• Nathan, for relentless feedback, extensive proofreading, in too many instances to itemize, as I have been translating.
• Robert Hunt (4/21/2025), for contention that λογος does not mean "word," which I then made mention of in the Introduction.
• Now, how about you?

Introduction

See the following for more detail than what is discussed in this introduction:

https://www.wiebefamily.org/Greek.htm
https://www.wiebefamily.org/Greek_Week.htm
https://www.wiebefamily.org/interest.htm (index to all articles and videos)

Many have endeavored to produce an English translation that is "faithful to the original Greek text."  In reality, they have all produced translations that are faithful to the English at the expense of the Greek, focusing on how to translate into the best English possible, with the tradeoff being how literal, or at least faithful, to the original Greek they can still remain after doing so.  Yet there is and can be no such thing as a "literal, word for word" translation.  The set of words in each language do not have a one to one correspondence to each other, nor does the grammar, nor do the composition and style rules map.  My translation will not accomplish such an impossible feat either, nor even to my own satisfaction, but it will take the additional step of being much more faithful to the Greek, sacrificing proper English grammar, punctuation, composition, and style, bringing out every word, nearly every grammatical construct, and every meaningful subtlety in the original text, only endeavoring to still keep the text readable and understandable in English.  And that is the goal of what I am calling "Garth's Hyper-literal Translation," which I will abbreviate "GHT."  It is not like any translation you have seen before.  I focus on how they said it, rather than how we would say it.  As much as possible, I avoid interpretation ("it says that but means this") but instead say what it says the way it says it.  Where others have fallen short due to an English language mindset, which they impose upon the Greek, I have much more closely followed the sense and flow of the Greek language.  That is why it is so very awkward in English.  It will take some getting used to, to read it this way.  But if you don't know the Greek, this will get you the closest to it, and those who do know Greek may question the virtue of being so "hyper-literal," yet they will have to acknowledge that it brutally accomplishes that objective.

At first it will seem that the GHT is complicated, and that is because the English is so very awkward.  But after a while readers will get used to the flow, recognize the patterns, and see that I have massively simplified the translation of the underlying Greek, producing a translation that has an unprecedented concordance and consistency, minimizing interpretation and ambiguity about what the underlying Greek says, making it so highly predictable that one could almost back-translate it into the original Greek words and grammar.

Notation, punctuation, capitalization

Every word, or construction between spaces, including possible hyphens and slash characters, or as demarcated within underscore characters, maps to one, single, corresponding word in the original Greek text, unless it is in square brackets.  I separately translate every single word in the Greek, something that no other translation does.  I use square brackets to denote something I have added for clarity that is not in the original text.  An [ing] on a participle means it is an aorist or future participle, not a present participle.  As noted in more detail below, I use curly brackets to denote dative and genitive cases and a colon to denote third-person imperatives.  I liberally use hyphens to bring out etymological/morphemes, compound words, and single words from the original that do not have a single English correspondence but can be expressed using multiple English words and/or English morphemes, and underscore to insert separate original words into a hyphenated sequence (usually "_not_").  I use the slash character where I need to convey that a word could be either one or the other English word, or a sense of both or something in between.  Since interrogatives are not punctuated in the Greek, and are not even explicit, I let the text flow as in the original and insert question mark characters in square brackets.  Beyond that, punctuation is simply a best-effort attempt to follow English convention.  There is little to no punctuation in the original Greek text, and not in the English sense or English convention.  I capitalize proper names as in English, but there is no capitalization scheme in Greek.  Verse number placement adheres to the convention originated by the Geneva Bible.

Audience

This translation provides no accommodation for sentimentality, liturgical recitation, or religious traditions of men.  It is for serious bible study for those who do not know Greek (yet), or who do know it but are not yet able to easily sight read it in the way they are able to sight read English at a glance.  Anyone quoting it for the benefit of a wider audience will, in many cases, need to adapt it to flow better in conventional English, but it provides a better starting point for doing so than going about comparing multiple conventional translations and reading commentaries.  If you want to know what the original says, as close to the original as possible, translating every original word and every original grammatical construct, at the expense of nice English, yet still reasonably understandable in English, then this is the translation for you.  However, it is still a translation, not the God-breathed original, no translation can exactly match the original, and you are still responsible as a serious student of the Bible to learn the original language.

Have I put this translation out of reach of some segment of the masses?  For certain, that will be the case.  Various popular English translations target audiences ranging roughly from the third grade level (e.g. NCV and NIrV) to fourth or fifth grade (e.g. The Message) to eighth grade (e.g. NIV) to tenth grade (e.g. ESV) to eleventh grade (e.g. NASB) reading comprehension level; I would say that my "GHT" assumes a high school graduate level of reading comprehension (by 1960's/1970's academic standards, not today's), because of the awkward and unconventional English, certainly much worse than reading the KJV.  But then, the aforementioned translations and so many others are still available, and will continue to be available, if you want something for casual reading and/or recitation.

Certainly, there will be passages of scripture, especially with Paul's writings, which, as Peter said in 2 Peter 3:16, are δυσνοητα "difficult-mind/thought[i.e. hard to understand/comprehend]."  My remedy is not to gloss over and (over)simplify to make for nice, easy-reading English, but to say it as the scripture says it, leaving the reader to labor through and figure it out for himself, rather than resigning and defering to an assumed state of enlightenment on the part of translators interpreting and distilling it down for easy reading, losing original detail as a result.

Academic credentials

I am a retired career electrical/computer hardware design/development engineer and have no academic credentials in any language area.  I am actually promoting that as an advantage.  I have spent many years studying Greek, and during that time have become increasingly frustrated with the products of credentialed academia at all levels.  A student learns from a professor, that student becomes a professor, and then teaches students likewise.  Academic status quo traditions and dogmas develop, as the student must agree with the professor to succeed academically, and then the professors dare not deviate from the status quo that they were taught, and which other professors profess, since they must maintain that status quo to maintain their own standing.  I've found critical thinking skills lacking as each just repeats the teachings of the one before him, without questioning whether it was ever right in the first place.  Also, students are not taught the language as much as they are taught to translate the language into proper English, such that the consequence ends up being that the original language cannot be understood until it is translated into corresponding English and interpreted by an English language mindset.  Ultimately, English becomes the master language by which ancient languages like this are evaluated, even those that preceded English by a thousand years or more, before English even existed as a language.

English translations today can be traced back to Tyndale, Erasmus, Wycliffe, even St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate.  Wycliffe translated from the Latin Vulgate and did not know Greek.  Later reformation-era translators, due to their Roman Catholic schooling, were likewise schooled experts in Latin, pioneers but novices at Greek.  Anything we have learned about ancient Greek since then is rarely applied to Bible translation, because of the reluctance of academics to deviate from the status quo that dates back five hundred years, and an unwavering devotion to the Protestant Reformation, which dates back to that long ago, yet is but one of many significant events in the historic timeline of Christianity.  Ironically, translation tradition among the academics today is consistent with the works of those "beginners" at Greek five hundred years ago.  Who would dare to deviate from that?

