When you are a Professional Premium User you have, among many other things, access to a unique study tool, consisting of a number of Online Bible modules. It is called the Analytical Bible. This is the result of many year's work to try and ensure consistency and completeness. At the moment, the Old Testament is complete (although some updates might follow) and soon everything from the New Testament can also be expected to be more or less complete. This article describes the Old Testament part for now, and will be updated to include the New Testament at a later date. The two main componenets are the Englishman's Literal Translation (module abbreviation Literal), described further below. and a "commentary": Englishman's Analytical Bible, with a number of "lexicons" attached. The types of books are in inverted commas because they are not really commentaries or lexicons, but can be found in that group of titles and use the functionality of that group. 


These special modules aim to provide those without much knowledge of the original languages a greater insight into the text. At the same time it alllows those who have studied Hebrew and Greek with tools to go much deeper and quickly provide more insight. The components and their relationships are described below (again, currently only for the Old Testament).


1. Literal Translation

In the module Literal, the Hebrew text has been translated concordantly as far as possible. The word order has been changed to make it readable in English,and punctuation and capitalisation have been added. Each Hebrew (or Aramaic) word is linked to a Strong number, aditional and untranslated words are all indicated. A number of special characters have been added in the text. In the example below, the Strong numbers are hidden so that the special characters are easier to spot, but to compare with point 2, it is useful to have the Strong numbers visible.

 

  1. Each and every added word is in italics. Many translations show some of the added words in italics, but here is is exhaustive.
  2. The & sign before a word means words that were implied by Hebrew vowel points.
  3. The “%” sign means a change in number from the original language. Elohim will thus be rendered as &God because God is singular. This is also done for words that are always plural. In this example, %riches is a plural in English where there is a singular in Hebrew, while %people is singular in English as a translation of a plural in Hebrew. Please note that "you "and "your" are assumed to be 2nd person plural,  What may perhaps be confusing is that when you and your are always assumed to be 2nd person plural in English. Therefore, %you and &your is used to indicate when the Hebrew is 2nd person singular.
  4. In Hebrew, personal pronouns are usually included in the verb. A long m-dash “—” means the subject pronoun for the verb is separate for emphasis.
  5. (Not shown) Words in Hebrew that have not been translated are indicated by a _ (not to be confused with — [see the previous point]).


Hebrew has only two tenses, complete and incomplete, which are translated as the perfect and present tense in English. The tenses of the verbs are preserved. There is no future tense since, as in all Semitic languages, ancient and modern, so we do not have a future tense. The future tense is derived from the context. Usually a verb is expressed in the perfect tense for which an action has not yet been completed.


2. Analytical Commentary

The Analytical Commentary is intended to be used together with the Literal translation. If both are used at the same time, it makes sense to ensure the two are syncronised. In the Analytical we see the same verse, but the Hebrew words are shown under each other, and in the order of the Hebrew text. Next to each word there is the translation and the Strong's number. In addition, there are the grammar parsings and grammatical notes. Hovering over these with the mouse (Windows) or clicking on it (Android and iOS) will give more explanation of n the meaning of the abbreviation. 


The same special characters of the "Literal" are also used here. Moreover, "+" means an implied construct as opposed to a real one as indicated by "-". Likewise “?” implies a interrogative, a “@” implies location and “!” implies subjunctive. And sometimes there is a link (shown as §GK-xx) to Gesenius Hebrew Grammer.

Underneath the list of Hebrew words, the text of the Literal is also shown here.


3. Special lexicons

Together with the Analytical a number of modules are installed which act as lexicons, while some real lexicons (such as Brown, Driver and Briggs) are also available. Those which act like lexicons do not contain explanations of words. They are intended to show the usage of the words inthe Bible. These are:

  • AnaHebEng (Exhaustive Analytical Hebrew/English) - this is organized by Strong's number with word counts for each item. Each entry contains Hebrew word, English translation, grammar information, references
  • AnaEngHeb (Exhaustive Analytical English/Hebrew) - this is organized by Strong's number with word counts for each item. Each entry contains English translation, Hebrew word, grammar information, references
  • AnaHebConcise (Exhaustive Analytical Concise Hebrew Concordance/Lexicon) - also organized by Strong's number, showing summary and frequency of English words used in Literal Translation and some grammar information


5. Conclusion

The material described in this article might take several days to get used to. We hope you find the above description useful. However, you may find it a bit sketchy. There is much more to say about these modules, but we don't want to put you off by writing pages of explanation. If you have any questions, or suggestions how this article can be improved, we would be happy to hear from you and try to help (top right of this screen to raise a ticket).