Non-Roman fonts used: SPIonic
1. This article lists the electronic resources of which I am aware in February 2003, both freely available and in commercial software packages (indicated with an asterisk in the list below). Usually the rule is, the more recent the program, the more sophisticated the software.2 In this Introduction, I will give an overview of the types of material available. Individual products and websites are listed in the next section.
2. At this point in time, the existence of the Hebrew Bible in computer-readable form, with vowels and accents, and of the Greek Bible with accents, is a fait accompli. Such texts usually contain the vocalized MT without cantillation signs, although the Bar-Ilan database includes them. The Accordance program offers two separate text files, one with accents (HMT-C), and one without them (HMT-T). This separation allows the programmers of Accordance to offer sophisticated search programs for the text without accents, since these accents are not needed for the great majority of our needs.
3. All available software packages are designed exclusively for a PC environment except for Accordance (Macintosh) and the Jewish Classics Library (PC and Macintosh). However, with emulation programs, the PC programs can now be used on the Macintosh, and the Accordance program can be used on a PC.
4. The great majority of the software programs of the Hebrew Bible represent Codex Leningradensis or BHS. In principle, these two sources should be identical, as BHS is based on codex L, but in practice they are not. The so-called Michigan-Claremont-Westminster text, the main text used, has been corrected according to codex L. On the other hand, the Bar-Ilan database, Tokhnit "HaQeter", displays the Aleppo codex, which differs in only a small number of details from codex L, but for students of grammar these differences are important. No less than twelve software packages offer the Hebrew Bible text, all reflecting BHS or codex L, except the Bar-Ilan database.3 The text of MT is thus available in several commercial software packages bearing such names as Accordance, Bible Works ,4 Jewish Classics Library, Quest , Logos, WordSearch, Gramcord, Bible Windows, Global Jewish Database, etc.
5. The text of the Qumran biblical manuscripts is not available in any software package, even though several texts have been encoded privately. At this point, they are not as easily used in research as the non-biblical Qumran scrolls.
6. Internal differences between the medieval manuscripts of MT are only researchable electronically for the few books which have been recorded by the HUBP (part of Isaiah, as well as Jeremiah and Ezekiel). The Masoretic accents are accessible in Accordance, Bible Works 5, and in the Tochnit HaQeter of Bar-Ilan. These programs allow for studies on the frequency of specific accents in the individual books and in the Bible as a whole, as well as their internal sequence and interrelation. Similarly, research can be performed in these programs on the vowels alone--for example, on irregular vocalizations, combinations of vowels and consonants--and on linguistic patterns, such as the pattern qetel or qitalon with a wildcard for the waw of qitalon.
7. The Masorah Magna and Parva are scheduled to be available in the Bar-Ilan database.
8. The Samaritan Pentateuch is available within Accordance in the edition of Tal (Tal 1994), without morphological analysis.
9. Besides Hebrew Scripture, nine software packages also contain the LXX encoded by the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) from the edition of A. Rahlfs (Rahlfs 1935), without any variants. The variants of the LXX have been encoded by CCAT in Philadelphia, though not yet for all books. Other tools available are the text editions by H. B. Swete (Swete, ed. 1887-1912); A. E. Brooke, N. McLean, and H. St. J. Thackeray (Brooke, McLean, and Thackeray, eds. 1906-); and F. Field (Field, ed. 1875); the grammar of F. C. Conybeare and St. G. Stock (Conybeare and Stock 1905); the introductions by H. B. Swete (Swete 1914) and G. Dorival, M. Harl, and O. Munnich (Dorival, Harl, and Munnich 1988); and modern translations, some of them as scanned images.
10. The edition of the Vulgate is available in nine software sources.5
11. The Targumim and the Peshitta are available in several sources, foremost on the website of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL), together with lexicographical facilities and search capacities.6
12. The key to the effective use of any software program of Scripture texts is the availability in the background of a lemmatization and of a morphological analysis (grammatical tagging) of all the Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Syriac text words. This lemmatization allows the user both to search all the text words and to produce concordances.7 While word searches are available in several programs, Accordance is probably the only one that enables the creation of complete concordances. Such concordances can be produced for any text range defined: any combination of biblical books or parts thereof, combinations of verses, pericopes, or selections (e.g., the Deuteronomistic verses, Wisdom literature, or late biblical prose or poetry). The defining of such ranges is subjective and can be changed at any time. The search facilities of the various programs differ; some are more sophisticated than others. The most sophisticated programs, Accordance and Bible Works 5, also allow for the search of morphological features, such as the frequency of the individual binyanim of the verb and unusual nominal forms, and also the search for combinations of lexical and grammatical information. The morphological and lexical information in the background of Accordance also allows for grammatical and orthographical studies on the Qumran nonbiblical texts.
