[B-Greek] Interlinear Scripture Analyzer

Eric Weiss eweiss at gte.net
Sat Oct 11 21:30:18 EDT 2003


One of the "reviews" for the software at the Web site:

"I just downloaded the ISA and it is AMAZING! Thank you soooo much 
for putting this out there and for FREE. I EXTREMELY appreciate 
this, as a Christian and supporter of the free software and open 
source movements too.... My husband and I have often drifted asleep at night saying, "If only we could learn Greek and **get at the 
root of the meanings",** and here we can finally get the intimacy 
with the language and with such a beautiful tool as this. Thanks 
again - I can only hope to write something so uber someday
thanks, 

-KO" 

Does this mean that we will be flooded with "root fallacy" errors by people who trust this program to teach them "what the Greek REALLY means"? (**   ** added by me) :)

(From the Web site: http://www.concordant.info/)

About concordant.info

It was at a conference, somewhere in the Netherlands. At the end of 
the morning session a slim, grey-haired woman stood up and 
asked : “Why is it, that speakers always say : ‘In your Bible the 
word is such-and-so, but in Greek the word is this-and-that.’ Can 
we trust our Bible at all ?”

Good question, madam. The same question I asked myself some twenty 
years ago. The beginning of a long search for truth.

At first I bought ‘The New testament from 26 translations’. I tried 
to make my own translation. But I came bewildered by all those 
divergent meanings of the same Bible verses. 

I decided to study Koiné-Greek, the language of the New Testament. 
I studied LaSor’s ‘Handbook of New Testament Greek’, and Bauer’s 
famous ‘Lexicon’. But after long hours of study I still felt the 
translation slipping through my fingers.

Then I came upon A.E. Knoch’s ‘Concordant Greek Text. Knoch gave a 
Greek text, based upon the three major uncial manuscripts of the 
Greek New Testament, plus an English sublineair.

In his introduction to this text, Knoch described his ‘concordant’ 
method. Every single Greek word was translated by a single, 
exclusive English equivalent. A ‘standardized’ translation.

It proved to be the answer to my questions. I began using the 
sublinear for my Bible studies and all those years it proved to be 
far superior to all other translations.

I started to make a Dutch sublinear, based upon Knoch’s Greek text 
and his English sublinear. Immediately I saw the possibilities to 
check the Dutch version of the New Testament by this method.

Then I met André de Mol. He suggested that I should make use of 
modern technology, such as a computer. He designed a bèta version 
of an interlinear program for me. Later he called it : ‘ISA’.

I chose the Nestle-Aland 26/27 for my Greek text. The ‘NA 26/27’ is 
used by Bible Societies all over the world for their translations. 
Then I adjusted Knoch’s concordant English sublinear to this ‘NA 
26/27’.

Afterwards I made a Dutch sublinear based upon the Dutch version of 
the New Testament, the 1951 edition of ‘Het Nederlands 
Bijbelgenootschap’. I put it under Knoch’s English, concordant 
sublinear.

With these sublinears anyone can see at a glance the divergences 
between the ‘original’ and the ‘translation’. And that is the 
answer to the question of that sweet, grey-haired lady. Can we 
trust our Bible at all? Please, madam, check it out yourself! With 
ISA.

Menno Haaijman
December 2002 


Eric S. Weiss
eweiss at gte.net
http://home1.gte.net/vzn05pnm/index.htm




More information about the B-Greek mailing list