My Reply to Questions About the Updated New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

4-10-23 Reply to Re New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge revised

I posted the following comment in the Logos General Forum:

Mark raised the question above:

“I am sorry, but I am still confused. Please make is clear.  What is the difference between TNTOSK and TUCRT? From your comments, one is contained in the other.  Is TNTOSK contained in TUCRT, meaning the TUCRT is more complete or the other way around?”

Others have also raised interesting questions.

After at least 26 years of pre-digital age meticulous Bible study using such resources in my personal Bible study (see the Bibliography in the New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and the Ultimate Cross Reference Treasury), I compiled additional cross references in many of my wide-margin Bibles. I used these as my first basis of increasing the number of cross references given in the original Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.

The original Treasury of Scripture Knowledge content was taken directly from Bagster’s Comprehensive Bible. The cross references in the Comprehensive Bible were taken directly from the cross references supplied by Scott in Scott’s Commentary and Bagster’s Polyglot Bible. Scott’s references were taken from the major reference Bibles available in his day with references supplied by Canne, Blayney, Browne and others.

On page 25 of volume one of Scott’s Commentary in a Postscript to the Preface, Scott states in his first paragraph:

“As the Marginal References formed no part of the original plan of this publication, but have, with very great labor, been added to the subsequent editions; it may be proper here to state some particulars respecting them.”

Therefore, to suggest that there is any connection between the references and the opinions expressed by Scott in his commentary and elsewhere to which at least one commentator on this thread objected is mistaken. It is mistaken because Scott himself states where the cross references he furnished for later editions of his Commentary came from. The cross references are given for the Bible text, not the notes in his Commentary.

My New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge was published in 1992. In the early 2000’s Nelson Publisher desired a simplified version of the NTSK which would make for a smaller, shorter volume. I took over two years to produce the requested volume, published in 2007 under the title Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible. To compress the NTSK, I removed nearly all the notes, all the chapter headings, and all the symbols except for the “+” symbol, which means “find more here.” I consolidated redundant cross references where these occurred to over 1800 single main reference points designated by the “+” symbol. Thus, in compressing the NTSK I did not lose any of the cross reference connections found in the NTSK.

Perhaps about 2009 I came upon a discussion thread on the Internet where users of the e-Sword Bible software program were wishing it possible to have the New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge in that software. They were especially interested in having more references to the Old Testament passages for the Sermon on the Mount. I joined in the discussion and indicated that I had been expanding the cross references beyond those I furnished for the New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge for my own use in my personal Bible study.

In 2010 I began preparing a much more complete collection of cross references. I completed the process in 2016. This new work was titled The Ultimate Cross Reference Treasury. After he completed processing and compiling my Word docx files into software format for e-Sword, Rick Meyers asked me, “Jerry, do you know how many cross references are in The Ultimate Cross Reference Treasury?” I told him I had no idea, only that I knew there are now about 7000 references just in Psalm 119. He then told me my new work contains over 900,000 references!

In 2022 I was contacted by Thomas Nelson Publishers. They requested my help in bringing The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge back in print. These new people at Nelson were astonished that the Publisher had allowed this reference work to go out of print about 1999. They said they intend to keep it in print from now on.

I offered suggestions as to which printing should be the basis of any new edition so that my previous suggestions and corrections would be preserved. Then they discovered that my Figure of Speech Index did not fully match the content of The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. They caught many problems and anomalies I had no way of spotting in the 1980s when I first produced the text and indexes on hundreds of 5 1/4″ floppy disks!

I spent many weeks last year resolving these issues and entering several hundred additional corrections I had marked in my copy of the 1992 edition across the whole text of The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Even the Name Index has been corrected with three or so names missed in my first compilation. So for some things, this new edition of The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge is even more complete and accurate than The Ultimate Cross Reference Treasury, though it does not have anywhere near the extensive content.

There is absolutely no way using Logos Bible software alone (minus my resource) that anyone could come up with anything approaching the extensive cross references I have hand-collected for over 50 years.

As for the usefulness of such cross references, perhaps no one has said it better than R. A. Torrey in his Introduction to the original Treasury of Scripture Knowledge:

“About twenty years ago I saw for the first time “The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.” I was interested in the book at once, and commenced to use it in my daily study of the Word of God. I went through book after book of the Bible, verse by verse, with the aid of “The Treasury.” I found that it enabled me, better than all the commentaries, to come to a true knowledge of God’s meaning.

“There is no other commentary on the Bible so helpful as the Bible itself. There is not a difficult passage in the Bible that is not explained and made clearer by other passages of the Bible, and this book is marvelously useful in bringing to light those other parts of the Bible that throw light upon the portion that is being studied.

“But not only does the book illuminate the dark places, it also emphasises the truth by bringing in a multitude of witnesses. It also greatly strengthens faith, for one cannot study his Bible with the aid of “The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge” without getting a deeper conviction of the unity of the entire Book. As he compares Scripture with Scripture and sees how what Paul says fits in to what Jesus said, and John said, and Peter said, and Isaiah said, and the Psalmist said; when he sees how every doctrine of the New Testament regarding Christ, His Divine-human nature, His holy character, His atoning death, and His resurrection, ascension, and coming again is enfolded in the types of the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Psalms, he becomes overwhelmingly convinced that the whole Bible has one real Author behind the many human authors. “The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge” enables one, not only to understand the Word, but to feed upon the Word.”