News by Stephanie Fox We felt that his contribution to the church as a whole was too significant to pass up.

Back to Table of Contents | Back to Main Index Previous News | Send mail to The Voice Multnomah professor back from years of Greek research "Anyone who owns a piece of Bible literature software that has Hebrew or Greek in it, I'm most likely the editor," Dr. Wheeler said. Many similar computer programs also use Dr. Wheeler's grammar notes. A Multnomah professor returned this year to a full-time position after a four-year intensive research project. Dr. Dale Wheeler, who teaches Pentateuch, Greek grammar and Greek syntax, specializes in editing electronic biblical texts in the original Greek and Hebrew that do not exist in print. In the 1996-'97 school year, the GRAMCORD Institute of Vancouver, Wash., asked Dr. Wheeler to act as a primary editor for three major computer translated texts. Dr. Garry Friesen, academic dean at the time, approved the idea and created a new position called a research professor. "We hated to lose his teaching skills in the classroom but felt that his contribution to the church as a whole was too significant to pass up," Dr. Friesen said. This position allowed Dr. Wheeler to continue teaching at Multnomah but provided enough time for his project because he was not obligated to the same extracurricular responsibilities as full-time professors. During his research project, Dr. Wheeler continued to teach first- and third- year Greek. Originally, a computer generated the texts by looking at each word based on patterns. The documents then needed to be corrected to standardize the parsing, which is the process of dissecting a verb to determine its context or meaning. The computer's translations needed to be sorted through "because a computer is not as clever as a sentient being," Dr. Wheeler said. The University of Pennsylvania divided the computer's first translation into 10 sections, which they sent to groups in the United States and Europe. Members of these groups made corrections word by word, using a Hebrew concordance. However, because many of the translators used different concordances and lexicons, when the documents were reassembled, the corrections did not align. Dr. Wheeler, along with Dr. Alan Groves, head of the Old Testament department of Westminster Seminary; Dr. Bernard Taylor, professor at Loma Linda University; and Dr. Don Carson of the New Testament department at Trinity Seminary; made adjustments. The texts Dr. Wheeler and his associates have produced are the "Groves-Wheeler Westminster Hebrew Morphology," the "UPenn-CCATS Morphological LXX" (Greek Old Testament), and the "GRAMCORD Morphological Greek New Testament." Within six to seven years they have released six major updates to the Greek New Testament. The GRAMCORD Institute released a Hebrew translation a year ago that has changes in the text in more than 30,000 places. In a few months they will release an updated version of the Septuagint that has corrections in more than 50,000 places. The information from the Hebrew translation will be developed into an analytical concordance Zondervan will publish. This will be the first text of its kind in more than 100 years. In addition, Dr. Taylor and Dr. Wheeler are revising an analytical concordance to the Septuagint. Dr. Wheeler advises several computer software companies in how to display and search the original language texts. "Anyone who owns a piece of Bible literature software that has Hebrew or Greek in it, I'm most likely the editor," Dr. Wheeler said. Many similar computer programs also use Dr. Wheeler's Greek and Hebrew grammar notes. In his free time, Dr. Wheeler plays the bass guitar for the worship team at Central Bible Church and plays the drums for the faculty-staff band. His wife is a first grade teacher in the David Douglas district, and he has three daughters. Dr. Wheeler is also a devoted "Star Trek" fan. Back to Table of Contents | Back to Main Index Previous News | Top Of Page Send mail to The Voice| Journalism department website © 2002 The Voice. No part of this publication may be reproduced in written or electronic form without prior written consent from the journalism adviser of Multnomah Bible College. All rights reserved.