
Bible API - otobrglez
http://bible-api.com/
======
wcarey
One of the most interesting things to happen to the scriptures is their
balkanization into verses. We generally don't atomize other writings that way,
and when folks read the scriptures as a series of disconnected logical
propositions all sorts of wackiness ensues. What would it look like to have an
API for the collected works of Jane Austen that returned snippets (some of
which are not even complete sentences)? How would that shape the way we read,
say, Persuasion?

That hermeneutic - texts are collections of independent logical propositions -
was essentially unknown in the ancient world, and cedes immense
epistemological ground to the project of the enlightenment that is
diametrically opposed to a Christian reading of the Scriptures, which
emphasizes their unity and their role in liturgical worship.

~~~
karaterobot
Good observation, but I think it's overstated. I don't know many people who
read the bible as a series of disconnected logical propositions, they mainly
read it in much longer sections covering some topic.

Chapter and verse come in when you want to quote something, or shorthand
something, or refer someone to a specific and narrow section.

In this usage, it's very similar to the way we cite Shakespeare, Homer,
Chaucer, Milton, etc. For example, the St. Crispin's day speech in _Henry V_
is at IV.iii.18-67, and any Shakespearean actor, fan, or scholar knows what
that means, but that notation doesn't force them to think of the play as
merely a set of disconnected speeches.

~~~
bdcravens
> I don't know many people who read the bible as a series of disconnected
> logical propositions

It's common to quote short passages (1-3 verses) in society, either to prove a
point (often missing context) or in a "thought for the day" manner. Many homes
have wall hangings with scripture that the owner has never read in the bible.

~~~
chacha102

      Many homes have wall hangings with scripture that the owner has never read in the bible.
    

People quote literature they haven't read all over the place[1]. Implying its
unique to the Bible means you probably haven't done your research either.

[1]: [https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/68007/50-famous-
misquota...](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/68007/50-famous-
misquotations-and-what-was-really-said)

~~~
bdcravens
The difference being that for the Christian (a presumption when you see
someone quote scripture) the Bible supposedly defines their worldview, as
opposed to various pieces of literature.

~~~
Natsu
Usually the Bible is taught via stories, especially the Gospel stories, rather
than individual verses and the verses are quoted to make points.

While there are, e.g., yearly Bible plans to read everything, not many people
these days have the patience to read all the numbers in Numbers and there's an
incredibly limited theological value in knowing how many there were of the
tribe of Napthali or what have you unless you're trying to pass a Bible quiz.

I mean, why would a modern day Christian want to memorize all the rules on
kosher food when Paul explained at length why they're irrelevant to us now? Or
the rules on making a potion out of the dust of the Temple floor of a temple
that's no longer standing? Or the rules about wearing clothing with multiple
materials?

Yes, there are yet some principles that might be extracted of some of these--
take for example, not muzzling the ox while it's treading the grain as an
exhortation to take care of your animals and anyone who serves you. Or the
prohibition on harvesting the last bits of crop at the edges of your fields,
which were then reserved for the poor, to always reserve something for the
poor among you.

But these things tend to be explained elsewhere and it ends up as trivia that
doesn't matter much unless someone is insistent that a Real Christian [TM]
must know whether the witch of Endor is from Samuel, Sirach or Star Wars...
which in turn depends on whether she's named Charal or not.

Yes, really -

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Endor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Endor)
[https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Charal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Charal)

------
cylinder714
John Walker (of Autodesk fame) has provided the KJV, Latin Vulgate and Hebrew
Bibles for some time now:

 _Bible_

[https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Bible/Bible.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Bible/Bible.html)

 _King James Version of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Includes
anchor labels for every chapter and verse, permitting easy citation from other
documents in the conventional form. For example the parable of the Good
Samaritan may be cited as:_

    
    
        <a href="http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Bible/Luke.html#10:27>

------
davidwparker
A decade ago (!) I worked on parsing bible searches.

[https://www.davidwparker.com/2010/03/04/parsing-bible-
search...](https://www.davidwparker.com/2010/03/04/parsing-bible-searches/)

It was a neat little project at the time, but due to copyrights, I didn't get
as far as I would have liked... I had planned on making a `diff` tool for
bible verses between versions.

~~~
duemti
Well, this is the reason there are so many versions. Copyright on the best
seller book of all time.

~~~
tekknik
Copyrights didn’t exist when most were written (not many people use NIV
versions) so what are you on about?

~~~
taborj
> (not many people use NIV versions)

[citation needed]

NIV is always on the list of most popular bible versions, and is in heavy
usage. KJV is by far the most popular, but NIV is still very popular.

~~~
hajile
I'd also add that the very popular New King James Version (NKJV) is both
copyrighted and uses different source material from the KJV which means that
differences in wording are not just old to new English, but also differences
in meaning.

