Strong's

Strong's is a reference to the linguistic work done on the Bible by James Strong, and particularly his Concordance.

Some researchers cite Strong's as though it were the Gospel truth, but in fact he had occasional weaknesses and biases in his work which can be improved upon today.

Examples of weakness or bias by Strong's include:

• a preference for monarchical spin in translating non-monarchical Greek terms, such as Μεγαλωσύνης, which means "greatness" based on its root but Strong's translates it as "majesty"
• a literary rather than scientific bias, thereby tending to avoid more scientific or mathematical terms such as power, efficiency, energy, perfection (in the sense of flawlessness), set, and infinity
• a lack of the full understanding of the Greek that we have today, as in the meaning of "ἐπιτιμάω". Strong's sets forth its meaning as "rebuke, chide, admonish, warn."; its real meaning is "to lay a value upon" or "to lay a penalty on a person."
• an overreliance on attaching the same meaning to a word based on how it was used in other contexts, even when the other contexts are dissimilar; if a foreigner translated "get" on such a basis he would make many mistakes because its meaning depends entirely on its context, as in "Get the baseball" and "I get it!" and "get real."

External links

The Pitfalls in Using Strong's Numbers (torahresource.com)