Opened
Home

Sources

The texts and data Opened is built on, their licences, and what we changed.

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

Bible text.

Licence: Public domain (dedicated 2023).

World English Bible (WEB)

Bible text.

Licence: Public domain. “World English Bible” is a trademark of eBible.org.

King James Version (KJV)

Bible text. Words the translators supplied are shown in italics.

Licence: Public domain outside the United Kingdom. In the UK, the Crown holds printing rights under letters patent.

Majority Standard Bible (MSB)

Bible text. A companion to the BSB whose New Testament follows the Byzantine Majority Text.

Licence: Public domain (dedicated by the Berean Bible Translation Committee).

Free Bible Version (FBV)

Bible text, unchanged.

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Copyright © 2018 Dr. Jonathan Gallagher.

Literal Standard Version (LSV)

Bible text. Words the translators supplied are shown in italics, and the translators’ alternate readings as small notes in brackets.

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Copyright © 2020 Covenant Press.

Our changes

  • Formatting only: the line marks (“||”) in poetry are shown as line breaks. The words are unchanged.

Young’s Literal Translation (YLT)

Bible text (1898). Words the translator supplied are shown in italics.

Licence: Public domain.

American Standard Version (ASV)

Bible text (1901). Words the translators supplied are shown in italics.

Licence: Public domain.

Darby Translation (DBY)

Bible text (1890). Words the translator supplied are shown in italics.

Licence: Public domain.

Our changes

  • Darby marks some words with “*” to point to notes that aren’t in this edition of the text; the marks are removed.

Tyndale New Testament (TNT)

Bible text (William Tyndale, 1534), New Testament only, in the original spelling.

Licence: Public domain.

Geneva Bible (GNV)

Bible text (1599 edition), in the original spelling.

Licence: Public domain.

Our changes

  • Verses are renumbered to the English numbering the app uses where the Geneva follows the Hebrew chapter breaks (Numbers, 1 Samuel, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Daniel, Hosea, Haggai). Where it prints two verses as one, the text stands under the first number.

Douay-Rheims Bible (DRA)

Bible text (Challoner revision, 1899 American edition), translated from the Latin Vulgate.

Licence: Public domain.

Our changes

  • Verses are renumbered from the Vulgate’s numbering to the English one: the Psalms (numbered as in the Greek and Latin, with titles as separate verses) and other places where chapters or verses are divided differently. Book names follow the English Bible (1 Samuel rather than 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles rather than 1 Paralipomenon).
  • The deuterocanonical books and the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel aren’t included yet.
  • Cross-references printed in some Psalm titles (“[2 Kings 16]”) are removed.

Webster Bible (WBS)

Bible text (Noah Webster’s revision of the King James Version, 1833). Words the translators supplied are shown in italics.

Licence: Public domain.

Our changes

  • Spaces between supplied words and the punctuation after them are removed.

Brenton Septuagint (Brenton)

Bible text: the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint), translated by Sir Lancelot Brenton (1844). Old Testament only. Words the translator supplied are shown in italics.

Licence: Public domain.

Our changes

  • Verses are renumbered from the Septuagint’s numbering and order to the English ones (the Psalms, and the Greek order of Exodus, Joshua, 1 Kings, Proverbs and Jeremiah). The Greek account of making the tabernacle (Exodus 36:8–39:13 in the Greek numbering) is too different to match verse by verse and isn’t included.
  • Short Septuagint additions are joined to the verse they follow; longer ones, Psalm 151, the additions to Esther and Daniel and Brenton’s Apocrypha aren’t included yet.
  • Where Brenton brackets a whole passage that itself contains supplied words, the inner brackets are removed (italics don’t nest), and so is a bracket left open from one verse to the next.

Revised Version (RV)

Bible text (English Revised Version: New Testament 1881, Old Testament 1885). Words the translators supplied are shown in italics.

Licence: Public domain.

Our changes

  • The brackets the RV prints around John 7:53–8:11 are removed, so the passage isn’t shown in italics.

Bible commentaries, via the Free Use Bible API

Commentary on every chapter and verse, chosen in the reader.

Licence: Matthew Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Keil & Delitzsch, Adam Clarke, John Gill and John Calvin: public domain. Tyndale Open Study Notes: © Tyndale House Publishers, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Our changes

  • Spacing and paragraph breaks are normalised; the words are unchanged.
  • Each note is shown for the verses it covers, from its first verse to the verse before the next note.
  • Only the 66 books of the Bible are included; Tyndale's separate topical articles are not shown yet.

The Church Fathers: Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

The library’s early church fathers: Ante-Nicene Fathers 1–9, and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I 1–14 and Series II 1–14.

