Bible Study Helps

“Study to show thyself approved … rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

One of the most valuable resources in Bible study is a concordance. A concordance is an alphabetical list of the words in a book or body of work, along with each word’s context. The first Bible concordance was completed for the Latin Vulgate in the year 1230 AD and was a simple alphabetical index of major words. In 1535, Thomas Gybson produced the first English concordance for the New Testament only. Others followed (Cruden’s, Young’s), but their scope was less extensive until Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible appeared.

James Strong, an American lay Methodist of English and Dutch descent, was born in New York City on August 14, 1822. As a young man, he developed a passion for medicine and planned to become a physician. Ironically, after graduating as Valedictorian from Wesleyan University in 1844, ill health plagued him, and he was forced to give up his medical pursuits.

He then held various positions, including teacher, mayor of Long Island, and management roles in construction and with the Flushing Railroad. In his free time, Strong studied biblical literature at his alma mater, where he was granted a Doctor of Divinity degree in 1858. He became an instructor at Troy University in New York.

While there, Strong became an advocate for establishing a school to formally train Methodist ministers, who many Christian organizations considered to have received poor training and inferior theological knowledge. He established the Methodist Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey, in 1868, where he remained as an instructor for some 25 years. There, he teamed with John McClintock (see profile below), another Drew worker, and published the Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature. It quickly gained respect throughout the broad religious community.

Despite continuing ill health, Strong found the energy to inspire his students through knowledge of the scriptures. Working long hours into the night, Strong completed much of the work on an exhaustive concordance. Rather than simply alphabetizing the words, he assigned a number to each Hebrew and Greek word found in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, including those considered minor and unimportant. Strong included phonetic spelling to aid pronunciation, along with definitions. This was a monumental task, considering there were no computers to help sort the 8,674 Hebrew root words and 5,523 Greek root words.¹

(1) The Greek words are numbered 1 to 5,624, as some consecutive numbers were skipped for unknown reasons).
Sources include https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McClintock_(theologian).
Concordances: Cruden’s 1737, Young’s 1879, Strong’s 1890, Bullinger’s 1895 (seldom used today)

Not relying on previously published concordances, Strong went directly to the Bible for each word. It took him and his researchers 35 years to complete, finally being published in 1890, a providential overruling for the Harvest Truth movement. Strong had wanted both accuracy and simplicity for his concordance. It would appeal to both scholars and laymen. For the first time, a student could easily define and compare words in the Bible by finding all verses where the same root word appeared.

Criticism and Other Works

Strong’s work drew criticism from scholars due to his lack of credentials as a Hebrew or Greek scholar. Yet his work was so thorough and complete that revisions of his concordance over the years were limited to adding new translations of the Bible. Strong published other minor works and was part of the committee for the translations known as the English Revised Version (RV) (1881-1885) and the American Standard Version (ASV, 1901).

That latter committee used his concordance to produce corrections to the AV, such as replacing the word “LORD” with “Jehovah” and “Godhead” with “Divinity.” “Hell” and “bottomless pit” were changed to “Hades” and the “Abyss,” respectively. Due to these changes, Strong’s Concordance is still opposed by many Trinitarian scholars and both the Catholic and Anglican Churches. However, some of Strong’s definitions are more theologically tainted than Young’s.

Strong’s numbering system has been a key to the development of concordances in other languages and for continued translations of the Bible. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of The Bible provided the framework for online concordances and electronic versions of the Bible.

John McClintock (1814-1870)

John McClintock was born on October 27, 1814, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents, John McClintock Sr. and Martha Mc-Mackin, had immigrated from Scotland. As a boy, John worked in his father’s bookstore. When he turned 16, he left his family and moved to New York to work as a bookkeeper at the Methodist Book Concern. He converted to Methodism and pursued ministerial studies there at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Like James Strong, ill health struck him.

John abandoned his studies during his first year and returned home to Philadelphia, where he returned to his studies a year later at the University of Pennsylvania. John completed his ministerial studies in three years, graduating magna cum laude in 1835. He had a brief period as a Methodist pastor in a small New Jersey church but left due to severe throat problems that would plague him for the rest of his life.

John took a position the following year in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, as assistant professor of Mathematics at Dickson College. He remained there twelve years, during which time he married and fathered two children, became Professor of Mathematics (1837) and Professor of Latin and Greek (1840). When he could, he spoke on the Bible, protesting both slavery and the war with Mexico. He was arrested for instigating a riot over slavery in 1847. He was acquitted, but the trial attracted much attention. After another year at Dickson College, John resigned to become editor of the Methodist Quarterly Review but continued to serve as a trustee until 1859.

As the new editor, John brought an intellectual quality to the publication, particularly with his essays on the works of the French Positivist Philosopher Auguste Comte. Comte believed only what could be proven by science. Mc-Clintock believed Comte’s science was sound, but his narrow viewpoint of truth left a gap that only religion could fill. McClintock’s essays moved Comte, and to their death, they were unlikely friends.

Following his first wife’s death in 1850, John remarried and declined an offer to become president of Wesleyan University. He declined a similar offer later from Troy University, preferring to remain as editor of the Quarterly Review. Finally, he resigned in 1856 to became pastor of St. Paul’s Methodist church in New York, returning to his first love of preaching. After four years, he accepted the pastorate of the American Chapel in Paris, France, where he remained until 1864. Three years later, recruited by Daniel Drew, founder of Drew Theological Seminary, McClintock became President of what would eventually become Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. John began to emphasize theology, donating some of his own works heavily. Providence was again at work.

McClintock devoted a significant portion of his time over the years to studying and translating German theological works into English, as well as authoring Latin and Greek textbooks. Yet his largest and most influential work began with his appointment to President of Drew University, where he met James Strong. Together with 200 assistants, they co-authored their Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, now commonly known as McClintock and Strong. John would not live to see the project’s completion, dying in 1870, three years after it began. Only four of the original ten volumes had been completed at that time. James Strong completed the remaining six volumes and two additional supplements.

John McClintock probably did more than any other Methodist to raise the Methodist church’s scholarly standing, which was in its infancy and had little respect from other established denominations. His focus on Bible research brought a higher level of intellect to the church and to truth-seekers, including Charles Taze Russell, who would begin writing extensively soon after McClintock’s death.