Daniel Taylor's interactive visualization of the Skeptic's Annotated Bible
Criticism of God’s word is nothing new. It was there in the beginning (Gen 3:1) and it lives on today. The ideas are always the same, just repackaged and recopied from someone else. Sometimes the tactic is simple mockery – taking a beautiful work created by someone else and flipping it onto its unbiblical head. It requires some dedication but little imagination. Case-in-point: the most popular visualization of “contradictions” from Project Reason is not much more than a re-hash of Chris Harrison’s original award-winning visualization of cross references.
How can we know the Bible is of supernatural origin, and what makes it different from any other holy book that people claim to be from God? To answer this question, many focus on evidence we find outside of the Bible: archaeological studies, historical documentation, and advanced scientific knowledge – all of which can be very helpful to answer skepticism. These lines of argument are built on knowledge found outside the Bible, but there is one line of evidence that relies mainly on scripture itself: the fulfillment of prophecy.
First, let me briefly address the common argument that using the Bible to prove the Bible is circular reasoning. The Bible is not just one book. It is a collection of 66 books by 40 different authors. If it were one work by one author (like many other “holy” books), it would be circular reasoning. This article shows the predictions of prophets whose fulfillment is witnessed by someone else in another time period. In many cases, this witness is recorded in scripture; in a few cases it is mentioned elsewhere in history. This represents multiple, independent lines of corroborating evidence – not circular reasoning.
Divine Origin
Only a being which exists outside the constraints of time can give a detailed description of what will happen in the future with one-hundred percent accuracy. (In general, I have found those who claim a biblical prophecy has failed to be fulfilled are referring to end-times predictions they have mis-categorized.) This is a characteristic which sets it apart from the Qur’an and many other “holy” books which have no prophecies whatsoever or the Book of Mormon which is filled with false predictions.
Here I’ll describe just a few prophecies which I believe prove the Bible’s supernatural origin. See 100prophecies.org, CARM, or our Google Custom Search to find many, many more mind-blowing examples of God’s prophetic words given to his people who compiled them in what we know as the Bible.
Daniel’s 69 Weeks
Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
– Daniel 9:25
This prophecy is part of larger discourse in Daniel 9:24-27 detailing the “seventy weeks” revealed to the prophet Daniel by the angel Gabriel. In verse 25, he indicates that the Messiah will come 7 weeks plus 62 weeks (69 weeks total) from the time a decree to restore Jerusalem was issued to the time the Messiah would arrive. Each “week” would have generally been understood by Jewish readers as representing a period of 7 years, each year being 360 days according to the Jewish calendar. This would make the time period 483 years (173,880 days) from the decree to the Messiah’s coming.
The decree came when Nehemiah met with Artaxerxes in 445 B.C. (Neh 2:4-8). That would place Messiah’s coming in 32 A.D. for the prophecy to be exact. The day of his coming was the Triumphal Entry recorded in Luke 19:28-48 (and parallel accounts in other gospels). Prior to that, he kept telling his disciples “mine hour has not yet come.” Chuck Missler argues that Luke 19:44 is in fact a rebuke for not knowing the “hour of they visitation” because the prophecy was so precise they should have been waiting for him that day. For a fuller explanation of this prophecy, other remarkable aspects of the “seventy weeks”, and discussion of the authenticity of this text, see Dr. Missler’s article.
Daniel’s Vision of the Four Great Beasts
Statue from Daniel Chapter 2.
The vision given by the Angel Gabriel in Daniel 7-8 is parallel to the vision of the statue in Daniel 2 (the photo on the right). I have chosen the former because of its specificity. Daniel records not only the symbolism but the interpretation of it which lines up perfectly with the history of the nations listed.
Daniel 8:20 names the kings of “Media and Persia” symbolized by a ram with great power. This matches the Medo-Persian empire as recorded by many historians. Daniel 8:21 names the king of “Grecia” symbolized by a goat which overtakes the ram from the west. Here again, the names and geography match the record of the Greek Empire and the conquest of Alexander the Great. Finally, he says four kingdoms will arise when the Greek Empire falls. Though he did not name these kings, they were: Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Cassander, and Seleucus.
