point me to a source for Scriveners?

Reply
- jack
  
  February 20th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
  
  sorry, I just got back to check on my old comment! It looks like you have Textus Receptus – Stephens 1550, with variants of Scrivener 1894 on your your other site: http://biblewebapp.com/study/#ref=Romans%201:1|ver=el_tr,en_nasb
  I would love to have it in reader’s version format!
  
  Reply

Guy

December 6th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

Delighted to find your readers bible and will now use it a lot. I must admit that at the beginning I didn’t realise you could type in the box to change the reference until I found this site to explain it.

Thank you for all your hard work

Alex H

January 9th, 2010 at 11:57 pm

I’d like to say thank you for this wonderful site.

I love the Reader’s Hebrew/Greek Bibles from Zondervan, and I will continue to use them, but this site has everything you need and is adaptable to fit the students needs. Great job!

I don’t know how much time you have to devote to this project, but I have some suggestions:

1) Instead of having the definitions at the bottom of the page, how about having an option to display them on the right side of the text? Kind of like that site that you link to: http://biblewebapp.com/study/
That way, one doesn’t have to scroll down to read a definition. Of course, having them on the bottom is great if one wants to print out the page, so you should keep that feature also.

2) I second the motion that you add a Septuagint version, even if it can’t be as adaptable as the Greek and Hebrew you already have. Here is some info on the LXX frequency word list: http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/lxx.htm

Mark Heath

January 19th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

only just came across this today. brilliant! this will be an excellent resource for me as I am trying to take my very basic Greek skills to the next level.

Isaac Hanna

February 7th, 2010 at 8:11 pm

I love your site and use it a lot. I thought I’d let you know if I found any errors in the program and I ran across one just now – in 1 Kings 13:2 the word עָלֶיךָ is identified and parsed incorrectly in the pop up – thanks again – Is this the proper place to submit corrections or should I do it somewhere else? Feel free to email me with the info – thanks – isaac.hanna07@northwestu.edu

H. Jim

February 10th, 2010 at 4:56 pm

This is an awesome idea. It allows the student to print up exactly the amount of help that you need at that point in time.
Three suggestions to users of this interface seeking to improve their language skills:
1) Place the settings so that you are having to read just *beyond* your skill level. You’ve worked through an intro grammar that had you memorize words occuring 50+ times? Print up the text with words that are used less than 40 times. That way, you won’t get rusty on your lexicon skills, and you’ll get better and guessing at what a word means from context.
2) Having done this, write down and memorize all the words that you have to look up. Eventually, you’ll have increased your vocabulary enough that you’ll be able to decrease the number that you put into the “words used less than” field.
If you follow these two pieces of advice long enough, eventually, you won’t need anything but the Hebrew or Greek and a pocket lexicon!
3) Do *not* check the “show parsing” box. This is especially true if you have had two or more years of Heb/Grk. You should be parsing on your own, and having words parsed for you is, in my opinion, too much help. It is going to make you lazy and rusty on your verbal forms. Even for the obscure forms that you won’t recognize right away–having them parsed for you will make you lazy and won’t help you develop the skills to figure them out on your own. That’s my experience, anyway. That’s one reason why the Zondervan GNT is, imo, a better tool than the UBS Reader’s GNT.

John Dyer

February 11th, 2010 at 8:51 pm

Glad you like it. I totally agree with your suggestions – that’s exactly why I made it.

Reply

Mathieu Pelletier

February 19th, 2010 at 6:05 am

Hello John,

Thanks so much for this! I teach Biblical Languages at a small theological college in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, the computer tools that are available are beyond the reach of most our students due to costs. This web tool really helps to bridge the gap between the first world and the developing world. I really hop to see more of these types of tools available in the coming years.

~Cheers,

Mathieu Pelletier

Read the Bible: Greek and Hebrew Reading Experiment

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