Greek & Hebrew Descriptive Terms

[Rod Wisdom]

When I view the available modules for Greek and Hebrew texts, I see several terms I have never been exposed to.  What do these terms mean?

 

Tagged

Morphological tagged

Grammatical tagged

Phrase tagged

Apparatus

Sigla

[Joel Brown]

• "Tagged" means that other information has been added to the text, but this could be anything.  Perhaps it is Strong's numbers, perhaps the lexical form, perhaps the part of speech.  Normally it refers to a Morphological tagging, but not always.

 

• "Morphologically Tagged" means that each word has had its lexical form, part of speech, and specific conjugation added to it.  All of this information is available for easy view or searching.  For instance, I can look at εὑρίσκοντες in Acts 4:21, and be told:

 

εὑρίσκοντες heuriskontes  εὑρίσκω  heuriskō  Verb pres act part masc plur nom  to find (Predicate) 

 

[ESVS] G2147  finding  

 

All of that information is either part of the morphological tag, or uses the morphological tag indirectly (such as finding the ESVS word).

 

• I believe "Grammatically tagged" is essentially equivalent to Morphologically tagged.

 

• Phrase tagged is a special enhancement to Strong's style tagging, of connecting words between languages.  Since often words do not translate one-to-one, but perhaps one-to-three or three-to-one, or any such variation.  Phrase tagging attempts at more closely showing these connections.  I believe only the Mounce NT and NIV-11GKE support Phrase Tagging as of now.  There's a blog and video here which can help highlight how it works: https://www.accordancebible.com/NIV11-GKE

 

• Apparatus refers to another document ("Tool") that references the source material for an edition.  For instance, there are thousands of greek manuscripts out there.  Was there variance in a passage between the different manuscripts?  An apparatus may list that.  They are absolutely essential in studying the source behind the compiled texts we use, but not essential if that is not of importance to you.

 

• Sigla refer to the marks within a text that connect it to the apparatus.  For instance, consider this excerpt from Matt 3:15:  εἶπεν  ⸂πρὸς αὐτόν⸃· ἄφες.  The little angle marks you find before the 2nd word and after the 3rd word refer to the apparatus, which would clarify how there was manuscript variance here.  Specifically, that certain manuscripts used αυτω instead of πρὸς αὐτόν.

 

I hope this helps!

[Rod Wisdom]

Joel,

Your explanation if very helpful.  Thank you.  I currently own the NA28 GNT tagged module as well as the Greek Septuagint Rahlfs revised and tagged module.  I want to add a Hebrew OT text module.  I am confused about a few issues.  First, I see three different Hebrew texts offered, Masoretic based, something based on Leningradensis, and something based on Stuttgartensia.  I have been led to believe that the text of the Old Testament in most translations was based on the Masoretic text, but now I'm not sure.  Which Hebrew text should I be using?

 

I am confused about an abbreviation I find in the modules.  It is HMT-W4.  There is a module titled, "Grammatical Syntax add-on to HMT-W4.  I can't figure out  what HMT-W4 is.  Is it one of the Hebrew texts?

 

I am also unclear on which module I need to use the Accordance interlinear feature.  As I said, I have NA28 and Ralhfs tagged.  If I add a tagged Hebrew text, I don't know whether to add the MT-LXX Interlinear Database module or the Hebrew Masoretic and Septuagint Parallel. 

 

Can you help me understand these issues please?

 

Rod Wisdom

[Helen Brown]

Rod: All the Hebrew texts that we have are based on the same manuscript: Leningrad, so the only very minor differences arise in how the dots are interpreted, is it an artefact or a dot in or over this letter. Our texts are:

• HMT-W4: Hebrew Masoretic Text with the latest full morphological tagging from Westminster, and the option to add the matching syntax developed for us by Robert Holmstedt.
• BHS-T: Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensia, the version of the German Bible Society that comes with sigla and apparatus, and to which we added the Westminster tagging.
• MT-ETCBC: This text has its own tagging from ETCBC (was known WIVU) and comes with the ETCBC Syntax.

I would start with HMT-W4 which is included in all the Hebrew Collections.

[Joel Brown]

Rod, to answer your question about the Interlinear:

 

Any tagged text can use the interlinear, but the capabilities can vary.  It sounds like you are referring to the MT-LXX interlinear capability, to show greek words under the hebrew, or vice versa, in the Old Testament. This only requires the MT-LXX Interlinear Database.