King James Version Bible references of the word “world” are identified by Concordances. A computer program I wrote shows 206 New Testament verses with the word “world” in them. Here, I use two of them, one incomplete, Cruden’s (C), and one exhaustive and complete, Strong’s (S), to show where the word is concentrated.

CONCORDANCE VERSIONS
Cruden’s concordance to the King James Version Bible references the world in various terms: ‘world,’ ‘in the world,’ ‘into the world,’ ‘this world,’ ‘worldly,’ and ‘worlds.’  Strong’s concordance singles out the word “world” and not Cruden’s composites. The following tables lists how many times these words and composites are used.  If ‘world’ is used multiple times in the same verse the number is added to the total. 

GOSPELS
The gospels tell of Jesus’ teachings and lived experiences regarding the world.  There are 77 words referenced in Cruden’s concordance (C) and 111 in Strong’s Concordance (S) [Last column].  (P) refers to how many verses contained one or more ‘world’ word variations. We can conclude the obvious, Strong’s concordance, being exhaustive and complete, is a better reference for scholarly citation and use.

ALL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Jesus’ use of “the world” in the gospels can SOMEWHAT be used as baseline when compared with other Biblical writers who experienced Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit dwelling in them after pentecost.  Non-Gospel, New Testament writers reference these words 84 times in the Cruden’s concordance and 133 times in Strong’s:

COMPARING BOOK WRITERS
All the New Testament books clearly show which human writer uses the concept of “the world” most frequently. I can examine the implications of this later.

CAUTION AGAINST LAZY THINKING
John uses the concept more frequently (63 and 103) followed by Paul (46 and 70), then Luke (13 and 18) and the others in diminishing order. 

We may be tempted to prioritize the higher accounts/counts using statistical significance reasoning here and outliers are less significant, but beware. While we can certainly prioritize Jesus’ words because He is God the Son but we will find the concept of “the world” is disclosed more by other writers? Certainly John’s and Paul’s concept of the ‘world’ are important to compare but all writers provide insights that are inspired by the single author, God the Holy Spirit, thus revealing God’s character and relationship to each writer. See an example of the theological doctrine of divine concurrence (also known as concurrent operation) here. The single author of the Holy Spirit means a coherent, nuanced understanding of “the world.”

All scripture is inspired by God… (2 Tim 3:16); it [scripture] cannot be broken (John 10:35); no scripture is of private interpretation (2 Pet 1:20); and Jesus’ rebuke to Satan “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matt 4:4, Deut 8:3).  

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS
1. We can see later that John’s (1 John 2:15) description of the world is the most elaborate and comprehensive but are other uses/descriptions subsumed into his version?

2. Another finding shows Jesus’ descriptions of the world are somewhat ambiguous, less descriptive when compared to John but His direct relationship to the world was unique its Creator, though it did not know Him (John 1:10). Are there clues to why Jesus gave only this scant teaching about the world? Perhaps it wasn’t yet time since the Holy Spirit would reveal more (John 16:12) or something else?? More on this later.