Change is not always progress. As in, there is always reason to worry about anything Jay P. Green does. And one could certainly do without his overblown introduction.

And yet, there is a genuine value to this book, and even to Green's additions -- although they were definitely the easy part. George Wigram's original work was the heavy lifting -- and it was, in its time, an amazingly useful bit of work. What Wigram did was create a concordance to the King James New Testament, but based on the underlying Greek, not the English. (Something Wigram also did for the Hebrew Bible, which was a much, much harder task and even more commendable.)

Take as an example the famous Greek word αγαπη, agape, meaning "love" or "love of one's neighbour." This is usually translated "love" in the KJV, but in one famous chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, the Jacobean translators decided (perhaps influenced by the Latin) to translate it "charity."

Now it is possible to determine this from an analytical concordance, or to check it from the Greek -- but this is work, and it still doesn't really show the range of uses of the word. By using Wigram, one can find every place the KJV translates αγαπη, and the word used to translate it in every case.

Of course, because the book is organized by Greek words, one needed at least some knowledge of Greek to use it. That's where Green came in. He applied Strong numbers, plus references to some important vocabulary resources (Baur-Arndt-Gingrich, Kittel, Thayer). The latter three hardly matter, not because they're unimportant but because they're easy to look up. But the Strong's numbers are a genuine addition for non-Greek speakers, since they let a person go from other references to this book. Knowing, for instance, that "charity" in 1 Corinthians 13 is Strong's #26, you can then use Wigram/Green to look up #26 and find all those King James translations.

Of course, you'll note that I've been careful to refer to the King James Bible throughout. That's the major defect of this work. It is based on the King James Bible, and the Greek text known as the Textus Receptus from which it is translated. But the King James Bible is not a very good translation (we've learned much more about koine Greek since then), and the Textus Receptus is a terrible edition of the Greek text. So, although this book represents a tremendous effort -- it isn't a very good concordance. What we need is a similar book based on the New Revised Standard Version and the United Bible Societies Greek text. If it were done with the skill with which Wigram did his work, it would probably be a five star production. ( )