This is the first full-text example as far as I know (Gen Z bible doesn't count).
There are hallucinations and issues, but the overall quality surprised me.
LLMs have a lot of promise translating and rendering 'accessible' more ancient texts.
The technology has a lot of benefit for the faithful, that I think is only beginning to be explored.
Answer: The sky. The ancient people who wrote the bible thought the sky was a solid dome that separated "the water's above" (aka rain) from the water's below. God lived on the other side of this dome.
This is confirmed later in Genesis with the Tower of Babel story.
They tried to reach this dome by building a tower. And "god" was so offended by their ignorance and stupidity (which he perpetrated) that he decided to punish them.
The "faithful" obviously reject this simple interpretation in favor of something more obtuse and mystical.
Imprecise language is a common human feature of a lack of understanding - something we all suffer from. We call LLM's "AI" without fully understanding what's artificial and what's intelligence.
The story of faith is, in some ways, the story about how little we know about the universe. That doesn't mean there's no progress. If anything, it shows there is an end goal.
The ancient narratives of Babel and Genesis reduce the incomprehensible (Creation, the Divine) into elements we as humans at that time could understand.
How else could our ancestors have possibly related to the divine?
There is nothing "divine" in the story to relate to.
It is a collection of unscientific, erroneous myths and beliefs that were popular in the culture at the time it was written --- by men. The only reason any divinity can still be subscribed to it is that these basic facts have been somewhat obfuscated through translation.
I truly appreciate the fact that they put this right up front in the book. Interpreted for what it is, it succinctly obviates the need for much further consideration or worry.
What I'm saying is that just because I could spend untold hours analyzing kindergarten art projects and present it to the parents in the class who will also find it intensely interesting, cat-icorns aren't real... they're just my child's way of imagining what's beyond their perceptions.
humans additionally have a spectacular ability to use absurdity and loose definitions of things in ways that play with this unspoken alignment to communicate other ineffable ideas and/or build community. I'd go as far as to say we play with this unspoken alignment more so than we say exactly what we mean.
I would think this behavior, although often seen in meme culture nowadays, would be highly relevant to religious communication and documentation of the past. I think actually trying to write down an exact meaning is a modern phenomenon and is observed in the over articulation and general structure of "legalese", for which I dont think the bible resembles very much in spirit in any way.
Simply, the "divine" isn't real. Nothing within the Bible points to any truly incomprehensible truth. The God of the Bible is not beyond understanding, he is cut from the same cloth as other sky-father deities of the time.
Everything within the Bible was limited to what the authors themselves could comprehend given their personal and cultural biases, because they are a product of human imagination and intellect.
When the writers said the world was created in seven days, they meant seven days. When they said that people tried to build a tower to heaven and God struck it down, and created different languages to confuse humans so they never tried that again, that's what they meant, and believed.
You could bring up the Trinity as an example of God's incomprehensible truth but the Trinity doesn't really exist in the Bible, it's an extra-biblical concept created by Christians as a philosophical compromise between rival factional ideologies and a desire to maintain a monotheistic religion given polytheistic elements. It is intentionally irrational but there is no deeper truth behind it. It's just accepted as a matter of faith.
There is and will be more details on process in future blog posts (blog is at the very bottom)
If you have more details, we'll investigate.
Beyond that,
>there are hallucinations and issues
seems like a deal-killer for a religious text. Yes, all translation by humans is an act of interpretation on some level, and so there's lossiness in all translation – but the difference between a human carefully weighing their reasoning for a particular choice of rendering vs. an LLM that is basically weighted dice that might land totally wrong is a categorically-different thing, not a question of degrees.
Because much of what it produces (especially in the "poetic" mode) does seem to be very much "off the beaten path" for a good number of renditions.
I don't think that the goal would be to have a dataset that is completely free from scholarship on the topic of Biblical translation, but rather to synthesize the rules and principles from the collected body of knowledge and apply it (with steering) to the entire Biblical text.
