Biblical Dictionaries & Thesauruses

Word studies stand or fall by their instruments. This catalog is the site's lexical backbone: the dictionaries, thesauri, lexicons, and encyclopedias of the Bible, each one classified by type, by the languages it covers, by the reader it was made for, by the tradition it comes from, and by how it may be reached — with its rights status, its host platforms, and whether it is keyed to Strong's numbers.

Choosing a Dictionary

Begin with the question, not the shelf. For the meaning of a name or place, a general Bible dictionary serves. For a theme traced through Scripture, a topical thesaurus serves. For what a Greek or Hebrew word means — its range, its usage, its history — only a lexicon serves, and the annotation on each entry here says plainly what the work can and cannot do.

Public Domain and Modern Works

Many giants of this shelf are public domain because they are old: Easton's, Smith's, Thayer's, the BDB, the 1915 ISBE. They are free, they are everywhere, and they are not the equals of the modern academic lexicons. A century of papyri, inscriptions, and the Dead Sea Scrolls stands between Thayer and BDAG, between the BDB and HALOT. Use the old works freely and gratefully — and check any conclusion that matters against a modern one.

A Note on Strong's Numbers

Strong's numbering (H1–H8674 for Hebrew, G1–G5624 for Greek) ties an English word to the original word behind it, and half the works here are keyed to it. It is an index, not a definition: the one-line glosses in Strong's own concordance are starting gestures. A number tells you which word you are looking at; a lexicon tells you what it means.

Start Here

For the lay reader: Easton's for names and places, Nave's for themes, and Bible Hub for the way between them. For the seminary desk: the BDB and Thayer with LSJ behind it, the 1915 ISBE, and the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament.

Greek lexicon Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament G. Abbott-Smith's manual lexicon of New Testament Greek, long the student's desk companion in the English-speaking world: compact, careful, and... Greek · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

General Bible dictionary American Tract Society Bible Dictionary A mid-nineteenth-century American dictionary of biblical literature and antiquities. A window on antebellum American Protestant learning;... None · Open / free

Greek lexicon BDAG — A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich: the standard scholarly lexicon of early Christian Greek, built on the papyri and the whole of early Christian... Greek · Subscription

Hebrew / Aramaic lexicon BDB — Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon Brown, Driver, and Briggs: the standard scholarly Hebrew lexicon of the twentieth century, built on Gesenius and arranged by roots, and the free... Hebrew / Aramaic · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

General Bible dictionary Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology A modern evangelical dictionary organized by theological topic rather than by name: long, careful articles on doctrines, themes, and biblical... None · Open / free

Platform Bible Gateway The largest translation library online, with dictionaries and encyclopedias (Mounce's and others) in its reference shelf, the fuller set behind... None · Freemium / mixed

Platform Bible Hub Bible Hub gathers the public-domain dictionaries, Strong's with its own enhanced entries, interlinears, and parallel texts in one search. The... Both · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

Platform BibleStudyTools.com BibleStudyTools hosts Baker's Evangelical Dictionary, Bridgeway, the Dictionary of Bible Themes, and the topical treasuries under license, free to... Both · Freemium / mixed · Strong's-keyed

Platform Blue Letter Bible Blue Letter Bible's lexicon pages put Thayer and BDB one click from any verse, each entry keyed to its Strong's number with its occurrences... Both · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

General Bible dictionary Bridgeway Bible Dictionary Don Fleming's one-man dictionary, written in deliberately simple English for new Christians and for readers with English as a second language.... None · Open / free

Platform CatholicCulture.org Library CatholicCulture.org's library hosts the 1910 New Catholic Dictionary among its reference works, free to read. The Catholic counterpart shelf to... None · Open / free

Hebrew / Aramaic lexicon DCH — The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew David Clines's dictionary covers Classical Hebrew whole — biblical, Qumran, and epigraphic — with every occurrence accounted. Eight volumes; the... Hebrew / Aramaic · Print only

Topical thesaurus / concordance Dictionary of Bible Themes Martin Manser's dictionary of the Bible's themes — some six hundred topics traced across both Testaments with their texts. A modern, careful... None · Freemium / mixed

General Bible dictionary Easton's Bible Dictionary A one-volume Victorian dictionary of names, places, and customs, still the quickest first look for a lay reader. Its archaeology and science are... None · Open / free

Hebrew / Aramaic lexicon Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon Wilhelm Gesenius founded modern Hebrew lexicography; his lexicon and grammar, in their nineteenth-century English editions, are public domain and... Hebrew / Aramaic · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

Hebrew / Aramaic lexicon HALOT — The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament Koehler and Baumgartner's lexicon, in its English edition: the current scholarly standard for Biblical Hebrew, with Semitic cognates and the... Hebrew / Aramaic · Subscription

General Bible dictionary Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary A dictionary of the proper names of Scripture with their meanings as understood in 1869. Useful for the names themselves and as a period piece;... Both · Open / free

General Bible dictionary Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary A modern one-volume dictionary with maps, photographs, and reconstructions, from a Southern Baptist publisher. Strong on archaeology presentation... None · Freemium / mixed

Bible encyclopedia International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) The original International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, edited by James Orr: five volumes of conservative-but-scholarly articles whose longer... None · Open / free

Hebrew / Aramaic lexicon Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature Marcus Jastrow's dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud, and Midrash: the standard lexicon of rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic, now open on Sefaria with... Hebrew / Aramaic · Open / free

