How do you find a passage in the bible?

Answer 1

I've found Bible Gateway to have the best resources for looking up passages by chapter & verse, by keyword, or by topic; they have numerous Bible translations available, plus two topical indices. If you know the chapter & verse, you can go there (or any similar site, of course) and see how it reads in a particular translation. If you have a general idea of how the verse goes, you can look it up by keywords; note, though, that different translations can use different words, making such a search very frustrating. For that a Topical search might be better, although that doesn't always give you everything, either. I don't know of any other sites that do it better, sadly. Maybe someone else can improve this answer with better citations? The above answer is excellent. In case your question was much more basic, here are the bare-bones concepts. When you give or get a bible reference, it contains 1) the book name, 2) the chapter, and 3 the verse(s). For example,

John 3:16 The book is the gospel of John.

Go to chapter 3. right after the book name, or to the left of the colon, is always the chapter number.

Verse 16. Every single book in the entire bible has a unique name, but some may be tricky. for example, there is a Gospel of John, and there are some letters (epistles) attributed to him as well. So "John" refers to the gospel, and "1 John, 2 John and 3 John" refer to his 3 letters. So, 1 John 2 refers to chapter 2 of the first epistle of John. 2 John and 3 John each contain only one chapter, but it's probably better for clarity to still refer to 2 John 1:4, for example. If you see this: John 3:16-21, it means what you might guess: verses 16 through 21 in chapter 3 of the gospel of John. This: John 3:16, 20, 27-30 means: the gospel of John, chapter 3, individual verses 16 and 20, and the verses 27 through 30. If you need to find a specific word in The Bible, get yourself a Concordance. This is a sort of Bible 'dictionary' where every major keyword in the Bible is listed. Simply looking up a word will bring up all the different occasions where that word is used, so any specific topic, number, name etc can be tracked down to its book, chapter and verse. A simple concordance can be found at bibletab.com.

Answer 2

Jewish answer: The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) is not written like a regular textbook, with laws in one volume, narratives in a separate part, and beliefs in yet another part. The Tanakh is a living thing. It has a tapestry of laws, beliefs, narrative etc., all interwoven to provide the highest benefit. The same system is followed in the Talmud. So the greatest benefit is by learning the entire text over a period of time; preferably with a proper commentary.

Answer 3

The first, and best way, to find passages in the Bible, is to READ it yourself and familiarize yourself with the scriptures. The easiest way is to start with the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke + John, take your time, jot down favorite passages as you go, and enjoy yourself. Read a few pages each morning...or a chapter a day....You'll build up a real knowledge of what's in the Bible, where to find scriptures and have a nice list of favorites to refer to, and share with others.

Way back when, I started with Proverbs, and slowly went through them one at a time, jotting down my favorites, and things I could apply to my life. I couldn't understand all of them, but the ones that touched me, I wrote down. Often there will be 'footnotes' next to a word in a favorite scripture, which will lead you to MORE scriptures having to do with the same subject, adding more substance to your research and giving you still more to enjoy.

Next, many Bibles have a concordance in the back, which highlights a particular word in a scripture, but you have to know the scripture involved to find a particular citation. For instance, if you want to find the scripture that says "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...", find a King James Version of the Bible with a concordance, look up......'shepherd'...in the back, and see if that scripture is listed among the many containing the word shepherd. You may discover that it takes you to Psalm 23.

In time, you'll see how the Bible is set up, and sometimes be able to guess what section of the Bible certain scripture passages are from by the content.

Answer 4

Visit biblegateway for a free bible resource to search for a passage by verse or keyword.