Genesis to Revelation: how the Bible begins and ends

The first book and the last book are linked more closely than most readers expect.

The Bible begins and ends with parallel pictures: a garden with a river and a tree of life, then a city with a river and the same tree. The data shows that readers have noticed. There are 181 direct links between Genesis and Revelation in the cross reference data. This page lists the 20 with the most reader votes.

Three threads that tie the first book to the last

1. Creation

Genesis 1:1 is the most linked verse in the whole set of Genesis-to-Revelation pairs. It is joined to Revelation 4:11 (207 votes), where the elders say God created all things, to Revelation 14:7 (call to worship the Creator), Revelation 10:6, and the 'Alpha and Omega' passages in Revelation 21:6 and 22:13. The Bible's last book keeps pointing back to its first sentence.

2. The serpent and the seed

Genesis 3:15, God's word to the serpent, is linked to Revelation 12:17 and 12:7. Genesis 3:1, the serpent's first words, is linked to Revelation 12:9 and 20:2, where the serpent is named again and finally bound. What begins as a conversation in a garden ends as a cosmic conflict that is decided.

3. The tree of life

Genesis 2:9 places the tree of life in the garden. Revelation 2:7, 22:2 and 22:14 bring it back. Access to it is closed in Genesis 3 and opened again at the end of the Bible.

Top 20 Genesis and Revelation links

Each row joins a verse in Genesis to one in Revelation. The last column is the number of reader votes behind the link in the OpenBible.info data.

Data: cross references from OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0), 341,290 references. Verse text: King James Version (public domain). Counts on this page were calculated by Bible Interconnect from that data on 12 November 2026.