Category: The Bible

Categories
Application MetaV The Bible Tools

MetaV Downloads

MetaV Logo_Large

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
Culture History The Bible The World Translation

The Kings English – 100 phrases in 3 Minutes

Glen Scrivener, an evangelist in Eastbourne, UK and blogger at KingsEnglish.info, masterfully works through 100 phrases we commonly use in the English language which came from the King James version of the Holy Bible. Read his blog for a new phrase each day to celebrate its 400th anniversary.

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
Cool Tools Preservation The Bible Translation

Dead Sea Scrolls Now Online

Most Christians have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their importance to biblical scholarship, but few have ever actually seen them. Now, that no longer has to be the case. The Israel Museum has teamed up with Google to not only make the images of the scrolls available digitally, but to make them searchable with interactive English translation.  Not only can you search the text on the Museum’s website, but now it will show up in Google search results (including in custom search results on soulliberty.com) as well.  They have even put a little bit of “flare” to it by animating the paper appear to be unrolling as you scroll through it.  Check it out here: http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/

Categories
Cool Tools The Savior Visualizations

The Volume of the Book is Written of Him

When I first began exploring word clouds as a means of visualizing biblical data, the result using Wordle was little better than a jumble of words sized according to frequency, with random colors and angular variations to add interest.  It’s a decent proof of concept, but as I said earlier, it fails as a design concept unless it’s intelligently combined with other elements.  Since then, I have discovered more well-developed technology that can “auto-magically” create word clouds which are good enough to stand alone as an artistic element.

At least one tool, Tagxedo, bridges the gap between Wordle’s overly simplistic automation and the manual processes required for intricate typographic designs such as maps made from words placed by hand, one by one.  Its strength is in its ability to layout and color the words based on an uploaded image.  I have re-created my original word cloud using words in the KJV (with some highly common words intentionally removed), laid out using an image of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns.

 Jesus

This tool allows you to save images in a range of useful formats as well as create your own products using that design.  Interestingly, when I shared the above image with the Tagxedo creator, he pointed out the fact that the Tagxedo store features a few products already designed with Bible words, albeit from a different image of Jesus.

What I particularly like about this concept is that the usual images of Jesus are merely artistic imaginations which may not have anything at all to do with how he really looked.  Instead, we get a truer, clearer picture of the Savior from the words he spoke though the writers of scripture.  How much more appropriate is it to paint his image with those words?

Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me.

-Psalm 40:7

Categories
Analysis The Bible Visualizations

How People Share the Bible

The Bible Gateway Blog has an interesting bit of analysis today on how people share the Bible versus how they read it online (based on BibleGateway.com statistics).  From the post:

When people share Bible passages on Facebook and Twitter, they share individual verses 74% of the time and chapters only 9% of the time…when people read the Bible on Bible Gateway, they read complete chapters over 50% of the time and individual verses 20% of the time.

What I enjoy about these images (like the one above) is seeing how we can take massive amounts of data – thousands upon thousands of Tweets, Facebook shares, and website hits, then plot them out in a way that makes larger patterns readily recognizable.  Those who know nothing of statistics or data gathering can visually compare social network activity with other types of online activity.  This is possible because our brains more easily recognize patterns visually than in a massive spreadsheet.

I’m especially encouraged when I see this taking place with regard to biblical interests.  It is God, after all, who gave us these communication skills and the cognitive abilities to interpret things with our eyes.  When art and architecture was all the rage, we got the Sistine Chapel and Notre Dame – both of which are explicity meant to honor God.  Today, information is the dominant cultural theme but it most often lacks any Christian concepts.  It’s about time we started catching up to those trends, and this kind of analysis is a good step.

UPDATE:  The author of the Bible Gateway post has expanded on his methods and provided futher analysis on his website, OpenBible.info.  If you’re a data “viz wiz”, you can also download the raw data for your own analysis (thanks for making that available!).

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
The Bible The Savior Visualizations

The Trinity in QR Code

QR Code Trinity


What you’re looking at is a QR code.  Anyone familiar with these would immediately recognize that it is unlike all other such codes – a distinction which will be explained shortly.  They have become prolific in marketing campaigns because they allow smart phone users to point their camera at the code then get a quick response (QR) that usually takes them to a website with further information without having to remember or type in a long URL.  It can also be used to share contact info on business cards, encode some bit of text, and much more.  Those unfamiliar with QR codes can think of it as a souped-up bar code.

In thinking about applications for MetaV, I thought about ways to crunch huge amounts of information into smaller spaces so that a “big picture” is readily apparent while still making it possible to get further details on demand.  While this illustration is not built directly using the MetaV database, is does represent this vision rather well.

