Scripture Web: Talents, Part 1

The LDS Topical Guide is a fantastic scriptural resource. An abundance of references and cross references are available by flipping through paper pages, utilizing the Topical Guide on LDS.org, or by using one of the many LDS scripture mobile apps. One of the big advantage to the electronic versions is that you can click on a link to a scripture and it can open up in a new browser page making it easy to go back and forth between the listed scriptures and the topical guide. I mean, who hasn't done it the old-fashioned way and gotten frustrated by losing their spot multiple times. Inevitably, that scripture ribbon bookmark is going to fall out, and then you're re-looking-up the topical guide entry you had first turned to.

However, even with an electronic topical guide, you are still limited by the list-like nature of the topical guide. For example, I recently taught a lesson on "Talents" in my primary class. Below is the text for the topical guide entry for Talents:

unto one he gave five talents, to another two: Matt. 25:15 . ( Luke 19:13 . )
unto whomsoever much is given: Luke 12:48 . ( D&C 82:3 . )
Neglect not the gift that is in thee: 1 Tim. 4:14 .
all things are given them which are expedient: 2 Ne. 2:27 .
thou wilt prove them, and take away their talent: Ether 12:35 .
every good gift cometh of Christ: Moro. 10:18 .
lay hold upon every good gift: Moro. 10:30 .
thou shalt exercise thy gift: D&C 6:11 .
every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God: D&C 46:11 .
hide the talent which I have given unto them: D&C 60:2 .
neither shalt thou bury thy talent: D&C 60:13 .
that every man may gain other talents: D&C 82:18 .
if a gift is bestowed … and he receive not the gift: D&C 88:33 .
See also Gen. 39:6 ; Ex. 31:6 ; Ex. 35:35 ; 1 Chr. 25:7

Notice that entries in this list are sorted in book/chapter/verse order. But what if we want not just a list, but we how entries are interconnected? One way to do this would be to take each scripture entry and find out what other topical guide entries refer to that scripture. We would expect that several of the scriptures in the list would not only be co-entries in the topic "Talents" but would also be co-entries under other topics, say, for example "Gift." Now you no longer have just a list, but an interconnected web. Of course, this begins to be rather complicated to find and track all the interconnections.

Fortunately, with all the interest in mapping social media connections, there are several open-source software solutions for graphically mapping interconnected webs. With a little web scraping plus the help of the software Gephi, I created the map below. The map has "Talents" at the center with all the scriptures under the "Talents" topic. Then every scripture in the "Talents" topic has a link to all the other topical guide entries that refer to those scriptures. The software then links up all the similar entries to create the web shown below. As a helpful aid, I created an image map that should let you click on the scripture reference in the .jpg image and hyperlink to the associated scripture on LDS.org (this may not work on mobile devices, though).

Take a look and explore the connections in the web below. In my next blog post, I will look at additional ways to map the connections on this topic.