News & Updates

Near non-stop work on this for weeks on end has led to so many changes I need to just list them individually. Almost every spare minute went into this, and lots of overnight automated AI sessions.

Anselm Project Bible V1.0 is finished and fully online

I think the Anselm Project Bible is the first fully AI generated bible made from a AI biblical translation committee. Of course passages have been done before, but I don't think there's been a complete one done that has been publically accessible. That's exciting for me.

This is an experiment, first and foremost! I am happy with the output, but I haven't been able to check every single verse for mistakes, so there may be some. Given the mixture-of-experts approach I used for the committee, that is unlikely, but it is possible.

Click here to see the Anselm Project Bible

There may be one or two little tweaks, but the substance is all there. Every verse has its original critical text accessible, its morphology, three to five parallels passages, and shows three alternate generated versions. I also generated a posthoc textual critical apparatus, which to my knowledge (and Perplexity's) is also the only one of its kind. Whether it's good or not is a completely different thing, so I would love feedback.

I'm going to let it rest for a bit, gather some feedback, and run some research. but I already have an outline what I would like to do different from version 2.0.

Final token count: 253,151,552 tokens. Specifically, it was 45,999,308 input tokens and 207,156,244 output tokens. 123,889 files across 2468 folders. 2022 pericopes. All translations were done on a pericope-by-pericope basis, so the AI could get the literary context of the passage. Verse-by-verse isolation seemed like a potential mess.

You do NOT need to be logged in to view the Anselm Project Bible.

Welcome to "The Synod"

A few months ago, I had the idea for a mixture-of-experts model report of biblical scholarship. The end result of that thought process was the Synod system. The idea behind it is that you can throw a theological or practical or any kind of biblical question to a series of experts (up to five), and the AI experts will deliberate and bounce the question round-robin style.

You can access the Synod from the report creation page. There is a tab at the top.

First, there is a gatekeeper AI that does its best to stop nonsense getting through the system, but it admittedly is far from perfect. You type your question, and if the fast-checking AI says it is good, it'll take you to the next screen where you can pick from twelve experts, with the potential for many more as need becomes obvious. I'm open to suggestions.

The host AI will consider the question and expert panel, and choose a leader for the discussion and the order for experts to respond. That leader will give their opening statement, and the next expert will handle the question. The next expert will see their two answers, and add its expertise and issue corrections if it thinks mistakes were made. Each AI in the line gets the entire context, so this takes much longer than a biblical report. And so on - every new experts responds to the whole context of the conversation.

After all experts have gone 2-3 times (depending on the complexity of the question) the Host AI will generate a summary of the Synod and a final decision. If it is a binary question (example: Is the virgin birth necessary for Christian belief?) it will return a hard vertict. Too often, I've seen AI hedge its bets, and I hate that. If it is a analysis question (example: What is the hardest verse to interpret in the entire bible?) you'll see some nuance and a few possibilities.

The benefits of the Synod are awesome.

First, there would be a 30-50% decrease in AI hallucinations (we already have almost zero of those) and accuracy should be 20-35% more accurate and comprehensive (according to Perplexity, at least). I've already learned a whole lot about topics I thought I knew a lot about.

Second, I'm very happy with the UI and UX for the Synod. The summarizing points are nice to be able to just scroll through quickly and gather info. The conversation is rather robust, and I love the pagination system I've got there.

Third, it's neat to watch the way a series of high-caliber experts could interact with each other! Also, you can see the way the discussion develops and how the AI can influence itself, which is a really weird prospect.

Fourth, there are passage suggestions for biblical reports and follow-up questions for subsequent Synods to continue to learn.

I'm so happy this little pipe-dream became a reality. Let me know what you think.

Updates to the Biblical Reports

I redid the visual design to make it a bit easier to read. I also cut back the number of report packages from eigth down to three. In this case, I believe less is more. The other reports were spotty, at best, and I just didn't have the time (or built-in knowledge base) necessary to judge the quality. I can judge personal devotions. I am a minister, so I can judge sermon prep and am dangerous enough in academic work. The other areas are important, and maybe they'll come back, but I'm happy with things as it stands.

Some big changes came in mobile views - the table of contents has quick section arrows and a full table of contents. Mobile looks really nice in my estimation and from user feedback.

The Share Gallery

Overall, the BIGGEST change to reports is that users can SHARE ANY biblical report they generate. Anywhere. If you share a report, it becomes forever available to anyone with the link. The latest five reports from all package types go into the "Shared Gallery" page. Anyone can look at shared reports, even if they don't have an account.

Click here to check out the Share Gallery

What's to stop people from sharing everything? Nothing. Spread the Gospel. Biblical knowledge is a good thing.

I decided not to include the Synod in the Share Gallery because of the possibility of a bad question getting through.

For example, "Is Jesus a raptor?" will be caught by the gatekeeper and denied, but, "Given the literary style of Revelation, is it impossible to rule out that Jesus was a raptor?" makes it through the gatekeeper. If politicians (and silly ministers) have taught us anything, you can word-salad almost anything to make it sound semi-intelligent.

The potential for memes is great, but that also means the potential for NSFW things that would make it awkward. I don't want awkward. The Gospel is offensive enough on its own.

