July 18, 2008

Learning Greek Just Got a Little Easier

As many Bible college and seminary students (and teachers!) can attest, learning Greek can be a challenging task. “It’s Greek to me!” hasn’t become a well-known expression without good reason.

One of our goals here at Logos is to facilitate learning and using the original languages. We offer a huge number of Hebrew and Greek resources. But as helpful and essential as grammars are for learning Greek, reading books isn’t enough for many students. They need to hear it and speak it to get it to stick.

We introduced our Greek Pronunciation Addin a couple of years ago (a Hebrew Pronunciation Addin is on Pre-Pub). It’s included in Scholar’s, Silver, and Gold and is also available for individual sale. The addin allows students to reinforce standard pronunciations, but only for lemmas (the dictionary form) and only one word at a time.

Learning the proper pronunciation for inflected forms involves a little more guesswork, especially for students learning Greek on their own without the help of an instructor.

With the new Greek Audio Bible, you can now hear Professor John Schwandt read any passage in the Greek New Testament. Simply enter a passage, and click play. The blue arrow will move with the audio to help you follow along in your Greek New Testament. If the normal reading speed is too fast, you can adjust it to slow or slower.

This is sure to be a helpful tool for beginner and intermediate Greek students.

Find out more at the product page, or see it in action in this video demonstration.

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (7)

July 11, 2008

166 Volumes of Greek Goodness!

Jacques Paul Migne’s Patrologia Graeca is a massive series of 166 print volumes of Greek writings from the 1st century through the 15th century. We’ve been asked many times if we’d consider making this indispensable set available, and we’re finally ready to give it a shot.

As you can imagine, digitizing 166 volumes of small Greek and Latin text—each volume ranging anywhere from 500 to 1,500 pages—is no small undertaking. Print sets are next to impossible to obtain. When we last looked into getting one, the price tag was in the $40,000 range!

Instead of trying to Pre-Pub the whole thing at once and putting it out of the range of just about everyone of our users, we’re going to release it in chunks. This will make it more affordable for you, allow you to pick and choose the sections you want, and make it so you don’t have to wait a decade for the completed project!

The first chunk, volumes 1-18 (20 print volumes), covers the pre-Nicaean period and features the writings of Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Melito of Sardis, Papias, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and dozens of others.

Why Would You Want It?

That’s the million dollar question—actually, the $400 question. Allow me to take a stab at some reasons that you should consider placing your pre-order.

Greek Studies

Comparative Grammar

The Greek New Testament is a fairly small corpus of literature. There are hundreds of words, forms, and grammatical structures that occur only once in the whole GNT making it difficult to adequately evaluate them. Being able to compare NT usage—vocabulary, morphology, and syntax—to other Greek writings like the LXX, OT Pseudepigrapha, Josephus, Philo, the Apostolic Fathers, etc. is incredibly valuable. But even these bodies of literature don’t address all of the questions grammarians and exegetes have. Significantly broadening the corpus of Greek texts that can be compared to the Greek NT is a major boon to biblical Greek studies.

Textual Criticism

In many cases the writings of the church fathers shed light on which readings of the biblical texts are earlier and more likely to be original. If you’ve looked at a Greek New Testament apparatus, you’ll see references to the fathers on nearly every page. Being able to look up these references will allow textual critics to get one step closer to the sources—and even make advancements in the field of textual criticism.

Church History

Reading the Original

Have you ever been reading somewhere in Schaff’s ECF and wanted to see the underlying Greek behind the English? I know I have. Have you ever wished you could follow references to the Father’s in footnotes in commentaries and other academic literature? With our digital edition of Patrologia Graeca, this kind of study will finally be easily accessible.

Many people don’t realize that Philip Schaff’s 38-volume Early Church Fathers represents only a fraction of the writings of the church fathers. If you want to read some of the church fathers, reading them in Greek or Latin is the only option. Serious students of the history of the formative years of the church cannot afford to ignore this massive collection of writings.

History of Interpretation

Since Scripture references will be tagged, you’ll be able to evaluate all of the places where a certain passage of Scripture is discussed—a crucial part of in-depth study on difficult passages. Want to find out how the fathers handled baptism for the dead in 1 Cor 15:29? No problem. Add your Patrologia Graeca collection to your Passage Guide, use the Reference Browser, or run a search like bible = "1 Cor 15:29".

Convinced yet? Read more or place your order at the Pre-Pub page.

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (12)

July 10, 2008

Where Are the Textual Apparatuses?

Textual apparatuses (a.k.a. critical apparatuses) are essential tools for serious exegesis. They list alternate readings, the texts that contain those readings, and often the level of certainty the editors had in choosing the reading they went with.

Students of the biblical languages will notice, though, that the main editions of the Hebrew OT (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) and the Greek NT (NA27 and UBS4) that come with our upper-end base packages lack the corresponding textual apparatuses. Without the apparatuses, you still need to reference your print volumes to check for variant readings. Are you stuck using part digital and part print for your study of the Hebrew and Greek texts?

There are two standard textual critical tools included in the Original Languages Library and Scholar’s Library: Gold.

If you don’t own either of these base packages, you can either upgrade or buy the resources individually.

There are several other critical apparatuses available as add-on resources.

Apparatuses for the Hebrew Old Testament

Both of these are included in SESB 2 and not available for individual sale. The BHS apparatus is also included in the Logos edition of SESB 1.

Apparatuses for the Greek New Testament

The NA27 apparatus is part of SESB 2 and the Logos edition of SESB 1. The UBS4 apparatus is available only in SESB 2. The Majority Text apparatus is bundled with the GNT.

It should be clear by now that if you really want to build the critical apparatuses section of your digital library, SESB 2 is a must.

For more on apparatuses and resources relating to textual criticism see the Critical Apparatuses section of the Product Guide for Greek Bible Texts & Tools. You’ll also want to check out the article “Critical Apparatuses: What and Why.”

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (4)

July 3, 2008

NA27 vs. UBS4: What’re the Differences?

Have you ever wondered what the differences are between the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th ed. (NA27) and the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, 4th ed. (UBS4) or between the various Greek New Testaments available for Libronix? Wonder no more. Rick Brannan has done extensive comparative analysis between these two popular editions of the Greek New Testament and gives you all of the details in this very informative article “NA27 vs. UBS4 (Greek New Testaments).” He also helpfully compares our various Greek New Testament texts.

I turned to Rick on a question a while back regarding a difference between the NA27 and UBS4 and quickly learned that Rick really knows his stuff on this. I think Rick’s article would make excellent required reading for Greek students (and professors!).

Go give it a read, and be sure to bookmark it for future reference.

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (4)

June 10, 2008

What's with All Those Extra Words?

Today's guest post is from Dr. Steve Runge, a scholar-in-residence at Logos Bible Software, whose work focuses on the discourse grammar of Hebrew and Greek.

