Introduction to Bible Dots

By Ryan Eaton
Posted Monday, Asher 20, 13000

The fundamental discovery behind the Bible Dots project is the realization that the Bible contains an exhausitve framework for using Scripture to interpret Scripture. This website exists to flesh out this claim by documenting the framework.

The way it works is simple to understand. A given verse or short passage of Scripture will play to a story or high-level concept in the book of Genesis followed by another passage or verse that plays to the book of Exodus and so on down to Revelation. Afterwards the process repeats with another passage related to Genesis and so on for another trip through the 66 books. In fact, the pattern of "replaying" the 66 books appears to occur everywhere in the Bible such that any given passage of Scripture has multiple related contexts elsewhere in Scripture that provide a balanced interpretation. No more guessing the interpretation or guessing which Scriptures interpret which Scriptures.

The reason the project was named Bible Dots is because the replays were first marked in our Bibles with "map dots" which were circled numbers. We eventually used this same style of notation on our websites. There are 66 dots, 1 for each book of the Bible. By placing dots in the replays the presence of a dot tells readers that the following passage is interpreted by material from the book referenced by number. Easy enough. Of course, we couldn't leave well enough alone, so the real reason for using DOT in the project name was to make the recursive acronym "Dot Organized Texts," which are texts that have been correctly related or organized for interpretation with circled numbers. If it helps, think of each circled number as a scroll since each book of the Bible was a scroll once upon a time.

If you are familiar with the chain reference system common to many Bibles then you have an ad-hock example of how this system appears to really work. I say "ad-hock" because the chain reference system was built by randomly noting how different verses or passages seem to relate. Often these passages are related because they use the same term, but are otherwise not too closely related and therefore don't yeild a very useful interpretation. In contrast, the DOT system is nearly mechanical. Once you have a passage of Scripture related to a given book the preceding passage had better deal with the previous book and the following passage had better deal with the following book or you are wrong. Notice there's no slack in the system, so it's difficult to make arbritrary connections like the chain reference system and there's no holes like there is with the chain reference system.

The only other catch to this study is that is does have a prerequisite study in book order. This notation system only works when the books of the Bible are in their correct order, an order we typically refer to as the Bible's Book Order.

Website Organization

So much work remains to be done in this space. For now there's a start at documenting a replay in the book of Philippians. This will give you some examples of how the Scriptures interact when matched.

You might also visit the Bible page since most sections of our online Bibles have dots. Those dots are not documented yet (that's what this site is for), and are subject to shifting around or even removal if they don't pass muster. So dive in, but don't assume the dots are correct.

At a previous time there were a few more pages on this site and a tool for surfing the replays. These will come back, but we're rebuilding much of our tooling and other subjects have been more pressing. My apologies to anyone who has been waiting on us for this research.