Methodology

Let The Bible Speak For Itself

These are the Bible’s first 32 words in the language, format and order of the oldest surviving writing.

And, here are modern English synonyms for each of those words. Each is presented on its own line with the synonym that best represents the original idea in blue letters.

in, at, to, when
head, begin, principles, start, summit
conceive, create, create by cutting, fatten
gods as one, God, gods, powers that be
about, of, unto
he, the
sky, skywaters, heavens
and, so, but
about, of, unto
he, she, the
earth, land
and
she, the
earth
be, being, become
formless, wilderness, confusion
and
empty, virgin, void, unfilled
and
dark, darkness
above, over, upon
face, mouth, opening, surface
abyss, deep, primal waters, deep sea
and
breath, spirit, wind
gods as one, God, gods, powers that be
from, part of, flowing from
breath, blow, hover, move, flutter, sweep
above, over, upon
face, mouth, opening, surface

A Leap of Faith

You can use the Freeware Bible Database to journey back in time and read the word, word for word.

I have been on that journey for four years now. So far, along the way, I’ve found a beautiful vision of God, a way to reconcile Creationism and Evolutionism and a blueprint for how the human race can transform the earth into a place that’s very good for all of us, for our children and for our fellow creatures.

But what do I know? I am not a clergyman or a theologian or a biblical scholar. I’ve never even read the whole book cover to cover. I keep trying, but keep getting confused and starting again at the beginning. I have read dozens of translations of the creation story, studied all the annotations and plowed through scholarly articles trying to understand what the Bible says without actually reading the original text. That didn’t work. So I forced myself to learn the ancient Aramaic/Hebrew alphabet and translated the first three chapters of Genesis into English.

A Database

In that process, I collected a significant amount of information and compiled it into a database designed to help people like you and me read the Bible for ourselves. At first, reading the database won’t be as easy as reading a book, because the data is arranged in rows and columns, so you have to read up and down – not just across. But once you get the hang of navigating the translation tool, you’ll be able to read the Word, word for word.

Here's where the data comes from and how it's organized:

Step by Step

The Primary Source

The Freeware Bible starts with the Leningrad Codex, the oldest complete manuscript of the Aramaic/Hebrew Bible that has survived into modern times. Here is a transcript of the first 28 letters.

That text reads from right to left, with no spaces between words, no capitalization and no punctuation.

Ancient Letters

The Freeware Bible is organized into columns. In the column below, each word from the Codex is written on a separate line and the letters have been reversed to read from left to right (like English).

Transliteration into Roman Letters

Next to that column, one or two Roman letters are swapped for each ancient one, so that you can verbalize each word and spot similarities between them.

Root Words and Synonyms

The Aramaic/Hebrew alphabet transformed over time. The letters started as symbols for tangible objects: stood for a house, stood for a head, stood for an ox, etc. This was like ancient Egyptian and modern Chinese. Then, over the centuries, each letter came to indicate a particular sound: sounds like a "b," like an "r," etc. This is like ancient Phoenician and modern English. Ultimately, each letter could represent both a root (original) meaning and a sound.

The Bible’s creation story dates back to the beginning of recorded history. It outlasted every significant document written in its original language. Think about that. How can you figure out the exact meaning of any word, when there is no place to look it up? Bible translators must make educated guesses about the definition of a word based on similar words found in documents written hundreds -- or thousands -- of years later. In our database, possible roots and synonyms are combined in one column with root words in bold type.

Annotations

As each new word appears in the database, it is annotated with additional information. The Roots and Synonyms column makes a lot more sense when you cross-reference it with the annotations. Here are annotations for the first three words:

So, in a nutshell, the first four columns of the database help you see ideas that would otherwise be obscured by the particular word choices made by any one translator, and the annotations provide additional information that doesn't fit in the database's grid.

Stepping Out of Line

In compiling the four principal columns of the database and writing the annotations, I've tried to stay as objective as possible, so that you will be able to come to your own understanding of the ideas contained in the ancient scripture.

The Verbatim Column

I used those four columns to write a verbatim translation of the creation story and to my surprise, found myself transcribing a vision of God and a version of creation that made perfect sense to me. Did this have more to do with the reading part or with the writing part of the translation job? I must confess, I do not know. You can, of course, see the data and judge the validity of the "Verbatim" translation for yourself.

The King James Column

To keep things in balance, our database also includes a well established translation. The King James column shows the synonym selections made by the people who wrote the King James Bible.

From Words to Verse

The creation story was first composed and vocalized in verse, not in prose. Since poetry is relatively easy to memorize and fun to hear, many of the great stories that have survived from ancient cultures were composed and handed down from generation to generation in verse. Maybe that is why much of the Bible is poetry, or maybe the words were first passed from God to man in verse. Either way, a true and full translation of the Bible belongs in verse not in prose, to honor the oral tradition from which it arose.

I've already said that I'm not a biblical scholar, theologian or clergyman. Well, I'm not a poet either. But I tried my best to write verse to express what the bible means to me. That verse, called Rejuvenation, is presented alongside the King James Bible verse.

The following shows the elements of the Bible Freeware database with explanations of each one.

Oral History

Before discussing our source materials, it is important to state that no Bible manuscript can honestly be called “original.”

"To comprehend the written Bible, it is essential to understand that most of the words which are now written down in it had been spoken first and therefore, they had been heard long before they could ever have been written." - Arislav Pelicankan

So, from the beginning, our ancestors engaged in the ongoing process of composing and revising Bible verse. The Bible did not begin as a book; it was a living document which synthesized diverse opinions and represented the collective wisdom of the community.

Some Biblical scholars estimate that the Bible was first composed during the Bronze Age (2000 to 1700 BCE) and then transcribed centuries later (1000 to 500 BCE). See, e.g., Amy Jill Levine., Introduction to the Old Testament. But multicultural anthropologists see far deeper roots in the history of the Bible. They compare the creation stories of ancient cultures from the Amazon to the Ganges, point to their uncanny similarities and posit that those stories spring from common roots dating back to the origins of humankind. See, e.g., Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth.

The Primary Source

Dated 1009 CE/AD, the Leningrad Codex is the earliest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible that has survived into modern times. It was compiled from sources which have been lost. The original document looks like this:

The manuscript includes two different versions of the Bible. The first has only ancient Aramaic/Hebrew letters. The second includes pronunciation guidelines added by the scholars who transcribed the document.

By the time the Codex was written, the language represented by the older version had long since fallen out of use. The Cambridge History of the Bible explains:

With the exception of several chapters of Daniel and Ezra, which are written in Aramaic/Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament is Hebrew. The creation story and the story of the tower of Babel imply that Hebrew was the original language of mankind. When we turn from folk legend to linguistic origins, however, Hebrew does not appear to have been the original language of the Hebrews themselves . . . it was probably a tribal dialect of the Old Aramaic/Hebrew.

The scholars who compiled the Codex translated the ancient text into their version of Hebrew and added vocalization symbols to show how they thought the words should be pronounced. In the Freeware Bible database, the Ancient Letter’s column breaks down the lines of the newer text into individual words and shows the vocalization guides that were added by Codex scholars. The Roman Letter’s column focuses on the older text, ignoring the pronunciation guidelines and simply swapping out Roman letters for the ancient ones.