This post is about another one of the discourse devices found in the Lexham High Definition New Testament and the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament. When reading the NT, we come across words like ‘behold’ or ‘truly’ that we do not use much in English. So what purpose do they serve in the Greek NT? These and other words function as 'attention-getters', and serve to draw attention to something unexpected or important that immediately follows. Attention-getters are often used in combination with other devices, especially meta-comments.

When we are telling a story, we will often throw in extra words at different points to add more drama or flair just before something surprising or important. Take a look at some examples:

In each of these examples, the bolded words could have been left out without significantly altering the meaning of what is communicated. We also find attention-getting devices in the NT that accomplish similar purposes. They tend to be placed just before something that is surprising or important.

Here are some examples from the NT.

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph. (Matt 2:13)

But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph. (Matt 2:19)

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. (Matt 3:16)

And behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:17)

In each of these examples from Matthew, the word ‘behold’ is placed just before something surprising or important, like the appearance of an angel or the voice from heaven. The same information could have been communicated without the attention-getter, but it would not have had the same ‘zing’ as it does with ‘behold’.

Examples of other attention-getters that are found in the NT include:

The important thing to keep in mind is that these attention-getters could have been omitted without significantly changing the content of what was communicated. The presence of the attention-getter represents the choice to attract extra attention to what follows. If you are interested in devices like these, check out the description on the Pre-Pub pages of the Lexham High Definition New Testament and the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament. Links to previous blog posts describing other discourse devices can be found there.

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (2)

June 6, 2008

Video Interview with Rick: What's So Cool about the LGNTI?

Rick Brannan was kind enough to sit down with me and answer a few questions about one of the projects that he's been working on for the last several months, the new Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament (LGNTI), which should be shipping any day now.

Click on the image below to watch Rick talk about this great new resource.

Windows Media Video: 5:31 | 14.8MB

You can also read about some of the features of the LGNTI or, better yet, watch Rick some demonstrate them in these two posts:

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (4)

June 4, 2008

“When I’m stumped . . . I go to Henry Alford.”

A couple of months ago, Dan Phillips emailed me about Henry Alford's The Greek Testament and asked if we would consider making it available in Libronix. I was familiar with Alford's work, but had never used it. I did some digging and concluded that it would be a perfect fit for Libronix. So I sent it along to our electronic text development department for a cost estimate, and now it's up on Pre-Pub for a fraction of the cost of the hard-to-find print volumes.

If you don't know much about Alford's Greek Testament, you can learn a good deal by the subtitle: "With a Critically Revised Text; a Digest of Various Readings; Marginal References to Verbal and Idiomatic Usage; Prolegomena; and a Critical and Exegetical Commentary." Alford's detailed analysis, which spans nearly 3,500 pages in print, covers the entire New Testament.

In his original email, Dan mentioned to me that John Piper often uses Alford's Greek Testament and speaks very highly of it. He couldn't remember where he heard Piper talk about it though. So he asked his blog readers for help, and we were able to track down the quote. It comes from the Q&A time at the end of Piper’s biographical lecture on Owen. Piper is answering a question about commentaries that he finds helpful. Here's what he says:

When I’m stumped with a . . . grammatical or syntactical or logical flow [question] in Paul, I go to Henry Alford. Henry Alford . . . comes closer more consistently than any other human commentator to asking my kinds of questions. (John Piper, “John Owen: The Chief Design of My Life—Mortification and Universal Holiness,” 1:30:11–1:30:31)

My ears perk up when I hear a scholar like Piper talk about the tools that he finds most helpful. I'm excited to see Alford's work digitized and look forward to consulting it in my own study.

In just the few days that it has been up, Alford's Greek Testament has already crossed the 50% mark. Go check it out and see if you think it would be a good addition to your Libronix library.

To learn more about Henry Alford, see Dan Phillips' very informative post "Great News for Greekers: Alford Gets Logosized."

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (4)

June 3, 2008

"Will I Become a Rungeianite?"

On the subject of Steve and discourse grammar, there was a helpful exchange in the comments of Steve's last blog post, which I thought it would be worth calling your attention to.

A commenter asked,

My main quandary when considering the LDGNT has to do with objectivity vs. subjectivity in conducting discourse analysis. I am inexperienced and basically ignorant of the concept of discourse analysis. I read some of Bill Mounce on the topic. What I would like to know is given that a particular scholar, in this case Dr. Runge conducts the analysis of the entire GNT, would another scholar arrive at the same kinds of results or would there be numerous differences with results? More or less, I am asking about "bias". Would I become a Rungeianite? And I say that in all well intended humor. :)

Perhaps you've had the same question. Some components of grammar are more objective than others. Many—though certainly not all—aspects of morphology tend to be fairly objective and agreed upon by scholars. Syntax, on the other hand, involves a bit more subjectivity. What about discourse? How objective or subjective is the work that Dr. Runge has done?

Here's Steve's helpful response:

You ask a great question. Most of what I have analyzed is fairly objective in nature, and could be replicated by others using a comparable interpretive framework (i.e. a functional, cognitive approach to discourse typology). What I am doing is better characterized as *discourse grammar* as opposed to *discourse analysis*, with the latter focused on trying to find the overall structure and message of a book. My analysis would give you the building blocks for doing such an analysis, but is more focused on documenting grammatical features and describing their discourse function. Each blog post has focused on one grammatical phenomenon and then described the task that it accomplishes in the discourse. I have striven to annotate only well documented, well attested discourse features. Most of what I have annotated relies upon the research of translators and other linguists. Other parts are original research which has either been peer-reviewed or presented at conferences for feedback.

There are indeed aspects that involve subjectivity, as is the case with some of the decisions regarding the block outline. Let's say there is a main clause with a subordinate clause, followed by a coordinate clause (linked by ??? 'and'). Which clause does the coordinate clause link to: the main clause or the subordinate clause? Grammar alone cannot answer this question. In most cases the decision is fairly objective, but there are times when a good case could be made either way. This project is intended to function as a commentary, something that you interact with in order to ensure you engage all of the relevant issues related to the passage. In the same way that you might disagree with a commentator, I expect that some will disagree with judgments I have made.

I have posted conference papers presented at SBL and ETS at www.logos.com/academic/bio/runge. I also chair a new section at ETS called 'Discourse Grammar and Biblical Exegesis', focused on making discourse-related research more accessible to biblical scholars. These papers document the research underlying the HDNT analysis, and include footnotes and bibliographies for readers.

For more information about what Steve has been working on here at Logos, see the following:

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

Attention-Getters

Today's guest post is from Dr. Steve Runge, a scholar-in-residence at Logos Bible Software, whose work focuses on the discourse grammar of Hebrew and Greek.

I want to introduce one of the remaining concepts that is annotated in the new Lexham High Definition New Testament and the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament. You have probably heard at some point that sometimes the biblical writers will repeat key words because of their importance. This is not the only kind of repetition found in the New Testament. Bible translators studying both Scripture and other languages from around the world have found that sometimes the repetition of ideas or sentences has a different effect than highlighting the repeated word. Instead, the restatement of already known information is used to intentionally slow the pace of the story just before something surprising or important happens.

