The NIV Exhaustive Bible Concordance, third edition

The cover of the Concordance states, "A Better Strong's Bible Concordance." That's quite a claim, can it hold up? If you do not know about Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible then you have missed something good in your Bible Library. Strong's concordance is a must have tool for Pastors and serious students of the Bible. My copy is huge and old and well used and well, exhaustive to the max.

This NIV Exhaustive Concordance is just like the Strong's Concordance, but with this difference, it focused on the NIV translation of the Bible. Strong's was more focused on the King James originally, later editions started to use more modern English, but not the originals.

This Concordance is going to be an excellent choice for Pastors and Bible students who have grown up with the NIV and have used that translation for their memory work as well as daily Bible reading. Why is that do you ask? Because the words you are familiar with in your reading of the NIV translation are the words that you will find in this concordance. It is important that the Exhaustive Concordance that you use works with the same translation you are use to so that you can easily find the words that you remember and are thinking about when you need to find a Bible Verse that just keeps slipping your mind.

A further claim is that this is the only Concordance that indexes every word found in the NIV translation. That is a true statement from what I have found and thus this is a good Concordance for NIV users.

The Concordance also offers Definitions for every Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek word in the Bible. Yeah, hard to believe but it does.

Finally what I find most attractive for me is the fact that there is a complete cross-reference system between the NIV Exhaustive Bible Concordance numbering system with Strong's - Goodrich/Kohlenberger numbering system. so if you still have your Strong's, like I do, you can check a word in that, check the number and then if you want go back to the NIV Concordance and find the corresponding number to catch the different word that the NIV is using. Yeah, that seems like very few people would do this, but some find it interesting.

NOW, for my only issue with the Concordance, my gosh the text is printed so small. That's not a problem for most young people and young scholars, but some of us old guys (yes I'm in my 60's) find it hard to look at such small text. But the only alternative would be for a "larger print" edition, but that book would be so huge that it would need to be in a couple of volumes. So, this is just a small problem for me personally. I will overcome it, if necessary I can use my magnifying glass that I keep close at hand all the time now. PLUS, don't get me wrong, the huge Strong's Exhaustive Concordance I have also has small text, oh well.

Enjoy!