New Testament Exegesis
Using Free Resources Available For TheWord
Greetings, fellow pilgrims.
The more I use TheWord Bible software, the more I like it. Here are some things that
I love about it:
- The ability to have multiple “word lookup dictionaries” that work together in the
Bible views
- Multiple Bible windows with independent settings
- Inline Cross References & Inline Commentary Links
- Inline Commentaries
Now individually, each of these features are quite nice. But collectively, working
in concert? Well, these tools make TheWord sing!
I’d like to show you what I’ve discovered about using TheWord for New Testament exegesis
- all with the amazing free resources already available for TheWord.
Let’s start with your shopping list of modules. And yes - these are all freebies!
OFFICIAL MODULES AVAILABLE INSIDE TheWord VIA THE DOWNLOADING INSTALLER:
[Note: from within TheWord, go to “Add Titles,” and select these resources.]
1. Bible - KJV (should be included with installation, but if not, go get it)
2. Dictionary - Liddle-Scott-Jones Lexicon of Classical Greek (LSJ)
3. Dictionary - Little-Scott-Jones Lexicon of Classical Greek, An Intermediate Greek
Lexicon (MLSJ)
4. Dictionary - Mickelson’s Enhanced Strong’s Dictionary (should be included with
installation, too, but if not, go get it)
5. Dictionary - Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary of American English
6. Dictionary - International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
7. Dictionary - American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
USER MODULES AVAILABLE INSIDE TheWord VIA THE DOWNLOADING INSTALLER
[Note: from within TheWord, go to “Add Titles” and then, in the top right corner
of that window, click “Official Word Repository” and then choose “Wordmodules.com”.
Then you’ll be able to select these resources.]
8. Bible - Textus Receptus with Interlinear (TRi)
9. Commentary - Henry Alford’s Alford’s Greek Testament (4 Vols)
10. Commentary - Johann Bengel’s Gnomon of the New Testament (5 Vols)
11. Commentary - Heinrich Meyer’s Critical Exegetical Commentary on the NT (20 Vols)
12. Commentary - William R. Nicoll’s Expositor’s Greek New Testament (5 Vols)
13. Dictionary - the “Combo Dictionary: BDB/Thayer/Strong/King James Concordance/TenseVoiceMood”
BTSK+
14. Dictionary - Latin to English Dictionary
15. Dictionary - Trench’s Synonyms of the New Testament
16. Dictionary - Concordance to the Greek Scriptures
17. DDT TW Download Treasury of Scripture Knowledge inline cross-references
By the way - you can utilize other modules, too; but for Greek exegesis, these are
currently the best free modules available for use.
Building Your Layout
Create a new layout and save it. I called this one “Greek Exegesis” - but you may
want to call it something else.
STEP ONE – Setting Up Your Exegetical Bible
We’ll start with the primary Bible exegetical window. If you have other windows open,
go ahead and close them. Once it is the only window open, “dock it” to the “middle
area.” On the Bible Window menu, make sure the “eyeball” (which is really called
the “Verse Target” icon) is not selected; also, make sure the “paper clip” (verse
synchronization) it not selected, too.
Now for this Bible, here are the Bible window options (the “gear” icon) that need
to be set:
General behavior and Compare view options - make sure you have the “Arrange Bible
Texts” set to “in columns....”
Strong’s numbers - Check “Show Strong’s numbers”. And choose the “Mickelson” dictionary
for the Strong’s lookup. Also, select “Show no link, just show in a popup....”
Morphology codes - Check the “Show morphology codes” box. Make sure the box is set
to “RMAC....” I have the rest of the boxes on this page unselected.
Footnotes and Cross-references - Check the “Show cross-references” and select at
least one set. The TSKe is an excellent set!
Commentary links - (This is not where you set up your inline commentaries.) Choose
the commentaries you want available as “popup links” right under your Bible text.
In this Bible view, I suggest you only place the commentaries that are verse by verse.
Also, do not select the commentaries that we’re going to place inline - that would
be redundant. EXAMPLE: check “Barnes,” “Poole,” “RWP,” “VWS,” etc., but not “Alford,”
“Bengel,” “Meyer,” nor “Nicoll. NOTE: The default setting is to only show the popup
when the CTRL button is held down. I always change that to “When the mouse moves
over the commentary link.”
