Categories
Application MetaV The Bible Tools

MetaV Downloads

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What is MetaV?

MetaV is the name given to the underlying database used to build the visual Bible explorer on this website and several other infographics. It links together details on people, places, periods of time, and passages in the Bible at word-level detail. This database is specially structured to simplify complex “big picture” analysis or visualizing biblical information.

What’s new in the current version?

You can track version history here or fork the GitHub repository.

Can I trust this information?

Above all, the Bible represents absolute truth given from God. The electronic source text of the Bible has been checked for accuracy against multiple other electronic sources of the King James Version using modern text comparison software. The rest of the information in MetaV is nothing more than well-studied conclusions about the Bible formulated and trusted by faithful Christians over the centuries. For more details on original sources, reference the database documentation available in the readme file (included in the downloads below).

 How should I navigate the data?

This database is structured so that anyone familiar with spreadsheet applications such as Microsoft Excel can make good use of the information in a variety of ways. Those who have experience with data manipulation and queries will find it simple to perform more advanced analysis. The readme file and schema diagram included in these downloads give an overview of the tables and fields as well as how they are related to each other.

Can I share it with others?

Please do! Our goal is to get the Bible and helpful related information into the hands of as many people as possible. MetaV was built using data obtained from those who have generously shared it with others.  In that same spirit, MetaV is free to use and copy under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license. All we ask is that you let us know where and how the data will be used.  Please see the details on individual source files (available at the links below) for more specific usage guidelines.

Click below to download all files.

CSV_Download

 

 

You can also fork the GitHub repository or, choose individual files from the table below.

File Name Size Description
Readme.txt 8 KB Complete source and licensing details and field names for all tables.
Schema Diagram.pdf 30 KB Visual Layout of the relationships between the tables listed below.
BookAliases.csv 4 KB Correlates all known book titles and abbreviations to a specific book ID
Books.csv 1 KB Standardizes all Bible book names with a given numerical ID
CrossRefIndex.csv 6.4 MB Compilation of cross references obtained from R.A. Torrey’s Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (Public Domain). Duplicate cross-references have been excluded.
MainIndex.csv 70.9 MB The main index associating the various tables in this database with individual words. Text used: 1769 Cambridge Edition of the King James Version, also known as the Authorized Version (Public Domain). Tags with references to deity are provided with permission from Bible Analyzer’s AVp module.
People.csv 96 KB Listing of all people in the Bible and key facts about them. this is a mashup of data found at complete-bible-genealogy.com and www.marshallgenealogy.org/bible. Name spelling has been updated to match the source bible text.
PeopleAliases.csv 61 KB All known aliases by which a person is referred to in the KJV.
PeopleGroups.csv 21 KB Groups to which individuals in the People table belong.
PeopleRelationships.csv 223 KB All known relationships between people listed in the KJV. Note: “Father” may refer to a more distant ancestor.
PlaceAliases.csv 26 KB All names by which a particular place is referred to in the KJV.
Places.csv 70 KB All identifiable places mentioned in the bible. Locations may be approximate. Source: openbible.info/geo (Creative Commons Attribution License). Place references in time periods prior to Noah’s Flood have been removed.
Strongs.csv 2.6 MB Strong’s Concordance in Hebrew and Greek. Source: openscriptures.org (https://github.com/openscriptures/strongs) License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
StrongsIndex.csv 6.2 MB Correlates Stong’s Number(s) with individual words in the KJV.
Topics.csv 1.6 MB Mashup of Nave’s Topical Bible and Torrey’s New Topical Textbook. Public Domain.
TopicIndex.csv 1.5 MB Correlates topics with each verse in the KJV.
Verses.csv 4.9 MB Full text of each verse in the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Writers.csv 1 KB Lists authors of each book of the Bible. Where one book may have had more than one writer, the primary author’s name is used.
Categories
Analysis Application MetaV The Bible

Mapping Social Networks of the Bible

Early this year I discovered a fascinating visualization that mapped all the connections made between “friends” on Facebook. It quickly spread around the internet with many people pointing out how country boundaries appeared from the links themselves with no borders drawn in the background.

