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Search and browse every Hebrew and Greek root word in the Bible. See ancient pictographic letter meanings, Strong's concordance data, gematria values, volume distribution across all scripture, and every verse where each root appears.
Original language study is the practice of going behind the English translation to examine the actual Hebrew or Greek words the biblical authors used. Every English Bible -- including the King James Version -- is a translation, and translation inevitably involves interpretive choices. A single Hebrew word may carry a range of meanings that no single English word can capture. By studying the original language, you recover shades of meaning that the English alone cannot convey.
Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, is a pictographic and root-based language. Most Hebrew words derive from three-letter roots, and each letter in the ancient Hebrew alphabet carried a pictographic meaning -- an ox, a house, a hand. When you examine the letters that compose a root, the pictographic meanings often illuminate the word's deeper significance. For example, the root 'aleph-bet' (the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet) combines the pictographs for 'ox' (strength, leader) and 'house' (household, dwelling), suggesting 'strength of the house' -- the father or patriarch.
Greek, the language of the New Testament, brings its own richness. Koine Greek was the common language of the Roman Empire and had a precision that allowed the apostles to express theological concepts with remarkable clarity. Greek root parts -- prefixes, stems, and suffixes -- combine to create compound words whose meaning is built from their components. Understanding these parts helps you grasp why Paul chose one Greek word over another when teaching about faith, grace, or redemption.
Latter-Day Daily's Original Language tool lets you browse Hebrew roots with their ancient pictographic letter meanings and gematria values, Greek roots with their component parts broken down, and a cross-volume tab that shows how the same root word appears across all five volumes of Latter-day Saint scripture. Every root includes Strong's concordance data, pronunciation, part of speech, KJV translation history, and a list of derived words you can explore further.
Select the Hebrew tab to browse Old Testament roots, the Greek tab for New Testament roots, or the cross-volume tab to see roots that span all five scripture volumes.
Type a word in English, Hebrew, or Greek to search, or scroll through the full list of roots sorted by transliteration. Each card shows the root word, meaning, and derived words.
Tap any root to see its pictographic breakdown (Hebrew), component parts (Greek), Strong's data, pronunciation, definition, KJV translations, and every derived word.
Every Hebrew root displays its ancient pictographic letter forms with the meaning each letter carried in the earliest Hebrew script.
Greek roots are decomposed into their component parts -- prefixes, stems, and suffixes -- with the meaning of each part clearly labeled.
Every root links to its Strong's number with full definition, pronunciation, part of speech, KJV translation list, and derivation notes.
See how each root word's occurrences distribute across the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price.
No. Every Hebrew and Greek root includes a transliteration (showing the word in English letters), a pronunciation guide, and a full English definition. The tool is designed to make original-language study accessible to anyone, regardless of language background. You can search in English and the tool will find the corresponding Hebrew or Greek roots.
Ancient Hebrew was written with a pictographic alphabet where each letter represented a concrete object -- an ox head (aleph), a house (bet), a camel (gimel), a door (dalet), and so on. These pictographic meanings often illuminate the deeper significance of Hebrew root words. For example, the three letters of a root word combine their pictographic meanings to tell a visual story about the word's concept.
A root word is the base form from which other words are built. In Hebrew, most roots are three consonants that carry a core meaning. Derived words add vowel patterns, prefixes, or suffixes to create specific nouns, verbs, and adjectives. For example, the Hebrew root sh-l-m (wholeness, peace) gives rise to 'shalom' (peace), 'shalem' (complete), and 'Yerushalayim' (Jerusalem, city of peace).
Original language study helps you see what the English translation cannot show -- the range of meaning a word carries, the connections between words that share a root, and the specific nuance the author intended. For Latter-day Saints, it also reveals connections between biblical Hebrew and Greek concepts and their echoes in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price.
Strong's numbers are a reference system created by James Strong in 1890 that assigns a unique number to every Hebrew and Greek root word in the Bible. They allow you to look up the original meaning of any word without knowing the original language, and to find every place that same root appears across scripture. Latter-Day Daily uses Strong's numbers to link root words to their full lexical entries and cross-references.
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