By and large, translators since then have already decided what it says before they translate it, because they are not neophytes unaccustomed to reading English translations, and they only dare to find a different way to rephrase the English, keeping it consistent, yet not being too concordant with what was before so as to risk a copyright violation.  This all should be evident to anyone comparing the so many different English translations of the Bible.

I have no academic credential, academic reputation, clerical ordination, or employment, at risk.  I cannot be fired, defrocked, decertified, or deprived of any source of income.  What is accomplished here stands on its own.  Don't like it?  Don't complain in some public forum about me, and make pooh-pooh, just so, ipse dixit declarations, ad populum, ad lapidem, ad antiquitatem, ad vericundiam, ad hominem, ad baculum, and nirvana fallacy.  If you consider yourself competent enough to critique this, then contact me and tell me what specifically I got wrong and why, and I will fix it.  My modus operandi is that of an engineer, as an innovator and problem solver.  If I am shown to be wrong, it is not a big deal.  I will simply fix it and acknowledge you by name for the correction (if not trivial or unsubstantial), even if you are a belligerent adversary.  And I have done so in the past.  Otherwise, an appeal to requirement for "academic credential" is not only argumentum ad vericundiam, but hypocritical, as one categorically dismissing this work on that basis would certainly not dismiss Jesus the carpenter, Matthew the tax collector, Luke the physician, the several fishermen, and so on, as disqualified for lack of specific academic credential, as the religious leaders of their time also similarly criticized them, yet we criticize those religious leaders for thus criticizing them.

Let us all bear in mind that we all knew our native language well enough to speak it fluently as a young child before even entering kindergarten, and were entirely competent in all the technical aspects of grammar and composition by the time we graduated from high school (or at least by 1960's/1970's academic standards and prior).  This did not require a college education!

So, why do I suppose that I am in a position to do better than all the rest?  This actually goes back again to my qualifications and mindset as a career engineer.  Where others before me, schooled in the language arts and/or religion, have been subjective and interpretive, I impose a much more strict, disciplined, precise, consistent, objective, mechanical, analytical process and methodology to translation.  And Koine Greek is very mechanical and mundane, lending itself well to that, due to the consequence of how the dialect became κοινη, "common," coming about so quickly, ubiquitously, and by necessity, through the rapid military conquests of Alexander the Great.  Where some others have claimed that their translation "brings out the Greek," I say they have failed, even to the point of eisegesis, reading into the Greek what they want to "bring out" of it.  In fact I consider all other English translations to have followed the method of "dynamic equivalence" (thought for thought to the target language) at best (yes, I am meaning NASB/ESV/KJV/etc.), or mix of translation and interpretive embellishment, or paraphrase, at the other extreme, whereas I would consider mine the only English translation actually achieving, or nearly achieving, "formal equivalence" (faithful to the lexical/grammatical details of the source language).  Scholars will be forced to admit that I have succeeded far more than others; they will just cringe at how much of a disservice to the English language I do to achieve that, and that it would be too much of a distraction to use in any church liturgy or devotional reading of scripture, which is very true.

Many of you don't know Greek.  It is far, far more straightforward than English.  Furthermore, Latin and Greek are sister languages that English is largely based upon, so there are very many lexical and grammatical aspects that carry over to English, making it relatively easy to translate.  This is not rocket science.  You should learn it for yourselves and not just trust me, or, for that matter, any credentialed scholar or translation committee uncritically, or else what you read here will be "yet another translation," and you will again be left asking, "Which translation is the best?"  Remember, it is the conviction of all mainstream Christianity that only the original manuscripts penned by the original authors are God-breathed.  There are some manuscript variations through hand-copying from then up until the time of the printing press, which thankfully are not of any significant consequence, and certainly not significant enough to affect any Christian doctrine.  Then, after that, translations of these manuscripts by men are not God-breathed.  And neither is this one.  But it will be immediately apparent that this "English" translation is much more faithful to the original than those that flow well in English.  Indeed, it will also make apparent how much the popular English translations have departed from the original so as to accommodate and generate nice English.  Yet this is still not "the Bible."  You weren't reading "the Bible" before, and you still aren't now.  The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.  Unless you are reading it in the original language, you aren't reading "the Bible" but someone's translation of the Bible.

"No translation committee?"

Neither Jerome, nor Wycliffe, nor Erasmus, nor Tyndale, were committees, yet are still honored and affirmed.  The first New Testament translation by committee was the protestants' Geneva Bible of 1560, then the Anglican Catholic (Church of England) Bishops' Bible of 1568 and the King James 1611 revision of it.  Translation committees have both advantages and disadvantages.  The committee makes changes more carefully considered by collaboration, pooling the knowledge and experience of multiple contributors, and eliminates spurious opinions.  On the other hand, a status quo and traditions are established, squelching dissent and discordant views that may actually be correct.  Although I assume the responsibility for this translation and am solely the one making the final call, you are potentially part of a "committee" if you provide helpful feedback that results in changes and improvements.

At this point I want to acknowledge the contribution of my son, Nathan, another engineer, who has tirelessly reviewed my work as I have progressed in the translation, by performing consistency checks as I go.  He has developed Python scripts and a SQLite concordance database to catch simple errors and inconsistencies, and has now converted all this to HTML/CSS/Javascript/JSON to create a "GHT Study Tool" with an ever-increasing set of features.  I now consider his work essential to this venture.  So, in a sense, this has now become a "committee" of two.  I am quite certain that I could not have achieved this level of accuracy and consistency without him.

Again, the lack of foundation and accountability to established academia, and even the lack of formal, traditional schooling in the languages, presents some advantages.  Indeed, we are forced to look up and analyze so many things from scratch because we started off without that foundation of having committed to rote memory so much that is just taken for granted.  In the process of looking up so many things that established academic tradition itself takes for granted, we find some things they may have overlooked for centuries.

That said, if you are hunting for some heresy or doctrinal schism, you won't find it here.  Nor any profound revelation hidden from men and only now revealed.  Just more clarity and transparency to the original language at the expense of good English, making the English very awkward to read.  I am simply fed up with overly loose and interpretive translating and paraphrasing, as well as with the traditions of the status quo and corresponding lack of due diligence to the original text, especially where they could have easily been more faithful to the original even without being "hyper-literal," and still rendered it in good English.  Yet I have not discovered anything that would deviate from mainstream Christian orthodoxy in any substantial or consequential way.  Nor am I on some agenda to hunt for and vindicate some doctrinal position.  So, for example, when you see that παρουσια, hyper-literally "being-aside-ia," which I thought would be a bit too hyper-literal, is translated as "presence" in Matt 24, that doesn't mean I am jumping into the laps of Jehovah's Witnesses, their NWT, and their notion of Jesus having already returned, being "invisibly" present since 1914, which is totally ridiculous (both the notion itself and the notion that I would accommodate that).  Rather, "coming," as an aorist participle, would be ελθων, and "arrive" would be some inflection of ηκω.  My translation translates; it does not make eschatological accommodations or implicate any kind of doctrinal statement about anything.

Which manuscripts?