~~~
taborj
Good point, and I didn't know that about NKJV. Very interesting.

~~~
tekknik
Here you both go:

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/299402/preferred-
bible-v...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/299402/preferred-bible-
version-usa/)

------
schappim
I just hit the API up and it errored with http status code “777 - Act of God”.

~~~
abiogenesis
You are lucky, it could've been a 666.

------
josh_fyi
Nice API. Still, it's a little like a Shakespeare API that supports only
Portuguese and Chinese. It would be great to include the original languages.

~~~
sb057
The problem (which Shakespeare also has[1]) is that there are numerous
versions of the texts in their original languages, with no particularly
definitive or even consistent editions of the Old Testament in Hebrew or the
New Testament in Greek AFAIK. Not to mention, the original Mosaic writings
have been completely lost to time, having been written in Ugaritic and not
Hebrew.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_texts_of_Shakespeare%27s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_texts_of_Shakespeare%27s_works)

~~~
wcarey
The gold standard for the Greek text of the New Testament is the critical
edition
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Testamentum_Graece](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Testamentum_Graece))
published by Nestle-Aland.

~~~
sb057
True, but that raises the question as to what to do with the various footnotes
other variant-related snags. It's just not particularly suited for something
like an API for verses.

~~~
wcarey
It is, as you say, not particularly suited for something like an API for
verses.

------
hombre_fatal
I don't understand the utility of an API for this beyond APIs generally being
fun to build.

All of the work is in formatting the data to be machine readable, and each
bible is <5mb. If you needed this, you could also just download the open
source bibles it uses and crawl it yourself which is surely superior in 99% of
use cases.

~~~
Jaruzel
I wondered the same thing. Surely a useful API is for data that changes, and
the recipient doesn't want to manage the content themselves? An API for
searching static data seems only useful as a learning exercise.

~~~
taborj
Or if said static data is a huge data set and unwieldy to maintain.

Or if that data is copyrighted, but allows free usage of small selections.

~~~
Jaruzel
Both valid points. Thanks!

------
bobuk
If you’re looking for ready to use data instead of API, there’s prepared jsons
for you

[https://github.com/bobuk/holybooks/tree/master/EN](https://github.com/bobuk/holybooks/tree/master/EN)

~~~
coolgeek
Thanks, but that could use some documentation. Directory names like "1CO" are
completely opaque to me, and almost certainly others

------
skissane
Book names are language-specific. So [http://bible-
api.com/Joannes+3:16?translation=clementine](http://bible-
api.com/Joannes+3:16?translation=clementine) works but [http://bible-
api.com/John+3:16?translation=clementine](http://bible-
api.com/John+3:16?translation=clementine) doesn’t

Is there an API to get the names of the books?

Vulgate appears to be missing the Deuterocanonical books

------
catsdanxe
Has anyone trained GPT2 on the Bible? I think it could create some interesting
stories.

~~~
gchamonlive
We could make a religion out of this

~~~
tekknik
You do realize you’re disrespecting an entire class of people right? Or let me
guess, it’s acceptable because you don’t agree with their beliefs right?

~~~
gchamonlive
First, stop projecting.

Second, I am not disrespecting anyone. There is no reference to any particular
religion so I don't see how I am offending this class of people.

Third, I should be free to create any system of belief I want, if that somehow
makes me feel like I am reconnecting to a higher power. If I feel like
creating a religion based on machine generated quotes learned from scriptures,
what is the problem with that?

~~~
tekknik
You don’t get to say when you’re offending people, others do. I’m religious
and you have offended me.

Create whatever you want but if you’re goal is to poke fun at a group of
people realize you’re one of the problems people keep pointing to in this
world. Instead of saying anything you could’ve simply ignored this post but
you had to make your ridiculous and pointless statement that does nothing but
spread hate.

~~~
gchamonlive
I have offended you by proposing a system of belief? Isn't this a little
intolerant?

> but if you’re goal is to poke fun at a group of people

Aren't you assuming too much?

> You don’t get to say when you’re offending people, others do

You are right, I apologize for my phrasing. I actually wanted to know how that
could be offending, because I could not see this.

~~~
tekknik
And you continue the offense by throwing in the stereotypes. These days
claiming a religious person as intolerant is on par with saying asian people
like rice or some other equally nonsensical stereotype. You called religion a
collection of stories. If you want to think my defending of ALL religions is
somehow intolerant then you are free to do so, but when you reduce religions
to a “collection of stories” this is where the offense comes.

------
aerodog
A similar thing has existed for the Quran for some years now

[http://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=1&verse=1#(1:...](http://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=1&verse=1#\(1:1:1\))

------
brightball
Pretty helpful. The more translations the better too. Cross referencing
translations is always interesting for me.

~~~
dane-pgp
> Cross referencing

I see what you did there.

