Sources and licenses

THE BIBLE TEXT

The English site uses the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), in the public domain since 2023 (eBible.org, engbsb). Its words lead to the original through the Berean tables (bsb_tables.tsv, also in the public domain): for each word of the Hebrew, the Aramaic and the Greek, its form, transliteration, parsing and Strong's number, and the BSB words that translate it. Here: 31,086 verses.

Also in the reader (open "Go to"), to read instead of the BSB or beside it: the World English Bible (WEB), in the public domain (eBible.org, engwebu, the edition that reads "LORD"), and the King James Version (KJV), the 1769 text (eBible.org and Crosswire, eng-kjv2006), in the public domain outside the United Kingdom: there, a royal patent with no expiration date limits its printing to Cambridge, Oxford and Collins. From the KJV we remove the "¶" the 1769 edition uses to mark a paragraph; the Strong's numbers for each word come from the edition itself, as Crosswire tagged them.

For the Spanish site, still in preparation: the Reina-Valera 1909 (RV1909), in the public domain (eBible.org, spaRV1909), with the Strong's numbers the edition itself marks phrase by phrase. We change two things, neither in what the text says: the first word of each chapter, which the 1909 printing sets in capitals, is written as a word ("EN el principio" becomes "En el principio"); and in the sixteen chapters where the edition numbers its verses its own way (Jonah 2, Hosea 12, Job 39 and 40, among others), each verse sits at its address in the King James numbering, the one the whole site uses, with the edition's number beside it. "Reina-Valera 1909" is a registered trademark in the United States: we use the name to say which text this is. To read beside it, Palabra de Dios para ti (PDT), © 2020 Asociación Bíblica Latinoamericana (eBible.org, spapddpt): its eBible.org record says CC BY 4.0 and the translation's own preface says CC BY-SA 4.0; we follow the stricter, CC BY-SA 4.0, and change no word. The PDT follows the critical text and leaves out some verses, such as Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53 to 8:11; where it does, its own note says why, and we remove the [[ ]] it uses to mark the place. In three places of the New Testament it numbers as the critical text does (2 Corinthians 13:12-13, 3 John 15, Revelation 12:18), and the verse sits at its King James address, with its own number beside it.

The Portuguese site uses the Bíblia Portuguesa Mundial, in the public domain, as verified in its eBible.org record (porbrbsl). It is a translation of the World English Bible that its authors are still revising. Until version 0.68.0 Scriptoria called it the Bíblia Livre, which is the name of another translation (CC BY 4.0, by Diego Santos, Mario Sérgio and Marco Teles); that is why the name changed here. It may be quoted and reproduced freely.

Bíblia Livre (BLIVRE), by Diego Santos, Mario Sérgio and Marco Teles, February 2018 version, under the CC BY 4.0 license, revised from João Ferreira de Almeida's 1819 translation and the Textus Receptus (eBible.org, porbr2018). We show the text as eBible.org publishes it, with four changes of formatting and none to the words: we remove the references the edition places in the middle of some verses (such as "Malaquias 3:1" after a quotation), we remove the spaces before commas and periods, we add the missing space after a comma, semicolon or colon that runs into the next word ("contra ela,diz o SENHOR") and we remove the space just after an opening parenthesis or quotation mark and just before a closing one ("( este era o pavimento )", "dizeis: “ Haverá"). On this site, both Portuguese Bibles can be read beside the English text: in the reader, open "Go to".

In the originals, to read and to compare in any of the site's languages: The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (SBLGNT), © 2010 Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, under the CC BY 4.0 license, with the critical apparatus as notes (eBible.org, grcsbl; we changed one thing, as the license asks us to say: the apparatus signs, such as ⸀ and ⸂ ⸃, are taken out of the running text, and the variants they mark stay in the notes); the Textus Receptus (TR), in the public domain, with Adam Boyd's manuscript notes (grctr); and the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC), the Hebrew with vowels and cantillation marks, in the public domain (hebwlc). The Hebrew and the critical Greek number some verses differently: Joel 4:1 in the Hebrew is Joel 3:1 here, and the title of Psalm 51 is two verses there. Each verse sits at its address in the King James numbering, which the whole site uses, with the edition's own numbering beside it; the mapping comes from the versification files of Paratext (SIL Global, MIT license), with seven cases the files leave out resolved by hand.

Strong's dictionaries, Greek (1890) and Hebrew (1894), by James Strong, in the public domain, in the Open Scriptures XML editions (the Greek by Ulrik Petersen; the Hebrew by David Troidl and David Instone-Brewer). The entries are in English; on the Portuguese site the reader says so, until we have glosses of our own in Portuguese. From the Hebrew we leave out the references to the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, which is under copyright to Moody. Here: 14,197 entries. The Greek is set in Cardo and the Hebrew in Ezra SIL, from SIL, both under the SIL Open Font License.

THE PLACES

The identifications and the coordinates come from OpenBible.info, under the CC BY 4.0 license (openbible.info/geo), which asks for attribution. The English names come from OpenBible.info too, as do the short English descriptions some places carry. The Portuguese names come from the text of the Bíblia Portuguesa Mundial itself, and the Portuguese descriptions are written by Scriptoria. The Spanish names come from the Reina-Valera 1909, written in today's spelling, the one the Palabra de Dios para ti uses in the same verses. Where OpenBible points to the place's item in Wikidata (public domain, CC0), the page points to it too. Here: 1,342 places, 305 of them with a description in English.

THE CROSS-REFERENCES

"See also," beside each verse: the links from OpenBible.info, under the same CC BY 4.0 license (openbible.info), which grew out of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and are voted on by readers. We keep those with at least three votes, the highest-voted first. Here: 214,176 links.

PEOPLE AND GENEALOGY

Curated by Scriptoria, from the biblical text itself: each family tie (father, mother, spouse, child) cites the verse that states it, and no tie goes in without one. Each person points to their item in Wikidata (CC0), checked against the same ties. Here: 149 people, 21 of them with a description in English.

DATES AND CONTEXT

Curated by Scriptoria. Each period states its basis: whether the text itself gives the date ("in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar"), whether the date is counted from the text or whether it is a historical reconstruction. And it cites the evidence, such as the Cyrus Cylinder or the Delphi inscription. Here: 35 dated periods (14 by the text itself) and 32 historical parallels.

THE QUIZ QUESTIONS

Written and reviewed by curators, each one with the verse that holds the answer. Live on the site: 106 approved questions.

HOW TO CITE

The attribution we ask for is "Scriptoria (scriptoria.digital), Berean Standard Bible, public domain" and, for the places and the cross-references, "OpenBible.info, CC BY 4.0". Every book, chapter, verse, place, person and question page has a plain-text version: add .md to the address, as in /en/bible/acts/11/26.md.