The Word Alone

The Remarkable Story of Alexander Cruden and His Enduring Guide to the Holy Scriptures

Among the great reference works produced for the study of the English Bible, few have enjoyed such a long and distinguished history as Cruden’s Concordance. Its full title is A Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures, but for generations of ministers, students, teachers, and ordinary readers of the Bible it has been known simply as Cruden’s Concordance.

The work was compiled almost entirely by one man, Alexander Cruden, and was designed principally as a concordance to the text of the King James Version. First published in London in 1737, it became one of the most enduring Bible reference works in the English-speaking world. Revised editions prepared by Cruden himself appeared in 1761 and 1769.

The Making of the Concordance

The circumstances surrounding the production of Cruden’s Concordance make the work all the more remarkable. Cruden undertook the task whilst working as a bookseller and corrector of the press in London. By 1735 he had been appointed bookseller to Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II, and during this period he devoted himself intensely to the preparation of his great concordance.

Unlike modern concordances, which may be produced by computer in a comparatively short time, Cruden’s work had to be performed by hand. He had to work his way through the text of the Bible, identifying words, arranging their occurrences, recording their references, and providing sufficient portions of the surrounding text to enable the reader to recognise the passage.

The scale of such a task is difficult for the modern reader fully to appreciate. There were no searchable electronic texts, databases, word-processing programs, or Bible software. Cruden had only the printed Bible, paper, ink, and his extraordinary capacity for sustained labour.

The bulk of the concordance was completed with astonishing rapidity, although the subsequent checking, correcting, arranging, and printing naturally required further labour. His concentration upon the undertaking was so intense that his bookselling business apparently suffered whilst his attention was absorbed by the concordance.

The completed work appeared in 1737. On 3 November of that year Cruden personally presented a copy to Queen Caroline. Unfortunately for Cruden, the Queen died on 20 November, only a little more than two weeks later, and whatever royal assistance he may have hoped to receive consequently came to nothing.

The first edition was nevertheless followed by a substantially improved second edition in 1761. Cruden explained that he had made the quotations more complete in thousands of places, distinguished leading words more clearly, added texts, improved definitions, and supplied additional historical information concerning certain biblical persons. The second edition was presented personally to King George III on 21 December 1761. A third edition, the last prepared during Cruden’s lifetime, appeared in 1769.

More Than an Index

One reason for the lasting usefulness of Cruden’s Concordance is that Cruden intended it to be more than a bare list of references.

Its entries enabled the reader to locate passages from remembered words, but Cruden also supplied sufficient surrounding wording to help identify the desired passage. The work contained information concerning the different senses in which important biblical words were used, together with material relating to proper names, Jewish customs, and other matters intended to assist the reader in understanding Scripture. The original conception therefore combined features of a concordance, dictionary, and biblical reference work.

Cruden himself had a high view of the usefulness of such a work. In the preface to the second edition he observed that there were few books more necessary to those who seriously studied their Bibles than a concordance, whether they were private Christians or ministers of the Gospel. Yet he did not regard his concordance as a substitute for Scripture itself. His first-edition preface closed with the prayer that those who professed to believe Scripture to be a revelation from God would diligently read and study it and, through the Holy Spirit, be made wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

That sentiment reveals something important about the spirit in which the concordance was produced. Cruden was not merely indexing an important piece of English literature. To him the Bible was Holy Scripture, and his concordance was intended to assist men and women in its careful study.

Alexander Cruden

Alexander Cruden was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1699 and was baptised at St Nicholas Kirk on 8 June of that year. He received a good education at Aberdeen Grammar School and Marischal College and acquired considerable ability in Latin, Greek, and biblical studies.

He originally intended to enter the ministry, but the course of his life took him in another direction. After periods of employment as a tutor, he eventually settled in London and became associated with bookselling, publishing, and the correction of printed works. In 1732 he opened a bookseller’s shop near the Royal Exchange, and in 1735 he received the appointment of bookseller to Queen Caroline.

Cruden’s life was not an easy one. He suffered periods of severe mental disturbance and was confined on several occasions under the harsh practices then employed for treating those considered mentally ill. His experiences resulted in considerable personal controversy and in several publications defending his conduct and protesting against his treatment.

Yet alongside these difficulties stood an extraordinary capacity for painstaking scholarly labour. Cruden worked as a corrector of the press, and several learned works were reputed to have benefited from his careful attention. He also supervised the printing of an edition of Matthew Henry’s Commentary, published a Compendium of the Holy Bible in 1750, and compiled a Scripture Dictionary, which was published after his death.

In later life he styled himself “Alexander the Corrector” and became known for his attempts to correct what he regarded as public abuses, particularly profanity and violations of the Lord’s Day. Some of his activities were undoubtedly eccentric, but behind them lay the same intense seriousness and determination which had characterised his scholarly work.

Cruden died in London on 1 November 1770. Contemporary biographical tradition records that he was found dead upon his knees, apparently having died whilst at prayer. He was buried in Southwark and left part of his savings to Marischal College for the establishment of a bursary.

Whatever may be said about the more unusual aspects of his life, Alexander Cruden left behind a remarkable monument to diligence. Few individuals have undertaken, single-handedly, a reference work of comparable magnitude and lasting usefulness.

Why I Regard Cruden’s as One of the Finest Concordances

I have used a number of Bible reference works over the years, but Cruden’s Concordance remains one of the finest concordances in my estimation. I use it often, and despite the availability of modern computer programs and electronic Bible-searching tools, I continue to find considerable value in consulting it.

One of its greatest strengths is its simplicity. When I remember part of a verse but cannot recall its location, Cruden’s allows me to take a significant word from the passage and trace it through the Scriptures. In doing so, I am not merely given a reference; I am able to see the word occurring repeatedly within its biblical setting.

This is one of the great advantages of a traditional printed concordance. Electronic searches are undoubtedly faster, but speed is not always the same thing as study. Turning through the pages of a concordance encourages the student to examine related passages, compare the use of words, and notice references which might otherwise have been overlooked. There is something valuable about following a biblical word through Scripture in this deliberate manner.

I also greatly appreciate the fact that Cruden’s Concordance belongs to an older tradition of Bible study in which the Bible itself occupied the central place. A concordance does not tell the student what he must believe about a passage. Instead, it directs him back to the text of Scripture and enables Scripture to be compared with Scripture.

That is precisely what a good Bible-study aid ought to do.

Modern reference works certainly have their place, and tools such as Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and Young’s Analytical Concordance offer features which Cruden’s does not. Nevertheless, there is a straightforward usefulness about Cruden’s Concordance which has enabled it to endure from the eighteenth century into the present day.

There is also something deeply impressive about the labour behind the book. Every time I use it, I am conscious that its thousands upon thousands of references were originally gathered not by a computer but through the patient work of one man examining the Scriptures word by word. Cruden’s achievement is therefore not merely a chapter in the history of biblical reference books; it is an extraordinary example of diligence in the service of biblical study.

For anyone who regularly studies the King James Bible, Cruden’s Concordance deserves a place within reach. Nearly three centuries after its first publication, it continues to perform the task for which Alexander Cruden laboured so diligently: helping the reader find his way through the words of Holy Scripture and, above all, directing him back to the Bible itself.