Visualizations – Page 2

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.

Every now and then people come across a classic scholarly work that for one reason or another seems to have been forgotten or at least taken out of the main stream of cultural influence although their truth is just as timeless as when it was originally produced. Clarence Larkin’s book, Dispensational Truth, is one such treasure. It is still sold in Christian bookstores and has been referenced by popular authors like Tim LaHaye, but that’s about the extent of it. His charts are available within Sword Searcher, which has a good bio. You can also get the full text and images for free at www.preservedwords.com .

To give you an idea of his influence over time, consider this: every illustration I’ve ever seen describing the statue in the vision of Daniel 2:31-45 is a variation of Larkin’s original graphic.

Larkin Chart Daniel's Vision — Clarence Larkin’s chart on Daniel’s Vision

I can identify with this particular author because, like me, he was a young mechanical engineer with some experience in drafting before being called into ministry. While a pastor, he employed his skills toward creating exacting illustrations of the Bible. The Larkin Estate indicates that he produced 205 charts and illustrations, complete with biblical references and full explanations of each. The ones I find most impressive are his works titled “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth” and “The Book of Revelation.”

As you can see, the original illustration is a black-and-white print. While Mr. Larkin did produce color charts, those he published were not, perhaps due to technology or cost limitations on producing a full-color book back in the 1920’s. I have found some colorized versions, but in my opinion they lack the original quality of his work. It has been on my to-do list for some time to make an attempt at converting at least one of these charts to a high-quality, interactive web presentation. Given the astounding detail of each chart, I’m not expecting to complete that task any time soon (any graphic designers out there looking for a project?).

He built these graphics at a time when no one had heard of the Bible being converted to a digital format. No one could yet dream of the complex visualizations made possible by advanced technology of the information age. I personally believe he was ahead of his time in creating ways to visualize related points in a unified whole that gives a consistent biblical picture.

Clarence Larkin gives due credit to the one who made such a work possible:

“With profound gratitude and thankfulness for the blessing of his Heavenly Father…in the hands of the Holy Spirit…”

Indeed, without the direction of the Spirit, no one man alone could accomplish this remarkable work. He also could not have done it if he had chosen to focus efforts on presenting and debating multiple theological views. On this point, the author states:

“[I have] sought to avoid such criticisms and to simply expound the Word of God as the Holy Spirit opened it up to [me.]”

It took three years to produce a book on just one theological view which he earnestly believed and was framed by nothing more or less than the scriptures. Had he gone beyond that into every wind of doctrine, three years would scarcely be enough to complete a discussion on the Book of Daniel alone!

Therein lies an area in which I believe it’s time to shift our thinking about the way we produce and use Bible study software. Everything available today includes a host of commentaries, versions, systematic theologies…all of which tend to have conflicting viewpoints to one degree or another. Yet, when Christians gather together for Bible study, only one such view is presented. To do otherwise would lead to confusion and be time prohibitive to boot. The same holds true for the working man or woman today who has trouble finding time to even read the Bible daily, let alone sift through a full library of data.

The teacher of such a study would wisely consult multiple resources while praying for God’s guidance, so in that sense today’s study tools are great. But, I believe that in-depth study should be made possible for everyone, not just the scholars and teachers. One way to do this is to 1) make it free to everyone and 2) limit the information to only authoritative works which agree with those of the author of said software as guided by the Spirit. While I do agree that it’s a not a good idea to limit access to multiple viewpoints, I do not agree that presenting an endless list of options to sort through accomplishes that goal. That kind of information overload actually makes good information harder to find, which is the last thing I want.

By restricting the database to a more popular-level summary based on detailed and reliable scholarship of old (such as the charts mentioned above), I expect it to be possible for one or a few godly men to produce more advanced tools quite economically. They could be used by anyone and would contain the same level of accuracy, detail, and cohesiveness of the many works of Clarence Larkin and others like him. Anyone willing to help in this endeavor is more than encouraged to pray and if you feel led to do so, contact me by leaving a comment on this blog.