Licence: Public domain (ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe, 1885–96; ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 1886–1900).

Our changes

  • Each volume is split into its works and chapters; the print edition’s title pages, contents and indexes are left out.
  • Footnotes are kept with the chapter they belong to.
  • Bible citations that name a real verse (“Gen. iv. 3-8”) open the passage; the words are unchanged.
  • Double hyphens are shown as dashes, and spacing is normalised.

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church and The Creeds of Christendom (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

The library’s History of the Christian Church (8 volumes) and Creeds of Christendom (3 volumes).

Licence: Public domain (History of the Christian Church, 1858–1910; The Creeds of Christendom, 1877).

Our changes

  • Split into sections and chapters, with footnotes and Bible citations as for the Fathers; title pages, contents and indexes are left out.
  • The CCEL text of the Creeds is the 1931 sixth edition. What David S. Schaff added in 1931 and can be separated is left out: his preface and list of literature, three sections on recent churches (vol. 1), the appendices of papal documents (vol. 2) and the part on recent declarations and church unions (vol. 3).

Classics, devotional books and Bible reference works (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

A Serious Call, The Reformed Pastor, Religious Affections, Holiness, With Christ in the School of Prayer, Absolute Surrender, The True Vine, Morning and Evening, All of Grace, and Easton’s, Nave’s, Torrey’s and Hitchcock’s reference works.

Licence: Public domain: William Law (1729), Richard Baxter (1656), Jonathan Edwards (1746), J. C. Ryle (1879), Andrew Murray (1885–97), C. H. Spurgeon (Morning and Evening, 1865–68; All of Grace, 1886), M. G. Easton (1897), Orville J. Nave (1896), R. A. Torrey (1897) and Roswell D. Hitchcock (1869).

Our changes

  • Notes added by the digital editions (cover art credits, a transcriber’s afterword) are left out.
  • Morning and Evening has one page per reading, with the day’s verse at the top.
  • The dictionaries and topical indexes have one page per letter (split by entry when a letter is long), each entry a heading so search finds it; verse references (“1Ch 6:3”) open the passage.

More classics and history (Christian Classics Ethereal Library and Project Gutenberg)

Bounds’ six books on prayer, The Deeper Christian Life, The Training of the Twelve, In His Steps, Edersheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, The Temple and Sketches of Jewish Social Life, St. Paul the Traveller, The Overcoming Life and The Pursuit of God.

Licence: Public domain: E. M. Bounds (1907–31), Andrew Murray (1895), A. B. Bruce (1871), Charles M. Sheldon (1896), Alfred Edersheim (1874–83), W. M. Ramsay (1895), D. L. Moody (1896, Project Gutenberg #33015) and A. W. Tozer (1948, Project Gutenberg #25141).

Our changes

  • Each book is split into its chapters; title pages, contents, indexes and publishers’ advertisements are left out.
  • Bible citations open the passage; Ramsay’s chapter numbers in capital Roman numerals (“Gal. II 1-4”) are read as chapters so they link. The words are unchanged.

Bible dictionaries, lexicons and Daily Light (CrossWire Bible Society)

The library’s Smith’s, ISBE, American Tract Society and Webster 1828 dictionaries, the Condensed Biblical Cyclopedia, Thompson Chain Topics, its Lexicons collection and Daily Light.

Licence: Public domain: Smith’s Bible Dictionary (1884), the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), the American Tract Society Bible Dictionary (1859), Johnson’s Condensed Biblical Cyclopedia (1896), Thompson’s chain topics (1934; the copyright was not renewed), Strong’s Greek and Hebrew dictionaries (1890), Abbott-Smith’s Manual Greek Lexicon (1922) and Daily Light on the Daily Path (1875). Webster’s Dictionary 1828: CC BY-SA 4.0, the edition by akaitsurugi (github.com/akaitsurugi/webster1828).

Our changes

  • Each dictionary has one page per letter and each lexicon one per hundred Strong’s numbers (Abbott-Smith one per Greek letter), every entry a heading so search finds it; an article longer than a page continues over several.
  • Bible references in the modules’ markup open the passage. Strong’s tense codes (numbers from 5656), which are placeholders rather than words, are left out. Cross-references between Strong’s entries open the entry they name.
  • Numbered lists are numbered, a point to a paragraph. In Thompson’s and the Tract Society’s references, “Jud” is read as Judges, “So” as the Song of Solomon, and lists missing their semicolons get them back.
  • The Cyclopedia’s electronic edition capitalises the first word of every printed line; ordinary words caught that way are put back in lower case. Names and the words it capitalises on purpose are left as they are.

Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible (Internet Archive)

The library’s Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible.

Licence: Public domain: James Hastings (ed.), Dictionary of the Bible (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909). The scan is of Cornell University Library’s copy, which it notes has no known copyright restrictions in the United States.

Our changes

  • The text is the scan’s OCR. The Bible references, whose verse numbers are printed small and raised, were read again from the page images; where a verse couldn’t be read with confidence, the reference opens its chapter instead.
  • A reference without a book takes the book last cited, as Hastings intends. References to the Apocrypha are written out but don’t open a passage.
  • The OCR’s usual misreadings were corrected (“Ufe” for life, words run together, misread headings), and running heads and page numbers were removed. Some stray marks remain where the scan’s text couldn’t be read.

Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, Antiquities of the Jews, Life and Against Apion (Project Gutenberg)

The library’s works of Josephus (eBooks #2850, #2848, #2846 and #2849).

Licence: Public domain (William Whiston’s translation, 1737).

Our changes

  • The Project Gutenberg header and licence are removed, as its licence allows for public-domain texts.
  • Whiston’s notes are kept with the chapter they belong to, and Bible citations open the passage.

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (Project Gutenberg)

The library’s Book of Martyrs.

Licence: Public domain (ed. William Byron Forbush).

Our changes

  • The Project Gutenberg header, licence and transcriber’s notes are removed.
  • Long chapters are split into one page per account. The source misnumbers two chapters, so chapters are numbered in order.

Classics and devotional books (Project Gutenberg)

The library’s editions of those books (eBooks #3296, #45304, #45305, #45001, #64392, #131, #654, #1653, #130, #79723, #79727 and #275).

Licence: Public domain: Augustine’s Confessions (trans. E. B. Pusey, 1838) and City of God (trans. Marcus Dods, 1871), Calvin’s Institutes (trans. John Allen, 1813), Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) and Grace Abounding (1666), The Imitation of Christ (trans. William Benham, 1874), Chesterton’s Orthodoxy (1908), Spurgeon’s Treasury of David (1869–70) and the Augsburg Confession (Triglot Concordia translation, 1921).

Our changes

  • The Project Gutenberg header, licence and transcriber’s notes are removed; the editions’ own prefaces and notes are kept.
  • Each book is split into its books, chapters or psalms; very long chapters are split into parts.
  • Bunyan’s marginal notes in The Pilgrim’s Progress are shown as notes, and verse keeps its lines.

OpenBible.info cross-references

Cross-references, ordered by readers’ votes.

Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Our changes

  • Only references with positive votes are used, at most 25 per verse.

STEPBible Data (Tyndale House, Cambridge)

Greek and Hebrew words (TAGNT, TAHOT), the brief Greek lexicon (TBESG), Hebrew lemmas and glosses (TBESH), morphology codes (TEGMC, TEHMC), and people and places (TIPNR).

Licence: CC BY 4.0. The data itself is available from STEPBible’s GitHub repository; Opened doesn’t redistribute it.

Our changes

  • Verses are numbered as in English Bibles like the KJV, and Psalm titles are part of verse 1.
  • Greek: words in the Nestlé-Aland text are shown with the BSB, ASV, FBV, Darby and RV, and words in the Textus Receptus with the KJV, YLT, LSV, Tyndale, Geneva and Webster. The WEB and MSB follow the Majority Text, which this data doesn’t tag, so they are shown with the Textus Receptus, the nearer of the two. Words found only in other editions aren’t shown.
  • Hebrew: the Leningrad text with the Qere where it differs, plus restored and LXX-based words that translators use. The Ketiv isn’t shown.
  • Morpheme separators are removed from words and glosses, and Hebrew transliterations are simplified (no syllable marks, lower case).
  • Where a word is tagged with a Strong’s number that the brief lexicon splits into senses, it links to the main sense.
  • Greek definitions are shown as plain text. Hebrew definitions aren’t included, because they are licensed separately by Online Bible.
  • Morphology descriptions are shortened (for example “Noun · Nominative · Singular · Feminine”).
  • People and places: we show names, descriptions, family links, references and locations. The one-sentence summaries were adapted by STEPBible from AI output (2024); Opened labels them as AI-written. STEPBible’s longer AI articles aren’t used.
  • People and places: references are matched to English (KJV-style) verse numbers, and group words such as “Jews” or “Greeks” aren’t counted as mentions of the ancestor they’re linked to. Each chapter shows the name it uses (for example “Jacob” rather than “Israel”).
  • Entries for God’s name, festivals, other gods and psalm terms aren’t listed among a chapter’s people and places.