I am examining Scrivener's Textus Receptus 1894, the Byzantine GNT (Robinson), and the NA28 with Critical Apparatus, also Friberg AGNT5 Critical Apparatus (where applicable), and occasionally CNTR critical apparatus (where applicable), checking every instance of every manuscript variation.  I don't categorically affirm one manuscript tradition and disregard the other.  I check each variation in each instance and decide for myself in each instance.  That's what textual critics (including Scrivener, and anyone who promotes a so-called "Textus Receptus") do.  Yet most tend to fall into political camps such that they swear by one and vilify the other, as if Democrats vs. Republicans in today's American political arena, as if simplistically there are, categorically, merely two different collations to choose from, when in reality we have some 5800 Greek manuscripts to consider.  So, I suppose that makes me a nonpartisan "Independent," as I don't align myself with either political platform of textual criticism (and, yes, even you who may be KJV/TR advocates are inherently textual critics).  In general (i.e. as a generalization, not categorically) I have concluded that the 𝔐/Byzantine/Majority/TR manuscript collations are, in general, substantially superior, and, in general, I deem them to be closer to the original, when compared to the Alexandrian/WH/NA/UBS/SBL tradition and basis.  In general, but not always.  My selections correspond to the former maybe something like 95% of the time (anecdotally speaking).  Among the latter tradition, I reckon Codex ℵ/Aleph/Sinaiticus to be a nineteenth century manuscript, so I don't give any weight to it.  Yet I also agree that there are some obvious, blaring defects within the various 𝔐/Byzantine/Majority/TR manuscripts.  And there are multiple variants of TR editions from 1516 all the way to 1894, and those are at variance with the multiple variants of Byzantine/Majority texts.  And let me make this clear:  There are words and variations within the TR tradition Greek New Testament Reformation-era compilations (Erasmus, Estienne/Stephanus, and so on) that cannot be found even in any Byzantine family/era manuscript.  So, these additions/changes clearly originated during the 1500's, however minor they may be.  In the outcome neither the "Democrats" nor the "Republicans," so to speak, can claim a platform without issue.  Yet, as I said, I tend to agree with the "Republicans'" choice of variants "95%" of the time (anecdotally speaking), as you will see.  Again, thankfully, all these manuscript variations hardly ever matter to the meaning and, when they do, it is of little to no significance or consequence.  My faith in the scriptures is thus reinforced, not compromised, to the point that I am not considering it worthwhile to note each individual instance where I have chosen one reading over another, as I think it would be a distraction.  But in general I choose primarily based on which variation is represented by a more diverse and larger number of manuscripts/families, but also secondarily whether there are various multiple supporting readings (not just one or two) that are reckoned as being older, and then after that whether the reading taken by itself obviously makes more sense and is more likely authentic, rather than claim, as the WH/NA/UBS/SBL political camp does, that a particular few (even two, ℵ and B) manuscripts are oldest and therefore best, or, as some in the KJV/TR political camp do, that Church of England Anglican Catholic clergy in the early 1600's were so godly and correspondingly divinely inspired as to have providentially utilized that which corresponded to the original autographs, even going so far as to add words here and there that could not be found in any previous manuscript.

Yet I cannot let my personal biases get in the way.  For example, on one hand, I personally question whether Matt 17:21 "this kind does not go out without prayer and fasting" is original but, in applying a consistent standard for inclusion, it is in my translation.  Yet even that doesn't affect any doctrine, because, as I have said in my articles, it would have to be referring to "this kind" of "unbelief" (the last thing Jesus mentioned), not "this kind" of demon, and that should be obvious, since Jesus didn't "fast and pray" the demon out of the boy.  Furthermore, "kind" isn't even the best translation of γενος, which hyper-literally means "become[noun]," a very general word with a very wide semantic range that refers to something that has become.  But you won't find some comment or footnote embedded in the translation to either point.  On the other hand, KJV/TR-only conspiracy theorists will be disappointed when they do not find their precious Johannine Comma in 1 John 5:7-9, also without further comment or footnote, since no known Greek manuscript before the 1500's has it.  Erasmus may have been pressured into including it for the cause of escaping slander, but I will not be.

After all that I have extensively compared of manuscript variations, the one and only place that might be considered to possibly affect Christian doctrine and practice would be the "snakes" and "poison" references at the end of Mark 16 (and perhaps not even the "snakes" reference, given Luke 10:19 and Acts 28:5, and that αρουσιν, "lift," has such a wide semantic range of meaning).  Some extremists in the WH/NA/UBS/SBL camp suggest that the Mark 16 ending may not be original (while nevertheless always including it, not daring to omit it).  This view, however, is untenable for many reasons, but particularly because early church fathers referenced/quoted the ending hundreds of years before the WH/NA/UBS/SBL camp's so-called "earliest and most reliable manuscripts" omitted it.  The notion was thoroughly critiqued by Scrivener in the late 1800's and should no longer even be a controversy.  Other teachings of the Mark 16 ending are confirmed elsewhere in scripture and are not unique.

I repeat again, that other than the aforementioned instance, any other variation that may possibly present an ambiguity of some meaningful consequence -- and these are very rare -- is resolved by a preponderance of other scriptures for which there is no ambiguity.  Even in the case of the "Johannine Comma," the witness for the deity of Jesus Christ and the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit are so well extensively attested by scripture without it, that the conclusions of the councils of Nicea and Constantinople would not be affected, nor any subsequent.

So much is made of the "oldest" vs. "majority" debate that, reluctantly, I feel compelled to elaborate on it at such length here.  Even granting the categorization of supposedly two competing families of manuscripts, which is a fallacy to begin with, since there are 5800 manuscripts, each of which is not labeled with a category, would the "oldest" manuscripts be better or would the manuscripts of the "majority" be better?  Both have further fallacies.  Let me explain.

In the negative, the "oldest" are not known to be "oldest."  The manuscripts did not have dates inscribed onto them.  Neither were they radiocarbon dated, which requires a sample and therefore is destructive, so is not ever done.  They are said to be of such and such a date by comparing style of orthography, choice of ink, choice of "paper" (so to speak), etc. with what is known to be of a certain era.  That does not present the rigor necessary to date with absolute certainty.

In the negative, the "oldest" are not known to be closer in accuracy to the original.  Consider that the "paper" and ink they used was very expensive, unlike sheets of paper today with negligible cost, which you read and then just toss into the trash or recycle bin.  Yet, similar to the "paper" of today, it deteriorated with time and use, and wore out.  Without a printing press for mass production, or a modern photocopier, let alone soft-copy digitization, it had to be manually copied by hand at some point, and then that copy kept getting used until it became worn out and illegible.  So, why, perhaps, would we find a good quality copy of something really old?  Perhaps because it wasn't worn out from use.  Why wasn't it worn out?  Because, perhaps, it had errors in it to begin with, and they knew it by reviewing it, so it was tossed into a drawer somewhere instead of being circulated and used until it was worn out and illegible.  Why wasn't it thrown in the trash?  Because it wasn't totally useless, it represented some scribe's hard work, and because it was, after all, the word of God, just with a few typographical errors, missing words, or whatever, inconsequential to Christian doctrine and practice.  On top of that, since "paper" was so expensive, it could have been designated to be washed and re-used, but never was.  Then, fifteen hundred years later, this manuscript gets discovered, judged to be of such antiquity, and is in good condition.  Now we know why.  "Perhaps."  That "perhaps" is no less speculative than the idea that it was more accurate because it was older, but it is a better educated guess, because these various minority copies of such antiquity have many discrepancies when compared to each other, so collectively have many errors.

