About Open Scroll

Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek do not always place meaning into a sentence in the same way English does. A single word may carry an action, person, number, direction, relationship, or intensity that English expresses with several separate words. Hebrew and Aramaic often build related words from shared roots. Greek can show distinctions in form, voice, and the way an action is viewed. English translations communicate the meaning in readable English, while the word cards help a reader see some of the additional detail present in the written word beneath the translation.

The word-by-word pages hold the 66 books. The reading Bibles add more: the Catholic Douay-Rheims has 73 books, the King James Version with Apocrypha has 80, the 1917 Jewish Publication Society Tanakh is the Hebrew Bible in English, in the Jewish order of its books, and the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), Brenton’s English translation of 1851, has 52 books. 1 Enoch and Jubilees, from the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible, are included on their own, in R. H. Charles’s translations of 1917.

• Every word has its own card. A card separates one Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek word from the rest of the verse so it can be looked at closely. It shows the word as written, a plain-English say line, its smaller pieces where available, and dictionary meanings connected to that word. Some words are simple. Others carry several layers of information in one form.
• The words stay in the order they were written. Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and English do not build sentences in the same order. A translation may move words so the sentence reads naturally in English. The cards retain the original written order so the reader can see where a word appears in relation to the words around it, notice repetition, and see when a sentence is shaped differently from English.
• The English verse is at the top of every verse. The American Standard Version is English and is best read as English by someone who understands English naturally and fluently. A translated verse is best understood first as a complete English sentence, then within its paragraph, chapter, and book. The material below the verse is for deeper looking.
• Some words carry a wider range than one English word can show. A Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek word may be translated by different English words in different verses because its exact sense depends on the sentence around it. At times, an original-language word includes an idea that English has no single matching word for. English may need a phrase, several words, or a choice between related meanings.
• Repeated words can reveal patterns in a chapter. When a word returns, the repetition may connect people, actions, places, promises, warnings, questions, or ideas. It can help a reader notice what a writer returns to, what changes from one verse to another, or where a theme appears again.

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• The English verse is the American Standard Version, published in 1901 and now in the public domain. Open Scroll uses the ASV because the word-level data needed for this project has been compiled, checked, and made available for that English text. Its public-domain status also allows the complete Bible text to be included freely. The verses are shown without punctuation marks so the word-by-word material can sit beneath them in a consistent pattern.
• The Hebrew text follows the Leningrad Codex. A codex is a handwritten book, rather than a scroll. The Leningrad Codex is a carefully copied Hebrew Bible manuscript from about A.D. 1008. It contains the complete Hebrew Bible, including Hebrew letters, vowel points, reading marks, and traditional notes. It is called Leningrad because it has long been kept in the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg, formerly called Leningrad. It is a medieval Jewish manuscript copied in Cairo, not a Russian government text.
• The Greek words are connected to the American Standard Version’s English, word by word. English did not come from Greek. English is a Germanic language, while biblical Greek and English use different grammar, word order, and ways of expressing action and relationship. The word cards help a reader see the Greek word or words connected with the English reading and understand why one Greek form may require several English words.
• The meanings come from established language-reference works. These include Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek lexicons, dictionaries, concordances, and word-reference systems used in Bible study and scholarship. Where Strong’s numbers appear in a resource, they are identification numbers that help connect a reader to a dictionary entry. The number is useful for finding a word, but is not itself the meaning of the word. Every exact source and its license is listed on Bible Sources, Credits & Licenses.

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