One of the ways the New Testament writers will slow things down before a significant speech is by saying ‘and answering he said to . . .’ even though no question was asked. Before significant event, they sometimes restate the action from the preceding sentence as backgrounded information in the sentence that follows (e.g. “They went to town. As they were going to town . . .). This repetition is often left untranslated, or is obscured in translation.

Repetition and other tools are used by writers to point ahead to significant conversations or events that follow, creating something like a speed bump with the unnecessary repetition. Here are some examples of what is called ‘tail-head’ repetition, where the end of one sentence (the ‘tail’) is repeated at the beginning of the sentence that follows (the ‘head’). We use this device in English to build suspense.

I heard a noise upstairs, so I decided to go up and check it out. As I was walking up the stairs, all of a sudden . . .

You can fill in the blank of what you think happens next, but it would likely be something surprising or unexpected, right? The same kind of repetition is found in the NT.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit (Matt 1:20).

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” (Matt 2:13)

As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” (Luke 24:36)

In each of these verses, the bolded content was already mentioned in the previous verse. Note that just after the bolded content, big things happen. The italicized word ‘behold’ is an attention-getter, another forward-pointing device.

Another kind of repetition that frequently is used in the NT involves using extra speaking verbs to introduce speeches. This device is found in contexts where one speaker takes the conversation in a brand new direction, or where the speaker and hearer are both trying to take it different directions. In conversational English, we might report such a speech by saying, “So she says to him . . . then he says to her . . . .” Notice that even though the conversation that is being reported is a past event, it is acceptable to report it using present tense verbs (‘says’ instead of ‘said’). In English, the ‘historical’ present and the emphasis on the bolded words would attach significance to each turn in the conversation. The same kind of effect is achieved in the NT using repetition. Take a look at how Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus is reported. The bolding identifies the repeated elements. The repeated words omitted in the ESV translation are in brackets.

Jesus answered [and said] him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)

Nicodemus [answered and] said to him, “How can these things be?” (John 3:9)

Jesus answered [and said to] him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? (John 3:10)

In v. 2, Nicodemus describes Jesus as a teacher sent from God. Jesus ‘answers’ even though Nicodemus has not asked a question. Jesus' declaration that one must be born again takes the conversation in a whole new direction. Both Nicodemus’ reply and Jesus redirection are encoded using repetition. In v. 9, the Greek verb ‘answered’ is left untranslated, represented by a bullet in the ESV text.

As I have stated in earlier posts, the same basic content could have been just as easily communicated without the repetition (like what you often find in English translations), but would not have carried nearly the same zing as using the repetition. The use of these discourse devices represents the writer’s choice to attract extra attention to something, ostensibly because of its importance to the context.

If you are interested in devices like these, check out the description on the Pre-Pub pages of the Lexham High Definition New Testament and the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament. Links to previous blog posts describing other discourse devices can be found there.

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (5)

May 2, 2008

Help from ‘Left Field’

Today's guest post is from Dr. Steve Runge, a scholar-in-residence at Logos Bible Software, whose work focuses on the discourse grammar of Hebrew and Greek.

I am currently teaching a class on the parables of Jesus at my church. We are looking at the parables that occur in more than one gospel and taking note of how they are used in each. Along the way we have come across differences in wording, begging that question: ‘So what?’

This week we looked at the ‘salt’ passages, found in Matthew 5:13; Mark 9:49-50; and Luke 14:34-35. We noticed that there are some significant differences in how this parable is related to the preceding context in the different gospels. There are two new resources called the Lexham High Definition New Testament and the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament that provide some really helpful insight into issues like this. These resources annotate where the NT writers used various devices to get our attention, emphasize things, build suspense, etc.

Another important contribution of these resources is a description in the left column that tells you what each line of the text is doing. This analysis is informed by things like the Greek conjunction used, the morphology of the verb, and the role that it plays in the larger context. We were using the Lexham High Definition New Testament in class, and it was really easy to point out how the different gospel writers wanted to connect the salt parable to the preceding context, since it was plainly spelled out in the left column. ‘Proposition means that there are no specific instructions about how to relate what follows to what precedes.  ‘Support’ indicates that what follows in intended to strengthen or support what precedes, but does not advance the story or the argument. ‘Principle’ indicates that what follows is a summary or conclusion drawn from what precedes, often providing the big idea for the section that follows. Take a look at the highlighted descriptions in the left column.

In Matthew’s gospel, the saying follows right on the heals of the Beatitudes. In Greek there is no specific conjunction that tells the reader how to connect it; it is just the next saying.

In Mark the section just before describes how it is better to cast off a part of you that causes you to sin than to keep it and risk being thrown into hell. The saying about the salt is connected to this with the Greek conjunction γ?ρ (for). This instructs us to understand what follow as supporting or strengthening what precedes, rather than introducing a new point. In other words, Mark has signaled with γ?ρ that the saying about the salt is connected to what precedes, supporting and strengthening it.

If you look at Luke 14:34, you will see that the verse begins with a bullet. In the ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear New Testament, you can see that the bullet stands in the place of the Greek conjunction ο?ν (therefore). This word signals that what follows is a principle or summary drawn from what precedes. In other words, it either summarizes what precede, or introduces a new principle that is drawn from what precedes. The preceding section in Luke describes counting the cost of discipleship, illustrated by the consideration that should be given before building a tower or going to war against a superior force. This means that Luke wanted us to read the saying about the salt as drawing from and building upon what precedes.

In each of these gospels, the saying about the salt losing its saltiness warns us about the hazard of losing the distinctive quality that makes us who we are, illustrated by salt losing its saltiness. In Matthew Jesus has just taught that when we encounter persecution for pursuing righteousness, we should rejoice and be glad. In such circumstances, one might be tempted to water down their faith, or put their light under a basket (cf. 5:15). The reference to salt adds to this same point by asking the question: ‘What good is salt if it loses its saltiness?’ If we water-down or hide our faith, then what’s the point?

In Mark, the same point is made by the reference to salt. If there is some part of us that is causing us to sin, that might destine us for hell, is it really worth hanging on to? The reference to salt presents the same issue from a different angle. The salting with fire suggests a refining process. But if this process does not produce real, salty salt, then what’s the point? The Christian life is not about hanging on to what Jesus died to free us from, but about being the salt and light that he redeemed us to be.

In Luke, Jesus has just given a summary principle in v. 33 drawn from the illustrations of building a tower and going to war: “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (ESV). The saying about the salt is building upon this point, providing a practical illustration of what happens when someone follows without renouncing all: he or she is salt that is not salty. If the salt is no longer salty, then what’s the point?

This is just a one example of the kind of help that the left column information of the Lexham High Definition New Testament and the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament can provide. It can really pay dividends in helping you understand the really hairy passages that use very complex grammar, unpacking it one bit at a time. Check out Romans 2:17 in the HDNT:

Paul wants to set up a very complex state of affairs, one which can get confusing in a hurry if you are just reading it in a continuous paragraph. His main point is this: Do you not teach yourself? The ‘complex’ marker tells you that the line that is only indented one place is the main idea of the complex clause. In this case, the main thought is the ‘principle’ line. The rest of the parts are indented and labeled to help you understand what role each plays, and to let you easily find the main idea.

We are nearing completion on this project, which means two things: it will be shipping soon, and the price will be going up when it is removed from Pre-Publication. Take warning; buy soon if you haven’t already!

If you missed them, be sure to check out Steve's previous posts.

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (2)

April 22, 2008

Free Greek Book!

Awhile back I blogged my excitement over the Studies in New Testament Greek Collection being offered as a prepublication special. It is chock full of books that can help exegetes and Bible students benefit from advances in modern linguistics. But as I looked at the collection, there was one volume I was sad to see missing. So we did some digging and found that we had a license from the publisher for the title, but it hadn’t made it into the collection because the publisher wasn’t able to provide us with a physical copy of the book. Well, that’s no problem, since I have a copy. So I brought my book in and we got permission from the Powers That Be to add this valuable book into the collection at no additional cost to you!

The book in question is Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research, edited by Stanley E. Porter and D. A. Carson. Half the book is dedicated to 5 essays on verbal aspect. One of the great debates in the study of biblical Greek has to do with whether or not verbal ‘tenses’, such as aorist and imperfect, actually communicate a temporal reference (indicating that the action of the verb taking place in the past, present or future) or whether they might not communicate something else entirely (aspect). Or do tenses sometimes convey time, sometimes aspect and/or sometimes both? In New Testament studies, the two most prominent voices in the early verbal aspect debate were Stanley Porter (also the author of Idioms of the Greek New Testament and the soon-to-be-released Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period) and Buist Fanning. In this volume, there are essays from both Porter and Fanning introducing their approaches to verbal aspect and commenting on each other’s theories as well. These excellent essays are preceded by an introduction to the debate by D. A. Carson (author of Exegetical Fallacies), and followed by two more independent reviews of Porter and Fanning, one by Daryl D. Schmidt (author of Hellenistic Greek Grammar and Noam Chomsky) and the other by Moises Silva (author of the Philippians volume of the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament).

After the section on verbal aspect, the other half of the book is a potpourri of articles on other applications of modern linguistics to the Greek Bible, including essays from Jeffrey T. Reed (who wrote A Discourse Analysis of Philippians: Method and Rhetoric in the Debate over Literary Integrity, and co-edited Discourse Analysis and the New Testament: Approaches and Results, both books that are also in this incredible collection), Paul Danove (who wrote Linguistics and Exegesis in the Gospel of Mark: Applications of a Case Frame Analysis and Lexicon, which is also in the SGNT collection), Michael W. Palmer (author of Levels of Constituent Structure in New Testament Greek), and Mark S. Krause (co-author of the College Press NIV Commentary on John).

Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics is a great addition to this already brilliant collection of books. We’ve sweetened the deal, so if you were sitting on the fence before, it’s time to order so we can get this collection into production ASAP!

Posted by Vincent Setterholm at 6:00 AM | Comments (4)

April 9, 2008

Bible Speed Search and Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament

First, a teaser. Here's where we're going:


Mixing syntactic force and lemmas in a Bible Speed Search?!

[Maybe you just want to cut to the chase and watch the video instead of read. That's fine, go right ahead! — RB]

The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament comes with two primary views. One is the Syntax Graph, (formal title: The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Sentence Analysis; shortname is LEXHAMSGNTGRAPH) where the text is in a column on the right, and a graph of arrows and lines shows how the text is structured. Hovering the text brings the Expansions and Annotations data for the word into a popup. If you use the Lexham SGNT, this is probably the view you're most familiar with.

However, there's another view, one I like to call the "running text" view. This has the text of the Greek New Testament (UBS/NA) but it has one clause on each line, with indentations to show the relationships. This view is also an interlinear. The resource is The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament, shortname is LEXHAMSGNT. Here's an example, note that I have my interlinear configured to only show the Greek text and the English gloss line (you can control this in View | Interlinear).


James 3 from the Lexham SGNT

Now, what not many people know about this edition of the Lexham SGNT is that it is tagged for Syntactic Force. This is what many people refer to as "syntax" when they talk about the Greek of the New Testament, and it is the sort of thing that many second-year programs at seminaries and colleges dig into. You can see the clause and phrase breaks and the hierarchy implied by indentation; what you can't see is that each word carries a syntactic force annotation. So, in the above example, when I hover over ???????, a popup informs me that this could be either a circumstantial participle or an adverbial participle. Definitions of these terms are given as well.


??????? in James 3.1 from the Lexham SGNT

Did you know that you can search for this kind of thing using the Bible Speed Search report? It's a little verbose, but possible: sgnt-syn = "circumstantial participle" andequals lemma:???? In the material covered by the Lexham SGNT, this happens 10 times (I know because I just did the search).

This is just one example; I made a video that explains things a little more. This combines a few different advanced concepts: non-Bible data type searching, the andequals operator (also note the notequals operator) and using the lemma field. But it allows you to find some pretty specific things. Like, copulative conjunctions that aren't ???.

To further facilitate this kind of searching, I've also compiled a list of valid syntactic force codes that you can key into the Bible Speed Search dialog. So, instead of having to type "circumstantial participle", you'd know you could instead type "ptc-circum". You can download this file (PDF); hopefully it'll help in your use of the Lexham SGNT.

Lastly, I should note that the Lexham SGNT is a work in progress; at present it includes annotations of Romans-Galatians and Hebrews through Revelation. If you find annotations that you don't agree with or would like to suggest alternate annotations, we want to know about it. Send an email to syntax@logos.com and we'll make sure it gets to the editor.

Posted by Rick Brannan at 6:00 AM | Comments (4)

February 25, 2008

Greek Syntax: Article Introducting Prepositional Phrase

Awhile back over on the Logos Newsgroup for Greek, someone asked a question:

Someone has commented that there are 484 occurrences of the definite article occurring without a noun introducing a prepositional phrase, such as, "τα επι τοις ουρανοις." I wonder if someone would teach me how to search my GNT (N/A27) to confirm this statement?

The example is (I believe) from Eph 1.10:

ε?ς ο?κονομ?αν το? πληρ?ματος τ?ν καιρ?ν, ?νακεφαλαι?σασθαι τ? π?ντα ?ν τ? Χριστ?, τ? ?π? το?ς ο?ρανο?ς κα? τ? ?π? τ?ς γ?ς ?ν α?τ?. (Eph 1:10, NA27)

as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph 1:10, ESV)

Note that the same structure is used in "things on earth" in the same verse.

Anyway, the best way to find stuff like this — where you're really searching for a relationship between words and/or phrases even though it looks like proximity will get you close enough — is a syntax search. In this example, the relationship is between the article and the prepositional phrase. It is more than proximity (occurring close to each other or in sequence); it is functionally that the prepositional phrase in some way further modifies/qualifies/distinguishes the article (which, in cases like these, tends to function like a relative pronoun).

The OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament makes this relatively easy to find. Let's look at this portion of Eph 1.10 first to see how it is analyzed:

Here the word group contains a head term; the head term contains a word (τα) and the structure that modifies it. Here the structure is a relator. A relator is basically a prepositional phrase that functions adjectivally, modifying a substantive (instead of functioning adverbially, modifying the primary verb of the clause). So all we need to do is find where a relator modifies a word that that is an article.

There are two basic cases to consider. The first is like Eph 1.10, where the word is the root word of the head term, and the relator modifies it. The second case is where the word is a modifier itself, like in Mt 5.16:

Here note that τον is a definer, and the relator (adjectival prepositional phrase) modifies the definer.

These are the two cases to consider. A syntax search that looks like the following should account for both of them:

You'll notice I've used an unordered group to contain the word+modifier portion of the query. Why did I do this? Because I really want to find where a word and a modifier are siblings (occur at the same 'level' in the annotation) because this implies they are in relationship with each other. The containing structure(s) (here the head term or modifier at the root of the query) constrain the elements to already being in the same unit. The unordered group allows for this, letting you specify the elements you care about (here a word and a modifier), and it will run the permutations, including optional elements occurring between them, while it searches. It makes query specification a whole lot easier.

When the search is run, 298 occurrences are located. Here's a snapshot of the results dialog:

The different colors in the results come in because of the "OR" in the query. In this way you can tell that some results come from one half of the "OR". Here the greenish color represents the top half of the "OR" (word is a direct child of head term); the brown represents the bottom half (word is a direct child of modifier).

So, to answer the question posed on the Greek newsgroup; I'd respond that according to the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament, there are 298 instances of the definite article occurring without a noun introducing a prepositional phrase.

Posted by Rick Brannan at 6:00 AM | Comments (6)

February 14, 2008

Finding Louw-Nida References in the New Testament

I'll admit it; I'm hopelessly addicted to reading (and writing) blog posts; particularly those having to do with Biblical Studies and especially those having to do with the intersection of Biblical Studies and technology. And when they can mix in the Greek New Testament, well, then I usually have to clean the saliva off of my keyboard.

So when I saw Mark Hoffman post a question and an answer about finding the co-occurrence of a Louw-Nida domain and a particular morphological criterion (here where Domain 25, "Attitudes and Emotions", occurs with an imperative verb), a light went off in my head. The in-development Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament, which has every word tagged with disambiguated Louw-Nida references (described more fully in this previous post), can do this fairly easily. You can even do it in one search with the Bible Speed Search dialog. Here's the query:

louw in LN25 andequals LogosMorph in V??M??

And here are the results, 122 hits in 108 verses:

And, since we haven't yet released the Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament (though you can buy it on pre-pub!), I thought I'd include a video on how this search works and some further things you will be able to do with the search data once it is available.

(Pardon my voice; I must've slept with my mouth open last night. I woke up with a dry throat and the ability to sing with a Johnny Cash style voice without even trying.)

Posted by Rick Brannan at 6:00 AM | Comments (2)

February 7, 2008

Making of the Lexham High Definition New Testament

[Today's guest post is from Dr. Steve Runge, a scholar-in-residence at Logos Bible Software, whose work focuses on the discourse grammar of Hebrew and Greek.]

This is a follow-up to a blog entry that I posted last Thursday entitled “Who Cares About Participles? I Do!” It described how the New Testament writers used Greek participles to push less-important action into the background in order to keep attention focused on the main action of a verse. At the end, I gave the warning that this principle about ‘backgrounding’ action did not apply to every participle. This prompted a great comment from a user. He said:

I wasn't the best student at English grammar either so to figure out that what you have shown us in this blog would have been impossible for me as I don't understand all the different parts of English speech and writing. So, my question is this: with my ineptitude with both Greek and English, how can I use this tool well and know even what to look for? Perhaps that is an impossible question to ask.

This is a great question. The reality is there is no possible way for him to have known or done what I did without knowing the grammatical principles I used. Even knowing the principle, he would still need enough grammatical background to do the analysis. In other words, he wants access to this information, but his grammatical skills are too rusty for him to do the analysis himself. On top of this, he was probably never taught this principle in his studies. If you read the participles blog post and are a few years out of school, you will probably empathize with his frustration. Maybe you never even had the chance to attend Bible school. Here are some questions.

  1. Were you able to understand the idea of 'backgrounding' the action in a sentence using participles?
  2. Did you understand the meaning that could be gleaned from the choice to use a participle, and not a finite verb?

If so, then the problem is not with your understanding of grammar, the problem is with your access to the analyzed data. Right now, there is no access without years of study, and in this user’s case, keeping his Greek skills fresh, right? My personal mission in life is to address the ACCESS issue.

I have spent the last 12 years studying the problem, proposing and testing solutions, and coming up with a plan. What if ALL of the backgrounded actions in the NT were identified? What if there were a visual-filter type label on them so that as you were reading the text you could distinguish main actions from backgrounded ones? Would that be helpful? What if I did the same with 15 other of the most useful devices I found in my research? What if you could see all of these devices identified right in the text? This way you would not be distracted from the biblical text by reading a separate commentary. What if the text was organized into a block outline, breaking down the complexity of the text to help you better understand how it flows and how it is organized hierarchically?

If these questions pique your interest, then you will be interested in a resource that is set to go on Pre-Publication in the next few weeks. It is called the Lexham High Definition New Testament, part of a new series of original language resources that we are working on. It catalogs and graphically identifies all occurrences of a specific set of devices, like backgrounding, that the biblical writers used, but which are largely invisible without knowledge of Greek.

Many of these devices are based on the work of Bible translators, and are not even taught in seminary classes. The only way to learn them at this point is to slog through the linguistics literature like I have done for the last decade. This required developing an extensive knowledge of cognitive linguistics, pragmatics and syntax. Having done that, and having annotated where all of the devices occur in the text, the problem of access to the data is only partly solved.

The next step is to explain the concepts based on our idiomatic usage in English. Every language has to accomplish the same basic set of tasks. Since the annotated devices accomplish a specific task, I can explain the Greek device by analogy to how the same task is accomplished in English, regardless of how it might be translated. In other words, it would not matter if a Greek participle is translated as a main verb in English as long as you understood that it is backgrounded, right? This is a new way of thinking about these issues, a great complement to working with your preferred translation.

There is another problem. My analysis of these devices is based on the Greek text, not an English version. This means that somehow the data needs to be exported and mapped to an English version so that non-Greek or 'rusty-Greek' folks can access it. Until two years ago, this would have been impossible. Logos has invested the time and money into creating reverse interlinears, where the original language words are aligned to the corresponding words of the English translations. This allows the data that I have annotated to the Greek to be exported and displayed in English translations. I’ll let you in on a little secret: Greek is not English! Not every Greek device maps well into English, so we combined and culled down from about 40 concepts in Greek to 17 in English.

