ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to acknowledge a large circle of people whose assistance has proven invaluable in undertaking and completing this work. If it proves valuable and worth the investment in time, energy, and finances, we certainly cannot congratulate ourselves. We can only thank God, whose hand has been seen at every turn, and a great number of his children. It is good to be people of vision and insight, but it only really matters that God sees the end from the beginning. It is also good to be clever and independent, but in this project, as in his church, God spreads his gifts among men. For these lessons learned and relearned, we praise God.

We have profited greatly from our association with the University of Minnesota Computer Center. Its director, Peter C. Patton, has been a partner in encouragement from 1977. His center was responsible for grants in computer time and supplies without which we would not have reached even the dreaming stage. The center’s staff is superb. As representative of the whole, we acknowledge two here: Mary Dickel, the director’s secretary, who was helpful in many situations; and Richard Hotchkiss, the associate director of systems services, whose concordance program GENCORD worked wonders, and who, when our needs became more complex, made valuable adjustments in the program.

This project was born in 1976 during a course in discourse analysis of the Greek text at the Dallas center of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). Special acknowledgment goes to the late John Beekman and to his assistant Michael Kopesec for early forbearance and later strong backing. The theory of discourse represented in this analysis has been thoughtfully developed over the last decade by the translation department of SIL. We are indebted to both theoretical and practical Bible translators, linguists, and scholars of Greek who have been available to us in the development of this project. Though inspired and encouraged by SIL, this project does not reflect the institute’s official position, nor is the institute responsible for its claims, false or true.

We would like to name those who have helped in grammatical analysis and tireless checking and crosschecking. We give them all together, individuals on a team, before singling out a few: Philip Clapp, David Clark, Howard Cleveland, Peter Davids (and his students), Richard Gould, Harold Greenlee, Clarence Hale, Verlin Hinshaw, Arthur Killian, David Lewycky, Neva Miller, Edward Peters, Robert Smith, Charles Stephenson, John Werner, and Winifred Weter.

Three of these scholars—Neva Miller, Philip Clapp, and Robert Smith—were very close to the project, especially during the last year. Volumes of correspondence, hours of phone conversation, and fleeting visits transpired between Minneapolis and their different parts of the country. Like all the other participants, each of these three had a different strength and focus. The resultant analysis of the Greek New Testament text is stronger and better for their input.

Clearly the person closest to the project was John Werner. John has been so essential that it would be easier to explain what he did not do. We shall instead limit ourselves to a few of his contributions. John has the distinct advantage of being both a linguist and a Greek scholar, and as far as we can tell, he is the closest living thing to a native speaker of Koine Greek. He checked the individual analyses of our volunteer grammarians, and every next analysis seemed to bring to him special delight. His complaints were never audible. He was especially involved in deliberations on the voice of verbs and on conjunctions. Many of the definitions and examples given in the appendix come directly from John. Whether it was his analogy of the purple stoplight or his insight into one problem derived from another construction, this analysis bears his distinguished stamp.

The Greek characters of the text were English transliterations through the development stage. The output tapes from the University of Minnesota Computer Center were sent to Logoi Systems, Hanover, New Hampshire, where the text was translated and typeset by Stephen V. F. Waite on a GSI CAT 8 typesetter, using an Ibycus computing system and the Kadmos typesetting program developed by David W. Packard of Los Angeles. We appreciate our typesetter’s patience as we worked out the technical details relating to format. And we appreciate the product. We also are grateful to Allan Fisher, who represented the interests of the publisher.

As with any project someone must take final responsibility. Someone must say each final yes or no. Your editors take this responsibility. We have attempted to put together a new analysis of the Greek text based on the best available to us from Greek scholarship, translation theory, linguistic insights, and computer science.

When all is said and done, the key to the text is found elsewhere: "Then Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24.45).

Barbara Friberg and Timothy Friberg

The life of the AGNT project has been gratifying to both its editors and many users. What began as a computer-based project turned hard copy came full circle with the advent of personal computers. The printed form still enjoys a strong following against a background of growing computer applications.

In the early 1990’s it became evident that the project would be more useful to more people through a simplification of the tagging system. What has resulted is a simplified tagging system (much fewer complex tags survive) that is still solidly based on what has been retained as the "working analysis" for terms of discussion in the appendix.

This revision has crucially depended on four people, whom we gratefully acknowledge. Robert Smith first suggested that we move in the direction of simplification. To prove his point he put in long hours reviewing the entire text, putting forth both suggestions for systematic change and justifications for individual instances. Neva Miller, partner in the Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (ANLEX) volume, used the tagging system extensively in preparation of the lexicon. Such painstaking attention to detail brought much input by way of suggestions and corrections. John Baima became agent of the electronic form of the project and in that capacity has had hands-on responsibility maintaining analysis integrity and developing new applications. Last to be revised was the extensive appendix and for that task Ulrik Petersen stepped forward. Rewriting the appendix for the simplified form of the tags required extensive checking and, as it turned out, frequent correcting of the tags themselves. A heart-felt thanks to each of these coworkers.