This is missing the Deuterocanon – the additional books found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but which most Protestant Bibles nowadays exclude – books such as those of Maccabees (both Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include 1 & 2; Orthodox Bibles add the 3rd book and occasionally even a 4th), Sirach (aka Ecclesiasticus), the Wisdom of Solomon, Tobit, Judith, Baruch. Catholics and Orthodox together are over 60% of the world's Christians, so over 60% of the Christians in the world use Bibles including these books.
Right now it only has two Bible translations – KJV and ASV – KJV includes these books, but in this website's copy of it they are missing. In the KJV, they were relegated to a separate section called the "Apocrypha". Catholics and Orthodox oppose that name, and that segregation. Protestants viewed them as having "lesser authority", primarily on the argument that Jews do not consider them to be scripture. By contrast, the Catholic Church declared the Deuterocanon to be of equal authority to the rest of the Bible at the Council of Trent, and many Orthodox adopt the same view.
Starting in the 19th century, there was a movement among Protestants to exclude these books from the Bible entirely, rather than simply relegate them to a separate section as previous generations of Protestants had done. As a result, the majority of contemporary Protestant Bibles omit them. Even the majority of contemporary printings of the KJV are missing those books, although in doing so those printings are being inauthentic to the intentions of its original translators and editors.
The other translation this site has, the ASV, is an early 20th century American revision of the late 19th century English Revised Version. The English Revised Version included the "Apocrypha" section, but following this movement against these books among Protestants, the ASV excluded it. (A minority of printings of the ASV do include an "Apocrypha" section, but that is taken from the English Revised Version, it did not form part of the American revision process.)
The books of the Deuterocanon are not viewed as canonical by most Christian churches for a number of valid reasons:
* They were never included as part of the Hebrew canon of books
* There is no evidence that they were included in the original versions of the Septuagint
* Historian Josephus made clear that those books were not part of the canon
* Not one New Testament writer quoted from the Deuterocanon
* Early church fathers did not consider them part of the Bible canon
* John Wycliffe, a catholic who included these books in his translation, still did not consider them of the same authority as the rest
* Even the council of Trent did not accept all the “apocryphal” books (e.g. 1 and 2 Esdras were excluded)
* The content of the books testifies against themselves with their inaccuracies, contradictions, and other problems that are not found in the traditional Bible canon
> The books of the Deuterocanon are not viewed as canonical by most Christian churches for a number of valid reasons
The phrase by most Christian churches is somewhat misleading. Weighting them by number of adherents, most Christian churches do accept the Deuterocanon as canonical. Two out of the three major historical branches of Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant) count them as canonical (*). The fissiparous nature of Protestantism means that Protestants form the vast majority of Christian denominations, counting each denomination as one regardless of its size–in spite of the fact that Protestants are a minority of all Christians.
And I don't agree that the reasons you give are valid – in some places I think you have the facts wrong, or are presenting them in a biased way. I don't think this site is the best place to debate it in detail, but you can find numerous works by Catholic and Orthodox writers rebutting the arguments you make.
(*) Some count more than three major branches – such as by splitting the Orthodox into Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox – but doing that still leaves Protestants the odd ones out
> The phrase by most Christian churches is somewhat misleading.
As someone else pointed out, I'm not talking about every individual church as a separate 'Christian church', I'm referring to the primary denominations, so Catholocism and Eastern Orthodox would be two churches. Most of the rest do not accept those books as part of the Bible canon.
> And I don't agree that the reasons you give are valid – in some places I think you have the facts wrong, or are presenting them in a biased way.
When it comes to religion, every view is biased. But that's ok if a view is correct. I'm looking at the facts based on what happened prior to all the offshoots of Christianity (including Catholicism, which didn't even exist until at least 300 years after Christ).
The purely historical argument, outside of any denomination makes it clear that the Deuterocanonical books were not considered part of the Bible canon.
> I don't think this site is the best place to debate it in detail,
I think it's fine if we remain civil.
> but you can find numerous works by Catholic and Orthodox writers rebutting the arguments you make.
They are just as biased as I am. But like I said, I'm not looking at any denominational argument, I'm only looking at the facts of history prior to ~300 CE.
Louis, this sounds like a conspiracy theory. A huge, controversial claim with misleading points, a belief that everyone is biased yet only you are "looking at the facts", a fervent desire to keep arguing on a technology-focused forum, and an ignorance of the links shared in the thread so far.
