Designed as a tool for those students and laypeople without a knowledge of New Testament Greek, Bullinger's A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament goes beyond resources such as Strong's Dictionary by not only providing a concordance and translation glosses, but also a complete lexicon with definitions, all in an accessible manner.
Bullinger's A Critical Lexicon and Concordance in many ways is a comparable tool Strong's Dictionary, but also surpasses it. The volume's organization by English head words makes it particularly accessible to the English-only student, while also providing the individual Greek words that those English words translate. Combined with his judicious knowledge of the Scripture and the Greek language, these features make Bullinger's work an important and practical resource for those who lack a knowledge of New Testament Greek.
Rather than being organized by Greek, Bullinger determined to make the King James Version the central organizing principle. Even more importantly, he recognized that there is no way of telling exactly which manuscripts the KJV translators used along with the Textus Receptus. Therefore, Bullinger helpfully provides citations of other manuscripts and critical editions, including the texts of Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, and the manuscript Codex Sinaiticus. These additional references take the reader well beyond the features of Strong's by allowing them to judge and decide for themselves what is the true text and what is not. Moreover, where Strong's definitions are limited only to the translation glosses of the KJV, Bullinger only organized his lexicon around the words of the KJV. The definitions and glosses form a complete Greek lexicon with the accompanying contextual and grammatical information one would expect in a full lexicon organized according to the Greek. All in all, Bullinger's A Critical Lexicon and Concordance functions as a helpful tool to compare with other dictionaries, such as Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words.
