Any student of the Word knows the fundamental rule that a verse can only be truly understood in its context. What is less commonly recognized is that the true context of a given verse is not just its immediate context, but the entire corpus of Scripture. All the concentric circles of context surrounding a verse must inform our interpretation of that verse. The hermeneutical principle usually cited in this regard is "Scripture interprets Scripture".
To truly comprehend and appreciate a given work by Rembrandt, you must first understand how he was influenced and shaped by his contemporaries, by his mentors and his predecessors, and by the sweeping history of art that conveged upon him in that focal point of creativity. We need to recognize something similar in the Bible. Of course, with art we may consider those ripples of influence as mere "happenstance". But with Scipture we have something more: here we have an intricately crafted work of literature, a book whose singular Author has carefully embroidered every thread and theme in precise and intricate ways, binding the disparate strands into one harmonious story. Moreover, this Author utilized the creativity and personality of indivdiual men: men of deep faith who were devout students of the Scriptures handed down to them, and whose theology and thought patterns were therefore greatly influenced by each other and by their predecessors.
Of course, I am not saying anything novel or surprising here: Ephesian 2:9 must be interpreted in light of Ephesians 2, and of the book of Epheshians, and of the prison epistles, and the Pauline epistles, and all epistolary literature in the NT, and of the entire NT, and of the entire Bible. Multitudinous threads of Scripture converge on this verse (and on every verse, by different routes) and amplify its meaning and message. The fundamental goal of the Serendipitus tool is to gently and lucidly unwrap those threads and to reveal them in unobtrusive but meaningful ways.
And, to that end, I aim to harness all the technologies of web design, data visualization, information science, and computational literary analysis at my disposal.
