Brave New Bible: AI and Bible Studies
How might AI change biblical studies in the future? This is something I’m pondering and re-pondering on a daily basis (see this video).
Imagine an AI plug-in called “BAB” for “BibleAiBot” that acts as your personal biblical study toolkit, tutor, fact-checker, research assistant, and sermon preparation pal! BABs could respond to prompts like:
Write a paragraph summarizing Romans 3:21-26 using studies by N.T. Wright, Paula Fredriksen, and Michael Gorman.
Provide a summary of different views of the significance of the perfect tense-form of the verb in Galatians 2:20.
Translate this article by Martin Hengel from German into English.
Provide a tabulated summary of the parallels between Romans 9 and the Dead Dea Scrolls.
In other words, imagine a cross between Biblegateway.com and Iron Man’s computer assistant Jarvis.
Those days might not be far off because, as Adam Graber points out, there already are AI-based Bible study tools that he believes will “continue to advance, proliferate, and eventually become proprietary systems.” Such systems I imagine will quickly become popular as they can be used for sermon preparation, private study, and even academic research.
Let me review a few of these BibleAiBots (BABs) for you and let you know what I’ve learned!
Bible.ai is a BAB that claims to have “millions of answers backed by Bible knowledge.” You enter a question about the Bible and it provides an answer from the Bible attained via ChatGPT. To be frank, you could just go to ChatGPT to get an answer. In addition, I asked Bible.ai, “What year did Paul write Galatians?” and got the answer, “I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to this question. I can only give biblical based answers, please try asking me a different question.” This proves that ChatGPT is not good with factual questions or contested areas of discourse. ChatGPT is good for summaries (like summarize Galatians 1) and for creative tasks (like write a poem about Galatians 1) but it is not a fact-checking search engine. So this BAB is a dud. Rating: 0
SiliconScripture.org is an “AI Powered Semantic Bible Search” where you can search words or phrases in a variety of public domain Bibles (KJV, ASV, Darby, etc.). It is limited to English language and to public domain Bibles. I don’t rate this BAB highly because Bible sites/software like Biblegateway.com, Blue Letter Bible, Olive Tree Bible Software, Logos, and Accordance do similar functions much, much better with access to more English translations, and you can search phrases in the original Hebrew and Greek. Rating: *
IlluminateBible.com is a BAB based on the NET Bible and ChatGPT. In its own words, “Illuminate is a Bible reader that puts artificial intelligence at your fingertips to answer any question you have.” I found this to be an easy and basic BAB to use. In sum, you go to your Bible chapter of choice, there you are immediately given (1) a one sentence summary of the chapter; (2) Prompts on previous chapters, historical context, and theological message. You can then enter questions about the passage which use ChatGPT to answer them. To be honest, this BAB is pretty much just using ChatGPT with the text of the NET open to view. Why it uses or is limited to the NET Bible I don’t know. Rating: **
AI-assisted Bible Study introduces itself as “an experiment [which] explores whether an AI can produce useful prompts for Bible study. Each chapter of the Bible has summaries, questions, and applications generated by an AI (and reviewed by humans).” In practice, this BAB invites you to identify a chapter (e.g., Colossians 1) for which it then provides you with multiple versions of: (1) Headings; (2) Short Summaries; (3) Summaries; (4) Application Questions; (5) Exegetical Questions; (6) Observation Questions; (7) Group Discussion Questions; (8) Prayers Based on the Text; (9) Personal Applications; and (10) Lessons. What is interesting, is that you are invited to vote on which summaries/questions are the best and most helpful. This way, the GPT begins to learn which answers/summaries meet with the largest consensus. This BAB has the motto at the top, “Generated by an AI, curated by humans.” That’s a good summary of what it is about. It is about getting answers and trying to improve, by vote, the answers given. Even so, as the authors recognize, the stuff generated might still be “unhelpful, offensive, or heretical.” In its favour, this BAB is a genuinely good Bible Study builder and it is making a concerted effort to improve its summaries and interrogation of AI for Bible Study. Rating: ***
NB: There is also Pastor.ai which uses AI to interrogate your church’s online sermons and videos. So it is basically an AI assistant developed from your church’s deposit of online information. Also, I just saw a Kickstarter campaign for an AI Bible App which intends to create AI-generated imagery from the Bible.
To be honest, there is nothing here that enhances my work as a biblical scholar and I would still recommend Logos Bible Software for studying biblical texts, for keeping ebooks on biblical studies, doing word searches, sermon and study building, and about everything else.
While AI is making some big advances, the data-base that ChatGPT uses and the way that it chooses to select and synthesize information is still not at JARVIS levels of utility. At the moment, ChatGPT is sort of like crowd-sourcing information about a topic. It is more complicated than that, but that is the level of limitation. And as we all know about committees or crowds, sometimes we are dumber together than we would ever be individually. Besides that, there is another danger Graber warns, “In fact, the BibleGPT might manufacture an entirely nonfactual response or ‘hallucinate’ a heretical statement. And from these hallucinations, users can end up with a misleading or warped theology.” In other words, you cannot always trust the veracity or even the theological orthodoxy of what BABs spit out.
What would be good is an AI plug-in to Logos which uses AI interactive chat features to better help you find what you’re looking for and assist in workflows to do what you want to get done.
Ultimately, the best BABs will encourage and enable us to connect with God, Scripture, mission, and church to achieve a deeper contemplation, more efficient exegesis, and a more excellent edification. But such things are still some time off …