Mapping God’s Bloodline
Our Father in Heaven writes beautiful stories. His brand of beauty seldom involves straight lines or purely smooth surfaces. He weaves textures and surprises that mesmerize as we move closer. Studying the depths of scripture inspires awe and wonder.
Some stories in the Bible include detailed descriptions of family trees. We can link these chains of fathers and sons to The Son of Man, Last Adam, Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and heir to the throne of King David, back to the patriarchs of each namesake. We also know several generations of Jacob’s descendants who established the tribes of Israel.
We derive these facts from lists of names, like rows in a spreadsheet. This data lets us create visual charts that reveal ancestral connections, making patterns and relationships easier to grasp than reading lists alone.
Typical genealogy diagrams use sharp right angles and lines that are either perfectly horizontal or perfectly vertical. These stand in contrast to things we describe as “organic,” with curves, flexibility, and intricacy—the way God designs things. The hand-drawn family trees in the King James Bible matched the ornate aesthetic of nature while spanning 34 pages. Yet, Nature’s Creator brilliantly packs millions of things into microscopic spaces.
God’s Bloodline follows the twists and turns in the plot of redemptive history. Its colorful blooms, curves, and asymmetry communicate something you can’t see in cold, hard data. It fits over 800 people and their connections into a compact space. Some names are invisible until you zoom in closer, curious to discover fascinating details in hidden spots. These characteristics are my attempt to reflect the qualities of the Designer who shaped the lives and heritage of the people in this chart.
Questions About the Women
An early prototype included wives and mothers, but the messy family structures and overlapping relationships made it hard to read. So, I focused on father-son connections and further refined the chart to show only those tracing back to Adam, excluding over 2,000 men, to reduce visual clutter.
Since then, many people have asked why the women aren’t included. The simple answer is that I have not yet found a readable way to show everyone in the Bible and their relationships in a single diagram. For now, you can learn about the mothers of the people shown on the map when you click “More Details.” The women’s names on those pages link to information about their lives, which are worth investigating.
Acknowledgements
This upgrade from a static image to a clickable, zoomable, searchable interface was done in partnership with some incredible volunteers. In the span of a few months, two people reached out via email asking if they could contribute. Their generosity took this project out of my long-term backlog, and I could not be more grateful for the impressive results they produced. I especially want to thank AO Lab for connecting me to more people and providing a platform to plan and develop new projects.
If you are interested in graphic design, programming, or data engineering and want to use those skills to build Bible-related content, send me a note so we can explore ideas together!