No one is suggesting you replace your ESV or NKJV with this for your religious study. This is as much a technical project of interest as it is a faith-based one.
In terms of your view of the priors on the Bible, you've described in my experience the process all translations go through. We're all skewed by default toward reproducing (poorly) previous translation through word choice modification.
That is, in many ways, the whole thing. My guess is an iterative approach can actually yield a better approach as words shift meaning socially over time.
But we will see!
There are lingering errors (hallucinations, notes) that need to be removed before it would be reasonable sharing and studying broadly.
The other commenter has pointed out novel copyright issues, not that it's likely we'd go to court over this.
For example. It is easier for a Camel to go into the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into Heaven. If you read this, it makes it sound like Abraham cannot get into Heaven, wasn't he wealthy? Heck, there's others who were wealthy in scripture, even kings are they all doomed? In Aramaic the same word that in Greek is said to mean camel, can also mean rope.
If you think about a rope going through the eye of a needle, and what it TAKES for a rope to go through the eye of a needle, aka removing all the threads or layers (humbling the person and forcing them to strip themselves down to their core) in order to make it through the eye of the needle. Or in other words, you must be willing to dethatch yourself from all your wealth. Remember the guy who asked Jesus was he must do to be saved and enter heaven, and walked away when Jesus told him to give away everything he owned to the poor? That is the same exact message.
There's a few other verses, but that's the main one that always strikes me. Some of them are far more nuanced and I get into hours of debate with people who are ignoring everything I am saying (I don't know why, I try to lay it all out in the most simple way possible) as if I'm breaking the law, but its obvious to me that we don't have perfect copies of the Bible. I still think the overall message is the same though, so nothing wrong with that. It proves yet again that men are all fallible.
Sorry for the tangent. I used to deep dive translations and their nuances, and the Aramaic based Bibles are very interesting.
There's also an Aleh Tav Old Testament Bible which is fascinating to me. It adds the Aleph Tav anywhere it would be in the Hebrew into the English.
This is a great question. In the next verses, the disciples ask pretty much the same thing: "Who then can be saved?" and then Jesus explains to them:
With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
And if we could bring more faithful people into that agreement process, that's a good thing.
As for the personal achievement, nothing really is a fully personal achievement in this (or really any) domain.
Which reminds me, do you think it's possible that the stories in the Bible are actually mystic symbolism and "veiled truth" (like the sort of stories that you might get in a dream) and people have mistaken it for actual physical history (with which it's obviously incompatible)?
The parables of Jesus come to mind. They weren't meant to be taken literally but to teach, to get a point across.
Obviously, you have to take a strong “religion first” lens to everything about the world from there.
But of course, there were ancient cultures that pre-date Judaism (and by extension Judeo-Christian sources), which share many similar stories but with different details and descriptions. Large scale flood myths and arks are common in history. You can read the Mesopotamian version in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is strikingly similar to Noah’s ark.
But I think my favourite interpretation that I've heard so far is that the stories in the Bible are like the protective husk that preserves the kernel of truth. The stories are catchy and have stuck, unwittingly allowing the truth to be carried across the centuries, safely hidden in the minds of men who did not understand it, until the day comes when people grow up enough, to the point where they could crack the shell and eat the fruit.
I really like how that sounds like, but of course, there are probably not many others who see it in that light. Luckily for me, these days they don't burn heretics any more (at least where I live :)).
> The stories are catchy and have stuck, unwittingly allowing the truth to be carried across the centuries, safely hidden in the minds of men who did not understand it, until the day comes when people grow up enough, to the point where they could crack the shell and eat the fruit.
is to betray just a general lack of understanding of the text. Just because you're exposed to the stories doesn't mean you understand the stories; the truth of the stories; or it's real intended meaning. It takes really smart people a lot of time and a lot of effort to just begin understanding the breadth and depth of the Bible. It's deeply humbling to begin to unravel it and see the story for how it portrays itself. I would really encourage you to take one story from the Bible, for example, the garden of Eden and see how it traces itself throughout the entire scope of the Bible and the different forms and iconography that shows up just from that one story.