~~~
brightball
I didn’t intended to do that, but I will be from now on.

------
paulcole
You could easily monetize this by adding sponsored content to every nth
request. Something like _I can do everything through Dannon® Oikos® Greek
Yogurt who gives me strength._

~~~
JoBrad
However certain I want to be that this would never happen, this is hilarious.

------
vmception
About a decade ago I did something like this on an app where the client wanted
people to find hidden passages in religious texts

Riding the Da Vinci and Nostradamus sentiment

I could see that coming back, people flock to these kinds of things in periods
of uncertainty.

------
chr15m
English Bible versions in mysql, sqlite, xml, csv, json.

[https://github.com/scrollmapper/bible_databases](https://github.com/scrollmapper/bible_databases)

Used it to build [https://wordbibleaddin.com](https://wordbibleaddin.com)

------
lordleft
This is neat. This makes me curious about the licencing around popular
translations, like the Jerusalem Bible or the NIV; is it not legal to post
those translations??

~~~
Intermernet
Apparently, the Bible is the Word of God. I'm not sure if copyright applies.

Romans 13:1-2 says: "Obey the government, for God is the One who has put it
there. There is no government anywhere that God has not placed in power. So
those who refuse to obey the law of the land are refusing to obey God, and
punishment will follow."

Acts 5:29 says: "Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God
rather than human beings!""

The US copyright act (chapter 3 section 302) states: "Copyright in a work
created on or after January 1, 1978, subsists from its creation and, except as
provided by the following subsections, endures for a term consisting of the
life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death."

<confused face emoji>

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
I expect that translating a work gives you a claim on the translation, which
is a creative work. (Mechanical translation doesn't have this effect)

~~~
hprotagonist
“it is my sincerely held religious belief that no translations in fact
happened...”

~~~
rsynnott
While there are sects that consider certain translations to be special, or
even divinely inspired, it’s usually pretty old ones which are out of
copyright anyway.

~~~
hprotagonist
that was my point, but i should have made it more explicitly.

------
elwell
Not sure if I'm more surprised about the support for Cherokee or JSONP.

~~~
stephenhuey
Yes, fascinating - it was translated into Cherokee back in 1860. According to
Wycliffe Bible Translators, 3384 languages have some Scripture translated for
them. Of those, 698 have the complete Bible and 1548 languages have a complete
New Testament.

~~~
elldoubleyew
Mostly unrelated, but I did a summer internship for Wycliffe my sophomore year
of college. We created an app that allowed non-technical speakers of a more
obscure language to review and make suggestions on draft translations of
scripture [1]. It would actually tie their native language translation to a
"bridge language" (usually english) and then also show the original
Hebrew/Aramaic which they could reference through a built in dictionary. As a
language nerd it was a really interesting project to work on.

AFAIK the app is still being used in the field and maintained (my internship
was over 4 years ago). This was a rare case of hiring interns to build
something and it actually working out.

[1] [https://www.translationcore.com/](https://www.translationcore.com/)

------
INTPenis
Would be nice to have a list of all books and their verse numbers so you can
make a random function.

------
shp0ngle
As a Catholic, I feel bad that there is no freely available and open English
translation that's also approved by Church, but what to do.

Maybe if I could get the 1950 version of Knox Bible somewhere. (Not the
republished, 2012 version, that's on NewAdvent.)

------
saos
Awesome! Would love NLT or NKJV translation.

~~~
NobodyNada
Unfortunately, you run into copyright issues very quickly when republishing
modern translations. This site only provides “public domain and freely
licensed bibles,” which includes neither NLT or NKJV.

------
geofft
BTW, the publishers of the ESV host an official API (although the terms of use
are somewhat restrictive): [https://api.esv.org/](https://api.esv.org/)

~~~
sb057
NET as well:
[https://labs.bible.org/api_web_service](https://labs.bible.org/api_web_service)

------
dilandau
I wrote a bible desktop application and pulled in a bunch of translation and
commentary from the swords project. I recommend looking into it if you're
after the underlying data, nicely structured.

------
CivBase
I find it strange that you have a default translation. I expect the sort of
crowd who would most likely use this will also be very particular about which
translation is being served.

~~~
chrismorgan
I think a default does actually make sense: if you don’t provide one, people
will start by getting confused, and if they get past that will try to decide
which version they should use, and probably go with the KJV as a name that
they recognise—but the KJV is simply not a good translation any more, mostly
because English has changed and it hasn’t but also by reason of its textual
sources. The WEB family¹ is superior in both these regards and not obviously
inferior in others, while remaining public domain, so defaulting to it does
people a service. (Note that in all this I’m assuming that any default will be
English. I think that’s a reasonable assumption because of the shape of both
the world and the internet.)

