MORE ABOUT CONCORDANCES

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 21

MORE ABOUT CONCORDANCES

(By "Ajax.")

THE TROUBLES OP CRUDEN

' Sue of the things that I learned through being trapped into writing «*%mut Concordances last week is the meaning of the word "concordance," arid the fact that in its application to the Bible it originally was, as in Latin it apparently still is, a plural. The definition given by.Cruden in the opening sentence of the preface to his first edition is:— A Concordance Is a Dictlonf.ry, or an Index, to tbe Bible, wherein all tne words used through the Inspired writings are arranged alphabetically, and the various places where they occur are referred to, to assist,us In Undine passages and comparing tbe several ' significations of the same word. Nearly two centuries earlier John Marbeck, who had been the first to anticipate Cruden with a Concordance to the whole English Bible, had found it necessary to explain the term on his : title page as follows: —■ j A Concordance, that is to saie, a Worke wherein by the prdre of the Letters of the A.B.C. ye male redely find any Worde contelgned In the whole Bible, so often as it is there expressed or mentioned. Lond. 1550. Not only was '' concordance apparently at that time an unfamiliar term,' tut from the reference to "the A.8.C." we may probably infer as much for '' alphabet." Though the Oxford Dictionary cites one earlier use of "alphabet," Marbeck either did not know that use, or preferred the home-grown term. • '. *. • The same authority mentions an obso. lete use of "Concordance" which was in much more obvious agreement with its etymological meaning than its current use. In thY sense it meant "a composition combining and harmonising various accounts; a harmony." A "Concordance on the Evangelists" is accordingly praised by Fuller (1661) as "a worthy work, to show the harmony betwixt those four writers." In the modern sense of the word as "a book which shows in how many texts of the Scripture any word occurs" (Johnson), "concordance" was, as I have said, originally a plural, "each group of parallel passages being pioperly," says the "Oxford Dictionary," • a coneordantia." It was an index of verbal harmonies or ' "concordantie," and the plural is retained in the Latin title of Bruder's "Concordance to the New Testament" (1888). But in English the plural has been dropped, and the term applied in the singular to the whole work. ■ • .» ' ♦ ■ iln the first of his prefaces, Cruden gives "a short historical account of Concordances, which," he says, '.'will tend to display their great.usefulness." The value of a Concordance to the Biblical, student is surely in as little need of proof as the value of the alphabet, and I cannot, say that Cruden's brief sketch makes it any clearer, but it is certainly interesting. Huso de S. Charo, a preaching Friar of the Dominican order, who was afterwards a Cardinal, was, says Cruden, the first who compiled a Concordance to the Holy Scriptures; he died in'the year 1262. He had studied the Bible very closely, and for carryon this great and laborious work the more successfully, we are told he employed 500 Monks of his order to assist him. But Cruden missed'the point that was really of more value for his purpose than all the. rest, viz., that Hugo undertook this Concordance as a necessary part <jf the preparations- for a commentary . which he had in hand. On the, first Hebrew Concordance, which appeared in 1448, Eabbi Mordecai Nathan had, Cruden tells üb, spent ten years, "and besides, as he himself says, he was obliged to employ a great many jwiters in. this work. "■ • • ■• • Abraham Trommius is the third of the great names on Cruden's list. This "aged and worthy Minister of Groiiingen," who, on the verge of his threescore years and ten, decided to give the world a Concordance to the Septusgint Version of the Old Testament, took sixteen years ti> complete it; and ■uch was the^qualfty of his work that the two folio* volumes which he published at Amsterdam and Utrecht in 1718 remained the standard book on the!subject for nearly two centuries. Think of the heroism of Johnson, said Stevenson in a passage which I quoted at ength three weeks ago, think of that superb Aidlfference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary and carried him through triumphantly until the end I Think rather of the tougher heroism and; more superb indifference of Trommius! Johnson was on the right side of 40 when he began his dictionary. He was on the right side of 50 when he finished it, and it had only taken him eight years. But it was not till 68 that Abraham Trommius started on his task, and at it took him just twice as long he was 84 before he could sing his *'Nune dimittis"! • • • Cruden was only '36 when the first edition of his Concordance appeared in 1737, and according to the article in the "Dictionary of National Biography," which I quoted last week, it had taken him less than" two years. That astonishing statement gave a rudo •hock to my comfortable theory that the compiling of the Concordance must for many years havo served as a blessed anodyne for a victim of melancholy and mental trouble— The sad mechanic exorcise Like dull narcotics numbing pain. It must also, however, have been just about as far from the facts. What the »'D.N.B." writer says'is:— la 1738 he began his "Concordance," and must have laboured at It with great assiduity, as the next year saw its publication, with a dedication to the Queen, to whom H was presented on 3rd November. In. the "Sketch of the Life and Character of Alexander Cruden," which is still prefixed to unmutilated editions of his work—-unfortunately not very common in these days—Alexander Chalmers avoids this absurdity. After mentioning Cruden's appointment in 1735 as bookseller to Queen Caroline, he proceeds: ' . He then began, to apply himself seriously to the great work, with which he had been some time occupied—the composition of a •. Concordance of the sacred Scriptures, and • through his great diligence and persevering industry, the first edition was published in 1737. ;' • • • » This is a good deal better than the "D.N.8." It enlarges the margin from two years to. three, and adds an indefinite "penumbra" during which Cruden's thoughts, and-doubtless his pen' also, must have been intermittently busy with his great work. The forty years Cf labour which are said to be embodied in Dr. Robert Young's "Analytical Concordance" must have included a considerable period of this kind; for lie had his living to make and all sorts •f business and missionary cares to attend to, and even if he could have regarded that munificent offer of £200 mentioned by my correspondent last Week as a non-discountable P.N. payable in forty years, the hope of ultimate payment at the rate of £ 5 a year can hardly have kept him working full time for the whole period. Financially Cruden's position was less deplorable. He was unmarried, had no.dependants, and had fairly regular employment from •he printers and the booksellers. Though ,

his hopes from "Caroline the Good," to whom the first edition of his book was dedicated, were dashed by her death within three weeks after her acceptance of a copy, he received £500 for the second edition (1761) and £300 for the third (1769), "with twenty copies printed on fine paper." It was not princely pay, but doubtless many of those "harmless drudges," the makers of dictionaries and concordances, have fared worse. it * » My theory of concordance-making as a sedative certainly receives no confirmation from the unhappy Cruden's first edition. "While a student at Marischal College he had, as Chalmers quaintly says, "imbibed an ardent affection for the daughter of a minister at Aberdeen." Generally speaking, tho imbibing of an ardent affection may, for those who are capable of it, be a less dangerous operation than the imbibing of ardent spirits, about which most people feel no difficulty. But with Cruden the effects of affectionate excess were sudden and disastrous. His friends had to confine him in what his biographer calls "a private receptacle for lunatics," and he seems never to have fully recovered either from the passion or from the liability to mental derangement in times of stress. The second attack of his malady was brought on by the failure of the first edition of his Concordance, but the success of the two,later editions involved no such strain. "It is probable," says the "D.N.8." man, "that his habits in later life improved his mental condition," but what the change in his habits was we are not told. A probable key is, however, supplied by Chalmers. On the enlarging and perfecting of his great work, the Concordance, he employed all ' the leisure hours of the later periods of his life. Freedom from financial wqrry and devotion to the great labour of his life probably combined to ease and sweeten Cruden's declining years. The theory which I had based on the blessings of drudgery seemed to be exploded by the circumstances of his first edition, but it may have a legitimate application to the second and third.