How to Find Christmas Verses from the Old Testament

This post is from Morris Proctor, certified and authorized trainer for Logos Bible Software. Morris, who has trained thousands of Logos users at his two-day Camp Logos seminars, provides many training materials.

In keeping with our Christmas theme, let’s talk about Old Testament quotes in the New Testament. We don’t have to read far in the Christmas story in Matthew or Luke before we see phrases like through the prophet or spoken by the prophet. Even if such a phrase doesn’t appear, the New Testament writers often allude to Old Testament passages.

In light of such occurrences, Logos users often email me asking how to locate the Old Testament verse on which a New Testament passage is based.

Actually, several ways exist to accomplish the task, but I’ll show a straight forward one using the simple feature of linking:

• Open your preferred Bible
• Type the word quotes in the Command box (A)
• Select from the drop-down list Open Old Testament Quotes in the New Testament (B)

• Type the word quotations in the Command box (C)
• Select from the drop down list Open Old Testament Quotations and Allusions in the New Testament (D)

Please note, both of these resources are in all standard-track Logos base packages and are grouped in the Library under the Type, Bible Harmony. If they did not appear under the Command box then place this text in the Library’s Find box and they’ll be listed: type:harmony.

• Drag the tabs of the open resources around the desktop until all three appear in their own tiles (E)

• Chose the panel menu on one of the resources (F)
• Select Link set A (G)

• Repeat the previous two steps for the other two resources so all three are linked to Set A (H)
• Type in the Bible’s reference box Matthew 2:6 (I)
• Press the Enter key to jump to that verse
• Notice the two harmonies follow the Bible because they’re all linked to the same Set A (J)

You’ll observe in the harmonies both the New Testament passage as well as the Old Testament passage on which it’s based. One harmony picks up Bethlehem as the place of Jesus’ birth (K) while the other emphasizes his leadership (L).

This simple arrangement could easily be saved as a Layout and reopened anytime you want to read the Bible looking for connections between the Old and New Testaments!

For more training like this, check out the Logos 6 Training Manual Volumes 1 and 2 Bundle.