Pitfalls in Concordance Usage. An article by Larry Kirkpatrick

Seventh-day Adventists tend to be very active people. Those proclaiming our Christian message to others include clergy and laymen. We hold both in high regard. There is much work for us to do and we want to make a dent on the Lord’s side of the question. But, along the path we sometimes lose sight of the various ways God is at work. And sometimes, we assume too much. The denominationally employed pastor assumes that the layman knows the intended way to use the concordance. The layperson, with his energy and zeal, may become confused about the work of the pastor. Why is he so careful about correct teaching? Haste! Jesus is coming!

The chief purpose of this very brief article is to highlight strengths and limitations of concordances as Bible study tools. The better we understand our tools, the more readily we can employ them correctly and to God’s glory.

Glosses Versus Dictionary Definitions

We might start with the question, What is a “gloss”? It is a short dictionary entry that is like a definition, helpful for learning a new or difficult word, but which does not reflect the whole range of meanings possible for a word. The difference between a gloss and a dictionary definition will likely be best understood if we make a comparison.

Compare that with the same entry in BDAG (A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Walter Bauer, Frederick William Dankar, Kurt Aland, Barbara Aland, F.W. Gingrich, 3rd ed.). The entry takes up three-fourths of a page for this one word. The data is organized thus (skipping to the particularized dictionary-meaning definitions):

In offering the ten meanings given above, the majority of the entry was not here reproduced. I did not include mention of these specific occurances of the word in 48 Bible verses carefully categorized under these heads, nor numerous references for extra-biblical Greek writings giving further historical examples of actual usage.

My point? To show that Strong gives you glosses—some meanings, not all, and those only in a very general sense; BDAG gives you an actual word definition, with specific meanings and particular data to review for yourself. In one situation you are trusting Strong, or, with BDAG or some similar intended-as-a-dictionary volume, you would be shown a full set of meanings defining the word, along with the particular texts verifiable by the reader.

Do not misunderstand; this is certainly no plot by Strong to mislead you! Surely he anticipated that readers would use the concordance as a concordance, and not as a dictionary. The edition I own offers 1218 pages of concordance and 205 pages of dictionary (more precisely, 205 pages of glosses!).

Different Tools

Some may not have been clear at all times concerning the difference between a concordance and a dictionary. The similarities are superficial; these are very different tools. A concordance is an alphabetical index of all the words in a text or a corpus of texts, showing every contextual occurance of a word. A dictionary is a list of the words in a language usually including pronunciation, part of speech, derivation, and word meanings.

Some dictionaries are abridged (less than full information), others unabridged. For the English language, this is why the current edition of the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary defines 476,000 words, but the abridged edition contains only 75,000. Comparing only Greek words, The BDAG dictionary runs 1108 pages, while Strong’s runs only 74 similarly-sized pages. These share the same set of Greek words, but Strong’s work is obviously highly reliatn on limiting to glosses in order to save space.

Strong intended us to use his Concordance to help locate passages to compare against each other for harmony. The idea is to help us know where to look to see whether the meaning of a word in a given passage helps illumine its use in other passages.

He did not expect the reader to begin with the assumption that all of the uses of a word in the Bible given in his Concordance have direct bearing upon one another, or that the short glosses he gives in his “dictionary” constitute a complete listing of possible meanings. Nor did he anticipate that the reader would arbitrarily pick from among the meanings offered as if all were available. Context determines which meanings are potential.

And so, it is not that Strong’s Concordance is evil or bad, but that those not understanding the tool he has provided unintentionally misuse it.

Words Versus Whole Thoughts

We should also recall as a general rule the thoughts that are inspired, not the specific words. The Bible writer was moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20, 21), but God did not take away his free will. The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet (1 Corinthians 14:30-34). God sent the thoughts to the inspired writers but they clothed those thoughts in their own words.

Most meaningful thoughts come in larger units than single words. The most fundamentally meaningful units of thought are not words but sentences and paragraphs. This is why it is so important to take no shortcuts, to read the Bible through from end to end. Words are easily indexed, but grouping whole thoughts is more difficult. One can cheat with a concordance or a DVD or a computer search mechanism, and present himself as being highly knowledgable and yet he may never have even read his Bible through.

To a hammer everything looks like a nail, and one unaware of the limits to the concordance can do a lot of counterproductive pounding with it. If he does not realize that thoughts, not words, are inspired, he will inevitably focus on words. The forest disappears; and all that there is, are trees. Worse, as noted above, he may be unaware that Strong is giving him glosses rather than definitions, or that he, like everyone else, in the choices that he makes, is subject to context. But if his goal is to understand God’s Word, he is not free to choose whatever he prefers, but must choose only from among those meanings which fit the context.

When Word Searches Miss

Sometimes someone does a word search electronically, but may not realize how many results he is missing. He may search for a word in its singular form, but miss the plural. Most electronic search engines have wild card options that can greatly help.

A search for “baptize” turns up seven hits in the KJV. But a search for “baptiz*” dropping the specificity of using the “e” returns 77 results in 62 verses! Using the wild card operator “*” returns all occurances ending in the following:

Were it present, results having the ending “-ing” would also have been returned. But we still don’t have all the hits that have to do with John the Baptist. To return “baptist,” we actually needed to search for “bapti*” rather than “baptiz*”.

