Bible study glossary

Plain-English definitions of the Greek and Hebrew study terms Scribe uses — Strong's numbers, the LSJ and BDB lexicons, interlinears, morphology, and more.

Strong's number

A Strong's number is the index a word receives in Strong's Concordance — H-prefixed for Hebrew, G-prefixed for Greek — linking an English word back to the specific original-language word behind it. In Scribe, every word in the BSB and MSB carries its Strong's number, tappable to open the full entry.

Concordance

A concordance is an index of every place a word appears in the Bible. A Strong's concordance indexes by original-language word, so you can trace one Greek or Hebrew term across every verse. Scribe builds this in: tap a Strong's number to list every verse it appears in, fully offline.

Lexicon

A lexicon is a scholarly dictionary of a language's vocabulary. For Bible study, Greek and Hebrew lexicons give the full range of meaning of an original-language word — far more than a one-line gloss. Scribe ships the standard references on-device: Liddell-Scott-Jones for Greek and Brown-Driver-Briggs for Hebrew.

Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ)

Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ) is the standard, most comprehensive lexicon of ancient Greek, used across classics and biblical scholarship. It maps a word’s full semantic range with citations. Scribe puts the LSJ definition behind every tagged Greek word, bundled on the device so it works without a connection.

Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)

Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) is the standard lexicon of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, organising words by root with detailed definitions and references. It is the Hebrew counterpart to LSJ for Greek. Scribe shows the full BDB entry when you tap a Hebrew word, offline and in place.

TBESG / TBESH

TBESG and TBESH are STEPBible's ‘Translators Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs’ for Greek (TBESG) and Hebrew (TBESH) — concise glosses keyed to Strong's numbers. Scribe shows the brief TBESG/TBESH gloss for a quick read, alongside the fuller LSJ or BDB definition for depth.

Interlinear

An interlinear presents original-language text with each word’s transliteration, gloss, and grammatical data aligned to it. Scribe offers a tap-driven, word-by-word interlinear — the whole verse broken into each word with its original script, transliteration, and gloss — rather than a continuous side-by-side parallel column.

Morphology (parsing)

Morphology, or parsing, is the grammatical analysis of a word — its part of speech, tense, stem, person, gender, and number (for example, ‘Qal Perfect 3ms’). Scribe decodes Hebrew morphology into plain English, so you can read what a form is doing without memorising the parsing codes first.

Lemma

A lemma is the dictionary or base form of a word — the headword you look up, as opposed to the inflected form that appears in the text. Knowing the lemma is what lets you find a word in a lexicon. Scribe shows the original token alongside its parsing on tap.

Transliteration

Transliteration represents the letters of one script using another — here, writing Greek or Hebrew words in the Latin alphabet so they can be read and pronounced without knowing the original script. Scribe shows the transliteration for every tagged word in its word-study panel.

Cross-reference (TSK)

A cross-reference links a verse to other passages on the same theme, word, or event. Scribe bundles the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (TSK), a classic public-domain set of cross-references, on-device; the Scholar AI research assistant draws on them to ground its answers, and the passages it cites are tappable.

Full-text search (FTS5)

FTS5 is the full-text search engine built into SQLite, indexing text for fast keyword and phrase lookup. Scribe uses FTS5 to search all 14 bundled translations from a word or fragment, instantly and entirely on-device — no server round-trip, available even in the free Reading Mode.

Classical Commentary Library

The Classical Commentary Library is 90,000+ entries from twelve public-domain commentators — Spurgeon, Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, and more — plus early church fathers and two Bible dictionaries. It's included with the $4.99/month subscription; on the $59.99 lifetime unlock or the free tier it's a one-time $24.99 add-on. Either way it installs once (~354 MB) and then searches fully offline.

Patristics

Patristics is the study of the early church fathers — the Christian writers of roughly the first to eighth centuries — and the texts they left. Their writings show how the earliest readers understood Scripture. Scribe's Classical Commentary Library includes patristic works from Augustine, Origen, Chrysostom, Irenaeus, and others, searchable offline.

Reading Mode

Reading Mode is Scribe's free tier, active after the 30-day trial. It keeps 9 translations, full-text search, bookmarks, and highlights — free forever, with no account. Strong's word study, the scholarly lexicons, morphology, cross-references, and AI research require Scholar.

Scholar

Scholar is Scribe’s unlocked tier. It adds the full LSJ and BDB lexicons, Hebrew morphology, tap-a-word study, and AI research. Scholar unlocks two ways: a $4.99/month subscription, or a one-time $59.99 USD purchase you own forever — no account either way. The $4.99/month plan also includes the full Classical Commentary Library.

See these in action in the word study with LSJ and BDB, or read how to do Greek & Hebrew word study on your iPhone.