The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Scripture beside Scripture

A cross-reference is a note beside a verse that says, in effect, read this one too. Reference Bibles print them in a centre column or in the margin, so that a reader of John 3:16 can turn to Genesis 22 or Romans 8 without knowing in advance that they belong together. A cross-reference explains nothing; it points, and leaves the reader to find out why.

Behind the habit lies an old conviction. Scripture was written by many people over many centuries, yet it is one word of one God, so one part is best understood in the light of the others. The risen Jesus read it that way with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus:

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself.

Luke 24:27

Matthew Henry's comment could be the motto of every reference Bible: "There are many passages throughout all the Scriptures concerning Christ, which it is of great advantage to put together" Matthew Henry, Luke 24:27. A list of cross-references is that work of putting together, done in advance.

The church has done it for a long time. In the fourth century Eusebius of Caesarea drew up tables that let a reader find where the four Gospels tell the same story, and Augustine, in On Christian Teaching (De doctrina christiana), advised readers to let the clearer passages of Scripture throw light on the obscure ones. The Reformers made the principle a rule of interpretation. Luther spoke of Scripture as its own interpreter, and the Westminster Confession states that "The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself", adding that when the sense of a passage is in question it must be searched out from other places that speak more clearly (1.9).

The principle does not belong to Protestants alone. Catholic and Orthodox teaching also asks that each passage be read within the unity of the whole Bible, though it places that reading within the living tradition of the church, where the Reformation tradition puts the stress on Scripture as the final rule. The inspiration and authority of Scripture sets out those views; in every tradition, reading one passage beside another is among the oldest ways of reading the Bible.

Cross-references by chapter and verse are younger than the habit: chapters were fixed in the early thirteenth century, verse numbers in the middle of the sixteenth. The Geneva Bible of 1560 printed verse numbers with a generous margin of notes and references, and the King James Version of 1611 carried references in its margin too; one of the rules given to its translators asked for them. Over the next two centuries the editors of new printings kept adding to them, and the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge came at the end of that line.

From the margins to the Treasury

The Treasury's references were gathered by many hands. The app's credit describes it as cross-references compiled by Canne, Browne, Blayney, Scott and others, names usually taken to be these men. John Canne, an English Separatist minister in Amsterdam, published English Bibles with marginal references in the middle of the seventeenth century, and his references were reprinted for generations. John Brown of Haddington (1722–1787), a Scottish minister, published The Self-Interpreting Bible in 1778, a title that states the principle outright. Benjamin Blayney (1728–1801) prepared the Oxford edition of the King James Version of 1769, correcting its text and greatly enlarging its references; the King James text most people read today, the 1769 text in this app among them, is his. Thomas Scott (1747–1821), a clergyman of the Church of England, published a commentary on the whole Bible with copious marginal references at the end of the eighteenth century.

They belonged to different churches, but all were Protestants who on the whole shared the Reformation's way of reading: the Bible as one book, and the Old Testament read toward Christ.

The references were brought together in one volume, The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, by the London Bible publishing house of Samuel Bagster (1772–1851). The first edition is usually dated to the 1830s, but the exact year, and who did the actual compiling, are not clear. The book does not print the Bible text: it goes verse by verse from Genesis to Revelation, giving only the words that carry references and the references themselves, and was meant to lie open beside a Bible. It was reprinted many times in Britain and America, and later American editions carried an introduction by the evangelist and Bible teacher R. A. Torrey (1856–1928), commending it for Bible study; many editions in print today include it.

The app's credit, following the description of CrossWire's TSK module from which its data comes, dates the work to about 1880. Both the date and the names need careful reading. All four men had died before the 1830s, so the credit cannot mean that they compiled this book; it means that the book drew its references from their earlier work. And 1880 is more likely the date of one of the later printings than of the first edition. Beyond that, this guide will not guess.

The Treasury is large. Counted in this app's data, 29,362 of the 31,102 verses of the King James Version have cross-references: 338,373 references in 65,062 keyword groups. That count takes a run of verses such as 1 John 4:9-10 as one reference; counting every verse in those runs separately gives about 637,000. The module's description speaks of five hundred thousand, presumably another way of counting. On any count that is more than ten references a verse, and a few verses, such as Acts 24:25, have over a hundred.

How the Treasury works

The Treasury does not join whole verses to whole verses. It works from the words inside a verse. Each entry gives a word or short phrase of the King James text, then the references that belong to it, then the next word. For John 3:16 there are three: ‘God’, with passages on God's love such as Romans 5:8 and 1 John 4:9-10; ‘gave’, with Abraham's offering of his son in Genesis 22:12 and Paul's words in Romans 8:32; and ‘that whosoever’, with the saying that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15-16). From one verse, the word you choose decides where you go.

