A. S. Geden (1857–1936)

This book is a completely revised and reset edition of the best-selling A Concordance to the Greek Testament edited by W. F. Moulton and A. S. Geden. Originally published in 1897, it has remained in print ever since. It is beyond any doubt the most useful basic tool available for the student of the New Testament. The original edition was primarily based on the Greek text of Westcott and Hort, but gave all the variants in the edition of Tischendorf and in the Greek text underlying the Revised Version of the English Bible; quotations are given with grammatical completeness as far as possible; a significant feature is the inclusion of the Hebrew text of direct quotations from the Old Testament; asterisks and daggers indicate whether the vocabulary items in the New Testament are found in Classical Greek and in the Septuagint.This new edition retains all the features of the earlier editions, but it is primarily based on the Greek text in The Greek New Testament (4th edition), which is identical with that in Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition), currently the two most widely used editions of the Greek New Testament; it incorporates the main marginal readings in the former of these texts; references to the variants in the older editions are preserved, so that the student has to hand every reading which by even a remote probability might be regarded as forming part of the true text of the New Testament. The Supplement incorporating the prepositions has been included in the main text of the Concordance. Where the same word occurs twice in the same verse, these occurrences are now printed on separate lines and individually verse-numbered so that it is easier to count the number of occurrences of any given word. Special new Greek fonts have been created to enable great clarity in the printing.… (más)

This book isn't what it used to be.

When it came out, the Greek New Testament of Westcott and Hort was the New Testament, so a concordance to it was the best Greek reference available. Nowadays, the United Bible Societies/Nestle-Aland text is everything, so this isn't quite a concordance to the standard Greek testament. The fact that Moulton & Gedden has been slightly added to in the century and a bit since it was published doesn't change that.

But there is a flip side: Cost. The concordances to the UBS edition are really, really expensive. Moulton & Gedden is still officially in copyright, because of the (trivial) additions made in the fifth edition. It's still cheaper than the UBS concordances.

And it is a nice edition in many ways. Where the New Testament cites the Hebrew Bible, M&G cite the Hebrew. Words not found in LXX (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) are marked with an asterisk. The fifth edition adds Strong Numbers to the entries, allowing access to a number of other reference tools. And, of course, there is something to be said for a concordance of older editions as well as for the new edition.

For the UBS text, these days, it's often easier to use a computer than a concordance. When you want a print book, this will serve well enough -- after all, UBS is very close to Westcott & Hort. If you're a serious Greek New Testament scholar, this book is still well worth having.… (más)