A Bible concordance is a concordance, or verbal index, to the Bible. A simple form lists Biblical words alphabetically, with indications to enable the inquirer to find the passages of the Bible where the words occur. [1]
Concordances may be for the original languages of the Biblical books, or (more commonly) they are compiled for translations.
Friars of the Dominican order invented the verbal concordance of the Bible. As the basis of their work they used the text of the Vulgate, the standard Bible of the Middle Ages in Western Europe. The first concordance, completed in 1230, was undertaken under the guidance of Cardinal Hugo de Saint-Cher (Hugo de Sancto Charo), assisted by fellow Dominicans. [1]
It contained short quotations (see Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque municipale, p. 28 [2] ) of the passages where a word was found. These were indicated by book and chapter (the division into chapters had recently been made by Stephen Langton) but not by verses, which Robert Estienne would first introduce in 1545. In lieu of verses, Hugo divided each chapter into seven almost equal parts, indicated by the letters of the alphabet, a, b, c, etc. [1]
Three English Dominicans (1250–1252) added the complete quotations of the passages indicated. Due to lack of space, present-day concordances do not aim for this completeness of quotation; it is likely, therefore, that the passages indicated were far fewer than those found in a complete concordance of today. The work was somewhat abridged, by retaining only the essential words of a quotation, in the 1310 concordance of Conrad of Halberstadt, another Dominican – his work obtained great success on account of its more convenient form. [1]
The first concordance to be printed appeared in 1470 at Strasburg, and reached a second edition in 1475. The larger work from which it was abridged was printed at Nuremberg in 1485. Another Dominican, John Stoicowic (also known as John of Ragusa), finding it necessary in his controversies to show the Biblical usage of nisi, ex, and per, which were omitted from the previous concordances, began (c. 1435) the compilation of nearly all the indeclinable words of Latin scripture; the task was completed and perfected by others and finally added as an appendix to the concordance of Conrad of Halberstadt in the work of Sebastian Brant published at Basle in 1496. Brant's work was frequently republished and in various cities. It served as the basis of the concordance published in 1555 by Robert Estienne. Estienne added proper names, supplied omissions, mingled the indeclinable words with the others in alphabetical order, and gave the indications to all passages by verse as well as by chapter, bringing his work much closer to the present model of concordances. [1] Since then many different Latin concordances have been published:
Peter Mintert's "Lexicon Græco-Latinum" of the New Testament is a concordance as well as a lexicon, giving the Latin equivalent of the Greek and, in the case of Septuagint words, the Hebrew equivalent also (Frankfort, 1728). [1]
The first Hebrew concordance (Meïr Netib) was the work of Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus, begun in 1438 and finished in 1448. It was inspired by the Latin concordances to aid in defence of Judaism, and was printed in Venice in 1523. An improved edition of it by a Franciscan friar, Mario di Calasio, was published in 1621 and 1622 in four volumes. Both these works were several times reprinted, while another Hebrew concordance of the sixteenth century, by Elias Levita, said to surpass Nathan's in many respects, remained in manuscript. [1]
Nathan and Calasio arranged the words according to the Hebrew roots, the derivatives following simply according to the order in which they occur in the Hebrew books; the Buxtorfs, father and son, introduced order into the derivatives by a grammatical classification of the verbs and nouns. Their work (Basle, 1632) also contained many new words and passages previously omitted, and an appendix of all the Aramaic words in the Hebrew Bible; Baer's edition of Buxtorf (1847) added certain particles. [1]
Fürst's concordance (Leipzig, 1840) was for a long time the standard. It corrected Buxtorf and brought it nearer to completeness, printed all Hebrew words with the vowel-points, and perfected the order of the derivatives. Every word is explained in Hebrew and Latin. Fürst excludes, however, the proper nouns, the pronouns, and most of the indeclinable particles, and makes many involuntary omissions and errors; his classification of roots is, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), sometimes fanciful. "The Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldaic Concordance" (London, 1843; third edition, 1866) is still considered very useful by the same. [1]
A comprehensive Hebrew concordance is that of Salomon Mandelkern (Leipzig, 1896), who rectified the errors of his predecessors and supplied omitted references. Though his own work has been shown to be frequently imperfect, still it is almost complete. An abridged edition of it was published in 1900. [1]
A New Concordance of the Bible (full title A New Concordance of the Bible: Thesaurus of the Language of the Bible, Hebrew and Aramaic, Roots, Words, Proper Names Phrases and Synonyms) by Avraham Even-Shoshan is a concordance of the Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible, first published in 1977. The source text used is that of the Koren edition of 1958.
