Good Bible concordance and Soteriology in Scripture

[invisiblewitnes]

I am discussing Scripture with a friend and what it says about soteriology and salvation, and he recommended I use a Bible concordance to be able to direct my study more effectively. Do you have any recommendations for what the best concordances are, in particular good Catholic concordances, but not limited to just Catholic if there are good evangelical ones for instance? But my friend and I are thinking of studying soteriology and salvation history, and could use any suggestions to help direct our study.

Any suggestion are greatly helpful. My friend and I might start a blog to write about the subjects we are studying.

Thank you again, and God bless you. Amen.

 

[sirach2v4]

I like Strong’s exhaustive concordance generally, but it is limited to the King James Version of the Bible. I don’t know if there is a Catholic counterpart to that high quality book. I’ve seen an edition of Strong’s that was simply wrong, that did not agree with an older edition that I already had. (I just threw away the “revised” edition.)

The New (~1993) Jerome Biblical Commentary has many features that you may be looking for, but it is not word concordance. My opinion is that a word concordance has its place but I wouldn’t think that it is very central to the discussion.

NJBC has a number of topical essays that are very academic in terms of quality.

I think the series of books on Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI are very instructive. I just finished a first reading of The One Christ by Meconi, which discusses st. Augustine’s theory of deification. His thesis is that deification (or divinization or the Greek theosis) is a metaphor for the Christian life. The book is expensive, because it’s probably a textbook for a theology class, but it’s worth the read, if you can get your hands on a copy.

My local public library has a aging set of something called The Interpreter’s Bible (with contributions by Catholics) which is very helpful.

If you have access to a library at a Catholic college you might see what they have on the shelves.