Of course the stories remained culturally relevant through oral traditions and Jewish law. The common thread is culture and the stories of a people.
With all due respect, how are you in any position to be able to objectively evaluate the quality assuming you’re not fluent in Hebrew and Greek?
Admittedly it's an aesthetic judgment on certain verses.
The bible was already translated well. The quality of your "work", by your own admission, depends on the "problem" at hand already having been solved and you having access to the solution. So it is literally ensloppifying an already existing better version.
Why?
The goal is not ensloppifying the Bible. Quantitative textual analysis is currently painstakingly done, and still has issues (e.g. weighing phrases that mean different things in Aramaic than greek - e.g. the 'eye of the needle'). People have undertaken this work but it is expensive and slow.
LLMs can do this.
The bigger reason to do this is that the translation can stay 'up to date' in any language ('vernacular') much faster.
There's a pretty big use case for that in my opinion.
What's fascinating to me is the suitability of some of the renditions that have been made. I've done a little bit of spot-checking, but some of the renderings (especially in the poetic version) don't seem to be very common translations.
Ideally this would be building off of established practice for translation, synthesizing existing human work, and applying those aggregated principles over the entire corpus.
It doesn't seem to simply be going with the majority version.
Genesis 1:13, Eve optimal Replace 'Then' with 'And' in optimal ('And the LORD God said') and poetic_daily to preserve narrative vav-consecutive connective consistently.
Side project, big book.
Those will get ironed out soon.
Did you use a reasoning model to translate these verses? If so, I would be very interested in seeing the breakdown that the LLM used that went into each verse.
I understand that such breakdowns can be hallucinated at many levels also (and final output does not always correspond with the reasoning flow), but I (personally) would find this helpful.
In an ideal world we could ingest the full study Bible's notes. My guess is much of the NET-level (or other study bible) scholarship is part of the base model corpus.
Here's a deeper view into the verse process. We did use a reasoning model.
{ "reference": "Genesis.1.1", "optimal": "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.", "poetic_daily": "At the dawn of all things, God shaped sky and soil into being.", "footnotes": [ { "anchor": "God", "note": "Hebrew אֱלֹהִים (Elohim); plural in form but singular in meaning when referring to Israel’s God." } ], "controversies": [], "connectives_check": [ { "source": "וְ", "rendered": "and", "status": "kept" } ], "consistency_flags": [], "scholars": [ { "name": "Thomas Schreiner", "one_sentence_view": "Emphasizes the verse as the absolute beginning of creation, affirming God's sovereign initiative." }, { "name": "Walter Brueggemann", "one_sentence_view": "Sees the verse as a theological overture introducing God’s ordering power over chaos." }, { "name": "Eugene H. Peterson", "one_sentence_view": "Views the line as the opening note of a grand narrative, inviting readers into God’s creative story." } ], "lexeme_refs": [ { "anchor": "God", "lang": "he", "lemma_id": "430", "note": "אֱלֹהִים (Elohim) chosen per rule preference; conveys the singular Creator without plural nuance." }, { "anchor": "and", "lang": "he", "lemma_id": "c/853", "note": "Connective וְ/ marks coordination between 'the heavens' and 'the earth'; retained explicitly." } ], "review": {} }
mikemarsh•2w ago
Although written primarily for Orthodox Christians, there are valuable cautions here to consider regardless of your tradition: https://www.jordanville.org/artificialintelligence
epsteingpt•2w ago
In this instance, I think it has the opportunity to democratize deep religious study in ways that used to be reserved for serious scholars.
e.g. Do you know what the word "daily" in the Lord's Prayer comes from?
Questions like these can engage the mind and spirit.