The first was that of Conrad Kircher (Frankfort, 1607); Tromm's, published at Amsterdam, 1718, had reference not only to the Septuagint, but also to the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. It remained the standard until it gave way to Edwin Hatch and Henry Adeney Redpath's "Concordance to the Septuagint and other Greek Versions of the Old Testament" (Oxford, 1892–1897). This includes a concordance to the deutero-canonical books and the Old Testament Apocrypha, and to the remains of the versions which form part of Origen of Alexandria's Hexapla . The Hebrew equivalents of the Greek, when known, are also given. References to proper names are added in a supplement published in 1900. Bagster's "Handy Concordance to the Septuagint" (London, 1887) gives simply the references, without quotations. [1]
The earliest concordances to the Greek New Testament are those of Birken or Betulius (Basle, 1546), Henry Estienne (Paris, 1594), and Erasmus Schmid (Wittenberg, 1638), whose work was twice revised and republished. During the latter half of the nineteenth century the standard New Testament concordance was that of Bruder (Leipzig, 1842; 4th ed., 1888). Its main defect is that it was practically based on the textus receptus , though it aims, in its latest editions to give also the chief variants. [1]
Moulton and Geden's Concordance to the Greek Testament, according to the text of Westcott and Hort, Tischendorf, and the English Revisers (Edinburgh and New York, 1897) includes all the marginal readings. In the case of a reading being in dispute among these authorities, the fact is pointed out. The Hebrew equivalents of all quotations in the N. T. are given; the relation of the Greek N. T. words to the Septuagint and other O. T. Greek versions, as well as to classical usage, is indicated. Two other concordances are The Englishman's Greek Concordance to the New Testament by G. V. Wigram (London, 1839, 2d ed. 1844), and Hudson's Critical Greek and English Concordance of the N. T. (Boston, 1875), which contains references to the chief variant readings. [1]
Charles Schaaf's "Lexicon Syriacum" (Leyden, 1709) practically serves the purpose of a concordance to the Peshito version. [1]
The earliest concordances in English were published in the middle of the sixteenth century, the first by Thomas Gybson in 1535 (for the New Testament only), and the second in 1550 by John Marbeck. In 1589, Two Right Profitable and Fruitfull Concordances was published by the Queen's printer, Christopher Barker, with royal endorsement centralizing the English biblical concordance form. [4] This work was regularly bound in to the rear of bibles printed in England from the mid-16th to early-17th century and remained the prevalent English concordance throughout this period, going through approximately thirty-one printings between 1589 and 1615. [5] Prior to its retirement, a concordance by William Knight appeared in 1610, though this received only one printing. [6] It was not until 1622 that a widely popular substitute arose, when the theologian Clement Cotton authored a revised concordance to the New Testament. [7] This was followed by an expanded edition covering the Old and New Testaments in 1627, [8] which was further enlarged to include the Apocrypha in 1635. [9] In the same period, John Downame published a shorter Briefe Concordance in 1630, [10] which was later expanded through subsequent editions. Both Cotton and Downame's concordances remained in regular print throughout the following decades, though were joined increasingly by alternate versions from the mid-1640s on.
The early eighteenth century saw the publication of the most famous English concordance, Cruden's Concordance , by Alexander Cruden. First published in 1738, it reached several editions in his own lifetime and has been re-edited, abridged and reprinted repeatedly. Cruden's work is not a complete concordance, and omits especially many references to proper names, but his last edition had a concordance to the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, which, however, is usually not reprinted. [1]
It was surpassed by three major concordances of the King James Version of the Bible, those of Robert Young, James Strong, and Walker. Others also followed.
These were followed by a concordance based on the Douay–Rheims translation of the Bible preferred by Roman Catholics, A Textual Concordance of the Holy Scriptures by Father Thomas David Williams, 1942.
Since software has made the Bible available in electronic form and with thorough electronic indexes, hard-copy printed concordances have less application. Most scholars and Bible students rely instead on software.[ citation needed ]
Due to Strong's numbers (see Strong's Concordance ) it became possible to translate concordances from one language into another. Thus, the Russian concordance of 30,000 words from the Russian Thompson Study Bible ("Новая учебная Библия Томпсона", La Buona Novella Inc, 2010, edition made by Christian society "The Bible for everyone", Saint Petersburg, Russia) is a translation of the English concordance from Thompson Chain-Reference Bible (The New Thompson Study Bible. La Buona Novella Inc. & B. B. Kirkbride Bible Company, Inc., 2006). In the process of compiling the Russian concordance, the Hebrew/Greek word corresponding to the English concordance word was found, and then its Russian equivalent in the Russian Synodal translation of the Bible was added to the resulting Russian concordance text.
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament.
The Septuagint, sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy, and often abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
The Vulgate, sometimes referred to as the Latin Vulgate, is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible.
Robert I Estienne, known as Robertus Stephanus in Latin and sometimes referred to as Robert Stephens, was a 16th-century printer in Paris. He was the proprietor of the Estienne print shop after the death of his father Henri Estienne, the founder of the Estienne printing firm. Estienne published and republished many classical texts as well as Greek and Latin translations of the Bible. Known as "Printer to the King" in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, Estienne's most prominent work was the Thesaurus linguae latinae which is considered to be the foundation of modern Latin lexicography. Additionally, he was the first to print the New Testament divided into standard numbered verses.
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the mas'sora. Referring to the Masoretic Text, masorah specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Jewish scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts of the Tanakh which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates from the early 11th century CE.
