Scripture Web: Talents, Part 2

In the last post on Talents, I promised a follow up on additional ways of doing a scripture web. For this second part, let's start at the beginning. A one-degree web for the topic Talents looks like this:

(one-degree scripture web for Talents)

Notice that this type of web isn't very useful. It's simply a less space-effective means of the topical guide list. Moving on to a two-degree web is what I showed in the last post:

(two-degree scripture web for Talents)

In Talents, Part 1, looking at this web showed the connection of each scripture to all the other topical guide references that refer to each scripture. This also provides interconnection between scriptures that are covered by the same types of topics--you start to get a web of interconnectedness.

What about the three-degree web? Well, as you might imagine, the three-degree web then contains all the daughter scripture references for each of the Topical Guide topics that showed up in the two-degree web. It's quite a mess to look at:

(three-degree scripture web for Talents)

For the three-degree, I left all the two-degree references colored and left all the labels off. As you can see, there are now so many scriptures in the web that it is no longer useful. This should make sense--we are stretching out farther and farther from the original topic, so most of the interconnected scriptures/topics become less relevant. 

However, some of the connected scriptures are linked together in interesting ways. How do we find the relevant connected scriptures? Gephi, the program I use for creating the scripture webs, has an analysis filter called "k-core." I'm not a graph theory expert, but if you want to know more about the mathematics, I'll refer you to the Wikipedia article. In short, the k-core let's you pick only the nodes (circles) that interconnect with a certain number of other nodes. Effectively, this keeps only the nodes that are interconnected rather than the ones that are branching off into new topics.

Here's an example of the three-degree scripture web for Talents with a filter of a k-core value of 3:

As you can see, this gives a more tangled web than just a simple two-degree web. However, you start to see more interconnections. The coloring comes as a feature in Gephi to show how groups/families in a web. 

Two interesting connections from this web I found are the scriptures Ezekiel 36:26 and John 6:51

Ezekiel 36:26

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

John 6:51

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

Initially, these scriptures don't seem to have anything to do with talents. But on further reflection, talents can be considered equivalent to gifts from God. One of the greatest gifts we can receive from God is new spiritual life through the Savior Jesus Christ. Both Ezekiel and John refer to this type of gift.

What other connections can you find?