Cross Bible Software: Cross References, Parallel Translations and Timeline

Intro to Cross Bible

Do you wish there were better online tools to help you navigate the Bible? Are you ever confused by the differences between the stories about Jesus in the Gospels, or between translations of the Bible that sometimes say very different things? Do you ever get frustrated when the footnotes in your Bible don’t give you the answers you’re looking for?

What if you could access intuitive, user-friendly Bible software with advanced resources that a beginner could use? Well, get ready for a sneak peek at the prototype for Cross Bible. Please like, share, and subscribe here on YouTube for more Bible-related content.

Bible Study Features

From the Home screen, we’re going to open up our book menu and select the Gospel of Luke, chapter 4. From here we can select from a menu of Bibles in English, Greek, Hebrew, and other languages. With a Bible selected, we can navigate to the chapter. These LEFT and RIGHT arrows let you navigate between chapters. If all you want to do is simply read a Bible, this is all you need to get started. But Cross Bible has much more to offer. Just click on the PLUS sign here to add another Bible in parallel. The verses are all lined up for easy comparison.

We can add a third Bible or even a fourth Bible and swap out versions however we like. And if we want to compare these verses more closely, this button here will flip the orientation, where I can also select from the menu of Bible versions. It’s all totally customizable.

Now, let’s get back to where we started and dig deeper into Luke chapter 4.

Jesus Reads Isaiah

Cross Bible, as the name suggests, is a ‘cross-reference’ Bible. Our initial Bible study tools focus on connecting the dots between related passages. The cross references are always front and center, and marked with these flags. And if we want to see what each one says, we don’t have to follow a hyperlink or leave this chapter we’re reading. Just click on any flag and you’ll get a popover tool with four different tabs.

The first tab has our 'Cross References', which are all categorized: “NT-OT” is for cross-references looking back from the New Testament into the Old Testament. “NT-NT” points to a similar reference elsewhere in the New Testament. “OT-NT” indicates that you’re in the Old Testament looking forward to the New Testament. Let’s bookmark Luke 4:18. That way, we can dig into it now and easily jump back to it later.

Spotlight on Luke 4:18 - "to heal the brokenhearted"

Here, Jesus is in a Jewish synagogue reading out loud from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”

This verse contains a couple of interesting textual artifacts that Cross Bible helps us uncover. When reading the King James Bible, you’ll see the phrase “to heal the brokenhearted,” which matches Isaiah 61. But if we compare that to more modern Bible versions, the phrase is omitted. Why is that? Well, if you go looking for the answer in the footnotes of your Bible, you may be disappointed.

But Cross Bible has a tool for investigating these puzzles in the “Textual Apparatus” tab, where we can see that this verse contains a ‘textual variant’ in Greek: ἰάσασθαι τοὺς συντετριμμένους τὴν καρδίαν.

Most scholarly resources expect you to already know Greek. But Cross Bible simply gives you the translation right here: “to heal the brokenhearted.” We can see that the King James includes this ‘textual variant’ because it’s based on the so-called “Textus Receptus” (which means “received text”). It’s based on the vast majority of manuscripts known as the “Byzantine Text” or the “Majority Text.”

Modern Bibles, based on the modern “Critical Text,” often leave out phrases like these when they aren’t found in the oldest manuscripts.

If you’re confused, don’t worry. Cross Bible will help you navigate these challenging passages by connecting them to our ‘Timeline of the Bible' feature, which is already available for testing on crossbible.com.

Timeline of the Bible

Let’s move on to yet another fascinating textual artifact in Luke 4:18 that Cross Bible helps us uncover. Note that every single version of the New Testament contains the phrase “recovery of sight to the blind.” However, it is a ‘textual variant’ in the Old Testament.

Here in the ‘cross-reference’ tab, we see an English translation of the Greek Old Testament by default that includes the phrase “recovery of sight to the blind.” This Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible is also referred to by the somewhat imprecise umbrella term “Septuagint,” often abbreviated by the Roman numeral “LXX,” meaning “seventy.”

Now, we can swap out the Old Testament version with any other Bible. Some of you might want to consult a Greek edition, which has the phrase “τοῖς τυφλοῖς ἀνάβλεψιν.” We can also consult the Hebrew text, or any version based on the Hebrew to discover that nearly all Bibles omit the phrase “recovery of sight to the blind” in Isaiah 61:1.

This is why it’s so important to consult the Greek Old Testament when comparing ‘cross references,’ because it’s usually in closer alignment with the New Testament and more clearly reveals Jesus’s fulfillment of prophecy.

It’s the Bible that the New Testament authors relied on, and it’s the Bible of the early Greek-speaking Christian communities.

Spotlight on Isaiah 61:1 - "recovery of sight to the blind"

Now you may be asking, “But isn’t it a translation of the ‘original’ Hebrew?”

Well, yes. It’s a translation of a Hebrew version that Jesus himself read out loud in a synagogue, according to Luke 4:18. So, Jesus is not ‘misquoting’ the Hebrew Bible. He’s simply reading from an early version of the Old Testament that was translated into Greek.

The Importance of the Greek Septuagint (LXX)

So, that concludes our demo of the Cross Bible prototype. We’ll be producing a lot more educational content focused on the Bible.

Please follow us here on YouTube and subscribe to our mailing list at crossbible.com for updates and early access. Check the description below for more information. Like and share this video. And if you leave some constructive feedback in the comments section, we’ll take it into consideration as we continue to develop our software and produce more educational content.

Feel free to let us know what topics you’d like to see us demystify with Cross Bible. Thank you for watching, and we look forward to taking you on this exciting journey.