Hacking the Bible

This just popped up in my Feedly... "Hacking the Bible: Inside the world of the new Bible coders—and how they will change the way you think about Scripture" You can read it online at Christianity Today. It's a really lively and fine article by Ted Olsen, a managing editor at CT.

Steve Smith, whose amazing work I've admired at OpenBible.info, is featured. They talk about the "Franken-Bible" project which I previously blogged about. There's a bunch of good stuff on Logos that's fun reading. I like Logos' Eli Evans' comment about what Bible tech is enabling: ""What we're doing here makes it very easy to run with theological scissors." I also think Logos' CEO Bob Pritchett is right when he talks about what technology enables. He says, "I like to follow rabbit trails. But I want curated rabbit trails. I want to be taken to places I'd never go to." I agree that hyperlinking is indeed an invitation to follow an endless array of rabbit trails. It's usually pretty fun, but it often leads to dead ends and is only occasionally helpful. So, yes, curated rabbit trails are needed, but even there we need to curate the curators.

There are some insightful concerns raised about atomization of the Bible (a 'vertical' reading enabled by Bible tech but one that loses sight of the context of a Scripture passage) and the role of biblical experts from the academy and the democratization of Scripture made possible by the Bible tech available at everyone's fingertips.

Ah, just read the article!

BTW, the article describes and links to Vincent Setterholm's (also at Logos) The Toracle: Oxen Law. That's a rabbit trail worth checking out for a bit!

HT: OpenBible.Info