What the Links Mean

← How the Site Works

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▶ Watch — Reading Scripture

Two Channels, One Web

The same web of connections meets you in two ways, depending on which lens you're reading through:

1. In The Bible (the paragraph view) — connections appear as coloured highlights woven into the text, each carrying a redundant underline cue, plus, on Old Testament chapters, small coloured † crosses marking where the New Testament takes up that verse. Tap any highlighted phrase or † to open a side-by-side comparison.
2. In every other lens — the connections are laid out for you as links. In Threads (the verse-by-verse view), each verse ends with a small row: IP · C · TOSK · TT · LT, and on anchor verses ATN. The wider-web panel groups those same connections by kind. The Interlinear lens links each word to its Lexicon entry.

This page is the key to every one of those markers — the colours, the underlines, the cross, and the abbreviations — with real examples you can click right now. If you're new, start in The Bible and let the colours guide you; reach for the rest as your questions sharpen.

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The One Colour Language

There is a single colour language across the whole site, and it answers one question: what kind of connection is this?

The underline says the same thing the colour does — solid, dashed, dotted for quotation, allusion, echo. Why say it twice? So the cue survives a colour-blind reader, a dim screen, or a finger covering half the word. The same red/blue/green governs both the highlighted phrases and the † crosses, so once you've learned it, you've learned the whole site.

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Example: Genesis 1:1 in Two Lenses

Here's the same verse in two lenses, so you can see what to expect.

The Bible — paragraph format; coloured, underlined phrases are clickable links

In the beginning God created [the heavens and the earth]¹.

^{¹ coloured blue with a dashed underline (Allusion) — clicking it opens an Intertextuality Pair linking Genesis 1:1 to Isaiah 65:17-18 (the "new heavens and new earth"). A sibling link on the same phrase also ties it to Psalm 104. Red + solid would mean a direct quotation; green + dotted would mean a fainter echo.}

Threads — verse-by-verse; every verse ends with an inline link row

Genesis 1 . 1

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. | IP¹ | IP² | TOSK | TT¹ | TT² | TT³ | TT⁴ | LT¹ | LT² |

Each small abbreviation in that row is a link:

• IP¹, IP² — two Intertextuality Pairs (Genesis 1 → Psalm 104; Genesis 1:1 → Isaiah 65:17-18)
• TOSK — the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge entry for this verse
• TT¹ – TT⁴ — four Trajectory Tables this verse feeds (Garden Commission, New Creation, New Jerusalem, New Moons)
• LT¹, LT² — two Longitudinal Themes (Creation and New Creation; Wisdom)

The Bible is where you read; Threads (and the wider-web panel) is where you drill into a single verse. Every verse in Threads has its own anchor (e.g. `Genesis 1 . 1`), so you can link straight to it from anywhere on the site.

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† Crosses — How the OT Tells You "the New Testament Takes This Up"

In Old Testament chapters of The Bible, you'll see small coloured † crosses at the end of certain phrases. A cross means: "a New Testament author takes up this Old Testament phrase."

The cross is the mirror image of the coloured phrase. A coloured phrase on an OT verse points you to an earlier or later OT connection; a cross points you forward to the New Testament's use of this verse. And the symbol fits: the New Testament's use of the Old leads, finally, to the cross.

The cross colour palette (the same language)

How to use them

Hover (or tap) a † to preview the citing New Testament passage. Click to open the full Intertextuality Pair — the side-by-side text with the connection explained.

A single OT verse may carry several crosses, one per NT citation. Psalm 110:1, for example, carries roughly 25 — visible evidence of why Psalm 110 anchors so much New Testament Christology.

NT chapters don't carry crosses

New Testament chapters use only the coloured-phrase channel — because every NT cross-reference already is a use of an OT text, marked as the phrase highlight. There is nothing later in the canon for the New Testament to point forward to, so no crosses are needed.

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Quick Reference — The Whole Key on One Card

A compact card to bookmark. Colours + underlines live in The Bible (paragraph view); abbreviations live in Threads (verse view) and the wider-web panel.