Far more could be said about the sequence of events, specific symbolism, and other details which Daniel would not be able to manipulate to show he was a true prophet. See this article by Kyle Butt for a more thorough analysis and defense of this prophecy.
The Reign of Cyrus
Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (emphasis mine)
-Isaiah 45:1
Here Isaiah names a king who did indeed gain great power without much resistance. It was written at least 100 years before Cyrus was even born, let alone had risen to power. This is yet another prophecy which could not have been fulfilled by a group of people wishing to validate what they foretold. Chuck Missler has a good article on the authenticity of Isaiah and the reign of Cyrus.
Destruction of the Temple
Jesus explained that the temple in Jerusalem would be torn down all the way to its foundations in Matthew 24:1-2 (Also see the prophecy in Daniel 9:26 and parallel accounts in Mark 13:1-2 and Luke 21:5-6.):
And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
Josephus, a historian who was also a Jewish Priest (i.e. did not view Jesus as the promised Messiah), recorded the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. The lack of any mention of this in the Gospels is further evidence of their authenticity and early writing. If Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were tossing in mentions of fulfilled prophecies to support their stories, why would they all leave out such an important event? Surely this would have lent more weight to Jesus’ words and given them reason to make up this evidence as well. The more likely explanation is that in fact the Gospels were written beforehand and the truth of Jesus’ words were recorded by others at a later date. Read more about this event here.
Jesus Christ
In addition to Daniel’s vision listed above, over 300 prophecies about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were made in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament (see a complete list here). Some are more open to interpretation than others, but the sheer volume of messianic predictions is undeniable. Like the things mentioned above, there are details about place names and sequences of events which shut out vague interpretations and would also be out of Jesus’ control if he were just a man. These include his ancestry, birthplace, the national reaction to him, the amount of silver exchanged for his life…it is simply overwhelming. Rather than deal with specific prophecies in this category and the possible objections one-by-one, I will address them more generally and again point to our search tool for further research.
Common Objections to Prophecy
Many who are skeptical of prophecy in general would argue that the wording or symbolism is loose enough that it can simply be re-interpreted to fit history. Consider this prophecy from Nostradamus which supposedly predicted the 9/11 attacks in New York City:
Earthshaking fire from the center of the Earth
Will cause tremors around the New City.
Two great rocks will war for a long time,
Then Arethusa will redden a new river.
I could see how this might fit the World Trade Center attacks, but it could match any number of other events as well. What sets apart prophecies like this from the biblical ones is that the latter includes very specific details which cannot be interpreted multiple ways. The sheer volume of messianic prophecies further narrow the range of possibilities so that not just any old “Messiah” would be able to claim he fulfilled biblical requirements.
Others would say the text was manipulated over time to support a religious agenda. This accusation fails for a number of reasons. First, we have copies of the Old Testament, prophecies and all, that date back hundreds of years before Jesus was born (see the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls). This means if anyone altered the passages about him, it happened in the New Testament.
But, does that work? The people who were still around in the years following Jesus’ ministry would certainly have refuted not accepted utter fabrications of events they would have known something about. Paul, before he was an evangelist, was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He had deep knowledge of said prophecies and a hatred for all who followed Jesus. He would not only have reason but also the influence to expose such a fraud. Instead, he repented and accepted the “Gospel Truth.” The video below is a good discussion with Lee Strobel talking about how he viewed these issues when he was an atheist and after he became a Christian.
Further objections and theories about how the Gospel writers must have invented this intricate story quickly become self-contradictory and sound more like an ancient Jewish conspiracy theory than a reasonable, objective look at the evidence.
How Will You Respond?
This is more than an academic exercise. God didn’t just make (and keep) the promises he gave about people and nations that died long ago. He also makes promises about things yet to come which matter to you and I. There will be a day when Jesus returns to fulfill the “end-times” prophecies, and when that day comes we better know where we stand. Those who repent of their sins, seek forgiveness through Jesus’ blood shed on the cross, and receive the Holy Spirit will be with him in Heaven. Those who run from his truth will choose a worse fate – an eternity in Hell.
