CONCORD, BOOK OF (Liber Concordiae), the collective documents of the Lutheran confession, consisting of the Confessio Augustana, the Apologia Confessionis Augustanae, the Articula Smalcaldici, the Catechismi Major et Minor and the Formula Concordiae. This last was a formula issued on the 25th of June 1580 (the jubilee of the Augsburg Confession) by the Lutheran Church in an attempt to heal the breach which, since the death of Luther, had been widening between the extreme Lutherans and the Crypto-Calvinists. Previous attempts at concord had been made at the request of different rulers, especially by Jacob Andreä with his Swabian Concordia in 1573, and Abel Scherdinger with the Maulbronn Formula in 1575. In 1576 the elector of Saxony called a conference of theologians at Torgau to discuss these two efforts and from them produce a third. The Book of Torgau was evolved, circulated and criticized; a new committee, prominent on which was Martin Chemnitz, sitting at Bergen near Magdeburg, considered the criticisms and finally drew up the Formula Concordiae. It consists of (a) the “Epitome,” (b) the “Solid Repetition and Declaration,” each part comprising twelve articles; and was accepted by Saxony, Württemberg, Baden among other states, but rejected by Hesse, Nassau and Holstein. Even the free cities were divided, Hamburg and Lübeck for, Bremen and Frankfort against. Hungary and Sweden accepted it, and so finally did Denmark, where at first it was rejected, and its publication made a crime punishable by death. In spite of this very limited reception the Formula Concordiae has always been reckoned with the five other documents as of confessional authority.
See P. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, i. 258-340, iii. 92-180.
CONCORDANCE (Late Lat. concordantia, harmony, from cum, with, and cor, heart), literally agreement, harmony; hence derivatively a citation of parallel passages, and specifically an alphabetical arrangement of the words contained in a book with citations of the passages in which they occur. Concordances in this last sense were first made for the Bible. Originally the word was only used in this connexion in the plural concordantiae, each group of parallel passages being properly a concordantia. The Germans distinguish between concordances of things and concordances of words, the former indexing the subject matter of a book (“real” concordance), the latter the words (“verbal” concordance).
The original impetus to the making of concordances was due to the conviction that the several parts of the Bible are consistent with each other, as parts of a divine revelation, and may be combined as harmonious elements in one system of spiritual truth. To Anthony of Padua (1195–1231) ancient tradition ascribes the first concordance, the anonymous Concordantiae Morales, of which the basis was the Vulgate. The first authentic work of the kind was due to Cardinal Hugh of St Cher, a Dominican monk (d. 1263), who, in preparing for a commentary on the Scriptures, found the need of a concordance, and is reported to have used for the purpose the services of five hundred of his brother monks. This concordance was the basis of two which succeeded in time and importance, one by Conrad of Halberstadt (fl. c. 1290) and the other by John of Segovia in the next century. This book was published in a greatly improved and amplified form in the middle of the 19th century by David Nutt, of London, edited by T. P. Dutripon. The first Hebrew concordance was compiled in 1437–1445 by Rabbi Isaac Nathan b. Kalonymus of Arles. It was printed at Venice in 1523 by Daniel Bomberg, in Basel in 1556, 1569 and 1581. It was published under the title Meir Natib, “The Light of the Way.” In 1556 it was translated into Latin by Johann Reuchlin, but many errors appeared in both the Hebrew and the Latin edition. These were corrected by Marius de Calasio, a Franciscan friar, who published a four volume folio Concordantiae Sacr. Bibl. Hebr. et Latin. at Rome, 1621, much enlarged, with proper names included. Another concordance based on Nathan’s was Johann Buxtorf the elder’s Concordantiae Bibl. Ebraicae nova et artificiosa methodo dispositae, Basel, 1632. It marks a stage in both the arrangement and the knowledge of the roots of words, but can only be used by those who know the massoretic system, as the references are made by Hebrew letters and relate to rabbinical divisions of the Old Testament. Calasio’s concordance was republished in London under the direction of William Romaine in 1747–1749, in four volumes folio, under the patronage of all the monarchs of Europe and also of the pope. In 1754 John Taylor, D.D., a Presbyterian divine in Norwich, published in two volumes the Hebrew Concordance adapted to the English Bible, disposed after the manner of Buxtorf. This was the most complete and convenient concordance up to the date of its publication. In the middle of the 19th century Dr Julius Fürst issued a thoroughly revised edition of Buxtorf’s concordance. The Hebräischen und chaldäischen Concordanz zu den Heiligen Schriften Alten Testaments (Leipzig, 1840) carried forward the development of the concordance in several directions. It gave (1) a corrected text founded on Hahn’s Vanderhoogt’s Bible; (2) the Rabbinical meanings; (3) explanations in Latin, and illustrations from the three Greek versions, the Aramaic paraphrase, and the Vulgate; (4) the Greek words employed by the Septuagint as renderings of the Hebrew; (5) notes on philology and archaeology, so that the concordance contained a Hebrew lexicon. An English translation by Dr Samuel Davidson was published in 1867. A revised edition of Buxtorf’s work with additions from Fürst’s was published by B. Bär (Stettin, 1862). A new concordance embodying the matter of all previous works with lists of proper names and particles was published by Solomon Mandelkern in Leipzig (1896); a smaller edition of the same, without quotations, appeared in 1900. There are also concordances of Biblical proper names by G. Brecher (Frankfort-on-Main, 1876) and Schusslovicz (Wilna, 1878).
A Concordance to the Septuagint was published at Frankfort in 1602 by Conrad Kircher of Augsburg; in this the Hebrew words are placed in alphabetical order and the Greek words by which they are translated are placed under them. A Septuagint concordance, giving the Greek words in alphabetical order, was published in 1718 in two volumes by Abraham Tromm, a learned minister at Groningen, then in the eighty-fourth year of his age. It gives the Greek words in alphabetical order; a Latin translation; the Hebrew word or words for which the Greek term is used by the Septuagint; then the places where the words occur in the order of the books and chapters; at the end of the quotations from the Septuagint places are given where the word occurs in Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, the other Greek translations of the O. T.; and the words of the Apocrypha follow in each case. Besides an index to the Hebrew and Chaldaic words there is another index which contains a lexicon to the Hexapla of Origen. In 1887 (London) appeared the Handy Concordance of the Septuagint giving various readings from Codices Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus and Ephraemi, with an appendix of words from Origen’s Hexapla, not found in the above manuscripts, by G. M., without quotations. A work of the best modern scholarship was brought out in 1897 by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, entitled A Concordance to the Septuagint and the other Greek versions of the Old Testament including the Apocryphal Books, by Edwin Hatch and H. A. Redpath, assisted by other scholars; this was completed in 1900 by a list of proper names.
The first Greek concordance to the New Testament was published at Basel in 1546 by Sixt Birck or Xystus Betuleius (1500–1554), a philologist and minister of the Lutheran Church. This was followed by Stephen’s concordance (1594) planned by Robert Stephens and published by Henry, his son. Then in 1638 came Schmied’s ταμιεῖον, which has been the basis of subsequent concordances to the New Testament. Erasmus Schmied or Schmid was a Lutheran divine who was professor of Greek in Wittenberg, where he died in 1637. Revised editions of the ταμιεῖον were published at Gotha in 1717, and at Glasgow in 1819 by the University Press. In the middle of the 19th century Charles Hermann Bruder brought out a beautiful edition (Tauchnitz) with many improvements. The apparatus criticus was a triumph of New Testament scholarship. It collates the readings of Erasmus, R. Stephens’ third edition, the Elzevirs, Mill, Bengel, Webster, Knapp, Tittman, Scholz, Lachmann. It also