In the positive, the majority could then be copies of older copies that were more accurate than the so-called "oldest" copies that were not as accurate and lasted longer because they weren't worn out because they weren't preferred to be read, knowing that they had errors.

Then, on the other hand, we grant that the "oldest" may indeed be the oldest and most accurate because of being closer to the original autographs.

Then, we grant that the "majority" are not necessarily the most accurate, because vast numbers of copies could have been made of an original copy that had errors in it.

Then, what of the nature of the errors?  As much as some KJV/TR-only fanaticism is based on conspiracy theory, that people in modern times are trying to pervert or water down the scriptures, the WH/NA/UBS/SBL camp is based on mere conjecture as well, which is that there were scribes who intentionally embellished or "corrected" the scriptures to suit.

I am not taking a position of accommodating either of the above.  I start with the assumption that the scribes did not intentionally add, remove, or change scripture with some agenda in mind, but that they were doing the best they could to reproduce the original.  I would need a compelling reason, internal or external to the text, to question motives.

So, given the above, why would there be errors?  Well, for example, if the copy that they are duplicating is worn out to the extent that some word or phrase is unreadable, then they may fill in the blank from memory, but not perfectly.  And there are a plethora of other kinds of reasons for errors.  The scribe's eyes skipping a few lines down to where there happens to be the exact same word in the exact same horizontal position is a classic one.  Byzantine vs. Koine adjustments is another.  A note in the margin being later construed as a correction is another.  And so on and so forth.  But we don't assume they are intentionally changing the word of God to suit, unless a clear agenda can be shown, such as with the Jehovah's Witnesses' translation, the NWT, in modern times, as an analogy, for example.  Aside from something of that scale, why suspect malice and guilt over benevolence and innocence?

As having translated the New Testament myself, I can attest to having made many unintentional, typographical, or otherwise mundane errors that my son, Nathan, with his eagle eyes, computer scripts, and cumulative database, has diligently and meticulously reviewed and caught.  I just accidentally overlooked something.  (And if he somehow didn't catch it, please don't hesitate to let me know.)  So, I am no different from those scribes in principle.  I never intentionally tried to alter something according to an agenda.  I also heard a prominent and well-known Bible translation scholar say that in all the translation committees he has been on over many years, he never witnessed a translator letting his personal doctrine or agenda get in the way of his translating.  That said, there are collective mindsets, such as with the KJV being tainted with Anglican Catholicism, or with recent, twenty-first century translations being tainted with feminist/LGBTQIA2S+ gender ideology, granted.  But we know that these committees collectively had these mindsets, none of which were ever covert, but promoted up-front as part of their corresponding institutions and translation methodology.

As much as you are tempted to fall into the KJV/TR-only camp of conspiracy theorists who claim to be godly in their desire to preservation according to a claim of divine providence, that is a fallacy, in that the existence of variants disproves it on the face of it.  And as much as you are tempted to fall into the WH/NA/UBS/SBL camp of academic state of enlightenment, correcting what they see as a cumulative corruption of scriptures over time, that is all just educated speculation as well.  So, which do you want, pseudo-pietistic snobbery or academic snobbery?  I will accept neither, but educate myself to the point I can make my own choices based on the knowledge we have available to us today.  Is it, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain," as the now-famous line from Wizard of Oz goes?  You will do well to not accept either a façade from the KJV/TR-only "spiritual" elite or a façade from the WH/NA/UBS/SBL "academic" elite, but employ your own critical thinking facilities and investigate for yourself, instead of operating on elitism, hearsay, and, quite frankly, superstition.

So, how do I handle the variations?  I look at the manuscript evidence for each variation taken by itself, decide for myself, and pick one, on a case by case basis.  And although no one can prove me right or wrong in each instance, if supposing I made the wrong pick in some instances, then what of it?  We have already seen that there is no consequence to Christian doctrine and practice in any of the cases.  And so, though God has not mechanically preserved the copies through the centuries (unless Ivan Panin was right and his manuscript compilation is the "holy grail" of perfect restoration), God has certainly not allowed any Christian doctrine or practice to become up for question.  And that aspect of God's providence is amazing to me, especially when comparing Biblical manuscripts to other, secular, manuscripts of antiquity.

Important points in lexicality and grammar, issues

I avoid religiously loaded words.  For example, χριστος is "anointed," βαπτιζω is "immerse," διακονος is "servant," and αποστολος is "sent-off[one]."  See my article, List of religious terms that shouldn't be religious.  I prefer to translate, not use traditional religious transliterations, which are not translations of the words.  Be assured that in any of these instances I am not on an agenda to water down any established Christian doctrine of mainstream orthodoxy or start a schism.  My desire is for clarity with regard to original word meanings, and I don't care about religious language and traditions.  In a few cases I do keep religious words.  For example, I am currently translating αμαρτανω/αμαρτια as "sin," even though it fundamentally more generally means fail/err/failure/fault/error.  "Sin" always connotes a spiritual/moral/ethical failure, fault, or error, and the scriptures don't concern themselves with mundane things.  Similarly, I want to translate προσευχαμαι/προσευχη as "toward-vow" but have kept it the traditional "pray/prayer," figuring that anyone familiar with my work can read my article on that.  Other examples are δοξα as "glory," μακαριος as "blessed," or χαρις as "grace," words that do convey the proper meaning even though religious.

I use "of{}" and "to{}" for genitive and dative cases, respectively, but everyone should keep in mind that these are not prepositions, nor do they, without actual prepositions, create prepositional phrases in the original Greek.  The genitive case simply points from an object and the dative case to an object.  However, when I create an English prepositional phrase from it, I don't always keep prefixing every consecutive genitive or dative word accordingly.  Instead, I enclose multiple separate words in curly brackets, which are all genitive or dative, as the case may be.

For verb conjugations, I use hyphens to combine the English auxiliary/helper verbs with the main verb, when a verb conjugation must be expressed in multiple English words to construct a verb phrase, as well as the implied subject with a pronoun, where needed.  In some cases I have to use a hyphen for clarity, such as "will-ing" for the verb "will," to be sure it isn't interpreted as the English adjective "willing."  I use the underscore character in a verb phrase to underscore that the word "not" is a separate Greek word (i.e. "_not_"), or any other word that is separate.  I also want to make clear that there are, grammatically, no periphrastic verb phrases!  That is yet another example of an English language mindset being read back into the Greek language.  I am not saying that there are never semantic, contextual reasons for a verb and a participle being placed next to or near each other, but I will always translate them separately and treat them independently, and you, the reader, should never visualize an English periphrastic verb phrase from them due to English mindset and habit.