I wanted to find a way to use this technology to bring people information about God rather than some product or service I’m trying to sell.  An easy way to do this would be to encode a URL to some Bible passage.  YouVersion.com uses this principle in its Facebook sharing tool, for instance.  One could create a collection of these codes about a particular topic, but how might you arrange those codes in a meaningful way that represents the over-arching concept?

The answer I arrived at was the three level QR Code, above.  The first level is a code that simply returns the text “God.”  The second level, shown in the colored squares which are normally solid squares that serve as alignment markers, represents the three persons of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The third level is the area with the smallest squares which again are usually a solid color arranged according to normal QR code specifications.  These individual squares return 129 different Bible passages that tell us more about each person of the Trinity, the relationships between them, and our relationship to God.

Beyond the directly encoded text, this work is a sort of metaphor for the Trinity and the Bible itself.  The allusion to the Trinity is obvious from the fact that three different levels of the code are used to represent a single Godhead.  The parallel with the Bible is a bit more subtle, but just as relevant.  Taken on the whole, everyone knows the Bible speaks of God.  One has to get just a little deeper to know that it’s talking about a Triune God.  Go deeper with your study to discover more details in specific passages.  Another interesting aspect of QR Codes that they have in common with the Bible is the “error-correction” properties of it.  What this means is that some portion of it can be destroyed or be otherwise unreadable and yet the overall code retains its message accurately.  When we compare Scripture with Scripture, unclear or isolated portions become understandable when put within the greater context.

I would encourage anyone with a mobile device capable of reading QR codes (all you need is a decent camera and a free scanner app) to play around with this.  It works best with low glare and low ambient lighting, as demonstrated in the video below.  You can also get this as a poster to put up in areas where tech-savvy people may take a second glance to dive into it and hopefully learn more about who God is.

Note: QR Code is a registered trademark of Denso Wave Incorporated in the following countries: Japan, United States of America, Australia and Europe.

Categories
Preservation The Bible Translation

Is Your Bible a Muslim/Mormon Bible?

There have been numerous articles and books written in the last 20 years proving that the NKJV, NASB, NIV, etc. are all products of Occult (Westcott and Hort) and Roman Catholic (Vaticanus) inspired bible scholarship.  Therefore, I will not attempt to re-invent the wheel here.  Instead, I will pose a new question:  Is it possible that your favorite “Bible” has been re-written by those who have a fundamental belief in common with those who claim the Quran, the Book of Mormon, or the Watchtower Society to be true?

Muslims, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the Bible contains many mistakes because after 2,000 years, the Bible no longer contains the original words from the original languages it was written in.  This is why they believe that the Quran was given to Muhammad or the Book of Mormon was given to Joseph Smith.  Both books are said to be God’s attempts to correct the errors in the Bible wrought by years of man-made copyist mistakes.

Ironically, this is the same argument that many Bible-correcting Evangelicals use to justify why they have abandoned the King James Bible in favor of modern “translations” that delete entire verses and change anywhere from 16,000 words (NKJV) to 60,000 words (NIV) of God’s Infallible Scriptures.  Just like Muslims, Mormons, Atheists, and every other religious group that denies the inspiration and accuracy of the Scriptures, they do not believe that God is powerful enough to preserve His holy words for all generations.  They deny the biblical doctrine of preservation and focus solely on the inspiration of the “originals” (which no longer exist).

Consider the following examples:

1)      Muslims emphasize the original (just as all textual critics and “fake bible” users do)

“First of all, it is important to know that if the “Bibles” of today, with all their versions and differences in the quantity of their “books” and “gospels”, were in fact the Original Holy Word of GOD Almighty, then there would be no need for the Noble Quran.” http://www.answering-christianity.com/warning.htm

2)     Compare the words of Joseph Smith (Mormon) with the words of Hank Hanegraff (typical Evangelical):

Joseph Smith: “I believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 327).http://lds.org/study/topics/bible-inerrancy-of?lang=eng&query=bible+errors

Hank Hanegraff:  “The Holy Scriptures… are therefore infallible in the original writings”http://www.equip.org/site/beliefs

3)      Or the Jehovah’s Witnesses with the words of Christianity Today (speaking on textual criticism):

The Watchtower:  “The copyists made only a few minor errors, and a comparison of these has established the original text inspired by God.” http://www.watchtower.org/e/lmn/article_03.htm

Christianity Today:  “In the New Testament only one word per 1,000 is in any way doubtful, and no point of doctrine is lost when verses not “in better manuscripts” are omitted.” http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/october7/31.102.html

Modern Evangelical scholars think that God is a liar when He tells us in Psalm 12:6-7 that he will preserve his words forever.  Psalms 12:6-7 “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.  Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.”

They  think that God is a liar when he tells us that not one jot or tittle will pass from the law:  Matthew 5:18 “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”  Luke 16:17 “And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.”

