Show HN: Bible as RAG Database

(crosscanon.com)

94 points | by jacksonastone 16 hours ago ago

65 comments

  • atmanactive 7 hours ago ago

    For completeness, this should include all possible books, including Ethiopian, and then it should include a drop-down with pre-defined sets one could choose from (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox...).

  • asim 12 hours ago ago

    That's cool! I did the same for the Quran to see how RAG works. I also indexed related works called "Hadith" and the names of Allah. It initially required indexing everything using OpenAI embeddings and then powered by it.

    https://reminder.dev/search

    It's also open source

    https://github.com/asim/reminder

    • jacksonastone 6 hours ago ago

      Yes! looks like yours has more features (I considered generating the audio) FWIW I observed that the embedding gives the most signal when I pass whole paragraphs (for all I know the Quran is in lyrical verse so maybe that doesn't work)

      • asim 2 hours ago ago

        Ah interesting. So I'm using an English translation. Tbh I wish I could do more with the Arabic but the models are not perfect at that. But the idea of giving it whole paragraphs makes a ton of sense.

        Tried to generate audio but wasn't satisfied with the interpretation of some words, saying that thou may try again.

  • kordlessagain 12 hours ago ago

    This is really cool...great job! It's a favorite pastime of mine to index various large corpora.

    As for speed, this might help for code referencing: https://github.com/deepbluedynamics/lume

    Blog post: https://deepbluedynamics.com/blog/lume-retrieval-primitives

    I use a small local model to extract entities for the graph, but it's not necessary.

    You can optionally use GTR-T5 which is a few years old now, but still good for generating fast and free embeddings. That step is only run once if you run it in hybrid mode.

    Feel free to take and remix or use!

  • andrethegiant 15 hours ago ago

    I vibed up something similar, comparing the verses of the big 3 religions. Cloudflare vectorize for embeddings db. https://crazy.church

    • kordlessagain 12 hours ago ago

      That's impressive and really fast. I asked it what it thought about vector databases:

      Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things {are} honest, whatsoever things {are} just, whatsoever things {are} pure, whatsoever things {are} lovely, whatsoever things {are} of good report; if {there be} any virtue, and if {there be} any praise, think on these things. {honest: or, venerable}

  • mcswell 16 hours ago ago

    Slow, but interesting. I used the query "government" and got back passages in Romans 13 (as I expected), but also passages in Daniel and Ezra describing decrees by government officials, which made sense.

  • ReactiveJelly 15 hours ago ago

    > The king profits from the field

    For the solution, read Henry George!

  • high_5 10 hours ago ago

    Excellent! Just searching "giants" pops our many more of these characters than just Nephilim and Goliath.

  • regus 16 hours ago ago

    Did you include the Deuterocanonical books?

    • jacksonastone 14 hours ago ago

      Ah no it doesn't but could be added. The books are listed in the checkbox list

    • zoogeny 15 hours ago ago

      It would be nice if there was a listing of exactly what was included somewhere.

      • jacksonastone 14 hours ago ago

        WEB translation of Protestant Canon, but your point is a good one. I will kick the agents.

    • smitty1e 15 hours ago ago

      No, and it's not KJV. Maybe NKJV? I searched

      Eccl7:13 "Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?"

      and it came back with:

      Ecclesiastes 7:12-15 For wisdom is a defense, even as money is a defense; but the excellency of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it. Consider the work of God, for who can make that straight which he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider; yes, God has made the one side by side with the other, to the end that man should not find out anything after him. All this I have seen in my days of vanity: there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who lives long in his evildoing.

      • martheen 9 hours ago ago

        That would be WEB, I'm guessing because WEB is public domain.

        • smitty1e 7 hours ago ago

          I didn't know what WEB was, but I thought the dots were related.

  • usrme 12 hours ago ago

    Thanks for creating this, this is really fun to play around with! Is the code for this out in the open if someone would want to peek under the hood?

  • sputknick 16 hours ago ago

    Would love to use if you can get it back up! Sounds like an awesome idea for a way to converse with the Bible

    • jnamaya 16 hours ago ago

      I built a Bible scholar agent using RAG grounded in the Berean Standard Bible. Is the same concept but an LLM discern the text for you.

      Here is the link to the demo: https://safi.selfalignmentframework.com/

      Choose the Bible Scholar agent and use deepseek or Gemini 3.5 for the LLM.

      • 3stacks 12 hours ago ago

        It’s great to see more stuff like this. Thank you for your contribution

    • sputknick 16 hours ago ago

      Nevermind, it eventually loaded

  • yjftsjthsd-h 12 hours ago ago

    Any chance you wrote it up anywhere? I'm somewhat interested in RAG and a worked example would be nice.