Bible encyclopedia Kitto's Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature John Kitto's cyclopedia of biblical literature, the mid-Victorian standard: deaf from boyhood, Kitto built the reference shelf of a generation of... None · Open / free

Greek lexicon LSJ — A Greek-English Lexicon Liddell, Scott, and Jones: the great lexicon of ancient Greek from Homer to Byzantium, within which New Testament Greek is one dialect among many.... Greek · Open / free

General Bible dictionary Lexham Bible Dictionary Logos's own dictionary, written for the digital shelf: thousands of articles linked to the texts and lexicons around them, free inside the Logos... None · Open / free

Platform Logos Bible Software The professional platform: BDAG, HALOT, TDNT and TDOT, Louw & Nida, and the Lexham Bible Dictionary live here as paid libraries, cross-linked word... Both · Subscription

Greek lexicon Louw & Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains Louw and Nida's lexicon arranges New Testament Greek by semantic domain — what a word does in its field of meaning — rather than by alphabet.... Greek · Subscription

Bible encyclopedia McClintock & Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature A twelve-volume cyclopedia of biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literature from a Methodist editorial house: encyclopedic on... None · Open / free

General Bible dictionary Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words The modern successor to Vine's: Bill Mounce's dictionary defines Greek and Hebrew words for English readers, keyed to Strong's and to Mounce's own... Both · Print only · Strong's-keyed

Topical thesaurus / concordance Nave's Topical Bible Orville Nave's topical arrangement of some twenty thousand subjects and a hundred thousand references, compiled by an army chaplain over fourteen... None · Open / free

Platform New Advent New Advent hosts the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907–1914 complete, with the Fathers and the Summa beside it. The Catholic public-domain shelf, as... None · Open / free

General Bible dictionary New Catholic Dictionary (1910) The one-volume Catholic counterpart to the Protestant dictionaries of its era: doctrines, saints, orders, and institutions from a pre-Vatican II... None · Open / free

Platform Perseus Digital Library Tufts University's digital library of the classical world: the full LSJ with its texts, the home of serious Greek lexicography online for a... Greek · Open / free

Topical thesaurus / concordance Roget's Thesaurus of the Bible A. Colin Day's classified treasury: Scripture's ideas arranged by topic on Roget's plan, for preachers hunting a theme through the whole Bible. A... None · Print only

Platform STEP Bible Tyndale House's STEP Bible: the texts in their languages with every word analyzed, lexicon entries (including an open abridged BDB and its Greek... Both · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

Platform Sefaria The open library of Jewish texts: Jastrow's dictionary linked word by word to the Talmud and the Targumim it serves, beside the Tanakh and the... Hebrew / Aramaic · Open / free

General Bible dictionary Smith's Bible Dictionary The great nineteenth-century dictionary of biblical antiquities, edited by William Smith with a corps of contributors. Learned for its day and... None · Open / free

Topical thesaurus / concordance Strong's Exhaustive Concordance James Strong's concordance indexes every English word of the King James Version and numbers every Hebrew and Greek word behind it — the numbering... Both · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

Platform StudyLight.org The great free library of the public-domain shelf: the 1915 ISBE, Easton's, Smith's, Thayer's, BDB's companions, the topical treasuries, and... Both · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

Exegetical dictionary TDNT — Theological Dictionary of the New Testament Kittel's Theological Dictionary: ten volumes of word histories in which each article traces a term from Homer through the Septuagint into the New... Greek · Subscription

Exegetical dictionary TDOT — Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament Botterweck and Ringgren's fifteen volumes: the Old Testament counterpart of TDNT, word histories from the ancient Near East into the canon. Shares... Hebrew / Aramaic · Subscription

Theological wordbook TWOT — Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament: some 1,400 articles by evangelical scholars on the Hebrew words that carry doctrine, keyed to... Hebrew / Aramaic · Freemium / mixed · Strong's-keyed

Greek lexicon Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Joseph Thayer's translation and revision of Grimm's Wilke, the standard Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament for a century and still the... Greek · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

Bible encyclopedia The Anchor Bible Dictionary The Anchor Bible Dictionary: six volumes, some six thousand articles, the late twentieth century's academic summit in English. Critical in... None · Subscription

Bible encyclopedia The Catholic Encyclopedia (1914) The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907–1914, at New Advent: fifteen volumes on doctrine, history, saints, and institutions from the confident pre-war... None · Open / free

Bible encyclopedia The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906) The Jewish Encyclopedia: twelve volumes of Jewish history, literature, and religion, the summit of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in English.... Both · Open / free

Bible encyclopedia The Oxford Companion to the Bible Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan's one-volume companion: short, authoritative articles by leading scholars on books, persons, and questions. The... None · Print only

Topical thesaurus / concordance Torrey's New Topical Textbook R. A. Torrey's topical textbook: doctrines and duties arranged with their Scripture texts printed in full. A compact systematic theology in... None · Open / free

General Bible dictionary Vine's Expository Dictionary of Bible Words W. E. Vine's word studies, keyed to Strong's numbers, written for English readers who want the Greek word behind the translation. Devotionally... Both · Open / free · Strong's-keyed

Bible encyclopedia WiBiLex — Das wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet The German Bible Society's open scholarly lexicon of the Bible: some five thousand articles by named academics, kept current, free to read. The... None · Open / free

How This Catalog Is Kept

This catalog is kept by the site's editors. Links are re-checked quarterly, access statements re-verified every six months, and the whole catalog reviewed once a year. Entries are never deleted: a work replaced by a better one is marked superseded and stays readable, so a citation to this catalog never rots.