Exegesis
Supported by Murray G. and Beatrice H. Sherman Charitable Trust
“Exegesis” is an attempt to understand how people quote the Bible – which parts they choose to quote, and why. It highlights the portions that appear most often on the web and presents excerpts from some of them. The Bible is quoted in a range of contexts: political, academic, scientific, ethical, literary, and, of course, religious. All are on display, along with careful discussion about the meanings and implications of every line.
Where the Bible is used to persuade, Dave is particularly interested in whether it is treated as a set of facts and literal dictates, or as an eloquent expression of subjective ideas. Many pages examine the subtleties, ambiguities and contradictions in the Bible, while others make explicit statements such as “God Hates Fags.” “Amidst all this, though,” says Dave, “a picture of a beautiful and inspirational Bible emerges, with popular passages seemingly just as likely to be encouraging as proscriptive.” “Exegesis” places a set of rules in motion. No editorial selection is applied.
This work has been emulated with Conifer by the Electronic Literature Lab in June 2021. To view this emulation click here.
TAXONOMY
Algorithmic | Data | Google | Mapping | Net Art | Religion | Search | Visualization
REQUIREMENTS
This piece requires the Java Plug-in 1.4.1 or greater to be installed in your browser. The plugin is part of the Java Runtime Environment. Most browsers should prompt you to install the plugin if you do not already have it. In some cases, an older version of Java may be installed, or the plugin may not be available in all browsers. This may require a reinstall or changing settings in your Java control panel.
This piece was developed on a Windows XP computer with 1 GB of RAM and a 1.7 GHz processor. Although slower Pentiums with at least 512 MB of RAM should do fine, it is recommended that you close other running applications for best performance. Performance may be poorer on Macintosh or Linux computers, but it should work on Safari 2.0 with OS X 10.2 or later and Firefox, respectively. Firefox has more information available about configuring Java. Exegesis was developed on a 1400 x 1050 monitor, and will not work well on anything less than 1024 x 768. It may be slower on very high resolutions. See http://turbulence.org/works/exegesis/about.html for other technical recommendations
MEDIA & ACHIEVEMENTS
Holy Infographics: The Bible Visualised | Books | The Guardian