How to Look Up Biblical Cross‑References for Topics

Today’s 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.

One of the most popular types of Bible study enjoyed by many Christians is cross-reference work. Toward that end, most English Bibles provide some cross-references inline with the biblical text.

If you enjoy this method of Bible investigation, you may find that those embedded cross-references are limited. So if you’d like to look up more biblical references for a given topic, try this setup that incorporates several Logos features:

• Click the Library icon to open your electronic bookshelf (A)

• Click Prioritize in the upper right corner of the library (B)

• Type nave in the Library’s Find box (C)

• Drag New Nave’s Topical Bible to the Prefer these resources list (make sure this resource is in the top five of your topical prioritized books, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias) (D)

• Open an English Bible, such as The Lexham English Bible (E)

• Navigate in the Bible to a passage containing a topic of interest, such as Colossians 2:14 (F)

• Right click on a word in the verse, such as cross (G)

• Click Selection: cross on the right side of the context menu (H)

• Select New Nave’s Topical Bible on the left side of the context menu (I)

• Notice this resource opens to an article containing numerous cross-references for the topic cross (J)

• Rest the cursor on a blue Bible cross-reference to see a popup of that verse from your preferred Bible (K)

• Click a blue Bible cross-reference to open your preferred Bible to that verse

To see multiple cross-references at once, add this to your study:

• Choose Tools | Power Lookup

• Select some text containing cross-references in Nave’s (L)

• Notice that Power Lookup displays the biblical text for all of those selected cross-references (M)

If you find yourself using this setup frequently, make sure to save it as layout.

For more helpful instruction about Logos tools, please check out the two-volume Logos 5 Training Manual Set.