First sent out
March 2005
TYNDALE TECH
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| Email notes from David Instone-Brewer at Tyndale House, Cambridge. |
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Unicode Fonts for Biblical Studies - made easy
I
looked in vain for Greek & Hebrew Unicode keyboards, which were
easy to install, intuitive to use, and free. Some keyboards are free for a
trial
period, some include just Hebrew or just Greek, and most are difficult
to use.
So I wrote my own, and I'm sharing them as the Tyndale Unicode Font
Kit.
Almost all word processors now support Unicode - with the notable
exceptions of Word Perfect on the PC and Word on the Mac before Word 2004.
If you use Windows 98, Mac OS 9 or earlier, you should use the legacy fonts
(see previous
emails).
1) Why use
Unicode?
2) Tyndale Unicode
Font Kit (and some
others)
3) Greek &
Hebrew Unicode Bibles to
download
4) Greek &
Hebrew Unicode Bibles on the
web
5) Masoretic
Punctuation
1) Why use Unicode?
*
All Unicode fonts are interchangeable
- in theory at least; in
practice you need a 'scholarly' Unicode font
for Biblical
languages.
* Unicode fonts are loved by publishers
* Documents with
Unicode can go straight to the web
* No need to make PDFs to make your
fonts look right
- though this is still the safest route if you
aren't sure everyone
has a Unicode font yet
* PC and
Macintosh Unicode is exactly the same
* Unicode Hebrew works with true
right-to-left formatting and wordwrap.
2) Tyndale
Unicode Font Kit (and some others)
The Tyndale Unicode Font Kit
includes
* keyboards for easily typing Biblical Hebrew, Greek and
Transliteration
* simple look-alike and sound-alike key positions (see
attached)
* instructions for customising the keyboards if you want to change
them
* the Cardo Unicode font by David Parry - excellent for Greek &
Hebrew
* Hebrew includes vowel pointing and Masoretic punctuation
* Greek
includes breathing, accents and ancient forms
* Transliteration is on the
same keyboard as Greek
* PC and Mac versions use the same keyboard
layout
* PC installer does all the hard work, with simple instructions for
activation
* any other scholarly Unicode font can be used instead or in
conjunction
* works perfectly with the Unicode Greek & Hebrew Bible Word
docs (below)
Tyndale Unicode Font Kit for PCs
http://www.tyndalehouse.co.uk/Download/TyndaleUnicodePC.exe
Save
this installer on your desktop, double-click on it to install the files,
and
follow the simple instructions to activate it. Then you can delete
it.
Tyndale Unicode Font Kit for Macs
http://www.tyndalehouse.co.uk/Download/TyndaleUnicodeMac.zip
Download
this, open the folder, and open the "Instructions" file
Other free
Greek & Hebrew scholarly fonts are available from
SBL - only
Hebrew yet
http://www.sbl-site.org/Resources/Resources_BiblicalFonts.aspx
SIL
- Greek & Hebrew separately
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=EzraSIL_Home
TITUS - only Greek
http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/indexe.htm?/unicode/unitest2.htm#TITUUT
Some
commercial fonts are also worth considering:
Linguist Software: http://www.linguistsoftware.com/lhebu.htm
Linguist fonts
are used by the Oxford Hebrew Bible Project and it has been
licensed by the
United Bible Societies for work on the Biblia Hebraica Quinta,
so it
is guaranteed to reproduce the BHS perfectly.
Galaxie Fonts: http://www.galaxie.com/store/product.asp?ProductID=27
which
are supplied with Word macros for converting from legacy Greek &
Hebrew.
3) Greek & Hebrew Unicode Bibles to
download
The following texts are converted to Unicode by
Tyndale House from texts which
have been prepared elsewhere. Please respect
the copyright restrictions which
are appended to the texts, and use them
only for non-commercial scholarly work.
Hebrew OT with vowels
- based on BHS, with Hebrew versification and English variations
marked
http://www.tyndalehouse.co.uk/Download/UnicodeTexts/Heb-OT_vowels_based_on_BHS.zip
Greek
LXX with accents
- based on Rahlfs text
http://www.tyndalehouse.co.uk/Download/UnicodeTexts/Gk-LXX_accents_Rahlfs.zip
Greek-Hebrew
LXX & MT in parallel
- Unicode version of Tov's electronic
edition
http://www.tyndalehouse.co.uk/Download/UnicodeTexts/Gk-Heb_LXX-MT_by_Tov.zip
Greek
NT with accents (NA27/UBS4)
- (UBS3, UBS4, NA26, NA27, and the
coming NA28 all use the same text,
though UBS & NA
use slightly different orthography)
http://www.tyndalehouse.co.uk/Download/UnicodeTexts/Gk-NT_accents_based_on_NA27.zip
4) Greek & Hebrew Unicode Bibles on the
web
Before you can read Unicode Biblical Greek and Hebrew on
the web properly,
you need to set up your browser to use the Cardo Unicode
font
(install this with the Tyndale Unicode Kit, or use another scholarly
font).
The instructions are slightly different for each browser:
In Internet Explorer 6:
- click on "Tools", "Internet options..." then
"Fonts"
- for "Latin based" language scripts, select the Web page font
"Cardo"
- for "Greek" and "Hebrew" language scripts, also select "Cardo"
Leningrad OT (used for BHS) with pointing
http://www.crosswire.org/study/parallelstudy.jsp?add=WLC#cv&key=gen
Leningrad
OT (used for BHS) with pointing & Masoretic punctuation
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/tan/index.htm
Leningrad
OT (used for BHS) with pointing & Masoretic punctuation
&
analysis & concordance & English parallel
http://verboomen.starline-inc.de/d13.php2xml?sfr=1&prq=1
Aleppo
OT with pointing
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/t/t0101.htm
Aleppo OT
Hebrew with English in parallel (Masoretic Text and the JPS 1917 Ed)
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0.htm
Aleppo OT
with full pointing & Masoretic punctuation
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/c/ct/c0101.htm
Targum
Onqelos with vowels
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/t/u/u0.htm
Mishna,
Tosephta, and both Talmuds in unpointed Hebrew
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/b/b0.htm
Hebrew
Unicode typewriter with all the cantillation marks
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/c/ct/c_search.htm
Greek
NT NA26/UBS3 = NA27/UBS4
- click on a word for simple lexicon and
gramatical analysis
http://www.greekbible.com/index.php?font=p
Orthodox
Church Greek NT with accents
http://kainh.homestead.com/files/NT4.zip
Sacred
texts from other religions, incl. Koran & Hindu texts
http://www.sacred-texts.com/unicode.htm
5) Masoretic punctuation
English has a few ways to split up a sentence (commas,
brackets etc)
but Masoretic punctuation employs about 30 ways. This enables
some very
precise analysis of the text's meaning, as defined by the
Masoretic rabbis.
Now that you can read and write these punctuation marks on
your computer
you might be interested to find out more.
TanakhML
Project - http://verboomen.starline-inc.de/
- the
Hebrew Bible with full Masoretic pointing
- concordance to every
form of each word
- analysis of verse structures, using
Masorectic punctuation
Masoretic Hebrew Punctuation
- a
summary of the history of the Masoretes and introduction to
how
Masoretic punctuation helps us to interpret the biblical text.
http://www.bfbs.org.uk/documents/masoretes.pdf
