Verbum 9 Tip 8ab: Faceted interactives: Biblical Event Navigator

MJ. Smith

Docx files for personal book: Verbum 9 part 1; Verbum 9 part 2; Verbum 9 part 3; Verbum 9 part 4; Verbum 9 part 5; Verbum 9 part 6; How to use the Verbum Lectionary and Missal; Verbum 8 tips 1-30; Verbum 8 tips 31-49

Reading lists: Catholic Bible Interpretation

Please be generous with your additional details, corrections, suggestions, and other feedback. This is being built in a .docx file for a PBB which will be shared periodically.

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Biblical event navigator

The Biblical Event Navigator is another interactive that strictly speaking as a hierarchical selection structure rather than true facets. This is an older tool that lacks a label to support searches and documentation. The data exposed by the Bible Event Navigator include:

• The event’s place in a hierarchy of Biblical events
• Participants in the event
• Geographic setting of the event
• Important things mentioned in the event
• Defining passages i.e., passages that recount the event
• Mentioned in i.e., passages that refer to the event
• On the terminal nodes, the passages are presented in the translation that is requested

• One can set the Bible to be displayed (1) which may or may not be your preferred Bible
• One can navigate the Biblical Event Navigator history – forwards and back (2)
• There is a find box to jump directly to an event (3) or one can use the hierarchical expand/contract menu to navigate to the desired entry.
• When an event is selected on the left, its title (4) and data will be displayed on the right. This data includes participants (5), setting (6), important things (7), defining passages (8), and passages mentioned in (9).

Biblical events section of Passage Guide

The Biblical events of the Passage guide is a simple index into the Biblical Events Navigator or Atlas. It has two sections: Events occurring and/or events mentioned. Event occurring are show with the complete hierarchy down to the terminal node. Note that the Biblical Events sections acts as a search on event data for the specified passage.

Atlas for Biblical Event

The Atlas tool is also geared to Biblical Events although not necessarily at the terminal node. Here the Atlas is one level higher – “Deborah and Barak defeat Sisera” rather than “Barak and Deborah rout Sisera’s army”. The data includes one additional piece, a brief description of the event.

The Atlas provides a map of the movements of the fighting forces. The left panel provides basic information – setting, participants, maps, etc. It also provides links to Factbook and Media search.

One can get to the Atlas entry by a Basic search restricted to the Atlas with any of the following search arguments:

• <Event Deborah and Barak defeat Sisera>
• "Deborah and Barak defeat Sisera"
• <Judges 4:12–16>

Note that the map name appears on mouse-over. The names of the maps match those given in the left-hand column of the Atlas.

Context Menu and Factbook

The Atlas tool provides a link to Factbook but it is also available from the context menu (right-click menu) of the Biblical Events Navigator heading.

Factbook has the standard heading with links and familiar sections.

The Key Passages section shows the event as narrated (key passage) and where mentioned (see also). The Events section shows a hierarchical section of the Biblical Events data to put the event in context.  Note the addition of the other nodes at the same level as the requested (terminal) node, which adds more context than we have seen elsewhere.

There remainder of the data is under the See Also section including:

• Participants
• Setting
• Important things

Wikipedia

One entry in Factbook is a link to Wikipedia – the internal Wikipedia page without the illustrations, not the web browser version with them. This is mentioned solely to remind you of the breadth of the data at your fingertips.