David L. Washburn

Specialist in biblical languages

EVEN BIGGER NEWS!

I want to extend a huge thank-you to all the folks who sent me messages of support when I announced my divorce last year. I have to admit, I went into that whole thing with a fair amount of trepidation, because I grew up, went to Bible college and served with a lot of Christians who are, in my view, absurdly judgmental about such things. The people who responded to my announcement were just the opposite: they were loving, encouraging, forgiving and basically acted like Christians should act. That really gives me hope.

But the story gets better. Over the past year since the divorce, Kathy and I have remained friends, done things together, talked like never before, read books together, and learned a LOT about ourselves and each other. As that progressed, we realized that we did, in fact, still love each other. We started going to counseling, apologized and forgave each other for a lot of things, and began a process that reaches its apex today:

WE'RE GETTING MARRIED! Again. Remarried. Re-tying the knot. Whatever you want to call it, we've reconciled and are planning to spend the rest of our lives together. This is truly a story of grace, because even at our lowest points, God still moved in our hearts and kept us committed to each other even though we didn't realize it at the time. And so, around 5 PM Pacific time today, we will be officially married for the second, and hopefully the last, time.

God is good. Far beyond our wildest imaginings. Never forget that.

EXCITING NEWS! A PUBLISHED NOVEL!

If you've looked at my credentials page, you might have noticed that I published a technical article about Josiah. Well, I found him such a fascinating character that I wrote a novel about his life. It has just been published as an e-book that you can download for the absurdly low price of $2.99. You can find it at
Smashwords Publishers
and it should be available on Kindle and other major e-readers soon. I'll announce when it is, but for now you can download it and read it on your computer. Enjoy!

Check out my new Internet review show!

BIG NEWS

I have something very important to report to users of this site, so take a moment and read this message before continuing.

Welcome to my home page. I'm an independent, widely published biblical researcher who does research in the biblical languages for fun and edification. My specialty is grammar, but I also do Greek and Aramaic.

I don't claim to have the final word on anything, but I will do my best to answer questions about the languages in a manner that is clear, well-researched, and most important, relevant. Since this is cyberville and you don't have a clue who I am or why you should bring your question to me, feel free to check out my credentials, including my publications. (Some of my publications are available online; those appearing as links in the credentials page may be downloaded. They are pkzipped, WordPerfect 5.x files.) If you think I can help you find what you're looking for, drop me an e-mail at the address at the bottom of this document. I will try to reply within a week of receiving your mail.

A new article that I wrote is now available online. This one is a true story that illustrates two things: God's providence, and the importance of bicycle helmets. Curious? Check it out!

I'm also very much into music, both Christian and classical. In college, I started out as a music theory and composition major for 4 years before switching to Bible study. Recently I've been getting back into that, especially since I bought myself a great synthesizer/music workstation and started understanding MIDI. Here's a description of my setup with some pictures (in the first picture, the guy in the background is one of the most phenomenal bass players I've ever known, and it's been a real privilege getting to play alongside him).

If this isn't what you were looking for, here are some other Bible-related sites you might find interesting. Note that I have recently added a link to Parons Technology's Hebrew and Greek tutorial pages. Be advised that I have not used these myself, but I have received feedback from a number of people who have and everything I have heard has been positive. One major feature of these CD-ROM programs is the fact that they include audio so you can hear as well as see the languages, which goes a long way toward helping the material stay with you. If you have any comments about these packages, please send them to me.

 

Bible Topics

General

  1. The Blue Letter Bible Online Interlinears, commentaries, and more
  2. Home page of the newsgroup soc.religion.christian.bible-study
  3. An online Topical Bible from Logos.
  4. The Society of Biblical Literature
  5. The CCAT transliteration standard for Hebrew and Greek
  6. Bible-related gopher site (CCAT)
  7. The GospelPage

Hebrew/Old Testament

  1. The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures
  2. The Hebrew Bible online in searchable format. Note that you will need to get the fonts referred to on the pages and install them before the Hebrew text is readable.
    1. Get the fonts now
  3. The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit
  4. Jewish Bible Association
  5. A Review of Hebrew Interlinears by H. J. Harm of SIL
  6. The Interactive Hebrew Text Project. This is a very cool site, though still under construction. Its biggest drawback is that it requires Microsoft Internet Explorer and doesn't work with the far superior Netscape. At the moment the only texts available are parts of Deuteronomy and Jonah, but the grammatical analysis is worth the effort of taking a look. The project is also soliciting comments from users in order to make it better, so hop on over there and make your wishes known.

