Visualising the Bible

This image received an honourable mention in the National Geographic's Best Science Images of 2008 competition.

A colorful rainbow brings to light the interconnected nature of one of the world's most familiar books.

The Bible's 1,189 chapters are plotted along the horizontal axis at the bottom of the image, with each bar's length determined by the number of verses.

The arcs above the graph show the 63,779 cross-references between each chapter.

"It almost looks like one monolithic volume," said Carnegie Mellon's Chris Harrison, who--along with Christoph Romhild of North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hamburg, Germany--won an honorable mention for illustrations in the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

—Image courtesy Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University; Christoph Romhild, North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church/Science (and National Geographic).

And from here:

This diagram arose from a collaboration between a Carnegie-Mellon Ph.D student and a Lutheran pastor to create a grand map of Biblical cross-references: "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... The bar graph that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible. Books alternate in color between white and light gray. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible is depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect."

I think it's pretty, and original, and I would have wondered if it might have won, if not for the religious theme, until I saw the one that did receive first place in the illustrations category:

"Zoom Into the Human Bloodstream"

Deft manipulation of perspective gives viewers a detailed look inside the human circulatory system.

The relationship between a tiny oxygen atom and the giant organ of the heart was accomplished with a common painting technique that fits many scales into a single picture, according to Jennifer Frazier of San Francisco's Exploratorium.

The unusual view won artist Linda Nye first place in the illustration category of the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

—Image courtesy Linda Nye and the Exploratorium Visualization Laboratory; The Exploratorium/Science (and National Geographic).

That's awesome!

Still, I think the first one is a nice mix of science and religion!