Have you ever SEEN what the Bible says? Some visuals.

Given the Bible contains almost 800,000 words, what’s it really talking about? The following two links show the most commonly occurring words for each book of the Bible, with the size of the word being an indication of how often it appears for that book.

Old Testament visualisations
New Testament visualisations

Look for the words that jump out consistently as you scan through those images. In having the images for each book of the Bible, rather than for the Bible as a whole, you can get a measure of how they agree. One of the things I love the most about the field of information visualisation is that things don’t need to be explained, just shown.

At first I was annoyed those images were split across two pages, but it was very valuable as it made me compare and contrast the Old and New Testaments. It’s interesting to compare books written to the Gentile believers with those written to the Jewish believers (for example Hebrews refers more to priests and covenants). If you have any other ideas for comparisons we can consider, please comment below with them.

Old vs New

From these images I see that the Old Testament is about the Lord, and the New Testament is about Christ. We don’t have a proof from this of the Deity of Christ (this means Christ is God and not only a man) but we do have a pointer towards that. This gives me (and hopefully you too) encouragement to reflect on John 14:6-9:

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?”