The book prints its references in shorthand. Under ‘gave’ it reads 1:14,18; Ge 22:12; Mr 12:6; Ro 5:10; 8:32, each reference staying in the book and chapter last named until another is given. The app spells them out.

The links are of several kinds. Some are quotations: under ‘Man’ in Matthew 4:4, Jesus' answer to the tempter, stands Deuteronomy 8:3, the verse he was quoting. Some are parallel accounts of the same events: Sennacherib's invasion in Isaiah 36:1 is linked to 2 Kings 18:13 and 2 Chronicles 32:1. Others share a word or an expression, say the same thing in other words, are read as prophecy and fulfilment, or stand in contrast. The Treasury never says which kind a reference is; the reader has to open the passage and see.

References in the same book usually come first, then the rest broadly in biblical order. What the compilers chose shows how they read, and they saw Christ throughout the Old Testament. Under ‘the Word was’ in John 1:1 they gather passages that confess Christ as God, John 20:28, Romans 9:5 and Titus 2:13, and set beside them Psalm 45:6 and Isaiah 9:6. That is Scripture read in the faith the church has confessed since Nicaea. The Treasury writes no commentary, but what it places beside what is its interpretation.

What it is good for, and its limits

The Treasury is at its best when you want to follow a word or a theme through the whole Bible. In Psalm 23:1 it hangs fifteen references on the word ‘my’, as in my shepherd. Follow only a few and a road opens up. Isaiah sings of the LORD who "tends His flock like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart" (Isaiah 40:11). Ezekiel, after God's promise to search for his scattered sheep himself, hears him say, "I will appoint over them one shepherd, My servant David" (Ezekiel 34:23), a promise given long after David's death, and so a promise of David's son. Then Jesus speaks:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.

John 10:11

Peter, writing to the elders of the churches, looks ahead: "when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away" (1 Peter 5:4). One line of David's has led through the prophets' promise and the words of Christ to the hope of his appearing. Set beside a topical list such as Nave's Shepherd, the road widens.

Second, the Treasury lets clear passages light up hard ones. God's word to the serpent in Genesis 3:15 is brief and riddling. Under ‘her seed’ the Treasury sets Paul's words that "God sent His Son, born of a woman" (Galatians 4:4); under ‘it shall’, the start of the clause about the serpent's head, it sets the promise that "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet" (Romans 16:20) and the passage on Christ destroying the devil by his death (Hebrews 2:14-15). Since Irenaeus in the second century many Christians have read Genesis 3:15 as the first promise of a redeemer, and the Treasury follows that reading. Jewish tradition and a number of modern scholars read it more broadly, as humankind's long struggle with the serpent, or with evil. Either way, the references show how the New Testament took up the old words. One word of God opens another:

The unfolding of Your words gives light; it informs the simple.

Psalm 119:130

Third, it is a good place to start when preparing a Bible study or a sermon: follow the references of two or three key words and you will see where the passage stands in the whole of Scripture. And because it has no commentary, its compilers' voice is far quieter than a commentator's. Christians of any tradition can use it.

The limits are real too. First, the Treasury was made from the English of the King James Version. Its keywords are King James words, and some of its links follow the English. Under ‘hell’ in Matthew 5:22 it lists the rich man's place of torment in Luke 16:23 and the lake of fire that receives death and the realm of the dead in Revelation 20:14. The King James Version has ‘hell’ in all three places; the Berean Standard Bible has ‘hell’ in Matthew but ‘Hades’ in Luke and Revelation. The Greek words differ: geenna (Gehenna) in Matthew, Hadēs in the other two. How the two are related is a real question, but the link itself rests on the English word.

The underlying text matters too. Under ‘the Word’ in John 1:1 the Treasury cites 1 John 5:7, which in the King James Version names three witnesses in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost. Those words are missing from most Greek manuscripts and from the texts modern translations follow; in the BSB the verse only begins a sentence about three that testify, and a reader who opens it will wonder why it is there.

Second, the quality varies. A quotation or a parallel account is a firm link; a reference that shares one word with your verse and little else is not. There are misprints as well. In the Treasury text the app received, among the references in John 1:4 for the life that was the light of men, stand Psalm 49:6 and Psalm 60:1-3, on people who trust in their wealth and a nation that feels rejected by God. Judging by the references around them, Isaiah 49:6, the servant made a light for the nations, and Isaiah 60:1-3, the call to arise and shine, were meant, and the book's name was misprinted.

Third, a cross-reference shows a connection; it does not prove a doctrine. A list of verses is not an argument. Some links are plain to anyone, others depend on the compilers' interpretation, and while their Protestant reading mostly runs with the church's historic faith, not every reference carries the same weight. When you gather references to support a teaching, ask of each one whether, in its own place, it really says that.

