Biblical Places: Locating on a map and in the Bible

As I have been soliciting suggestions for my upcoming BibleTech08 presentation on Digital Resources for Biblical Mapping, one request was made that a person would like to be able to click on a place on a map and see all the instances where it is mentioned in the Bible. Here are some ways to do just that.

• Using the map module in BibleWorks7, right click on a place name, and then click on that place name in the popup. This causes a search to run in the BW7 main module.
• Using the OpenBible.info Bible Atlas, one can find the information displayed in the graphic above. If you use GoogleEarth and the OpenBible.info downloadable kmz file which contains all the biblical information, then you can fly around in GoogleEarth, click on a place and get the information displayed like this:
• There is a similar downloadable file from the GoogleEarth community that provides information from the ISBE or Eastons when you click on a place name instead of the references.
• A similar online option is to use BibleMap.org. This one works through the biblical text. Clicking on a hyperlinked location name, the place is located on a GoogleMap, and then clicking on that place name will bring open the entry from the ISBE. It looks like this:

There are lots of other ways to get from a place mentioned in a biblical text to an accompanying map, but the best way to find biblical references starting by looking at a map location is the GoogleEarth with the OpenBible file. [The maps in Logos do not really lend themselves to this kind of work. I have created a resource collection of "Maps," and so I conduct searches on that collection to generate the list of appropriate maps.]

New "Art of the Bible" site from OpenBible.info

OpenBible.info has just announced a new "Art of the Bible" site. The project is described here and says:

Art of the Bible is a website I* made to catalog 5,800 freely available historical Christian-themed artworks on Wikipedia. The site primarily focuses on European paintings from the 1400s to the 1800s that, at least in the U.S., should be free from copyright considerations. Arranged into 116 Bible stories, it relies on linked data to populate its database–which means you should be able to use these images for pretty much any purpose.
*I'm presuming the "I" is Stephen Anderson who's been behind most of OpenBible.info's stuff like this.

The homepage graphically organizes major biblical events or persons along with subcategories. Clicking on one of the subcategories will bring you to a visual collection of related art. (Cf. the graphic above.) Clicking on one of the images brings you to Wikimedia where more information and downloadable files can be found.

The advantage of this site as compared to a Google or Bing image search is that these are all from Wikimedia, and that means you can be (completely?) sure that the image is free to use.

Check it out!

Google Earth Exercise for Biblical Geography

In the previous post, I provided an exercise for learning how to use Google Maps in the service of biblical geography. I've now prepared another exercise for learning how to use Google Earth. Google Maps has incorporated some features of Google Earth and vice versa, but there are features in Earth that remain unique and particularly helpful for biblical studies. 

If you are not familiar with Google Earth, this exercise provides a step-by-step introduction to it. If you are acquainted with it, the exercise highlights features related to biblical geography. In particular, I have pasted in section 7 of the exercise below which provides links to some of the most helpful addins (KMZ files) for biblical geography.

This exercise was composed simply based on my experiences with the program. I certainly may have overlooked something significant, so please share what you know in the comments.

HERE is the PDF exercise you can download.

Section 7 of the exercise: 

RESOURCES FOR BIBLICAL GEOGRAPHY

Now that you have a general idea of how Google Earth works, how can we maximize its use for doing biblical geography? Here are files and links you will want to use that can be saved in the My Places panel on the left. 
(Note: Google Earth uses KMZ and KML to store location data. Clicking on the KMZ or KML links below. You cana open them in Google Earth, and they will appear in your Temporary Places at the bottom of the My Places panel. If you decide you want to save that collection, right click on it and “Save to My Places.” When you exit Google Earth, it will ask if you want to save the files that are in the Temporary Places.)

