Connecting Your Hebrew OT with Your Greek NT

A good friend of mine sent me the following question:

I’ve been using a Libronix workspace a lot for Bible study, but one feature is annoying me (probably because I’m doing something wrong). If I start out in the OT, the Hebrew texts in one corner are all visible. If I type in a NT reference into the English translations, the corner of Hebrew texts switches to Greek. So far so good. But when I go back to the OT, the Greek stays Greek (i.e., LXX) rather than returning to Hebrew. How can I fix this?

Great question. If you do much work in the original languages and jump back in forth between the Hebrew OT and Greek NT, you’ve probably experienced this. While it’s nice to be able to look at the LXX, most people who know Hebrew usually prefer to see the Hebrew by default rather than the Greek.

So how can you avoid having your Hebrew OT switch to the Greek OT when you jump from the OT to the NT and back again to the OT?

Here are three suggestions on how to avoid this problem:

1. A simple solution that may work for some is to keep a second English text opened and unlinked for the purpose of jumping to cross references, etc. This will keep the rest of your linked resources from following you from the OT to the NT and then back again. The problem with this option is that you may want the rest of your resources to follow you.
2. A second option is to have the LXX and the Hebrew open in two separate tabs. Always unlink your Hebrew text from your English text before jumping to the NT. Relink it when you return to the OT. This is okay if you jump back and forth infrequently, but could get rather tedious if you’re jumping back and forth often.
3. The best option—at least that I’ve been able to think of—is to create a custom serial resource association linking your preferred Hebrew text with your preferred Greek text. This will override the default behavior.

To set up a new serial resource association, go to Tools > Library Management > Define Resource Associations, select Serial, and click New. Name your resource association something like “Hebrew OT with Greek NT” and add your preferred Hebrew OT text and Greek NT text.

Here’s a brief video (without sound, 1.01 MB, 51 sec.) showing you how to set up your resource association.

Here’s a brief video (without sound, 2.21 MB, 48 sec.) showing the behavior before and after creating the custom serial resource association. You’ll notice that before I create the resource association (not shown in this video), it switches me to the LXX when I jump back to the OT. After I create the association, jumping back to the OT keeps me in the Hebrew.

Hope this helps! Feel free to comment if you have a better way to address this issue.

For more information on creating a resource association, see 14:53–18:31 of the "Customize Your New Digital Library" training video.

See also our previous post, "The Value of Custom Resource Associations."

Update: If you want all of your Greek New Testaments to be connected to your preferred Hebrew OT, simply add them all to the resource association putting your default GNT on the top.