New Greek/English Interlinear New Testament - Flipbook - Page 7
INTRODUCTION TO
The New Greek/English Interlinear New Testament
R O B E R T K . B R O W N A N D P H I L I P W. C O M F O R T
New Testament Greek students all over the world recognize the superior quality of
two editions of the Greek New Testament: the Greek New Testament, published by the
United Bible Societies, and Novum Testamentum Graece, edited by Eberhard and Erwin
Nestle, followed by Kurt Aland. These two volumes represent the best in modern textual
scholarship. In the 1970s a group of international scholars, each an expert in Greek and
textual criticism, worked together to produce a unified edition of these two texts. This
unified edition was first displayed in the United Bible Societies’ third edition of the Greek
New Testament (1975), followed by the twenty-sixth edition of Novum Testamentum Graece
(1979). Both editions shared the same wording in the text; the two, however, differed as
to punctuation, paragraph breaks, spelling (in some instances), and the critical apparatus.
The Greek text in this interlinear edition is the United Bible Societies’ Greek New
Testament, Fifth Edition (2014), the text of which corresponds to Novum Testamentum
Graece, 28th Edition (2012).
This Greek text, with an accompanying English interlinear translation, is now made
accessible to even more readers of the New Testament. Very few people learn Greek well
enough to read the Greek New Testament unaided, so all Greek students (and former
Greek students) can benefit from an accurate interlinear translation of the Greek New
Testament. An interlinear translation also helps those who, though having very little
knowledge of Greek, want the most basic, word-for-word, literal translation of the
Greek text. The interlinear translation in this book should provide all such students and
readers with a reliable, fresh rendering in modern English. Readers can be assured that
the translators used the best lexical sources in preparing this translation. The English
translation of many Greek words and phrases (including idioms) very often agrees with
definitions and renderings found in the second edition of A Greek-English Lexicon of the New
Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, edited by Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, and Danker.
It is difficult to translate one language into another on a word-for-word basis because
each language has its own syntax, grammatical constructions, and idioms that are
difficult—if not impossible—to replicate literally in another language. To compensate
for this difficulty, we have created special symbols and procedures for rendering certain
Greek grammatical constructions and idioms that cannot be translated smoothly into
English on a word-for-word basis.
The following is a concise list of some of the more commonly occurring special cases.
It is, of course, impossible within the confines of an introduction to be comprehensive,
particularly with regard to idioms of the Greek New Testament (which occur with some
regularity). Also, it’s important to recognize that this introduction is designed to serve
merely as a guide in understanding patterns employed in the English translation (i.e., the
typical ways that we have rendered certain constructions). Naturally, the specific context or
the complexity of the word order in a given passage may dictate a variation from the pattern.
For a more detailed presentation of matters of Greek grammar and syntax, the reader is
encouraged to consult the standard Greek grammars, lexicons, and reference works.