Fourth, a reference is only a verse number, and a verse cut loose from its context is easily misread. Luke 16:23 belongs to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus; Genesis 22:12 is the climax of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Finally, the Treasury is a nineteenth-century book that never says why a reference is there, and the study of manuscripts, languages and the ancient world has moved on since. For explanation go to a commentary, and for the meaning of words to the Original tab.

In this app

In the reader, tap a verse and a bar appears at the foot of the screen; tap Study and a sheet opens with four tabs: Original, Commentary, Cross-refs and Topics. The sheet reopens on the tab you used last, and the arrows at the top move to the previous or next verse.

The Cross-refs tab lists the verse's keywords in order. Each group is headed by its keyword, with the references below it as buttons such as John 10:11; when there are more than twelve, a + button shows the rest. A group without a heading usually holds references for the verse as a whole.

The headings are the King James words the Treasury chose, while the verse at the top of the sheet is in the translation you are reading, so with the Berean Standard Bible, the default, they will not always match: the heading ‘that whosoever’ in John 3:16 stands for everyone who believes. A small word such as that or when stands for the clause it begins. In the Korean app each heading is instead the matching words of the Korean Revised Version (개역한글).

Tap a reference and a small sheet shows the passage in your translation, up to eight verses of it. Read takes you to that place in the Bible, and Study opens the study sheet for that verse. Close the small sheet and you are back where you started.

The app shows the Treasury's keywords and references and nothing else. It leaves out the book's short chapter outlines, its brief notes on some words (that the council of Matthew 5:22 is the Sanhedrin, for example), its marginal readings that render the Hebrew or Greek more literally, and its dates, such as the B.C. 4004 at John 1:3, which appear to follow the seventeenth-century chronology of Archbishop James Ussher. It also drops references to the verse itself, repeats and references it cannot read, and checks that every remaining reference names a chapter and verse that exist in the King James Version; that check cannot catch a wrong verse that does exist, like the Psalm 49:6 above. Verses listed one by one are joined into runs such as 1 John 4:9-10.

In Settings, Offline reading can save the study data, cross-references included, for use without a connection. The foot of the Cross-refs tab names the source, with an About this work link to this guide, and Study sources in Settings gives the credits.

Using it well

Read the verse first. Cross-references do not replace the text; they take you out into the rest of Scripture and bring you back to it. Ask what puzzles you or which word holds your attention, and open that word's group. Three or four references read slowly will do more than twenty skimmed. What a Commentary Is and How to Read One describes how the app's helps fit together.

Take John 3:16 and follow three of the references under ‘gave’. The first takes you to a mountain in the land of Moriah, where the angel of the LORD stops Abraham's hand and says, "you have not withheld your only son from me" (Genesis 22:12). The second is the parable of the tenants: the owner of the vineyard sends servant after servant, who are beaten or killed, and at last, "having one beloved son, he sent him to them" (Mark 12:6). The third is Paul, gathering it all into one sentence:

He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things?

Romans 8:32

Read side by side, the three show how much weight the one word ‘gave’ carries. What God stopped Abraham from doing, he did not stop himself from doing; many interpreters hear an echo of Genesis 22 in Romans 8:32, where the ancient Greek translation of Genesis uses the same verb for not sparing a son. The parable shows the Son as the last and dearest of those God sent; Romans shows the gift as the pledge of every other gift. Add 1 John 4:9-10 from the group under ‘God’ and it is as if John were explaining the verse himself: love is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Then go back to John 3:16: the same verse now holds more.

Ask what kind of link each reference is: a quotation, the same event, the same word, the same thought, a prophecy and its fulfilment. Genesis 22 and Romans 8 are joined by the same thought. If you cannot see a link, do not force it; move on.

Read each reference in its place: tap Read and look at what comes before and after. Genesis 22:12 needs the whole chapter to be felt, and the parable of the tenants needs its audience, the leaders who, Mark says, knew it was told against them.

Check the original. A link may follow an English word, so when a word matters, open the Original tab and tap the Greek or Hebrew word in the verse. The lexicon entry's Where this word is used button lists every verse with the same original word: a road laid by the Greek or Hebrew rather than the English (STEPBible's Original-Language Data). Widen the view by topic as well: where the Treasury works outward from the words of one verse, Nave's Topical Bible on the Topics tab gathers verses under a subject (Nave's Topical Bible).

For a Bible study, note three or four references for each of two or three key words and read them aloud together; Scripture will do much of the explaining. But the aim of following references is not to know more verses. It is to know the first verse better, and the One it speaks of:

You pore over the Scriptures because you presume that by them you possess eternal life. These are the very words that testify about Me

John 5:39