The Bible as Knowledge Graph

Tucked away in the back of my desk drawer is an old medal from the Sunday School. It was left there many years before, and was awarded for ‘scripture knowledge’.  In generations past people would learn the order of the books of the Bible, together with committing chunks of it to memory. Does this, however, constitute knowledge?

Earlier this week Google launched their new ‘knowledge graph’ service. So far they have collected some 3.5 billion facts about 5 million objects, and the knowledge graph helps to connect them together. Isn’t this exactly what we would like people to do with the nuggets of wisdom and understanding they get from the Bible? Don’t we want them to connect them together, as well as joining them with relevant facts or troubling questions from the real world? If ever there were a hermeneutic for  now – this is it.

In the video below you will see Google Product Management Director Johanna Wright say that Google is ‘ in the early phases of moving from being an information engine to a knowledge engine’. When I asked an expert about the difference between the two she said that ‘information becomes knowledge when you use it‘. Isn’t that exactly the kind of Scripture knowledge we need?

When you watch the video below, try substituting the word ‘Bible’ for knowledge and see how it sounds. Meantime, I have a sermon on Proverbs to write – more about knowledge than information, I think.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQl6VGvX-c&w=560&h=315]