I hope more people use the tools to fully explore their faith, instead of outsourcing prayer and sermon creation to the LLMs.
bwestergard•2w ago
Did you read the essay? It says:
"Instead of being merely “agnostic” as many argue, digital technology has amplified the ability of the princes of this world to feed the fallen man, to make him more docile and distracted while installing beliefs, morals, and feelings that are acceptable to the secular spirit of this age. AI may be the final technology that is weaponized to create this new man before the Antichrist arrives, who will be the human manifestation of AI---an ever-helpful problem-solver who people mistakenly feel they cannot live without."
Your position is diametrically opposed to this one.
epsteingpt•2w ago
"Those who use AI must always remember that it is psychologically designed to keep you typing and asking. It targets your vulnerabilities to achieve this end without any spiritual concern for your soul. To the creators of AI, your addiction to their platforms is a metric of their success.
Many have told us that AI chatbots give “good” spiritual answers that are “correct,” but as long as the underlying programming of the AI is to keep you directed onto itself, the behavior of AI is simply that of a false elder. A false elder may very well teach correctly and coat his words with a spiritual veneer, but ultimately, he wants you to focus more on himself than on Christ. Dealing with a false elder can cause a believer severe spiritual damage by distorting what should be a relationship with the divine to one of dependency with a person who seeks his own glory. Today, AI may share dogmatically correct spiritual answers, but its goal is not your salvation but for you to ceaselessly ask it more questions. The creators of AI want you to love their own creation, not the Lord Himself."
This is true with any technology, and often, in many cases many human spiritual leader.
My agreement is not to downplay the risk or natural 'amorality' of such a technology--it's clear with Grok e.g. AI can truly do evil. But LLM's are not internet porn or gambling.
Just because the current version and incentives of technology are arranged in such a way doesn't mean you can't counteract it.
The enemy will find and use new ways to enslave us - we can't reject progress because of that.
So yes, I do 100% agree with the current mission and technology. But unlike the author, I personally believe the ultimate work of Christianity in humanity is to turn us all to repentance and bring us closer to God, not to reject the sinners.
Onawa•2w ago
I'm Native American (indigenous, or whatever other moniker you've heard). Both of my paternal grandparents were subjected to the horror of boarding schools. So forgive me if I'm a bit cynical when it comes to the methods deemed appropriate by Christianity to "turn us all to repentance and bring us closer to God."
I would argue that instead of being a tool to try and convince more people that the Abrahamic god is the "right one", maybe think about using LLMs to challenge your own biases regarding religion and to question the myriad of moral and logical issues presented within your holy book.
Just a suggestion from someone also looking at the idea of utilizing LLMs to preserve and explore indigenous language, culture, and wisdom without becoming a slave to the technology.
epsteingpt•2w ago
LLM's here are a tool for accessing old works, which happen to coincide with my faith.
If you're using LLMs to preserve and explore indigenous texts and languages, that is an absolutely wonderful thing to do. I wish you great success.
There are an increasing number of orphan / dying / dead languages, and there could be a project to 'resurrect them' and comprehensively translate their texts to spread them more widely.
I wish you great success on your journey!
mikemarsh•1w ago
* historical American Puritanism (of the kind you rightly opposed)
* modern "rock concert and a TED talk" Evangelicalism
* Traditional Orthodoxy such as that of the Jordanville Fathers of the linked article
may not be the most accurate classifier? Anything more than a cursory inspection would reveal these are all very different things, even if they all use some overlapping vocabulary from time to time (word-concept fallacy).
jonjacky•1w ago
"progress" is a loaded term, it carries connotations of good. Not everything from the tech industry is an example of progress. I agree with the authors of the linked article that programs designed to create the illusion of a sympathetic listener in order to prey on the naive and credulous are just evil.
jonjacky•1w ago
I'm not sure if they really mean to say that literal horns-and-pitchforks demons in the flames of hell are typing chat responses designed to drive people mad and encourage them to kill themselves -- or just that the chat programs are built and promoted by people motivated by a systematic hostility to human well-being. Either way, they think they are pure evil.