What is displayed in English is actually Greek data. If you find concepts like backgrounding valuable, and the want to get access to things that you would likely not even have learned if you had done advanced Greek study, it will soon be accessible to you mapped onto an English translation.

Not every concept is easy enough to understand with a thumbnail sketch for an introduction. However, a good many of them ARE that simple, but access to the data has been the ongoing problem. We have taken the very best of these devices and mapped them into English in the Lexham High Definition New Testament. There will be another, more detailed and more technical version of the data that is mapped onto the Greek text that will also be released, called the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament.

I appreciate the frustration people have felt about helpful information being restricted to the few that had the aptitude and discipline to reach the advanced levels of original language study. There is a tremendous amount of information that will remain restricted to this domain, based on the nature of it. However, there is a lot of practical stuff that can be exported and applied by folks if only they had the access to it. This frustration has been my motivation for getting up at 4:30am several days a week since 1993 to do research. I worked construction for the last 15 years to provide for my family and fund my study. Logos hired me in October 2006 because they believed that the insight into Scripture that users would gain from this project was worth the investment to produce it.

There is not another resource like the Lexham High Definition New Testament, where a collection of the most useful discourse devices are pulled together and practically applied. I will be blogging about a different device from the Discourse NT series each week for the next few months. I do not want information that would be beneficial to people like you, people who are smart and motivated to study God's Word, to remain restricted to the few. I have had several scholars rebuke me for taking on such a project, saying people might misuse it. People are already misusing English versions, so why not give them something that might curb some of the abuse and misunderstanding?

Update: Both products are now available for pre-order:

Posted by Rick Brannan at 6:00 AM | Comments (11)

January 31, 2008

Who Cares About Participles? I Do!

[Today's Guest Post is by Dr. Steve Runge, who is a scholar-in-residence here at Logos Bible Software. Steve is working on projects to annotate discourse function in the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Bible. More importantly, he's a really smart guy with a passion for explaining the exegetical significance and importance of discourse functions in language that non-academics can understand — so that sermons and lessons can take such things into account, resulting in better preaching and teaching. Look for more posts from Steve in the future. — RB]

My name is Steve, and I wanted to give you some ideas about how you can use some technology you probably already have to enhance your Bible study. One of the great features of the Biblical Languages Addin is the Morphological Filter (click View | Visual Filters) that lets you markup Greek and Hebrew Bibles based on their morphological coding (Click for video demo; here's a blog post with similar information). And you are probably saying, “Steve, I don’t know Greek. Why would I want such a tool?” I am glad you asked!

One of the basic tenets of Bible study is to identify the main idea of each verse, which in turn allows you to build toward understanding the big idea of a passage, and so on. Believe it or not, the New Testament writers wanted the same thing. Not every action is of equal importance, and so the writers made choices about which actions to make the main idea of a sentence. One of the ways they did this was by using different kinds of verbs for different kinds of actions in order to prioritize them.

If you were to picture a line of soldiers, there are two ways I could make some of them stand out. The first way is to have the important ones take a step forward. This is essentially what emphasis does, it brings something out front. The other way to make something stand out is to have the less-important ones take a step back. By pushing the less-important things into the background (‘backgrounding’ them), I can focus your attention on the ones that are left in their original position. This is exactly what the writers did through the use of participles. Wait, it’s okay, don’t be afraid! Grammar can be a great friend and ally! Let me show you how.

Every sentence in the New Testament required the writer to make decisions. We make them all the time without even thinking about it, whether writing or speaking. We choose wording that fits best with what we want to communicate. The same is true of the NT writers. If they wanted something to be viewed as a main action, they used a main verb form (technically ‘finite’ verbs like the indicative, subjunctive or imperative moods for fellow grammar geeks). If they wanted to describe some action to set that stage for the main action, the writers would use participles before the main action to push the less important action into the background. Here is a quick example from English.

  1. I was writing a blog post this morning. I spilled my coffee on my keyboard.
  2. While writing a blog post this morning, I spilled my coffee on my keyboard.

In the first line, both actions are described as though they were equally important, both use main verbs. The second line backgrounds the first action using a participle in order to set the stage for the main action that follows—spilling my coffee (Don’t worry, Bob. I didn’t really spill, just needed an example).

This same kind of backgrounding happens all the time in the New Testament. And even if you don’t know Greek, you can use the tools available in Logos to find these backgrounded actions. Here’s how.

If you have an ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear of the New Testament and the Morphological Filter from the Biblical Languages Addin, you have all that you need to start your study. Open up the ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear in Logos Bible Software, and then click View | Visual Filters. This opens up the Visual Filter dialogue. Then click on Morphological Filter in the left pane, then click Add.


Click image for larger version
(works for all images in this post)

Then click Details. This opens up another dialog box that lets you choose the grammatical characteristics that you want to visualize. We want to check Verbs, and then Participles under Verb types. Then click Add on the lower left, and finally pick a how you want to represent it in the text using the Palettes (I chose the Gray highlighter pen). This will identify all of the participles.

Now you need to identify the main verbs. All we have to do is repeat the steps. Click Verbs, and then under the ‘Tense, Voice, Mood’ menu click Finite under ‘Verb types’, then click Add.

Now pick a visualization from the Palettes (I chose green highlighter pen), and finally click Okay. You are ready to look for backgrounded actions!

In your ESV reverse interlinear, go to Matthew 28:19, we can take a look at how Matthew uses a participle to prioritize the actions of the Great Commission. English does not use participles like Greek does, so a lot of them get translated into English as though they were main verbs. This is not incorrect translation, it is just a consequence of Greek not being English. But you can pick out the backgrounded actions from the original Greek using this Visual Filter in the Reverse Interlinear.

In English, there are two main actions of the Great Commission: Go and Make disciples. But if you look at ‘Go’, you’ll see that it is a participle. Does this mean it doesn’t matter at all? No, it does matter. Matthew used a participle to make sure that we got the main idea of the verse: MAKING DISCIPLES. Both actions need to happen, but they are not of equal importance. Using a participle backgrounds the less-important action.

This idea of backgrounding only applies to participles when they precede the main action, not when they follow it. The participles that follow the main action tend to spell out more specifically what the main action looks like. Here, ‘making disciples’ is spelled out as ‘baptizing’ and ‘teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded’.

Another good example is found in Acts 9:1-2, where Saul is seeking to arrest the believers in order to keep ‘The Way’ from spreading.

In v. 1 there are two actions described: ‘breathing’ and ‘went’. But we can tell from the Morphological Filter that both of these actions are backgrounded. That means that these actions are setting the stage for the main action, and are not the main action themselves. The main action doesn’t come until v. 2; it is Saul ASKING for the letters. ‘Going’ to the high priest was just something that had to happen before he could ‘ask’ them for the letters. Luke’s choice to use a participle reflects how he chose to prioritize the action. Understanding how he prioritized the action will help us better understand the main point of the passage. The other participles in v. 2 function as ‘verbal adjectives’, describing whom Saul is seeking (the ones ‘belonging to the Way’) and how he will bring them (‘having been bound’). The principle of backgrounding only applies to the action participles that precede the main action.

