Tutorial: How do I Put/View Greek or Hebrew in Posts?

[fredtgreco]

Ok, so you are ready to post your latest deep thoughts on a passage of Scripture, complete with comments on the original language (Hebrew for OT, Greek for NT). But what you are wondering is how can I do this?

Well you can do it now. The simple answer is that it is done in the same manner that you make text bold or italic. That is done in one of two ways:

1. You type your text, then highlight it and go up to the BBCode boxes above the text box and select the appropriate box. In this case, you want the "Font Face" box. Then pull the drop down box to the font you want. The BBCode will be automatically inserted AROUND your text. make sure that all the text that you want in a different font is INSIDE the BBCode, like so

[b]I want all this text to be bold[/b] but not this text

2. The second way is similar. You simply type the BBCode characters, beginning and ending with brackets and the appropriate code. So bold uses "b", italics "i" and the like:

[b]This is bold[/b]
[i]This is italics[/i]
[font=arial]This is in arial font[/font]
[size=24]This is huge text[/size]

Because you can type BBCode yourself, you are not limited to the 7 options in the drop down box. You simply replace "whatever font name you want" (the real name) for "arial".

Another important point is having the text be viewable. The Greek and Hebrew fonts tend to be small, so I would suggest that you combine the font codes with the size codes. I would suggest Huge (size=24) for Hebrew and Large (size=18) for Greek. You can obviously adjust this as well.

So let's take a look at an example. This is John 1:1

in normal font face
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

in Bwgrkl font face (pasted from Bibleworks, for example)
VEn avrch/| h=n o` lo,goj( kai. o` lo,goj h=n pro.j to.n qeo,n( kai. qeo.j h=n o` lo,goj

in Bwgrkl font face, showing coding (pasted from Bibleworks, for example)

[font=bwgrkl][size=18]VEn avrch/| h=n o` lo,goj( kai. o` lo,goj h=n pro.j to.n qeo,n( kai. qeo.j h=n o` lo,goj[/size][/font]

Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew (bwhebl, the Bibleworks font):

`#r<a'(h' tae�w> ~yIm:�V'h; tae� ~yhi_l{a/ ar"�B' tyvi�arEB.

showing coding

[font=bwhebl][size=24]`#r<a'(h' tae�w> ~yIm:�V'h; tae� ~yhi_l{a/ ar"�B' tyvi�arEB. [/size][/font]

Finally, it is also critical to make sure that your readers can actually READ the fonts and not gibberish. You could use the font symbol for this reason for greek, since it is widely distributed. But there is no wide distribution Hebrew font. And symbol has severe limitations. The answer is for the viewer to get a couple of very good, free Greek and Hebrew fonts. Two of these sets are provided by (1) Bibleworks and (2) Bill Mounce (author of Basics of Biblical Greek). You can get them:

Bibleworks Fonts http://www.bibleworks.com/fonts.html (showing character maps)

Greek & Hebrew Windows http://www.bibleworks.com/downloads/bwfonts.zip

Greek & Hebrew Mac http://www.bibleworks.com/download_mac.html

Mounce Fonts

Greek font page http://www.teknia.com/free/TekniaGreek.html

WinXP direct download http://www.teknia.com/free/TekniaGreek.html

Mac direct download http://www.teknia.com/public/mac/TekniaGreek-OS9.hqx

Character map (pdf) http://www.teknia.com/public/pdf/TekniaGreek.pdf

Hebrew font page http://www.teknia.com/free/TekniaHebrew.html

WinXP direct download http://www.teknia.com/public/win/Install_TekniaHebrew.exe

Mac direct download http://www.teknia.com/public/mac/TekniaGreek.hqx

Character map (pdf) http://www.teknia.com/public/pdf/TekniaHebrew.pdf

[Edited on 10/22/2004 by fredtgreco]