How to Find New Testament Quotes from Old Testament Prophets

Today’s post is from Morris Proctor, certified and authorized trainer for Logos Bible Software. Morris, who has trained thousands of Logos users at his two-day Camp Logos seminars, provides many training materials.

New Testament writers frequently quote Old Testament prophets without explicitly referencing them by name. “Who said that?” may, therefore, be a common question we ask in our Bible study. You’ll be happy to know that Logos tags speakers throughout Scripture so we can readily identify them as well as locate other verses in which they were quoted! Let’s take a look at a specific example:

• Open a Bible such as the LEB to Acts 7:48–49, which is part of Stephen’s sermon (A)
• Notice the phrase “just as the prophet says” in verse 48 followed by the words of a prophet in verse 49 (B)
• At the beginning of verse 49, rest the cursor on the megaphone icon (C), which identifies Isaiah as the quoted prophet (if the icon is not present, click the visual filters icon—three circles—on the Bible’s toolbar and select speaker labels) (D)

Logos has identified and tagged the speakers in conversation or being quoted in both the Old and New Testaments. You can see who’s speaking with the megaphone icon.

But now let’s say we want to locate all the places Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament:

• Right click on any word in verse 49 (E)
• Click the arrow icon next to Stephen the speaker on the context menu (F)
• Notice both Stephen and Isaiah are listed as speakers, because Stephen is quoting Isaiah
• Select Isaiah (G)
• Select Search this resource (H)

• Select New Testament from the drop-down list on the search panel (I)
• In the search results, see all the places in the New Testament where Isaiah the prophet is quoted (J)

Train your eyes to spot the megaphone icons, then use a right mouse search to find every time a specific person spoke in the Bible.

You can learn more about Logos 6’s features in the Logos 6: What’s New? Manual and the Logos 6: What’s New? Video, now available on Pre-Pub.

Also be sure to register for an upcoming Camp Logos live training seminar, including the January events in Tampa and Houston.