If you really want to set the record straight, the place to do so is in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterocanonical_books. You can edit the page and see what the theologians and experts on Wikipedia have to say about a frontend enthusiast's view on Biblical Historicity.
What part of that Wikipedia document do you think contradicts what I've said? The lede says:
> Although there is no scholarly consensus as to when the Hebrew Bible canon was fixed, some scholars hold that the Hebrew canon was established well before the first century AD – even as early as the fourth century BC, or by the Hasmonean dynasty (140–40 BC). The modern Hebrew canon does not include the seven deuterocanonical books, and this was the basis for excluding them from the Protestant Old Testament.
And:
> Since the 16th century, most Protestant churches have accepted only works in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as the canonical Old Testament, and hence classify all the non-protocanonical books from the Septuagint as apocrypha.
Those two points more or less support the points I'm making. Of course much of this is debatable, I'm not denying that, but I think the preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that these books don't belong.
You say the preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that these books don't belong.
Meanwhile Wikipedia says there is no scholarly consensus as to when the Hebrew Bible canon was fixed.
Don't you think your statement and Wikipedia's are somewhat in conflict?
It also says some scholars hold that the Hebrew canon was established well before the first century AD – even as early as the fourth century BC, or by the Hasmonean dynasty – but that is just the opinion of some scholars, and other scholars disagree.
Contrary to the opinion of those scholars, I think there is good evidence that the canon was not fixed that early. The fact that Mishnah Yadayim records 2nd century CE Rabbis debating whether Qohelet(Ecclesiastes) and Song of Songs belonged in the canon or not is evidence that the Pharisees did not finish fixing their canon until the 2nd century CE, by which point Christianity had already begun to separate into a separate religion, and most Christians did not feel bound by the Pharisees' decisions.
The fact that the canon wasn't fixed doesn't mean the apocryphal books were part of it. I'm saying there is little evidence to support that, even though the canon wasn't fixed. And again, that's just one of many arguments against the apocrophya.
And that's besides the fact that even if there was some so-called "debate" about it, if the canon didn't actually change as a result of those debates (e.g. Song of Songs and Eccl. are part of the canon), then how can you say it wasn't fixed? I mean, that's just silly.
> The fact that the canon wasn't fixed doesn't mean the apocryphal books were part of it
That's not the point. The point is that there wasn't a single canon, different sects of Jews had different canons. All these canons were overlapping – all Jews accepted the Torah, there was widespread (but not universal) acceptance of the Prophets; the third part of the Jewish canon, the Writings (Ketuvim) saw the most disagreement. And we have evidence that the canon of the Qumran community did include books now considered "apocryphal"–see https://www.jstor.org/stable/24663170
Did some Greek-speaking Jews include "apocryphal" works in their canon, just as the Qumran community did? Well, we have evidence that the Qumran community included Greek-speaking Jews – most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were in Hebrew or Aramaic, but some Greek texts were recovered as well.
We know that many Greek-speaking early Christians accepted some of the pre-Christian Greek "apocryphal"/"deuterocanonical" works as canonical. Why did they do that? Well, a very plausible hypothesis is that some Hellenistic Jews already accepted them as canonical, and Hellenistic Christianity inherited that acceptance from (segments of) Hellenistic Judaism. We don't have direct proof of that, but as a historical hypothesis it is very plausible, especially in light of the evidence from Qumran that some Jews (even Greek-speaking ones) did accept (other) "apocryphal" works in their canon.
> And that's besides the fact that even if there was some so-called "debate" about it, if the canon didn't actually change as a result of those debates (e.g. Song of Songs and Eccl. are part of the canon), then how can you say it wasn't fixed?
The canon did change. In the middle of the second century CE, the Pharisees still had multiple canons – a narrow canon which excluded Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, a broad canon which included them, and also a couple of intermediate canons which included one but not the other. The outcome of this debate was that the broad canon won out over the narrow and intermediate ones, and supporters of those other canons died out.
And, if we consider other Jewish groups such as the Sadducees or the Qumran community, we find even more Jewish canons than that. However, the 1st and 2nd centuries CE saw a great deal of decline in the diversity of Judaism, due to various factors (the trauma of the Jewish-Roman wars, competition from Christianity), and part of that decline in diversity was the reduction of multiple canons to one. But that reduction did not complete until after Christianity had already split off from Judaism, which is why many Christians (both in the early Church, and also today) do not believe that Christians are bound by it.
