Every cross-reference in the dataset runs from one verse to another. The left column is where references start, the right column is where they land. Click a book on the left to see where it points; click on the right to see what points into it.
This is the one page that shows recorded direction rather than consolidating it, because the two columns mean different things.
Cross references are often recorded in only one direction. One verse may point to another verse, even though the relationship between the two passages works both ways.
For these visuals, those references are consolidated in both directions. A connection is counted whether it was originally recorded from the first book to the second or from the second book back to the first.
Two ways to rank a book's routes. Most references is the raw count, and it is the honest answer to where a book points — but it is nearly the same answer every time, because Psalms and Isaiah receive so much that they crowd almost every list. Most distinctive divides that count by what the receiving book takes in overall: Psalms receives about 4% of every reference in the dataset, so a book sending Psalms 11% of its own output is pointing there roughly two and a half times harder than its size alone would predict. On that measure Revelation's neighbors become Daniel, Joel and Zechariah, and Matthew's become Mark, Luke and John.
The distinctive view ignores routes of fewer than ten references. Without that floor a single reference into a very small book produces an enormous ratio, and the list fills with three-verse epistles rather than with relationships. Two books cannot fill eight routes at that threshold; they show fewer. The same reasoning — measuring against what chance and size would predict — is set out in full on the method page.
This page is the exception. Here the recorded direction is shown rather than consolidated, so the two columns mean different things. Read direction as a fact about the compilation — which passage an editor was annotating — not as a claim that one text depends on the other.
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FIG. 02 66 books · 2,036 routes
Click a book on the left to see where its references point, or on the right to see what points into it.
Most routes are close to balanced. Psalms and Isaiah exchange 2,473 one way and 2,074 the other. Matthew and Luke are almost exactly even at 1,604 and 1,582. Where a compiler annotated one passage, they usually annotated the other too — 96 percent of ordered pairs have a reverse partner at book level.
The lopsided pairs are the interesting ones. Genesis points to Psalms 1,004 times while Psalms points back only 490. Psalms points to Revelation 875 times against 429 returning. In both cases the earlier book is annotated with forward-looking notes far more often than the later book is annotated with backward ones.
Books split into senders and receivers. Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Luke send more references than they receive. Psalms, Isaiah, Matthew and John receive more than they send. Compare a book's two blocks — left for outbound, right for inbound — and the imbalance is visible directly.
What this measures. Direction here is a property of the reference work, not of the text. A nineteenth-century editor working through Genesis wrote notes pointing forward; an editor working through Psalms wrote fewer pointing back. The asymmetry is real and worth seeing, but it describes how the compilation was assembled.