Superscripts: IP¹, IP², IP³ (or TT¹ TT² TT³, C¹ C²) mean multiple of the same type — click each for a different connection.

Foundation Texts: deep-exegesis essays on key passages (Hebrew/Greek word studies, full NT-use-of-OT analysis). You reach them from inside a Trajectory Table, not directly off a verse.

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IP — Intertextuality Pairs

What it stands for: Intertextuality Pair — two passages that are connected.

What it does: shows how one passage quotes, alludes to, or builds on another. Biblical authors did this constantly, later writers taking up earlier ones to carry the story forward.

Two categories: OT to OT (a later OT author drawing on an earlier) and NT to OT (a NT author taking up the OT).

What you'll see when you click: the two passages side by side, with the connection's kind named and weighed.

Real Example

Click this link: Matthew 1:22-23 → Isaiah 7:14

NT Text: Matthew 1:22-23 — "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: 'The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel.'"

OT Source: Isaiah 7:14 — written ~700 years earlier.

Connection: Matthew tells you outright — this is a fulfillment. "Immanuel" means "God with us," and Matthew uses it as a bookend for his whole Gospel: Jesus is God with us from birth (1:23) to the end of the age (28:20).

When a verse has multiple IPs

You'll see superscripts: IP¹ IP² IP³. Genesis 3:14, for example, has three — linking to Isaiah 65:25, Micah 7:17, and Isaiah 25:10.

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C — Chiasms

What it stands for: Chiasm (from the Greek letter chi, which looks like an X).

What it does: reveals a mirror-pattern structure the author deliberately built into the text. Ideas given in order, then echoed in reverse — like a sandwich — with the weight at the center.

What you'll see when you click: the full structure laid out with indentation and colour-coded keywords showing which parts mirror each other.

Real Example

Click this link: Genesis 3:1-24 — The Fall

Here's the simplified structure of what you'll find:

What does this tell us?

• The center is the point. Moses structured the whole chapter so that God's promise to crush the serpent is literally at the heart of the story.
• The matching pairs reveal meaning. Compare D and D': humans try to cover their shame with fig leaves → God provides real covering through animal skins (the Bible's first death, the Bible's first sacrifice). Human effort vs. God's provision.
• This proves the author intended it. Elements in precise mirror positions show the writer designed it that way. This isn't an interpretation imposed on the text — it's structure embedded in the text.

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TOSK — Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

What it stands for: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — a classic cross-reference collection first published around 1830 by London publisher Samuel Bagster, gathering the parallel passages of Canne, Browne, Blayney, Scott, and others. (R.A. Torrey later wrote the introduction that made it famous; he did not compile it.)

What it does: gives you one of the most comprehensive sets of cross-references ever assembled — roughly 380,000 connections. For each verse, TOSK lists related passages organized by keyword.

What you'll see when you click: a list of related verses grouped by the key words and phrases of the verse you're studying.

Real Example

Click this link: Genesis 3:15 in TOSK

Think of TOSK as the ultimate concordance. If you want to know every place the Bible touches a concept, TOSK will show you.

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TT — Trajectory Tables

What it stands for: Trajectory Table — a study tracing how a theme or type develops across the entire Bible.

What it does: shows how an Old Testament shadow (a "type") develops through the prophets and finds its fulfillment in Christ (the "antitype") — a seed planted in Genesis grown into a full tree by Revelation.

What you'll see when you click: a table of numbered stages tracing the theme from its first appearance, through the Old Testament, into the New, and on to its final fulfillment.

Real Example

Click this link: Adam (The First and Last Adam)

Here's a simplified version of the 11-stage trajectory you'll find:

Each stage links to the actual text in Threads, and many link to Foundation Texts — detailed analyses with Hebrew and Greek word studies.

The Four-Step Application

At the bottom of every Trajectory Table you'll find a Four-Step Application that makes the trajectory personal — and keeps it from collapsing into a moral lesson:

Why this matters: it keeps the indicative before the imperative. Every trajectory leads not merely to information about Christ but to transformation through Christ — not just "What does this mean?" but "What does this mean for me, in him?"

