[B-Greek] Prejudice against mention of Strongs
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Thu Jun 4 15:48:19 EDT 2009
On Jun 4, 2009, at 8:55 AM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> As far as Strong goes, it's funny. I have never seen a
> Strong's, I don't really know what he did or who he is
> and I'm sure he was a good guy and I think any
> resource can have value. But it's true that he unfortunately
> is linked even in my very democratic with a small d
> mind with good intentioned folks who let us just say
> have not yet learned that if you are going to use "Strong's"
> and "the Greek really says" in the same sentence you
> have to be REALLY humble. We all do, though, have
> to be really humble. The prejudice against any mention of
> Strong's is just that, and needs to be acknowledged, by me anyhow.
According to my dictionary, "prejudice" is "preconceived opinion that
is not based on reason or actual experience" One might think that
repeated warnings against "Strong's" might have aroused some curiosity
about what's being warned against. I would have thought too that the
warnings were intended to be understood by those being warned. The
fact is, however, that Biblical resources with Strong's numbers and
definitions are readily found on the internet, and a profession of
willful ignorance about them coupled with a claim that one needs to
acknowledge a prejudice against mentioning them does seem a little bit
odd to me.
There are those who are prejudiced against Wikipedia, but rather than
name them, I'll cite the URL of the Wikipedia article on Strong;s
numbers and let those interested decide for themselves whether it
tells them as much of what they really want to know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong%27s_Concordance
= http://tinyurl.com/hsfk4
And here's the entry for a Strong's number selected at random 1037:
Strong's Number: 1037
Original Word Word Origin
βυθός a variation of (899)
Transliterated Word
Buthos
Phonetic Spelling Parts of Speech
boo-thos' Noun Masculine
Definition
1. the bottom or depth of the sea
2. the sea itself, the deep sea
King James Word Usage - Total: 1
deep 1
The objection against Strong's numbers is that it provides what are
essentially glosses on Greek words. Where Greek words refer to
concrete physical items encountered by human beings in everyday life,
glosses are usually quite sufficient; but as we proceed to describe
and discuss experiences and concepts of a more abstract nature,
glosses become increasingly inadequate as lexical tools.
There are some of us, perhaps quite a few, who do indeed think that
reliance upon glosses for understanding the vocabulary of Biblical
Greek beyond relatively early stages of learning Biblical Greek is not
very helpful for acquisition of a better ability to read and
understand Biblical Greek texts.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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