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Christianity Today, November (Web-only), 2008

Reference Rainbow

What it looks like to graph the Bible's cross-references.

Graphic by Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University | posted 11/20/2008 05:03PM

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Click here to view the graphic.

When Christoph Römhild, a Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, Germany, sent Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. student Chris Harrison a list of 63,779 cross-references between the Bible's 1,189 chapters, the two became enthralled with elegantly showing the interconnected nature of Scripture. Each bar along the horizontal axis represents a chapter, with the length determined by the number of verses. (Books alternate in color between white and light gray.) Colors represent the distance between references. The graph won an honorable mention in the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Science journal.

Click here to view the graphic.

Related Elsewhere:

Chris Harrison's website also has more on visualizing the Bible.

Christianity Today also has previous slideshows on its website.

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November (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52

Comments (26)

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Displaying 1–5 of 26 comments

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GrannyB

December 04, 2008 12:16pm

Wow! I continue to be awed by the displays of the the wonder of His Word. His Word is truly a light in the darkness, and not just ordinary and white....but full of imagination and wonder and beauty!!! Praise be to God the Father, the author and Creator.

Andrew

December 03, 2008 2:09pm

Second on the poster idea... that'd be sweet.

Doug

December 01, 2008 3:42pm

Where can I get a poster of this? That would be great!

RJohn

November 27, 2008 4:48am

Interesting. Pretty even. But what's the point, exactly?

Glenn

November 25, 2008 2:16pm

AMAZING! It truly shows the interconnectedness of the whole Bible. Thanks for sharing this marvelous image with us.