TIP of the day: Strong's numbers - a brilliant and obsolete idea

MJ. Smith
MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,405
edited November 20 in English Forum

A century ago, mixing alphabets in a book created serious difficulties for the printers' type-setters most of whom were fluent in setting a limited number of alphabets. James Strong had a brilliant idea that cut the cost of type setting and decreased type setter errors as they were setting only familiar characters - replace lemmas by numbers. Fortunately, computers have simplified the difficult in switching between alphabets as well as having eliminated the need for type setters. Now we blame keyboarders or OCR routines for errors.

However, there still are people alive who gre up with Strong's numbers, and for them Logos continues to support Strong's numbers. Remember that Strong's system was designed to support only the KJV. In Proctor, Morris. Logos 6: Training Manual. Vol. 2. Murfreesboro, TN: MP Seminars, 2015." Section 32 Strong's Numbers", are lists of Lobos Bibles and Dictionaries containing Strong's Numbers. Generally you will obtain more information by using the actual Greek or Hebrew lemma than you will obtain using Strong's Numbers.

1. In interlinear/reverse interlinear Bibles with Strong's numbers, they may be accessed via:

  • interlinear panel
  • inline interlinear
  • context menu (right click)

2. The lexicon selections offered by the context menu (right-click) illustrate the difference between using the actual lemma option or using the Strong's number associated with the lemma.

3. Using the actual lemma in a search results in substantially more hits than using the Strong's number which appears in only a limited number of resources.

4. Because Stong's numbers are used in a number of older resources it is handy to have the Information panel to "translate" them.

Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

Comments

  • Rick Ausdahl
    Rick Ausdahl Member Posts: 1,711 ✭✭✭

    Thank you, MJ.

    There are so many different ways of extracting information in Logos that can nuance the results!  I don't expect to ever learn them all, and I know from experience I tend to forget much of what I've learned--so I just plod on, hoping that over time, the repository of tips I can remember and my understanding of how to affectively use the software will sloooooowly grow.

    Hmmm.  I wonder.  If I forget things I've learned, is it still legit to say I learned them?  [*-)]

  • JAL
    JAL Member Posts: 625 ✭✭
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/741560#Comment_741560

    Rick Ausdahl said:

    If I forget things I've learned, is it still legit to say I learned them?

    My father used to tell me that learning something well is often mostly relevant to learning it again when the need arises.

    "The Christian mind is the prerequisite of Christian thinking. And Christian thinking is the prerequisite of Christian action." - Harry Blamires, 1963

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