Visual Graph of Bible Cross-References

Thanks to the wonderful world of Twitter, I came across this visual treasure created by Chris Harrison. When I saw this, I first fell in love with the graphical representation of the graph. It’s easy to enjoy a graph of truth, but when it’s done right, your eyes it makes it easier to absorb the information.

Here’s what Chris wrote on his website regarding the cross-reference graph:

This set of visualizations started as a collaboration between Christoph Römhild and myself. Christoph, a Lutheran Pastor, first emailed me in October of 2007. He described a data set he was putting together that defined textual cross references found in the Bible. He had already done considerable work visualizing the data before contacting me. Together, we struggled to find an elegant solution to render the data, more than 63,000 cross references in total. As work progressed, it became clear that an interactive visualization would be needed to properly explore the data, where users could zoom in and prune down the information to manageable levels. However, this was less interesting to us, as several Bible-exploration programs existed that offered similar functionality (and much more). Instead we set our sights on the other end of the spectrum –- something more beautiful than functional. At the same time, we wanted something that honored and revealed the complexity of the data at every level –- as one leans in, smaller details should become visible. This ultimately led us to the multi-colored arc diagram you see below.

The graph’s arcs are color-coded based on distance of the cross-reference. The heights of the arcs are dependent on the distant between the cross-reference points. Green colored arcs show greater distance while purple colored arcs show a short distance.

On the bottom x-axis, the alternating gray bars indicate the different books of the Bible. While the length of each bar, shows the length of each chapter in the book. There are 63,779 single arcs on Chris Harrison’s graph, each arc representing the 63,779 cross-references found in the Bible. With the coloring of the arcs and the distance help create the “rainbow-like effect” which makes this graph so interesting.

You can download different resolutions from Chris’s websites for personal use, although I recommend contacting Chris for any permission of use questions.

Medium Resolution JPG 2000×1200, 1.4MB

High Resolution PNG 12000×7200, 109MB

View Chris Harrision’s website