I am currently in the middle of a devotional / teqaching prep project called Gospels bubblemaps. It’s a project that started as one idea and suddenly expanded to three.

My original goal was simply to create color-coded charts of each of the four Gospels. This phase is now done. Each type of passage (miracle, parable, dispute, passion prediction, etc) has a separate color.

These charts let me see at a glance where the concentrations of certain kinds of passages are in each Gospel. They also help me find passages quickly (the passages display when hovering over each bubble).

Phase two: the peril of parallel passages: Since each passage had its own separate note, I decided to link parallel passages together. I borrowed Kurt Aland’s Synopsis of the Four Gospels from the seminary library, and went to town. Little did I know what a long, tedious and frustrating exercise that would turn out to be. Not only are there parallel passages, but there are parallel verses in passages that themselves are not parallel, and there are passages that seem parallel but are not, and there are sayings of Jesus that get placed in wildly different contexts, which change the emphasis and meaning, and there are entire passages that get repeated, but with the details changed – and in the same Gospel! But I did the best I could, and thankfully, this phase is now also complete.

I am now in the last phase. I am tagging each passage in the Gospels with the themes, people, places, groups, and imagery types found in that passage.

I have automatically generating lists of all the tags – all the people tags, all the theme tags, all the places tags, all the groups tags, all the imagery types tags, and all the passages in each Gospel with their tags. These lists will grow as I add tags to more passages.

I would eventually like to use Gospels bubblemaps to write a manual in Spanish of all the themes in the Gospels, and what the various passages say about each theme.

This resource is free for you to consult! I hope you find it helpful. Here is the link: https://giffmex.org/gospels.bubbles.html