• Bible Places (ISBE) KMZ with info from ISBE and Easton Bible Dictionaries
• Note that the ISBE is from 1939 and Easton is from 1897. Use this dated information with discernment! (This file originated with the Bible Places group in the Google Earth Community, but I have corrected some errors and grouped sites alphabetically for easier navigation in Google Earth.)
• Complete list of Bible Place KMZ (from OpenBible.info; cf. below) with listing of every biblical mention and live links to the online ESV Bible
• Note that when you click on a Bible text, it will open a browser pane in Google Earth. You can open the window in your usual internet browser by clicking in the upper right corner [Open in ...]. To get back to the Earth view, click on “Back to Google Earth” at the upper left.
• Also available: KMZs arranged by biblical book and by chapter. Turn book or chapter layers on and off to see patterns across the Bible.
• Biblical Rivers and Bodies of Water KML (OpenBible.info)
• Jerusalem Overlays (OpenBible.info) Historical map overlays for Jerusalem
• Bible Mountains addins
• Sacred Destinations addins: Over 1000 sacred spots around the world
• Jerusalem Temple Overlays: Quite a few overlays and markers for spots at and around the Jerusalem Temple
• Sites of Jesus addin
• Google Earth and journeys of Paul
• Viewing Biblical Sites in Google Earth - Some helpful tips and a collection of links to KMZ files including Journeys of Paul (from Tim Schumacher)
• Paul's Missionary Journeys kmz file (get file HERE)
• Paul's first journey (annotated) kmz file
• Paul's second journey with locations in Athens kmz file
• Gerasa (by Stephen Langfur) is great example of using GoogleEarth to demonstrate city geometry

OpenBible.info Update: Mapping, Photos, Overlays, Bible Browser, Topical Bible

If you haven't checked out OpenBible.info, it is well worth a visit. I have referenced them before for their work on Bible Geocoding and Bible Atlas and their Bible Word Locator visualizations, but they have other useful resources as well.

• Overlays for Google Earth: There is a nice collection of ancient and modern map overlays for Jerusalem, and there is another one for biblical Bodies of Water. These overlays are great in Google Earth, because you can control the transparency as well as adjusting direction and changing perspective.
• Photos of Bible Places: Using photos from Flickr that people have geocoded, OpenBible has mashed up a list of biblical places with those photos in that spot. It's a mixed bag of results but still useful.
• Topical Bible is "a web 2.0 topical Bible mashup" that uses the ESV Bible and the Yahoo search resources. If you what to find what the Bible says about a topic, enter a search term, and it will not simply perform a word search, but, by using related words to your search term generated by Yahoo, return a much larger collection of verses. Once these verses appear, however, users have the ability to 'vote' on how helpful they are or not to someone wanting references to this particular topic.
• Bible Book Browser: This is a neat way to visualize the Bible. There is a picture of the whole Bible, and by moving the cursor over a particular book, you move through the various chapter headings derived from the ESV Bible. Click on the chapter, and you are brought to the ESV text.

Blended Digital Gospel Harmony of Palm Sunday Account at OpenBible.info

Blog article link

Stephen Smith at OpenBible.info has posted an interesting proof of concept tool showing what a blended digital gospel harmony might look like. As he notes, gospel harmonies have appeared in print either as parallel accounts (think Aland's Synopsis or Throckmorton's Gospel Parallels) or as blended harmonies of which Tatian's Diatessaron is the earliest known one.

Smith notes the limitations of print harmonies and has produced a digital one that is interactive and gives readers greater clarity regarding where material is being derived. It also lets readers choose to prioritize one gospel if they choose.

In his initial work, Smith shows what the Palm Sunday / Entry into Jerusalem text might look like. The reader has the option of picking one of the four Gospels as the base which is highlighted in red. He notes that it was surprisingly time-consuming to construct a single passage like this, so don't expect a full Gospel any time soon.

I think the most helpful thing about such a tool is that a person can more quickly compare two Gospels and simply note what turns to red or black. One can quickly see that differences, at least in this account, are minimal between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but switching to John as the base makes a considerable difference.

HERE is the blog article and HERE is a page where you can play with the blended digital Gospel harmony yourself.

Google "Talk to Books" uses natural language algorithms to answer theological questions

Google recently announced a "Talk to Books" feature which conducts searches at the sentence level rather than the word level.

