Introduction

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At beginning of the previous century in the United States of America a young man named Adolf Ernst Knoch was led to the decision, to make a translation of the so-called New Testament which would enable the unsophisticated bible student to come into close contact with the main text without knowing the original languages. Basically, the idea was to translate as uniformly as possible, creating in this way, a true image of the Greek text in English. The idea was not really new because similar efforts had already been done in ancient times, but it was the first time to do this since the invention of letterpress printing.

Nevertheless, the manner was unique. The complete vocabulary of the Greek Scriptures was divided into its etymological and grammatical elements (morphemes) and assigned to corresponding English equivalents, which were derived from the language usage of the Sacred Scriptures. During this process double meanings were avoided in order to translate uniformly word by word and form by form. With the aid of these standards a uniform English sublinear was generated as a base for an easy to read idiomatic concordant translation. Regarding the English idiom, meaning and grammar variants had to be added to these standards, but always on the same basis of uniformity. Where necessary deviations occurred, these were indicated by typographical means.

A.E. Koch called the method used ‘concordant’ because the resulting translation is completely in accord with the original text itself. The first edition of a concordant translation was published in 1926, an edited and enlarged version followed in 1931. The bright light of spiritual knowledge which the readers of the concordant translation received led to the intention of also producing a concordant translation of the so-called Old Testament from the original Hebrew/Aramaic, according to the model of the Greek-English version. Therefore, in order to make precise studies at the relevant locations within the Holy Land, the editor travelled to Palestine. Afterwards, he visited Europe, coming to Germany also, the land of his ancestors. Whilst staying there, the concordant idea received many followers and as a result A.E.K. decided to undertake a German concordant translation of the Greek Scriptures before returning to the United States.

Back home a revision of the English concordant translation was waiting to be done. This was published in 1944, as an easy to handle pocket book with a keyword concordance contained in an appendix. After A.E.K.’s death in 1965, this version was reprinted four times, the latest in 1983 as the Concordant Literal Version (CLV). After finishing the Greek work with the 1944 edition A.E.K. and his fellow workers focused on the English concordant translation of the Hebrew/Aramaic Scriptures, publishing a first draft of Genesis by the end of the fifties and of Isaiah through the beginning of the sixties. Subsequently, the Concordant Version of the Old Testament (CVOT) has been completed and published in a single volume by the Concordant Publishing Concern in the USA.

A new era began with computer technology, revolutionizing the possibilities of studying the Sacred Scriptures. Computer software now makes possible comparisons and word studies in an easy and reviewable manner, rapidly providing lots of additional information in new forms of presentation. On this basis the Interlinear Scripture Analyzer (ISA) was created, being a tool best suited to support the concordant idea in an up to date manner. The Scripture4all Foundation has taken on the task of creating and publishing concordant interlinears of the ancient biblical texts via ISA that are completely in accord with the concordant idea. With the consent and permission of the Concordant Publishing Concern the whole concordant material in the English language was digitized, checked and updated by computer support and further interlinears in the Dutch and German language were added. In English there is now an etymological and idiomatical sublinear of the Greek Scriptures (cles/clis.en) with several standard levels (std-1/1b/2.en) as well as parsings (parsing-r/parsing-c.en). Of the Hebrew/Aramaic text an idiomatic sublinear (ches) is available at this moment. Specifically arranged interlinears as well as tables concerning grammar and word-building are ready for download in PDF format on this website.

As at the beginning of the concordant work under the overall control of Adolf Ernst Knoch, we also have the persuasion that God will use this work more than anything else we know for the laud of His glory and for the blessing of His saints.