This is a running list of applications that will be possible with the currently-envisioned Open Scriptures platform. Under each application, a description of what it does and how it does it will be provided. What ideas do you have?

Manuscript Comparator

This application not a potential--it is now a reality; while a prototype, it is a fully-functional application. The tool allows two or more Biblical manuscripts or manuscript editions to be easily compared in side-by-side and unified views (no original unedited MSS are yet incorporated; currently New Testament MSS are included, but inclusion of Old Testament Hebrew manuscripts will be essential). It demonstrates a fundamental concept in the Open Scriptures framework: semantic linking. All of the contributing manuscripts are merged together to produce a single unified manuscript containing every attested variant; additionally, while merging, a manuscript's words are linked to their corresponding words in the unified manuscript. (All words in the unified manuscript are normalized by making them lower-case and removing diacritics and punctuation; spelling differences and transposed words are not normalized). Because each manuscript links back to the unified manuscript, every manuscript is then connected to every other manuscript by virtue of their shared links to a common point.

With the database of interlinked manuscripts constructed, the Manuscript Comparator is able to obtain the differences among manuscripts by querying the database for the requested manuscripts and joining them to each other and the unified manuscript. The results are presented in either a parallel (side-by-side) or unified view, with words highlighted according to whether they are “inserted” or “deleted”.

One of the side benefits of having each manuscript's words linked with their correspondingly equivalent words in other manuscripts (semantic linking) is that any morphological parsings that are provided for one manuscript may then be viewed with any other manuscript. For example, the MorphGNT project provides parsings and lemmas but no Strong's numbers. The Tischendorf text by Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen, however, includes Strong's numbers. Since the MorphGNT and Tischendorf texts are merged into a single unified manuscript, there is a linkage between two corresponding words in two texts by means of their common link to the unified manuscript. This allows Strong's numbers to be viewed witht he MorphGNT. This graunlar semantic linking is an absolute fundamental concept in the Open Scriptures framework, and almost all applications can be immensely empowered by having it available.

Translation Comparator

While comparing manuscripts is a very important ability, and even more powerful tool would be one that compares translations based on their manuscript sources. This is the goal of the Translation Comparator. The data underlying this application must be much more complex since it involves not only MSS in one single language, but additionally it includes the texts of translations. In order for translations to be compared based on their manuscript sources, each of the semantic units in the translations must be linked back to their corresponding source semantic units in the unified manuscript. (Read more in "The Tagged Tanakh and Semantic Linking".) In order to obtain these semantic links between translations and the unified manuscript, collective intelligence must be employed. Multiple users must make passes over a translation and link it back to the unified manuscript; the more users make passes, the more reliable the data (see an old prototype).

In the Translation Comparator, comparing the English King James version with the Spanish Reina Valera version would result in very few differences (if any) since they both rely on the Textus Receptus. Additionally, with the semantic links in place, it will also be able to compute the degree to which any translation relies on one manuscript over another.

Integrated Searching and Comprehensive Concordance

Since all translations are linked together by means of their common links to the unified manuscript, searching for a scripture passage by keywords will be greatly improved. In English, for example, there are dozens of translations and each of them use different ways of saying essentially the same thing. Computers normally have a hard time dealing with synonyms, but if the synonymous words are linked together, then they have no problem. If I were to get my translations confused and I mixed up the wording of the KJV and the NIV, and if I tried to search for a single verse that contained two words, one KJV and the other NIV, then I would be able to get matching verses because of the semantic linking.

The semantic linking of words in translations makes concordances possible that contain all of the words not only from one translation but from all translations in a given language. This would allow the user to see how a Greek or Hebrew word is translated in all of the translations in a given language. Such an exhaustive concordance of all translations in a language would greatly reduce failed concordance lookups when the words from translations are confused.

Interlinear and Bilingual Editions

It almost goes without saying, but since translations are interlinked at the semantic-unit level, it is then possible to easily create interlinear and bilingual (parallel) editions of scripture. Pagination and paragraph spacing may be fine-tuned so that semantically equivalent words appear as close together as possible. Furthermore, in addition to the traditional interlinear view, it will be possible to view how any number of selected translations translate the word or phrase in question. The result of looking up a particular word in a certain verse could be the display of the semantically equivalent words or phrases in every other language in the system.

Translation-Independent Cross References

Since all translations link back to their manuscript sources, user cross-references can benefit by this in that they can be independent of the translation they were derived from. If someone were to do an extensive cross-reference of the Old Testament in the New, if such a cross-reference were stored in the Open Scriptures system, the cross-references could be viewable in any translation the user desires. Different views of the same underlying data. This translation independence also entails an internationalized system

Version Translation Examiner and LXX/Masoretic Text Comparator 

Translations can be examined to see how faithfully they translate the manuscripts because translations are linked with their source manuscripts at the granular semantic level. For example, what if the semantic units of the LXX were linked with their corresponding semantic units in the MT? An application like this would be invaluable for LXX studies and Old Testament textual criticism. There are cases where the LXX meaning is more specific than the Hebrew, and in cases of the reverse, where the LXX’s meaning is more generic. (It would be great to compile a list of these semantic variance link types.) In such cases, perhaps there could be an equivalence rating from 0.0 to 1.0, where 1.0 means an exact translation and 0.0 means complete variance; for virgin/maiden, perhaps a rating of 0.75 would be appropriate; when multiple people make passes over the data and provide ratings like this, we could then average them out to get a rating that is validated by collective intelligence. (Read more about this in "The Tagged Tanakh and Semantic Linking".)

The interlinked semantic web of links between translations and manuscripts can do a lot to enable examining how "free" a translation is. For example very free translations like The Message which may be so paraphrased that individual words and phrases cannot be linked at all but rather whole sentences and paragraphs: the more free a translation, the longer the smallest common units of meaning; the more literal (word-for-word) a translation is, the shorter the smallest common units of meaning.

