Pastors, Bible students, and Greek language learners, rejoice: Bible Gateway now has a complete interlinear Greek-English New Testament! As you read the Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament, you can now click on any word to get a detailed breakdown of its meaning in the original biblical language.
We added the English half of this Bible to our library last year; we’ve now added the complete Greek study tools to it, making it the first Bible of its type on Bible Gateway!
If you’re already familiar with interlinear Bibles and the value of Greek word studies, you can dive right in—the Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament is listed with the English Bibles on BibleGateway.com:
If you aren’t familiar with interlinear Bibles, let’s take a quick look at how they work, and why they’re so useful.
As any Bible student or translator will tell you, even the best modern-language Bible translations sometimes fail to convey every nuance of the original biblical language. For that reason, it’s often useful to look at the original Greek words behind a Bible passage (particularly when you’re faced with a challenging or difficult-to-understand verse) to see what context or clarity can be gleaned from them.
Let’s take a look at how an interlinear Bible helps you do that. To start, look up Mark 2 in the Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament. You’ll see the Greek text of the chapter with an English translation of each word or phrase above it:
To get more information on any word, simply click on it. A sidebar will open with a detailed breakdown of the original Greek word. In our example, let’s click on the word gathered:
The box that opens up has a lot of useful study information. In order, it shows:
- The word as it appears in Greek (with an English transliteration in parentheses).
- The Strong and GK numbers for the word. These numbers are references to entries in Strong’ Concordance and the Goodrick-Kohlenberger numbering system, two popular ways of organizing biblical languages for study.
- The definition(s) of the word, with links to and notes about how it’s used elsewhere in the New Testament.
- A link to see a complete list of everywhere the word appears in the New Testament (courtesy of teknia.com).
This lets you not only see the definition of the original Greek word, but also how and where it’s used in other New Testament passages. Comparing different uses of a word throughout Scripture is an invaluable tool in understanding tricky or unusual word choices.
So, is an interlinear Bible useful to you if you aren’t a pastor or a Bible student? Absolutely! A good way to get started using an interlinear Bible is to pick a key verse from your everyday devotions or Bible reading, and ask a few basic questions about it:
- Are there any subtleties in the wording of this verse that are lost in the English translation?
- Do the alternate definitions listed for the important words in this verse add any interesting flavor to their meaning?
- Do the key words in this verse get used a lot in Scripture? Is their use in this verse similar to, or different than, their use elsewhere?
- Can you spot any obvious challenges or difficult choices that would be faced by somebody translating this verse from the Greek?
You’ll also find that an interlinear Bible is a very useful companion if you’re trying to learn biblical Greek.
So whether you’re a pastor or a student; whether you’re doing an advanced Bible study or are starting on the rewarding challenge of learning to read biblical Greek, we hope that you find the Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament useful. We’re grateful to Bill Mounce and his ministry at Teknia for making it available to Bible Gateway readers. Carve out some time this holiday weekend to explore this amazing study Bible; you won’t regret it.
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