We generally avoid featuring infographics about literature because they obfuscate the text rather than illuminate it. One exception is the Bible, which is so big and woolly, it occasionally benefits from a text-based visual analysis (or just pisses off a lot of people).
The latest Bible visualization won’t start an e-Holy War, but it certainly shrinks some complex ideas down to size. Openbible.info used algorithms to label events in the Bible according to positive or negative sentiment (“Think of it as Kurt Vonnegut’s story shapesbacked by quantitative data,” the designer writes), then mapped the narrative peaks and canyons around the wheel you see below. Black is positive, red negative.
Click Image To Enlarge
What you end up with is a snapshot of the relative cheeriness--or gloom--of different sections in the Bible. As the designer tells it:
Things start off well with creation, turn negative with Job and the patriarchs, improve again with Moses, dip with the period of the judges, recover with David, and have a mixed record (especially negative when Samaria is around) during the monarchy. The exilic period isn’t as negative as you might expect, nor the return period as positive. In the New Testament, things start off fine with Jesus, then quickly turn negative as opposition to his message grows. The story of the early church, especially in the epistles, is largely positive.
In short, it gives you a bird’s-eye view of the tone of each book, something that’s easy to miss in a line-by-line reading. You could also use it as a guide of sorts to the darkest, juiciest parts of the Bible.
It’s worth noting that at the microscopic level, the analysis doesn’t hold up terribly well. As a commenter on Openbible points out, it mis-characterizes both positive and negative events in the Book of Nahum--and who knows where else. The designer concedes that the calculations here are far from perfect:
“I largely agree that on individual verses, the results are hit-or-miss, and the data are certainly at the mercy of an opaque algorithm. In the aggregate, as you note, the trends largely fit with my basic expectations, so it may be the case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.”
Guess there’s something refreshing in that. I mean, if an algorithm can figure out the Bible, then what the hell have we been fighting over all these years?
COMMENTARY: If the Holy Bible, The Bible, The Old Testament, The New Testament, King James Bible, The Roman Catholic Bible, The Koran, The Tanakh or just the good ole Good Book, which ever version you chose to use, is so righteous, why do humans continue to screw over each other, lie, cheat, steal, hate, commit adultery, use the Lord's name in vane and even kill each other? The simple answer: The Bible does not have any real clout. Even the Roman Catholic church is considered by many to be full of corruption and sin. The Church of Mormon is prejudice against females. These are books that are based solely on one thing: FEAR. Fear of the unknown, fear of punishment by some force or power, fear that if you don't follow the rules in the Good Book, you will go to hell for all eternity, which is one fucking long time to burn.
Personally, I believe that hell is right here on Earth, and human beings above any other life form on this planet, are the only ones that actually set out and plan the murder of each other, commit wars, and drop WMD's on each other. Even the King of the Jungle, makes peace, and the males find a way to compromise, and split up the females so that everybody gets laid regularly, and their DNA gets passed on. The animals have found peace amongst themselves, while Man is still screwing around, and not trying very hard, to get along, although it says right there in the Book of Paul: "Thou shall love thy fellow man as thou lovest thyself." If we lived by that covenant, that would be the only rule we would ever need. If we lived by that covenenat: We would have universal healthcare, and employer's would learn to love and respect their workers, and not exploit their labors, export our jobs overseas or take away social security and medicare for people for no good reason other than they old and the weakest.
It seems that we preach, but we do not follow, and we certainly don't repent over it, and if we do, we do it with two fingers crossed behind our back.
Courtesy of an article dated October 19, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design
Christian Videos,
I absolutely agree. The Bible consists of fables. We don't even know who wrote the various books included in the Bible. This was all done centuries ago during the reformation in Constantinople. To believe everything written in the bible and try to live that way is a huge mistake. To justify Bible teachings as part of the laws of our country is even more dangerous. Once religion enters the political arena, it becomes a powder keg, and that's the sort of thing we are seeing right now. Thank you for you imput. Hope you will visit my blog regularly. Tommy
Posted by: Tommy | 04/19/2012 at 09:27 AM
Good thing you shared this infographic. Reading the bible is a good idea but not living with what you read from it is not.
Posted by: Christian Videos | 04/19/2012 at 05:37 AM