Working the Word on the
Web
There are many great resources on the Web that relate to
working the Word of God. If you use your computer to study and research
the Bible you may find that it is more convenient to use the Web
resources. And you may find resources on the Web that you may not have
in software or book form. Out of the dozens of sites that provide resources
to research the Word, however the location at http://www.biblestudytools.net/ is by
far the most comprehensive. So in this area we will discuss and use some
of these tools to do a example study.
Fonts
But first let's talk about using the original languages found
in the Bible. This word -> ajgapavw should show as the Greek word for God's love. If
you see ajgapavw instead of Greek letters it is because you do not have the font
needed to display it in the original Greek language and your Web browser is
not smart enough to know that you want a Greek font and get one for you.
So you need to download one. Use the following link to get the
fonts for the
Bible Study Tools Web site. Once you have installed these fonts the red word
above will be in Greek letters. But remember that each Web site is
different and not all of them use the same fonts. So you may need to do
this many times as you go from one Web site to another. If you are not
interested in using an interlinear or other native language tools maybe fonts
are not important to you right now.
Example
Study
Concordance
Because the Web is accessed by way of computers and
computers just love numbers, the Strong's numbering system has caught hold on
research Web sites. So in order to do research on the Web you are going to
have to use Strongs numbers. There are some tools to look up scripture
references and do searches with Strongs numbers on this Web site. But let's
take a look at the source site at Bible Study Tools. You are probably
going to access the Strong's Concordance through two avenues: scripture lookups
and word studies.
Scripture lookups are the most common starting
place.
Word studies will often be a
result of scripture lookups. Use this link to
Scan The Greek
Lexicon
.
Interlinear
Now let's take a look at the interlinear NT. As an example lets view
the following verses
I John 5:7-8.
Follow this link and you will see the following text (more or less).
We can clearly see that the section of verses 7 & 8
starting with the words "in heaven" in verse 7 and ending with "in earth" in
verse 8 are not in the text. This was added to the text (possibly to try
to prove a point.) According to the Greek texts this verse should read:
"For there are three that bear record, the
Spirit and the water and the blood: and these three agree in one.
" To
check out your own scriptures use the following link to request a scripture in the
Hebrew or
Greek Interlinear. This link also allows
an English word search. For those that are used to doing word
searches in Greek, I am not aware of any Web site that has this capability yet.
If you notice all of the Greek words are in a different color and are
underlined. That is because they are hyperlinks to the Strong's concordance
(or some other, they don't tell you much about what text or references they are
quoting. Here is an example: "Greek lexicon based on Thayer's
and Smith's Bible Dictionary plus others") By clicking any one of
these links you can display the reference in the concordance for that particular
word. I have changed the original text from the Bible Study Tools Web site
and removed all the English Links but have modified the Greek ones so they will
work from here so you can try it out. But on their site you can click
on any word that is a hyperlink, English or Greek (or Hebrew if you
are working in the Old Testament).
