Guide and Instructions

This guide shows you how to find your way around and get the most out of the site. Reading, searching, previews and verse colors work the same way on a computer or a phone. Laying passages out side by side — and saving that arrangement as a study — is on the computer only.

Getting around

At the top of every page is a menu bar:

Previews. Most links show a preview instead of making you leave the page:

This lets you follow a cross-reference, check a lexicon entry, or read a footnote without losing your place.

Coloring verses

Click or tap any verse and a small palette opens where you touched it. Pick a color, or choose none to clear it. Use them however you like — one color for a theme you are following, another for questions to come back to. A color stays with the verse everywhere it appears, including inside previews, and it works the same on a computer or a phone.

Creating a study

On a computer you can mark up this Bible the way you would a hardcopy, with your own notes and cross references laid out beside the text. Hover any link to open its preview, then drag it by its bar to leave it on the page. It stays where you put it, and it will still be there when you come back. Just like a real Bible, this works on every page, including the homepage.

To keep what you have built, click the Save as a study icon and give it a name. Saved studies sit in a column down the left side of the page, and clicking one opens it again. Lay it out however suits you.

Want to share a study with a friend or a group? Anyone can open your link on a computer and get a working copy of their own, which they can change and save without touching yours.

Reading a chapter

Chapters are presented in paragraph form from the King James Version (KJV), with:

Studying a verse

Click any verse number to open it. Each verse view gives you three English translations — the traditional KJV, the modern Berean Standard Bible (BSB), and a literal word-for-word rendering of the original — followed by the interlinear table.

Use the interlinear table below for a deep dive into studying the actual words penned by the original authors. Every word of the New Testament was written in Koine Greek; the Old Testament in Hebrew, with a few passages — mostly in Daniel and Ezra — in Aramaic.

The interlinear table

The table has four columns:

  1. Translation — the direct English translation of each word, in the correct form for how it is used (so "wept," not just "weep").
  2. Hebrew / Greek — the word in its original language. Hover or tap it to look it up in the lexicon.
  3. Transliteration — the original word spelled in English. The small superscript links give the word's morphology (its grammatical form); hover or tap them for the full description.
  4. Texts — which manuscript traditions include the word, or where it appears differently across manuscripts. Hover or tap an abbreviation — such as L for the Leningrad Codex — for the full name.

Differences in spelling, word order, or versification across traditions are footnoted right in the table.

The lexicon

Click any Greek or Hebrew word to open its lexicon entry. The lexicon is compiled from many public-domain sources — Strong's, Brown-Driver-Briggs, Abbott-Smith, and Liddell-Scott-Jones among them — and it is disambiguated: clicking "Mary," for example, takes you to that specific person, not just the general name.

The Septuagint (LXX)

The Bible known to the first-century authors of the New Testament was the Septuagint — the Greek Old Testament. Because the New Testament often quotes it, and it can differ from the Hebrew, every Old Testament verse has a "Greek Text" link to its Septuagint counterpart. In addition, every Scripture Quoting Scripture reference in New Testament verses link to the Greek verse in the Septuagint.

The menu

The ☰ menu on the right also holds:

Enjoy your study.