13. Although these morphological analyses usually follow one central source, such as the lexicon of Köhler-Baumgartner in the case of Hebrew Scripture, they are subjective, and a word which one scholar considers a noun may be considered by another to be a verb. One scholar may ascribe a given form to the niph'al, while another one considers it to be a hitpa'el. One source discerns one main meaning of dever, while another one differentiates between two homographs. The morphological analysis behind Accordance probably places too many groups of words under the heading of "particle." This subjectivity comes to light when reviewing the differences between the existing morphological analyses.8
14. The morphological analyses that are at the base of the software packages should be considered separate entities, since they derive from independent sources. Seven different morphological analyses of Hebrew Scripture are based on codex L/BHS. These include the Westminster Hebrew Old Testament Morphology of Groves-Wheeler (available in at least five software packages), the Werkgroep Informatica (including syntax and clause hierarchy) from Amsterdam, the Bar-Ilan analysis, and the analysis of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, as well as additional commercial and private morphological analyses. For the LXX, I know of just one such analysis, that of CATSS-Taylor-Wheeler, available in seven different software packages. For the Targumim, there is the analysis of CAL, while for the Vulgate there is no such analysis, so searching in that translation is rather restricted. Four different morphological analyses exist for the non-biblical Qumran texts.
15. The availability of different lemmatizations enlarges the search facilities, as different lemmatizations and grammatical decisions yield different results. Accordingly, differences relating to exactly the same search executed in different software packages may derive from (1) differences in the base text, among them errors; (2) differences in tagging words9 and determining of lemmas; (3) differences due to the capabilities and assumptions of the software. In an example given by Hahne (n. 7), the different programs provide differing numbers for the occurrences of the pair of Greek particles men and de.
16. The bilingual CATSS database, in Accordance, allows for the examination of Greek-Hebrew equivalences, select features in translation technique, and searches of Hebrew or Greek grammatical features.
17. In the following list, commercial products are indicated with an asterisk.10
MT, Codex Leningrad B19A/BHS11
MT, Codex Leningrad B19A, scanned images
MT, Aleppo codex
MT, Masoretic accents
MT, Aleppo codex, Masorah Magna and Parva
Texts from the Judean Desert
Ben Sira, Hebrew, medieval manuscripts
LXX, codex S, scanned images
LXX, codex W, scanned images
LXX, codex 1219 (Freer) of Psalms, scanned images
Greek Scripture, papyri
LXX, edition of A. Rahlfs (Stuttgart 1935) (encoded by TLG)
LXX, edition of H. B. Swete, scanned images
LXX, edition of Brooke-McLean, scanned images
LXX, variants, Göttingen and Cambridge editions (incomplete)
LXX, Hexapla, edition of F. Field (Oxford 1875), scanned images
LXX, H. B. Swete, Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge: University Press, 1914), scanned images
LXX, Dorival-Harl-Munnich, La Bible grecque des Septante (1994), scanned images
LXX, grammar, F. C. Conybeare and St. G. Stock (Boston 1905)
LXX, grammar, H. St. J. Thackeray (Cambridge 1909)
LXX, translations into modern languages
LXX, translations into modern languages, work in progress
Vulgate: Edition of R. Weber (Stuttgart, 1969, 1983)
Search facilities on the basis of a non-lemmatized text:
Targumim (Onk., Ps-Jon., Targumim to the Prophets and Hagiographa, Pal. Targumim)
Targum to Job
Targumim, Pseudo-Jonathan and Onkelos, translations
Targumim to the megillot and Psalms:
Targumim from Qumran
Peshitta, codex A, scanned images
Hebrew and Greek Scripture compared
Biblia Hebraica Quinta (in preparation)
Novum Testamentum Graece (Nestle-Aland)
CATSS, Morphologically Analyzed LXX text (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ - accessible, with corrections by D. Wheeler (version 2.2), in:
Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar
S. R. Driver, F. Brown, and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford 1957)
L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner and J. J. Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Translated and edited under the supervision of M. E. J. Richardson
H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (9th ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1940) with E. A. Barber, A Greek-English Lexicon, A Supplement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968) and P. G. W. Glare, Revised Supplement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) (the latter three: intermediate edition)
J. Lust, E. Eynikel, and K. Hauspie, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, I-II (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft,1992, 1996)
G. Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (trans. G. W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968-1976), abridged edition
W. Bauer, W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, W. D. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature (2nd ed.; Chicago/London 1979; 3rd ed.)
Anchor Bible Dictionary (ed. D. N. Freedman; New York/London: Doubleday, 1992)
PhotoGuide (linked with text files)
© TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, 2003.
