Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Richard W. Pickett Jr." <nt.programmer AT home.com>]

Hello All,

        I am a computer programmer.  I've been working off and on for the 
past few
years on a Bible search engine of my own.  As a personal project I haven't
been able to devote a lot of time to it, but now I'm finally seeing the end
of the tunnel.

        Currently I have a text that looks like this:

Genesis 1:1 ¶ In the beginning <7225> God <430> created <1254> the heaven
<8064> and the earth <776>.

The <Number> is Strong's for Greek/Hebrew depending on OT/NT.  Viewing these
numbers can be turned off and on via the menu.

This program is primarily to be used from the English perspective, so the
fact that the Hebrew/Greek words are in a different order than the original
text is ok with me, it's actually preferred.  The format I'd like to keep my
text in is this: (English phrase/word) followed by <original Greek/Hebrew
phrase/word>.

I have both the full text of the Tanach and the Greek NT.  What I don't have
is a complete English and original text mixed in electronic form, as you can
tell from the example above I'm missing quite a bit of the original text, I
only have key words.  I do have an interlinear Bible, but it would take many
years of editing to get all the Strong's numbers in the correct places and I
think by then it would be more effort that what it is worth.

If anyone knows where I can find a comprehensive interlinear Bible in
electronic form to use as my text for this project I'd greatly appreciate
it.

In addition, if anyone knows of a electronic form of the Strong's
Hebrew/Greek dictionary, or a H/G dictionary that I can use without
copy-write infringement it would be greatly appreciated.

Most of the features of the program will center around searching.  For
example you could do a search for every verse that used Strong's Hebrew 7585
(sheol) but wasn't translated as the word hell by typing this search:
 h7585 NOT hell ).  In order for me to do such accurate searches (down to
what the words translated from/into) I'll need a more exact interlinear
document than what I have.  More complex searching than this example is
being implemented, my main focus being a tool to do language and translation
studies.  If you have any functionality suggestions, please write.

Also if you are interested the beta releases will be free and for those that
do extensive beta use/feedback I'm going to give lifetime free updates.  I'm
not really doing this for the money and don't expect to make much on it
anyway.  I'm a serious Bible student and have been disappointed in the
software I've seen over the years so I figured I would write something
mainly to suit my own purposes, but if someone else can benefit from it I'm
all for it.

BTW I'm also porting this (even as I write this email) to PDA/HPC.  I have a
HP 360LX that I'm putting this on, just touching up the databases right now
to accommodate it's lack of memory.  I have it on my laptop, but it's
embarrassing to pull my laptop out in church just to find a verse.  And it's
not always convenient to walk around with a laptop, but a PDA on the other
hand...

Please write back with any and all comments and suggestions.

Your humble servant,

Richard W. Pickett Jr.
NT.Programmer AT home.com