The biggest, hairiest chain of backgrounded actions that I have yet found is in Mark 5:25-27, where SEVEN backgrounded actions before we finally get to the main action. Nearly all of these are translated in the ESV as though they are main verbs. Remember, this is not bad translation, it just reflects that Greek is not English. Take a look!

Look at all of the actions that are backgrounded! The one main action that is left standing is ‘touched’, all of the rest are simply setting the stage for this action. Mark clearly indicates this by using participles instead of main verbs. He could have just as easily chosen to make ALL of the actions main ones, but then ‘touched’ would not have stood out. They would have all been equal. By backgrounding the less-important actions before the main action, the writer lets us know which action we need to focus on. There is good reason to focus on ‘touch’ in this context, because it is the key action that sets off a whole series of events that follows. Touching Jesus is what heals this woman (v. 27). Look at how Jesus’ response is described in v. 30.

Three participles are used to describe the actions that lead to Jesus’ response (‘said’), and what he says is the most important part of the verse: ‘Who touched me?’ Mark has carefully framed his message to make sure that we do not miss the main point of the story!

The gospels and Acts by far make the most use of backgrounding through the use of participles before the main action. Here are a few more examples from Matthew. In Matt 13:46 in the parable about the pearl of great price, look at which actions have been backgrounded.

There are only two main actions in this verse: ‘selling all that he had’ and ‘buying’. The ‘finding’ and ‘going’ set the stage for the main actions. Do you see how the backgrounding fits with the main idea of the passage?

Another example is found in the description of Jesus preparing to feed the 5000 in Matt 14:19.

There are three backgrounded actions leading up to one main action in the first sentence. ‘Ordering the crowds’, ‘taking’ the loaves and fish, and ‘looking up to heaven’ are all backgrounded, keeping attention on the main action: he said a blessing. In the next sentence, ‘breaking’ is backgrounded, keeping attention focused on ‘giving’ it to the disciples who in turn give it to the crowds.

By the way, you do not need to use the visual filter to find out if an action is a participle in Greek or not. If you hover over ‘ordered’ in v. 19 of the reverse interlinear and look at the display in the lower left corner of the main window, you will see some information displayed.

The G2753 is the Strong’s number; the rest is the grammatical information for the Greek word. You can get the same information as what we have visualized using the Visual Filter, but it is does not let you see the big picture, and it is not nearly as cool!

As you may have noticed, not every participle backgrounds an action. Some participles don’t even describe action, but instead function as verbal adjectives to describe a person, place or thing. The participles that follow the main action usually spell out more specifically what the main action looks like (a topic I will take up in a future post). But there is hope!

I have been working for the last year in a super-secret department (next to Rick!) on a project that identifies all of the New Testament occurrences of cool devices like backgrounded actions. There are 15 other devices that are all explained and marked up using something like the visual filter right in the text to help you better understand what the writers were trying to draw your attention to. Stay tuned for more details.

Update: Both products are now available for pre-order:

Posted by Rick Brannan at 6:00 AM | Comments (11)

January 24, 2008

Updates to the Louw Nida Greek-English Lexicon

The Louw-Nida Greek Lexicon (formal title: Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, though henceforth "LN") is a unique and helpful lexicon. It is, however, put together differently than most Greek lexicons.

[OK, this got a little long. If you're more of an I-have-to-see-it-to-understand-it sort of person, cut to the chase and check out the video.— RB]

Instead of being ordered by the Greek alphabet (for easy headword lookup) with one article per headword, the lexicon is ordered by the concept of semantic domain. Even more confusingly, words with multiple major senses have multiple entries. For example, ???????? could be "human being", or more specifically "man", or even more specifically, "husband". In this case, LN has at least three definitions in three different places in the lexicon.

The lexicon has a separate index, ordered by headword, that helps one to navigate the articles and actually use the lexicon. We've had LN (volumes 1 & 2) available in Logos Bible Software for years; it is included in many of our packages (specifically, Original Languages, Scholar's, Scholar's Silver and Scholar's Gold).

So to use LN, you've had to go into the index, pick the likeliest sense from the index list, then go to that entry and see if it is proper.

With the new enhancements we've made to LN, when you keylink in from a Greek New Testament (or a New Testament Reverse Interlinear), you'll go directly to the article representing the sense being used in your current instance instead of the catch-all index entry. How's that for cool? (and time-saving!)

If you still want to go to the index entry in volume 2 after having read the sense-specific article, you can still get there — check the video for the groovy keylink-on-the-lexicon-headword trick I use to do this quickly. (Note that the method is more fully documented here).

Confused? That's OK. I made a video; you can hear me blathering on for almost nine minutes on this book, how it is ordered, how it is used and the significant enhancements we've made to it to support keylinking into this lexicon from the Greek New Testament (or New Testament Reverse Interlinears!) Apologies for the last minute; I sort of ramble on for a bit.

This updated version is available on our FTP site (ftp://ftp.logos.com/lbxbooks, look for LOUWNIDA.lbxlls). You also can download the latest version of LN from the book's page on our web site if you'd like to try this yourself.

Posted by Rick Brannan at 6:00 AM | Comments (6)

January 18, 2008

Progress on the Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament

Back in December, we put The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament on Pre-Pub.

Since the early reception to the Pre-Pub was good, we've been doing a little work on the New Testament interlinear and even have some provisional data back from the editor, Hall Harris. So I thought I'd take some time to walk you through some of the features in the hopes that even more of you will pre-order it!

Posted by Rick Brannan at 6:00 AM | Comments (5)

January 11, 2008

Don't Forget the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament

We've given frequent attention to the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament here on the blog. It's a tremendous collection of resources. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament, the other set of NT syntax resources, hasn't been in the spotlight quite as much, mostly because it is still a work in progress. At present it covers the following 11 books: Romans, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, and Revelation. (If you don't have access to all of them, make sure to update to 3.0d to get the latest LSGNT resources and syntax database. A revised version of the LSGNT that includes 2 Corinthians and Galatians is included in 3.0e, which is now in beta.)

But don't let its incompleteness keep you from taking advantage of the wealth of information available here. Unlike the OpenText.org resources, the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament resources use the traditional syntactical categories that perhaps the majority of Greek students are familiar with, so it will likely prove to be the most helpful for students as they learn and teachers as they instruct.

When I was in seminary I had the opportunity to teach elementary and intermediate Greek. I was always looking for more examples to show my students so they could learn the grammatical concepts that we were covering in class. Most grammars provide several examples—Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics was especially helpful in this regard—but I was always running down additional examples to discuss in class or to use in handouts, exercises, quizzes, and tests.

