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The translation guide

The working rules for the Wroot Press Bible: a full translation from the Masoretic text, the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament, consolidated from three NT drafts and eleven pilots (Claude Docs, exported to pilots/) and updated through ruling 79 (2026-10-01). Bracketed numbers are rulings in docs/RULINGS.md, which holds the full text of each. The plan is PLAN.md; the reader's edition is docs/WPRB_GUIDE.md.

1. Purpose and foundations

The translation aims at faithful provocation: it restores the part of a word’s meaning that the reader’s tradition has cut off, and it does so systematically, never verse by verse to unsettle one camp. Every surprise must lead the reader into the source, not into the translator.

1. The stranger attested sense. Where a word has more than one attested sense that fits, prefer the one the KJV/RSV tradition passed over. It must belong to this word in this period, and its strangeness must be in the source language, not in an odd English word.
2. Readers carry the tradition. The expected rendering is already in the reader’s head; printing the other sense puts both readings in play. A reader without the tradition gets it from the apparatus.
3. Cruxes stay open. Where English can hold an ambiguity, it does. Where it cannot, the stranger reading is printed and the expected one noted [1]; where no stranger sense is attested, the expected reading is printed with the evidence [40].
4. Provocation never settles doctrine. Choose the stranger sense of a word, never one side of an exegetical debate. “Justify” keeps its declare/make ambiguity; ἀνήρ in 1 Cor 11:3 stays “man.”
5. Every provocative gloss carries a note. Without a reference point, a strange rendering reads as a mistake or a simplification (the CEB’s “happy”). See section 8.

2. Source texts and versions

1. Two Old Testaments. The OT is offered twice: a Masoretic version under the Hebrew home glosses and an LXX version under the Greek home glosses, which are the NT’s own. Concordance runs within each version; differences are kept, not harmonized (Gen 1: “good” / “beautiful”) [52].
2. Which language sets the gloss. The Hebrew sets the home gloss in the Masoretic version. NT quotations follow their own Greek and note the Hebrew [4].
3. Aramaic is a third lexicon: a cognate tie where the Aramaic and Hebrew senses overlap, a tie by function where they diverge (Aramaic עֲבַד “make”). Reverse concordance applies within each language [28]. Words found only in Aramaic take English words never used for Hebrew (“lo,” “dominion,” “sheath”) [29].

3. Lexicon

Rules

1. Home gloss by default. Each word has a home gloss. Contextual departures are allowed with a note, but the home gloss holds wherever the author builds a chain [2]. Within a literary unit the chain wins; across books the collocation decides [37].
2. Reverse concordance. One English gloss serves one source word within each language, so that “bringing together” cannot render two different Greek words.
3. Several stranger senses: the collocation decides (כָּבַשׁ + land → “subdue”) [3].
4. Split home glosses. A word may carry two home glosses by stem or construction, declared once in the lexicon: עָשָׂה make / do; יָלַד bear / produce; מָלַךְ reign / make reign [20]; עֶבֶד slave / servant [34]; אָמָה slave-woman / servant-woman [76]; רוּחַ and πνεῦμα wind / spirit [31, 56]; συναγωγή gathering / synagogue [57].
5. Cognates. Hebrew loanwords already in English (tohubohu, sabbath, shofar); Greek cognates for Greek (kairos, logos, icon); LXX cognates for Hebrew only when the Hebrew gloss is open [5]. A cognate is printed only where its living English sense overlaps the source, and is always noted [57].
6. Concrete over abstract. Keep the source’s material word: “silver,” not “money”; “the burning of his nose,” not “anger” [39].
7. Hapax legomena. Look for the reading first in the same book, then elsewhere in the Bible, then in cognate languages and the versions [25].
8. Plurals of abstraction become English singulars (חַיִּים “life”); Elohim is excepted as a name [26].
9. Synonym fields are fixed as a set and published as a table [44].
10. Faithful provocation is systemic. A provocative gloss is chosen once for the whole corpus and the effect falls where it falls; it is not re-chosen verse by verse.