When a verse has multiple TTs

You'll see superscripts: TT¹ TT² TT³. Genesis 3:14 has five — Adam, New Creation, New Jerusalem, Seed Promise, and Tree of Life. One verse, five threads running through the whole Bible.

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LT — Longitudinal Themes

What it stands for: Longitudinal Theme — a theological idea traced from one end of the Bible to the other.

What it does: like a Trajectory Table, but broader. A TT follows a specific type (Adam, Passover); an LT follows a big theological idea (Temple, Covenant, Kingdom) across the whole canon.

Example: God's presence with his people runs from Eden (Genesis 3:8) → tabernacle → temple → Jesus ("Immanuel" = God with us) → the church → the new creation ("the dwelling place of God is with man," Revelation 21:3).

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ATN — Anchor Text Networks

What it stands for: Anchor Text Network — a map of the canonical career of one specific OT passage.

What it does: where a Trajectory Table tracks a subject (Adam, Passover, Melchizedek) and a Longitudinal Theme tracks a big idea (Covenant, Kingdom, Temple), an ATN tracks a single OT text — every place it gets quoted, alluded to, recited, or transformed by later biblical authors.

The simplest test: if you can name what you're tracking in three words, it's a TT or LT. If you can only name it by its reference (Psalm 110, Isaiah 53:4-6, Exodus 34:6-7), it's an ATN.

Where the link appears: only on the anchor verses themselves. You won't see an ATN link on Romans 1:17; you'll see it on Habakkuk 2:4 (the anchor), with the Romans 1:17 citation plotted inside.

What you'll see when you click: the OT anchor in BSB text, its OT-internal pre-history, the NT verse-by-verse citation (each plotted with Greidanus method and Beale category), critical citations flagged, and related TTs and sibling ATNs.

Real Example

Click this link: Psalm 110 — The Right-Hand Session and the Melchizedekian Priest

The anchor: Psalm 110:1 and 110:4 — "The LORD said to my Lord: 'Sit at My right hand…'" and "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."

Why this anchors a network: Psalm 110 is the most-cited OT chapter in the New Testament — roughly 25 citations — anchoring three Christological structures the NT cannot do without:

The ATN walks each citation, shows what the NT author is doing with it, and traces the OT-internal warrants (1 Kings 5:3/5/19, Daniel 7:13) that prepared the right-hand-session vocabulary.

How the networks are organized

Not every OT verse warrants an ATN — the corpus is bounded to texts the New Testament actually takes up. The networks are listed flat, in canonical book order, and each carries an NT receptions count: how many distinct New Testament passages pick the text up. That number is descriptive, not a ranking — a single citation can carry a whole doctrine. New here? Start with the Foundational Anchors shortlist at the top of the index.

→ Browse all 80 Anchor Text Networks

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Interlinear — The Words Themselves

The Interlinear lens lays a passage out word by word, the Hebrew or Greek underneath, each word linked to its Lexicon entry by its Strong's number.

What it does: lets you weigh a single word in the original — its meaning, its range, where else it appears — without any language training. The study is done for you; you only have to look.

Example: open Genesis 1:1 in Interlinear and you'll see the Hebrew bereshit bara elohim — "In the beginning God created" — each word a link to its definition in the Lexicon.

There is also the LXX lens — the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament the apostles so often quote. For more, watch Into the Original Languages in the Getting Started videos.

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Multiple Links of the Same Type

When a verse has more than one connection of the same type, you'll see superscripts:

• IP¹ IP² IP³ = three different Intertextuality Pairs
• TT¹ TT² TT³ = three different Trajectory Tables
• C¹ C² = two overlapping chiastic structures

The more links a verse carries, the more deeply it is woven into the rest of Scripture. Some verses — like Genesis 3:15 — are major intersections where many threads cross.

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→ Next: Try it yourself with a guided walkthrough →

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