> All the Holy Scriptures defile the hands. The Song of Songs and Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) defile the hands. Rabbi Judah says: the Song of Songs defiles the hands, but there is a dispute about Kohelet. Rabbi Yose says: Kohelet does not defile the hands, but there is a dispute about the Song of Songs. Rabbi Shimon says: [the ruling about] Kohelet is one of the leniencies of Bet Shammai and one of the stringencies of Bet Hillel.
All the Rabbis it quotes are known to have been active in the 2nd century CE. So in the 2nd century CE, there was a real debate among the (successors of the) Pharisees about the canonicity of Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes.
Furthermore, this passage gives evidence that the same debate was active in the 1st century CE as well (and possibly even the 1st century BCE too), through Rabbi Shimon's reference to Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel.
> The point is that there wasn't a single canon, different sects of Jews had different canons.
You're attaching a lot of weight to a lot of different historical viewpoints. Of course you can find different sects of Jews with different canons. You can find different sects of Jews doing a lot of strange things including committing mass suicide.
However, the majority of the most recognized scholars and historians of the first few centuries C.E. do not consider the so-called apocryphal books as part of the Bible canon. Josephus, Jerome, Councils at Laodicea and Chalcedon, as well as numerous church Fathers (e.g. Justin Martyr, Melito, Origen, Hilary, Epiphanius, Gregory Nazianzus, Rufinus of Aquileia) testify to the closing of the canon outside of the apocryphal books.
> We know that many Greek-speaking early Christians accepted some of the pre-Christian Greek "apocryphal"/"deuterocanonical" works as canonical. Why did they do that?
It doesn't matter. A lot of your arguments hinge on finding obscure debates and controversies. So what if there was controversy among some? The general consensus, however, disagrees with those debates and controversies and finds them irrelevant.
> The canon did change. In the middle of the second century CE, the Pharisees still had multiple canons
You mean the same Pharisees about whom the the Jew, Jesus Christ, said: "Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition." (Matthew 15:6)
> And, if we consider other Jewish groups such as the Sadducees or the Qumran community, we find even more Jewish canons than that.
Again, do you mean the Sadducees whom Jesus and many first century Jews condemned? It's irrelevant to even consider any canon that contradicts the most well respected historians and scholars of those time periods. You refer to them as "canons" but they are no such thing. The Hebrew canon was well established by the time of Josephus and only a few obscure sources contradict that.
> And why do you dismiss it as 'some so-called "debate"'? It was a real debate, you can read the Mishnah for yourself
I dismiss it because it's irrevelant. In fact, it's about as relevant as you and I having this debate right now, because neither you or I can change the fact that the canon was well established before the 1st century CE.
> All the Holy Scriptures defile the hands.
You want me to take seriously a document that says that?
> Furthermore, this passage gives evidence that the same debate was active in the 1st century CE as well (and possibly even the 1st century BCE too), through Rabbi Shimon's reference to Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel.
Yes, it was very active -- among people who had no say in the matter and whose opinions didn't mean a whole lot until we decided to throw 20th century criticism into the mix.
> As someone else pointed out, I'm not talking about every individual church as a separate 'Christian church', I'm referring to the primary denominations, so Catholocism and Eastern Orthodox would be two churches. Most of the rest do not accept those books as part of the Bible canon.
Part of the problem with this whole approach is that there is no agreement on how to slice Christianity into "primary denominations". Indeed, most presntations of Christianity – in fields such as comparative religion or church history – don't start with "denominations", they start with branches. Some divide Christianity into two main branches – Western (Catholics and Protestants) and Eastern (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East). And as you can see, each of those two main branches in turn has some major sub-branches. (There are also some hybrid cases which straddle the East-West boundary, most notably the Eastern Catholics.) And then Protestantism in particular is in turn divided into some major sub-sub-branches, such as Anabaptists, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Reformed, etc. And then in turn those major branches of Protestantism contain denominations within them – for example, the US has three major Lutheran denominations, the mainline-to-liberal ELCA, the conservative LCMS, and the (arguably even more) conservative WELS, along with over 30 minor ones. Now, at which level of this tree do you count? Because if you count at the level of individual denominations, no doubt Protestants outnumber everyone else, simply because they are (by far) the least unified branch of Christianity. But, if you drill up the tree, to the level of major branches, then on many issues Protestants end up being "the odd ones out".
> including Catholicism, which didn't even exist until at least 300 years after Christ
Church history is complicated, and terms like "Catholicism" have multiple meanings. Whether what you just said is true may depend on what exactly you mean by the word "Catholicism".