Since the aorist tense (χρονος αοριστος) is, categorically, not marked for time or aspect/progress/completion (which is what the Greek word α-οριστος means, "without-definition, unbounded, indefinite"), I map this to the English simple present tense, which usually means the same thing in English.  For example, I can tell you that "I play the piano."  That said, I am not making a statement of when or any sense of progress (and in fact I am sitting at a computer, not a piano, right now), but just expressing the verb "play" as fact.  Indeed, most of the verbs in the text of this Introduction are English simple present, expressing fact, not time or progress/completion.  Parse this English text and see!  For written historical narratives, we use the English past tense but Greek has no past tense.  Rather, historical narratives were told from the perspective of the speaker putting himself in the frame of reference of being in the past observing the events happen as they occurred.  We do that in English colloquially and informally, usually in oral speech, using the English simple present tense.  Where you see square brackets in the form "[ing]" on a participle, that is to mark and distinguish an aorist active participle from a present participle, as English has no aorist participle form, but I have to somehow get an "-ing" in there to make it recognizable in English as a participle, if it is in the active voice.  I also do the same for future participles, since English has no such thing.  For passive aorist participles, I consistently translate into the English past participle form, since in English this will (hopefully) be understood as timeless fact/state.  See Matt 9:6, for example, where Jesus declares the paralytic "roused" even while he is still lying there, then that same passive aorist participle is repeated in the next verse after he gets up.

The imperfect tense (χρονος παρατατικος) conveys something that has not completed.  I consistently represent that as "has-been-[verb]ing," the English present perfect progressive/continuous tense.  That is awkward but can be important.  For example, in John 1:1 ...και θεος ην ο λογος "...and God has-been-being the word" makes for an even more powerful statement of the deity of Christ, since using past tense does not inherently imply that whatever was in the past still is the case.  And now you don't even have to swap the words around.

The Greek present tense (χρονος ενεστως) describes something happening in the present, so I consistently map that with the English present progressive/continuous tense, "is-[verb]ing." 

The other tenses are intuitive and straightforward to map.

The Greek language has both second and third person imperative verbs, whereas English only has second person imperatives.  To translate the third person, I construct the phrase using a colon.  For example, Matt 5:16, "the light of you: shine," such that it is the light that is being given the imperative, the command, not the person being addressed.  This eliminates the traditional use of "let" (e.g. "let your light shine"), where "let" is a verb that only means "allow," still in the second person, and does not bring out the imperative sense of the actual verb (i.e. "allow your light to shine" has "allow" as an imperative in the second person and "shine" as an infinitive). 

See https://www.wiebefamily.org/English-Greek_verbcharts.htm for a comparison of English and Greek verb conjugation. 

The concept of "deponent verbs" has been sufficiently debunked in recent times.  I do my best to search for a corresponding English word that maps to the middle/passive voice of any word traditionally marked "deponent."  For example, σεβομαι would be to religiously devote oneself such as to be religiously devoted to the object in question (middle voice), whereas προσκυνεω would either be "worship" in the active voice or "be worshipped" in the passive voice.  For middle voice of other verbs that are not traditionally tagged as so-called "deponent," since English has no middle voice, I try to choose a word that can be conceptualized as acting such as to be acted upon.  For example, I translate απολλυμι as "destroy-off/away" in the active or passive voice, but "perish-off/away" in the middle voice. I considered, but found it too tedious, to systematically and mechanically express each instance as "[verb]-such-as-to-be-[verb]ed" or "[verbs]-self," but do explicitly express reflexivity/affectedness in some cases where needed, when the verb does not inherently express it semantically.  On the other hand, in some cases I just leave it in the customary English active sense, because the so-called "deponency" is just a syndrome of English.  For example, διηγεομαι is hyper-literally "be-led-through" (middle/passive sense) but means "describe" (active sense) in English.  I am compelled to stick with the latter, because the hyper-literal construction is not intuitive in English and I cannot think of a better way to express it in the middle/passive sense.  Or, for example, γινομαι, "become," is inherently middle in meaning, so I just translate it as it flows best in English, either "become" or "is-become."

The Greek language has no third person personal pronouns.  They used αυτος, from which we get the English prefix that also means "same," and which occasionally does not even refer to the third person, but first or second person.  We may say, "If a man diligently studies the scriptures, he will be blessed."  They would say, "If a man diligently studies the scriptures, [the] same will be blessed."  However, in just translating it "same" I do lose the person, number, and gender, which in some cases I have to note in square brackets. 

I keep things like definite articles in places that they are traditionally or systematically omitted.  For example, "Jesus" was a common name, there also being a Jesus bar-Abbas (Jesus son of Abbas), the criminal released by Pilate, and "Jesus called Justus" of Col 4:10.  So, they wrote "the Jesus" to signify the particular Jesus already specified.  We just don't do that in English with proper nouns, but that is what the definite article is for, in both Greek and English.  Likewise, ο θεος is "the god," employing the common noun "god."  That definite article distinguishes the "god" of Israel, whose name is not "God" but יהוה, the "tetragrammaton" YHWH, usually pronounced "Yahweh," or the more customary English pronunciation, "Jehovah."  The reason I keep the capitalization of "God" is to avoid being viewed as sacrilegious and causing offense to some.  It should not be capitalized.  The same goes for Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Lord, as applicable to deity, which I also capitalize.  I capitalize "Anointed" (i.e. "Christ") where it refers to Jesus, but do not capitalize "son of man."  (That does not mean I believe that Jesus was ever not fully God, however, so don't read anything into that.)

Altogether I find a way to translate every original word, where the rest of the translations may omit words that they consider insignificant or that do not suit the English translation.  On the other hand, if the original Greek word is already a transliteration, then I keep the transliteration and do not translate, such as "amen," "raka," and "mammon," for example, or currency, units of measure, and so on.  So, this translation is "literal, word for word" in that it translates every word, but it isn't "literal, word for word" in that I have to add words (such as "of{}" to denote genitive and "to{}" to denote dative, for example), and that I routinely change the word order, wherever English requires it to make sense of it (such as English subject-verb-object order, for example), add punctuation, and so on.  But you will see that every word is translated and never omitted or lumped into an equivalence.  For example ει μη is "if not," not "except" (the common rendering), and there are some cases where it is not wise to jump to that English equivalence, such as in Mark 6:8, resolving a supposed Bible contradiction about whether Jesus allowed the disciples to take a staff or not.  Another example is ου μη which, as a two-word phrase, is neither redundant, nor emphatic, nor a double negative, as the former is objective/absolute/denies whereas the latter is subjective/relative/rejects/prohibits.  Each of these words needs to be translated appropriately, either individually, or when used together, or when part of contractions.  Why do the popular translations smooth over the distinctions?  Do they think that the word of God is unnecessarily overly specific?  If I do need to note an equivalence to a multi-word phrase, I do so in square brackets, such as, for κατ' ιδιαν, "with self [i.e. in private]."