  • NDlurker 15 hours ago ago

    This is really cool. Thank you for sharing.

  • iqihs 15 hours ago ago

    Not super impressed with this considering you can get better results in seconds from any basic LLM workflow.

    • FloorEgg 14 hours ago ago

      Yes but for probably 1000x the energy/cost.

    • jacksonastone 14 hours ago ago

      I wanted to know it was only returning source. My suspicions always go up when I have the LLM lean on its "deep memories". too much fluff, inconsistent translations, stuff like that.

  • keithnz 15 hours ago ago

    Looking for slavery, it comes up with Leviticus 25:46-49 but misses the context that starts at verse 44.

    • jacksonastone 14 hours ago ago

      Groups by paragraphs when collecting embedding

  • LarsDu88 15 hours ago ago

    Pretty effective. You can even type in "child murder" and "genocide" and get relevant passages

    • LarsDu88 15 hours ago ago

      Fun exercise. Type in pokemon or japanese. You can really see the nearest neighbor text in embedding space. Pokemon gives passafes referencing animals and japanese passages referencing foreigners

      • hogehoge51 15 hours ago ago

        yes, this is quite fun - very distant in time and geography, but converging in semantic space.

        天照大 (Amaterasu)

        > He brought me into the inner court of the LORD’s house; and I saw at the door of the LORD’s temple, between the porch and the altar, there were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the LORD’s temple and their faces toward the east. They were worshiping the sun toward the east.

        神武天皇 (Emperor Jimmu)

        > As he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons struck him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. Esar Haddon his son reigned in his place.

  • bloaf 16 hours ago ago

    My search returned what might as well have been a random assortment of bible verses. It made me wonder what Terry Davis would have thought of modern AI. Would it be the natural evolution of his shortcut for random bible verses that he built into TempleOS, or would it be the opposite and a voice of evil?

  • dredmorbius 15 hours ago ago

    RAG, for those unfamiliar, retrievel-augmented generation:

    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrieval-augmented_generation>

    • hogehoge51 15 hours ago ago

      The Bible, for those unfamiliar, it’s the civilization source code forked and maintained by the Jesus cult that emerged about 2 millennia ago.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible

      (To put it in Hacker terms, where I suspect RAG could be a more familiar term than Bible)

      • chrismorgan 12 hours ago ago

        “Source code” is not at all the correct term. It’s more like the documentation.

      • Shadowmist 14 hours ago ago

        TIL

      • jacksonastone 14 hours ago ago

        shots fired!

        • cluckindan 12 hours ago ago

          Search for ”destroy”

        • hogehoge51 13 hours ago ago

          The return volley is worse! My attempt at explaining the concept of a Bible in terms relative to a "hacker world view" is making me bleed many downvotes ;-)

          The Bible as a RAG is very interesting for me even as a non religious person - A document that has survived and guided millennia of civilization should be accessible as possible. But also seeing how concepts of the modern world and different ancient worlds map to the Bible via a RAG is fascinating.

  • jnamaya 16 hours ago ago

    The site is not loading for me! Interesting project

    • mcswell 16 hours ago ago

      You have to wait awhile. It came up for me after 30 seconds or so.

      • jacksonastone 14 hours ago ago

        it's basically running on a toaster, sorry

        • TeMPOraL 12 hours ago ago

          If that toaster didn't have a plan already, then feeding it with monotheistic holy scripture will definitely give it some ideas.

          • jacksonastone 6 hours ago ago

            I wonder if polytheistic toaster would be more or less... ambitious.

          • a96 10 hours ago ago

            A toaster is just a death ray with a smaller power supply

            • TeMPOraL 4 hours ago ago

              Less power, more hatred towards humankind.

              • red-iron-pine 2 hours ago ago

                only if you take it in the bath, or don't unplug it before fishing out a trapped slice

  • cluckindan 10 hours ago ago

    Can we have apocryphal books too, like Moses 6 & 7 :)

  • gaiagraphia 16 hours ago ago

    First result for "Jesus":

    >Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept. Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s relative, and that he was Rebekah’s son. She ran and told her father. When Laban heard the news of Jacob, his sister’s son, he ran to meet Jacob, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. Jacob told Laban all these things. Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh.” Jacob stayed with him for a month. Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my relative, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what will your wages be?”

    • jact 15 hours ago ago

      Hypothesis:

      This passage lists a lot of names repeatedly, and Jacob is in the genealogy of Jesus. Genealogies also list a lot of names. So perhaps somehow it’s jumping from Jesus to Jacob?