> The purely historical argument, outside of any denomination makes it clear that the Deuterocanonical books were not considered part of the Bible canon.
I don't agree with you there. I think there is good historical evidence of their acceptance as part of the Bible by many of the Church Fathers.
> The deuterocanonical books (from the Greek meaning "belonging to the second canon") are books and passages considered by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East to be canonical books of the Old Testament
The Catholic Church alone has 1 billion followers. Your bullet points after that seem to be cherry-picking and outright fabrication.
The specific wording was "most Christian churches", which given how many different denominations there are in protestantism is probably accurate, although I do not have a source for this.
The GP’s comment sought to marginalize & disrespect a religious text by misrepresenting the text's prominence within its own religion.
I suspect we would not be playing word games, if they instead said that SuperNotes is not a real notetaking app and justified it with “notetaking means a lot of things to a lot of people”
The work to marginalize/sideline those texts was already done by many others over an extended period of time, GP was just pointing that out (and pointing out why they have done so).
I would be happy for you to say that Supernotes is not a note-taking app if instead you felt it was more of a knowledge-management app or a digital zettelkasten system. Note-taking does mean different things to different people. Some people don't think it's effective note-taking if you're not doing it with pen and paper.
The original statement went for "most Christian churches", not "most Christians" (what you'd get with your "weighting"). Maybe a useless metric but the one chosen up-thread.
Going from there to implicitly weighting by membership seems rather arbitrary: I could also claim to weigh by readership (or hours of reading, or any other metric that includes actually working with the text) which might give a pretty different result, given how the idea of individually reading and interpreting the Bible is a major raison d'être of Protestantism.
there are hundreds of denominations and thousands of "independent" churches. we can argue in which way we weigh their voices, but not ignore their sizes completely.
A perfectly good case to make (I'm not quite convinced by "most churches" as a metric), but doing so is different from moving goalposts and calling it "weighting".
> They were never included as part of the Hebrew canon of books
The Septuagint, the earliest known Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, is the version of the Old Testament most often quoted in the New Testament.
The oldest surviving non-fragmentary copies of the Septuagint do include these extra books. Whether earlier copies, that don't survive, included them or not, can only be speculation. But you raised this issue as a "valid reason" for rejecting those extra books ("There is no evidence that they were included in the original versions of the Septuagint"). If we can't know and can only speculate, how can that be a "valid reason" for rejecting anything?
It's definitely a less significant point, but the reason I brought it up is that many make the argument that because they were included as part of the Septuagint, then they must be part of the Canon. Which is ridiculous on its face because they were never included in any Hebrew-based canon.
Actually, since the discovery of the multiple Hebrew text variants (including Pre-Septuagint) found in the Dead Sea Scrolls invalidated Jerome's argument against the Deuterocanon, I have yet to see a valid reason against their inclusion stand up against inspection.
Reviewing yours:
> * They were never included as part of the Hebrew canon of books
There is no evidence that there was a closed Hebrew Canon prior to the time of Jesus.
The Hebrew scriptures were divided into three parts - The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. While it's true the Law and the Prophets had solidified by the time of Jesus, there is no evidence that the Writings were closed, and every reason to indicate that they weren't (see Rabbi Akiba and his comments regarding Sirach, Esther, and the Gospels around 100 AD).
> * There is no evidence that they were included in the original versions of the Septuagint
I'm not sure why you think that is relevant?
> * Historian Josephus made clear that those books were not part of the canon
> * Not one New Testament writer quoted from the Deuterocanon
Numerous Old Testament books, like Esther, that Protestants believe to be inspired are not quoted in the New Testament - does that make them not canonical?
Numerous non-canonical works, like the Book of Enoch, are quoted in the New Testament - does that make them canonical?
And anyway, it's interesting to know that the original KJV of 1611 (which included the Deuterocanon) included 11 cross-references in the New Testament to Deuterocanonical books, where it believe New Testament authors were quoting from or alluding to parts of the Deuteronincals. [https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/6316/what-d...]
> * Early church fathers did not consider them part of the Bible canon
> * John Wycliffe, a catholic who included these books in his translation, still did not consider them of the same authority as the rest
"As Jerome saith" echoed down through history. Jerome, around 400 AD, mistakenly had some doubts, and those same doubts reverbated over the next thousand years. Both of Jerome's two core reasons for his doubts are now known to be wrong.
