Look Inside: ESV Reverse Interlinear NT

How can you take your study of God’s word a step further if you’re unfamiliar with the original languages? Well, we’ve created a product that can do just that! Welcome to the ESV Reverse Interlinear for the New Testament.

This is the second reverse interlinear we’ve done at Olive Tree, along with producing a number of traditional interlinear Bibles in a variety of translations. Here’s a look at the benefits of using the reverse interlinear and some screenshots of how it looks in our app.

How Does this Enhance Your Study?

A traditional interlinear will make the original languages prominent and then place the corresponding English word(s) directly beneath the word in the original language, typically in smaller font. The result is often a translation that is not very fluid. And it is difficult to use without a working knowledge of the original language.

That’s where the reverse interlinear can really help bridge the gap. Instead of making the original language prominent, the reverse interlinear keeps the English translation prominent and then places the word from the original language beneath the corresponding word in the English translation.

We’ve made this even easier with our version of the reverse interlinear. Instead of using the original language between the lines of the English translation, we’ve transliterated the original language. This helps the reader who doesn’t know the original languages learn how to recognize and pronounce the words from the original languages. I know, pretty neat, huh?

Strong’s Tagging

By this point, you’re probably thinking we couldn’t make this product any better. But there’s one more feature we added to the ESV Reverse Interlinear NT. We added Strong’s numbers! Both the English word and the transliterated Greek word are tagged with Strong’s numbers. If you want to see what metamorphoō looks like in Greek or search for this word in the rest of the Bible or one of your dictionaries, then just tap on it and access all that information in a popup window.

The popup window provides a lot of information about the word you’ve tapped. It contains the Greek word, parsing information, and different ways to search or lookup the word. If you want to search for other occurrences of this particular word in the Bible, then tap “Search for g3339.”

To look up this word in the Olive Tree Enhanced Strong’s Dictionary (included for free) or another resource you have in your library, then tap “Lookup μεταμορφόω.”

Other Greek Resources

Once you’ve gotten to the point where you’re comfortable using the ESV Reverse Interlinear NT, you can add some other Greek resources to your library as the next step. Here’s a screenshot of the ESV Greek-English Interlinear in the parallel tab of the Resource Guide.

And here’s a screenshot of the Nestle-Aland 28 New Testament. Notice how the word order in the Greek will sometimes differ from the word order in the English translation.

ESV Reverse Interlinear NT

By now you should be ready to give the ESV Reverse Interlinear NT a try, especially if you’re on your way to becoming more fluent in the original languages. Stop by our store and pick up a copy as you take your study of the words God has used to reveal himself one step further!