Using This Site

This site is a resource for those doing research on the Greek in Christ's words. It was designed to make research easier for those not familiar with ancient Greek so you can create your own translations. It eliminates having to research how to parse or translated each word. It is designed to be used by those unfamiliar with the technical terms of grammar, Greek or English. The links in the articles, both on the verse and word level, take you to my research sources (see below) so you can review the research for yourself. If you have any specific questions about specific verses of Christ's words, you can send them to me at gagliardi.gary@gmail.com.

Main Resources Sites

The definitions and parsing of the Greek words are based primarily on the Perseus Project at Tuft's University. The definitions of words in my vocabulary section are trimmed down versions of the Little-Scott-Jones Lexicon. This is NOT a biblical lexicon, that is, drawing its definitions from how the Bible translates its Greek. It explains how the Greek words are translated generally in all ancient works (except for the Bible). So the word that is translated as the religions concept of "sin" in the Bible is explained in its general use, which is closer to our "mistake." I can use Perseus to compare Jesus's use of words with someone like Josephus who came out of a similar culture around the same time. All links for the Greek verses and the words in Greek letters go to the Perseus Project for analysis.

For Biblical resources, I primarily use the Blue Letter Bible site. This allows me to compare different English translations and access Strong's Concordance, both for Greek and Hebrew. However, I use other sources for the Hebrew as well, though none that seem consistently valuable. One extremely valuable aspect of Blue Letter is that it allows me to research into how different Greek words are using in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament. The lack of the Septuagint is my major criticism of the Perseus Project. I also use it for accessing the Latin Vulgate. Other resources such as the BibleHub are also used occasionally when researching specific issues with the text.

Finding Information on a Specific Verse

The easiest way to find a specific verse of Jesus's words is to type its verse number in the form 12:34 (without the Gospel name) in the Search box on the upper right. The system will then list all the verses the reference that verse number. You can then click on the verse you want.

The search box can also search on other more specific information such as where certain Greek words appear. Simply type in the word either in Greek or Roman letters and the verses referencing it will appear. Typing search terms with spaces in between them search for articles with all those terms, so typing "baptism John" finds all articles with both "baptism" and "John" in theme. The search only works on full words, not parts of words.

Jesus's Spoken Verses

There are 1,910 articles here, one for each verse in the Gospel containing the words of Jesus. These articles are constantly being updated to provide the following information. Not all articles have all of this information, as new additions are made every day. The most general information appears first in each article, but that overview is followed by a wealth of detail on each Greek word and English translation.

Spoken to: generally, who Jesus addressed the verse to.
Context: The general context of the statement based on previous verses.
Greek: All the Greek words in the source. It starts with a link to the verse at the Tuft's Perseus site for Greek study. Clicking on the Greek words at Perseus gives you all possible words and all possible forms, but it highlights the most likely choice based upon statistical methods.
KJV: The King James Version translation of the verse. The link to the verse book and number takes you the how this translation is parsed into the KJV English.
NIV: The New International Version of the verse. This is a newer field being added to older articles. The link takes you to how the ESV version is parsed.
Third Version: (if any) This started as an analysis of the NLT, the New Living Translation version of the verse. This to is a newer field being added to older articles. However, I stopped analyzing the NLT because its connection to the original Greek is so remote. The “Issues” section for the NLT, citing all the problems with calling it a “translation,” became the largest part of each article.
Listeners Heard: My word-by-word translation of each word in the words' correct forms and, as much as possible, in the correct word order. Words are translated as they would have been heard at the time, not the meanings the word has evolved since the NT.
My Takeaway: What I find entertaining about Jesus’s idea.
Lost In Translation: A brief description of the fun stuff that is lost in translation.
Wordplay: Any hidden wordplay in the verse from the Greek.
Original Word Order: My Listenters Heard translation put in word order of the original Greek and aligned with the original.
WORD-BY-WORD COMPARISON OF THE GREEK TO ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:
Greek : A word-by-word parsing and definition of each word in the Greek source. This is the most detailed part of each analysis. Words in Greek letters link to a definition at Perseus. Words in Roman letters link to Biblical definitions from Strong’s at BlueLetterBible.com.
KJV Analysis: A word-by-word comparison of the translation to the original including what is changed and left out. Codes are used in parentheses to identify the types of problems with each word of the translation.
KJV Analysis Issues: Number and list of translation issues found in the verse. Among the issues cited as “confusing words,” “wrong words,” “wrong tense,” “wrong form,” “inserted words,” “inserted phrases,” and so on.
NIV Analysis: A word-by-word comparison of the translation to the original including what is changed and left out.
NIV Analysis Issues: Number and list of translation issues found in the verse. Same issues
Third Verse Analysis Issues: A word-by-word comparison of the translation to the original including what is changed and left out. Originally used for the NLT, but now used for any translation that a reader asked me to analyze.
Third Verse Analysis Issues: Number and list of translation issues found in the verse.
Related Verses (if any): The similar verses in other Gospel and source verses from the Old Testament when available.
Possible Symbolic Meaning (if any): Correlation with Jesus's use of symbols and cycles. This was more important in earlier articles, but isn’t used as much now.
Front Page Date: Date due for publication on front page of ChristsWords.com
Unimportant Opinions and Imaginings: Rather random ideas I get from reading the verse.

