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Reference Rainbow

Graphic by Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University

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

Christianity Today November 20, 2008

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.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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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