Category Archives: Bible

Visualization of Bible Linkages

This is a bit off-topic for my usual blogging, but as a geek/research scientist/amateur Bible scholar this fascinates me.

Chris Harrison, a doctoral student in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, has posted on his web site a page on Visualizing the Bible.  The first plot displayed is Bible cross-references showing the linkages between different verses in the Bible.  If you download the hi-res version (and watch out because it is hi-res at 109 MB and 12000×7000 pixels) you can get a cross-reference down to the chapter and pretty close to the verse in the Bible.

Have a look at it.  If nothing else Chris has done a great job of making it visually appealing.  But just a few of the things that jumped out at me:

How much of the Bible references back to Genesis and the first half of Exodus. This includes Revelation providing an “over arching” feel to the plot.

The cross-references within individual books, especially Revelation.

The number of cross-references to Ruth and Song of Songs is very low.

There are some interesting moderate-length linkages to the end of Deuteronomy and the end of Ezekiel.

Now I realize that the eye may find patterns that are not significant, but this is an interesting way to view this data.  what do you see?  Is this helpful to interpret scripture in the light of scripture?

My thanks to Corey’s blog “It’s A Start” for the post pointing to this.