I started the #BibleDataStories a few years ago, seeking to marry Data Science and Bible Study, first out of personal curiosity, then to share with others. I have a whole IG page for this. I haven’t been doing much in the past 1 year, but I am picking it up and hope to work on more interesting stories going forward – so help me God.
Now, here is a visualization I was working on towards the Christmas celebration – but I completed it about a week ago, so I’m now able to share it. It shows the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies about the birth of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. I was specifically interested in the topic because of the euphoria that characterizes modern-day Christmas festivities. A lot of it is just secular with zero reference to the Birthday Boy himself. This is my attempt to draw attention back to the reason for the season. There were numerous prophecies in the Old Testament pointing to the birth of this one individual and how they all come together in the mysteries surrounding the birth of Jesus. Now, if you are a student of biblical prophecies, you know there is a somewhat sub-genre called Messianic prophecies. I didn’t focus on Messianic prophecies as a full scope but only prophecies that deal with the birth of the Messiah.
The visualization is made up of a prominent Sankey chart and 3 bar charts beneath it.
Sankey Chart:
The Sankey chart features green nodes on the left and red nodes on the right. The green nodes represent prominent Prophets in the Old Testament who prophesied the birth of the Messiah. The size of each node is indicative of the number of times the said Prophet prophesied about Jesus’ birth. The red nodes represent the New Testament books in which these prophecies were fulfilled. Again, the sizes of the red nodes indicate the number of prophecies fulfilled in each New Testament book. The entire visualization is an interactive one; hence, you can especially check out the links between the green and red nodes to reveal more useful information. Once you hover your pointer over each green link, it reveals the following: the name of the Prophet, the exact Old Testament reference where the prophecy is recorded, the theme of the prophecy, the New Testament book in which it is fulfilled, and then the exact New Testament reference.
The bar charts
- The green bar chart shows the number of prophecies each Prophet declared regarding the birth of the Messiah.
- The blue bar chart shows the number of these prophecies that were recorded in the Old Testament books.
- The red bar chart shows the number of these Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled in New Testament books.
Follow this link to my Tableau Public account to check out the interactive version of the visualization:
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/eli.sabblah/viz/MessiahBirthProphecies/MessaiahBirthProphecies