CONCORDANCE, a reference book defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “an alphabetical arrangement of the principal words contained in a book, with citations of the passages in which they occur.” There are concordances for a number of great writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Tennyson, Dante, etc.; but more concordances have been produced relating to the Bible than for all these authors, and many more, combined. In an article such as this, it is not necessary to discuss the earlier MS attempts at constructing concordances. The first important concordance was that of Rabbi Isaac Nathan, who labored on a concordance to the Heb. Bible for ten years, 1438-1448. This was printed in Venice in 1524, and tr. into Lat. in an edition of 1556. It was with this work as a foundation that the learned Hebraist John Buxtorf (1564-1629) published in Basel (1632), his Concordantia Bibliorum Ebraicae.

The first concordance of the Eng. Bible included only the NT: The Concordance of the New Testament Most Necessary to be Had, etc. by Thomas Gybson (d. 1562), first appearing before 1540, and reprinted in London with the date 1550. The first concordance of the entire Eng. Bible was produced by a most interesting individual, John Marbeck (d. 1585), published in 1550 under the title, A Concordance, that is to saie, a Worke Wherein by the Order of the Letters of the A.B.C. ye maie redely find any Worde Conteigned in the Whole Bible, so often as it is There Expressed or Mentioned. Extending to 766 folio pages, three columns to a page, or 2,300 columns, this was no small accomplishment for one man. Originally, he relates in the preface, he had drawn up a concordance in which the entire sentence in which any one word appeared was written out, “which made a greate and a houge volume.” Just as he finished the work Marbeck was apprehended at Windsor, arrested under the so-called Statute of Six Articles, and condemned to death, though later this sentence was rescinded. His arrest was in part due to the writing of the concordance, which was destroyed, and “for copying out of a worke, made by the greate Clerke Master John Calvin, written against the same five articles.” This would seem to indicate that the concordance which appeared in 1550 was the second one he had compiled.

A concordance that seemingly has escaped the notice of all who have attempted to write on this subject is a Concordance to the Holy Scriptures, compiled by Samuel Newman (d. 1663), an Oxford graduate, later moving to New England, so that on the title page of his work, we have the clause, “one of the Puritans at Rehoboth, England.” The second ed., corrected and enlarged, appeared in 1672; later, with improvements, Cambridge, 1720, and reprinted in London in 1889, a large folio work of nearly 800 double column pages, generally known as the Cambridge Concordance.

Prob. the most famous, most widely-used, and most frequently reprinted concordance of all is the one by Alexander Cruden (1701-1770)—A Complete Concordance of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (1737). Of course, it was not really “complete,” as the later works of Strong and Young, but it remained the most complete of them all for 150 years. How many eds. have been printed is not known; but the American Catalogue for 1876 lists twelve different publishing firms in America who were each issuing Cruden in some form, and Scribners were offering five different eds. at that time, nearly a hundred years ago! As witness to the fact that Cruden eclipsed all preceding similar works, of the fifteen concordances published between 1610 and 1820, listed in Malcom’s Index to Religious Literature (p. 119), not one has been reprinted for the last one hundred years.

It was in the last decade of the nineteenth cent. that the two most complete concordances were issued, but these were preceded by two smaller but valuable works, one by the distinguished Bible scholar, John Eadie (1810-1876), An Analytical Concordance to the Holy Scriptures (London, 1857).

In 1873 appeared the first ed. of the largest concordance of the Bible that had thus far appeared, by Robert Young (1822-1888). The Analytical Concordance to the Bible on an entirely new plan, containing every word in alphabetical order, arranged under its Hebrew or Greek original, with the literal meaning of each, and its pronunciation, with the latest information on Biblical Geography, Antiquities. This work of 311,000 references often has been revised and reprinted. Six eds. were called for within twenty years.

An equally comprehensive concordance was published in 1890 by James Strong (1822-1894), with the following title, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, showing every word of the text of the common English Version, together with a Comparative Concordance of the Authorized and Revised Versions. Strong’s concordance also is supplied “with brief dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek words of the original.” Strong was a professor at Drew Theological Seminary, and the co-editor of the now being reprinted M’Clintock and Strong Cyclopaedia.

In Young’s concordance the occurrences of any one Eng. word, e.g., in the NT, are classified according to the words of the Gr. text, whereas in Strong’s concordance all the occurrences of the Eng. word are given in succession, each followed by a number. For example, the occurrences of the Eng. word “word” in Strong are followed by numbers 3056, 4487. One must then turn to the end of the concordance to discover the Gr. word to which these numbers refer. In the Young concordance, however, the Gr. words are already classified, as logos and rhēma, and a line of quotation from each v. in which these words occur.

It will surprise many to know that the absolutely indispensable Englishman’s Greek Concordance of the New Testament, compiled by George V. Wigram (1805-1879), appeared as early as 1839, and is still in print. In this volume of 1,000 pages the Gr. vocabulary of the NT is arranged alphabetically, with all the occurrences of each word. This is followed by a complete index of the words of the Eng. text, with the Gr. words from which they are tr. The word “word” is said to be a tr. of two Gr. words logos and rhēma. The index states that a complete list of all the passages in which these two Gr. words occur may be found on pp. 462 and 677 respectively. The concordance is worked out with great detail; e.g., under the little preposition “with” are listed the thirteen different Gr. words that are so tr. in all VSS. There is also an index of Gr. and Eng. words; e.g., under the Gr. word “logos” twenty-seven different Eng. words tr. from “logos” in the NT, such as “doctrine,” “preaching,” “rumor,” “speech,” “truth,” “word,” etc. This is an indispensable work.