So, as is my tendency, I thought about what it might look like to do something similar based on the connections between people and places in the Bible. Once I set out to define these relationships, I quickly found it hard to get the data I would need. Unlike with Facebook, Moses and Aaron had no way to input their personal information in a database that makes it easy to do this kind of thing. The Semantic Bible project has come a long way in terms of explicitly defining relationships among New Testament figures, but nothing yet for the Old Testament which contains far more people and places. Chris Harrison managed a complex visualization of social networks, but it is based strictly on word proximity to generate connections.

Since MetaV contains genealogical information for everyone in the Bible and geolocation data, I was able to create a composite database of links using both definite relationships and textual proximity. Then, I mapped the data following a very handy tutorial by Nathan Yau at FlowingData. People are linked to places if that person’s name appears in the same sentence as a place name. “Sentence” connections are those which have two people mentioned by name in the same sentence. “Self” links are where one person is linked to multiple places due to travels, marriage, etc. “Spouse” and “Parent” relationships are defined according to available genealogy data.

Color variations are a function of how many times the connection appears and the distance between the places. Lines are drawn along great circle routes in keeping with the Facebook map inspiration.

Social Networks of the Bible

What is immediately clear (though not at all surprising) is the centrality of Israel. The links within Israel and the ones going around the world are so dense that one can’t help but notice is is at the heart of all the interconnection in scripture, no matter how you slice the data. I would love to hear your thoughts on these patterns, so please leave a comment if you find something interesting!

Categories
Application Hermeneutics/ Exegesis MetaV The Bible Vision

Data-Driven Hermeneutics

One’s approach to Bible study has great influence on a person’s views about God and our relationship with him. The set of guidelines I prefer and recommend would be what’s generally known as the inductive bible study method. I find it’s a great way to let the text speak for itself before applying any pre-concieved ideas that may warp its intended, actual meaning. Of course, no single study method must be dogmatically practiced as long as the approach does not impose outside influences that may skew our interpretations (a.k.a “Sola Scriptura”).

Likewise, a person’s approach to understanding any other data set has a huge bearing on their eventual understanding of what that data represents.  A flawed approach tends to produce false or misleading statistics, granting that field of study a special category coined by Mark Twain in his famous line: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” On a blog that I regularly visit, Flowing Data, Nathan Yau does a good job of giving examples of the right and wrong ways to analyze and present data truthfully.  The recent release of his book Visualize This promises to be as good a resource as his blog.  It comes along with a wonderful video (below) that illustrates some important points I’d like to expand on.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  The parallels between this approach to statistics and sound hermeneutics are immediately apparent.  Let’s walk through each step and discuss how it corresponds to inductive Bible study and how I believe we can improve upon some areas.

  1. Get Your Data. Normally we choose some passage that is manageable in the time we’ve set aside for study.  When studying an entire book, it must be broken into smaller segments.  This is a good way for individuals to dig really deep and meditate on certain points, but it can be inadequate and unnecessary for other purposes.  Enough people over time have taken this approach, tabulated and published key information that can now be used alongside many other such resources to efficiently study the entire Bible as a whole.  The data sets I’ve chosen come from renowned scholars over several centuries, now combined in one linked data set (MetaV).
  2. Ask a Question.  Once we’ve chosen what passage(s) to pick apart, we must make some basic observations.  What people, places, or time frames are mentioned?  Much of this can be gleaned directly from the text, but helps such as maps or time lines are often necessary to really understand where in the world that place is or what else might have been going on in that period of history.  This is why MetaV includes a year assigned to every passage and why every identifiable place is given a latitude/longitude.
  3. Choose your tools. These days we’re stuck with either pen and paper or study software which does a great job of putting a microscope on the text, but nothing is yet available which can handle analysis of the entire Bible.  If you’re computer-savvy, you may be comfortable with various spreadsheets, databases, or statistical computation tools, but let’s face it – not everyone just loooves to do stats in their spare time!
  4. Explore.   This goes along with the observations you may have when asking some basic questions, but now it may be expanded to look for trends, patterns, and differences.  Like the video points out, it’s useful to compare things according to categories, space, and time.  The only real way to do this on a scale larger than a chapter or two is to take each place mentioned in the passage and find it on a map (hopefully one that corresponds with the time period you’re studying) or take a similar approach to finding/plotting events through time.  To help in that regard, you may find this interative visual to be useful.  On a smaller scale, highlighting key elements by marking them with colors and shapes can help you identify repeating or contrasting phrases.  Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if your study tools did that for you, allowing one to apply this to everything in the Bible at once so you can spend more time thinking and less time marking?  I think that day is fast approaching.
  5. Get your story.  Once you have some idea of what’s being emphasized, compared, or explained, it’s time to put it all together. What does this text actually mean? How does it relate to other stories?  How does it relate to your own life?
  6. Design your visual.  It’s just not enough that you understand it.  You want to share what you’ve learned…but how?  How might you communicate key points in a meaningful, truthful way without simply reciting the text or handing over a list of raw data?  This is another reason why most analysis, both biblical and otherwise, is limited to smaller, more manageable bites.  It’s a fairly unique skill set to handle large volumes of facts and communicate them in a way that isn’t overwhelmingly complex or else too watered-down for the sake of simplicity.  I am finding more and more folks out there like Nathan Yau who are teaching others these skills and I’m learning a great deal from their online resources.  I sincerely hope that the visuals on this blog do a decent job of that for you as well.

