Old lexicons are in general treasure chests of linguistic information which is necessary for the proper evaluation of scriptural meaning. But no one has the time to go and look a word up in all of them. Even if one did have the time, the abbreviations will take days to get one's head around. This is where modern computer technology comes in. We have
enhanced the lexicons we use as follows...
1. As mentioned above we search all the Hebrew Lexicons or all the Greek Lexicons at once for a word and return all the entries for that word together on one page.
2. We de-abbreviate them as much as possible, using the various abbreviation lists, taking care with ambiguous abbreviations
3. Every alternative word form in an entry is made into a new entry so that the computer can search for that word form too. So for example the regular Strong's Dictionary has 8674 entries in the Hebrew, which are the
Strong's numbers. But our enhanced version has 10,404 entries because there are many alternative word forms that never got a Strong's number. We assign these numbers such as 1000.1 and 1000.2 preserving the original Strong's coding scheme.
4. Strong's dictionary spends most of its time sending the reader around in circles to look up other words referred to only by their Strong's number. That is not much help if you are busy and you haven't yet memorized all 8674 Hebrew stems. So in common with some of the versions of Strong's Dictionary on the net we have added in the Hebrew word that corresponds with the Strongs number referring to it. This make a monstrous difference to the power of the dictionary. For example the original lexicon has this entry...
|
26 |
lyIg:ybia] |
Ăbîygayil,
ab-ee-gah´-yil, or shorter
lg:ybia]
Ăbîygal, ab-ee-gal´;
from 1 and 1524; father (i.e. source) of joy;
Abigail or Abigal, the name of two Israelitesses:—Abigal. |
The enhanced lexicon has this entry...
|
26 |
lyIg:ybia] |
lygyba |
Ăbîygayil,
ab-ee-gah´-yil, or shorter
lg:ybia]
Ăbîygal, ab-ee-gal´;
from 1 ba' and 1524 lyGI; father (i.e. source) of joy;
Abigail or Abigal, the name of two Israelitesses:—Abigal. |
The non vowel pointed stem is added for computer searching when we cannot get a vowel pointed match with that lexicon. In the enhanced entry you see immediately how the two roots combine to make the stem. In the origial entry you have to do two look ups before understanding what Dr Strong was attempting to convey.
5. When lexicons refer to a scripture, this reference can be made into an html link so that the reader gets to the scripture immediately if required.