DWThe Direct WitnessAccount

The evidence beneath the English

Every consequential choice
leaves a record.

John, Mark, Matthew, and Luke were developed through direct Greek analysis, lexical work, and manuscript comparison. Where surviving witnesses materially disagree, the competing Greek readings and their effect on English remain open to the reader.

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chapter-level decision records generated from the live translation registry

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public provenance schema, designed to remain machine-readable and auditable

SBLGNT

standardized inspectable Greek reference edition

Textual basis

SBL Greek New Testament

Edited by Michael W. Holmes. The project's standardized, publicly inspectable Greek reference edition. It is not presented as retroactive proof that every existing chapter originated from one uniform printed edition.

This is an honest reference claim, not a retroactive claim that all completed work began from one uniform printed edition. Material manuscript forks remain independently documented at the reading they affect.

SBLGNT project · Text and apparatus · License

Translation record

John 18

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john.18.sword18

τὴν μάχαιραν / τὴν μάχαιράν σου

TEXTGRAMMARTRANSLATIONhigh confidence

Does Jesus say ‘the sword’ or explicitly ‘your sword’ ?

The earliest broad Greek text has the article, which can carry possessive force in context. A smaller stream adds the explicit pronoun.

Why this default

The article-only reading is default because it is nearly universal in the early Greek witnesses. Greek can use the article where English naturally uses a possessive.

Evidence

ExternalThe sword: P60, P66, א, A, B, C, D, E, L, N, W, 047, 054; your sword: a limited Latin/Greek stream.

InternalAn explicit ‘your’ naturally clarifies the article’s contextual possessive force.

Project defaultPut the sword into the sheath

Project default · early Greek article

Witnessesτὴν μάχαιραν · P60, P66, א, A, B, C, D, E, L, N, W, 047, 054
AlternativePut your sword into the sheath

Explicit possessive reading

Witnessesτὴν μάχαιράν σου · vg-cl, Cyril, Origen, later witnesses
AlternativeSheathe your sword

Idiomatic rendering

WitnessesRendering option · translates the article idiomatically

Reference roleStandardized inspectable reference; manuscript forks are independently reopened.

Revision historyNo decision-level revision has been recorded since the provenance ledger was introduced.

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Record integrity

One registry drives both the reader and this record.

The manifest is regenerated from the translation source before every production build. Its source digest is 450adc54c1fc782fbae5e9ed6a640a2ae0e3be080722ac134c84e1248c2a312a.

Decision-level revision history begins with this ledger. Earlier development is not reconstructed into false precision; future material changes can be appended to the relevant record with their reason and date.