--- pretty_name: "Atlas Biblica β€” Open Reference Data" license: cc-by-4.0 language: - en - pt - he tags: - bible - biblical-studies - digital-humanities - gazetteer - onomastics - reference size_categories: - 1K - **Repository:** - **Point of contact:** Fred Guth Structured reference data about the people, places and names of the Bible. It is the open half of the data behind [**Atlas Biblica**](https://atlasbiblica.com), a free reference to the people, places, events and books of the Bible. Every record carries `atlas_url`, the canonical address of its page on [atlasbiblica.com](https://atlasbiblica.com), so the dataset joins to the live reference without a lookup table β€” a row about Abana carries and the page is there. ## Configurations | Config | Rows | What it holds | | --- | ---: | --- | | `onomasticon` | 4,219 | The Portuguese spelling of every named entity, and how each was decided. | | `onomasticon_rulings` | 577 | Hand-authored spellings, one written reason each. | | `onomasticon_refusals` | 31 | Names the ARC renders as common nouns and never spells. | | `places` | 1,013 | The gazetteer join, carrying every competing modern identification. | | `names` | 683 | Names more than one figure answers to, and the candidates they resolve among. | | `canon` | 66 | The shape of the pinned edition: books, chapters, verse extents. | | `eponyms` | 28 | The man, the tribe and the land told apart. | | `eponym_refusals` | 2 | Senses looked for and deliberately not minted. | ```python from datasets import load_dataset ono = load_dataset("fredguth/atlas-biblica", "onomasticon", split="train") places = load_dataset("fredguth/atlas-biblica", "places", split="train") ``` ## The one that exists nowhere else: `onomasticon` A mapping from each entity in an English-language scholarly registry to the way the *Almeida Revista e Corrigida* β€” the Portuguese translation in widest traditional use β€” spells that name. Every entry records **how** it was decided: - **`arc-vote` (3,631)** β€” resolved automatically by matching the entity's own verses in the ARC text. - **`ruling` (557)** β€” decided by hand, each with a written reason, mostly non-cognate renderings no string similarity can find: *John β†’ JoΓ£o*, *James β†’ Tiago*. - **`english` (31)** β€” a refusal. The ARC renders these as common nouns and never as names: *Azazel* is "bode emissΓ‘rio", *Horesh* is "um bosque". Nothing in that edition spells them, so the name stays English rather than being invented. The refusals are the point as much as the rulings are. A gap recorded as a gap is a result; a gap filled by a plausible guess is a fabrication no downstream reader can detect. ## `places` Biblical places matched from the STEPBible registry to OpenBible.info, carrying **every** proposed modern identification rather than a single answer: coordinates, the scholarly works consulted, and community vote scores over time. Where the tradition disagrees about where a place was, the disagreement is in the data. `identifications[].best` marks the highest-scoring proposal. `votes` is a list of `{name, count}` rather than an object, because the key set is open β€” 19 keys across 628 distinct combinations β€” and an open-key struct breaks Arrow's schema inference partway down the file. ## `names` Names that more than one figure answers to, each with the candidates it resolves among and how each is attested. `scenario: no_primary_topic` means no candidate is attested strongly enough to hold the bare name alone. This is the disambiguation problem stated as data β€” what stands between "Joseph" and the eleven different people the text calls Joseph. ## `canon` Per book: order, testament, chapter count, total verses, and `extents`, the verse ceiling of each chapter. Measured against one pinned edition, and a property of *that* edition β€” versification differs between traditions, so these are not universal. ## `eponyms` STEPBible types fifteen eponymous ancestors as persons and gives the tribe and the territory descended from them no record at all. Read literally, that places seven towns inside Jacob's fourth son. These records declare the missing senses, each with a written verdict. `eponym_refusals` holds the senses looked for and deliberately not minted: Levi has no territory (Joshua 13:14), and Joseph's allotment is Ephraim's and Manasseh's. ## What is not here **The claim store.** Atlas Biblica is built on a graph of verse-anchored assertions extracted from the text; that graph is not published, and nothing in this dataset derives from it. Everything here comes from the entity registry, the gazetteer, the pinned edition or hand-authored decision tables. Practically: these datasets describe **who and what exists, what they are called, and where they are** β€” not what anyone did. ## Source, licence, citation The browsable form of this data β€” one JSON file per record, in a tree β€” and the code that builds both live at ****. This mirror is generated from that repository and pushed on every change. Released under **CC BY 4.0**. It incorporates work by others under their own terms β€” STEPBible (CC BY 4.0), OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0), the Berean Standard Bible, the Almeida Revista e Corrigida and Natural Earth (public domain). See `ATTRIBUTION.md` for the pinned versions and full notices. > Guth, F. *Atlas Biblica β€” open reference data*. https://github.com/Gutenback/atlas-biblica-data