This is just one of the ways that I believe MetaV can be applied to broaden our understanding – taking the Bible as a whole, seeking common or diverging elements while remaining true to the intent of each individual passage.  If you’re looking for other ways to understand the data in MetaV, keep checking this blog for upcoming visualizations or do what I do: find sites like Flowing Data to get some ideas and “how-to” articles.  Then, let me know what you come up with by leaving your comments below.

Categories
Inspirations MetaV The Bible Vision

What’s next: Graphing the Graphe

For many in our day, to picture the Bible is to think of an old dusty book on the shelf with leather binding and golden accents.  Its pages are so thin you’re afraid you’ll destroy them at every turn, or perhaps you believe the words on its pages will destroy you.  I have taken the words from those pages and linked them with explanatory works in order to show you the Bible in a way that you’ve never seen it before.

Scripture contains stories about thousands of people over thousands of years in thousands of places.  We can take those thousands of words and make them into a picture.  The root word from which we translate the term “Scripture” is graphe. This same root word is also the basis for our English word “graph.”  How appropriate is it then to to translate the words of scripture into graphs as we use that word today?

Christians of the renaissance “visualized” the Bible with works of art that are now considered priceless.  Now we can replace the oil and canvas with data and computers.  I would contend that this approach is no less beautiful or creative.  Now that the foundation has been laid, in the coming months on this blog I will bring forth the realization of this vision.  Never before seen patterns may emerge.  Beautiful structures may unfold.  Readers will see the consistency of design in God’s words and works through time, space, and the soul of mankind.  This is truly an exciting time.

Categories
Application MetaV The Bible Version History Vision

MetaV 2.0 Now Available

MetaV 2.0 is now available to download as an Access database or as a group of csv files.  I have attempted to make it as easy as possible to understand the structure of the data, but feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.

This is perhaps the most complex undertaking I’ve ever engaged in and I know it simply would be impossible without the ongoing guidance and helping hand of the Lord our God.  There are many improvements that can and will be made in future versions, but the time for collecting information is past and the time for turning it into action is upon us.  As I’ve seen from the response to my infographic, “Mapping God’s Bloodline,” visual presentations of biblical data can reach far and wide, gaining influence in some of the most unlikely sectors of our society.

MetaV provides the foundation for more visualizations of this type.  With it, data experts can correlate biblical people, places, and timelines in ways not yet imagined.  For the foreseeable future, I shall be focused on bringing the big picture of the Bible into view using modern data techniques.  I welcome your ideas and would be happy to share on this blog any visualizations or analyses you have performed.

Click Here to go to the download page.

Categories
Analysis Cool Tools Genealogy MetaV The Bible The First Days Visualizations

Mapping God’s Bloodline

Follow the genealogy of Jesus from the creation of Adam and Eve through Noah, the tribes of Israel, King David, and finally Joseph and Mary. Zoom out for a broader perspective or zoom in to examine finer details.