There are also numerous modern concordances of the Gr. and Heb. text. In 1870 Charles F. Hudson published his Critical Greek and English Concordance of the New Testament, which reached an eighth ed., revised by Ezra Abbot (1882). This lists all of the passages where each Gr. word occurs but it does not quote them. In the Preface to the seventh ed., signed “H.L.H.,” it is asserted that “there is probably no one book in existence which points out so many of the facts and considerations which influenced the Revisers in a large proportion of the changes made.”

A more technical work which has won great approval was published in 1897 as the combined labor of two famous Eng. scholars, William F. Moulton (1835-1898) and A. S. Geden (1857-1936), the Concordance to the Greek Testament according to the Texts of Westcott and Hort, Tischendorf and the English Revisers, (third ed., 1950). The quotations are from the Gr. text. A work widely used in England and America, though published in Germany, is the Handkonkordanz Zum Griechischen N.T., by Dr. Alfred Schmoller. This was first published in 1869. It has been revised continually, the 8th ed. appearing in 1949, based on the 10th ed. of the Nestle New Testament. It is alphabetically arranged, with each Gr. word given its Lat. equivalent. In some places the material is arranged under major headings, as “logos,” into three groups: (1) verbum Dei substantiale; (2) verbum Dei et Christi; (3) reliqui loci. The latest work of this kind was done by the late Jacob B. Smith, A Greek-English Concordance to the New Testament, Scottdale, Pennsylvania (1955). This lists 5,524 Gr. words giving the various renderings of each in the KJV with the number of times each occurs. In 1963 there was published a work compiled by J. Stegenga, The Greek-English Analytical Concordance of the Greek-English New Testament.

There began to appear at Oxford in 1897 that monumental work in two folio volumes, with a supplement, A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament Including the Apocryphal Books by Edwin Hatch (1835-1889) and Henry A. Redpath (1848-1908). This indispensable work for the study of the Gr. OT also gives the Heb. equivalent of every Gr. word in each passage in which it occurs.

Over a hundred years ago, John Taylor published a work now seldom seen, A Hebrew Concordance adapted to the English Bible, somewhat after the manner of Buxtorf, a revised ed. appearing in 1876. A valuable work, in compact format, was the English and Hebrew Bible Student’s Concordance, by Aaron Pick, professor of Heb. in the University of Prague. It was arranged alphabetically according to the Eng. word, for which the Heb. word or words are then given; e.g., for the Eng. word “good-bye” thirteen Heb. words are listed, with the passages in which each occurs. This was subscribed to by a number of bishops, by T. H. Horne, J. Pye Smith, E. H. Bickersteth, etc. In 1874 there appeared the Englishman’s Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament.

In 1883, edited by John Alexander Ross, appeared A Complete Concordance to the Revised Version of the New Testament, “published under the authorization of Oxford and Cambridge Universities.” It mainly follows the lines laid down by Cruden. In 1922, when he was eighty-two years of age, M. C. Hazard (1839-1929) published his Complete Concordance to the American Standard Version of the Holy Bible. This work is said to contain 300,000 references under 16,000 headings. The classification of these words is wonderfully helpful in spite of the fact that there are many errors in the volume. Thus for “word” there are two columns of references under that single term, followed by all the vv. where occur the phrase “word again,” then “word of Jehovah came,” “word of God,” “word of Jehovah,” “my word,” “word of truth,” etc.—twenty different headings. In addition there are some encyclopedic notes prefacing many of the words. For the first word, Aaron, its probable meaning is given, then six lines of a summary of his life. In 1894 appeared the work by J. B. R. Walker (1821-1885), A Comprehensive Concordance, later reprinted in 1945 with an introduction by M. C. Hazard. This is based on Cruden, but is said to contain 50,000 more references than Cruden. In 1957 appeared Nelson’s Complete Concordance of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, compiled by John W. Ellison. Finally, in 1964, appeared the Concordance to the New English Bible, New Testament, compiled by E. Elder. The editor defines this work as “a concordance of words not in, or not in the same verses as the KJV. A supplement to existing concordances of other Versions.”

Many attempts have been made to construct concordances to the Douay VS but the definitive work, which will not have to be done again, is the Complete Concordance to the Bible (Douay Version), 1953, a work by Newton Thompson and Raymond Stock.

In addition to these separately published concordances, a number of very valuable compilations of this kind have appeared from time to time in books devoted to Bible study, semi-Bible dictionaries, etc. Possibly the best known of the earlier attempts is the one by William Wright, The Illustrated Bible Treasury and a New Concordance to the Authorized and Revised Versions.

Then, of course, there has been published for over a half century, The Oxford Cyclopedic of over 300 pages, and the work of a few decades ago, by W. M. Clow, The Bible Reader’s Cyclopedia and Concordance, neither of which carries a date of publication.

Bibliography There are some helpful articles on the earlier compilers of concordances in the M’Clintock and Strong, and also in J. Townley’s Illustrations of Biblical Literature (1821), 2 vols.; D. G. Miller, “Concordances,” Interpretation (Jan. 1947), I, 52-62; C. R. Gregory, in Schaff-Herzog, III. 205-210; particularly valuable for titles of concordances of most European languages. F. W. Danker: Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study (1960), 1-18.