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7a - More about word studies
IF word studies interest you, your library could expand rapidly once you start to collect Biblical books about words. Concordances and Lexicons are just starting-off points. Volumes have been written about single words and when some of these studies are brought together, into multi-volume collections, you are soon talking about a lot of shelf space and quite substantial purchase prices. This appendix works through some of the options and notes the availability of much of this material in electronic format as well, some of it available online.
Concordances
The main choice, for hardcopy reference is between Cruden’s Concordance (which merely lists the occurrences of key words) and Young’s and Strong’s Concordance. It used to be said: “Cruden’s for the crude; Young’s for the young; Strong’s for the strong!” and there are some fairly hefty-sized volumes about (of both Young’s and Strong’s), as well as some very nice (and much sought after) India-paper versions of Young’s. But nowadays you can get the same facility electronically, for your handheld or laptop computer, and finding words and getting basic derivations is part of all the Bible software programs (like Biblesoft, Libronix, Online Bible, e-sword and suchlike). But you have to be careful about the definitions that are offered, which can be theologically skewed, and it is often much better to use a concordance to track usage and take your cue from the way a word is used throughout scripture.
The key difference between Young’s and Strong’s is the layout of the passages of scripture. Where a Hebrew or Greek word is translated differently in the KJV (both concordances use this version as their bedrock translation), in Young’s when you look up the word you’re after you will find all the various uses of that English word listed together analytically. So, if it’s the word “love” (to make things easy), the entry will list all the references in order under the subheadings of the Hebrew words that are so translated (ahabah, ahabim, ohabim and dod). It then does the same thing with the Greek words (in this case just agapē). Then there is another listing headed “Love, to –”, then “Love, in –” and so on. Go to the back of the concordance and you find the original word (e.g. agapē) and it will tell you that it’s translated as “charity” 27 times and “love” 86 times. Such statistical information gives you an idea about the most likely rendering, or another possible way of translating the same word in the passage you are studying.
Strong’s is less welcoming; for your first examination of the word will provide a list of all occurrences in the order in which they appear in the Bible together with a string of numbers (157, 160, 2836, etc). To follow up each number you have to refer to the back of the concordance where a concise dictionary (separately for Hebrew and Greek words) provides a brief definition. At first no statistical information was provided about word usage, but more recent versions have an expanded set of definitions and these are usually incorporated in Bible software packages (though there are different definitions in different places, which can be a bit confusing). For example, the entry for word 157 in the Libronix digital library reads as follows:
157 [’ahab, ’aheb /aw·hab/] v A primitive root; TWOT 29; GK170; 208 occurrences; AV translates as “love” 169 times, “lover(s)” 19 times, “friend(s)” 12 times, “beloved” five times, “liketh” once, “lovely” once, and “loving” once. 1 to love. 1a (Qal). 1a1 human love for another, includes family, and sexual. 1a2 human appetite for objects such as food, drink, sleep, wisdom. 1a3 human love for or to God. 1a4 act of being a friend. 1a4a lover (participle). 1a4b friend (participle). 1a5 God’s love toward man. 1a5a to individual men. 1a5b to people Israel. 1a5c to righteousness. 1b (Niphal). 1b1 lovely (participle). 1b2 loveable (participle). 1c (Piel). 1c1 friends. 1c2 lovers (fig. of adulterers). 2 to like.
There are several different versions of Strong’s available and you need to examine the specification carefully. Different publishers, like Nelson and Zondervan, have reset the original text. Zondervan call their version the Strongest Strong’s and their publicity says that they have “rebuilt Strong’s from the ground up; using biblical research experts John Kohlenberger and James Swanson they have achieved unprecedented accuracy and clarity. Longstanding errors have been corrected; omissions have been filled in; word studies have been simplified and thoroughness and ease of use have been united and maximized.”
What Kohlenberger and Swanson have done is to allow theological bias to creep in to the definitions of this concordance. For example, notice how the definition of the word “logos” has altered from the original Strong’s concordance:
3056. logos, log’-os; from 3004; something said (including the thought); by implication a topic (subject of discourse), also reasoning (the mental faculty) or motive; by extension, a computation; specifically (with the article in John) the Divine Expression (i.e. Christ):—
account, cause, communication, X concerning, doctrine, fame, X have to do, intent, matter, mouth, preaching, question, reason, + reckon, remove, say(-ing), shew, X speaker, speech, talk, thing, + none of these things move me, tidings, treatise, utterance, word, work.
The definition in the Strongest Strong’s now reads as follows:
3056 logos, n. GK: 3364 [→3004]. word, spoken or written, often with a focus on the content of a communication (note the many contextual translations in NIV); matter, thing. “The Word” is a title of Christ (Jn 1:1), emphasizing his own deity and communication of who God is and what he is like:-
There are more examples given in the October 2006 edition of “The Bible Magazine”, pages 8-10, available online (see Back Issues). And the article highlights the fact that similar problems exist with some more recent software definitions, including the new definitions provided in the OnLine Bible.
All these study aids were originally based only on the KJV (or AV), but some of them are now available for other versions, including the Analytical Concordance to the RSV (which only deals with the New Testament) and the Exhaustive Concordance of the NIV (by Goodrick & Kohlenberger). But if you are thinking of one of these, you need to check if they are analytical or just a listing of words without reference to the Hebrew or Greek originals.
