Twelve topic searches, chapter by chapter

The question

The main map compares chapters with one another. The topic-search study compares many subject titles and keeps the single best passage for each title. This page asks a different question: for one subject, what is the strongest result in every chapter? That makes it possible to compare the entire Bible in one view.

The twelve subjects are ones this site already keeps verse collections for: fear, anxiety, grief, doubt, joy, healing, strength, forgiveness, money, marriage, friendship and wisdom. Each strip in the figure links to its collection, and each of the ten highest chapters links to the reader.

A high score marks a passage worth opening. A low score says only that this model found no closer match in that chapter for that one word; it does not say the chapter is silent on the subject.

What was measured

• The subjects. Twelve words, each typed exactly as a reader would type it, in lowercase and on its own: fear, anxiety, grief, doubt, joy, healing, strength, forgiveness, money, marriage, friendship and wisdom. Each is the subject of a verse collection on this site.
• The search. Each word was turned into a search query by the model behind the site's search box and scored against every passage the search scans: 41,444 entries of the Berean Standard Bible, four-verse windows and single verses, and the 31,102 verses of the King James Version, 72,546 entries in all. The score is the similarity of the query to the passage.
• The chapter score. For each of the 1,189 chapters, the best score any of its passages reached, in either edition, is the chapter's score for that subject, and that passage is its best passage. Twelve subjects across 1,189 chapters give 14,268 chapter scores, and the King James Version supplied the best passage for 9,135 of the 14,268 chapter scores.
• The threshold. The search box treats 0.55 as its floor: a query whose best passage scores below it gets no results at all, rather than a poor match. A chapter at or above the threshold holds a passage strong enough for the search to return. A chapter below it returns nothing for this search, which does not establish that the subject is absent from it.
• The lists. For each subject, the ten highest chapters and every chapter at or above the threshold, each with its best passage, and the count of verses of the Berean Standard Bible that carry the word itself.

The twelve strips

Each strip below is the whole Bible in reading order, one thin mark per chapter, and the darker the mark the higher that chapter's best passage scored. The darkest shade begins at the search threshold of 0.55, so the darkest marks are the chapters a search for the word could return. The highest chapter of each strip is labeled beneath it, and the tables under the figure carry the ten highest chapters for every subject and every chapter at or above the threshold. Each strip's title links to the verse collection for its subject.

Read the strips for where the dark marks gather, not for how many there are. On a narrow screen each mark is thinner than a pixel and the browser blends neighbors together, so a single dark chapter among pale ones shows as a faint band; the counts are in the tables, and every number on this page is in the data file linked in the method.

Subject by subject

One observation for each subject, stated as where the highest scores fall. These are observations about the search, not statements about what the Bible teaches. The numbers in each paragraph come from the data file; the sentence after them is an editorial note on the kind of passages the search found, written after reading them, and every chapter it names is one of that subject's ten highest.

Fear

For fear, the highest chapter is Psalm 55 at 0.673; 48 chapters reach the threshold, 37 in the Old Testament and 11 in the New. Its ten highest chapters fall in Job (four), Psalms (two), Genesis, Proverbs, Hebrews and 1 John. The highest chapters are speeches in Job and psalms in which the speaker names dread or terror outright, with Genesis 9, Proverbs 3, Hebrews 12 and 1 John 4 the other four. Here, fear is a search word, not a single theological category. The matched passages use related language in different senses, including dread or terror, reverence and the “fear of God.”

Anxiety

For anxiety, the highest chapter is 1 Peter 5 at 0.538, and no chapter reaches the threshold. Its ten highest chapters fall in Psalms (three), Job (two), Proverbs (two), Isaiah, Philippians and 1 Peter. No chapter reaches the threshold for the word on its own. The highest are 1 Peter 5 and Philippians 4, each of which has a verse about worry that the site's collection also carries, and after them Job, the psalms and Proverbs.

Grief

For grief, the highest chapter is Job 17 at 0.589; 6 chapters reach the threshold, 4 in the Old Testament and 2 in the New. Its ten highest chapters fall in Job (two), Psalms (two), Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Matthew, John, 2 Corinthians and James. Job 17 and Psalm 88 lead, with 2 Corinthians 2, where Paul writes of his own sorrow, and Psalm 6, Matthew 5, John 16 and Lamentations 3 among the ten.

Doubt

For doubt, the highest chapter is James 1 at 0.523, and no chapter reaches the threshold. Its ten highest chapters fall in John (two), Acts (two), Deuteronomy, Psalms, Luke, Romans, Galatians and James. No chapter reaches the threshold. The highest chapters are mostly from the New Testament, James 1, Romans 14, Luke 24 and John 10 among them, with Deuteronomy 28 and Psalm 56 the Old Testament's two.

Joy

For joy, the highest chapter is 1 Thessalonians 5 at 0.615; 4 chapters reach the threshold, 3 in the Old Testament and 1 in the New. Its ten highest chapters fall in Psalms (seven), 1 Thessalonians (two) and Isaiah. Psalms take most of the ten, with 1 Thessalonians 5 at the top, 1 Thessalonians 2 beside it and Isaiah 65 the one chapter from the prophets.

Healing

For healing, the highest chapter is Matthew 8 at 0.582; 8 chapters reach the threshold, 6 in the Old Testament and 2 in the New. Its ten highest chapters fall in Psalms (two), Jeremiah (two), Matthew (two), Isaiah, Hosea, Mark and Luke. The ten split between Gospel chapters with accounts of healing, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and Old Testament chapters in Jeremiah, Hosea, Isaiah and the psalms where healing is asked for or promised.

