This week in Christian history: All-Russian Church Council opens, James Strong born

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, August 11, 2024

James Strong born – Aug. 14, 1822

James Strong (1822-1894), an American theologian best known for creating the Strong's Concordance. | Public Domain

This week marks the anniversary of when theologian James Strong, best known for being the man behind the influential The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, or simply Strong’s Concordance, was born in New York City.

Strong studied biblical languages at the Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, serving as acting president of Troy University and helping to found Drew Theological Seminary.

Regarding his famous concordance, Strong labored for about 35 years to catalog approximately 14,000 Hebrew and Greek words found in the Bible, according to Stephen Nichols of Ligonier Ministries in 2020.

“This massive, exhaustive concordance shows where every word in the Bible can be found with its book, chapter, and verse. And this was produced before computers, before software programs, and before search engines, which means this work was all done by hand,” explained Nichols.

“One of his colleagues at Drew said this of James Strong: ‘At night, in the library, he worked like a plow horse, but in the lecture room he was a cult. No one ever went to sleep in his class unless he was in bad health or an imbecile.’”