[Words in square brackets]
These are translator insertions and are NOT part of any original manuscript and are therefore NOT part of the inspired text.
We add them to help you to understand what we believe the writer meant to convey, as other languages often have different ways of speaking and can miss out words that are necessary in English.
Sometimes we may get these wrong. Usually they are just additional words, but sometimes they may replace words from the original text that make no grammatical sense in English.
(Words in parentheses)
The original languages did not have parentheses markings, but the words within them ARE original.
We added the marking because it seems like the writer or speaker added these particular words as an aside comment, as we sometimes do when speaking. Therefore we have added the parentheses markings to help the reader see it.
Did we always get it right? Probably not.
{Look!}
This is a grammatical feature that can’t really be translated like a normal word, because it’s a ‘particle,’ not a word.
It’s an instruction which describes how the sentence is to be read, as if to say ‘pay attention’ or ‘wow, look at this!’ or ‘look at this right now!’. It’s a bit like our ! character, but it comes at the start and isn’t about speaking emphatically, but more about telling people to pay attention. Some Bibles translate it as ‘Behold!’ – but in modern English, that sounds like you’re trapped in a medieval fantasy novel.
You don’t have to read these, feel free to skip them.
[Syr]
[Syr] is found in the Christian Era books, and is short for ‘Syriac,’ which refers to the main dialect of the Aramaic language.
It shows that the previous statement (or word) appears quite differently compared to other Bibles, because we believe that most Christian books were originally penned in Aramaic. The Aramaic texts we have today are all written in the Syriac dialect.
We defer to the Aramaic text over the Greek when the two are in conflict (except for Mark, Luke, and Acts, which we believe were originally in Greek).
Volunteers are still adding these.
Learn more about the languages of the Christian books.
[LXX]
[LXX] is found in the Jewish Era books, and means the ‘Greek Septuagint.’
It shows that the previous statement (or word) appears quite differently compared to other Bibles because we use the Greek Septuagint as a source text, while other Bibles use the corrupted Hebrew Masoretic text.
Why does ‘LXX’ mean the Greek Septuagint? The word ‘Septuagint’ actually means ‘Seventy,’ named such because 70 translators were said to have worked on the first part of the translation. Now, the number 70 in Roman Numerals is LXX (L = 50, X = 10). So LXX is the traditional nickname for the Greek Septuagint.
Volunteers are still adding these.
Learn why we use the Greek Septuagint.
Long dashes –
These only show the reader where to insert a long pause. Unlike in some other Bibles, they do not indicate where a word has been removed. In our translation, all spurious words are crossed out instead.
(!)
This is a symbol that indicates that the previous remark was sarcasm. It’s commonly used in closed captioning for television and movies. Of course, as translators, we’re only making an educated guess as to where a Bible writer is using sarcasm, so we may get it wrong at times. I’m sure that will come as a shock to you (!).
Volunteers have just begun adding these.