The Genesis of a Dream

This is the starting point. The seed. My goal is simply to plant it and pray about it and watch to see what God causes to grow...

State of the Art:

When I survey the state of Bible Study software available today (both commercial and free), from my perspective they all seem to be variations on a basic theme: an electronic concordance with a digital library of commentaries and maps/charts. The stronger ones allow you to dig into the greek/hebrew (maybe even morphological searches, if you shell out the big bucks and know what you're doing). They allow you to open up all sorts of parallel versions, or to find all the passages that mention "faith" and "works" in the same context, or to read what 17 other commentators have to say. Some add videos or other visual elements and some add a few other bells and whistles, but that's about the extent of it. This doesn't exactly reflect the methodologies of healthy Inductive Bible Study, to say the least. (Please offer me an alternate perspective if you disagree with this basic assessment of the status quo.)

Two main drawbacks of this approach are: (1) They expect you to know what you're looking for; i.e., they are the "Google" of Bibles: give me a word or phrase and I'll give you a list of those verses in canonical order. (2) They don't really support mature Bible study techniques; it's just "search & find" or "compare this version to that", or "what does Dr. Soandso say about this passage?" None of this is "bad" per se, but is it "rightly dividing the Word of Truth"?

A Dream for the Future:

Now let me give you a taste of what I believe Bible study could be like, if it were re-invented from the ground up. Imagine a software tool that:

• Assists the user like a tutor, guiding him through the paces of sound exegesis and theologically informed, Biblical hermeneutics.
• Is squarely built on a knowledge of the underlying languages, but doesn't expect the user to know them. (So, for example, word studies are based on the underlying greek word, even if you don't know it.)
• Understands and emphasizes the importance of context, and in particular, the concentric circles of context that surround a given passage. (viz., pericope - book - author - genre - testament - Bible)
• Can enable the user to visualize and comprehend the thematic threads that weave through Scripture and hold it together. Can guide the reader on a "Scriptural expedition".
• Understands the distinction between semantic cross references ("same concept in different verses") and lexical cross references ("this word or phrase in different verses"), and can display those references in lists sorted by relevance (based on the context), supported by a sophisticated algorithm akin to Google's "Page Rank" system.
• Is supported by powerful, dynamic, and interactive visualizations -- tools that borrow from the recently-exploding science of "Information Visualization" and Large Dataset Analytics. 
• Supports the reader's devotional study in such a way that allows the true meaning of the text to virtually "jump off the page".  ("Serendipitous Discovery" as opposed to "Search and Find")
• Is visually beautiful, simple, elegant, and intuitive -- borrowing from the so-called "Apple" aesthetic. A tool that enlightens and captivates the modern-day Christians the way stained glass windows did for the Medieval church. A tool that becomes your favorite place to do devotions.

I intend to use this blog to collect some of my ideas and design decisions. Discussions will also be welcome, if anyone chooses to join the conversation. I also hope to create a "project wiki" for more formal documentation, as I progress.