List of Bible dictionaries

"Bible Dictionary" redirects here. For the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints publication, see Bible Dictionary (LDS Church).

A Bible dictionary is a reference work containing encyclopedic entries related to the Bible, typically concerning people, places, customs, doctrine and Biblical criticism. Bible dictionaries can be scholarly or popular in tone.

A Dictionary of the Bible (1863), edited by William Smith, title page for the third volume

The first dictionary of the Bible in English was the Christian Dictionarie (1612) of Thomas Wilson.^[1]

Bible dictionaries of the 18th century

18th century

Year	Title	Editor	Comments
1722	Dictionnaire historique, critique, chronologique, géographique et littéral de la Bible[2]	Augustin Calmet	English translation (1732, 3 vols.) as An historical, critical, geographical, chronological and etymological dictionary of the Holy Bible, by John Colson and Samuel d'Oyly.[3]
1769	A Dictionary of the Holy Bible[4]	John Brown of Haddington	Welsh translation by James Rhys Jones as Geiriadur Beiblaidd, 1869–70.[5]
1770	Vollständiges Biblisches Wörterbuch	Jacob Christof Beck[6]
1779	A Dictionary of the Bible[7][8]	Alexander Macbean
1784–5	Scripture Lexicon[9]	Peter Oliver: might be Peter Oliver, or a Birmingham preacher of the same name according to James Darling, Cyclopaedia bibliographica.[9]
From 1797	Dictionary of the Bible, translation from Calmet[10]	Anonymous, Charles Taylor	Later as Calmet's Dictionary of the Holy Bible, American edition enlarged by Edward Robinson.[11]

Bible dictionaries of the 19th century

19th century

Year	Title	Editor	Comments
1804	Dictionary of the Bible[12]	James Wood[12]
1805–08	Geiriadur Ysgrythyrol[13]	Thomas Charles	4 vols.
1810	Dictionary of the Holy Bible[14]	Miles Martindale	2 vols.
1815	A Theological, Biblical, Ecclesiastical Dictionary[15]	John Robinson
1816	Biblical Cyclopædia[16]	William Jones
1817	The Diamond Pocket Dictionary of the Holy Bible[17][18]	William Gurney[19]	The 1829 American edition by Archibald Alexander comments that the book was found to be an abridgement of Brown's work; and Alexander made a fresh version.[20] Welsh translation 1835 by Isaac Jones.[21]
1831	Theological and Biblical Dictionary[22]	Richard Watson	Based on conservative authorities.[22]
1833	Dictionary of the Holy Bible[16]	Edward Robinson
1837	Complete Index and Concise Dictionary of the Holy Bible[23]	John Barr
1840	Biblical and Theological Dictionary[24]	Samuel Green
?–1843	The Bible Cyclopædia[25]	William Goodhugh William Cooke Taylor	2 vols.
1845	Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature[26]	John Kitto	2 vols. An abridged version was made by James Taylor, as the Popular Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature (1854).[27]
1845–53	A Biblical Dictionary[28]	James Austin Bastow	3 Vols.
1847	The People's Dictionary of the Bible[29][30]	John Relly Beard
1847	A Concise Dictionary of the Holy Bible[31]	James Covel
1848	Biblical Cyclopaedia[32]	John Eadie
1851	A Biblical and Theological Dictionary, illustrative of the Old and New Testament[33]	John Farrar
1854	A Bible Dictionary[34]	Samuel Bulfinch Emmons
1856	A Dictionary of the most important names, objects, and terms found in the Holy Scriptures[35]	Howard Malcom
1863	Smith's Bible Dictionary	William Smith	A Concise Dictionary of the Bible for the Use of Families and Students (1865) was abridged from this work by William Aldis Wright.[36]
1864–83	Geiriadur Beiblaidd a Duwinyddol[37]	John Jones	3 vols.
1866	Imperial Bible Dictionary[38]	Patrick Fairbairn
1866	Treasury of Bible Knowledge[39]	John Ayre
1867–81	Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature[40]	James Strong and John McClintock	10 vols.
1867	Smith's Comprehensive Dictionary of the Bible[41]	Samuel Weed Barnum
1870	The Household Bible Dictionary[42]	James Aitken Wylie
1870	Beeton's Bible Dictionary[43]	Samuel Orchart Beeton
1871	A Bible dictionary for the use of all readers and students of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments of the books of the Apocrypha[44]	Charles Boutell	Reissued as Haydn's Bible Dictionary (1879), named for Joseph Timothy Haydn.[44][45]
1885	Cursus Scripturæ Sacræ[46]	Karl Josef Rudolph Cornely et al.
1894	The Sunday School Teacher's Bible Manual[47]	Robert Hunter	As Cassell's Concise Bible Dictionary (1901)[47]
1894–1912	Dictionnaire de la Bible[48]	Fulcran Vigouroux
1897	Easton's Bible Dictionary	Matthew George Easton
1898–1904	Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible	James Hastings	5 vols.
1899–1903	Encyclopaedia Biblica[49]	Thomas Kelly Cheyne J. Sutherland Black	4 vols.

Bible dictionaries of the 20th century

English Bible dictionaries

20th century

Year	Title	Editor	Comments
Barnes's Bible Encyclopedia, Biographical, Geographical, Historical and Doctrinal	1903	Charles Randall Barnes[50]
Standard Bible Dictionary	1909	Melancthon Williams Jacobus, Jr.[51]
Temple Dictionary of the Bible	1910	William Ewing and John Ebenezer Honeyman Thomson[52]
Universal Bible Dictionary	1914	Augustus Robert Buckland and Arthur Lukyn Williams[53]
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia	1915	James Orr
A New Comprehensive Dictionary of the Bible	1922	Selah Merrill[54]
The Popular and Critical Bible Encyclopaedia and Scriptural Dictionary	1922	Samuel Fallows[55]
Theological Word Book of the Bible	1951	Alan Richardson
Harper's Bible Dictionary	1952	Madeleine S. and J. Lane Miller
The New Bible Dictionary	1962	J. D. Douglas	Second Edition 1982, Third Edition 1996
Dictionary of the Bible	1965	John L. McKenzie, SJ[clarification needed]
The New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible	1970	Henry Snyder Gehman
LDS Bible Dictionary	1979
Harper's Bible Dictionary	1985	Paul J. Achtemeier
The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary	1987	Allen C. Myers
Anchor Bible Dictionary	1992
Oxford Dictionary of the Bible	1996	W. R. F. Browning	2nd Edition 2009

Bible dictionaries of the 21st century

• New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (2008)

See also

• Bibliography of encyclopedias: religion

References

• Dictionaries, article by E. C. Richardson in The International standard Bible encyclopaedia (Volume 2) (1915) pp. 844–8; archive.org.