How to search in a Bible chapter (rather than a Bible verse)

I received the following email, and thought I'd post my reply here in case it benefits others:

Could you tell me how to search for an OT chapter? In other words, I don't want to find a verse, I want to find chapters that have similar words/motifs to the one I am looking at in the NT. I am trying to determine what chapters of the OT are the underlying ones for John 10. I have a few like Ezek 23 and 34, and Jer 31, but I found those by searching for verses with "shepherd" and "flock". How do I type in a few words into the search bar, and find the corresponding OT chapters that have the same words, not just verses as that is too refined?

The easiest way of achieving what you want is to switch
to a Basic search instead of a Bible search. Make sure you select which version
of the Bible you want to search from the drop-down, and it’s probably best to
choose ‘Bible Text’ from the fields menu (it’s probably set to ‘All Text’ at
the moment, which means that headings and footnotes will also get searched).

It’s not perfect (you can’t restrict your search to the
OT, for example), but doing a basic search does ensure that the granularity is
set to chapters, not single verses.

Something else you may want to consider is a resource you probably already own called Old Testament
Quotations and Allusions in the New Testament (it’s in every base package
apart from Home). It will point you in the direction of several possible
allusions.

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Comments

Allen Browne

The easiest way of achieving what you want is to switch to a Basic search instead of a Bible search. Make sure you select which version of the Bible you want to search from the drop-down, and it’s probably best to choose ‘Bible Text’ from the fields menu (it’s probably set to ‘All Text’ at the moment, which means that headings and footnotes will also get searched).

Thanks, Mark.

That has to be worth adding to the Wiki on searching.

John Brumett

What about doing the search in the bible search and then graphing the results by hits in Chapters? Ezekiel 34 has the most hits in the chapter with 15.

George Somsel

Could you tell me how to search for an OT chapter? In other words, I don't want to find a verse, I want to find chapters that have similar words/motifs to the one I am looking at in the NT. I am trying to determine what chapters of the OT are the underlying ones for John 10. I have a few like Ezek 23 and 34, and Jer 31, but I found those by searching for verses with "shepherd" and "flock". How do I type in a few words into the search bar, and find the corresponding OT chapters that have the same words, not just verses as that is too refined?

Without bothering to search, the first thing that comes to mind is Ps 23. This is the good shepherd, not the hirelings.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Passage Guide has PARALLEL RESOURCES section that includes Old Testament Quotations and Allusions in the New Testament:

Keep Smiling [:)]

Mark Barnes

What about doing the search in the bible search and then graphing the results by hits in Chapters? Ezekiel 34 has the most hits in the chapter with 15.

That's a good suggestion in this case (where we're doing an OR search). But it wouldn't work in an AND search, because in the Bible search the two words would have to be in the same verse, and it wouldn't pick up occassions where the two words were used in the same chapter, but not the same verse. You'd need the basic search in that case.

Mark Barnes

Passage Guide has PARALLEL RESOURCES section that includes Old Testament Quotations and Allusions in the New Testament:

Yes, I'd forgotten that. It uses exactly the same data from the resource I linked to, but presents it in a different format. I must admit I prefer format of the resource direct, but it's handy having it in the Passage Guide too.