The New Treasury’s Twentieth Anniversary

Twenty years ago today I arrived home from teaching in Detroit, a trip of 60 miles each way.

My wife let me know that The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge had arrived. That happened to be on Valentine’s Day, so the anniversary is an easy one to remember.

Every year since then we remember that event on Valentine’s Day.

Though the printed form of the book is no longer available new from the publisher, The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge is available in digital form from either Libronix (software by Nelson, the publisher of the book) or in Logos Bible software.

For those who prefer using the cross references in book form, a more portable edition of the cross references has been published as Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible, and this resource is still in print, either from the publisher, Thomas Nelson, or from Amazon, or from your local Christian bookseller. If a local bookseller does not carry the book, it can always be special ordered.

If you have never done cross reference Bible study, you are missing much of what is in the Bible for you.

Of course, you must start to read the Bible itself for yourself first. But don’t delay the study of the Bible by means of cross references.

Cross references link related passages of Scripture in such a manner that they throw much light upon the subjects dealt with in a particular verse.

Many Christians have chosen a “life verse.” If you have done so, you might want to look up the cross references for that verse first! You will certainly enjoy what you find.

No concordance can do what either The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible can do. You can study individual Bible verses in depth using these cross reference tools. You would find it difficult, almost impossible, to study individual verses in depth with a concordance. Think you can? A concordance can find all the places where a given word in either English or the original language is found. But a concordance will not lead to other verses on the same theme that do not use the same words. That is what cross references do very well.

Some people think they prefer using a concordance, because what it presents has no way to be doctrinally biased. They are right–there is no bias in a concordance. It is simply an index of where all the words in the Bible are found.

Some people think since cross references were humanly devised they must be biased. They must be subjective. Therefore they prefer using a concordance.

What about bias in the cross references? If you have read what I have written in the Archives here, you know something about where the cross references came from. Knowing that, you would understand that there can be little or no possible bias in them. Instead, there is much blessing and insight to be gained by their study.

Cross references have been developed at the hand of believing Bible scholars over several centuries. They are commonly found in the center or side column margins of reference Bibles. The references collected in the original Treasury of Scripture Knowledge were the work of Thomas Scott, from the margins of Scott’s Bible (a five volume work), sometimes referred to as Scott’s Commentary.

I came along in 1992, after more than two and a half decades of careful research and collecting of cross references in my wide margin Oxford and World Bibles, and created what is now The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. In 2007 my condensation of that work, Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible, became available after I spent a bit over two full years to consolidate the references.

Those who absolutely do not want any human opinion intruding into their study of the Bible should stick with Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible.

But most students of God’s Word tell me they prefer to have access to my notes. What notes I have provided in the New Treasury are thoroughly documented with Scripture. I believe that most people who disagree with my notes have simply not carefully considered the abundant Scripture evidence I give to support my comments. Or, they are already committed to a false system of theology that is not really grounded in the Bible, properly interpreted.

They need to come here and learn to do Real Bible Study!