Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>]

Gday Peter,

You asked about Hebrew sofware. Bibleworks 4 easily handles your searches,
without the difficulty of the Logos interface.
It can also do much more complicated searhces than the ones you requested.
For example, it has conditional searches, that if a particular word occurs
in a particular place relative to another word, then it must have the same
gender/root/etc. You can search on Hebrew vowels, Kethiv/Qere forms, and
punctuation. You can also search on multiple versions at once. So you could
search for all verses in the MT with the word tov where in the corresponding
LXX verse (the program converts the verses to match automatically) there is
the word agathos. The Louw-Nida database can also be directly pasted into
Greek searches, alowing you to instantly search on a semantic domain in the
NT. There is also a combined LXX and GNT database so that one can search
this database for whatever you like. Semantic domains can also be created
for the Hebrew (or any language).

One can also search on specific chapters of books, so one could set up a J
database, or a Northern Hebrew database, and search these for particular
syntactical or other features. The Word Frequency List generator gives an
instant word list for any set a passages and/or books the user specifies.
There are dozens of other features as well. The program comes with
Louw-Nida, Friberg, Liddell Scott, Whittaker's Revised BDB,  TWOT, and
dozens of Bible versions in many languages. It also has great DDE links for
pasting into wordprocessors. The greatest strength however is the support.
Users regularly report difficulties with the program which are usually
corrected and posted onto the web for download within 24 hours. Since the
release of 4 there have been over a hundred such updates. There is also a
daily digest for users to ask questions and share search routines, Word
macros, etc. One user for instance contributed a macro that strips the LXX
tagged text of all tags except the root word behind each word, which a PhD
student had requested to assist his studies.

In terms of the future of Hebrew search programs, there are several
developments. The biggest issue facing many software developers is the move
to Windows 2000 and unicode. This will require most programs to be rewritten
from scratch. In terms of electronic texts, there is work at the moment to
have the critical apparatus of UBS4 and BHS (and eventually BHQ) available
in electronic format, and there is some hope to get BAGD as well. Regarding
Hebrew syntax, the most exciting possibility is the incorporation eventually
of the Woerkgroup Informatica database into WTM. This will allow clause,
phrase, functional, and other searches of remarkable ability. Each word is
tagged at 4 or 5 different levels. This will be a few years off, but will
then allow for searches like this: Find every noun phrase followed by an
adjectival phrase followed by a subordinate temporal clause with a weyiqtol
form.

SIL is also working on a phrase/clause parsing of the NT and eventually the
OT. Since they realise the various linguistic frameworks possible for this,
they are looking into parsing the text with a few different configurations,
(which would be graphically arranged as well,) that will allow the user to
compare say a Longacrian discourse analysis with a Nicaccian one. This is
only in conceptual stage so far. They are also experimenting with
colour-coding of syntactic features/verbs in the MT and the options for
user-diagramming of texts. I am working on this at the moment and it looks
promising. The difficulty is whether or not the software becomes publically
available, as most SIL/UBS software (eg Translators' Workplace, Paratext,
BART) is not at the moment.

A development along another line that has been suggested within UBS (again,
I think only conceptually at this stage) is the move to developing XML
electronic texts. These are very powerful, and can be placed on the internet
or a intranet. Again, this may not be for sale though.

I am on the develpoment team for Bibleworks 5, which is also very
interesting. They are thinking about having the entire Greek textual
apparatus for this version, as well as more sophisticated statistical
abilities. They also have two European scholars working on the LXX which has
always lagged behind the other languages in development.

There are other options ahead but these are some of the most interesting and
most likely to occur within 4-5 years.

With regards,
Matthew Anstey

PS Perhaps a Mac user could inform us of the future of Mac Bible-computing?