Customer Reviews

The Englishman's Greek Concordance of New Testament: Coded with Strong's Concordance Numbers

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For years I've considered this Bible Study tool to be one of the three or four most valuable in my entire library of approximately 5,000 volumes! This is a tool that allows you to look up any Greek word by simply having the Strong's number. Even if you cannot read Greek or pronounce the word, you can still gain a great deal of insight into it by looking at every verse in the New Testament in which it is used. (This is in a format that is identical to the way the Strong's Concordance lists the occurances of the English words.) Thus, you can find every place a particular Greek word is used and see how it is translated in the English Bible (KJV). I've often said that you could easily determine what a word means, even without a dictionary, if you could study it enough in the context in which it is used. Buy this Bible Study tool and I'm sure you will treasure it the rest of your Bible studying days.

I do greek work for my church. My church uses the KJV and thus the people are very familiar with Strong's Concordance. The main problem with Strong's Concordance is that the words are categorized under the English translation, and not by the Greek. So if you were to do some study on the word "mind" and used Strong's, you would have to spend a very long time trying to sort out the different english words used for a particular greek word. (The greek has over 20 words for the word mind...each having a specific meaning)

If you were to use the Englishman's Concordance you would then be able to do a search under the Greek word...not the English. Let's say you wanted to find all references for the Greek word #3563 (Strong's), then this reference is what will do it for you. This book is very easy to use. Also, many greek students and teachers use this book often. But one note of caution. There are two main Greek texts used today for translations. Most Bibles today comes from the Alexandrian Text, while the KJV comes from what is called the Received Text. There are a few differences in the texts. So if you were using the Englishman's Concordance with an Alexandrian Text Bible (such as NIV, New Am. Std, Living, Good News, etc) you will come across some differences.

For those who are serious about digging deep into God's word, a Greek-English corcordance like this one is a must. For instance, if you look up the word "soul" in Strong's Concordance, you'll find only 19 usages in the New Testament. Using this concordance, however, when you look up "soul" in the index, you find out that the Greek word for it is "psukee" and you get the page number to find it on. Going there you will discover that this word is used about 150 times in the New Testament. Using Strong's you miss out on all the verses in which "psukee" is translated as other words such as life, person, mind, heart, etc. Seeing all the verses gives you a full picture of what the word really means.

I have found that a lot of what God teaches in the Bible gets lost in English translations. I also believe that some of the translations are downright deceitful ways to preserve church doctrines. For instance, I am now certain that the Greek words "aion" and "aionios" (p. 19-20) should be translated consistently as "age" and "age-lasting" and never as "eternity" and "eternal". I believe that Rotherham's Bible correctly translates these words. Whether you agree with me or not, you can look up all usages of these words yourself and not have to rely on the translators. That is a very liberating experience.

I bought this book without knowing even the Greek alphabet and still found it easy to use. Eventually I learned some Biblical Greek, and this made using the concordance a little easier. Now I can look up a Greek word without going to the index first.

There are some drawbacks you should be aware of. The print is small and is of very poor quality. In some places the print is too light and in others it is dark and smudgy. I can make out all the words, but I can see where the print quality would bother a lot of people, especially those whose vision isn't what it used to be. There is no table of contents and for that reason I was unaware for about two months that there is a separate section for proper names. There is a vocabulary section with very short definitions and not much more.

You might want to look at a copy of this book before buying it. If you can overlook the poor print quality, it is a great book that you will use over and over again. Otherwise, you'll have to splurge on a more expensive Greek concordance. Just make sure you get one though.

Many bible students tend to shy away from more serious, technical reference tools thinking they may only be for "scholars".

Not so with Wigram's The Englishman's Greek Concordance.

It does help to know the Greek alphabet, but that comes easily with more use. This reference can be used by the serious bible student, searching from either the English or Greek word.

I find it helpful to study from an "interlinear" bible, looking up the Greek words I need in this concordance. Absorbing how NT authors used the words, I can draw my own conclusions without having them filtered through the theological views of another.

What a blessing!

This book is a great way to determine what a greek word actually means. It is the reverse of the strongs concordance(Greek to english rather than english to greek). Simply look in Strong's concordance for a word and look at the Strong's number then take this study tool and it will show you every occurance of that word in all it's various forms, in their English translation, under the strong's number. By using this book with contextual study of a word makes the study of greek far easier especially if you have little or no knowledge of greek parsing(word endings).

Even though The Englishman's Greek Concordance can be used without a Strong's Concordance, to make full use of this Greek Concordance you will need Strong's.

For example, when researching out "careful" as referenced by number 3309 in Strong's, The Englishman's Greek Concordance will show the verses that the Greek word "merimnao" refers to. Even though you may have begun studying the word "careful," you will end up being referred to verses using other English words pertaining to the same Greek meaning.

The way Englishman has set up his reference system differently than Young did in Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible is that Englishman keeps the verses specific to the exact Greek word whereas Young incorporates the varied Greek words used with a specific English word.

By using The Englishman's Concordances with a Strong's, you will gain a better understanding of why Strong chose the synonyms he did for each particular English word. In the above example, "merimnao" is from the previous reference numbered 3308 Greek word "merimna" and it was given the definition ---> to be anxious about:--(be, have) care(-ful), take thought. Englishman opens up a deeper an awareness of this original Greek word by showing you the other verses which use this same thought.

Young basically does the same thing as Englishman, but in a different manner with a different outcome. Since I gain varied insights by using Strong's, Young's, and Englishman's Concordances, I cannot say which one is the best since all of them have their own strengths and drawbacks.

If you still can't decide whether or not The Englishman's Concordances are what you would like to have, find a library that has this reference material so you can compare. Before I bought my copies, I didn't know what I was missing. Now that I have this reference set, I don't regret investing the money I did into purchasing such a blessing!

I was very disappointed when this book came, as the print quality is awful. I would expect better. I have a hard time even reading some of the print and it looks like someone just ran it through a cheap copier. With that said, I highly recommend the Englishman's Greek Concordance as a reference and study aid, just try to find a better printing.

This book, first published in 1839, has proven its worth over the years. Even if you know Greek fairly well, this book can give you a quick overview of the range of senses it has in the New Testament. For detailed study you will need a modern Greek lexicon (the best are A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature and Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains Vols 1 and 2). But for average churchgoers this Englishman's concordance will prove very helpful once you learn the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet.

This book can also be useful for the study of another major language of the early church: Coptic. Coptic, like English, has lots of words borrowed from Greek. My Coptic professor pointed out that since Coptic Christian writers were steeped in the New Testament, often their use of Greek words is very close to that of the NT (when the words appear in the NT). If you are unsure about how a Greek word is being used in a Coptic text, if it appears in the NT, you can look it up in the Englishman's Greek Concordance for a good first approximation of the likely usage.

Great for defining Greek words by context. You can use a computer to do this, but what can't you use one for these days? ;-), I like to have a hard copy too... for a number of reasons. The only reason I put a 4 instead of a 5 is that the print is hard to read in some places.

The print quality is not that good. I'm disappointed with this book.