“Bapti*” adds results like all occurances of “baptist” and “baptism”—38 more. Searching for “baptize” we returned only seven results; using a few simple modifications to our query, we gathered over 100 more!

Sometimes there is a complication we do not expect. Search for “666”. Depending on the Bible translation you are using, you may or may not have a result. The search is futile with the King James Version. So you switch to the numbers written out, searching for “six hundred sixty” returns one result. But when we search for “six hundred threescore” three additional results are added.

Another help is to use quotation marks to search for an exact string. A search for " John " (notice the spaces) returns 133 matches in 130 verses. If you limit the scope of your search to only "John the baptist," you return 13 results. You would still have to sort out all of the " John " results to make certain you were finding all of the occasions where his name is mentioned.

There are many more ways to use wildcards. The above list is only an introduction to whet your appetite.

And then there are other verses that bear on a matter, but which may not immediately come to mind. For example, since Jesus identifies John the Baptist with Elijah, a word study on John should include consideration of the texts that have to do with Elijah’s work, too.

There are many things in the Bible one may easily miss, even if he is painstakingly careful with his word seaches. For example, a word search for “humility” will not list anything from the passage Isaiah 11:1-9, yet it is an important passage on humility. Again, a word search for “hypocracy” will fail of finding Isaiah 1:10-15, leaving the seeker with an unrefined knowledge concerning what inspiration says about it.

All of which is not to attack the use of the concordance, but to outline some potential pitfalls. A concordance is among the most important tools for Bible study, but is most helpful when the user knows its intended use and its limitations.

Three Concordances

There are a variety of concordances available today. The three most popular are Strong’s, Cruden’s, and Young’s. Let’s consider each briefly.

Cruden was a member of the Free Church of Scotland. His concordance is smaller, and lacks the numbering system later developed by Strong. His concordance was first pubished in 1738. In some ways the Cruden may be superior to Strong because it does not include a dictionary. You read that right! One is less likely to misuse Cruden’s concordance as a dictionary because it does not present itself as one. It helps you find concordant passages. It is remarkably handy.

If you already own a Strong’s, by no means discard it! It is the world’s most popular concordance. Alas, because of the way it presents itself, it is also the most likely to be misused. Strong was a Methodist and he devised a methodical, though flawed, system for numbering the words in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. He then provided a dictionary of glosses at the back of his concordance, listing them by number. This enables the layperson to look up a word from the original biblical language and learn something useful and insightful about it. Unfortunately, it also creates the illusion of giving more knowledge than it actually does. The glosses are far from complete. The focus on specific words also inevitably moves emphasis from thought to word, and from the importance of context to a missemphasis on the importance of words as free-standing units. Another problem is etymology. Strong provides in his dictionary of glosses likely breakdowns of words into the subunits from which they are made. But when we think in English, we do not normally think about the history of a word or of the components out of which it is constructed; we think of its current meaning. Etymology is useful but of limited value. The problem with Strong’s Concordance is not what it is but how we use it. Remarkably helpful in many ways, it remains overrated.

A third, less well-known concordance, is that of Young, another Methodist. Young does something very helpful. He arranges the entries under his English headings, grouping them according to the various words of the biblical languages which they have been translated from. Where Strong lists the words in sequential order of their occurance but otherwise ungrouped, Young chose to group the same words all together in the lists. An example will demonstrate. Let’s try the word “similitude”:

STRONG’S CONCORDANCE
Similitude

Nu	12	:8	the s· of the Lord shall he behold:	*	8544
De	4	:12	voice of the words, but saw no s;		"
		:15	ye saw no manner of s· on the day	*	"
		:16	the s· of any figure, the likeness of	*	"
2Ch	4	:3	under it was the s· of oxen, which		1823
Ps	106	:20	their glory into the s· of an ox	*	8403
	144	:12	polished after the s· of a palace:	*	"
Da	10	:16	s of the sons of men touched my		1823
Ro	5	:14	the s· of Adam’s transgression,	*	3667
Heb	7	:15	the s· of Melchisedec there ariseth	*	3665
Jas	3	:9	are made after the s· of God	*	3669

Similitudes

:10

and used s·, by the ministry of the

1819

This looks rather orderly here on the page, but look at the Strong’s numbers along the right margin. Seven different words are numbered, all appearing willy-nilly. Contrast with Young, who groups according to the biblical language words. There are seven different words, but he has grouped them together for you:

As you can see, Young’s arrangement is much crisper, and actual uses of the same word are grouped together. This enables one to obtain information better organized visually, and much more rapidly! There is still a risk of giving too much attention to particular words and not enough to ideas, but not as acute as with Strong’s numbering system. Having used all of these concordances, I heartily recommend you give Young’s a try. Many have found it superior to Strong’s.

Summary

In this short article we have considered, albeit briefly, several important topics. These have included the difference between glosses and full dictionary definitions, the difference between the concordance as a tool and the dictionary as a tool, the danger of a mistaken focus upon words to the exclusion of whole thoughts, helps for better word searches, how a word search may miss entire key passages, and a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the three most popular concordances. The focus has been on thinking carefully about how we use these tools in Bible study.

With so many winds of doctrine blowing about today, so many ideas and notions, it is very important that we upgrade our Bible study methods. When He has His way with His Word, we are helped, and we are more available to Him to be agents on God’s side of the question! GCO

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