Do not make that choice before honestly examining your heart to know whether you reject the sure word of prophecy because it “doesn’t hold water” or if it is because you are looking for any reason at all to deny the God who sees all things from beginning to end. Do not be deceived by yourself or by false teachers, for you know not the day nor the hour when it will be too late to turn back.
After absorbing over 50 hours of apologetics lectures and debates on topics as simple as an overview of Genesis and as minute as cave formation in New Mexico, my friend and I had an idea. We seriously considered condensing the information in our vast, overpriced DVD library into a series of short video clips to deliver the key points in a way that would be more engaging to our generation and easy to share online.
We never got past the first script, but I am happy to report that several ministries with superior skills and funding have had the same idea in recent years. Answers in Genesis now has Check This Out, The Institute for Creation Research produces That’s a Fact, and Creation Today has my personal favorite: Creation Minute. These video series focus on foundational issues surrounding science and the Bible, but what about the other important questions of life?
Now, Mark Spence of Living Waters teaches on these broader topics in a series of apologetics videos taken from the Way of the Master TV Show. I was blown away by the quality of not only the teaching but also the production that goes with it. Unlike those old lectures, these videos get right to the heart of some of the most-asked questions about Christianity or religious beliefs in general. Everyone has time to watch three minutes (or less) of non-stop, hard-hitting apologetics on the questions that matter most.
You can watch all 10 videos below or click a link to jump to a specific clip.
This is the first in a series of posts outlining the roadmap for MetaV, a database of people, places, passages, and periods of time found in the Bible. Much work has gone into developing it, but there is much work left to do. There are gaps to be filled in, new data to add, and (most importantly) applications to be developed which aid in data exploration. This roadmap provides a thorough understanding of the improvements I currently envision. It does not include any timelines for completion of these ideas.
People
When we study the Bible and come across a person, we’d like to know a few basic things about that individual which provide some background for understanding his life and how his experiences relate to the story we’re reading. MetaV provides that context with family relationships, some basic biographical information, and explicit identification of the person named. As an example of the latter, consider that there are 26 unique individuals in the Bible named Zechariah. MetaV makes it clear whether that passage is talking about the well-known prophet or one of the other 25. Or, the opposite problem may occur in which one person goes by more than one name such as Paul (originally Saul) or God himself who goes by many names.
Unambiguous, Thorough Searching
To that end, some work remains in identifying names which are not always easy to process programmatically. These may include possessive forms (like “Aaron’s”) or in many cases where the name of a person is also used to describe a place (like Israel). Even more ambiguous are personal pronouns (him, hers, we, they, ours). We know they describe a person and can usually identify that person through normal exegesis. It is time we recorded that knowledge in order to build upon it.
By including that level of detail in MetaV, we will be able to find verses which refer to a group of people but never mention them by name. A good example would be Jesus’ disciples. Any place which references the “disciples”, “apostles”, “the twelve”, etc. would be a reference to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, etc. even though they are not discussed by name. Unless and until this is defined at word-level detail many of these verses would not appear in search results for “Matthew” (or another disciple for this example) meaning the search would not return some pertinent references.
Biographical Details
Other things we’d like to know about people in a “quick reference” context window which are not yet defined in MetaV are: official title, occupation, name meanings, or even a brief summary of the person’s life. We would also like to know what books of the Bible that person may have written. Again in the case of Zechariah: are you reading about the person who wrote the book of Zechariah, or a different person with the same name? We also know the birth and death places for some people. Future revisions to MetaV will link these places to the “Places” table for more context.
Relationships
The relationships defined in MetaV today are limited to family relationships. But, we interact with others outside our family in the context of work, school, and play. People of the Bible are no different. A set of data defining these relationships for people in the New Testament already exists as part of the Semantic Bible project. This data can be integrated into MetaV and then expanded upon to include Old Testament figures.
