How to Use True Vineyard

True Vineyard is a comprehensive biblical atlas and research platform built by John Bigelow, director of True Vine Ministry. It works on desktop and mobile — use it directly within this website or open it in its own window for a full-screen experience.

The platform is organized into 20 modules across four Parts. Part I — The World of the Text (Modules 01–07): Interactive Map, Scripture Lookup, The Old Testament, The New Testament, People Groups, Biblical Figures, and Family Tree. Part II — The Witnesses Behind Your Bible (Modules 08–13): The Synopsis, Textual Variants, Bible Editions, Bible Lineage, Sources & the Argument, and The Enemy's Testimony. Part III — The Church That Carried It (Modules 14–17): Canon, The Councils, Carriers, and Divisions. Part IV — Time, and a Test (Modules 18–20): Biblical Calendar, Chronology, and Quiz. Each module is designed to be used independently or together. New features and content are added regularly — check back often.

The Interactive Map plots 305+ biblical locations from Eden to Rome on a live, pannable map with multiple base styles — including Parchment and Midnight. Seven named journey routes (Abraham's Migration, The Exodus Itinerary, and more) are drawn as routes with numbered stops. Every chapter in Scripture Lookup has a "Show Chapter on Map" button that puts that chapter's locations on the map together. Use the Itinerary tool to measure real-world distances.

Scripture Lookup covers all 1,546+ mapped chapters of the Bible — Genesis through Revelation — each with a chapter summary, an "At a Glance" panel showing figures, places, and people groups, and cross-reference sections for Signs & Wonders, NT Quotations, Textual Variants, and Locations Mentioned. Old Testament books also include a Study Booklet PDF you can download. The Reckoner tool (accessible from any Scripture page) converts weights, money, and measures from biblical to modern equivalents.

The Old Testament module presents the larger half of the Bible as a readable entry in its own right — explaining what the collection is, how it is structured across different traditions, and where the traditions differ on its contents. The deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and the Maccabees) are treated as the bridge between the Testaments rather than a footnote, with fuller chapter summaries, figure biographies, and variant units grounded in their transmission history — including the short and long Greek recensions, the Old Latin, and the Qumran and Masada fragments where they survive.

The New Testament module covers the twenty-seven books of the NT — which the traditions once doubted or still order differently — and the wider Syriac and Ethiopian lists. It explains which books were debated, by whom, and what the outcome of those debates was. The module pairs directly with the Witnesses section (Part II) for the manuscript evidence behind each book.

The People Groups module covers 59+ nations, tribes, and confederations of the ancient Near East — Canaanites, Amorites, Moabites, Hittites, Philistines, Samaritans, and more. Each entry includes the LXX Greek name (which often differs from the familiar English form), territory context, prominent members linking to their figure profiles, and the nation's scriptural significance. Filters let you narrow by empire, NT mention, and whether the group has profiled members. Note: the atlas never treats Hebrew, Israelite, and Jew as one word — the Samaritans are the clearest case, calling Jacob their father in the Gospels while remaining distinct from Jews.

Biblical Figures covers 546+ figures from Adam to the people Acts names once. Each entry gives the chapters the person actually appears in, the places tied to them, the family line where there is one, and where the ancient copies disagree about the name or the story. The 37 deuterocanonical figures are now full profiles with chapter joins. Filters group figures by prophets, prophetesses, figures appearing in only one chapter, the tribes of Israel, and more — each filter chip shows a count before you press it.

The Family Tree lays out the lineages of the biblical narrative on one pannable canvas — from Adam through the patriarchs to the houses of David and Saul and the royal line through the exile. The heraldic makeover gives each card engraved manuscript-style design with corner flourishes and era-specific textures. Each lineage carries its own ring (Adam solid gold, Omri crimson double, Matthew blue dashed, Luke green dotted) — shape is the first cue so color is never the only one. Use "Find a Connection" to name any two people and the chart walks the genealogies back to the ancestor they share, then draws the path down both sides — Boaz to David takes three steps.

The Synopsis presents the four Gospels side by side on the episodes where they diverge — who carries each passage, who does not, and where the copies of a single Gospel disagree with each other. For example, Peter's denials told four ways at once, or the passage the oldest manuscripts do not have. It is the most direct way to see how the Gospel tradition was transmitted and where the textual evidence clusters.