With Talk to Books, we provide an entirely new way to explore books. You make a statement or ask a question, and the tool finds sentences in books that respond, with no dependence on keyword matching. In a sense you are talking to the books, getting responses which can help you determine if you’re interested in reading them or not.

You ask a question, see the excerpts that the natural language algorithm has identified as matches, and then can choose to see the excerpt in context in the book where it occurs.
OpenBible.info checked it out and provides some interesting examples. As noted there, you are going to get mixed results, as you might expect, since Google can only search through books it has analyzed. As OpenBible note, the results will often point to books by evangelical publishers who have promoted indexing of their books by Google. I did not find, however, that the excerpts pulled up many old, public domain texts.
Here are some examples I tried:

• Was Jesus really forsaken when he was crucified?
• Should Christians be pacifists?
• Why is it important to distinguish between law and gospel? (Compare this to results from a regular Google search.)

So, yes, this may have value for a particular type of theological / biblical question. OTOH, when I asked "Which Gospel is the best one?", the first two excerpts pointed to John, but the third pointed to Marcion!
HT: Sean Boisen on Twitter

Visualization Fun!

Okay, I'm basically riffing on some neat stuff posted on a couple other blogs.
First, the ESV blog has this interesting entry on Visualizing Cross References and Social Networks which draws on a blog entry by Chris Harrison on Visualizing the Bible. You really need to follow the links for a bunch of interesting visualizations, but here's my favorite, and here is how Harrison describes it:

This project started after receiving an email from Christoph Römhild. He had compiled a list of cross-references found in the Bible and was looking for advice on how to visualize these connections. ... Due to the extremely high number of cross-references, this lands more on the aesthetic side of the information visualization spectrum. Different colors are used for various arc lengths, creating a rainbow like effect. The bar graph running along the bottom shows every chapter in the Bible and their respective lengths (in verses). Books alternate in color between white and light gray.

(Image used with permission of Chris Harrison. Thanks!)

You should be able to pick out Ps 119 (the long bar in the middle) and the Gospels about 3/4 way to the right. As Harrison says, this isn't too insightful, but I do like the Genesis/Revelation and the prophets/Gospels connections. I can use it as a logo for my OT in the NT class!
And now, once again, here is proof that even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut and that a bazillion monkeys typing on the Internet can get close to the truth. Over on the OpenBible.info blog (and this blogger is not a blind squirrel or one of the monkeys!), some examples were given of Google's new experimental timeline view. What it basically does is take a search parameter and then look for dates that are included with the entries of the returned hits. This means, of course, that a search entry and a reference to a date might have absolutely no relationship to each other, but it will still show up on the graph. The OpenBible.info blog gave some examples of the dating of the Exodus and the birth and crucifixion of Jesus. They do kind of help highlight issues in dating and significant moments. I tried out a few more.
Note that you can keep clicking down to get more and more specific time periods. Oddly for "Martin Luther," 31 October 1517 hardly makes a blip. Enough fun for today. If you play around with it for yourself (in the search bar, replace "data" with your own search term/s), let me know if you get anything worthwhile or interesting.

Digital Resources for Biblical Mapping Update

An earlier post requesting comments on what people want in a mapping resource and how they are using it only generated one comment, but it did also generate a couple of fine postings on other blogs.

• I've expressed my admiration and appreciation for the work being done at OpenBible.info, and the author there posted a comprehensive list of how mapping in Bible software should develop. It is well worth reading, because that person not only has a great perspective on what is possible, but some great ideas about other ways that the maps could be used and integrated with other resources. Thanks!
• Over on the Accordance Blog, David Lang posted on the benefits of using the Accordance Bible Atlas. It does look to be an excellent resource. I see that Accordance can be run rather well on a PC using a free emulator (instructions/links are posted on their site), but the 3D features of the Atlas are not available. I'll have to do more checking on this. In a more recent post, David also demonstrated a good example of how the mapping software might be used in understanding the battle of Gibeon.
• Bonus: The latest OpenBible.info blog entry provided a link to a link of work by "The Glue Society" which depicts an imagined Google Earth view of some biblical events: a God's eye view of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Noah's Ark on Ararat, Parting of the Red Sea (cf. below), and the Crucifixion. Here is the best way to see these fun pics.