Again, let's be clear that there is no way to completely eliminate interpretation in a translation.  However, I go to great lengths to minimize it.  If a word has a wide semantic range I may have to choose from the possibilities, and that is interpretation, but, where needed, I will indicate multiple meanings with slash characters and/or put my interpretation in square brackets, so that you know it is interpretation and not strictly one-for-one translation of an English word that can have only one possible meaning for an exactly equivalent Greek word that can have only one possible meaning.

I try to keep lexical concordance, meaning using a concordant method of translation, giving each Greek word a unique and consistent English equivalent, as much as possible, instead of taking liberties with the wider semantic range of various words.  It is almost to the point that you can predict what Greek word is being translated by the English word that I use.  For example, τεκνον is always "offspring" (not necessarily young "child") and παις is always "child" (not necessarily "offspring"), and then παιδιον, the diminutive, is always "childling."  But, on the other hand, I have to be flexible with words that have too great a semantic range or mean different things in different declensions, conjugations, and contexts.  For example, περι, "around/about," figuratively "concerning/regarding," which I let the reader get from translating it "about," but for which "around" won't work.  Or κατα, "down/against/with," with figurative "according to."  Or, for example, ωδε can be of manner ("thus" or "in this way") or of place ("here").  See Matt 16:28, Mark 9:1, and Luke 9:27, where the grammar, as well as the immediate context, compels it to be the former, resolving an oft-cited Bible "contradiction" dilemma.  Yet δια is nearly always good enough as "through" and εις is always good enough as "into," for example.  Altogether I am exhaustively and painstakingly scrutinizing my resources, aiming to find an English word with the greatest semantic range that characterizes what the greatest semantic range, or least peculiar, least context-dependent meaning of a Greek word is, to limit my reading into the text, as much as possible.  Yet I want to clearly distinguish different words where they are indeed different.  It is beyond me why so many translators claim to believe in verbal, plenary inspiration, yet will, even in the very same verse, translate two different Greek words with the same English word, as if it didn't matter that they were different words.  The well-known "Peter do you love me" discourse at the end of John would immediately come to mind, but there are many more places where I have made sure to make a distinction where the original text makes a distinction, and that goes for every grammatical feature as well.  Believe me when I say that I am examining and reexamining everything.

With grammatical constructs, I am very rigid, consistent, and I do not make any exceptions, or take such broad liberties with the grammar as most do to make for nice English prose.  And I do not honor all the modern concoctions of interpretive subcategories.  It is not "this kind of aorist."  It is "aorist."  It is not "dative of such and such."  It is "dative."  And so on.  So many scholars and textbooks unnecessarily complicate things, which is just reading an English language mindset back into the Greek, as if these subcategories were part of the original Greek grammar, whereas I just render the grammar, as parsed, consistently and in a concordant fashion.  I consider all this lexical and grammatical rigidity a feature, severely limiting my ability to interpret rather than translate, and honoring the verbal, grammatical, plenary inspiration of the original text, that every original word and every original grammatical construct is God-breathed, that every word and every grammatical construct ought to be specifically and consistently translated.

An exception to my "every grammatical construct is translated" rule is that to bring out gender and number of every word into English is impractical and would result in extreme clutter full of square bracket denotations.  Singular vs. plural nouns and pronouns are made apparent, but in the Greek all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, participles, and so on, have both gender and number.  Nathan's "GHT Study Tool" can be used to bring out the grammar to the final 100% via mouse-over pop-ups, even if only the English is selected to be displayed by his tool.  Obviously, in the some cases where a word has the same spelling for different declensions or conjugations, we can do nothing more than display the assumed parsing.

Accordingly, 99.9% of the time (anecdotally speaking), I am in harmony with standard, existing, published parsing (except for so-called "deponency"), as this is mostly mechanical and mostly not subject to interpretation anyway.  But not always.  For example, while people debate about whether to translate John 4:24 "God is spirit" or "God is a spirit," I conclude neither.  Noting that πνευμα is the spelling for both the nominative and accusative case, that there is no verb "is," and that αυτον means "same" in the accusative, I translate it "...for also the Father is-seeking to-whom-the-same[plural], the worshiping same Spirit, and the God is-necessitating the[plural] worshiping same to-be-worshiping in to{spirit} and to{truth}" with πνευμα as accusative, the object of the verb "worship," not nominative as has always been assumed, and αυτον modifies πνευμα, "same spirit."  This makes contextual sense after the fact as well, in that Jesus is answering the woman's question about worshiping here ("this mountain") or there ("Jerusalem").

I try to bring out prefixes, suffixes, morphemes, and morphological/etymological constructions as much as possible.  For example χαρισμα is grace-effect, based on the -μα suffix ("spiritual gift" would be δομα πνευματικος, which is not in the Bible), εκκλησια is "out-calling" ("church" would more properly be συναγωγη), and μετανοεω is change-mind/thinking.  Or, for example, when you see "girlie" in translation, I am not trying to be cute.  That is a diminutive ending, παιδ-ισκη, so I translate it as such.  On the other hand, there is a point where I need not be pedantic.  For example, I still translate σωμα, "whole-effect," as "body," πνευμα, "breathe/blow-effect" as "wind/spirit," and for εκκλησια, "out-call-ia," I just settle for "out-calling."  And although σπερμα, "sow-effect," would sound much better as "seed," σπορος is seed, so I feel compelled to make a distinction.  And then, in some cases I just can't bring out the meaning even to my own satisfaction.  For example, the verb/noun αποκρινομαι/αποκρισις breaks down to "judged/judgment-off/away-from," too cryptic to hyper-literally render, yet there is no way to emphasize in the text that this is not fundamentally just a verbal reply/answer but has to do with an assessment made, a response in principle, somewhat akin to what we have in English with a "respondent" in a court case.  I just translate as "respond" or "response," but every time I see the word in the Greek I wish I could do better.

I try to keep prepositions and prepositional prefixes as literal/geometric as possible (δια=through, επι=upon, υπο=under, etc.), as the figurative uses are usually apparent from the literal/geometric sense anyway.  But it is best not to habitually jump to figurative uses.  For example, Peter told them to be immersed "into" (εις) forgiveness of sins in Acts 2:38, where water (υδωρ) is not even mentioned, making moot all the debates about what the English word "for" means.  Or, for example, Paul brought out the irony of the Corinthians immersing people literally "over" (υπερ) dead people in 1 Cor 15:29, where the dead people would obviously be buried under the ground, all in the context of some in Corinth saying there was no resurrection.  So, now the Mormon "baptize for the dead" (baptism of dead people by proxy baptisms) contention is rendered moot.  Or, for example, in Matt 6:19-20 we traditionally have "where moth and rust destroy," but the basis for "rust" is the root word for "food" and the basis for "destroy" is the root word for "reveal" negated ("destroy" would have been ολλυμι).  But food has nothing to do with metal and it doesn't actually say "destroy"!  The solution to the problem is that it is more accurately "eat-up-sis" (βρω-σις) i.e. the state of eating up something, which moths would do if they get into closed food storage containers to lay eggs, and that this is hidden from view.  So, my "hyper-literal" rendering is "which-where moth and eat-up-sis[i.e. state of eating up] is-unreveal-izing," leveraging the equivalence of the Greek suffix -σις to the English suffix -sis (and -ιζ to -ize in α-φαν-ιζ-ει), tying the moths to the hidden, and implicit ruin, of the condition of food, analogous to, in the second part of the verse, the thieves being associated with breaking in and stealing (an operation that is also not immediately apparent, as well).  Evidently nobody before me figured this out, as "rust" and "destroy" is now etched into all the translations and, consequently, dictionary entries, all based on a mistranslation by St. Jerome into Latin ("aerugo" and "demolitur"/demolish) in 405 AD, which Erasmus (who only changed "demolitur" to "corrumpit"/corrupts) and Reformation-era English translators, fluent in Latin, pioneers but novices in Greek, copied and translated, after which everyone after that just followed suit and parroted out what they were taught and were accustomed to through the generations without checking to see whether it was ever right in the first place.  This is why a careful examination of each word -- indeed, reexamination -- is called for to do diligence to any translation.

