Named one of the best science images of 2008 by the National Geographic News, Visualizing the Bible “… brings to light the interconnected nature of one of the world’s most familiar books.” 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.

This chart was created by Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with Christoph Römhild, a Lutheran Pastor. Chris won the Honorable Mention in the NSF’s Science & Engineering 2008 Visualization Challenge.

This graphic is a registered trademark of Chris Harrison. All rights reserved.