Explore people and events in the Biblical narrative.
Scripture Trace is a visual guide to Biblical people, their family relationships, events, chronology, and the Scripture passages connected to them.
Why Scripture Trace
Scripture Trace was born out of a desire to visualize the rich relationships, timelines, and events woven throughout the Bible. We hope it helps bring the Bible to life for all who visit.
What it does
Search for a person or select a card in the relationship map to follow parents, children, spouses, and siblings.
Read the context
Open the Scripture references attached to a person or relationship to connect the map back to the text.
How event chronology works
Events are ordered by the source dataset's Anno Hominis (AH) year. The display uses the documented anchor 1 AH = 3961 BC and skips year zero. Equal-year events share a row but are not assumed to be simultaneous or causally connected.
How event links work
Timeline lines come only from reviewed event-link records. Shared dates, people, places, references, and CSV order never create a line automatically. Related links use non-causal styling.
How the data works
Imported people, alternate names, relationships, and references are validated before they enter the application. The explorer loads a focused person's immediate family context instead of presenting the source data as one exhaustive family tree.
Known limitations
The structured datasets are guides, not independent interpretations of Scripture. Names, relationships, events, dates, and citations may be incomplete, ambiguous, disputed, or revised as the source data improves. New Testament coverage combines a reviewed curated milestone set with a bounded approved adaptation of Theographic Gospel and Acts events. Dates remain approximate or disputed, and the adapted subset intentionally omits unresolved people, places, maps, and event links. Consult the cited passages when evaluating a connection.
Data attributions
Scripture and structured data
Scripture text is provided by API.Bible. The selected translation's copyright notice is displayed with every loaded passage.
Structured data from the Holy Bible provided by: Brady Stephenson. (2026). BibleData: Structured Datasets from the Holy Bible (Version 1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19539956.
Theographic event data
Approved Gospel and Acts event metadata is adapted from Theographic Bible Metadata by Robert Rouse / Viz.Bible, distributed through Gnosis v0.9.3. The adapted data is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes: Scripture Trace selected a bounded subset; revised titles, descriptions, event types, chronology and confidence; reviewed overlap and parallel accounts; retained Scripture evidence; and omitted unresolved people and places.
CC BY-SA 4.0 applies to the adapted Theographic event dataset and Scripture Trace's contributions to that adaptation. Separately identified application code, existing curated events, and public-domain Scripture evidence retain their own terms. Use does not imply endorsement by Robert Rouse, Viz.Bible, Theographic, Gnosis, or Gnosis contributors.
Map data
Event maps combine the following self-hosted or locally curated geographic sources. License links and material transformations are listed explicitly.
- OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding Data · CC BY 4.0
Place candidates and representative coordinates were subsetted to the events currently mapped.
- © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0
Some identified OpenBible-derived place data may incorporate OpenStreetMap data.
- Pleiades contributors, release v4.1 · CC BY 3.0
A minimized subset of precise Pleiades places and date-compatible names is redistributed for nearby historical labels. Familiar English and plain Pleiades public titles rank ahead of closer-zoom scholarly romanizations; modern substitutes, undated, uncertain, and temporally incompatible names are omitted.
- Cliopatria, Seshat Global History Databank, v0.2.0 · CC BY 4.0
Polity geometry was subsetted by event place and date, and coordinates were rounded for display.
- Natural Earth, v5.1.2 · Public domain
The application progressively loads minimized 1:110m overview, 1:50m detailed, and viewport-selected regional 1:10m high-detail geometry plus physical-label data. Natural Earth present-day country boundaries and country labels are a default-off comparison overlay. Curated present-day context for the focused place is a separate default-off secondary label; coordinates are rounded to four decimal places.
Historical polity borders are estimated reconstructions rather than surveyed boundaries. Source inclusion does not imply endorsement of Scripture Trace or its interpretations.