Methods

Tagged verses

The people, places, and events on Begat come from Theographic Bible Metadata, which tags each verse with the people, places, and events it refers to. A person’s tagged verses are the verses Theographic tags with that person. Theographic tags a verse where the person is named, and also many verses where the person is referred to only by a pronoun or a title, so a tagged verse need not contain the name.

A tagged-verse count counts verses, not occurrences: a verse that names Abraham three times is one verse. Abraham has 277 tagged verses. The bars under Mentions on each page show them by book, and every verse is listed under Verses, in the Berean Standard Bible with a switch to the King James and American Standard versions.

A page with more than 400 tagged verses in more than one book gives each book its own verse page, so that no page grows too large to load on a phone.

An event whose verses all fall in one book and number more than 400 shows a grid of that book's chapters instead of repeating the text the chapter pages already carry.

Name counts

Under the bars, each person’s page counts how often the name appears in each translation. This is a different measure from tagged verses, and the page says so.

• It is a whole-word count: “Abram” is not counted inside “Abraham”.
• It is case-sensitive: “Lord” and “LORD” are different strings.
• Possessives count: “Abraham’s” counts as one “Abraham”.
• It counts the string, not the person. Everyone who shares the name is included, and verses that refer to the person by a pronoun are not.

So Abraham’s page shows “Abraham” 264 times and “Abram” 71 times in the BSB. Jacob’s page shows “Israel” 1,975 times in the BSB, because almost every one of those is the nation, not the man. Aholibamah’s name appears 8 times in the KJV and 0 times in the BSB and ASV, which spell it Oholibamah. The same name can give a different count in each translation, and that is the reason all three are shown.

Years

Years come from Theographic, which takes them from the chronology of Floyd Nolen Jones, The Chronology of the Old Testament. Every year on the site is labelled traditional (Jones). Jones builds on Ussher’s framework, which counts years from the ages and reigns recorded in the text. Other chronologies, including the dates of critical scholarship, differ from it by decades or by centuries. Begat does not yet show critical dates beside the traditional ones. A year on a page is the year as Jones records it, not a settled fact.

Abraham’s page reads “1995–1820 BC, 175 years”. There is no year 0: 1 BC is followed by AD 1. A span that crosses it is therefore one year shorter than the difference of the two numbers.

Where places are

Identifications

Locations come from OpenBible.info’s Bible Geocoding data. For each ancient place OpenBible lists one or more identifications, which are candidate modern sites, and gives each one a score, time_total. In OpenBible’s words, the score “reflects the confidence of current scholarship” in the identification. It is “an integer best viewed as a fraction of 1000, where 1000 represents very high confidence”, so “a score of 100 reflects 10% confidence”. A few scores in the data fall outside 0 to 1000 (the lowest is −419 and the highest 1169). Begat does not clamp them and places them in the labels below as they are.

OpenBible uses this score “throughout the dataset as the basis for sorting identifications”, and Begat follows it: each place uses the identification with the highest score. A tie goes to the higher average vote (vote_average), and a remaining tie to the one OpenBible lists first. The site never shows the raw score. It shows one of three labels instead:

Of OpenBible’s 1,342 ancient places, 644 are likely (48%), 537 possible (40%), and 161 uncertain (12%). Haran is likely; Mount Sinai, identified with Jebel Musa, is possible.

Matching Theographic’s places to OpenBible’s

The place pages are Theographic’s places. Each is matched to OpenBible by name, ignoring case.

• When OpenBible has several places of that name, the match is the one that shares the most verses with Theographic’s place. It must share at least one verse, and a tie is no match.
• When OpenBible has exactly one place of that name, it is used only if it shares at least one verse with Theographic’s place, whenever Theographic lists any verses for it. This keeps a same-named place in another book from being used. In this build 7 places (Dan, Joktheel, Kadesh, Karnaim, Merom, Nohah, and Rock of Escape) fail this test and use Theographic’s point instead.
• A matched place takes OpenBible’s point. A place with no match takes Theographic’s own point, if it has one. That point is drawn on the map but not graded, and the legend calls it “not graded”.