1Special thanks are due to R. Brown, A. Groves, R. A. Kraft, and G. Marquis, as well as others, for information provided and criticisms given. The websites by Joel Kalvesmaki (http://students.cua.edu/16kalvesmaki/lxx/), David L. Washburn (http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur/), and by Jim Adair, as part of a service provided by TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, the TC Links page (http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/TC-links.html) were also helpful. To the best of my knowledge, no printed bibliography exists with the exception of the following sources, which are not very helpful as the data in this field change very rapidly: Hughes 1987, Lancashire 1991.
2For example, since the CATSS database was planned way back in 1980, we can now perform only limited tasks in the comparison of MT with the LXX. When that database was planned, the current more sophisticated programs did not yet exist. Besides, the CATSS database was construed on a mainframe, as microcomputers were not yet in common usage.
3In all programs, slight adjustments were made to the appearance of the text, as all used different fonts. The text was first made available for word-processing using the Hebraica font created and distributed (font and text) by Linguist's Software (Phil Payne in Seattle). Until Hebrew Bible search software became available, this was probably the most widely used version in word processing. There are now many word-processing versions of the text available using fonts produced by the various Bible software companies. Some of the companies have licensed Linguist's Software fonts. The most common of which I am aware are: Hebraica I & II and the New Jerusalem font (Linguist's Software), the BibleWorks font, the BibleWindows font, SuperHebrew (I think the predecessor to Hebraica?), and the Gramcord font. Then there is SIL's font (called SIL Ezra; public domain). Scholars Press also produced a public domain font, SPTiberian (now maintained by the Religion and Technology Center). In addition, Accordance uses its own font called Yehudit, while Gramcord for Windows uses a different font. Each of these fonts maps the Hebrew a little differently, so the vendors have revised the text for use with their fonts. A text in one particular font is not easily converted to another font. The advent of Unicode will solve most of the problems involving variant font maps. The SBL is developing a public domain Unicode font, which is scheduled for initial release later in 2003. (Thanks to Alan Groves for much of this information.)
4See a detailed review of this package in: http://www.bibfor.de/archiv/02-2.schmidl.htm.
5For the history of the encoding of the Vulgate text and for further sites, see the data provided by R. A. Kraft in http://www.le.ac.uk/elh/grj1/linksa.html.
6Based mainly on Mikra'ot Gedolot HaKeter (Bar-Ilan University Press, 1992-2000) as well as on various editions. For details, see http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/searching/targum_info.html.
7See http://www.balboa-software.com/semcomp/scbible2.htm for H. Hahne's descriptions of these aspects in "Using a Computer in Biblical and Theological Studies, Lesson 6: Computer-Assisted Bible Study, Part 2."
8I have seen several grammatical decisions in Accordance which I consider undesirable, and in addition, I've found mistakes in the morphological analysis of the Hebrew, which, however, are being corrected.
9Hahne (n. 7) compared a few software packages for the New Testament. Thus, some programs classify kai as an adverb, while others classify it as a conjunction.
10In this area, data change constantly, and the use of a web search engine such as google.com may provide additional information on new projects and products. Use of the search facility in google.com under "images" provides further links under such headings as "Septuagint," "Dead Sea Scrolls," and "Hebrew manuscripts."
11All these texts are ultimately based on the Michigan-Claremont text, first encoded by H. Van Dyke Parunak and R. Whitaker and corrected in 1983-87 by a team from Westminster Theological Seminary led by A. Groves and E. Tov.
Brooke, Alan England; McLean, Norman; and Thackeray, Henry St. John, eds. 1906-. The Old Testament in Greek. London: Cambridge University Press.
Conybeare, F. C., and Stock, St. George 1905. Grammar of Septuagint Greek. Boston: Ginn; reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988.
Dorival, Gilles; Harl, Marguerite; and Munnich, Olivier 1988. La Bible grecque des Septante: Du judaïsme hellénistique au christianisme ancien. Paris: Editions du Cerf/Editions du C.N.R.S.
Field, Frederick, ed. 1875. Origenis Hexaplorum. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964.
Hughes, John J. 1987. Bits, Bytes & Biblical Studies: A Resource Guide for the Use of Computers in Biblical and Classical Studies. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
Lancashire, I. 1991. The Humanities Computing Yearbook 1989-90: A Comprehensive Guide to Software and Other Resources. Pp. 18-31 (Biblical Studies). Oxford: Clarendon.
Rahlfs, Alfred 1935. Septuaginta. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
Swete, Henry Barclay, ed. 1887-1912. The Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Swete, Henry Barclay 1914. An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek. 2d ed. Revised by Richard Rusden Ottley. With an Appendix containing the Letter of Aristeas, edited by H. StJ. Thackeray. London: Cambridge University Press; reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1989.
Tal, Abraham 1994. The Samaritan Pentateuch, Edited According to MS 6 (C) of the Shekhem Synagogue. Texts and Studies in the Hebrew Language and Related Subjects 8. Tel Aviv: University of Tel Aviv.