The Voice Behind Every Greek Word in Logos — A Conversation with John Schwandt
How the man who recorded the Greek New Testament for Logos uses ancient languages, Mobile Ed, and Redemption Seminary to make biblical study accessible for everyone.
If you’ve ever right-clicked on a Greek word in Logos — and heard it pronounced out loud — you’ve already heard John Schwandt’s voice.
You just didn’t know it.
That’s one of the things I love about this interview. John isn’t a distant scholar behind a podium. He’s someone who has been quietly serving Logos users for decades — pronouncing every Greek word in the software, building the Reverse Interlinear New Testament that helps English readers engage the Greek text, and creating courses that make the original languages approachable for ordinary Bible students. And now, through Redemption Seminary, he’s extending that same mission into full-blown accredited theological education — entirely online, entirely affordable, and built entirely on Logos.
I sat down with John to talk about all of it, and I walked away both encouraged and a little amazed.
You’ve heard this voice before.
John Schwandt has one of those origin stories that feels like it was written for Logos users specifically.
He came to faith as a young man, picked up Logos Bible Software back in 1991 when it was still running on DOS, and has never really stopped. He went on to teach Greek for twenty years, traveled the country teaching intensive Greek courses in a single week, and eventually found himself out in Bellingham teaching the Logos team Greek — which is how Logos discovered him. Before long, he was recording Greek pronunciations for the software, then mapping the ESV’s English translation to the grammatical structure of the original Greek to create the Reverse Interlinear — a resource that still powers the “corresponding highlights” feature in Logos today.
What strikes me most about his story, though, is what he shared about his own early struggle with language learning.
He failed Greek. More than once. Not because he wasn’t smart — but because he didn’t understand that Greek wasn’t just vocabulary. It was a system, a grammar, a whole way of thinking about how language works. The moment he finally understood that, everything changed.
That’s the kind of story your average Logos user needs to hear.
The Pronunciation Tool — and why it matters more than you think.
One of the most practical moments of our conversation came when John pulled up the Pronunciation Tool inside Logos and walked through something most users have probably never noticed: you can actually choose which pronunciation system you want Logos to use.
Koine. Erasmian. Modern.
Each one represents a different scholarly tradition for how the Greek of the New Testament would have been spoken. John’s preference is Koine — the reconstructed pronunciation of how the original hearers of the New Testament would have heard the words read aloud. He walked through all three, explained the differences clearly and without condescension, and made it feel completely approachable.
If you’ve ever right-clicked on a Greek word and clicked “Pronounce,” and quietly wondered what you were actually hearing — this is the video for you.
And John said something in the interview that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. When asked why he prefers Koine, he said simply: “This is how the original hearers would have heard it.”
That’s not a technical preference. That’s a pastoral one. He wants us to hear Scripture the way it was meant to land.
He also shared something deeply personal — and disarmingly honest — about how he got there:
“I was language impaired. I failed Spanish a couple times. I failed Greek a number of times just because I was unwilling to learn a new syntax, a new system. I thought it was just vocabulary. I didn’t want to decline or conjugate. I didn’t even know what those words were and they — I didn’t like them just by how they sounded. And so I didn’t do well. And I would have professors say, ‘I can’t work with this.’ And they were right. They couldn’t. And so finally I took an intensive course. It ended before I could fail. It told me that it was a finite body of knowledge at that point and even a knucklehead like me could get through a finite body given enough time.”
— John Schwandt
He went on to teach Greek for twenty years. And he challenges every student he’s ever had to find a mistake he hasn’t already made himself. That kind of earned humility is rare. And it makes his courses — and this conversation — feel safe in a way that most language instruction never does.
Three Logos resources worth exploring alongside this interview.
As you spend time with John’s interview and think about engaging the original languages in your own study, here are three tools in Logos that connect directly to what he’s built and described:
1. Mobile Ed: Interactive Greek Alphabet Course
This is John’s one-hour course — designed for anyone who has ever been curious about Greek but intimidated by it. Whether you’re a pastor, a small group leader, or just someone who wants to stop skipping Greek words in your commentaries, this is where to begin. It comes with both the Koine and Erasmian pronunciation versions so you can compare and decide which fits your study best.
2. The ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear New Testament
This is one of John’s most significant contributions to Logos. It keeps English as the top line and places the Greek underneath — so you don’t need to already know Greek to engage the original language of the text. It’s an elegant bridge between the English you know and the Greek you want to understand better. John helped map the grammatical relationships that make this resource’s “corresponding highlights” feature possible, and it shows.
3. Mobile Ed: GK101 Introduction to Biblical Greek
For those who want to go further than the alphabet and actually learn to read and parse the Greek New Testament, this is John’s full 15-hour introductory Greek course inside Logos. It’s built around his own grammar (published by Lexham Press), and it’s the same material that forms the backbone of the Greek curriculum at Redemption Seminary. You don’t have to enroll in a seminary to benefit from it.
What Redemption Seminary is actually doing — and why it matters.
John is president of Redemption Seminary (redemption.edu) — an accredited, fully online seminary built as a direct outgrowth of Logos Mobile Ed.
Here’s what makes it different: every course uses Logos as its primary study environment, and the library is provided for you. You’re not piecing together your own resources. You work through workbooks at your own pace, and then meet weekly one-on-one with a qualified mentor — someone with a doctorate in theology — who gives personalized feedback and guides you toward success. There’s no high-pressure exam culture. No campus to uproot your life for. And the tuition is intentionally kept low, with GI Bill benefits now approved.
John described one student who completed coursework on his lunch breaks. Another who had already done significant Mobile Ed study on his own and received up to nine credits of transfer credit for it. It’s the kind of theological education that actually works around a real life, a real family, and a real ministry.
As John put it: “We’re a support crew for the front lines. The pastors, the people ministering in churches — you don’t even have to be a pastor. Ministry happens everywhere. That is the front line.”
A gentle challenge for this week.
If you’ve been avoiding the Greek tools in Logos because they feel intimidating — let John’s story give you permission to start small.
This week, try just one of these:
Open the Pronunciation Tool (under Tools in your sidebar) and change the pronunciation setting. Right-click on a Greek word in your Bible and hear it out loud. Just sit with the sound of it.
Browse the Interactive Greek Alphabet Course and spend 20 minutes with the first lesson. Not the whole course — just a start.
Next time you’re reading in your English Bible, try enabling the Reverse Interlinear view (under the View tab in any ESV pane) and hover over a word. See what’s underneath it.
You don’t have to learn Greek to love God’s Word better. But you might be surprised how much closer the text feels when you can hear even one word the way the original readers heard it.
John has spent decades quietly making that possible for all of us. This interview is a small window into that work — and I think you’ll find it both practically helpful and genuinely encouraging.