> * Even the council of Trent did not accept all the “apocryphal” books (e.g. 1 and 2 Esdras were excluded)
> * The content of the books testifies against themselves with their inaccuracies, contradictions, and other problems that are not found in the traditional Bible canon
Actually that's not the case - their "problems" are the same as those from the rest of the Protestant canon. See https://youtu.be/tRmlW954PwI?t=651
> There is no evidence that there was a closed Hebrew Canon prior to the time of Jesus.
If that's the case, then any argument that predates Jesus in favour of the Deuterocanon would also be invalid.
> I'm not sure why you think that is relevant?
My argument against the Septuagint is relevant because it's often used as an example of why the Deuterocanonical books should be included in the Bible canon. The Septuagint is a direct translation of the Hebrew books (i.e. what would eventually become the Hebrew canon). If the Hebrew canon (even if it was just a loose canon at that time) never included the Deuterocanonical books, then there is no reason to assume the Septuagint would suddenly include them in its first copies.
> Numerous Old Testament books, like Esther, that Protestants believe to be inspired are not quoted in the New Testament - does that make them not canonical?
No, of course not. I provided a body of evidence against the Deuterocanon. This is just one part of that argument. The argument is strengthened by all the points, not just one of them.
> Numerous non-canonical works, like the Book of Enoch, are quoted in the New Testament - does that make them canonical?
No. Again, same as above. The point alone isn't extremely meaningful until you consider all the evidence.
> And anyway, it's interesting to know that the original KJV of 1611 (which included the Deuterocanon) included 11 cross-references in the New Testament to Deuterocanonical books, where it believe New Testament authors were quoting from or alluding to parts of the Deuteronincals.
I think the key word there is "believe". Unless a writer says something along the lines of 'the prophet says...' then the argument is weak at best.
> This is inaccurate, look at the historical record:
Well, according to Wikipedia: "Early church fathers such as Athanasius, Melito, Origen, and Cyril of Jerusalem, spoke against the canonicity of much or all of the apocrypha, but the most weighty opposition was the fourth century Catholic scholar Jerome who preferred the Hebrew canon, whereas Augustine and others preferred the wider (Greek) canon."
So it's certainly debatable, but there's much evidence to support what I said, as far as I can see.
> Actually that's not the case - their "problems" are the same as those from the rest of the Protestant canon.
Examples: Tobit claims to have seen events in his lifetime that cover more than 250 years, but Tobit 14:1-3 says he died at 102 years of age. Judith contains geographical oddities that can't be resolved except with miraculous assumptions. Ecclesiasticus 25:33 blames Eve for human sin instead of Adam, which contradicts Apostle Paul's writings. Baruch says the Jewish exile would last '7 generations', contradicting the Bible canon which says it would be 70 years. That's just a small sampling.
The word "Bible" means different things to different people. Just like the word "Deuterocanon" means different things to Catholics vs Eastern Orthodox.
It's not that this API is "missing the Deuterocanon". This API was likely made by protestants.
The two English translations provided by the API are not approved by the Catholic church.
When I search Google for "Bible", the top two results, bible.com and biblegateway also don't include those additional books.
> The word "Bible" means different things to different people.
Not completely different things, the majority of books all major Christian churches agree on (all of the NT and the majority of the OT). The dispute is really about different views on the boundaries of the same thing - the Christian Bible - as opposed to distinct things
> Just like the word "Deuterocanon" means different things to Catholics vs Eastern Orthodox.
Again, not two completely different things - Catholics and Eastern Orthodox agree on the majority of the Deuterocanon, there are only a few books which Eastern Orthodox have which Catholics lack (3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh; Georgian Orthodox have 4 Maccabees too). And, the Catholic Church has never condemned the Orthodox for accepting these extra books - the Council of Trent condemned Protestants for accepting less, but (quite intentionally) did not condemn the Orthodox for accepting more. So one might say that their status in Catholicism is ambiguous.
> The two English translations provided by the API are not approved by the Catholic church.
I’m not sure how significant that is given that there are a number of Bible translations which do include these books yet which haven’t been approved by the Catholic Church; including one of the translations this site does have (the KJV) - this site’s copy of the KJV is incomplete
> When I search Google for "Bible", the top two results, bible.com and biblegateway also don't include those additional books.
You know, if they called it “Protestant Bible API” instead, I would not have complained.