Core glosses settled so far

Settled after the table was drawn up: Χριστός “Christos” [66]; מָשִׁיחַ “anointed” [68]; μετανοέω / μετάνοια “rethink / rethinking” [69], with Erasmus’ resipiscite against the Vulgate’s paenitentiam agite in the note; ψυχικός / πνευματικός “soulish / spiritual” [70]; σάρκινος / σαρκικός “fleshen / fleshly” [71].

Wisdom terms (Prov 8) and grief terms (Lam 1) have their own field tables in those pilots.

4. Grammar and syntax

1. Carry the source’s syntax. Participles stay participles where English allows (“having arisen”); μέν… δέ is “on the one hand… on the other”; wayyiqtol chains open with “And.” Clause structure is kept; English word order is not forced where it breaks sense.
2. Articles only where the source has them. A construct with an indefinite genitive takes no article (“in counsel of guilty ones”); in poetry this rule produces the terseness by itself.
3. Varied constructions stay varied (“between waters to waters,” Gen 1:6) [6].
4. Verbs stay verbs. A finite verb stays finite; an infinitive or participle becomes a finite clause, or a verbal -ing or to-infinitive when a finite verb would impose a tense or person the source leaves open. No “the X-ing of” or “-tion of” unless the source has a noun [10].
5. Pronouns keep grammatical gender for persons and personified figures; inanimates take “it” [8, 41].
6. אָדָם / ἄνθρωπος is “human” by default; “man” when a distinct, already-existing woman appears in the same verse or the next; “human” again when “male and female” describes the אָדָם itself or אִישׁ / ἀνήρ is in the same verse [11]. Personified female figures do not trigger the rule [43].
7. Aspect in poetry. Qatal as perfect or past; yiqtol as present or habitual unless plainly future [15].
8. Verbless clauses stay verbless in poetry [13] and in formulas of blessing and greeting (“The grace of the Lord Jesus with all”) [65].
9. Case law. כִּי “when” for a main case, אִם “if” for a sub-case, וְאִם “and if”; “then” may open an apodosis [35].
10. Oath formulas keep the literal “if,” with the curse left unspoken [21].
11. Deferential speech keeps third-person address and its shifts (“the throne of my lord the king after him”) [22].
12. Idioms of the body are kept (“What to you?”; “bad in the eyes of”; “on a horn, son of oil”).

5. Poetry, sound and form

1. Lineation follows the Masoretic accents, not modern editors [14]. Each colon takes its own line, and the second and any third colon of a line-group are indented; in qinah the indented colon stays shorter [48, 78]. In the chapter files each colon is a line beginning \q1 (flush), \q2 or \q3 [102]. The same layout holds for Greek poetry.
2. Parallelism. Parallel members match in order and shape. Parallelism may override the syntax rule for function words only (אֲשֶׁר, אֶת, the conjunction), and each override is noted [12].
3. Puns go in the text when English has one that keeps both home glosses (Man / Woman; counsel / council) [17], and a word may be added to carry one (“just outcry”) [23].
4. Sound over literality. Where the source marks sound (a pun, an alliterating or rhyming pair), an English rendering that carries the sound may replace the literal gloss, which goes to the note (“briar and bramble”; “misjudgment”; “finds… misses”) [24]. Where the source marks no sound, the gloss rules stand.
5. Formal frames (acrostics, alphabet frames, envelopes) are never imitated [16]; acrostics are marked with the Hebrew letter beside each stanza number [47].
6. No editorial headings or speaker labels in the text; section titles, if any, go in the apparatus [27].
7. Quotation marks only where the text introduces speech with a verb of saying; an unmarked shift of voice stays unmarked [51].
8. Paragraphs follow the Masoretic open and closed sections (פ, ס) [36].

6. Names and divine names

Χριστός is transliterated “Christos” in the NT and the LXX version alike [66].

1. Personal and place names appear in familiar English forms in the text, with the Hebrew or Greek form, and the meaning where the narrative plays on it, in the notes (Adonijah, “my lord is Yah”; Bathsheba and the oaths) [18].
2. Personifications take no capital (“wisdom”); the pronouns carry the personification [42].

