Imagine if the people in Bible times had smart-phone cameras? Wouldn’t it be nice to have snapshots of the Bible Stories–photos of the patriarchs, pictures of Joseph in Egypt, or a camera roll from the time of the plagues and the Exodus from Egypt?
The recent advent of AI-generated art has opened up an incredible tool for Pastors and other teachers of the Bible to have freely-available illustrations to make teaching more impactful.
The purpose of the Virtual Bible Snapshot Project is to bring together a curated collection of the best freely available images for teaching Biblical topics, including AI art and creative-commons licensed photos and artwork. This collection can be freely used for teaching and preaching illustrations.
Browse the Collections
The Virtual Bible Snapshot Project consists of multiple file shares. The main image collection comes in two formats: medium resolution and high resolution. If you have a slower internet connection or if you just want medium resolution images for use in powerpoint or websites you can browse the medium resolution collection.
If you are a graphics designer or want images for printing you can browse the collection at high resolution. The images are the same, but in this collection they are in a combination of original .jpg and lossless .webp format. These are large files – they also require a lot more bandwidth and storage space.
We have also begun to collect videos for Bible teaching, as well as line-art or drawing-style illustrations. Since these don’t fit the theme of our primary collection, we are making these available as separate collections to make it easier to keep the styles and media separate.
NOTE: while these images are free, some are subject to varying license terms and may not be able to be used for any purpose. Please see Copyright and Terms of Use for details.
You can also download the entire collection or synchronize portions to your computer. See downloading instructions here.
The pictures in this collection are provided to you as a resource, but not as a finished teaching product. Many of these images, in their current form, may not be suitable for a general audience. Besides often distorted or misshapen bodies (a common symptom of AI generated images), there could be cases of indecent clothing or otherwise generally inappropriate images showing up in the collection. If you come across these, please kindly let us know.
Some pictures here are of excellent quality for full-screen images, while others may only be suitable for smaller illustrations. While we do our best to keep the images of the highest quality, we ask that you be responsible and selective in the use of the images. If you notice problems, please send a message to Pastor Daniel.
The photographs in the collection come from a variety of sources and represent a diversity of religious history. We hope they will be useful as teaching aids, but obviously many represent religious traditions that differ widely from our Adventist beliefs. There are many helpful resources available online and in print, which can be extremely helpful in placing these pictures in their historical and geographical context.
One of the most valuable collections in this project is the Bible Lands – Photos and Illustrations collection. These are mainly photographs, available under Creative Commons licenses, of various places in and around the Bible lands. These can be incredibly helpful as teaching aids, in conjunction with good resources to give history and context around these places.
Note that this collection does not provide commentary or narrative of the places pictured. You can find helpful narrative in a good Bible Lands book. The following websites may be helpful for explanatory narrative, or if all else fails, a Google search. Note that many photos feature churches and monuments relevant to Christian history and Christian tradition, which may or may not directly relate to the actual sites where Biblical events took place, but are nevertheless helpful in understanding the Christian religion and history.
- BiblePlaces.com – The pictures here are not free, but the narratives on this site can be helpful in conjunction with the comparable CC licensed photos in this collection.
- HolyLandSite.com – Video tours and lengthy descriptions of many places featured in this collection.
- Wikipedia
- Bible Geocoding from OpenBible.info – Identify the places and locations of ancient Bible events on Google Earth.
- Bible Maps from KnowingTheBible.com (mirrored in this collection)
The Virtual Reality Bible Museum has graciously allowed us to redistribute their images of the ancient Wilderness Tabernacle under a Creative Commons license. You can view this collection by clicking the button below, but please also head over to their website at VRBM.org to see their other material, and even consider inviting their ministry to present at your church or outreach event.
Bible Scenes
Jeremy Parks has also done an incredible job building 3D imagery of many Biblical scenes. His video collection includes animations of the tabernacle and furniture construction, Solomon’s Temple, Herod’s Temple Mount, the Tower of Babel, the crucifixion of Christ and more. Jeremy has graciously licensed his content with a Creative Commons license and has allowed us to mirror his videos in our collection as well. You can find his videos throughout the video collection, but please do head over to his website bible-scenes.com and buy a subscription to support his work. The subscription also gives you access to 4K content which is not hosted here.
Also be sure to check out his YouTube channel with narrated versions of his video scenes, and take notes so you can share this useful information in your Bible teaching.
Need a hand studying the Bible? Check out the growing collection of Bible Study Resources at PastorDaniel.net.
This collection draws from many contributions of our maintainers and contributors, as well as Creative Commons images sourced from the Internet. Particularly helpful resources include:
- Adventist Media Exchange, the official place to organize and share digital assets for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Most content here is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, making it an excellent resource. Many of their Bible Lands photos and AI-generated Bible images are mirrored in this collection, but many others are not, so be sure to check out this valuable resource!
- Flickr is an excellent resource for photographs, particularly Creative Commons licensed photos (some of which are mirrored in this collection).
- Wikimedia Commons contains many historical as well as recent photographs of places all over the world, as well as some excellent photographs of the natural world.
- pxhere.com is a collection of free (CC0) stock photography and an excellent source for stock images.
There are also many helpful collections of Bible illustrations and useful AI images that can’t be included here.
- FreeBibleImages is one of our favorites. Some of these images are already included here under a Creative Commons license. Many of other images are licensed such that they cannot be redistributed here without special permission, but they can be used freely for your own use and teaching.
- FreePik has a wide variety of images including AI images on Christian themes. The copyright terms on the site do not allow redistributing their images, so we aren’t including them in this collection.
- Pixabay hosts many free AI generated images. Just search for “Jesus AI” for example, and you find a number of high quality images. For similar reasons as FreePik, we aren’t including them in this collection at this time. In particular, check out the following users on Pixabay:
- Pexels is another online collection of free stock photography, videos, and art that is a valuable resource.
- Gospel Art from the Mormon Church can be used for “personal use” and can be posted on other websites, but other use requires special permission.
Do you want to contribute art?
If you are an artist and would like to contribute to this collection, please click here.