Inline commentaries - Check “Show inline commentaries,” and choose to do so “at the
right of each verse.” I don’t like to “Show title before each entry” - because the
“Show floating header” keeps everything better organized, especially on those longer
verse comments. Now: this is where we’ll select our 4 Greek intensive NT commentaries:
Alford, Bengel, Meyer, & Nicoll Exp GNT. (Those “tab names” may be slightly different
in your setup. But you know what to look for.)
Word lookup dictionaries - Check “Lookup words in dictionaries as mouse moves over
Bible viewer.” Select “Use the same dictionaries set for all Bible modules.” Also
check “If there is a Lemma for the word, use it instead.....” Uncheck “Show
definitions
only when CTRL is pressed.” (If you want the popups to only happen when you mouseover
a word AND hit the CTRL button, make sure this setting stays checked. I prefer the
auto-popup.) And check “If more than one dictionaries....” Now you’re ready to select:
ATSBD, ISBE, Latin, LSJ, MLSJ, Trench, Webster. (If you have other favorite or premium
Bible dictionaries, like Eerdman’s, feel free to add those, too. If you add one,
you may want to remove ATSBD or ISBE, or both. Or not - keep them all!) The dictionaries
you choose in this setting will have mouseover popups in all of the inline commentaries.
Word click options - There are five boxes on the page. Check them all.
General options - change the number to 750. If you find the popups are happening
too quickly, you can make the number greater. If you find they lag a little, make
the number smaller. To me, 750 is just about perfect (sometimes too fast, and sometimes
too slow).
Other settings - Feel free to experiment with other settings. They will not affect
how this layout works with the exegetical tools.
Your screen should look mostly like this screenshot (I didn’t include the floating
header in the pic). Set your Bible version to “TRi”. Now, before we proceed, why
not do some judicious “mouseovering” in the Bible and inline commentaries? I think
you’re going to like what you see! (Screenshot from Rom 2:8; mouseover the image
to see more detail.)
Make sure you mouseover: 1) Greek words in Bible; 2) morphology codes in Bible; 3)
Commentary links in the Bible; 4) English words in the commentaries; 5) Greek words
in the commentaries (they won’t all popup, by the way); and 6) try out some Latin
words in Alford. (Examples of each type can be seen with the red boxes in the above
picture.)
By the way - you can toggle the Cross-references on and off with the “X” key (notice
mine are off); and the commentary links with the “L” key (notice mine are on).
Now, if you’re like me, it’s Christmas time. Who wants to read any more?! Well, I
hope you do (or at least, you will). Because there’s more good stuff to learn.
STEP TWO – Making All Of Your Windows
We’re going to add 5 windows. 1) A book view for all of your dictionaries. Dock it
to the “bottom row right”. Make sure you choose “Dictionaries” as the book set. All
three “link” options need to be checked. 2) A “book search” window. Dock it to the
“bottom row center.” 3) Another book view - this one for all of your commentaries.
Dock it just to the left of the book search window you made. Make sure you choose
“Commentaries” for the book set. And all three link options must be checked. 4) A
“Bible search” window, docked just to the left of your commentary window. And 5)
a Bible window, docked all the way to the left. (We’ll set the options for this secondary
Bible view in the next step.)
Now your screen should look something akin to this (mouseover image to see dashed
portion enlarged):
STEP THREE – Setting Your Options For Your Secondary Bible
Click on your secondary Bible (lower left portion of your monitor). On the Bible
menu, make sure you “select” the “eyeball” (for “Verse Target”) and “select” the
“paperclip,” choosing your primary Bible view as your synchronizing view.
Now for your Secondary Bible View options....
Strong’s numbers - Check “Show Strong’s numbers” and choose “BTSK+” as the dictionary.
All the rest of the boxes on this page should be unchecked.
Morphology codes - Check “Show morphology codes” and select RMAC.... The rest of
the boxes on this page should be unchecked.
Footnotes and Cross-references - Make sure “Show cross-references” is selected, you
“overlay” the TSKe Xrefs set. Or choose a different set. Or neither.
Commentary links - In this Bible view, I select commentaries that are not verse by
verse, like Lange’s, Ironside, Stedman, etc. Note that while you can scroll through
these comments with the popup, you can also click the link. That will make the commentary
window move to that note from that commentary. (More on this below.)
Inline commentaries - you’ll want to make sure you turn these “off” by unchecking
the “Show inline commentaries” box. But if you want the inline xrefs in more than
one window, then leave them on. Or, choose “TSK” in the top window, and a different
set of xrefs in the secondary window.
