When teaching, I often point to the value of a reverse interlinear, especially as a software feature. A reverse interlinear shows the English text and enables us to look up the Greek or Hebrew word behind an English word simply by clicking or hovering over it. I have written about it as well. As a cost-free option, I particularly like the STEP Bible.
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Online Greek and Hebrew Bible with Up-To-Date Dictionary
However, I have now found an even better resource for this: MARBLE. It is made available by the United Bible Societies at https://semanticdictionary.org/. I will briefly explain its basic functions. And be sure to watch the demo posted toward the end of this issue to get a taste of what MARBLE can do!
Advantages
One advantage of MARBLE is that it shows, verse by verse, the full text in Greek or Hebrew and right next to it a translation. In English, this is the RSV. Several other languages are available as well. Clicking or hovering over a word, either in the original language or in the translation, changes colour in both languages. It is therefore easy to see which English and Hebrew or Greek words are linked.
And there is more. Clicking on the word opens a dictionary entry in an additional column. The STEP Bible has this feature as well. However, as is true for most free applications, it only includes older resources that are no longer under copyright and therefore somewhat outdated. This is not true for MARBLE.
MARBLE comes with two up-to-date and innovative dictionaries. For the Greek NT, it contains a so-called semantic dictionary based on the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Louw and Nida 2021).
And for the Hebrew Bible, it comes with the Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew edited by Reinier de Blois and Enio R. Mueller (2000-2021).
Not only are these dictionaries up to date, they differ significantly from traditional dictionaries, as they are based on semantic domains. This requires some explanation.
Semantic Domains
Traditional dictionaries provide a definition of words. Defining a word can be quite hard. For example, think of different kinds of furniture. We all readily recognize a table, a chair, and a stool. But how do you define, say, a chair in such a way that every chair is included and everything that is not a chair is excluded?
It is certainly not how children learn to speak. We don’t give them definitions of words, so they know which term to use. They pick up the meaning of words by placing them in relationship to other words. For instance, a couch is not a chair. But they are both furniture. And different from a table, they are strongly associated with the verb to sit on. One can sit on a table, of course, but this is not its normal use, and most of the time, parents won’t allow their children to do it.
To put it simply, furniture is a semantic domain (semantic meaning meaning). It includes terms like couch, chair, table, and to sit. Or in the words of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), an offshoot of Wycliffe Bible Translators:
A semantic domain is an area of meaning and the words used to talk about it. (SIL n.d.)
Notice how clever this definition is. The area of meaning exists in a sense independent from any words used to speak of it. And it integrates those words into a network of relations.
The website the quote is taken from provides an overview of nine main domains divided into hundreds of subdomains (see https://semdom.org/).
Using the words of SIL (n.d.) again:
As a child learns to speak, he forms lexical relations [that is, relations between words] in his mind. We need these lexical relations in order to speak correctly. Each of us has a mental dictionary which is organized into a giant network of lexical relations. Within the network are important clusters, like cities and towns linked by roads.
So a semantic domain is a cluster of words in the mental network. The words within the domain are linked by lexical relations and the domains themselves are linked by lexical relations.
The concept of semantic domain was developed in the context of Bible translation, especially by Wycliffe and SIL. It has proved tremendously helpful in ‘mapping’ the words in a new language and in finding appropriate words to use in translating biblical texts. But it has also made possible a new type of dictionary, one that takes the relations of words to other words into account. It places each word within a hierarchy or network of semantic domains.
It takes some getting used to, but it is an awesome tool for in-depth study and interpretation.
Toolbox
For further free resources on the internet to study books of the Bible, see the Toolbox, available when you subscribe to this blog!
A Personal Note
Create a Learning Site is approaching its 10th birthday. It’s hard to believe, but come April, I will have been writing these monthly inputs for 10 years: 120 issues! And to be honest, I feel like I need a break. I do not want to stop, but I do want to step back for some months for evaluation and longer-term planning. In other words, I am going to take a sabbatical starting in May.
Attribution
Ulleo. 2018 <https://pixabay.com/photos/marbles-glass-toy-childrens-toys-3070512/>
ErikaWittlieb. 2017 <https://pixabay.com/photos/living-room-chair-sofa-couch-home-2155376/>
References
De Blois, Reinier, and Enio R. Mueller. 2000-2021. Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (United Bible Societies) <https://semanticdictionary.org/semdic.php?databaseType=SDBH&language=en#> [accessed 25 January 2024]
Louw, J. P., and Eugene A. Nida (eds.). 2021. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson)
SIL. [n.d.]. ‘What is a semantic domain?’ <https://semdom.org/description> [accessed 25 January 2024]
STEPBible. 2024. ‘STEP Bible’ <https://www.stepbible.org/>
United Bible Societies. [n.d.]. ‘MARBLE’ <https://semanticdictionary.org/>