In this build 1,101 places take OpenBible’s point, 172 take Theographic’s, and 25 have none.

Places with no map

When OpenBible’s top identification for a place has no point, the place is not drawn, and Theographic’s point is never used in its place. Eden is the clearest case. OpenBible’s top identification for it is “unknown location”, so Eden’s page has no map and no grade and says “Its location is not known.”

What the sentence under the name says

A place’s page carries at most one locating sentence, and which one depends on OpenBible’s type for the chosen identification.

• Now … is given to sites with a present-day name, of these types: campsite, garden, pool, settlement, spring, structure, and well. The modern name is the name of the modern location OpenBible links to the identification (from OpenBible’s modern locations file, with a trailing number such as “ 2” removed). Without such a link the identification’s own description is used, unless it is prose such as “unknown location” rather than a name. Haran reads “Now Harran” and Bethel “Now Beitin”. Jerusalem has no “Now …” sentence, because its modern name is its name.
• Identified with … is given to natural features of these types: body of water, hill, island, mountain, mountain range, river, spring, valley, and wadi. Mount Sinai reads “Identified with Jebel Musa”.
• A region gets neither. Its page says “A region; the map marks the point OpenBible uses for it.” Egypt is drawn at OpenBible’s point for it, at Ain Shams (ancient Heliopolis), which marks a city in Egypt rather than where Egypt is. On maps a dashed ring marks a region, river, or mountain rather than a town.

The likely, possible, or uncertain label is shown only for these types: campsite, garden, hill, island, mountain, pool, settlement, spring, valley, and well. Regions, rivers, bodies of water, mountain ranges, wadis, natural areas, roads, structures, altars, gates, and the other types are drawn without a label, because a single point does not locate them. The rule is the same on the place’s own page, in the place lists of people and events, and on every map, where such a place is marked “not graded”.

Some of OpenBible’s points are taken from OpenStreetMap. A page whose map draws one of them credits “Map point © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)” in its sources.

Nearby places

The Nearby list gives up to ten places with a point, nearest first, by great-circle distance in kilometres. A place that shares OpenBible’s identification or the exact point with one already listed, or lies within 50 m of one, is the same site under another name and is skipped. So the list never shows “0.0 km”.

Nations named after ancestors

Theographic tags a tribe or a nation under the ancestor it is named after. A verse about the tribe of Judah in the time of the kings is tagged with Judah, the son of Jacob. For these 20 ancestors Begat splits the tagged verses in two:

• Jacob: Israel (the nation)
• Judah: the tribe of Judah
• Levi: the tribe of Levi
• Dan: the tribe of Dan
• Benjamin: the tribe of Benjamin
• Ephraim: the tribe of Ephraim
• Manasseh: the tribe of Manasseh
• Reuben: the tribe of Reuben
• Simeon: the tribe of Simeon
• Gad: the tribe of Gad
• Asher: the tribe of Asher
• Naphtali: the tribe of Naphtali
• Zebulun: the tribe of Zebulun
• Issachar: the tribe of Issachar
• Esau: Edom
• Moab: Moab (the nation)
• Amalek: the Amalek people
• Ishmael: the Ishmael people
• Canaan: the Canaan people
• Midian: the Midian people

A tagged verse dated after the ancestor’s death year, or after 1600 BC when no death year is recorded, is treated as a reference to the people, not the person. A verse with no year stays with the person. These people references are counted separately on the ancestor’s page (“Later verses tagged with Jacob are about Israel (the nation), not the man: 763 verses, counted separately”). They are left out of the ancestor’s own counts, related people, the people named alongside, and the stories, and every other page’s shared-verse counts leave them out too. Jacob has 246 tagged verses of his own and 763 people references.

Theographic files the man Jacob under the name Israel. Begat files him as Jacob, with Israel as an alias, at /people/jacob/.

Page addresses and namesakes

Each page has a short address made from its name, such as /people/abraham/. When several people share a name:

• The bare address goes to the one with the most tagged verses. Anah, son of Seir, has 5 and is at /people/anah/.
• The others get the father’s name, in the form name-son-of-father or name-daughter-of-father. The father’s name is used in its bare form, never with a suffix of its own, so the second Cainan, son of Arphaxad, is /people/cainan-son-of-arphaxad/. Anah has two such namesakes, /people/anah-son-of-zibeon/ and /people/anah-daughter-of-zibeon/, and Aholibamah has /people/aholibamah-daughter-of-anah/.
• When there is no recorded father, or the father’s name would not make the address unique, the address takes a number: /people/aholibamah-2/, then -3 and so on, in order of tagged verses.

The addresses /people/<letter>/, /people/other/, and /people/all/, and the same three under /places/, are directory pages that list many entries at once, so no person or place can take those addresses, and the build fails if one would.

Places and events that share a name follow a simpler bare-then-numbered rule. Among places, the bare address goes to the place with the most tagged verses. Among events, it goes to the earliest in story order (Theographic’s sort key), and the later ones get -2, -3 and so on in that order.

In lists and in search, a name that two or more entries share carries a short hint: the first alias, else “son of” or “daughter of” the father, else the first book the person appears in (“in Genesis”).

Three addresses belong to the divine entries in every section of the site: god, jesus, and holy-spirit. The addresses /people/god/, /people/holy-spirit/, and /people/jesus/ redirect to the divine pages, so /people/jesus/ goes to /divine/jesus/. The one person who shares the name, Jesus who is called Justus (Colossians 4:11), is at /people/jesus-justus/.

Divine entries

God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have pages of their own under /divine/ and are never counted as people. They do not appear among related people, people named alongside, contemporaries, or the most-mentioned people, and they have no family tree and no era. Theographic gives them many aliases, some of which are single common words. Begat drops these words from the divine entries: “Ancient”, “God”, “Holy”, “host”, “last”, “root”, and “Sun”. They are left out of “Also called”, the search aliases, and the name counts of a divine entry.

Theographic also lists common words among the aliases of some people, such as “mother” for Mary or “wife”. Begat drops every all-lowercase alias, from every person, being, and divine entry, because a name is capitalised; such words are left out of “Also called”, the search aliases, and the name counts.

Beings: angels, spirits, and the gods of the nations

Theographic files angels, Satan, and the gods of the nations as people. Begat lists them apart, under /beings/, from a list chosen by hand, one Theographic id at a time, and each id was checked against its Easton entry and its tagged verses: the angels Gabriel and Michael; Satan, Apollyon, and Baal-zebub; and Baal, Chemosh, Molech, Dagon, Diana, Ashtoreth, Milcom, Adrammelech, and Anammelech. The choice is by id, not by name, so the men who share a name stay people: the other Michaels, the men named Baal, and Adrammelech the son of Sennacherib. Lucifer stays a person too, because Easton reads the name as a title of the king of Babylon, and so does Nebo, whose one tagged verse (Ezra 10:43) names a family, not the god. These entries have no family tree, no era, and no contemporaries, and they are left out of the people directory and the most-mentioned people. They still appear where the verses name them, such as among those named in the same verses and the people in an event. Their old addresses under /people/ redirect to /beings/. The build fails if any of them is given a family relation.

Generations from Adam

“The 21st generation from Adam, counting Adam as the first” is counted on Theographic’s family links. Begat starts at the person and steps to the father, then to his father, until it reaches Adam, and the number of steps plus one is the generation. If the chain breaks (a father is not recorded), reaches a divine entry, or loops, no generation is shown. The Adam to Jesus chart counts the same way: Adam is the first generation, so a person there who is the 75th generation is 74 generations after Adam.

Theographic’s chain includes Cainan, son of Arphaxad, who appears in Luke 3:36 and in the Septuagint but not in Genesis 11 of the Hebrew text. Counts from Shem’s descendants onward are therefore one higher than a count from Genesis alone: Abraham is the 21st generation and David the 34th.

Eras

Each person is placed in one of eight eras on the traditional (Jones) years:

A person with a recorded birth year is “Born in the era of” the era of that year. David, born 1084 BC, is “Born in the era of the Judges”. A person with no birth year is “Mentioned in the era of” the era of the midpoint of the years of their tagged verses. Anah is “Mentioned in the era of the Patriarchs”. Divine entries have no era.

Alive at the same time

“Alive at the same time as” lists other people whose recorded lifetimes overlap, with the length of the overlap. Only people with both a birth year and a death year are compared, and the person’s parents, children, partners, siblings, and half-siblings are left out. Up to 8 are shown, longest overlap first. The overlap is counted with no year 0. Abraham was alive at the same time as Eber for 175 years, 1995–1820 BC. Terah, his father, is not listed.

Alive at this point, on chapter pages

A chapter page lists the people alive at the middle of the chapter. Begat takes the years of the chapter’s dated verses and their median, and lists the people with a recorded birth and death year whose lifetime includes it. A chapter needs at least 3 dated verses for the list to appear. At most 12 people are listed: the most tagged are chosen, then shown in order of birth. For Genesis 12 the median is 1919 BC, and the list is Shem, Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Abraham, and Sarah.

The writer shown on a book or chapter page is labelled Traditional writer, because it is the writer tradition assigns (Moses for Genesis, John for John 1), not settled authorship.

Events in order

Events are in story order, the order of Theographic’s sort key. A shared start year does not settle that order, because many events share one. The previous and next links at the foot of an event skip events that last more than a year, so that they walk the story: “Abraham goes to Egypt” is followed by “Abraham and Lot Separate”, not by “Sojourn in Canaan and Egypt”, which lasts 430 years. Those long events stay in every list, and their own previous and next links go to the nearest dated short events.

The home page

“Featured today” shows one person, place, or event a day. The list it chooses from is fixed when the site is built: a hand-picked set, padded with the most-mentioned people. The entry for a day is picked by the date on the visitor’s own calendar, counting days and stepping through the list in order, so the same date gives the same entry for everyone in a time zone and no one is tracked.

Six holidays override that pick, in this order; when two windows overlap, the first one listed wins. Christmas is 25 December, one day. Holy Week runs from Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, through Holy Saturday, seven days. Easter is one day, found with the Gregorian calendar rule for the date of Easter (the Meeus/Jones/Butcher method). Pentecost is one day, 49 days after Easter. Passover starts on 15 Nisan, the Hebrew calendar date, which the visitor’s browser works out from its own Hebrew calendar, and lasts eight days. Purim is one day, 30 days before 15 Nisan. If a browser has no Hebrew calendar, the Passover and Purim overrides are skipped and the daily pick shows.

The family tree on the home page and on person pages hides the grandchildren behind a “Show grandchildren” button.

Biographies

The short text under a name is the first two sentences of the person’s entry in Easton’s Bible Dictionary, which is labelled with its date of 1897. Without an Easton entry the text is assembled from the data, for example “Son of Seir. Mentioned in 5 verses, first in Genesis 36:20.” The full Easton entry is printed at the foot of the page as published. Its editorial brackets, such as “[Heb., Adam]”, are part of the original and are kept.

Theographic links six people to an Easton entry that is about another of their names, or another person, rather than their own story. Begat shows Easton’s article on the person instead, leaving Easton’s words as they are: Daniel (not Belteshazzar), Naomi (not Mara), Mary Magdalene (not “Magdalene”), Jethro (not Reuel), Pharez (not the “Perez” cross-reference), and Jonadab the son of Shimeah (not Jonathan).

Which pages are noindex

A person’s page is marked noindex, which asks search engines not to list it, when it has at most one tagged verse, no family relation in either direction, and no Easton entry. Such a page holds a single fact that a search result would repeat. A place’s page is marked noindex when no verse is tagged with the place, as with the possessive forms “Egypt’s” and “Zion’s”. The page is still built, linked from every list, and found by the site’s search, but left out of the sitemap. A letter page of a directory is marked noindex when it lists fewer than three names. An event is marked noindex when it has a single verse and a person with their own page already carries that fact. In this build 326 people and 10 places meet these rules. Divine pages are always indexed.