Strength

For strength, the highest chapter is Job 6 at 0.580; 5 chapters reach the threshold, all 5 in the Old Testament. Its ten highest chapters fall in Job (two), Proverbs (two), Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel, 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, Joel and Colossians. All but Colossians 1 are Old Testament chapters, most of them from Job and Proverbs, and the best passage comes from the King James wording for most of the ten.

Forgiveness

For forgiveness, the highest chapter is 2 Corinthians 2 at 0.593; 5 chapters reach the threshold, 1 in the Old Testament and 4 in the New. Its ten highest chapters fall in Psalms (two), Numbers, 1 Samuel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians and 1 John. The New Testament supplies most of the ten: Paul asking a church to forgive in 2 Corinthians 2, the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, and Mark 11, 1 John 1, Ephesians 4 and Luke 7, with two psalms, Numbers 15 and 1 Samuel 15 for the Old Testament.

Money

For money, the highest chapter is Deuteronomy 14 at 0.492, and no chapter reaches the threshold. Its ten highest chapters fall in Genesis (two), Deuteronomy (two), Leviticus, Proverbs, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Haggai and Zechariah. No chapter reaches the threshold, although the word itself occurs in 97 verses of the Berean text. The highest chapters are ones where money is paid or weighed out, in Deuteronomy, Genesis, Leviticus and Haggai, with Proverbs 7, Isaiah 52 and Zechariah 11 beside them.

Marriage

For marriage, the highest chapter is Isaiah 62 at 0.536, and no chapter reaches the threshold. Its ten highest chapters fall in Genesis (two), Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Joel, Matthew, Luke, Ephesians and Colossians. No chapter reaches the threshold. The highest chapters are Isaiah 62, where a city is spoken of as a bride, the laws of marriage in Deuteronomy 21 and Leviticus 21, and Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3.

Friendship

For friendship, the highest chapter is John 15 at 0.584; 2 chapters reach the threshold, 1 in the Old Testament and 1 in the New. Its ten highest chapters fall in Proverbs (five), Psalms (two), Micah, John and 1 Peter. John 15, where Jesus calls his disciples friends, stands at the top; most of the rest of the ten are sayings about friends from Proverbs.

Wisdom

For wisdom, the highest chapter is Ecclesiastes 7 at 0.626; 41 chapters reach the threshold, 35 in the Old Testament and 6 in the New. Its ten highest chapters fall in Proverbs (eight), Job and Ecclesiastes. Proverbs takes most of the ten, with Ecclesiastes 7 at the top and Job 12 the one chapter from elsewhere; the search reaches the threshold in more chapters here than for any subject but fear.

Comparing these twelve searches

Eight of the twelve subjects have at least one chapter at or above the threshold, and 119 of the 14,268 chapter scores reach it; for four of the twelve, anxiety, doubt, money and marriage, no chapter reaches the threshold. Fear has the most chapters at or above the threshold, 48, and wisdom the next, 41; no other subject has more than 8. These counts describe how this model responded to each query. They do not rank the subjects by their importance or prevalence in the Bible.

The highest score of all is for fear, 0.673 in Psalm 55; the lowest of the twelve highest is for money, 0.492 in Deuteronomy 14. The median chapter score runs from 0.325 for anxiety to 0.413 for wisdom: for a one-word search, a typical chapter's best passage sits well below the threshold whatever the subject.

Of the 120 chapters in the twelve lists of ten, 85 are in the Old Testament, and three books supply 51 of them: Psalms supplies 21, Proverbs supplies 19 and Job supplies 11. Psalm 55 is in the ten highest for three subjects, fear, anxiety and friendship, and 7 other chapters are in the ten highest for two.

Try it yourself

What it cannot tell you

• It reflects two translations and one model. The passages come from the Berean Standard Bible and the King James Version, scored by one multilingual model. Different editions, query wording or models may produce different scores, and this experiment does not isolate those effects.
• The threshold is not a test of absence. A score below 0.55 says that the search would return nothing; it does not say the Bible is silent. The word money occurs in 97 verses of the Berean Standard Bible, and no chapter reaches the threshold for it.
• A one-word query is a thin query. The search saw a single word, not a question. A word with more than one sense is matched on whichever sense a passage happens to carry, and a fuller query gives the model more to match. The scores here are what one word gets.
• The scores are similarities between model representations, not counts. A dark mark does not mean the chapter mentions the subject more often, or matters more for it, than a pale one. It means one passage in it came closer to the word as the model reads both.
• Counts for different words do not rank biblical themes. Broad or many-sided words can behave differently from narrower words. The number of chapters crossing the threshold cannot establish that one subject is more frequent, central or important than another.
• The twelve are a choice, not a sample. They are the subjects this site keeps collections for. Another twelve would give another figure by the same method.
• The ranking has not been validated by readers. Which of the ten highest chapters a reader would find relevant has not been tested. Open the passage and judge it in context.
• The scores do not rank importance. The experiment makes no judgment about a subject's religious value or a tradition's reading, and the editorial notes are readings of examples, not a consensus.

How this was made

To cite a figure elsewhere, say which measure it is (a chapter's best passage score for a one-word search, or the count of chapters at or above the threshold) and carry the two editions, the model and the exact word with it. Corrections are welcome through the contact page.

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