In reducing words, and often breaking up compound words into etymological/morphological root meanings and constructions, I have to be careful not to commit the etymological fallacy, such as, in the classic English example, a "butterfly" has nothing to do with butter and is not a fly, or that we park in the "driveway" and drive on the "parkway," but I have yet to encounter such blaring examples in Greek, although I have had to go with composite meanings in many cases where a hyphenated compound construct would not cause the reader to jump to the accepted composite meaning.  For example, there's συκο-φαντησητε in Luke 3:14, being a "fig-revealer," one of the things John the Baptist told the soldiers not to do.  That etymology is vindicated by ancient Greek history, and it most certainly does have to do with figs; however, few would know that, so I have to indicate in translation that this is an informant who would extort or blackmail someone.  Similarly, in John 12:6, that is a "tongue-case," γλωσσοκομον, that Judas was stealing out of, etymologically a small box meant for storing mouthpieces of wind instruments, but it isn't intrinsically a "money box," even if that's what the context implies the disciples were using it for.  Why on earth would this be significant?  Because, if it was a tiny box, then they weren't carrying much money around, just some loose change.  Or, for example, in Matt 18:6 and Luke 17:2, yes, that is a "donkey millstone" to be hung around someone's neck, a millstone that is so weighty that a donkey is used to turn it in a grain mill; I don't say "large millstone," because "large" (μεγας) isn't the word used.  On the other hand, for example, the compound παραβολη is "aside-cast," but I feel compelled to stick with the transliteration "parable," as it would otherwise be too much of a leap from the morphological construction.  Even so, the reader will at times find awkward how I stubbornly insist on hyper-translating so many words and constructs instead of interpreting them, leaving the reader to jump from the "hyper-literal" rendering to the semantic sense, where it would have just been easier to interpret into a more common, more natural English word or phrase.  For example, notable and frequent is my translation of the contraction ουτος as "the-same" instead of "this," and εκεινος as "the-there" instead of "that."  Although awkward and perhaps appearing unnecessary to the point of annoyance, it makes for a distinction between the contraction and the definite article, ο, which can also be translated "this," and the embedded sense of "there" may potentially be semantically meaningful.  So, for example, in Matt 10:22, we have "the-same will-be-saved" as opposed to "this will-be-saved," requiring inserting a word, i.e. "this [one]," or, of course, taking liberties with "dynamic equivalence," as it is called, to make for nice English, "he who endures to the end will be saved."  That example is not semantically significant.  But, for example, significant in Matt 9:38 and Luke 10:2 is breaking up the contraction οπως to "which-how," bringing out the pronoun "which," which then functions as the subject of the verb εκβαλη, "may-cast-out," with the agent of cause being δεηθητε, which is "be-necessitated," passive voice, "of the Lord of the harvest," genitive case, not "pray to the Lord of the harvest," dative case.  This shifts the responsibility to those being addressed, not God.  Again, this mistranslation dates back to St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate in 405 AD, where he used "rogate" ("ask"), "Dominum" ("Lord" in the accusative case), and just "ut" ("as" or "that") for οπως.  Erasmus translated similarly, and Reformation-era English translators, fluent in Latin, pioneers but novices in Greek, propagated the error, after which everyone after that just followed suit, without ever checking to see whether it was right in the first place.  I covered this in a separate article.

Keeping the last points above in mind, I am not saying that it is wrong to substitute English "he" for "same," "this" for "the-same," "that" for "the-there," and so on, or "he" for "the" where it functions as the subject of a sentence, is masculine gender, and does not modify a noun.  And if you need to do so, then do so, at least mentally.  It is just that I am making it clear what the original word was, rather than jumping to accommodate it in English and losing the distinction by doing so.  Accordingly, keep in mind that if ancient Greek is fusional synthetic, then the Greek speaker's/listener's language mindset would have tended toward habitually breaking down word constructions into the morpheme components, whereas the English mindset not much so, but rather tends to just look at the whole word.  Who ever considers the morphological construction of "butterfly" or "driveway/parkway" until someone brings it up?  Again, this is why we should not force an English language mindset back onto the ancient Greek in translation by assuming these morphological constructions were lost on them.  And, consequently, this is why my translation goes to such lengths to deconstruct and reconstruct them, because we can assume from how the writers so often arbitrarily construct words in ad hoc ways like Legos, that the Greek language mindset was like that.

For proper nouns, since people and place names are transliterated, not translated (except in a few instances that are noted in scripture), I use the most commonly recognized English equivalent name, since the objective is to unambiguously identify the person or place mentioned.  So, for example, I do not conflate the Old Testament "Joshua" with New Testament "Jesus" or Old Testament "Judah" with New Testament "Judas," even though the spellings in Greek are the same.  In some cases I am more strict than popular translations, and not without reason.  For example, Jesus and his disciples from Galilee were "Jews," as the term is defined today.  They encountered fierce opposition in Judea by "Judeans," who were also "Jews."  I consider the term "Jew" an ambiguous and inappropriate substitute for "Judean."  Or, for example, the slave girl in Acts 16 had a spirit of "Pytho/Delphi," a place name, so can be connected spiritually to a Pythia priestess.  This has nothing to do with the particular species of snake as we classify it today, notwithstanding the legend of the god Apollo slaying the mythical snake, "Python," there.

I do not feel compelled to honor diacritical marks in the NA28 and various other Greek texts, as the earliest manuscripts did not have them.  This means that they were added later.  Consequently, for example, τις could either be "who" as an interrogative pronoun or an indefinite pronoun, but I will not let manuscript diacritics compel that distinction.  Is it ἡ (the definite article, "the"), ἢ (the conjunction "or" or "than"), ᾗ (the pronoun "who/which"), or ᾖ (the verb "may-be-being")?  That is Byzantine Greek, not Koine Greek.  I will sanity check and not blindly assume.  I find it ironic that modern academia, which is mostly of the WH/NA/UBS/SBL camp and advocates their various source Koine uncials as what they call the "earliest and most reliable manuscripts," advocates the Byzantine-era system of diacritics, which they employ in their published New Testament Greek, making sure their Greek text employs these diacritics, whereas their "earliest and most reliable manuscripts" basis doesn't.  Then their professors burden all their seminary students with it.

