Understanding the Holy Bible which is a very large volume containing 66 books within two major parts--the Old and the New Testament can be difficult. At first, the Bible could seem a little hard to navigate, but with some basic knowledge on how it is organized and practice, you will be able to quickly find any scripture to check for accuracy of what people say or that you need for any other reason.

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[edit] Steps

Learn how the bible is organized. It is divided into Book Chapter:Verse. For example, if you wanted to look up John 3:16, first you would turn to the book of John. You would then turn to the 3rd chapter (the number before the colon is the chapter.). You would then find the 16th verse.
- Verses are usually arranged with small numbers within the text. Some Bibles are formed into paragraphs and only have the number of the verse that begins each paragraph.
- The first part of the Bible is called the Old Testament (Tanakh -- Jewish) Bible of the "books of Moses" and other ancient prophets' writings and second the New Testament of Christian books starting with the Gospels of Christ written by Christian Jews and one Greek Jew, the Apostle Saint Paul.
Look in the back of your Bible; it may have a concordance (index) which will direct you to a few verses that contain each word that you find in the concordance.
Buy a separate Bible concordance with a Bible dictionary and maps all in one volume, or find a set of books with commentaries.
See whether or not there is a cross reference in your Bible--which is usually setup in two text columns, and then the cross reference may be found in the middle of the page in a very narrow column. It serves as a kind of footnote section to list other places you find the same, a similar/related topic in the Bible.
Inspect the bottom of the pages or above the beginning of each chapter to see if your Bible has selected comments about the subject, meaning and/or history of the material in that chapter.

Bible Research on the Internet

Search for a Bible subject/verses on the internet that refer to your topic. Bible subject:marriage or try Bible verses:marriage for example to find several websites that may contain your reference. Some will be sermons, others commentary and some will be arguing or discussion pages.
Find a Bible quotation on the internet like Bible quote:for God so loved the world. If you have several of the words from a verse but want its chapter and verse location in the Bible, this is used like a concordance.
Find many language translations of the entire Bible with various, different versions (older or more modern language usage, etc.) on the internet.

[edit] Tips

Practice! Choose random verses or a scripture reference you find in an article or book to look up and you will soon get the hang of it.
Many verses in the book of Isiah are believed to refer to the Messiah (Jesus in Christian belief.) for example Isiah 53.
There was a group of Messianic Jews called the Essenes in a break away monastery of about the time of Christ.
Some Muslims study both parts of the Bible along with their Holy Quran (Koran). The prophet Mohammad(PBUH), peace be upon him--and also some other Islamic writers refer to the Bible as scriptures worthy of honor and respect, to be considered and possibly studied carefully but they do not believe all of the writings in the Bible to be accurate or inspired.

[edit] Warnings

Be careful, as some books have names that are very similar. For example, there are four books with the name John. They are John, 1st John, 2nd John, and 3rd John.
Realize that the entire Bible is used by Christians for teaching, doctrine and reproof (correction of misunderstandings) while only the Tanakh is used by the Jews.