The translation we use
Every verse on this site is quoted from the World English Bible (WEB). Nothing is paraphrased, retyped or generated — each quotation is read directly from one dataset of the translation, so the wording on a topic page, an article and a chapter page is always identical.
What the World English Bible is
The World English Bible is a modern English translation produced as an update of the American Standard Version of 1901, revised against the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Majority Text. It is deliberately placed in the public domain, which is why it can be published here in full, free of charge, without a licence fee or usage restriction.
The exact edition
- Translation
- World English Bible (WEB)
- Edition
- World English Bible, Protestant edition (engwebp), eBible.org — public domain
- Source
- Distributed by eBible.org as the
engwebpverse-per-line text edition, imported unmodified. - Scope
- 66 books, 31,103 verses — the Protestant canon, Genesis to Revelation.
- Copyright status
- Public domain. No permission is required to quote, copy or redistribute it, including commercially.
How the text is stored
The import keeps the translation’s own book order, chapter divisions and verse numbering. Each verse is stored as a separate record identified by book, chapter and verse number, with its testament and edition recorded alongside it. Where a psalm has a superscription, the translation includes it in the first verse, and we leave it there rather than editing the text.
We do not add, shorten or modernise anything. If a verse looks unusual, that is the translation, not us. Curated pages store only references, never their own copy of the wording, so a quotation cannot drift out of step with the translation.
Other translations
Most widely used modern translations are under copyright and require a licence to publish in full. We would rather publish one complete translation you can read in context than fragments of several. If we add another, it will be one we are properly licensed to use, and it will be labelled everywhere it appears.
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