I am a sucker for a good infographic. In the same way a work of art can illuminate your thoughts, a great drawing or graphic can literally change the way you see the world. Great infographics are quite difficult to produce. They make some banal bit of data visible and accessible, they tell a story, and in some cases they are quite beautiful. The image here shows a portion of a graphic produced by Chris Harrison and Christoph Romhild, which shows more than 63,700 cross references in the Bible. Along the bottom are the various chapters in the Bible starting with Genesis 1 on the far left. The length of each line represents the number of verses there are in that particular chapter. The colored arcs connect the two verses that refer to one another. The colors correspond to the distance between the two chapters that are linked.
What makes this graphic so fascinating is the fact that this text contains 66 distinct books totaling more than 1,200 pages, written by more than 35 individuals, in a handful of languages, over a period of 1,600 years. During this period the text was often read out loud and parts committed to memory. Any copies of the text were hand written — meticulously produced by scribes. Most modern readers are aware of significant references and important connections between various verses; however, the scope and depth of these connections remained invisible to me until this graphic was produced. This graphic does not provide any definitive answers to life’s deep questions but rather amplifies my curiosity, illuminating the complexity, mystery and wonder of this ancient text. I don’t know if this work should be considered ART, but it feels very similar to the experience I have when looking at a master work.