Categories
MetaV The Bible Version History Vision

Progress Update

A lot has progressed since I first posted the central parts of MetaV.  At that time, I had only converted and indexed the text of the Bible itself.  Since then, I’ve managed to add cross references, topics, time lines, readability info, Strong’s Concordance, and locations.  I’ve even made a number of tools to explore each “module,” and one to explore the timeline, places, and text all in one place.  But, what’s next?  The diagram below shows the modules I have envisioned so far to include in the database.  Black outlines indicate areas of future development; white outlines are completed modules (tables).

Each sub-group has at least the main part of it complete, with one exception: People.  What can I say? People are messy.  I know there are a number of genealogies out there and a number of tools produced to explore them, but finding an openly available one in an appropriately structured file that’s free for public use is proving difficult.  Therefore, I expect it will take significantly longer to compile such a reference on my own using what I’ve scraped together so far.

I have chosen not to upload the updated database until I at least have people identified and tagged with basic relationship information (father/son, husband/wife).  After that iteration is complete, I’ll make that available and begin work on the remaining modules and other refinements at the same time as producing new, simple tools to explore the database.  Any estimate on how long that will take would only be a guess.

Categories
Application Cool Tools MetaV

Introducing MetaV

I’ve spent some time already on this blog talking about the ideas behind MetaV: what it is, why it’s different, etc. Now, the map and timeline data is complete and the first visual exploration tool is here.  This work is not licensed, so feel free to share, copy, and modify as you wish.

MetaV

Categories
Analysis Inspirations MetaV The Bible

It’s about time!

One central idea behind this new tool called MetaV is to link everything in the Bible to a period of time, then use that to perform a search or put a passage in greater context. Today, this is one step closer to being real.

R.A. Torrey compiled the Treasury of Scripture knowledge which contains the most cross-references of any concordance available.  It also contains a year associated with each passage.  I have taken this data and plotted it along a timeline (below) in a way that I believe will be simple to understand and use when combined with other panes of information.

The concept comes from atomic mass spectroscopy.  A simple strip with bars on it of varying colors or line densities indicates particular wavelengths of an element.

The same layout can be used for a timeline, substituting years for wavelengths and verses for particles of light where BC is denoted with a negative number and the darkness of the color indicates how many verses deal with that year, as seen above.

This graphic is based on Torrey’s book, but in its electronic form it must be checked for data quality and completeness before being incorporated into anything more detailed.  The simplicity of such a view, when combined with details from associated passages and other useful information has a real potential to make a complex, interrelated whole more understandable.

Categories
Application Current Events MetaV Politics The Bible The Last Days The World Visualizations

Egypt in the Bible

With the recent uprising in Egypt, I thought it would be worthwhile to get a little historical context.  What better place to go than the Bible?  Take a look at this interactive map to see all the places in modern-day Egypt that are mentioned in the Bible.

 

Categories
Cool Tools MetaV The Bible Vision

Quality Interaction

I’ve been out shopping for cars recently, and it has reminded me of one of the shortcomings I’ve noticed among Christian websites I tend to visit. As usual, I intend to fill this gap through our efforts at SoulLiberty.com. Let me explain.

Something I appreciate about car websites is that they put a lot of effort into showing you the main features of each model. I can see the inside and outside, and often do a 360-degree tour. In each view, I can see certain areas featured; click on them and find out more details, see a video, etc. Of course, a lot of this is designed to dazzle the buyer into an emotional state where he simply must have that car becuause “it’s just so cool!”

But aren’t certain things about the Bible just “so cool?”  I happen to think so.  Then, why not present things in such a way that conveys that feeling to the new or maturing Christian student?  If a storytelling professor can make statistics look like the most interesting thing in the world, can’t geeky web designers do the same with the most epic and fascinating story of all time?

Guttenberg invented the printing press for one big reason: to distribute the Bible to as many people as possible.  That was a time when Christians were the master of new technology intended to carry out God’s calling.  Today, the most high-tech ideas are motivated by material gain or fulfilling other carnal lusts.  How can we begin to turn this back around?

One place to start is by implementing today’s technology to aid in teaching Biblical ideas.  Yes, churches and ministries are always adopting new tools, but they were new to the world 5-10 years ago.  One of my 2011 goals is to bring the Bible itself into a tool that is barely over a month old.  That’s the future.  Right now, we have some catching up to do.

