Cross References and The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

In previous posts, we’ve discussed using topical indexes and parallel passages for situating a reading in the context of related passages. Another tool for making these connections is the Cross References section in the Passage Guide.

These cross references are just like those found in many print Bibles’ footnotes or margins. In fact, Logos uses cross references from the Bibles in your digital library to assemble this report. It assembles and compares your passage’s cross references to select those most commonly cited and, thus, most likely to be important or clearly correlated.  These references appear highlighted in bold, and the top five are displayed in your preferred translation. Perhaps not surprisingly, the top five cross references to this reading from Mark are from the parallel in Matthew.

In addition to drawing on your Bibles’ footnotes, Logos also draws cross references from a book called The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and links to it at the top of the section. The Treasure of Scripture Knowledge (or TSK, for short) is basically a giant index of cross references to the Scriptures.

So while the Passage Guide gives the most commonly cited cross references, you can open up TSK to go deeper. There are around 70 links in TSK for this passage, so it might be a bit much to examine them all, but they’re broken down by verse and particular words or phrases within each verse, which makes TSK perfect for thoroughly exploring cross references related to a particular point. For instance, 12 passages are given as cross references to Jesus’s foretelling in Mark 8:31 that he will be rejected by the leaders of Israel—including Old Testament prophecies, parallels in the other Gospels, and Peter’s preaching in Acts 3. This breakdown by phrase is also helpful for identifying the commonality that is the basis for listing a particular verse as a cross reference, which might not be obvious from the list of references in the Passage Guide.

TSK is also useful apart from the Passage Guide. Since it’s indexed by Bible reference, it makes it easy to directly look up cross references for a particular verse. You can even use a reference search to do a reverse lookup, finding which verses cite your passage as cross references. The references aren’t necessarily always reciprocal, so this can sometimes pull up some interesting results. For instance, this search for our reading from Mark brings up Ecclesiastes 3:6, where TSK relates “a time to lose” with Christ’s words in Mark 8:35 that “whoever would save his life will lose it.”

The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge is just one of the many tools for exploring the Scriptures included in the Logos Catholic Libraries.