¹ “Familiy” because the WEB also has a British/International spelling edition,
not present through this API. If anything I think it would make a better
default than the American spelling edition. Matches the spelling used by more
of the world, and lines up with the KJV better.

~~~
CivBase
Your post is a perfect example of _why_ I think it's a bad idea to have a
default. There is a lot of debate over which translations are the most
valuable and very little concensus. A lot of organized denominations still
lean heavily on KJV, regardless of its relative accuracy. A lot of them take
strong opposition to KJV. Even if we all agreed KJV was bad, what do we use
instead? NIV? ASV? WEB? There is no sensible default.

Besides, just as a verse is part of a book, so is a book part of a
translation. It makes as much sense to declare _which_ bible to query a verse
from as it does to declare which book or verses to query for.

~~~
chrismorgan
If considering _all_ English translations, you would certainly get a wide
variety of opinions about what should be the default for everyone, if default
there be; yet I suspect that the substantial majority of informed opinions
would support the KJV, NIV and ESV, with all others trailing far behind. As
regards _user-facing_ systems, BibleGateway.com has long used the NIV as its
default. I certainly wouldn’t; I’m not fond of what the NIV has become. All in
all, for an API I would agree with you and recommend no default.

But for a site like this, you’re only considering public domain translations.
_Given that_ , I think that the WEB is a reasonable default, specifically
because of the paucity of available options. And when you have fewer options,
I think a default is more useful—“you don’t have the one I want, so what
should I use instead?” will cause paralysis that a default resolves.

On the available public domain English BIbles: you’re generally limited to the
KJV, a variety of more obscure translations older than the ASV, the ASV, and
the WEB. (Fun fact: the old testament of the RSV and the first edition of the
new testament are now public domain for most of the world, including Australia
where I live. I grew up with the RSV and still use a second edition RSV as my
primary Bible.) Out of these, I don’t think there’s much contest: the KJV is
popular for historical reasons but a poor _default_ for the aforediscussed
reasons; of the obscure translations, most or all are either unconventional in
some significant way, or would be widely acknowledged to be superseded by the
ASV, by direct or indirect lineage; that leaves the ASV and the WEB which is
mostly just a linguistic update of the ASV. That leaves the WEB as a sensible
default public domain translation.

------
programmarchy
Is there a programmatic way to split books into chapters and verses? Verses
don't seem to simply be divided by sentences; there can be multiple sentences
in a single verse. But is there a well-defined metric that could be used to
apply to other books?

------
benbristow
Seems to be some extra whitespace on the text of the example you provided.

[http://bible-api.com/john%203:16?translation=kjv](http://bible-
api.com/john%203:16?translation=kjv)

------
millerm
Would be nice if The Skeptic's Annotated Bible could be added to the API.
Doubt that though.

[http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/](http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/)

~~~
Mediterraneo10
It has been years since I last looked at the Skeptics Annotated Bible, but
when it launched there were a number of claims based purely on the standard
English translations of the Bible. I remember especially how it was claimed
that Jesus was "disrespectful of his mother" (and therefore not a morally good
person) by addressing her as "woman", even though _gunê_ in Greek was a
totally normal form of address with no disrespectful tinge to it at all. (We
know a lot about forms of address in Greek and Latin thanks largely to the
work of Eleanor Dickey).

I mentioned this to the creator of the website, but he said he lacked any
academic background and could only base himself on the English. Consequently,
I wrote the site off as more a knee-jerk response to religion instead of any
rigorous challenge to the claims of Christianity.

~~~
jacquesm
Spending time on annotating it either in English or the original is giving it
too much credibility to begin with. If we're going to go to the source let's
look at the Torah instead, not at a bunch of pull requests with bug fixes
against the original.

~~~
dang
Please, Jacques, this is pure flamebait. Please don't.

~~~
jacquesm
As you wish.

------
zornado
Protip: Add Cloudflare (CDN) to provide caching and https for the api. Makes
it faster, reduces traffic on the endpoints, and makes them secure.

Also try to host it as a lambda function.

------
coronadisaster
Does it let you compare against different revisions of the bible?

------
macarthy12
I keep getting NULL

~~~
djxfade
Sounds like an enhancement

------
biolurker1
How can a programmer believe in god is beyond me.

~~~
flatfilefan
How cannot he when the “logos kyrie o teos” is mentioned e.g. in Iesekiel as
the self -description of the divine, meaning roughly “the master of putting
thoughts into words”. Doesn’t this sound like a very description of a
programmer to you?

~~~
battery423
You talk about a book.

A book written by people 2000 years ago.

There is not a single proof in existence, that this book is not more then a
story equivalent to Harry Potter or any other Fairy tale.

And then the issues just start...

A omnipotent she/he/it who thought 'yeah going to earth 2000 years ago is the
perfect and only timing i will ever go to earth', then creates humans (which
are much older than that and we know that well enough) and then never comes
back and helps us?

Whats that for a shitty leader?