Greek/New Testament

  1. Loads of information relating to Greek Grammar, exegesis and textual criticism
  2. Links to various editions of the Greek New Testament online
  3. Greek New Testament (and Old) online
  4. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
  5. The Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon of Classical Greek
  6. The Septuagint - an unbelievable trove of information and resources related to the Septuagint and other Old Greek versions.
  7. The Synoptic Problem
  8. The question of Q by Eta Linnemann, a world-renowned New Testament scholar.

Textual Criticism

  1. The Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism
  2. A new online Greek New Testament using the 1881 Westcott-Hort text with Nestle-Aland 27th edition variants.
  3. Images of some pages of P66
  4. Images of P87
  5. Two minuscule manuscripts, number 1907 (number 7 on the page) and number 57 (number 9 on the page).
  6. Many other images of New Testament papyri
  7. A newly-identified New Testament papyrus fragment designated P116, with an article in German about it.
  8. TC: an Online Journal of Textual Criticism (both Old and New Testament)
  9. Dating New Testament Manuscripts
  10. A fine exposition of Psalm 12:6-7 with reference to the King-James-Version-Only debate.

Archaeology

  1. Loads of information relating to Northwest Semitic languages and archaeology
  2. The Oriental Institute Research Archives
  3. Biblical Archaeology Society
  4. An ongoing discussion of the Tel Dan Inscription that seems to mention the "house of David," maintained by my colleague George Athas.
  5. The Edinburgh Ras Shamra (Ugarit) Project
  6. A database of all the Ugaritic tablets with vocabulary, searchable concordance and more.
  7. An online intro to Ugaritic Grammar - very cool!
  8. The Akkadian Language
  9. A short introduction to Hieroglyphics
  10. Your name in hieroglyphics!
  11. Dr. John McMath's Research Ministries Page
  12. The Franciscan Archaeological Institute
  13. Archaeology in Review. Note that this page has not been updated in a very long time; I also have not explored the rest of the site where it resides, so I can't say whether there's anything else of use there or not.
  14. A huge library of photos of ancient sites and objects.
  15. Online tables of contents of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR)
  16. Okeanos - Biblical, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
  17. Israel Antiquities Authority
  18. Second Temple Synagogues - images, ancient literary citations, an excellent resource.
  19. Near Eastern Archaeology (formerly Biblical Archaeologist)
  20. An article about the archaeological debate over Jericho and other sites from the book of Joshua.

Dead Sea Scrolls

  1. A TrueType font that simulates the script used at Qumran.
  2. A new transcription of the scroll 1QS (the so-called "Manual of Discipline") by yours truly.
  3. A fresh online translation of, and discussion of, the Habakkuk Commentary, also known as the Habakkuk Pesher, from Qumran Cave 1.
  4. The Great Isaiah Scroll - This is the complete photographic edition on the Web. The graphics are large, but well worth the effort. Don't miss this one!
  5. An article by Norman Golb about the purported Yahad Ostracon found at Qumran. Having now had the chance to review the Ostracon article in Qadmoniot, I tend to agree with Golb that Cross and Eshel have badly mis-read this ostracon. Check it out and decide for yourself.
  6. The Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls
  7. Various DSS-Related Topics by Ian Hutchesson
  8. An interesting article about Qumran (in German)
  9. Dead Sea -- Intro
  10. New Dead Sea Scroll dates
  11. THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS PROJECT