Englishman’s Concordance
If you decide you just want to see all the occurrences of the original word listed together, so that you can make up your own mind about the way the word is used in scripture, and you don’t want to have to look them all up individually (under “love” or “charity”, for example), there are concordances which do just that, and they offer no definitions at all, right or wrong. The Englishman’s Hebrew & Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament was compiled by George Wigram and has again been updated several times. Using this you find the original word you want to study (like the Hebrew word for love: aheb) and all the occurrences are listed together.
In the original version, you had to be able to negotiate your way around Hebrew (or Chaldee) but the more recent edition is linked to Strong’s numbers (this is usually called The New Englishman’s Hebrew Concordance, and that is also linked by other reference numbers to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Gesenius Hebrew Lexicon/Dictionary.
There is a New Testament version too, again by Wigram, which was originally titled, The Englishman’s Greek Concordance and that has gone through the same process of being linked to Strongs’ numbers (The New Englishman’s Greek Concordance) and a further expansion has taken place (titled The Word Study Concordance), to include numbering which cross-references to reference books like Moulton & Geden’s, Arndt & Gingrich’s Greek Lexicon and Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.
Theological dictionaries
These linkages from one reference work to another show the way in which you can find out more and more about a particular word. Theological Dictionaries come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and have varying usefulness. You need to be especially careful when using these to appreciate that the theology of the compilers is different from our understanding of God’s revealed truth. But, as ever, there will be useful information to be found there, if the work is used with discrimination. Here’s an example. When we looked at the definition in Strong’s for ‘aheb (numbered 157), it contained the link “TWOT 29”. That’s a link to item 29 of the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, a two-volume compilation by Harris, Archer & Waltke, which begins to take you further into the subject. This is what you would see there, if you followed the linguistic link:
29 (āhēb) love, like, be in love, lovely.
Derivatives
29a (ahab) love.
29b (ōhab) love.
29c (ahăbâ) love.
There is little variation in the basic meaning of this verb. The intensity of the meaning ranges from God’s infinite affection for his people to the carnal appetites of a lazy glutton.
The verb appears in all moods of the Qal stem plus Niphal participle and Piel participle. The sixteen Piels are not intensive, but usually refer to illicit “lovers.” The prophets Jeremiah (22:20, 22; 30:14), Ezekiel (16:36; 23:5, et al.), and Hosea (2:5–13) use the word to speak of Israel’s adulterous relations. Zechariah has the word in the presumably messianic passage, “I was wounded in the house of my friends” (13:6).
āhēb frequently describes love between human beings. The love of father for son is exemplified by Abraham and Isaac (Gen 22:2) and Israel and Joseph (Gen 37:3). A slave might “love” his master and wish to identure himself to him for the rest of his life (Ex 21:8). This is the word used in the rule “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). “Love” of the stranger is also incumbent on the faithful (Deut 10:19). Samson had apparently told Delilah that he “loved” her (Jud 14:16; 16:15). Ruth “loved” Naomi her mother-in-law (4:15), Elkanah “loved” his wife Hannah (1 Sam 1:5), and Rebekah “loved” her son Jacob (Gen 25:28). Hiram’s “love” for David illustrates international friendship or irenic politics between the two (1 Kgs 3:1). Notice that nowhere is the love of children toward parents mentioned. Rather. they are to honor. revere, and obey … (and so on, and on)
If you use the electronic version of Strong’s, that expanded definition is only a mouse click away, otherwise you might have an interesting challenge decoding the Strong’s numbers into the TWOT index numbers (there’s a table of comparisons at the back of Volume 2). But we’re not finished yet, as you might expect. There is a five-volume New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis, edited by W A VanGemeren, which has 22 pages about the same Hebrew word, starting with the word for love that was used in Egyptian and Sumerian, then tracing Old Testament usage and collating a lot of information from other writers and scholars. This work (known by its initials as NIDOTTE) is also available electronically and that makes the cross-reference easier, as the indexes can be quite hard work between all these reference works, but as the text is lengthy, you might prefer the printed version.
NIDOTTE is matched in the New Testament by The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, edited by Colin Brown, which comes in four volumes and covers much the same ground for the Greek New Testament. This work looks at a word or topic theologically and is easier to access because the English word is used as the reference point. So, to follow our working example, there is an entry for “Love” which is subdivided into a consideration of apagaō and phileō, a ten-page summary which concludes with an extensive bibliography, if you want to go further still and read books, like C. S. Lewis’s “The Four Loves” or Nygren’s “Agape and Eros”.
One further compendious work deserves a mention as it is reckoned by some to be the ultimate authority when it comes to the meaning and usage of New Testament words. This is The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament edited by Kittel and Friedrich, commonly known as “Kittel”. This was published a volume at a time and, when complete, comprised ten volumes, although it was later abridged by Geoffrey Bromiley into one volume (known as “Little Kittel”), which is much more accessible. Well indexed, you can move from the English word to its Greek equivalent quite easily. The entry for apagaō, for example, has been abbreviated to just five pages and traces the development of love in the Old Testament, its use in pre-biblical Greek, in Judaism, by Jesus and then by the apostles, subdividing between Paul, James and John, before concluding by a reference to the post-Apostolic period. Both the original Kittel and the abbreviated versions are available electronically, and can be purchased from Libronix as part of an electronic library that complements The Christadelphian – 1864 to 2000 and other Christadelphian material which is available electronically.