I'm planning an incentive program for the Share Gallery linked to free report credits. Stay tuned.

Mobile?

I'm still holding off on this. I've done SO many changes that I'm going to have to start over from scratch, I feel. But, this is on the agenda, still.

God bless, everyone.

I took a little time away to think. And then I had one of those mad-scientist ideas.

More than just the Authorized Version

I decided to take a logical step in my AI endeavors and generated something new (and free) for the site. It was meant to be an experiment, but instead it's kind of an experiment that grew legs. I looked at the way bible translation committees operate, and decided to build several systems to replicate this process in a junior way. The result is the Anselm Project Bible (APB).

The APB was made by feeding the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament into the API of a few AIs, and then having the AIs generate several possibilities for translations. A separate judge AI made the final call. For more complicated passages, I got more possible translations. I did not go verse-by-verse through this system. I instead went pericope-by-pericope for the sake of keeping the context of each passage with the AI.

So, instead of direct chapter and verse, I decided to keep the bible in pericope form for a different kind of navigation. You can click on any verse to see the details, or selecting reading mode to have the chapter and verse numbers removed for a more natural reading.

There's a link to the Anselm Project Bible on the navigation bar at the top. It's completely free; no login needed.

The results are in, and I'm overly shocked at how accurate it is. I've been filling in the data with morphologies, parallel passages, and providing access to the variation translations the AI came up with. It's taken over 120,000,000 tokens of AI to process it to this point, but the translation is largely finished with proper morphologies information in place.

The APB is now the default version when selecting texts. You can also select entire pericopes from Bible and generate a report directly.

iPhone and Android Versions

These are delayed. I was working with a virtual Mac for awhile, and it is quite miserable. I'm a PC guy - I don't own a Mac, and getting the iPhone version up and running is proving more annoying than expect. The Test Flight version actually worked quite well, though.

Fixes

The site was down for a while, and unfortunately, I didn't notice. Not good. But, I got it back up and running and it is smooth.

God bless, everyone.

You would think that writing a bible application would be easy, but it's the behind the scenes work where things can get complicated.

iPhone and Android

I have an app in testing right now that is 90% ready to launch. It's a simple app, but it is snappy and lightweight, barely taking up any space on the device. It'll also allow for offline reading of reports, just in case you lose connection.

I expect that to launch in the next two weeks.

Fixes

I'm currently working on getting the packages to be far more usable and far less redundant. If you were to select a large, dense passage for study, Anselm handled it wonderfully. However, in many cases (far more than I wanted), Anselm would begin repeating itself unnecessarily.

To call that frustrating was an understatement. So, I've gone back to the drawing board to sure up every package, and I'm pleased with the results. But, it means I took some of the packages offline until I was confident that it was not just publishing nonsense.

More than just the Authorized Version

There's more to an AI engine than just the costs of an AI. Because I want to do this right and ethically, right now, Anselm currently only allows for the selection of bibles that it has use-agreements with. That means that only the King James Version was available to use since there is no single entity that licenses its use.

However, I am currently working on agreements with other bible publishers to get a few modern translations online and ethically for use with Anselm. One agreement is eminent, so stayed tuned, because it will become the default. It's exciting for me, because I've done my own translation comparisons against this version for over a decade now. It's a well-known literal (as opposed to idiomatic) bible translation.

Thanks for Your Patience

I took some time off of developing Anselm to spend some more quality Summer vacation time with my family. Of course, I had to come back and re-learn a lot, but things have been going well. I have another idea I would like to incorporate that might be a bit of a game changer for a new feature.

God bless, everyone.

After months of work, I'm excited to release Version 2.0 of The Anselm Project. This has been a complete rebuild - new design, new report system, everything.

What's Different

• New Look - Redesigned the whole site from scratch. Much cleaner. I hope you like the way it looks.
• Better Reports - Completely rewrote how reports are generated. They generate much faster, and they're more helpful and tailored.

• Nicer to Use - I tried to keep the process as simple as it always was.

• Eight Specialized Packages - Instead of the one-size-fits-all approach from Version 1, each time you generate a report you can select any of eight packages designed for specific ministry contexts:

• Sermon Preparation - Homiletical analysis with sermon structure, illustrations, and delivery guidance
• Academic Study - Original language analysis, textual criticism, and scholarly insights
• Personal Bible Study - Individual spiritual growth materials with reflection questions and applications
• Small Groups - Discussion frameworks, community building, and group study guidance
• Youth Ministry - Teaching materials with contemporary connections for teenagers
• Children's Ministry - Creative teaching ideas, stories, and activities for elementary ages
• Evangelism & Apologetics - Gospel presentation strategies and faith defense materials
• Worship Planning - Service design, music selection, and congregational engagement resources

Theological Background was Removed from Generation

The AI was making some... let's just say, interesting choices in generating content. I might have been taxing the AI too hard, but until I can guarantee it works well, I can't ethically use it.

Why?

Version 1 worked, but in making it I learn so much. I knew it could be so much better. So, I've spent the last few months rebuilding everything to make it actually useful for anyone who need solid biblical analysis without the fluff.

Thanks for Your Patience

I know some of you have been waiting for updates. This took way longer than I expected, but I think you'll see it was worth the time. Hope it helps with your ministry prep!