These same Bible-correcting hypocrites have no problem telling Muslims, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses that they are “wrong” to change the Quran, Book of Mormon, and New World Bible over time.  For example, James White (who helped produce the NASB counterfeit bible):  “By placing parallel passages in the books of Moses and Abraham side by side, an evolution of thought is clearly demonstrated within the Pearl of Great Price itself.”  http://vintage.aomin.org/ldstheology.html.  How Bible-correctors such as James White can lambast Mormons, Muslims, or J.W.’s with a straight face after changing 16,000 to 60,000 words in their own “bibles” is beyond the scope of comprehension.  A modern Textual Critic producing a NKJV, NIV, NASB, etc. to fit his personal theology is no different than a Jehovah’s Witness changing words he doesn’t like to fit his personal theology.

Sadly, many well-intentioned Christians have built their ministries on attacking God’s words and replacing them with “better translations” and “better meanings.”  Like the Pope, they elevate themselves above Scripture in their desire to pontificate on God’s Holy Bible (essentially making them God).  They further imply that the “laity” cannot truly understand the scriptures without their exposition (and years of studying dead languages).  These well-intentioned yet carnal Christians can be summed up with three passages:

1 Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

Revelation 22:18-19 “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:  And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

1 Corinthians 11:19 “For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.”

It does not matter if you are Spurgeon, Moody, Ironside, etc.  If you have the gall to change God’s words, you are treading into heresy.  Interestingly, one of the main arguments that non-Christians use as to why they don’t believe the Bible is because there are so many different versions.  Unlike carnal Christians, non-Christians realize the logical inconsistency in claiming an all-powerful God can somehow lose his infallible/perfect Bible to the sands of time.  But of course, since you are a Bible-believer, you witness to non-Christians on a frequent basis about Jesus Christ and you already know about this regular objection.

For the record:

1)      There are no originals anymore.  Anybody who refers you to the “originals” is either a liar, ignorant, or insane.

2)      There is a King James equivalent Bible in every major language on Earth.  Also for you Anglo-phobes, English is the modern equivalent of a universal language in all facets of life, just as Greek and later Latin were.  Doesn’t it make sense God would communicate His message in the most prevalent language of each time period?

3)      It is far easier to open up a dictionary for 400 words you don’t understand than it is to compare multiple fake Bible versions with conflicting words and verses you don’t understand. Studying the Bible in Hebrew/Greek is a waste of time if you can’t understand the Bible in your own language.  This is why most “scholars” can spend years learning languages yet not possess an elementary knowledge of the Bible itself.

4)      You don’t have to have a Bible of any kind to be saved.  However, if you want to learn more about your Lord and Savior, it helps to have his Real Bible (the KJV today) as opposed to some man-made counterfeit (NKJV, NASB, NIV, etc.).

Christians:  Do you side with God’s pure words or do you side with cults (mainstream or fringe) who continue to revise those words?  Do you believe in God’s promise of preservation or do you believe in the heathen’s doctrine of Bible corruption?  Is your heart so hardened that you refuse to admit that you’ve been wrong for all these years?  Admittedly, we are all fallen sinners.  It’s tough to admit you lack the discernment to recognize God’s words when you see them.  It’s equally tough to apologize to both God and your fellow Bible believers for maligning both God’s words (preserved in English through the KJV) and those Christians who actually believe their Bibles to be true.

Categories
Analysis Cool Tools The Bible Tools Translation Visualizations

English Bible Version Explorer

I’m a little late joining the bandwagon on celebrating the 400th anniversary of the KJV, but here’s my contribution to the mix. I found an interesting web site called Bible Reader’s Museum which, among other things, has extensive listings of Bible versions throughout time.  Being the chart junkie that I am, I converted their English Bible version list (used by permission) to an interactive graph of versions over time.  It begins at quarter-century intervals and then changes to smaller intervals as you filter out the years.  The list at the bottom filters along with it, making it simple to find one or several, then click the name to go to that version’s website.  It’s amazing to see just how many translations there have been over the years. Take a look!

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
Alleged Errors Biology The Bible The First Days

Of course there are Unicorns

The Bible mentions unicorns 9 times. Critics use this as a means to argue that scripture is a collection of myths. Yet, a brief study shows the Bible is talking about an animal that is nothing like the creature of fanciful legend.

Categories
Anthropology The Bible The First Days Visualizations

Knowledge Networks and the Tower of Babel

I happened to come across a project today that maps the links between various Wikipedia articles to help understand the categories and topics that users find to be related.  Normally I wouldn’t share such a project on this blog, but since they used the Tower of Babel as an example, I thought it would be fitting.  The project is from Sepans, called Mapped Wiki, and you can see their results below:

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

Mapping God’s Bloodline

Bible Genealogy Map

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.

Continue reading “Mapping God’s Bloodline”