Every page’s title names the kind of thing it is and the facts the page holds, so two people with the same name never share a title.

What Begat does not do

• No theology. Begat shows computed, sourced facts and the method behind them. Where traditions disagree, as on dates and identifications, the disagreement is labelled and no side is taken.
• No generated prose. No text on the site is written by a language model. The biographies are Easton’s words or a sentence assembled from the data by the rule above.
• No accounts. You cannot sign in, and nothing about you is stored. The privacy page says what is measured.
• No verse search. The search box finds people, places, events, and books by name. It matches each word you type against the words of a name, in any order, and ignores a leading “the” and a possessive “’s”. It offers a chapter when you type a reference such as Genesis 6 or John 3:16. When nothing matches exactly and what you typed has four or more letters and no digit, it shows the closest names, a letter or two off. It does not search the words of the Bible.

Known issues

The audit last ran with the build of 2026-10-17. It counts the known traps in the data. A hard rule stops the build; every other count is reported.

• People whose death year is before their birth year: 0. A hard rule: the build fails if there are any.
• Years stored as 0 (there is no year 0): 0. A hard rule: the build fails if there are any. Theographic’s 0 placeholders are read as “no year”.
• People with no gender recorded: 0. A hard rule: the build fails if there are any.
• Settlements where OpenBible's point and Theographic's are more than 50 km apart: 109 of 797. Worst: Telassar (1,058 km), Kir (986 km), Canneh (871 km), Casiphia (765 km), Sepharvaim (723 km). These are genuinely disputed identifications. Begat shows OpenBible’s graded point.
• Regions, rivers, and other large features drawn at a single point: region 122, river 25, body of water 8, mountain range 4, natural area 14, wadi 5. The point stands for the whole feature, so these places are given no “Now” sentence.
• People whose name and aliases match no word in any of the three texts: 30. For example: Achsa, Benhail, Chushan-rishathaim, Concubine the Aramitess, Daughter of Herodias. Their name counts are zero. Most are spelling variants that the translations spell differently, such as Achsah for Achsa; the rest are descriptions, not names.
• Names shared by a person and a place: 128. For example: Abdon, Abel, Abiezer, Adam, Addar. Search results and lists always say which kind each one is.
• Easton entries still containing markup: 0.
• Events with no participants recorded: 13. For example: Tower of Babel, Joseph's brothers go to Egypt, Moses Flees Pharaoh, Oppression by Ammon and Philistia, United Kingdom. These are narrative events whose participants Theographic left blank.
• Events with no tagged verse: 0.
• Places with no tagged verse: 10. For example: Aram-naharaim, Aram-zobah, Ashdod's, Egypt's, Gate of Benjamin. Most are named only as a person’s place of birth or death, or are possessive forms such as “Egypt’s”, kept as Theographic records them.
• Aliases dropped from the divine entries: 14. For example: Ancient, Holy, dayspring, father, host. These single common words are left out of “Also called”, search, and the name counts (see Divine entries above); a few may be real titles.
• All-lowercase aliases dropped from people and beings: 20. For example: concubine, daughter, firstborn, daughters, daughter. Theographic lists common words such as “mother” or “wife” among some people’s aliases; they are left out of “Also called”, search, and the name counts.
• Places whose only same-named OpenBible place shares none of their verses: 7. For example: Dan, Joktheel, Kadesh, Karnaim, Merom. They use Theographic’s point instead (see Matching Theographic’s places to OpenBible’s above).
• Angels, spirits, or gods with a family relation recorded: 0. A hard rule: the build fails if there are any. An entry with a family is a person, so the list of beings would need checking (see Beings: angels, spirits, and the gods of the nations above).

Also known, but not counted by the audit:

• Possessive place names. A few of Theographic’s place names are possessives, such as “Egypt’s”, “Jerusalem’s”, “Samaria’s”, and “Zion’s”. They are kept as Theographic records them.