Unspeakable

David Paul

What is up with the word "speechless" in Acts 9:7?

7     The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.

New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update

I was doing a study in L3 and I did an Englishman's Concordance search on "activity" in 2 Thes. 2:9...

9     that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders,

New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update

...and I got the following report:

I immediately noticed the first entry...speechless...and was surprised because it seemed out of place. G1753 is energeia. I hovered on "speechless" and the Strong's entry for energeia popped up (a feature that L4 & L5 both lack to their everlasting disgrace), but I didn't see speechless as a meaning, so I assumed that it was a linking error. I did a right-click "selected references" search and realized that it wouldn't help because it was keying on the mislabelled Strong number for energeia. I then left-arrowed a couple of times to a Greek text and did a right-click "selected text" lemma search in Complete Word Study Dict. NT on the word eneos G1769 (Strong's gives two spellings for the word--having either one "n" or two--which is odd since it is a hap-leg). That gave me this entry...

G1753 is not that close to G1769, so it isn't likely to be a simple typo issue that caused the bad link. Remember I said it is a hap-leg? Look at the entry above--it says it is found also in Acts 22:9...only it isn't. Doh! This is a multi-car error train! I did a search in Dict. of Biblical Greek which gave this report:

Two issues present here: first, a quick spelling tally--CWSD (2 n's), DBG (1 n), Strong's (both)...for a hap-leg! What's more interesting is that the word energeia is the very next word! This could explain the typo link error (it's easy to hit 8 instead of 7)...except for one thing: the error clearly stems from misattributed Strong's numbers, not from DBG numbers. Very odd.

I decided to look at the use of eneos-enneos in the LXX, which the CWSD presented in its entry. I hover over the link...and get a pop-up of the NASB!! This is a clear design flaw. All such links should display the preferred LXX resource. The error train gets longer--but it still has a head of steam! For the sake of ease, I click over to L5 where I have a couple of LXXs linked to my NASB. Brenton shows the reference is to dumb (speechless) dogs...

...and then I check the Lexham LXX interlinear, and it shows this!!

The error train derails! A real comedy of errors related to this one word across numerous resources, and some of the errors (like the one above) are truly flagrant. 

The one partially redeeming thing I found is that the pop-up you get in L5 when hovering over the original word I was studying (energeia) does show the correct Strong's info--at least that has been fixed. The reason I say partially redeeming, of course, is because I use L3 for about 98% of my study...and none of these things, even when fixed, will ever be made right in L3. 

Room4more

You need to do some updating. I check L5 and my other bible programs and all seems correct. Sorry.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

David Paul said:

I was doing a study in L3 and I did an Englishman's Concordance search on "activity" in 2 Thes. 2:9...

9     that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders,

New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update

...and I got the following report:

Noticed Libronix 3 report is missing Col 1:29

Thankful for Logos 5 sympathetic highlighting of search results plus root search.  Thankful can open two Bible Word Study guides:

Keep Smiling [:)]