Daniel’s Blog

Today, in the Christian calendar, it is John the Baptist day. Every Christian will known the story of John’s birth, John’s baptisms and John’s death as explained in the canonical bible. We celebrate this day as a remembrance of the wonderful life of John the Baptist.

However!!! Little does the average Christian know (and those of other spiritual paths) that John the Baptist is not just a Christian Character!

John the Baptist appears in Mandaeanism, Islam and Bahaism.

In Mandaeanism, John the Baptist is a key figure in scripture. His Mandaean name is Yahya/Yahia. Mandaeanism has quite different theology to Judeo-Christianity, but it does actually detail the baptism of Jesus. Here is one of the fantastic quotes from Mandaean Scripture:

“Bring fire and burn me; bring sword and hew me in pieces.” But the priests in Jerusalem answered to Yahy?: “Fire does not burn thee, O Yahy?, for Life’s Name has been uttered o’er thee. A sword does not hew thee in pieces, O Yahy?, for Life’s Son rests here upon thee.” -

Mandaean John the Baptiser
John the Baptist can be found in Islam too. His Islamic name is also Yahya. Here is one quote from the Koran:

“O Yahya! take hold of the Book with strength, and We granted him wisdom while yet a child” -

The Koran
And also (but not finally) he is mentioned in the Baha’i faith. John is one of the prophets, and is mentioned here:

“As to the list of the prophets with whom Bahá’u'lláh identified Himself in the passage found on pages 26 and 27 of ‘The Dispensation of Bahá’u'lláh’, their names are as follows: Abraham, Moses, Joseph, John the Baptist, Jesus, Imam Husayn, on whom Bahá’u'lláh has conferred an exceptionally exalted station, (and) the Bab.” -

Lights of Guidance
There are also various other spiritual reference to John the Baptist in various Gnostic and Apocryphal-Christian writings.
But it doesn’t stop there… if you dig deep enough you’ll find references to John the Baptist in writings about Anthroposophy, Theosophy and even Freemasonry. But maybe that’s a topic for another time.

So I hope you all have a joyous John the Baptist Day! Christian, Mandaean, Muslim, Baha’i, Gnostic, Anthroposophic, Masonic and otherwise!

SemanticBible Linked Data: Version Alpha 1

I am very very pleased to announce something which I have been working on for a while which is the transformation of SemanticBible into Linked Data. Please be aware that this a very early version at the moment, and so if you see it break when you are looking around then I’m probably improving and enhancing it.

More information (and recent update information) is available on the Linked Data SemanticBible about page. But here’s a quote from it for you:

SemanticBible is an online Semantic Web version of the Bible, it has lots of facts and figures about the Christian sacred texts. Please do have a browse around.

A Brief History

SemanticBible started life as a project by Sean Boisen over at SemanticBible.com, but Daniel Lewis and his colleagues at OpenLink Software decided to help Sean out by providing a Linked Data based approach. The outcome was this service.

Starting URIs:

• https://semanticbible.openlinksw.com/bible/cgi : The Composite Gospel : holds information about the stories in the Gospels
• https://semanticbible.openlinksw.com/bible/NTIndividuals :New Testament Individuals : holds information about people and places referenced in the New Testament
• https://semanticbible.openlinksw.com/ontology/cgi : The Composite Gospel Ontology : the vocabulary for describing the stories in the Gospel
• https://semanticbible.openlinksw.com/ontology/NTNames : The New Testament Names Ontology : The vocabulary for describing the people and places referenced in the New Testament

As I said before, do expect it to break randomly…. but if it seems like theres something not quite right, or if you have any feature requests that you wish to add then do email my work email ( dlewis[at]openlinksw[dot]com ) or skype me ( daniel.lewis ).