Greek Study Helps
For studying the Greek text of the New Testament
To look up Greek words related to specific Bible texts:
You can download free software to help you from E-sword (if you are using Windows):
E-sword is also available for I-phone and I-pad at:
ADVANTAGES
- This software gives you a range of meanings for a particular word,
- Also (by right-clicking on the word) it helps you locate where this word is used elsewhere—in that particular ‘book’ or throughout the whole New Testament.
LIMITATIONS
- This software only gives you the Greek words related to the text of the King James Version (KJV). So it does not always reflect the words that are now preferred in the most up to date versions of the Greek New Testament.
- It only gives the definitions of the primary words in a particular verse
- Because it only shows the root verbs, it doesn’t help you know the tense of the verb; nor does it help you know if a second person verb is singular or plural (when the pronoun is implied but not present). This is a particular limitation when your English translation does not make a distinction between plural and singular in the second person (‘you’).
For more detailed descriptions of each Greek word (in its various forms) as used in the New Testament, you can open a free pdf version of this classic book at the above link. It is a large file and will take several minutes to load.
To see how a word fits into a whole sentence structure in the Greek:
1. You can download free software from, or just consult the following site, Scripture4All (S4A): http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Greek_Index.htm
ADVANTAGE
- There are grammatical helps connected to each word. For example, you can see what the tense of the verb is, and if it is singular or plural in the second person (when no pronoun is attached to the verb). This is important for readers of modern English where this distinction is not made in either the verb form or the pronoun (‘you’).
LIMITATION
- Because this site also uses the King James Version, it doesn’t always reflect the words and sentence order of an up-to-date Greek New Testament.
OR...
2. To make use of a more recent Greek text, you can go to a website that links the Greek text to the New American Standard Version [NASB]). For example, if you click on the following link, you can look at Ephesians 3:9 (that relates to Med.#6) and see that NASB follows the more up-to-date Greek text, which uses the word oikonomia ('administration' of the Mystery) instead of the word koinonia ('fellowship' of the Mystery) that is connected to the older King James Version (KJV).
http://www.biblestudytools.com/interlinear-bible/passage/?q=ephesians+3:9&t=nas#
To research another verse, or whole passage, just type the reference into the 'Find it' window at the top of the page.
ADVANTAGES
- Same
LIMITATIONS
- You only get definitions of primary words in each verse
- As with all of these resources, you don’t get the help offered by a complete Greek New Testament, that gives you manuscript information and the relative strength of a preferred word or phrase in the cases where various manuscripts differ in their readings. (For the Greek New Testament I used for my translations, see Bible Translations Used, note #ii).
For a Greek-English lexicon of the Septuagint translation of the Tenakh (Old Testament:
You can go to the following site:
http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/septuagint/default.asp
NOTE: A study lexicon of the Hebrew text is available at:
http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm