Guides to the text

Straight answers about the text itself: who may reprint which translation and why they disagree with each other, how the numbering on the page got there, what languages the thing was written in, why the table of contents changes between traditions, and how to read it in something larger than fragments. Written to be useful whether or not you ever install this app.

• Which Bible translations are in the public domain

  Why a free offline app carries the King James Version and the Chinese Union Version and not the NIV — and how the free translations actually differ from each other and from the modern ones.

• Who added the chapter and verse numbers

  Nobody who wrote the Bible put numbers in it. The chapters are medieval and the verses are from the 1550s — and knowing that changes what you do when a chapter ends mid-argument.

• Reading the Bible offline, without an account

  Why most Bible apps want you signed in, what they actually sync, and the honest list of what a purely local app can and cannot do for you.

• How to choose a Bible reading plan

  The half-dozen shapes a reading plan can take, which reader each one suits, why so many die in Leviticus, and what to do after you miss a week.

• Why Bible translations differ

  The same verse reads differently in different Bibles for five separable reasons — and none of them is that somebody is hiding something. What is actually going on, set out without taking sides.

• The order of the books of the Bible

  Why the contents page differs between a Jewish Bible, a Catholic one, an Orthodox one and a Protestant one — and what each arrangement is arguing without saying so.

• What languages was the Bible written in

  Hebrew, some Aramaic, and Koine Greek — and the more interesting question underneath, which is what “the original” means when every copy we have is a copy.

• Reading a whole book of the Bible in one sitting

  Paul’s letters were written to be read aloud to a room in one go. Reading them the way they were meant to be received takes less time than you think, and shows you things verse-by-verse reading cannot.

• Reading the King James Version today

  Four hundred years of English separate you from the 1611 text, and most of the difficulty is a short list of words that changed meaning. Learn the list and the rest reads more easily than its reputation suggests.