People also form groups. The disciples are a group. The Israelites are a group. Much like today’s social networks which readily find a person’s group membership, MetaV currently has identified members of the 12 tribes of Israel and the people listed in Jesus’ genealogy. Clearly many more groups must be defined, but this is a good start.
Communication
The Bible is God’s communication to man. Within that, we see God talking to prophets, people talking to each other, and writers speaking to readers. Wouldn’t it be nice to clearly identify who is the sender of a message and who is the intended recipient? Well, the folks at Crossway have tackled the first part of that using Mechanical Turk. They produced a dataset identifying all the speakers of the Bible and, thankfully, released it publicly. Once it is “translated” to work with MetaV, I can begin the process to show recipients of what is being spoken (or written).
That’s all for now. Keep an eye out here to learn how we can improve upon data describing places and periods of time, or find out about the applications being developed to explore this data.
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The Gospels tell the story of Jesus Christ, each one emphasizing different aspects of his time and teachings. A typical harmony of the Gospels lays out all the events and references the passages that describe them in each book. This chart takes a different approach by comparing the broader topics illuminated by those verses.
The sides of each cross are scaled according to how often a topic is dealt with in the corresponding book (as a percentage of the total number of verses in that book). The right side represents Matthew, the top is Luke, left for Mark, and the bottom line goes with John. The topics and verse references are from the topical index in MetaV which has a mashup of Nave’s Topical Bible Concordance and Torrey’s New Topical Textbook.
A Valid Approach?
It is common to hear a pastor tell how often a certain word appears in the Bible or in a particular book to support his point. But, is this an accurate representation? One can discuss the topic of faith, for instance, without ever mentioning the word directly. I could envision many ways in which the word-count approach would leave a false impression.
It may be more accurate to look at topics and to compare them against each other to see their relative prominence. But, even this approach can have its distortions. It relies on indexes produced by people in a particular culture and historical period. That could introduce some bias in assigning topics to each verse, thereby skewing the whole thing – consciously or not. Overall, however, the comparisons here line up well with what you would conclude after reading it all for yourself (by far the best approach).
About that one in the middle…
It should be no surprise that the lines representing Jesus Christ would be the longest. If it had turned out any other way, I would have begun looking for errors in my data. What is surprising, however, is that the lines form a nicely proportioned cross. According to the topical indexes I chose, John focuses more on Jesus, Mark slightly less, and the others hit close to the average. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if this is a convenient coincidence or a divine design.
Due to space and readability limitations, only the highest-ranking topics (based on total verse count) made the list. Are you surprised to see any of them in the top 48? Which ones would you expect to be more prominent that aren’t shown on this chart? What stands out in terms of what different writers emphasize? Please leave your comments below – I’d love to hear some insights.
Christianity is too judgmental, too strict. We must drop such dogma if we are to live as free people in a just society. You have heard this said before. You may have thought it yourself. This impression is false and easily disproved by a simple comparison of the words in the Bible vs. the collection of documents that define United States law.
Suddenly the Bible does not seem to be such an oppressive rule book after all, especially when considering this chart does not account for many federal regulations, state laws, city ordinances, etc. Some point to the dietary laws penned by Moses as an example of invasive restrictions on personal freedom. This seems to be a reasonable argument until you look at Title 21 of the U.S. Code which governs food and drugs. It has 699,440 words. Moses only managed to write 174,733 words in the Bible during his entire 120 years on Earth! The FDA certainly has a lot more “thou shalt nots” limiting dietary freedom than God ever passed down to the Jews.
The same holds true for many other aspects of our lives from the time we brush our teeth to driving to and from work to watching TV at night. All of these activities are regulated, monitored, and controlled to one degree or another by one or more federal agencies somewhere along the line.
The Source and Justification for Laws
Before going further, we would be wise to understand the reasons that we write laws to begin with. Consider the words of Frederick Bastiat in his masterful book, The Law:
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place…Each of us has a natural right – from God – to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.