Word lookup dictionaries - select all Bible dictionaries like “ISBE,” American Tract
Society Bible Dictionary, etc. In this secondary Bible window, only the text of this
Bible version will have popup dictionary lookups. (If you want the popups to only
happen when you mouseover a word AND hit the CTRL button, make sure this setting
stays checked. I prefer the auto-popup.)
General options - set this number to 750; and adjust up or down if you want your
mouseovers to happen slower or faster.
At this point... set up is finished. Whew! Make sure you save your layout when you’re
finished. Also, if you make any changes to your layout options that you want to keep,
make sure you re-save your layout.
How It All Comes Together
Now, with the way you have set up your Greek Exegetical layout, here’s what you can
do:
1) Your four main exegetical commentaries are all visible and scroll with the verse.
All of these commentaries have “word lookup dictionary” clicks available; and even
many of the foreign words will be “mouseoverable” and clickable as well. (NOTE: If
you add a Hebrew dictionary, like Girdlestone, to the “word lookup dictionary” list
in the Exegetical Bible window, when those Greek commentaries reference a Hebrew
word, the click might work there, too!) The amount of supplementary information available
with just a simple mouseover and/or word-click is staggering.
2) Hovering over any of the verses - no matter where they are - will show you a popup.
If you click any of those verses, your secondary Bible will jump right to that verse.
But your primary Exegetical Bible won’t move. Yesss! If/when you want your secondary
Bible to come back to your main verse, just click anywhere on your primary Exegetical
window.
3) The commentary links in the main Bible window (the khaki-colored commentary links)
are visible if you mouseover them. And if you click one of them, then the commentary
window at the bottom center of the page will move to that position in that commentary.
Very nice for longer readings, or just to do a little more study. Just temporarily
maximize that window, read the longer entry or entries, and when you’re ready to
go back to exegesis, simply restore that window.
4) Hovering over the Greek words in the TRi will show you a great deal of original
language information. Mouseovering the KJV in the secondary Bible view will show
you entries related to the English words - history, archaeology, definitions, etc.
When you mouseover the Strong’s number in the secondary Bible window, you’ll find
a truckload of helpful information from BTSK+ (which is conglomerated from several
excellent language resources).
5) The one helpful dictionary that won’t give you popups in the Bible texts from
the Exegetical window is the Greek Concordance. Select that particular dictionary
(“GRC”) in the dictionary window. Now, in the primary Exegetical Bible window, just
click on the TRi word you want to research - and the GRC will move automatically
to that word. (The Strong’s number is clickable for the GRC in the secondary Bible
window.) It will show you how that word is used in the KJV with all of its cognates,
and in all of the verses (TR and LXX). It is quite comprehensive.
6) The book search window that is between your commentaries and dictionaries can
be used for either window. Just make sure you set the search options before each
of the searches you initiate.
7) The Bible search window can search and link to either window. If you click any
of the bible references, the most recently used Bible window will move to that reference.
Conclusion
This layout allows me to do my original language exegesis much faster than anything
else I’ve been able to put together. I think you’re going to like it very much.
I’d very much like to hear from you about any suggestions that you have; troubles
you encounter; or just any other comments you might like to make. Drop me an email,
won’t you?
A Few More Concepts...
Everything I’ve written above is absolutely free. However, for a little bit of money,
you can make a couple of substantial improvements for Greek exegetical work.
1. Go Wide. As in, a widescreen monitor. That 24" never looked so good, did it?
2. There are some premium modules that make a big difference in exegetical work performed
with TheWord.
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament Abridged (TDNTa) - This module is an
excellent Greek dictionary if you want more information on word backgrounds. It works
in a similar fashion to the LSJ/MLSJ, but the TDNTa focuses on the NT usage of the
words, while the LSJ/MLSJ focuses more on the classical usage of the word (Plato,
Socrates, etc.). At $30 - it’s probably the single best “bang for the buck” premium
resource for Greek exegetical work. And it works great in the popups!
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament... (BDAG) - The standard Greek lexical
work recognized by conservatives and liberals alike as the single best Greek lexicon
available at any price. And it works great with TheWord - especially in the popups!
NICNT Romans by Douglas Moo - this is not in commentary format; it is a “commentary
- ebook” hybrid module. But it is excellent for Greek exegetical work, and it is
very nicely formatted to work with TheWord. As Costas releases more individual titles
from this set, you should purchase this one and each of the other individual works.
Expository Notes of Dr. Thomas L. Constable - This is an excellent commentary set
that works beautifully with TheWord! While not strictly exegetical, his excellent
expositional work is based on correct exegetical principles. It is well worth the
$35 purchase price!
