An Important word

Greetings in the Lord dear readers and friends:  

Before I go on there are a few necessary things I need to state so that all of you, my readers, won’t get confused as I post on topics.  First of all, unless otherwise noted I will quote the scripture from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible.  My decision to do that instead of some other version I think more accurate is because the KJV is the most widely known and trusted of the scriptures in the English language.  Where I might choose to quote another version because I think it gives an insight on the verse in question, I will cite the version using accepted international abbreviations, in parenthesis, just as I gave for my readers a moment ago.  Since I am a student of the Bible’s languages I may at times translate a verse myself where I believe doing so may give my readers some insight into the text.  I will always note such translation thusly, (S).

Because it is the basis for the New Testament and widely accepted in the English speaking world I will quote the Textus Receptus (TR) when appealing to the Greek text in which God inspired the Apostles and others to write the New Testament for us.  When I deviate from that course because I believe the TR text to be lacking, I will make an appropriate note on the matter.  When appealing to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament (OT), I will use the excellent Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia  (BHS) as the standard.

When writing about specific words from the original languages in the Bible’s text I will provide the Strong’s number along with the word in the format commonly used today.  That means the number itself will be prefixed with the letter G or H, e.g. H5315 and G5590, which are for the numbers for the words nephesh and psyche, the Hebrew and Greek words for soul respectively.  For those unfamiliar with what I’m talking about,. James Strong published a concordance to the KJV in 1890 which included brief lexicons, or dictionaries for the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic languages.  Mr. Strong assigned every word in the original Hebrew and Greek texts behind the KJV Bible a number for the purpose of ease in looking up up the words in his lexicon section, and gave said number for the word in every citation of a verse where it appeared.  Mr. Strong’s numbers became a standard over the years for identification and citation of a word so that there is no confusion as to which word is meant.  Most new lexicons use the numbers as well and some interlinear editions of the New Testament also provide the number for readers’ convenience as well.

Where I think it is important I will also appeal to the early texts from languages into which the bible was translated, such as the Latin, Aramaic, Coptic, and Gothic.  While I‘ll probably use the Vulgate as my primary Latin text, I will cite from the Vestus, or early Latin texts which predate the Vulgate where I believe the rendering there appropriate.  The Coptic editions of the New Testament are some of the earliest translations available to us, the Sahidic dating back into the Second Century A.D., and form a much overlooked resource for students of God’s word.  The Sahidic Coptic text of the NT is especially important given the antiquity of the text and a number of features of the language itself which make it different from the other early languages and make it important to the study of God’s word.

All of these texts and resources plus many more can be found at the Unbound Bible website, which is linked to in my links section.  It is an excellent site for those who want to compare various Bible Translations in English as well as other languages and check into the ancient languages as well.  Another great resource is the e-sword Bible Study program and the Online Bible program for computers, both of which are free programs.  I will link them as well.