Tool: Resurgence Greek

Via John Simons – Theology, Technology, and Stuff, I discovered the new location for Resurgence Greek (ReGreek.com). It’s now being maintained and further developed by Mars Hill Church.

Resurgence Greek is not a general Bible study tool, but rather a specific tool for folks who know some Greek and want to be able to read and research a bit more quickly. It has a simple interface that allows you to perform the major functions that you will need in quickly studying a passage in Greek. You can click on any Greek word to get a very basic (and I emphasize basic) gloss. In that window there is a magnifying glass icon, one of the few graphic features, that you can select in order to highlight all usages of that word.

In the example that I show here (click on the thumbnail for a full size view), I have highlighted the word proc throughout the book of John. Normally you wouldn’t want to do that with a very common word in a large amount of text, but in this case I wanted to see how long it would take. There was a noticeable, but not annoying delay compared to other actions, which shows that the interface here is quite efficient.

The English Bibles available are the NASB, ESV, and KJV. What might be an annoyance in a more general Bible study tool is appropriate here. For those seeking aid in doing a more rapid study of the Greek text, these versions will be very helpful with their word-by-word literalism.

There is a tutorial and also a concordance page, but you can type in the text you want to view using pretty free formats. Adding new text simply adds columns, though you can conveniently remove them as well. In my testing, all results were very quick.

A standard caveat is required on any such tool. Glosses, such as those provided by clicking on words, are not the same thing as understanding the word in the original language and context. Quick checks with parallel English versions are also not the same thing as understanding the text. A little Greek can be dangerous, if you “[do] not yet know as [you] ought to know” (1 Corinthians 8:2). The best corrective is realizing just where you are, and depending on yourself just that far.

Within that caveat, however, this tool will be a welcome one, especially to those who do not have more advanced Biblical languages in their own Bible software.

For developers, this project will be open source, and there is a full page on collaboration on the ReGreek.com site.