Part of the problem here is that many Protestants are ignorant of the fact that the majority of Christians have a bigger Bible than they do. Relatedly, many Protestants are ignorant of the fact that Protestants are a minority of Christians.
> Part of the problem here is that many Protestants are ignorant of the fact that the majority of Christians have a bigger Bible than they do. Relatedly, many Protestants are ignorant of the fact that Protestants are a minority of Christians.
Do you have a citation for this claim? Most protestant Christians I've met are aware of the apocrypha, they just do not consider them canonical, in the same way they do not consider the various Islamic additions to the Judeo-Christian tradition to be part of their religion. From my anecdotal experience, I do not think it is any more common for a protestant to be unaware that certain extra books are included in Catholic/Eastern Orthodox Bibles than it is for a catholic/eastern orthodox to be unaware that protestants exclude those same books.
Squabble was spot on – "The Bible" is different things to different people. When you buy a bible in a book store and it does not include Deuterocanonical books, it is not usually referred to specifically as "The Protestant Bible" – it is just called "The Bible". So it does not seem necessary for this API to do that either lest it incur your complaints.
> Do you have a citation for this claim? Most protestant Christians I've met are aware of the apocrypha
I'm not aware of any formal studies on this question, I can only speak from personal experience. And, of course, different people have different personal experiences. Mine include hearing – on multiple occasions – Protestants say things along the lines of "Catholics aren't Christian". (To be fair, only a minority of Protestants say stuff like that, but in my experience it is a significant minority.)
> they just do not consider them canonical, in the same way they do not consider the various Islamic additions to the Judeo-Christian tradition to be part of their religion
That's not a good analogy, because prior to the 19th century the vast majority of Protestant Bibles included these books, and some of them still do – by contrast, no Protestant Bible has ever included the Quran. Protestantism originated as a reform movement within the Catholic Church, and one of the aspects of Catholicism which they thought needed reform was the widespread acceptance within it of these books as being equal in authority to the rest of the Bible. So these books play an important role in the history of Protestantism; by contrast, the Quran has no more of a role in the history of Protestantism than the Vedas or the Tripitaka do.
> Squabble was spot on – "The Bible" is different things to different people
I think, before anyone launches a website called "Free Bible API", they should be aware that different branches of Christianity have different ideas about what belongs in "the Bible", and they should be clear about how they are going to relate to those differences: Are they trying to be ecumenical and inclusive? Or are they building something for one specific branch of Christianity only, such as Protestantism?–in which case, state that limited scope clearly and up-front. This website shows no signs of having thought through any of that.
> Protestants say things along the lines of "Catholics aren't Christian"
Not really sure what this has to do with the topic at hand. Sure, some people say that. You can define "Christianity" however you want, and through that definition exclude certain practitioners.
> That's not a good analogy
It was not intended as an analogy, it was just another example of not considering something to be part of your religion even though another group thinks it should be.
> they should be aware that different branches of Christianity have different ideas about what belongs in "the Bible"
How do you know Jake Cyr is not aware of these things? As you pointed out yourself, this API only includes two translations at the moment. Contrary to what you have said, however, the KJV does not normally include the apocrypha in the present day. From wikipedia:
> ...this version of the Bible became the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re-edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" usually indicates this Oxford standard text.
So it makes sense, given that neither of these translations typically include the deuterocanon, that those books are not accessible via this API. I think listing the translations is sufficient explanation of what content will be included and that there is no reason for this to be explicitly called "The Free Protestant Bible API" or any such thing. Your complaint would have much more merit if Jake Cyr was specifically excluding certain books that normally would be found in the included translations, but that is not what is happening here.
> Not really sure what this has to do with the topic at hand. Sure, some people say that. You can define "Christianity" however you want, and through that definition exclude certain practitioners.
I said that some Protestants appear to believe that they are the majority of Christians. From a neutral point of view, that's a factually incorrect belief. But if you choose to define "Christianity" narrowly to just include your own group, then of course your group turns out to be the majority of Christians, even 100% of them. I've also heard from some Protestants the related claim that "most Catholics aren't Christians" but an ill-defined minority of them who have "saving faith" are–an idea which if accepted might be taken by some to make Christianity majority Protestant but not 100% so. And in my mind it is relevant to the topic at hand – if one starts with the (incorrect, most would say) assumption that most Christians are Protestants, it is straightforward to arrive at the (just as incorrect) conclusion that most Christians reject these books as part of the Bible.
> It was not intended as an analogy, it was just another example of not considering something to be part of your religion even though another group thinks it should be.
Well, given that historically the majority of Protestants accepted these books as part of the Bible – albeit with lower authority than the rest of it – and some Protestant Bibles still contain them – I don't see how it actually counts as "not considering something to be part of your religion even though another group thinks it should be". Even if we just narrowly define their religion as "Protestantism"–as opposed to Christianity as a whole–it is an important part of the history of Protestantism, and still part of it for many Protestants today. Indeed, some Protestants even still use these books liturgically – to give just one example, Anglican and Methodist marriage services both include (as a permitted option) a reading from the book of Tobit, an element also found in Amish wedding services. So, comparing it to a text from a completely different religion, and which one's own religion has no history of using in any way, and which one's own religion doesn't use today, it isn't a sensible comparison. It isn't "just another example" because it isn't the same thing at all.
> How do you know Jake Cyr is not aware of these things? As you pointed out yourself, this API only includes two translations at the moment.
Jake Cyr is welcome to give an account of what was going through his head, and if he chooses to do that I will be all ears. Unless and until he does, I can only guess–but that's all you can do either.
I always feel like the counts for Christian branches provide an extremely skewed view. Since it's faily common for people to count themselves as Catholic or Orthodox simply due to their upbringing (even when they don't believe there is a God) on the other hand people who consider themselves Protestant almost exclusively don't just believe in God and the authority of the Bible but usually wont consider themselves Protestant without having made a formal choice to follow Jesus and join a church (whatever that means from within their denomination).
I think that if you only count Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants who believe in God, the authority of the Bible Protestants suddenly become a majority possibly a very large majority.
I might be wrong in this; I grew up in the Netherlands where officially we have 20% Catholics and 15% Protestants but although I live in one of the most "Catholic" places of the country I havent encountered a single Catholic that goes to church exept for on eastern and chrismas (and then they usually do it to please family, and yes I thought for a while if it is really not a single one). On the other hand everyone I encountered who calls himself a Protestant meets that more strict definition I talked about above. And Ive heard similar stories from international students in my university.
But again I might be very wrong and am definitely open to data that proves me otherwise.
It is complicated. Some people who come from a Catholic or Orthodox background still want to identify with that background as a cultural identity (e.g. "cultural Catholic") even if they no longer believe in its doctrines or follow its practices. The same happens sometimes for Protestants too, but seems to be somewhat less common among them–a Protestant who stops believing is more likely to just be a "none" than to call themselves "culturally Protestant".
One can point to some examples of "cultural Protestantism" though. Northern Ireland: in the 2011 census†, over 40% of its population identified as "Protestant", but for many of them it is primarily a cultural identity rather than a religious one. The outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins has repeatedly called himself a "cultural Anglican", and I'm sure he'd not be the only person to say that (although Anglicans disagree among themselves about whether Anglicanism is Protestant, so a "cultural Anglican" may not necessarily consider themselves a "cultural Protestant")
> but usually wont consider themselves Protestant without having made a formal choice to follow Jesus and join a church (whatever that means from within their denomination).
That's a biased criterion because the criterion itself is based on Protestant cultural assumptions, which in turn are based on Protestant theological assumptions. Many Protestants believe one becomes a Christian by making "a formal choice to follow Jesus". Catholics and Orthodox believe one becomes a Christian by baptism, and infants who are incapable of making such a choice are regularly baptised. It is not that Catholics and Orthodox do not care about personal faith, they do, but they do not make it the central focus in the way that many Protestants do.
And that (in part) explains why there are more cultural Catholics than cultural Protestants – to Catholics, the Church is first and foremost a community, and once you are in, you are in for life – maybe you no longer attend, don't believe, don't want to have anything to do with it – but if you ever change your mind, you'll be welcome back with a minimum of fuss, as if you'd been there all along. So Catholic theology encourages the "cultural Catholic" phenomenon in a way that Protestant theology does not.
† The 2021 census results are due out next year, which will give us a more current picture of Northern Ireland's religious demographics
Not just incomplete but badly translated. Such as the warning against "vain repetition" in prayer in KJV Mt 6:7, targeting ancient Christian prayer practices like e.g. petition prayers and the Rosary (which are in direct continuation of old Jewish litanies, such as Psalm 136, and sanctioned by Heaven itself: "Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus"). "Battalogein" should refer to "babbling": using lots of grand words to impress God and other people, as opposed to the simple but dignified petition of a humble soul.
