Cruden’s Completely Mad Concordance
Through this short article by John Piper, I was recently made aware of the extraordinary author of the famous “Cruden's Concordance”—Alexander Cruden.
Apparently Mr. Cruden began his work of painstakingly recording the occurrences of every word in the King James Version Bible (of which there are 777,746) in the 1720's, and his ‘complete’ concordance was first published in 1737. (Quick thinking readers may have worked out by now that this was BC—Before Computers.)
Cruden's Concordance has never been out of print since then. Even today there are 18 editions available.
However, there is some debate as to whether Cruden was also as mad as a cut snake. Sadly there seems reasonable evidence to suggest that he was—such as his propensity to obsessively stalk and propose marriage to women he barely knew.
He also sought for himself the official title of “the Corrector of the People”, and a Knighthood so that, as he wandered the countryside chastising people about their immoral behaviour, they would consider him more authoritative. In seeking the Knighthood, he bent the ear of many an official and dignatory, and he complained vociferously at their lack of attention to his request. (Although Cruden comments that the Earl of Paulet “spoke civilly to him; for, being goutish in his feet, he could not run away from the Corrector as others were apt to do.”)
He was, at the very least, an “eccentric”.
But as Piper points out, his obsessive ‘folly’ of attempting to record the occurrence of every word in the Bible has been an enormous blessing to students of the Bible for hundreds of years. God can, and often does, use even the oddest people to bring about his divine purposes.
[More about Alexander Cruden. ABC Interview with Cruden's most recent biographer.]