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As of September 2023 all of the Bible has been translated into 736 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,658 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,264 other languages according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. Thus, at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,658 languages.
Partial Bible translations into languages of the English people can be traced back to the late 7th century, including translations into Old and Middle English. More than 100 complete translations into English have been produced. A number of translations have been prepared of parts of the Bible, some deliberately limited to certain books and some projects that have been abandoned before the planned completion.
The Douay–Rheims Bible, also known as the Douay–Rheims Version, Rheims–Douai Bible or Douai Bible, and abbreviated as D–R, DRB, and DRV, is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by members of the English College, Douai, in the service of the Catholic Church. The New Testament portion was published in Reims, France, in 1582, in one volume with extensive commentary and notes. The Old Testament portion was published in two volumes twenty-seven years later in 1609 and 1610 by the University of Douai. The first volume, covering Genesis to Job, was published in 1609; the second, covering the Book of Psalms to 2 Maccabees plus the three apocryphal books of the Vulgate appendix following the Old Testament, was published in 1610. Marginal notes took up the bulk of the volumes and offered insights on issues of translation, and on the Hebrew and Greek source texts of the Vulgate.
Modern English Bible translations consists of English Bible translations developed and published throughout the late modern period to the present.
Chapter and verse divisions did not appear in the original texts of Jewish or Christian bibles; such divisions form part of the paratext of the Bible. Since the early 13th century, most copies and editions of the Bible have presented all but the shortest of the scriptural books with divisions into chapters, generally a page or so in length. Since the mid-16th century, editors have further subdivided each chapter into verses – each consisting of a few short lines or of one or more sentences. In the King James Version (KJV) Esther 8:9 is the longest verse and John 11:35 is the shortest. Sometimes a sentence spans more than one verse, as in the case of Ephesians 2:8–9, and sometimes there is more than one sentence in a single verse, as in the case of Genesis 1:2.
The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, generally known as Strong's Concordance, is a Bible concordance, an index of every word in the King James Version (KJV), constructed under the direction of American theologian James Strong. Strong first published his Concordance in 1890, while professor of exegetical theology at Drew Theological Seminary.
Johannes Buxtorf was a celebrated Hebraist, member of a family of Orientalists; professor of Hebrew for thirty-nine years at Basel and was known by the title, "Master of the Rabbis". His massive tome, De Synagoga Judaica, scrupulously documents the customs and society of German Jewry in the early modern period.
A concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, listing every instance of each word with its immediate context. Historically, concordances have been compiled only for works of special importance, such as the Vedas, Bible, Qur'an or the works of Shakespeare, James Joyce or classical Latin and Greek authors, because of the time, difficulty, and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era.
Jehovah is a Latinization of the Hebrew יְהֹוָהYəhōwā, one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton יהוה (YHWH), the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The Tetragrammaton יהוה is considered one of the seven names of God in Judaism and a form of God's name in Christianity.
Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible is a Bible concordance to the King James Version compiled by Robert Young. First published in 1879, it contains "about 311,000 references subdivided under the Hebrew and Greek originals with the literal meaning and pronunciation of each."
In Biblical studies, a gloss or glossa is an annotation written on margins or within the text of biblical manuscripts or printed editions of the scriptures. With regard to the Hebrew texts, the glosses chiefly contained explanations of purely verbal difficulties of the text; some of these glosses are of importance for the correct reading or understanding of the original Hebrew, while nearly all have contributed to its uniform transmission since the 11th century. Later on, Christian glosses also contained scriptural commentaries; St. Jerome extensively used glosses in the process of translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible.
Novum Instrumentum Omne, later called Novum Testamentum Omne, was a bilingual Latin-Greek New Testament with substantial scholarly annotations, and the first printed New Testament of the Greek to be published. It was prepared by Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) and printed by Johann Froben (1460–1527) of Basel.
The Apostolic Bible Polyglot (ABP), originally published in 2003, is a Bible translation by Charles VanderPool. The ABP is an English translation with a Greek interlinear gloss and is keyed to a concordance. The numbering system, called "AB-Strong's", is a modified version of Strong's concordance, which was designed only to handle the traditional Hebrew Masoretic Text of the Old Testament, and the Greek text of the New Testament. Strong's concordance doesn't have numbering for the Greek O.T. The ABP utilizes a Greek Septuagint base for the O.T. and, therefore, required a modified system. The numbers and the Greek word appear immediately above the English translation instead of side by side, as is common in many interlinears.
While the Old Testament portion of the Bible was written in Hebrew, the New Testament was originally written in Koine Greek. The Greek language, however, has several different dialects or denominations. This required several different translations done by several different individuals and groups of people. These translations can be categorized into translations done before and after 1500 AD.
The initiator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, translated the entire Hebrew Bible into Esperanto. His translation has been much admired by Esperantists and is widely held up as a model or exemplar for other Esperanto authors and translators. Other translators have also edited and published Esperanto versions of the New Testament and Apocrypha.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Concordances of the Bible". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.| Authority control databases: National |
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