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spacebanana701/21/20254 repliesview on HN

I’ve found LLMs extremely useful for Bible study.

If I’m struggling with a verse they can quickly show alternative translations and compare the interpretations of historical commentators.

Of course all this was possible with Google, but it could take an unreasonable amount of effort.


Replies

rtkwe01/21/2025

Doesn't the section where the author goes through the LLM completely fabricating or confounding different parts of scripture give you pause about the truthfulness of the responses?

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michaelfm121101/21/2025

I saw this post a while ago: https://benkaiser.dev/can-llms-accurately-recall-the-bible/

While LLMs are in generally fairly good at recalling bible verses, they can't do it perfectly. If the Bible truly is the infallible word of God that we believe, then shouldn't we use more caution than just "welp, sometimes it makes mistakes"?

You could counter this by saying a person can't remember Bible verses, and this is true, but a person usually recognizes when they can't remember something instead of making something up. If you asked me to recall any random Bible verses, chances are I wouldn't be able to do so. However, unlike an LLM, I would admit I don't know for sure and I would pull out a Bible or look online for an authoritative source rather than adlibbing something on the spot.

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giraffe_lady01/22/2025

There is good venerable software that does exactly this. A lot of options including several open source ones.