Strong's Dictionary and the Septuagint (Annotated)

Book excerpt: This book is an abridged edition of Strong's Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries, which was taken from Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (1890) by James Strong (1822-1894). The changes I made are as follows. Only Greek definitions have been reproduced (the letter "A"). Etymologies and references to other Strong's entries have been removed. Archaic spellings have been modernized, misspellings corrected. Parts of speech and Bible references have been added from other sources. LXX references are from Alfred Rahlfs' Septuagint (1935). No apocryphal books are included, just one apocryphal chapter (Psalm 151). I compared the LXX with the Apostolic Bible Polyglot (1996) whenever I found errors. The appendix consists of words marked in the ABP but unmarked in the LXX. This book also contains an introduction, a list of abbreviations, and a bibliography. Many legends surround the creation of the Septuagint or the LXX ("seventy"), an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Regardless of its origin, the document exists. This fact tells me one thing: God chose Israel to be a "light to the Gentiles" because he wants "the ends of the earth" to be saved (Isaiah 45:22, 49:6). Must everyone learn Hebrew, then? No. God speaks every language, even those now extinct. He inspired the creation of the Septuagint in order to prepare the way for the church, which received the Gentiles. Through both the Septuagint and the apostles' preaching, Gentiles were granted "access by one Spirit unto the Father" and became "fellow citizens with the saints" (Ephesians 2:18-19). Translation was thus the means by which God offered his salvation to the world.