Go back to the car example: our website applied that years-old idea to the Ark of the Covenant.  While a clip from Indiana Jones might invoke the “that’s so cool” thoughts, I felt it would be better to make something different.  What we have now is a 3-D model of the Ark that can be explored from the exterior and interior.  You can click on icons to learn about key features, just like that Corvette you’ve been drooling over.  It’s interesting, informative, and biblical.  It links yesterday to today through technology and by linking the Ark’s symbolism to our daily Christian walk.

Ark of the Covenant Interactive Tool

What I am not advocating here is a wordly approach to evangelism with focus groups, high-pressure marketing campaigns, and so on.  There’s nothing wrong with advertising, however. Isn’t that what evangelism is anyway – advertising the Gospel far and wide?  I’m also not arguing that putting a little more glitz into a website will have a direct impact on the visitor’s journey to salvation. I’m simply pleading for a higher standard. Give God your best each and every day in everything you do, and it will eventually rub off on others.

Categories
Inspirations MetaV Personal stories The Christian

From Business Intelligence to Biblical Wisdom

Let me share  a story about how God orchestrates events in our lives to accomplish his will and help us find our calling.  I started this blog not long after moving to a new department in my company.  The road I’ve been speeding down since then is worth describing.

My first attempt at getting the transfer failed.  Another engineer who hired on at our location shortly after me got it instead.  Later on, I discovered that the divine plan was better than my own.  A few months after that first interview, another job in the same department came available, but this one was far better suited to my skills and one which I knew would be much more interesting to me.  It would involve a great deal of database manipulation for reporting, analysis, and whatever else might need to be done with our computer systems that I could help with.

Around that same time frame, I was envisioning a draft concept for a bible search/study tool that I have coined “MetaV.”  All I had was the idea and an illegible sketch.  I was certain that I’d have to invest in some new tools and steadily, patiently learn some new programming language to make it work with the database I had begun building.  That all changed when I swapped jobs and began learning about newer ways to gather, compute, analyze, and visualize data.

Nearly every month I have learned of new tools and techniques which help me take leaps forward in various projects for this site and at work.  Many times I just “happen” to discover them.  As one who believes in God’s omnipotence rather than luck, I can see how he uses things like this in “secular” circumstances to teach us and mold us spiritually.  There is really no difference between our work lives and spiritual lives.  God is everywhere, in control of everything and every part of our day.

The field collectively known as Business Intelligence includes players like SAP (Crystal Reports), IBM Cognos, and of course Microsoft (plus many others).  Then, along comes Tableau.  It turns out that the people that make the most annoying Facebook games collect and analyze user data in ways you wouldn’t believe – and they use Tableau to do it.  I thought: what if I could use that to analyze scripture?  What if we applied business intelligence tools to find biblical wisdom?

Now, don’t get me wrong – only the Holy Spirit can truly bring understanding of his words.  But, having a tool that provides a view of scripture you’ve never seen before can be a big help in beginning that process.  I am happy to report that Tableau does have a free version of their software for use with public data that I have begun applying to MetaV.  Thanks to the awareness of new tools gained through my new job duties, I am using weeks-old technology to create things like readability graphics without having to learn any special programming or making any investment other than time.

With a little more of that investment, an integrated view of the entire Bible with a map, timeline, and details about each verse in a single interactive view is not that far away.  Had I gotten the job I originally went for, I don’t know that I’d be this far along in the process.  I don’t know that I would have found the tools to help me do the things that I believe God has equipped and called me to do.  I do know that his timing and his plans are perfect.  When that time is right, readers of this blog will be the first to discover an entirely new approach to bible study.

Categories
Analysis Application MetaV The Bible Tools Visualizations

Readability chart

There are numerous claims about the readability of various English Bible translations. The chart below is the result of my own calculations using the standard Flesch-Kincaid grade level formula. Many other readability calculations do not specify whether sentence lengths are based on punctuation or verse divisions. This tool allows you to see it either way. In some sections, the results are wildly different.

This tool also makes it easy to find readability levels for each author, book and chapter (on the advanced tab), unlike the more general readability comparisons you may have seen already. Due to copyright restrictions, it is difficult to obtain electronic versions of the entire text of translations other than the KJV, so at the moment we do not have a simple tool available for comparing readability accross different versions.

