This dictionary has been prepared because Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible and the Encyclopaedia Biblica have been found too “discursive” for handy use. It is intended for educated ministers, who “have not always the leisure to enter into a discursive presentation of critical research”; for Sunday-school teachers and workers; and for intelligent laymen interested in Bible study. To serve such readers, the dictionary should be accurate but not technical; “it should be up to the day in its information, but not so discursive as to burden its pages with the pedantry of undigested facts.”