The Parable of the Peanut Butter Sandwich: An Exercise in Artificial Intelligence and (Pseudo-) Bible Translation

Abstract

The public release of artificial intelligence tools such as Microsoft’s Bing Chat built on OpenAI’s generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) continues to spark extensive interest—attracting headlines, prompting important interdisciplinary questions, and posing dilemmas both ethical and methodological. The aim of this paper is to provide a sampling and temporal snapshot of AI-powered Bing’s abilities through the creation, translation, and adaptation of pseudo-biblical content. We adopt as our source text an AI-generated parable in the style of the King James Bible—here entitled “The Parable of the Peanut Butter Sandwich”—originally prompted by software developer Thomas Ptacek. For the purposes of this paper, Bing adapted the original parable into multiple versions (Nida, poem, acrostic, and French), supplied it with paratext (introduction, illustrations, and glossary), and analyzed it from the perspectives of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and the Documentary Hypothesis. Lastly, Bing generated a sermon outline in the style of renowned orator St. John Chrysostom. We hope that subsequent studies at the nexus of artificial intelligence and Bible translation will continue to build on the Parable of the Peanut Butter Sandwich to explore both the potential and the implications of emergent technology.