The SimHebrew Bible: The Hebrew Bible in Simulated Hebrew – with English Guide

Translations of the Hebrew Bible convey the meaning of the text, but not other key aspects of it—such as its economy of language, wordplay, repetition of the same word in different contexts, and above all, the root structure of words. While phonetic transliterations help somewhat in this regard, they obscure the text by adding vowel letters, and lose vital spelling distinctions, or doing so by the addition of diacritics that fail to convey the distinctions as clearly as the original, and which are often technically unavailable in many contexts.
The SimHebrew Bible takes a different approach, by the simple expedient of adapting the Roman alphabet to suit Hebrew phonology (much like every western European language)—based on historical affiliation, phonetic function, serendipitous graphic similarity, or opportunistic availability. The result is a precise simulation of the Hebrew, such that the non-Hebrew reader can immediately and clearly appreciate the linguistic features of the text – in particular, its economy of language, wordplay, repetition of the same word in different contexts, and above all, the root structure of its words – without having to master the Hebrew alphabet, or to contend with the technical challenges of displaying or manipulating non-ASCII or Right-to-Left writing. This Bible is intended to serve as a complement, not a replacement, for existing research resources – particularly where technical constraints preclude the use of traditional RTL Hebrew characters, or SBL diacritics. To this end, it also allows easy searching in both Hebrew and English, including a full glossary and links to a corresponding online concordance.