I never read the Interlinear Bible first. Time though has proven that it was not a total waste of money and as I said above, I now use it frequently although only to check the meaning of a word or passage. When I first saw the Hebrew text, I was so disappointed that I thought this book would never be of any use to me. Of course not all the text is a shambles but certainly more than 60%(I'm talking about the Hebrew text, the Greek text is much more readable)! Although most of the reviewers mention this flaw, their description is really an understatement: the Hebrew letters are quite distorted, specially at the beginning or end of each sentence, and the vowel signs and the dagesh are hardly decipherable. The problem with this Interlinear Bible is the awful quality of the print.
When I have difficuty in understanding a sentence in my Hebrew manual (EKS or Mansoor) or in my Biblia Stuttgartensia, I usually consult this book rather than the Index to the BDB by Bruce Einspahr,a book which I have found quite useless so far. With this number you can find the meaning of the word in the BDB, the best Hebrew Lexicon available on the market.Ĭatholic and Orthodox readers should note that the Interlinear Bible is a Protestant Bible, which means that Baruch, Judith, Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, and 1 and 2 Maccabees are missing. Each word in the original text has a figure above it.
The Interlinear Bible is a huge, quite unwieldy volume with a magnificent leather cover giving you the Hebrew/Greek text of the Bible plus a literal translation both under each separate word and in the form of a continuous translation in a narrow column beside the Greek or Hebrew text. If anyone has any questions about this text I don't mind the e-mail.
Overall I would say this is the best study Bible available and well worth the money. Unfortunately this particular bias and others that are akin to it are seen throughout. For example in Mt 13:15 the translator uses the word convert (change from one thing to another) and in Isa 6:10 which is where this verse is quoted he translates the same word as "turn back" (not change from one thing to another but go back to what you originally knew). The only other complaint I would have about the translation is that on a rare occasion the translation is not consistent. Jacob in the Hebrew and James in the Greek. For example Miriam in the Hebrew section is Mary in the Greek. Unfortunately the names in the Greek portion (NT) did retain their British influence instead of the "literal" Greek and Hebrew. For example what is traditionally translated, "the bank of the river", would be translated, "the lip of the river". As far as the translation goes it is painfully at times literal (this is good for study). The texts used are the Masoretic and the Received Text. This makes it so you can look up the word without knowing Hebrew or Greek. Also in the Hebrew/Greek column the literal translation for each word has been placed below the word and the Strongs number above the word. This Bible has the Hebrew or Greek (depends on which passage you are reading) in one column and the English next to it in another column.