Fun stuff

  1. Reverend Fun
  2. Church humor
  3. MUSIC - some of my favorite Christian musicians
    1. Newsong
      2. Rebecca St. James
    2. Steven Curtis Chapman
    3. Mark Lowry
    4. Amy Grant
    5. If you are into writing music, here are a couple of Windows programs that are really helpful:
      • Noteworthy Composer, a shareware program that makes it a breeze to enter notes, lyrics, guitar chords, you name it. Registration is inexpensive and worth it.
      • Anvil Studio, a program for the more seriously MIDI-minded, and best of all, the basic program is free. It lets you record from your synthesizer, combine MIDI and audio tracks, edit individual MIDI events, and has some low-priced add-ons that let you print, work with patches for your particular synthesizer and more. I can't praise this one enough. Plus, the tech support is far above and beyond the call of duty. Try it!
  4. If you're a church musician, the Worship Together site is an amazing resource for music and more.

Computer resources for Bible and language study

  1. A Paleo-Hebrew font in both Adobe Type Manager and TrueType format
  2. A Macintosh version of the Paleo-Hebrew font, converted and refined by Joel L. Breazeale. Self-extracting stuffit format with a README that tells how to install it. Thanks, Joel!
  3. Jack Kilmon's page--several more paleo-Hebrew fonts (better than mine!), as well as other ancient-script fonts including a Dead Sea Scrolls hand; Jack also has reproductions of several ancient documents including the 10 Commandments, the Lord's Prayer in ancient Aramaic, and much much more.
  4. WordPerfect Assistant, an EXCELLENT set of WordPerfect macros that make it easier to type in Hebrew, Greek and Cyrillic using WP's internal character sets. The Hebrew includes vowels and types right-to-left. Available for nearly all versions of WP from 5.1 on.
  5. An excellent Greek flash-card program for DOS, Windows or Mac

    6. (Note that you will need both the Flash Works program and the Greek font - the page doesn't tell you that!)
  6. Parsons Technology's multimedia hebrew and Greek tutorials
  7. Silver Mountain Software, a source for some excellent Hebrew and Greek fonts
  8. The GRAMCORD Institute

Resources online and otherwise

  1. The University of Chicago ETS project
  2. The Perseus Project, extensive online resources including full-text ancient writings in several languages and countless archaeological images, to name just a few.
  3. The online library of Christian Classics
  4. Duke University Papyrus Archive
  5. The home page of the Society of Biblical Literature. Among other things, you can get Scholars Press' free fonts here. The fonts include Hebrew, Greek, Syriac and a transliteration font with diacritical marks and all the other goofy characters you need to show transliterated materials.
  6. Directory of Online Journals etc. (gopher)
  7. The Noncanonical books homepage
  8. Christian Book Distributors
  9. Dove Booksellers. The site includes both new and used books, and there's a mailing list you can subscribe to for updates of the used book section.
  10. Eisenbrauns Publishing. The site includes both new and used books.
  11. Christian Computing Magazine Online
  12. Resource Pages for Biblical Studies
  13. Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN)

Linguistics

  1. SYNTHINAR: The Syntactic Theory Seminar
  2. Summer Institute of Linguistics Home Page

Astronomy

General

  1. This is so much fun it's indescribable: How to fly a spacecraft!
  2. 3D Solar System Check this out!
  3. AstroMart
  4. Project Galileo
  5. NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab
  6. Skymap, the best Windows planetarium program around
  7. Deep-sky Sketches
  8. Planetary Science Research Discoveries, a new online journal

Mars

As a committed Areophile, I offer some of my favorite links about the Red Planet:

 

  1. The Mars Pathfinder update page. Fantastic photos and more!
  2. Latest Mars Global Surveyor Info
  3. The Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery (an online book)
  4. The Planet Mars
  5. A map maker of the planet Mars This one is just too cool for words!
  6. SEDS info and links on Mars
  7. The Mars Exploration Program
To ask a question or make a comment, send e-mail to 
dwashbur@nyx.net

This page designed and maintained by Dave Washburn of CNAL. Email for prices and services.