Sources & licenses
GEBible presents the Bible as a primary source. Every translation it ships is public domain or used under an open license, listed below.
Texts
| Translation | License | Attribution / source |
|---|---|---|
| World English Bible (WEB) | Public Domain | World English Bible — public domain. Carried forward from the original seed (scrollmapper/bible_databases compilation). |
| Berean Standard Bible (BSB) | Public Domain | Berean Standard Bible — dedicated to the public domain (CC0) by the BSB translation team / BSB Publishing (2023). |
| King James Version (KJV) | Public Domain | King James Version — public domain. Carried forward from the original seed (scrollmapper/bible_databases compilation). |
| American Standard Version (1901) (ASV) | Public Domain | American Standard Version (1901) — public domain. Carried forward from the original seed (scrollmapper/bible_databases compilation). |
| Geneva Bible (1599) (GNV) | Public Domain | Geneva Bible (1599) — public domain. |
| Douay-Rheims (1899) (DRA) | Public Domain | Douay-Rheims Bible, Challoner revision (1899 American edition) — public domain. Normalized to KJV chapter/verse numbering. |
| Young's Literal Translation (YLT) | Public Domain | Young's Literal Translation — public domain. Carried forward from the original seed (scrollmapper/bible_databases compilation). |
| Literal Standard Version (LSV) | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| Unlocked Literal Bible (ULB) | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| Darby Bible (DBY) | Public Domain | Darby Bible — public domain. Carried forward from the original seed (scrollmapper/bible_databases compilation). |
| World Messianic Bible (WMB) | Public Domain | World Messianic Bible (eBible.org) — public domain ("World Messianic Bible" is a trademark of eBible.org). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. |
| Webster's Bible (WBT) | Public Domain | Webster's Bible — public domain. Carried forward from the original seed (scrollmapper/bible_databases compilation). |
| Free Bible Version (FBV) | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| Bible in Basic English (BBE) | Public Domain | Bible in Basic English — public domain. Carried forward from the original seed (scrollmapper/bible_databases compilation). |
| Tyndale New Testament (1534) (TYNDALE) | Public Domain | Tyndale New Testament (1534), William Tyndale — public domain (New Testament only). Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| JPS Tanakh (1917) (JPS) | Public Domain | The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text (Jewish Publication Society, 1917) — public domain (Old Testament only). Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| unfoldingWord Literal Text (ULT) | CC BY-SA 4.0 | unfoldingWord Literal Text (ULT) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. The original work by unfoldingWord is available from unfoldingword.org/ult; presented here as plain reading text with the original word-alignment data omitted. |
| Majority Standard Bible (MSB) | Public Domain | Majority Standard Bible — Public Domain. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| Revised Version (1885) (RV) | Public Domain | English Revised Version (1885) — Public Domain. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| Text-Critical English New Testament (TCENT) | CC BY 4.0 | Text-Critical English New Testament — © 2022 Robert Adam Boyd, licensed CC BY 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| Family 35 New Testament (F35) | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Family 35 New Testament — © 2016 Wilbur N. Pickering, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| Orthodox Jewish Bible (OJB) | CC BY 4.0 | Orthodox Jewish Bible — © 2002-2011, 2021, 2024 Artists for Israel International, licensed CC BY 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| Isaac Leeser Tanakh (1853) (LEESER) | Public Domain | Isaac Leeser Tanakh (1853) — Public Domain. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
| KJV Cambridge Paragraph Bible (KJVCP) | Public Domain | KJV Cambridge Paragraph Bible — Public Domain. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). |
Cross-references
| Source | What it is | License |
|---|---|---|
| OpenBible.info | Cross-reference dataset derived from the public-domain Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. | CC BY 4.0 |
Cross-references © OpenBible.info, used under CC BY 4.0 and adapted (re-mapped to this app's reference scheme and filtered by community vote-weight); derived from the public-domain Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
Commentary
GEBible serves 39 commentary sources — 37 public domain and 2 under CC BY-SA 4.0. See the full Commentary sources list with licenses and attributions.
Commentary is presented as a historical primary source — cited by author and date, not as an endorsement.
How these sources are used
For what this site is, what it adds to these texts, and who makes it, see About.
GEBible is a primary-source reader. Every scripture text it ships is public domain or used under an open license (each version's license is listed in the Texts table above), so the words you read are the source text itself, not a paraphrase or a proprietary edition.
The cross-references are topical, not lexical. They trace the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (via the OpenBible.info dataset) — connections of theme and subject between passages — and have been re-mapped to this app's reference scheme and filtered by community vote-weight. They are not a concordance and do not claim that two verses share an original-language word.
Commentary follows the same primary-source posture: the historical public-domain notes (37 voices — see the full Commentary sources list) are cited by author and date and presented for study — quoted, not endorsed.
The surface also serves one MODERN, openly-licensed voice: unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn. It is presented as one cited voice among the historical commentators — never the app’s own voice — and its verbatim display, attribution, and license notice satisfy the license’s ShareAlike obligation.
The surface also serves one MODERN, openly-licensed voice: Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API. It is presented as one cited voice among the historical commentators — never the app’s own voice — and its verbatim display, attribution, and license notice satisfy the license’s ShareAlike obligation.
Spotted a typo or a mis-aligned reference? This is a one-person project. Email john@godlessengineering.com. Corrections to the underlying public-domain sources are tracked upstream.
Fonts
Typefaces are licensed under the SIL Open Font License (OFL) and are commercial-safe.
Search
The optional “Related by meaning” search band ranks passages by semantic similarity using the all-MiniLM-L6-v2 sentence-embedding model (Apache-2.0), run entirely on our own server over the World English Bible — your search is never sent to any third party.
Topical index
The optional “Grouped by topic” search band and the Topics browse pages draw on two public-domain 19th-century topical arrangements of the Bible:
- Nave's Topical Bible (Orville J. Nave, 1897) — public domain.
- Torrey's New Topical Textbook (R. A. Torrey) — public domain.
Each is one editor’s grouping of the text into subjects — a historical finding aid, cited not endorsed, not Scripture’s own taxonomy. References are resolved onto the World English Bible; a few that don’t match its versification are omitted rather than shown as dead links.