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While AI obviously isn’t mentioned in the Bible, it has proven useful as a tool for Bible translation and interpretation. Additionally, specialists explore how the Bible informs our understanding of AI as a source of knowledge.

Science and the Bible are sometimes held up as opposing cultural forces, but an understanding of history shows this is not the case. The practice of science owes much to how the world is understood by our society, and in the West, our understanding of the world is created, in part, by our reading of the Bible. For many, the study of the natural world was a vital part of their faithful exploration of God’s creation and the laws that govern it.

The books of the Old Testament were primarily written in Hebrew, with a few later books and passages, such as Esther and parts of Daniel, written in Aramaic. The New Testament books were written in Greek, specifically the Greek of the provinces called Koine Greek. The earliest translations of the Bible are of books of the Old Testament. Aramaic translations and commentaries, known as targums, helped Jewish communities better understand their Scripture as knowledge of the Hebrew language waned. Greek-speaking Jews translated the Bible into Greek in a translation known today as the Septuagint. The Septuagint was eventually adopted by early Christians as their version of the Old Testament.

Though the Bible remains important today, it was written millennia ago, in different times, places, and cultures. Modern ideas and sentiments do not always align with some stories or verses, such as those about slavery or women, and this can make understanding these passages difficult. Every faith tradition wrestles with these verses and their interpretation, but this does not mean they discard the Bible.

The advent of AI has drawn a considerable amount of attention to its possible uses for biblical translation and interpretation, but there are several other technologies that scholars use, as well. As AI becomes better adapted to certain projects, no doubt it will be integrated into the use of some of these other research tools. One of the most important is the role of infrared light in revealing lost or erased text.

The “mass” in “mass production” is a matter of perspective. For example, the hundreds of Paris Pocket Bibles produced in the 13th century were certainly a type of “mass production.” But most often, people think of this phrase to mean the large-scale printing of the Bible. And for that, we turn to the inventor of modern printing in the West: Johannes Gutenberg. Initially, printing was slower than scribing the Bible, but the technology eventually outpaced the number of manuscripts being produced by hand.