Method

How the atlas knows what it knows

Zakhorium’s basic unit is the statement: a sentence that paraphrases a precise passage of a source. Events, profiles, museum items and quiz questions are assembled from these statements, so every sentence displayed carries its own source marker.

Each statement has two independent axes. The kind of evidence says what sort of knowledge it represents; the verification status says whether the reference has been checked. A tradition can be perfectly verified as a tradition.

When scholars disagree, the disagreement is recorded as a debate, with positions attributed to those who hold them and the source’s assessment kept separate. The atlas does not pick winners where the source does not.

The reference book is used as a historiographical foundation, not as a reservoir of text: nothing is transcribed beyond titles and the recommended bibliography, and none of the book’s illustrations is reproduced. The Portuguese paraphrase is the reference version; the English is a translation of it.

Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.

§ 01Status

What works, what is partial, what is missing

Source registry and page mapdoneCitations point to the printed page of the registered edition; an internal map verifies the anchors. New sources are added without changing the application.
Automatic reference checkingdoneEach citation stores a short anchor, checked against the text of the cited page (4556 references). It runs locally: the book’s text is not kept in the repository.
Chapter 1, Ancient Israel and Other Ancestorsdone181 statements, 19 events, 11 debates, 21 people, 11 items, 16 questions.
Chapter 2, Becoming the People of the Bookdone216 statements, 36 events, 14 debates, 11 people, 8 items, 22 questions.
Chapter 3, Jews and Greeksdone109 statements, 23 events, 8 debates, 25 people, 9 items, 18 questions.
Chapter 4, Between Caesar and Goddone169 statements, 25 events, 11 debates, 28 people, 10 items, 19 questions.
Chapter 5, From Temple to Talmuddone182 statements, 34 events, 8 debates, 29 people, 11 items, 20 questions.
Chapter 6, Under the Crescentdone179 statements, 36 events, 7 debates, 44 people, 4 items, 21 questions.
Chapter 7, Under the Crossdone225 statements, 36 events, 9 debates, 43 people, 11 items, 20 questions.
Chapter 8, A Jewish Renaissancedone180 statements, 20 events, 7 debates, 28 people, 8 items, 18 questions.
Chapter 9, New Worlds, East and Westdone152 statements, 26 events, 12 debates, 30 people, 8 items, 24 questions.
Chapter 10, The State of the Jews, the Jews and the Statedone135 statements, 20 events, 8 debates, 23 people, 7 items, 16 questions.
Chapter 11, Modern Transformationsdone200 statements, 12 events, 13 debates, 25 people, 8 items, 19 questions.
Chapter 12, The Politics of Being Jewishdone205 statements, 20 events, 14 debates, 38 people, 8 items, 20 questions.
Chapter 13, A World Upendeddone186 statements, 21 events, 14 debates, 34 people, 8 items, 20 questions.
Chapter 14, The Holocaustdone273 statements, 21 events, 10 debates, 23 people, 8 items, 18 questions.
Chapter 15, Into the Presentdone222 statements, 23 events, 10 debates, 27 people, 10 items, 18 questions.
The book’s full chronologypartial527 paraphrased entries from pp. 519–531; 12 marked under review (printed dates that appear shifted and one doubtful attribution).
TimelinedoneZoom from millennia to years, lanes by category, hatched uncertainty, clustering, filters, relations and contemporaries, keyboard support.
AtlasdoneMapLibre with local geography, 217 georeferenced places (Pleiades, Natural Earth and Wikidata), routes and zones filtered by year.
Historical borderspartialOnly schematic zones, labelled as illustrative. Reconstructing borders requires specific cartographic sources not yet registered.
3D globedoneThree.js with React Three Fiber: places, animated arcs and chronology density by region and century. Without WebGL, the content remains available in the atlas.
Museumpartial124 items with licences obtained from the Commons API; 109 records await checking against the institutions’ catalogues.
Sound archivepartialCurated catalog of open-licence Commons recordings, persistent player and per-track records. Automatic ingestion and the musical-diaspora map are still partial.
Jewish believers in JesuspartialDedicated timeline lane and museum filter; seed from Skarsaune, Pritz, Becker/Reed and Kinzer. Density across the centuries is still initial.
QuizdoneSeven question types, an explanation and a source for every answer, review of mistakes. Questions on disputed topics are attribution questions.
PersistencepartialContent in versioned, typed files; quiz progress saved in the browser. A database will be needed for accounts and collaborative editing.
SearchdoneLocal, accent-insensitive index of events, people, places, debates, statements, chronology and bibliography.
HebrewpartialRight-to-left support and a dedicated font; Hebrew spellings added by the editors are marked as editorial and await specialist review.
EnglishpartialInterface, page addresses, chapters 1 to 15 and the full chronology are translated; the translations await human review.
Chapters pendingStructure recorded (titles and pages). Detailed content not yet written or verified.
Human scholarly reviewpendingThe paraphrases were checked automatically for the page, not for interpretation. They need specialist reading.