Finally, this is not a "gender neutral" translation.  Modern translations and revisions are now bowing to the English language ideology of twentieth century radical feminism and twenty-first century LGBTQIA2S+ sexual perversion, so as to promote "gender neutrality."  In my translation, ανθρωπος translates to "man" and αδελφος to "brother," and etc., maintaining the gender specified in the grammar of the Bible, which is there for a reason, which you can read about in the first two chapters of Genesis, and corresponds to similar English language usage up through the mid-twentieth century before the time of the sexual revolution.  See my article/video for additional information.  That said, there are a few cases where gender is not explicit (notwithstanding inherent grammatical declensions), so I do force gender neutrality, such as τεχνιτης, which I translate "crafter" not "craftsman" in Acts 19 and etc., because "man" is not in the original Greek morphological construction.

All this points to my acceptance of the verbal, grammatical, plenary inspiration of the Bible, which is that, although written by men, every aspect of what was penned was God-breathed, words and grammar.  This drives me to the objective of minimal manipulation and minimal interpretation in translation.  And if you agree with me on this point, then you should welcome translations that are more faithful to the original language, rather than being more faithful to English grammar, punctuation, composition, and style, as long as the translation is still understandable by an English reader.  And I definitely push this to the limit.  Please let me know if you find any place where the translation is not still understandable in English.

Resources used

While translating, I have always open on my "desktop" Olive Tree platform NASB'95 Interlinear, NA28 with parsing and critical text annotation, NA28 Critical Apparatus, Friberg AGNT5 Critical Apparatus (although of limited utility), CNTR critical apparatus (although of limited utility), Byzantine (Robinson) text; Logos platform LSJ, Brill/Montanari, Brill/Beekes, Wharton (Etyma Græca), Louw-Nida dictionaries; ISA2 (Interlinear Scripture Analyzer, version 2 with Scrivener's Textus Receptus 1894).  I also reference various other works as needed, digital and hard copy.  I do not reference Christian lexicons/dictionaries (BDAG and etc.), word studies, and commentaries, except occasionally Louw-Nida's semantic domain lexicon (for the category organization), as these are predicated upon Christian tradition and doctrine that is not built into Koine Greek as a language and to which the men who penned the New Testament would not have had access.  My translation translates; it does not exegete.  That said, I am cognizant of the fact that the New Testament was written by Christians, and there are some cases, though scant, where the language used reflects that, and where I feel compelled to accommodate it.  For example, αμαρτια is "sin," not "failure/fault/error," λογος is "word," which does not map to the English language definition yet is well understood in the Christian biblical context, and etc.

Regarding dictionary entries, keep in mind that even the secular ones we use are relatively modern works on the timeline of history, and that a dictionary summarizes all the possible meanings and ways a particular word is used.  This means that how it is translated in modern published works is referenced and cited, which would include how modern Bible translations interpret a word.  This means that in some cases an entry even in a secular dictionary will be begging the question.  The same syndrome applies to secular translations of ancient Greek secular works.  This is why sometimes my translation of a word is so deconstructive in its breaking down into fundamental morphemes that the way I translate it cannot exactly be found in any Greek dictionary.  Why?  For the same reason I have been repeatedly pointing out, which is that even the secular translations of ancient Greek secular works are made to conform to proper English, and my hyphenated constructions are not proper English!  There are even a few words here and there that are only found in the Bible, so, predictably, the secular dictionaries define them according to the Bible translations.  Is this wrong?  No, firstly because ancient Greek is such a fusional synthetic language, and secondly because that is how dictionaries work.  But that drives me to investigate the etymology and morphology of the word, possibly coming up with something better, so that I am not also begging the question!

Scholars questioning any of my few instances of Koine Greek grammatical assertions that are contrary to the status quo, and requiring scholarly, credentialed academic verification, can refer to Grammar of the Greek New Testament in Light of Historical Research (PDF, 52 MB) by A.T. Robertson (1914), which is conveniently accessible online in digitized form and also in the public domain.  That work further references an immense collection of other scholarly works, too many for even that author to exhaustively list in his bibliography, which is 21 pages long.  The aorist problem is most thoroughly addressed in this article by Charles R. Smith in the Grace Theological Journal 2.2 (Fall 1981), p. 205-226, and this article by Frank Stagg in the Journal of Biblical Literature (1972), p.222-31.  The so-called "deponency" issue is thorougly addressed by A.T. Robertson (op. cit.) and other scholars here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Although my being critical of credentialed academia in a number of aspects is clearly apparent, that all said, to be fair, I did not learn ancient Greek from deciphering some "Rosetta Stone" that I dug up out of the ground somewhere, so to speak.  I am indebted to the accumulation of scholarship by others before me, to be able to build upon that and accomplish this translation.

File format

This translation is written in HTML/CSS/Javascript on a plain text editor in a single textfile and, since it is hand-typed, it is still readable even as a plain textfile without using a web browser.  I use only ASCII characters, except for the few unicode Greek characters in this introduction and the non-breaking space character at the end of sentences throughout, which is just to force them to be double-spaced.

Being online, it will perpetually be a work in progress.  I update/upload the latest version often multiple times daily, so that what you are reading is likely no more than an hour or so out of date in terms of my workflow.  I do make retroactive changes and improvements from time to time, so what I have already translated is subject to change.  I estimate that the file with the whole New Testament will be around 1.5 MB when completed.  As noted at the top and bottom, this work is granted to the public domain; I am especially opposed to commercializing and merchandising the Word of God.  When Jesus comes back and cleanses the temple of God (which is now the body of Christ, not a building), you won't find me part of the Bible translation publication business enterprise.

At this point, my son, Nathan, has upstaged me with his "GHT Study Tool", which can also be set to display just my English translated text alone (i.e. without interlinear Greek and etc.), and that with mouseover pop-ups, everything clickable, better navigation, and all the rest of his functionality and utility at one's fingertips, so it is questionable whether it is of any added value to just read my translation from this original rudimentary HTML file.  Accordingly, I would recommend accessing and reading the GHT using his tool.

If you are reading anyone's copy, adaptation, or modification of the GHT, the original source is at https://www.wiebefamily.org/GHT.htm.  Note:  No one can claim a copyright on a derivative work of something in the public domain.  That is considered fraud.  Do not accept any claim to ownership, licensing, copy restrictions, or use fees associated with any derivative work (reformat, adaptation, modification, etc.) as a matter of alleged claimed intellectual property.  You are free to copy and use any derivative work as well, without restriction or any legal ramification.  If the translation is still the "GHT," or based on the "GHT," then it is still public domain.  (Note that a publisher can legally still charge a fee for your obtaining a digital or print copy, or for proprietary software to render it; it is just that no one can forbid you from copying and reproducing the text of this Bible translation, or producing a derivative work from this Bible translation or from anyone else's derivative work.)

Old Testament

That will be another project for another year.  One thing at a time; first the New Testament.