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

AI and Biblical Art

Parable of Mustard Seed - image created by Bing Image Creator

I keep thinking about the AI issue and what that means for me as a Bible teacher. How can I work with students to make good use of AI? How can I use it myself to improve my teaching and presentations. Since anything AI-generated is both totally original and totally derivative (i.e., derived from stuff others have created that’s floating around the internet), I suspect that there will be always be plagiarism and copyright concerns that will need to be sorted out.

Let me draw your attention to one example related to biblical art and the use of DALL-E 2. Stephen Smith is doing all sorts of interesting stuff with the Bible and data analytics and such on his OpenBible.info site. Take a look at what he did when he took verses from Genesis and Luke and ran them through DALL-E 2. He first used ChatGPT using a prompt like this:

Suggest 5 unique concept ideas for a work of visual art inspired by Luke 14:7-11 (do not pick the place of honor) in the Bible. Include art direction and a specific medium and artist to emulate. Include artists from a variety of eras, styles, and media. Try for an unusual perspective. Title, year, medium. Description.

He then ran the prompts through DALL-E 2. HERE are some of the better images he chose from among the 828 that he generated. I think some of them are quite good, and many are superior to some of the stuff I’ve seen that actually shows up in publications. If you scroll down to the bottom, he even calculates the financials. Tldr: “Each GPT-3 completion costs around half a cent, and each text prompt to DALL·E generated an average of 1.3 usable images, bringing the all-in cost per image to around $0.12, or around $99 total for this project.” (BTW, DALL-E requires a free account, but you get 15 free images per month.)

I can imagine using something like this to create images for my presentations. I don’t think it’s too big of a deal for my individual, education-use stuff, but I’m wondering how publishing houses will use this. Along with copyright issues, here’s where the ethical concerns about replacing machines with humans comes into play. Still, I am sure you still need some people to evaluate the images generated and choose suitable ones, adjust the prompts to get more desired results, etc., but cost savings could be tempting.

Another avenue to access DALL-E is through Microsoft Bing Image Creator. (25 images are free, and then you will probably need to use Microsoft Reward Points gained by using Bing search to get more.) It does address responsible use of the images created. (Check here.)

We have put controls in place that aim to limit the generation of harmful or unsafe images. When our system detects that a potentially harmful image could be generated by a prompt, it blocks the prompt and warns the user. We also make it clear that Image Creator's images are generated by AI, and we include a modified Bing icon in the bottom left corner of each image to help indicate that the image was created using Image Creator. We will allow living artists to report their name to us for limiting the creation of images associated with their names.

The image at the top of this post is one that comes from Bing Image Creator requesting an image depicting the parable of the mustard seed with mustard plants and birds. The one below I created directly in DALL-E. They are certainly usable and better than anything I could have created on my own. But do check out the remarkable images on the OpenBible.info blog.

Parable of Mustard Seed - image created by DALL-E

 

How do the English versions break the text into sections?

2 John Sanky Diagrams Section Headings
From https://www.openbible.info/labs/bible-section-sankeys/ 

Over at OpenBible.info, Stephen Smith continues to play with interesting visualizations of the biblical text. A recent post shows how we can see the way different English versions break up the text under section headings:Explore Bible Sections (Pericopes) with Sankey Diagrams. Using a free online resource, SankeyMATIC, Smith took twenty English Bible, generated the data for where each split up the text (he shares the data which looks like a lot of work to me), set it up to be used in SankeyMatic, and then generated Sankey Diagrams for each book of the Bible. I've copied the one he generated for 1 John. 

What are you looking at? Sankey diagrams provide a way of comparing and visualizing data. The height of the band indicates the number of sources in agreement. The splits show where they differ and how many differ. As you would expect, they all agree about the beginning and end of the text. Most versions insert a heading at 1.4, but at least a couple versions split at 1.5, and some make no split at all.

