Theocratic Aid To Kingdom Publishers

Lesson 59

BIBLE CONCORDANCES

What is a "concordance"? As applied to the Bible it is "an alphabetical index of words, showing the places in the text of the Bible where each principal word may be found, with its immediate context or surrounding words in each place".

The first Bible concordance of a fashion was produced by Anthony of Padua (1195-1231). However, Cardinal Hugo (de Santo Caro), to aid him and his clergy (not the laity) in their Scripture studies, produced the first fairly comprehensive concordance in 1244. He called no fewer than 500 fellow Dominican monks to aid him in compiling this work. His work in Latin was an alphabetical index of all the declinable words in the Latin Vulgate Bible, and has formed the model of all concordances to the Bible since. Inasmuch as at his time there were no divisions of the Bible into verses, it was necessary for him to design a sys-

tem of divisions for reference purposes. These early divisions as a basis were later developed into a final form in 1545 by Robert Stephens, thus completing the establishment of our present system of Bible divisions of chapters and verses.

The first English concordance to the entire Bible was produced in 1550, by John Marbeck. He referred only to chapter divisions, not using verse divisions. Robert Stephens published one in 1555 and made use of chapter and verse division for the first time (the ones he made ten years before). Finally, in the year 1737, Alexander Cruden in London produced quite a comprehensive and accurate concordance to the English King James Version of the Bible. Cruden's concordance still is in common use today and employs features which greatly aid in Bible study. Some editions of Cruden's contain a separate concordance on the Apocryphal books. In the latter part of the nineteenth century two excellent exhaustive concordances made their appearance, namely, the Analytical Concordance to the Bible by Robert Young of Scotland and in 1890 the Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible by James Strong of the United States. These masterful works will each be studied separately in later lessons.

Many other concordances, especially to the King James Version, have made their appearance in this country and abroad. However, in 1922 the first concordance to the American Standard Version of the Bible was produced by M. C. Hazard. For many centuries the Roman Catholic Hierarchy has discouraged Bible study, but finally, in 1942, had to succumb to the pressure of modern Bible study by authorizing for the first time the publication of a concordance to the Douay Version.

There are three primary uses of a Bible concordance. First, a concordance is used as a memory aid to locate a particular known text. This is accomplished through a system of PRINCIPAL WORDS which are listed alphabetically in the concordance. A portion of the context containing the

principal word together with the scripture reference is quoted to aid in determining whether that particular reference is the one desired. To illustrate, in the following scripture the words in italics are principal words, and the text can be located by looking up any of those principal words in the concordance. "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." —Matt. 24:14.

The second use of a concordance is the determining of the Scriptural presentation on a subject, with which presentation one has not heretofore been acquainted. For example, the truth-seeker seeing the earth torn by wars longs for peace. He knows men promise it, but they have promised it before. He wants to see what his Bible says concerning peace but does not know where to look. He goes to a concordance and looks up the word "peace". There he finds scriptures which show men cry "Peace, peace; when there is no peace"; that men's ambassadors of peace weep bitterly; that even as they say "Peace and safety" destruction comes. Then he learns that Jehovah is the God of peace, Christ Jesus the Prince of peace, that his followers are kept in perfect peace, that those who love Jehovah's law have great peace, that his followers are commanded to publish peace among men of good-will. By further searching he becomes convinced of man's inability to establish peace, and is comforted by God's purposes to bring it in abundance.

The third use of a concordance is to make a comparative Bible study on some points, especially of doctrinal controversy. As an aid to comparative study of Bible texts to get at the harmony of the teaching of the Scriptures on any one subject, the concordance is invaluable. By its use one may determine for himself which side of a controversy is the Scriptural one. Take as an example the controversial subject of the "soul". What is it? Is it separate from the body? Is it immortal? To learn the Bible's answer the truth-seeker looks up the word "soul" in a concordance.

He learns that man was not given a soul at the time of his creation but became one, that other creatures are spoken of as souls, and that souls die. He even learns that Christ Jesus 'poured out his soul unto death'. He further learns that no man can deliver his soul from the grave but that Christ Jesus has become a ransom for those that obey. If some of the texts seem to be in contradiction with one another, he can read the context and study all the references in relation with one another and thereby come to the inner agreement existing among all these scriptures. Thus he gets the full, rounded-out and complete teaching of the Bible on the soul, and not the narrow, sectarian view of any denomination on the subject.