  • cdong 13 hours ago ago

    pg-vector with hnsw is still 15 seconds?

  • condwanaland 15 hours ago ago

    Searched for "sexual exploration". One of the results i got returned was from corinthians and read:

    The wife doesn’t have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise also the husband doesn’t have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

    I'm so glad this religion of peace sees consent as profoundly unimportant

    • jacksonastone 14 hours ago ago

      You could make the case I've just been indoctrinated in this stuff (genuine believer) but I take that to be a profoundly progressive verse given the context Paul is writing. Notice the symmetry.

      • condwanaland 14 hours ago ago

        I do notice the symmetry. It is saying that each of them can use the others body as they like, without regard for the other. But that's fine, because they can do it right back.

        A progressive system is not built off "I'll do what I want to you but I also will let you do it back". That conveniently ignores that there is still an entirely non-consenting party in this.

        Your body belongs to you. Your partners body belongs to them. And religious institutions teaching the opposite of this is what has lead to decades of marital rape and entitlement. I call that very very far from a progressive system

        • jimmygrapes 13 hours ago ago

          Consider this: neither man nor women, when fully committed to each other as if they are one, and maybe even if they are not committed, can control the emotions and impulses inflicted upon them by the other.

          It's ok to set aside misgivings about the whole thing and how the world has corrupted it all and just explore the possibility of depth and beauty and love. You don't have to chose the worst interpretation of things, even if others have.

          • condwanaland 13 hours ago ago

            Describing my interpretation of a passage that quite literally says "your body belongs to someone else" as a 'worst possible reading' would be comically hilarious if not for the rather sinister undertones.

            Your interpretation of this passage is reading far more into things and doing far more justifying than mine is

            • danhau 7 hours ago ago

              From your earlier comment:

              > It is saying that each of them can use the others body as they like, without regard for the other

              This is your own interpretation and it shows your bias. The bible (and I assume other religious texts) is easy to misinterpret due to bias. It's not written like a technical documentation where the tiniest details are specified; thus giving plenty opportunities to subject a text to arbitrary meaning.

              This was a problem even in biblical times. 2 Peter 3:16

              > as also in all of his letters, speaking in them of these things. In those, there are some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unsettled twist, as they also do to the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

              The solution is study. Not superficially reading and guesstimating, but to study the text itself, the surrounding verses, the context. Who wrote it? Who's the audience? What, more broadly, are they trying to say? Crosschecking with other verses in bible. Things like that (See Proverbs 2:1-5, Psalm 1:2, Joshua 1:8, Psalm 119:97, 1. Timothy 4:15)

              Coming back to the text in question (1. Corinthians 7:4). The surrounding verses provide context on what this is about:

              > To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion. > Let the husband give to his wife her due, and let the wife also do likewise to her husband. > Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent for an appointed time [...].

              Put simply: "marry and enjoy sex." That's basically what the apostle Paul is trying to say here. But of course, that alone doesn't debunk your interpretation.

              Paul also wrote Ephesians 5:28-33

              > In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. A man who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cherishes it [...] Each one of you must love his wife as he does himself; on the other hand, the wife should have deep respect for her husband.

              Also vers 25:

              > Husbands, continue loving your wives, just as the Christ also loved the congregation and gave himself up for it.

              There are further verses, but this comment is getting too long.

              • condwanaland 7 hours ago ago

                Also, from your comment

                > "marry and enjoy sex" is what Paul is trying to say

                This is your interpretation and shows your own bias. I read it as "you must have consent from your partner to withhold your body from them". Which is revolting and coercive.

                • jacksonastone 6 hours ago ago

                  I think their point is if you are a reader of Paul's work and the surrounding text you can deduce pretty soundly he isn't saying take turns in mutual abuse, but something else. Big picture, Christianity has a central, and odd tension, of sacredness of individual, but also perfect unity in community. The Trinity as the prime example. But marriage also as two flesh becoming one. Much of Christian writing is how to resolve that seeming contradiction (individuality with perfect unity and love)

              • condwanaland 7 hours ago ago

                Funny how my view that 'your body belongs to yourself and no one else' doesn't require study and cross-referencing and other passages to understand.

    • laichzeit0 14 hours ago ago

      You have to keep reinterpreting it until it aligns with whatever the masses currently consider to be true. This has been going on forever. The current hot reinterpretation is to say we’ve been wrong in what the scriptures teach about same-sex relationships and aaacktshually.. it’s fine.

      • sapphicsnail 10 hours ago ago

        Jesus doesn't say anything very explicit about homosexuality but he's pretty clear that no one should be rich and it's never ok to kill. I've been seeing a lot of hot reinterpretations on that front.