7. The page: typography and marking

Three devices are reserved and must not be reused: italics (supplied words, by long English convention), small caps (the Tetragrammaton only) and color (never the only signal).

8. The apparatus

The translator writes the notes [75]. As in Hart and Alter, the notes come from the translator, not a separate commentator. They are drafted with the verse, at the moment of decision, in the translator’s own voice, so the reasoning is on record and never reconstructed afterward. Each decision note names the ruling that decided it; in the data, the note is attached to the word it explains.

1. When a note is required. Two kinds of note [7, 75]. A decision note is required for a change of sense from KJV/RSV, a departure from the home gloss, or a crux. A reading note is optional, and is written wherever it helps the reader: chains and links across the canon (“Gihon, also the river of Eden”), wordplay the English could not carry, the history of interpretation. Wording changes alone get no note.
2. The note format. Each note gives the expected rendering (KJV/RSV), the distinction that forces the change, and an anchor passage where the distinction is plain. It also cites the deciding ruling [45].
3. Standing notes cover a rule once instead of at every occurrence (pronouns; אָדָם; oath formulas; split home glosses) [8, 11, 20, 21].
4. Tables for synonym fields [44] and for names (Hebrew or Greek form and meaning) [18].
5. Textual notes. Ketiv when the sense differs [19]; the LXX against the Masoretic text [54]; Göttingen and Rahlfs readings [53]; readings behind the KJV, with their origin (Erasmus at Rev 22:19) [60]. Masoretic scribal features (small, large and suspended letters, dotted words, inverted nuns): translated as written, no device in the English; a note is required when the feature changes the sense (Judg 18:30 “Manasseh,” the suspended nun), and optional when a tradition hangs on it (Gen 2:4; 2:7; 33:4; Deut 6:4) [79].
6. Doctrinally decisive cruxes name the versions and the Jewish and Christian interpretive traditions, whichever reading is printed (Prov 8:22: LXX, Aquila, the Arian controversy, Genesis Rabbah 1:1) [46].
7. Puns and homographs the text could not carry go here (זָמַר prune / sing; עוֹלֵל deal / glean).
8. Expansive notes [74]. A note opens with the evidence that decides the reading: the text, the versions, ancient interpreters, cognate-language texts. Cite the evidence, not the arguer who found it. After that, a note may be as expansive as is useful: other translations (Hart, NJPS, the Vulgate, Luther), the history of interpretation, and modern scholarship, credited by name. Lexicons are finding aids; where possible, cite the passages they point to.

9. Order of precedence

When rulings meet in one word, the higher wins, and the note cites it [45, 50].

1. A crux, under rulings 1 and 40
2. Sound the source marks [24]
3. A chain within the literary unit [37]
4. Concrete over abstract [39]
5. The collocation [3]
6. The home gloss [2]

Two checks run above the order. A gloss that creates a false sense in English yields (“unfaithful wife,” “idiots,” “pharmacists”) [57]. And no provocation may settle a doctrinal crux (section 1).

10. Order of work

The phases, the per-book workflow, models, gates and status definitions are in PLAN.md. The three principles behind the order stand: translate the books that set the vocabulary before the books that borrow it; translate the source of a quotation before the quotation; leave the books full of hapax legomena until the concordance can answer ruling 25.

11. Rulings made after the pilots (2026-10-01)

76 אָמָה as עֶבֶד (slave-woman / servant-woman); 77 δοῦλος “slave,” no split, with the Greek service words fixed (παῖς “servant,” θεράπων “attendant,” λατρεύω “serve”); 78 poetry one colon per line, later cola indented; 79 Masoretic scribal features. 80 name-like cosmic nouns (Abyss, Sheol) take a capital as names; 81 what counts as poetry (Psalms, Proverbs, Job always; elsewhere only where the Leningrad Codex sets verse or the translator lines a passage and notes it). Open: שִׁפְחָה needs its own home gloss (candidate “maid”), to be ruled at Gen 16. The decisions on licence, Swete, the reader's edition and note numbering are recorded in SOURCES.md, docs/WPRB_GUIDE.md and PLAN.md §2.