looking for a prooftext ...

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Pressing-On

Where did Strong's, if that is true in all cases, pick up "(clamorously) foolish"?

Short and honest answer: I don't know.

It may have been due to the fact that there were few people in the West who really understood Biblical Hebrew in the 19th century and that the whole process of developing the more complete body of knowledge that we have today took some time.

Strong's most important contribution was his numbering system that was used as a tool for getting Hebrew linguists on the same page (or on the same stem word at least). Also, his Concordance of Scripture passages still remains an invaluable tool for Bible students today.

Where problems arise is when people go to the dictionary portions of the Strong's Concordance and try to apply what they read there in the same manner as they would a Webster's English Dictionary definition. Strong never had such a plan in mind.

Instead, he was supplying all of the many different uses of the stem word involved. Using the proper prefix or suffix in Hebrew one could get that stem word to say just the opposite of what the stem alone means. See for example "one" or "echad."

In his dictionary section Strong includes such meanings as "united," "several," "a few" and even "eleven."

Now, how could the word "one" also mean "eleven?" It doesn't make any sense. But what Strong was striving for was to develope a workable list of stem words that other scholars could use in their studies.

The way "one" (echad) becomes "eleven" is when you add a suffix for "ten" to the root or stem word "echad" and get something like "one + ten." The Strong's dictionary however included all uses of the stem - even compound uses that would turn the meaning of the stem around 180 degrees.

I've seen Trinitarians bungle the dictionary entry for "echad" for years. They way out of the bungle is to look up the passages where the word is used in the main Concordance section and you will find something like "259" and "6240" listed together. Going by the dictionary alone will result in confusion.