New Testament Quotations of the Old Testament

This should be built in to all of the semantic linking.  The New Testament text which contains the quotations should be linked to the relevant Old Testament text, in any version but especially the LXX and MT.  This could be similar to a tool-tip pop-up window that shows the original text for comparison.

Misc Idea Brainstorming...

• Combining all Greek MSS into one text, including variants (see Manuscript Comparator above)
  
• Model textual history of the Bible, storing not only each popular Greek manuscript but all of the early MSS
• Unified diff of MSS
  
• Manuscript timeline: keep track of manuscript revisions
• Translation sources: see which manuscripts are used for various translations
• Graphically shows how we got to have the translations that we have today.
• Utilize project which has taking photos and making transcriptions of Biblical manuscripts
  
• Electronic New Testament Manuscripts Project
• New efforts by Dan Wallace
• Biblical Manuscripts Project 
• Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts 
• The Codex Sinaiticus Project
  
• Allow data providers to monetize their contributions
• Some data is just not free, since it is just too costly to produce and the workers must be compensated for their efforts
  
• Users may have to pay subscriptions to use some data
• Students and laymen should be able to access data for free
• Portion of contributions would go toward maintenance of costs
• Word study tools, results of which are available in any source-linked translation
• To provide a lasting and definitive means for users to create and collaborate on inductive word studies, and write commentaries and notes on passages (e.g. all of the names of God, a Trinitarian Concordance, cross-reference between Bible and Qur'an, etc). This textual foundation would keep any study from being isolated to one translation and one language.
• Facility for making Bible Book outlines and verse syntax diagrams
• standard format:  and they would be stored in a way that would be translation-independent
  
• web app to create
• output standard XML outline format: XSLT can transform one format into another
• outlines in one language can become immediately available in another since each translation would be linked back to their source
• so that an outline done in the NIV would immediately be available in any other translation or language
  
• also syntax trees
  
• book outlines are form of discourse analysis; syntax trees would fit under the larger discourse
• collaborating and versioning; merging outlines; comparing outlines
• tool for inductive Bible study... can be given to classes at Multnomah to help students and build the library
• Comments, word studies, etc. done with in translation should be made available in any other since each translation would be source-linked
• make scriptural tools (such as word studies, commentaries, and notes) which were written for one version, apply to any other translation as well
• Apply scripture tools developed (i.e. notes or commentaries) for one translation, to be used on another (e.g. a NASB-based tool mashed up with an Arabic translation)
• Linking translations to MSS so that any word study can be done and made available in any other version
• Provide means of cross-referencing ranges of tokens with other ranges
• Provide foundation so that word studies can be done in one version and immediately be accessed by any other version or translation
• Wiki commentaries on the Bible
• Looking behind a word to see its origin and how other translations translate the same word
• easily see where any translated word originally came from (looking "behind" each word), and see how it was translated in other versions in its semantic unit and context
• Look up every instance of a word's in a specific parsing
• Regular expression-esque searching of the MSS
• Annotating/Commenting
  
• Provide a means of annotating an abstract set or range of tokens
• Tagging
• See how a Greek word or phrase is translated into any language
• User-built translations of the Bible which are peer-reviewed and commented on (WikiBible), an Open NET Bible of sorts
• WikiBible (aka Open Source Translation)
• Concordances which consist of not only all of the words from one translation, but words from an entire language (i.e. all English translations). Language-exhaustive concordances using words from all versions.
• Complete concordance, listing every word from any version
• Text searching across all translations, doing fuzzy and partial matching across multiple translations, since a phrase in mind may be jumbled combination of multiple versions
• Lexicons to include definitions... (Strongs, BDB, etc) each entry of which can have a listing of every instance of that word in the MSS, along with how those words are translated.
• Validation of user data by redundancy, verification, and rating
• Users could have profiles which indicate how many semantic-units they've linked, what their overall rating is, and how many comments they've made, etc.
• Include token-tagged audio bibles to go along with textual data, so that as the scripture is read, the corresponding word can be highlighted inline
• Use the HTML 5 audio element API
• Text is displayed on the page, and upon pushing PLAY, they press the spacebar to advance the currently selected token
• Once they've clicked a token, then when they click on that token again, the audio will seek to that position
• Note that the stored time index should be at the beginning of the spoken word, not during the spoken word
• If they get behind, they need to be able to fix their position; when replaying over previously tagged text, then they should be able to adjust/shift the subsequent indexes?
• Hebrew chanting of the text  
• Partner with FCBH to do this
• Mechanical Turk?
  
• Display parse trees of sentences
  
• SVG can dynamically draw these trees so that the grow out of the written prose text
  
• (Note: I need to update the Syntax Tree Drawer so that it can dynamically generate SVG in the document or VML if IE)
• Transform unordered lists into a tree view
  
• TreeBanks
• Display the scanned physical pages in combination with the electronic version; highlight search terms in the image as is done in Google Book Search.
• As is being done with the Sinaticus project, but they are using Flash
• Topic maps
• Implement complete OSIS identifier spec so that arbitrary ranges can be specified
• Cross-references
• Engrams
• Quotations of the OT in the New (see W/H public domain text)
• Semantic domains
• Zoomable Bible (see Sean Boisen's work)
  
• Cross-platform libraries to provide consistent features and interface
• Geography Overlay
  
• Historical texts could be linked to the geographical location (Google maps?) in which they occurred
• Possibly include actual pictures/videos of the locations
• Possibly include routes that were taken by biblical characters: i.e. Paul's missionary journeys, Exodus routes, routes Abraham took, etc.
  

What Else???

What ideas do you have for applications built on top of an interlinked Semantic Web of Scripture?