James Strong (theologian) - The Concordance

The Concordance

His best known work is Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, first published in 1890, of which new editions are still in print. Numerous revisions, such as The Strongest Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible and The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, along with adaptations of the concordance to translations other than the Authorized King James Version while retaining the "Strong's" or similar branding, such as the Strongest NIV Exhaustive Concordance are also available. "Strong's numbering" of Greek and Hebrew words, have dominated the enumeration of such words in Bible study helps to the present day, only recently being supplemented by Goodrick-Kohlenberger numbering.

For the concordance, Strong numbered every Hebrew or Greek root word which was found, for ease of reference. This numbering system (8674 Hebrew roots and 5523 Greek roots) is now widely used in the English speaking world and also widely available on the web where it is used in conjunction with Wigram's Englishman's Concordances and Thayer's Lexicon.

A clarification to parts of the above paragraph would say "8674 Hebrew and Aramaic lexical entries; and 5523 Greek lexical entries, but note that there are only about 5415 actual entries, since more than 100 numbers were jumped over, for currently unknown reasons." At the end of the Greek Dictionary of the New Testament section of this book is the following Note: "Owing to changes in the enumeration while in progress, there were no words left for Nos. 2717 and 3203–3302, which were therefore silently dropped out of the vocabulary and references as redundant. This will occasion no practical mistake or inconvenience." Further, note that modern Old Testament lexical systems often separate out entries on Aramaic words from those on Hebrew words, a practice initiated by A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (an English work based on Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar in German), which is commonly called "Brown-Driver-Briggs" or "BDB" after its three primary authors.