Smith's Bible Dictionary

Sir William Smith (1813–1893) was the great English maker of reference books in the nineteenth century. His dictionaries of Greek and Roman antiquities, biography, and geography were standard works in every school, and in 1860 he turned the same method on the Bible, gathering a large company of contributors to produce A Dictionary of the Bible in three large volumes (1860–1863). It brought together the results of modern travel and discovery in the Bible lands, and most of the Bible dictionaries that followed it drew on it.

The three-volume work was too large for most homes, and it was soon condensed. The SwordSearcher module is the one-volume edition of 1884, with 4,640 entries. The entry on the Bible itself begins:

The Bible is the name given to the revelation of God to man contained in sixty-six books or pamphlets, bound together and forming one book and only one, for it has in reality one author and one purpose and plan, and is the development of one scheme of the redemption of man.

Smith's strength is history and geography. The articles on places describe them as travelers of the day found them; the articles on persons trace them carefully through the narrative; and the articles on the books of the Bible discuss their authorship and contents at length. The doctrinal entries are shorter than in Fausset, and the tone is more that of the scholar than the preacher. Among the dictionaries in the library it stands between Easton, which is briefer, and the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, which is much larger.

Every Scripture reference in the dictionary is linked, and so are the cross-references from one article to another. The entries are indexed by verse, so the Verse Guide and Bible margin show which articles touch the passage you are reading.