OpenBible.info Bible geocoding

Where biblical places were, how sure scholarship is of each, and the other sites proposed, for the chapter maps.

Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Our changes

  • Each STEPBible place is matched to OpenBible’s entry for the same verses and name; the few without a match keep STEPBible’s location, labelled approximate.
  • OpenBible’s confidence scores (out of 1000) become three labels: well established (500 or more, with no strong rival), likely (200 or more) and uncertain (lower, or with a rival site at least half as strongly supported). Uncertain places show up to three other proposed sites.
  • A region or area is drawn at the single point OpenBible uses for it (for example Judea at Jerusalem).

OpenFreeMap, OpenStreetMap and Natural Earth

The chapter maps, drawn with MapLibre GL (BSD-3-Clause), which Opened serves itself. Maps load only when you tap Load Map.

Licence: Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); OpenFreeMap and OpenMapTiles styles (BSD and CC BY); Natural Earth relief (public domain).

Our changes

  • Roads, railways, airports, buildings, borders and modern towns are hidden, and the remaining modern names muted, so the ancient places stand out; shaded relief is added beneath the sea.

Berean Standard Bible audio, read by Bob Souer

Audio Bible for the BSB. Each chapter is copied once to Opened’s storage when first played.

Licence: Dedicated to the public domain (CC0 1.0), as stated by Bible Hub for the BSB narrations.

World English Bible audio, read by Winfred W. Henson

Audio Bible for the WEB. Each chapter is copied once to Opened’s storage when first played.

Licence: Public domain.

King James Version audio, read by LibriVox volunteers

Audio Bible for the KJV, from 51 LibriVox recordings hosted on the Internet Archive. Each recording is copied once to Opened’s storage when first played; the reader is named in the player.

Licence: Public domain in the USA (LibriVox). Listeners elsewhere should check their own country’s copyright law.

Our changes

  • Where LibriVox has several recordings of a book, a solo reading of each chapter is used first, then a reading of a few chapters together, then a dramatic reading.
  • Some files read several chapters together; the player says so, and carries on after the last of them.

Wikimedia Commons photographs

Photos of archaeological finds. Each is copied once to Opened’s storage and served from there. They are shown unaltered except for size.

Licence: Each photo is public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, checked file by file; the photographer and licence are shown with every image.

Literata typeface (TypeTogether, for Google Fonts)

The reading serif for Scripture, headings and the wordmark, and for shared verse images (Latin files from Fontsource 5.3.0, built into the image renderer).

Licence: SIL Open Font License 1.1 (openfontlicense.org). Copyright The Literata Project Authors.

Opened archaeology notes

Notes on finds that relate to particular passages: what each shows and what it doesn’t. Drafted with Opened AI; disputed identifications are labelled “Scholars differ”. Awaiting review by our advisors.

Licence: Written for Opened.

Opened apologetics answers

Answers to hard questions: each states the objection at its strongest, then the Christian case with every point labelled (Scripture, historical evidence, philosophical argument, Christians differ), where the evidence is weaker, and arguments to avoid. Drafted with Opened AI; every reference is checked against the Bible text automatically. Awaiting review by our apologetics advisors. Books suggested for further reading are cited, not quoted.

Licence: Written for Opened.

Opened book introductions

Introductions to all 66 books: author, date, setting, purpose, themes, outline and key passages. They were drafted with Opened AI and every reference is checked against the Bible text automatically. Where Christians hold different views on authorship or date, both are given and labelled. They are awaiting review by our advisory board.

Licence: Written for Opened.

Bibles in the Library

83 Bibles in other languages and the original languages, from eBible.org and the CrossWire Bible Society. Each licence was read on the translation’s own page; texts licensed for non-commercial use only, with no changes allowed, or with unclear terms aren’t included.

Our changes

  • Where a Bible numbers verses differently from the King James Version (Psalm titles counted as verse 1, a chapter break in another place), its verses are shown under the KJV’s numbers so they line up side by side. A Psalm title is joined to the verse after it. The words are unchanged.
  • Left out of the text: the source’s own verse numbers and footnote markers where they were printed inside verses, and the Danish 1931 Bible’s bracketed translator notes. Verses a Bible leaves out stay out.
  • The Septuagint’s verses, which the Greek orders and numbers differently, are matched to the English numbers with STEPBible’s TVTMS (Tyndale House, Cambridge; CC BY 4.0). Psalm 151, and Greek additions with no counterpart in the Hebrew, are left out.
  • Deuterocanonical books some of these Bibles include are left out for now.