Religion & Theology

Tips on Searching for Scripture Citations

When looking for commentary and other information about a specific passage of scripture, it is possible to search by scripture citation in some databases.

Books

In the library catalog, use the appropriate Library of Congress subject heading following this basic pattern (make sure you are using the "subject" label, not "words or phrase"):

Bible O.T. Genesis
Bible N.T. Matthew

Chapters may be specified by using Roman numerals and verses may be specified by using Arabic numerals. 

Bible O.T. Genesis, XXXV, 9-15
Bible N.T. Matthew, III, 16 

The following standard subheadings can be added to the end of any scripture search:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Meditations 

Although it is possible to narrow a search to a specific scripture passage or type of commentary, it is not always useful to do so when searching for books.  Books tend to cover an entire biblical book making it sufficient to search at the broader level without specifying chapter, verse, or subheading.   

Articles

The ATLA Serials database includes an indexed scripture citation field.  There are two methods for searching by scripture citation.

To browse for articles by scripture citation click "Scriptures" in the menu bar across the top of the search screen.  To see all results for a particular book the Bible, click on the name of the book.  Click "Expand" to see results for a particular chapter of the book.  Chapters may be expanded to search for particular verses or passages.

To search for articles by scripture citation, select "Scripture Citation" in place of "Select a field" in the drop down menu of the search form.  In the search box, enter the desired verse or passage using standard scripture citation format (John 3:16) and click "Search".