The Story Behind the New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

PREFACE

I first learned of The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge in a vacation Bible school class on “How to Study the Bible” taught to senior high school students at the Highland Park Baptist Church by Miss Ellen Groh. Miss Groh was a student at the Detroit Bible College at the time and later went to the mission field. The pastor of Highland Park Baptist Church then was Dr. Lehman Strauss. That was the summer of 1955.

That Christmas my Aunt Ethel Sherwin sent me a Christmas card with a five-dollar bill. On December 24, 1955, I rode my bicycle four miles to the Grand Bible and Book Store in Highland Park and had Mr. Bob Humphries, the proprietor, locate a copy of the book for me. To this day I believe this Bible study tool was the best investment I have ever made for Bible study.

I was convinced that I needed to buy the book for myself when in Miss Groh’s class I looked up the encouraging references at 2 Timothy 1:7. During the years immediately after high school graduation, I used the volume as many as three hours a day in Bible study.

Over the years I have marked my copy of the Treasury, underlining particularly clear references, and noting printing errors as I found them. I added references to those already given in the Treasury in the wide margins of my study Bibles, as I prepared weekly Sunday school lessons over the years.

In the main reading room of the library at Bob Jones University I first saw Scott’s Commentary, and found this to be the primary source of the references in the Treasury. The Treasury has many additional references not found in Scott, though in some passages, such as Exodus 20, the reverse is true. I have since obtained several used editions of Scott’s Commentary. Many variations from Scott’s original references (over 4,000) and printing errors (nearly 1,000) present in the original edition of the Treasury have been corrected in this new edition by consulting this source.

This is the only new edition of The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge ever prepared. All previous editions are merely reprints of the original edition which first appeared about 1836. In my preparation of this new edition I have incorporated the results of my thirty years of personal Bible study using the original Treasury into this revised and expanded edition. I almost did not live to finish my editorial work on the New Treasury, for I was shot in the head by an unknown assailant on March 13, 1986, when I had typed the text only as far as 1 Samuel 3. The Lord miraculously spared my life. During my recovery I kept working on the book, often without income. This time away from teaching permitted a more thorough revision and expansion than I originally planned.

The most significant feature of the Treasury is its nearly exhaustive collection of cross-references. These references are the source of its enduring usefulness to every Bible student. Therefore it has been to the cross-references themselves that the greatest effort has been given in this new edition to make this excellent reference tool even more usable to the modern reader and student of the Bible. I have added over 100,000 new cross-references and supplied many more key words to the Bible text, making this the most complete collection of biblical cross-references ever published.

I am thankful to Miss Ellen Groh, Dr. Lehman Strauss, my Aunt Ethel, the proprietors of many Christian and secular bookstores, and to the present publisher for their encouragement to me in making this new volume possible. Of course, I must not neglect to mention the many hours of assistance in looking up cross-references, preparing and checking indexes, and proofreading provided by my wife, Susanne. In a volume of this size and magnitude it is impossible to produce an entirely error-free manuscript, I am sure, but every effort has been made to provide an accurate reference tool for personal Bible study.

Jerome H. Smith

Smith, J. H. (1992). The new treasury of scripture knowledge: The most complete listing of cross references available anywhere- every verse, every theme, every important word. Thomas Nelson.