[amazon asin=1440446458&template=iframe image] Those things which we have a natural right to defend are those which originate from our Creator. Therefore, the words God has spoken to us in the Bible should be the foundation of our laws which protect those gifts. Then, how do we end up with so many statutes which extend far beyond this intent? Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:8, “But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.” When we step away from the biblical basis of natural law, we begin to use it improperly. The law fails when we turn its intent toward what Bastiat describes as “stupid greed and false philanthropy.”
We have attempted to force “false philanthropy” upon our society through legal plunder – the use of force to deny a person’s right to their property. As evidence, the longest section of the U.S. Code is the one dealing with health and welfare. It is over 8 million words which makes it longer than the entire tax code and associated regulations combined. Surely it is noble to take care of the needy and sickly, but it is unjust to forcibly confiscate someone else’s money to do so. Religion accomplishes the same task through genuine charity which is not given out of duty, obligation, or force (2 Cor 9:7). In this and many other ways, the Christian worldview is the antidote (not the source) of injustice or oppression.
Legalism and Grace
When preachers step forward to explain these principles and call us to adhere to God’s standards, some will object that it’s too legalistic. But, the same folks will not cry “legalism!” when the IRS comes to enforce tax laws which are three and a half times the size of scripture. It might be easy to jest at this hypocrisy, but it raises a useful point. Is it reasonable to expect anyone to fully comply with a set of laws so voluminous we can’t even manage to read them let alone understand and follow them to the letter? Certainly not, and here the faithful critic of legalism is correct to point out our utter inability to live a sinless life (Rom 3:12).
If we fail to follow every rule and regulation codified in U.S. law, we may experience little or no consequence. Even if we are to commit the most heinous of crimes, our sentence may only be the death of our earthly bodies. In contrast, God administers eternal and infinitely more severe consequences for breaking just one of his commandments. This may be one reason that biblical guidelines are seen as less forgiving than federal laws.
While more and more people are beginning to fear our government, our deeper fear is of the one who can destroy both our body and soul in Hell (Matt 10:28). The natural desire is to ignore or deny this existence of Hell, hoping it will squash our fear. Why would God set up such severe punishment? Does he hate us? No. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son (John 3:16) to pay the debt we owe so we won’t have to suffer this awful fate.
This is how a righteous judge can also offer us the kind of liberty and peace that can be found nowhere else but in the salvation of Jesus Christ. When we approach God in repentance and ask forgiveness, it is freely granted. Ask the same of Homeland Security when you forget to leave a pocket knife in the car at the airport and you’ll find out just how “forgiving” our government can be.
It is time to recognize that when we look to God’s instructions we can be free; when we pile regulations on top of laws built on the wrong foundation, we are crushed under the weight of government power. If we are to find freedom, let us heed the words in Galatians 5:1:
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
What makes this visualization much more interesting than previous graphics is the way each grid cell is colored. Red is a link from a New Testament book, blue for the Old Testament, green for major divisions of the Bible, gray indicates a cross-reference from a verse in one chapter to another verse in the same chapter, and purple indicates references between chapters in the same book.
As soon as you start getting “interactive” with it, you discover how the color intensity is produced, forming the heat map effect in the grid above. For instance, if you choose to show references from John to Isaiah, you see details of how the passages in those books connect to one another. More lines between them result in more color displayed in the larger grid.
Cross References between John and Isaiah
Such an interactive visualization makes it far simpler to navigate and understand Torrey’s massive dataset. Even if you are not especially interested in exploring these details, everyone should be able to appreciate the message that this and earlier cross-reference visualizations share in common: that the words given to us by God are deeply woven together throughout all the times and cultures in which they were transcribed.
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.
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.
You can also fork the GitHub repository or, choose individual files from the table below.
Compilation of cross references obtained from R.A. Torrey’s Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (Public Domain). Duplicate cross-references have been excluded.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This high-quality, visually engaging presentation by Mark Spence, the Dean of the School of Biblical Evangelism, gives clear reasons why the Bible can be trusted as inerrant, inspired, and infallible.
Even though the Ark of the Covenant is long lost, you can still explore it virtually. In this study tool you can find info about the ark, its history, symbolism, and contents.