The Greek section provides most of the common meanings for each word. The way that each word is translated in any Gospel version represents just one of these possibilities. Examine the Greek source in these articles on individual verses, and you can draw you own conclusions about what Jesus was really trying to say in any verse.

The latest additions are the analysis of the NIV. These newer translations (NIV NT published in 1973, and updated 1978, 1984; NLT 1994, updated 2004, 2007) depart much further from the Greek than the KJV.

Other Information of the Site

A number of more general articles about the Greek of Jesus's words are also available under the Knowledge Center Menu in the left-hand column. These article cover a range of topics, but most are them deal with how Jesus uses specific words and phrases under the Common Words and Phrases heading. More information about the items on this menu are provided after the following section.

Using Christ's Words Articles

We list the information in the basic Christ's Words articles above, but you may want to know more about the detailed information within some of these headings. .

The Greek Vocabulary shows each Greek word in the verse, in the original Greek letters. This is in the specific form of the Greek used and it is linked to the Perseus database that shows all the possible words in could be. The article then shows the most grammatical details of the word such as its part of speech (adv, noun, verb, etc.) and details such as noun number, gender, and case information. It then shows the spelling of the general form of Greek word in Roman characters. This is linked to the Blue Letter Bible that allows you to see how the word is translated in the Bible and all the verses in which it appears. The listing then shows various meaning and uses of that word in ancient Greek. These definitions are not limited to their translation in the Bible but reference the much more general way the word is translated in Greek.

Literal Translation of the verse. This alternative translation serves a number of different purposes. Some are designed to show how differently a given set of Greek might be translated. Others fix "problems" with the KJV. Let's give a few examples of common examples of problems we will usually fix. First, if different Greek words are translated as the same English word in the KJV or the same Greek word is translated as different Greek words, the alternative will show English words that match the Greek. Sometimes, the KJV doesn't capture the correct tense of the verbs, sometimes because Greek tenses are more complex than English ones. The alternatives try to reflect the sense of the Greek tenses when possible. Finally, another common problem is that "religious" meanings of words are used in the KJV when such meanings would not have been the way that those words were "heard" by listeners in Christ's era. For example, the Greek word translated as "forgive" doesn't mean "forgive" in Greek. It means "to let go," "let fall," and similar meanings.

KJV, NIV, NLT English Vocabulary sections. This is the longest section because the standard is now to define every word used. In articles that have not been updated, this information may appear under the "Hidden Information" section. These sections examine the English vocabulary as translated by the specific versions. It is designed to examine the differences between English translation and the original Greek on a word-by-word basis.

Here, the words appear in the word order of the English translation, not the original Greek word order. Then the other possible meanings for that word are given. Any differences between the English form of that word and the Greek form are examined. In the most recent articles, the specific problems with each translation are coded and counted. For example, you can see what English word have been inserted that are not in the Greek and what Greek words have been left out. This allows you to get a sense of how accurate the English translation is in a technical sense.

Using the Knowledge Menu

Common Words and Phrases contains the most detail under this menu. It contains specific articles about common words and phrases used in many different verses. These articles often look at the difference between how these words are translated in the Bible and how they are more commonly translated in Greek elsewhere. One purpose of these articles is to examine not the general meaning of these words, but how Jesus used these words. This menu has many main articles and sub-articles.

Christ's Humor is a selection of articles about Jesus's specific used of the Greek language. In addition to Jesus's use of humor, these articles discuss the difference between spoken language and written language, how we can know that Jesus spoke Greek and other issues.

Today's Words is a general article examining what Christ's words teach us today in contrast to what we learn from the Christian tradition. The article under it examine how certain common ideas that Christ discusses are better updated in today's terms rather than the terms of previous centuries.

Individual Verses contains menu items taking readers to the articles on individual verses of Christ's Words by going to the four Gospels shown in order.