As well as being the largest and longest concordance made at Little Gidding, the Royal Library concordance is also the most structurally complex. The book was made with the aim of ordering and indexing all of the laws and ceremonies in the first five books of the Bible.

Under three chapter headings of Moral, Ceremonial and Political laws, and numerous sub-headings, each Bible verse which dictates a law is painstakingly cut out of a printed Bible and stuck in. These sections are fully indexed in a contents section that stretches to nine pages of lovingly neat typescript and manuscript. Each section, law and individual Bible verse is recorded.

The Royal Library's concordance also contains the complete book of Genesis and the book of Exodus up to chapter 19 (just before the Ten Commandments are given to Moses).

These sections are richly illustrated with Biblical scenes, portraits and genealogical trees.

Throughout all the chapters of the concordance, and comprising the entire last chapter, are excerpts from published works on 'typology', a system in Christian theology for understanding people, objects and actions in the Old Testament as 'types' prefiguring Christ.

 

The typological works Moses Unvailed by William Guild (first published 1620) and Christ Revealed by Thomas Tailor (first published 1635) are pasted in almost in their entirety.

Finally the concordance is liberally sprinkled with treatises and chapters, mainly clipped from the works of the theological writer and friend of the community Thomas Jackson.

Throughout the volume there are pasted an enormous amount of printed images. Most of these depict scenes from the Old Testament, or from the life of Christ.

 

There are many instances in which the prints the community could access did not quite fit their needs, and they would expertly collage together the scene they needed to illustrate the particular verse. There are even a few instances where they resorted to painting a scene, or using marbled paper as part of a collage.