How I wish that I had had access to the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament when I was teaching the genitive absolute, the purpose infinitive, the dative direct object, the nominative of appellation, or the double accusative. In about 15 seconds, I can open the Syntax Search tool and generate a list of 55 genitive absolutes, 113 purpose infinitives, 122 dative direct objects, 26 nominatives of appellation, or 78 double accusatives—plenty of fresh material for in-class examples, handouts, quizzes, and tests. It's as simple as adding a Word to the query, checking the box next to the grammatical category for which you want to generate a list, and clicking Search.

purpose-infinitives-search.jpg

What a time saver this would have been!

But these tools aren't just for teachers. Put them in the hands of your students and have them analyze all 68 of the attributive participles in John's letters or the 85 subjective genitives in Romans, for example. Simple access to so many examples will surely make grasping abstract grammatical concepts much more attainable.

So don't forget about the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament. It is included in the top four base packages (Original Languages, Scholar's, Scholar's Silver, and Scholar's Gold). If you haven't yet upgraded, visit our upgrade page to see your options.

Check out our other blog posts dealing with the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament:

Posted by Phil Gons at 6:00 AM | Comments (6)

December 26, 2007

Greek Syntax: First Thessalonians 4:16, Part IV

I've blogged a bit about the prepositional phrase ?? ?????? in 1Th 4.16. There are three previous posts in this series:

Today's post, the last in the series, is a follow-up to Part II. We'll further explore how to search for ?? ?????? in relation to the verb (predicator) that it co-occurs with; only today we'll search for this with both adverbial (as in Part II) and adjectival instances. For those of you who can't wait, here's a link to the video:

In 1Th 4.16, ?? ?????? occurs before the verb, as shown below:

1Th 4.16

This instance is somewhat ambiguous (indeed, that's the reason why the JBL article was written); there are equally good reasons for the prepositional phrase to modify the subject or the verb. OpenText.org SAGNT annotates this as an adjectival relation, further modifying the subject. In order to examine like cases, we need to find where the prepositional phrase itself (whether the OpenText.org SAGNT annotates it adjectivally or adverbially) occurs preceding the predicator. Our earlier search in Part II only located OpenText.org's adverbial instances.

So today's video starts there and then shows how to search for where OpenText.org's adjectival instances precede the predicator. The combination of those two lists provides the whole set of instances where the prepositional phrase precedes the predicator.

Once the lists are available, the analysis can proceed. Examine not only the verbs, but also the other clausal components that are similar to 1Th 4.16. Which of these instances, like 1Th 4.16, appear to be genuinely ambiguous as to where the prepositional phrase can attach? And can those instances help in establishing reasons to prefer either adjectival or adverbial modification in 1Th 4.16?

Lastly, after surveying the material, you may want to do a reference search of your Greek grammars to see if any of them discuss the issue of how the prepositional phrase functions in 1Th 4.16; you may also want to check some of your commentaries (like NIGTC on Thessalonians, perhaps; or the WBC or ICC volumes if you've got 'em) to see what they say.

Posted by Rick Brannan at 6:00 AM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2007

Why Use the Septuagint?

Today's guest blogger is Dr. Michael Heiser, Academic Editor at Logos.

Logos recently announced the creation of the Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint on the Pre-Pub page. Many pastors, seminary students, and lay people devoted to Bible study might wonder about the value of the Septuagint for Bible study. The Septuagint, of course, is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. The Septuagint was the Old Testament of the early Greek-speaking church, and it is by far the version of the Old Testament most frequently quoted by Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. Rather than try to persuade you of the value of the Septuagint by means of these kinds of arguments, I thought it might be helpful to provide a practical example where the Septuagint explains what seems to be a New Testament theological blunder. I'm betting most of us are interested in that sort of thing!

Below is Deuteronomy 33:1-2 side-by-side in two translations. On the left is my literal rendering of the traditional Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Masoretic text. On the right is an English translation of the Septuagint at this passage. I have boldfaced significant differences for some discussion.

Traditional Masoretic Hebrew Text
Septuagint
?1 This is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the Israelites before his death.

2? He said: Yahweh came from Sinai, and He shone upon them from Seir. He appeared in radiance from Mount Paran, and approached from Ribeboth-Kodesh, from his right lightning flashed at them.

3 Indeed, he loved the people, all his holy ones at your hand. And they followed at your feet; he bears your words,

4 the law which Moses commanded us, an inheritance for the assembly of Jacob.

1 This is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the Israelites before his death.

2? He said: The LORD came from Sinai, and He shone to us from Seir; He made haste from Mount Paran with ten thousands of Kadesh, his angels with him.


3 And He had pity on his people, and all the holy ones were under your hands; and they were under you; and he received his words,

4 the law which Moses charged us, an inheritance to the assemblies of Jacob.

What Are We Looking At?

Some English translations (ESV, NIV, NASB) are close to the Septuagint or sound like a mixture of the two choices. As the traditional Hebrew text goes, the Hebrew phrase in verse 2 underlying "Ribeboth-Kodesh" is the same (except for spelling) as what occurs at Deut. 32:51 ("Meribath Kadesh"). This is why most scholars today consider the phrase to be a geographical place name, and I agree. The Septuagint, however, obviously has something else going on! While it is possible to get "ten thousands of Kadesh" from the Hebrew consonants of the traditional Masoretic text, the very common Hebrew word for angels (mal'akim) does not appear in the traditional Masoretic text. The Septuagint translation (aggeloi) came from a different Hebrew text.

One more observation: In verse 3 the Masoretic Text seems to equate "the people" with "all his holy ones." Yahweh's people, his holy people, are under his authority ("under your hand"). They follow at the LORD's feet and receive the Law. Note that the singular pronoun "he" in "he bears your words" likely refers to Israel collectively (i.e., ISRAEL bears your words). Israel is often referred to as a singular entity in the Bible ("my son," Exod. 4:21-23; "my servant," Isa. 44:1). The Septuagint, however, gives the reader the feel that "his people" and "all the holy ones" are different groups. In the Septuagint, God pities his people and his holy ones--the angels referred to in the previous verse--are under his authority. Israel, of course, receives the law.

So What?

So who cares? Well, the Septuagint here helps us understand an oddity mentioned in several places in the New Testament-the idea that the Mosaic Law, given at Sinai, was actually given by angels. Check out these New Testament passages:

Acts 7:52-53

52 Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, 53 you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it."

Hebrews 2:1-2a

1 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. 2 For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, 3 how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

Galatians 3:19

19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.

Simply put, if you stick to the traditional Masoretic Hebrew text for your Old Testament, there is no place that the New Testament writers could have drawn such an idea. The closest you come to that is in Psalm 68:17. While that verse has a multitude of angelic beings at Sinai, it says zilch about the Law.

The point is that the New Testament references have provided fodder for biblical critics who want the New Testament to be guilty of either an outright error in thought, or just contriving a doctrinal point out of thin air. The Septuagint shows us that those perspectives are just simply incorrect. The New Testament writers weren't nitwits or dishonest. They were using the Septuagint.