So, what good is this kind of information? Smith cites some examples from Ruth and Lamentations (acrostic divisions). 

Another way I think this kind of visualization could be helpful is to compare alignments in the LXX version of books as compared to the Hebrew. E.g., it's always messy trying to align ch:vs in LXX of Isaiah w/ that of the Hebrew (and English versions). Esther is also messy that way. And the Psalms need alignment between the Hebrew, Greek, and English with offsetting chapters and verses. 

These Sankey diagrams could also be helpful for showing some key places where sections are in question. For example, here is a snippet Smith generated for Mark 8.27-9.30.

Mark 8.27 starts the scene near Caesarea Philippi where Peter makes his confession of Jesus. Most versions make a split at 8.31 and the first Passion Pronouncement. Some break again at 8.34 when Jesus calls the crowd together and talks about what it means to follow him, but some don't break until 9.2. It appears that one version breaks at 9.1, though 9.1 really does belong with the preceding. (And unfortunately, the Revised Common Lectionary follows the chapter break rather than the logical break at 9.2.) The Transfiguration starts at 9.2. Should it run until 9.14, or, as some versions do, break at 9.9 and the discussion as they are coming down the mountain about rising from the dead and Elijah?

And thanks to Smith's sharing of the data, I will hope to find the time to plug in my preferred division of Mark's gospel and use the SankeyMATIC to show how mine differs from the others.

One other thing that might be interesting historically is to use Eusebius' Kephalia of the Gospels to show how it compares to modern divisions.

How else do you think these could be used?

Bible Reading Plans for the New Year

If one of your resolutions for the new year is to be more consistent in your Bible reading, there are a few good online/desktop resources to help you in this discipline.

Logos Global Bible Reader: A Logos blog post on this reader states:

This free download from Logos is a powerful desktop application that provides community and accountability in a Bible reading plan.

Once you install Global Bible Reader you sign in with your Logos.com user account and choose from one of the six reading plans. After you chose a plan (or multiple plans) Global Bible Reader will download six days worth of reading (so you can even read when you’re not online). After you finish the reading for a day, click the Done Reading button and Global Bible Reader will mark the day as completed. In order to make sure you don’t fall behind, you can set up Global Bible Reader to give you a daily reminder to read the day's text. More than just reading yourself, Global Bible Reader plugs you into a community of people who are on the same reading plan as you...

Facebook Bible Reading Group: Wayne Leman reports on this option on the Better Bibles Blog:

Join us in reading and discussing the books of the Bible in 2009! We’re starting with Genesis, and we hope you’ll join us for as many books as you’d like–hopefully all of them.

We’ll be using an edition of the Scriptures called “The Books of The Bible” that the International Bible Society has specially formatted for reading with greater understanding and enjoyment. The text is in a single column, and there are no chapters or verses or section headings.

Those of you who are already members of Facebook can attend the event by going to this Internet address:http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=40536860035

YouVersion: From the YouVersionBlog:

Our One-Year Reading Plan will take you through the entire Bible in 2009—just read the selections mapped out for you each day and you'll cover the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice this year. Invite friends to join you in this journey and you'll have built-in accountability along with enhanced learning.

And don’t forget that you can use your mobile phone to read the Bible no matter where you are.

UPDATE: There is an interesting post on the OpenBible.info blog on how evenly distributed the amount of daily reading is using different Bible reading plans.

UPDATE: 2009.01.16: Logos also has free Bible reading plan that includes the Deuterocanonical / Apocryphal books.

Another Bible Visualization

Over on the OpenBible.info blog, a Bible Sentence Paths visualization has been added to their collection. It is a bit more difficult to make sense of this one, but if you follow the link in the Notes to the Stefanie Posavec visualizations, you can see how the visualization does actually communicate some information about an author's style. The metadata embedded with the visualization (e.g., the red in the visualization are words of God/Jesus) does also give some sense of the focus of a particular book.