The Variant Browser catalogs every cataloged divergence in both testaments — the Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Masoretic Text under one toggle; the papyri and the great codices against the Byzantine majority under the other. Each entry explains what the difference is, why it matters, and what the evidence says. A running scoreboard tallies which witness each variant favors across the full dataset.

Bible Editions catalogs 80+ editions by the base texts they actually translate — from the Septuagint to the medieval Masoretic Text — with seven study Bibles beside them. Filter by whether rabbinic authorities were consulted in translation, by interpretive framework, by translation method, and by whether the deuterocanon is printed. Each filter chip shows how many editions match before you press it.

Bible Lineage traces every English Bible edition back through its ancestors — through the KJV, the Vulgate, and the Septuagint to the Hebrew Scriptures at the root. One connected family tree makes the relationships visible: you can see which modern translations are actually descendants of the same 1526 translation that nearly every English Bible descends from. This is the ancestry chart for the Bible itself.

Sources & the Argument presents the full case for why the atlas elevates the older witnesses — the Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch, and Dead Sea Scrolls — over the later Masoretic Text. The reasoning is laid out step by step with the rules of evidence every verdict in the atlas is judged by. The bibliography that backs it is included in full. This is the argument John Bigelow has constructed in "Beyond the Consensus" — made navigable here within the atlas.

The Enemy's Testimony is a gallery of concessions from the witnesses who had every reason not to grant them — the governor's prosecution file, the satirist's comedy, and the later rabbinic tradition's own indictment. Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Thallus, Pliny the Younger, and others are presented not as allies of the biblical record, but as adversaries whose own writings inadvertently confirm key events. Each entry gives the popular image, then the documented details, then says where the sources do not settle the question.

Canon presents eight communions and eight canons laid out book by book — Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Ethiopian, Coptic, Syriac, Anglican, Protestant, and Samaritan. There is no column that is simply "the Bible." The broadest canon in Christendom runs to 81 books. This module makes visible what is rarely acknowledged: that the question of which books belong in the Bible has never been uniformly settled across all Christian traditions.

The Councils covers every council that settled something — with who accepted it and who did not, and the losing side's position printed rather than summarized. No council ever called itself ecumenical; that title is conferred afterwards. Pick a communion and whether it accepts or rejects, and the page becomes that communion's own list of which assemblies it counts. Disputants' names now link directly to their cards in Carriers.

Carriers covers the figures who copied, translated, and argued over the biblical text — not the figures in the Bible, but the ones who carried it forward. Each entry gives the popular image, then the documented details that cut against it, then says where the sources do not settle the question. Filter by where a figure worked, the language they wrote in, which communion claims them, and the ones whose sources do not settle it. Each filter chip shows how many carriers match before you press it.

Divisions places 93+ church bodies on a real time axis — the extinct ones drawn rather than left off — and beneath the map provides a side-by-side comparison of 19 communions that separates what the record settles from what each one claims on its own authority. The church in India older than most of Europe is one of the most striking entries.

The Biblical Calendar sets 25+ calendars side by side — from the Torah's own reckoning to the Qumran priestly cycle and the fixed rabbinic calendar — with today shown in four of them at once and a resolver that answers when any feast falls in a given year. The interactive wheel lets you explore 10 lenses: holy days, feast dates compared across traditions, lineage of each system, and how they tension against each other at the 12 key points of the year.

Chronology places Creation to the early church on one axis — with the dates that are argued over marked as arguments rather than quietly settled. Beside it sit eight places where the later rabbinic reconstruction moved something (the compression of the Persian period among them), with the case on each side printed in full. The Sojourn in Egypt is presented as a live debate: 215 years (supported by the LXX, SP, and Galatians 3:17) versus 430 years (from the MT). A Solomon's Temple anchor date slider lets you adjust the fixed point and watch the full chronological cascade.

The Quiz module pulls five question types drawn fresh from the atlas itself: figures, places, genealogy, textual traditions, and the calendar. No two rounds repeat. The geography round pins places on the map from their description. Every question is grounded in atlas data, so a wrong answer points you back to the relevant module entry for deeper reading.