# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1858_S152
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

152 Lutheran-Theological Pastors' Library.

however many writings of this kind there now are, it is nevertheless
beyond question, for anyone who has looked around in this part of
theological literature, which work of this sort takes the prize above
all others. It is the following: "M. Gottfried Büchner's Biblical Real
and Verbal Concordance, or Exegetical-Homiletical Lexicon." The author
was born at Riedersdorf, in the district of Eisenberg (Saxe-Altenburg),
in the year 1701, studied at Jena, and became an academic lecturer
there in 1746, and later rector of the school at Querfurt, where he
died in 1780. The first edition of the concordance in question appeared
in the year 1740, the second in 1746, the third in 1756, the fourth in
1765, the fifth in 1776. The latter, however, was edited not by the
author himself, who was by then advanced in age, but, with his
approval and under his supervision, by August Wichmann. In the year
1837 the work was published, with some enlargements, for the sixth
time by Dr. Heinrich Leonhard Heubner, superintendent and first
director of the royal preachers' seminary at Wittenberg, issued by the
publishing house of C. A. Schwetschke and Son in Braunschweig. This
sixth edition was followed in 1844 by the seventh, in 1849 by the
eighth, in 1853 by the ninth, and in 1858 by the eleventh edition. This
history of the book alone suggests that it answers its purpose to a
high degree. A great many writings of similar tendency have appeared
alongside our Büchner and have indeed displaced it for a time; but they
have all soon vanished again, while Büchner's work, even after it had
remained fifty years [during the reign of Neology] untouched on the
bookseller's shelves in thousands of copies of the fifth edition, has
again found so much recognition that no work of this kind can now
succeed alongside it. The excellence of Büchner's concordance consists
in this, that under every word occurring in the Bible the various
meanings in which it is used in the Bible are precisely indicated, and
the Bible passages in which the word is used in the same meaning are
systematically arranged together. The purpose thus pursued, of
classifying all the words of the Bible according to their various
meaning and reference, has given this concordance the form of a
"biblical theology," dogmatics and ethics, in the good sense of the
word, in nuce, and indeed in lexical form. There is probably no other
book that gives, in such compressed brevity, so much insight for the
right understanding of the whole of Holy Scripture in all its bearings.
The book takes the place of an entire library. Its style is as pithy as
it is lively. Everything breathes an ardent zeal for living faith and
true godliness. Throughout, first consideration is given to its use in
preparing for the sermon. Whoever has used the book for a while can

*) Chiefly, no doubt, through the wretched rationalist concordance of
M. G. F. Wichmann, superintendent at Grimma, Leipzig, 1783 and 1796. 4to.