(chart may take a moment to load)

 

Categories
Inspirations MetaV Personal stories The Bible The Christian

Motivated by the Impossible

With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
– Matthew 19:26b

After I graduated from one of the most prestigious institutions in America, the US Air Force Academy, I was filled with pride … too much, in fact.  One of my first assignments was to create project reports from an online database which I had never used.  I met the challenge head on as any new military officer would.

My reply to the task was: “If it is possible, I can figure out how to do it no matter what it is.”  One of my newest colleagues who was familiar with this system quickly took the cue to initiate some “mentorship.”  Perhaps the hero persona of this higher-ranking Afghanistan war veteran compelled him to save his troops from the crash that a rookie like me could have caused by flying blind.

The system didn’t crash.  He showed me a lot, and so did some computer experts I had the privilege of working with in northern Japan.  At my next base, I had the same attitude toward a similar challenge – this time with a lot more knowledge and even less humility.  Once again, the system we had couldn’t do what we needed and the red tape involved with replacing it could wrap around the world a hundred times.  After following the chain of command all the way up to the person responsible for this system across the entire Air Force, he explained that what we wanted to do was “not possible.”

What self-respecting company grade officer would accept that as an answer?  “Impossible? I’ll show you impossible!” A few months later I found a workaround solution and everybody was happy with the new process.  It saved some people a lot of work and gave others more control over the work they were interested in getting accomplished.

My intent here is not to boast of these accomplishments.  God has brought me a long way from that kind of big-headedness.  My point is that when others say something is impossible it is often because they cannot imagine many possibilities beyond their experience.  In that respect, inexperience is an advantage when guided properly.  With God’s leading and power, all things are possible.

The things I describe on this blog are part of my ongoing attempt to realize what may otherwise remain unknown and undone.  It is daunting to think of collecting biblical scholarship in such a way that you can see and analyze it all at once rather than picking through it a piece at a time.  It is a mountain of a challenge, but it is not impossible to move such mountains. Lord, help us!

Categories
Cool Tools MetaV The Bible Visualizations

Everywhere, All at Once!

We have come a long way from the days when you had to choose between an unwieldy Bible atlas or else limit yourself to a handful of maps in the back of your everyday Bible. With the proliferation of free online mapping tools hosted by Google, Yahoo, MapQuest, and others, we have the ability to overlay practically any information we want onto satellite imagery or simple region outlines. Naturally, some industrious Christians have incorporated some of the information from that old atlas into interactive maps.

One of these is BibleMap.org which does a great job of helping you explore the places mentioned in a particular chapter of the Bible that you may be reading or studying at the time. Another approach is that of OpenBible.info which allows users to download place marks for Google Earth, either for the entire Bible or individual books.  One limitation of each of these is that it is either difficult or impossible to see every place all at once without downloading additional software.

That’s going to change right here, right now.  Thanks to a powerful tool called Tableau Public recently made free for limited use on open-source data, we can download a file from a site like OpenBible.info and make some interesting comparisons.  We can vary the colors and sizes of each place mark, filter for a particular place or book, and much more that can help us discover new insights or rediscover old ones. For example, the New Testament more heavily references northern regions and … wait a second! Since when was Spain referenced in the Bible? And, just where are Gog and Magog, anyway?

Here are a few tips for exploring the information.  Click the legend to show only New or Old Testament references.  Hover over a place mark to see more info, or click on it to see all the references associated with that place.  Click-and-drag to select more than one place.  Use the arrow icon at the bottom to allow for zooming and panning around the map.  Choose one or more books for other filter options.  Click the name of  a place in the data sheet to reveal its location on the map.  Most of all, have fun seeing the Bible in a whole new way! Note: the map may take a while to load.

 

There are a few things to bear in mind, however. First, the country divisions on this map correlate to present boundaries, not the boundaries as they were in the past. Bodies of water or whole countries are shown as a single place mark, which can make things somewhat difficult to interpret. I did not compile the original data, but as near as I can tell it is limited to explicit references of a place by name; it does not include verses which describe an event which took place in a particular location but doesn’t mention the place by name. Lastly, places mentioned during a time period before Noah’s flood are not shown since the global flood would have reshaped the landscape enough to make its location impossible to accurately identify.