How can you claim the KJV normally includes the apocrypha (and therefore it is "missing" from this API) and then in the next paragraph admit that, well actually no, most modern KJVs do not include it?
In [current year], neither translation available in this API typically includes the Deuterocanon, so it would not make any sense for those books to be accessible here.
The most accurate contemporary editions of the KJV do include the Apocrypha, such as the Penguin Classics edition (ISBN 978-0141441511) and the Oxford World Classics edition (ISBN 978-0199535941). The KJV was divided into three major sections (not counting frontmatter including its introduction) – the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament. If you remove one of its major sections, you don't have the full KJV any more, you have an abbreviated version.
The introduction to the Oxford World Classics edition says that if they had omitted the Apocrypha from the KJV it "would have unnecessarily mutilated what is probably the world's most longstanding best-seller" (page xxv, my emphasis). I think they are right – a KJV without the Apocrypha is in a real sense a mutilated KJV.
"The most accurate contemporary editions of the KJV" is adding a value judgement that wasn't there before. fastball's assertion was "most modern KJVs do not include it?"
Now, the question is what "most" means here (by number of publishers, by copies sold, ...) but it certainly doesn't mean "most accurate", true as it might be (or not)
Is it really a "value judgement" to draw a distinction between complete and abridged editions? All complete editions include the Apocrypha; abridged editions generally omit it, and often more than just the apocrypha – abridged editions frequently omit the introduction written by the original translators, and also their dedicatory epistle to King James I. And that is what makes the Oxford World Classics edition among the "most accurate" – the fact that it is complete and unabridged. The only way to be more accurate is by going for a facsimile edition – facsimile editions are available, but the original unaltered typography and spelling can make them quite a challenge for the modern reader. By contrast, a complete and unabridged edition such as Oxford World Classics uses modern spelling and typography, but (unlike abridged versions) does not omit any significant component of the original text.
Is it wrong to insist that we reserve the title of a work for its complete and unabridged editions, or at least view them as preferentially deserving of that title? There is nothing stopping anyone from publishing an abridged version of Tolstoy's War and Peace, and indeed at least one abridged English translation of it has been published (and it would not surprise me if abridgements in other languages, including the original Russian, were available as well) – but let us not pretend that an abridged version of War and Peace is the same as the original, or deserving of being passed off as it unmarked – and suppose that abridged versions of War and Peace ended up being printed far more than unabridged versions were, would it then make sense to argue that "Tolstoy's War and Peace" (without further qualification) now referred to an abridgement instead of the complete original? But, if one objects to that, does not the same logic demand that one object to abridged versions of the KJV being presented as "the KJV" without further qualification? A complete and unabridged edition of a work is more deserving of its title (without qualification) than an abridged and incomplete edition, and that applies no matter what text we are talking about.
> does not the same logic demand that one object to abridged versions of the KJV being presented as "the KJV" without further qualification
The statement in question referred to "modern KJV" and the absence of a dedication to King James should be a rather good clue that it's not quite original.
What is a "modern KJV"? The complete and unabridged 1997 Oxford World classics edition?
And many (but not all) of the abridged versions keep the dedication, even while removing the Apocrypha and original translator's introduction.
Going back to my example, if abridged versions of War and Peace outsold complete ones, I don't think it would make sense to claim there was such a thing as the "modern War and Peace" which differed from the original.
The Bible isn't that large in terms of actual data, it's all text. So storing a bunch of translations locally seems pretty easy. And from what I can see from the documentation, this only allows querying chapters/verses across translations, so it doesn't seem to be doing a lot of serverside work to link data together or to find references to names/places, or to merge translations together in some way.
Is there a reason I'm missing why this is an API instead of something handled locally in a structured data format? Does it have access to a bunch of licensed translations that I couldn't use locally or something?
I guess I'm just a little confused at what the value add is of having be online instead of local.
The problem isn't "pretty easy" per-se (different translations assign different chapter/verse numbers in places, for example) but there has been lots of work spent on it already. There are protocols and formats to manage Bible texts, and entire organizations revolve around maintaining these (e.g. https://crosswire.org/). Some of them even have provisions for dealing with copyrighted materials (with unlock keys that you can buy).
The red flags I see:
* That site doesn't mention such prior art _at all_.
* First thing I run into when trying to get a list of translations is Cloudflare. Nice, preparing for hyperscaling already! However, no discussion anywhere about the threat model of providing texts that can spell trouble in parts of the world through arbitrary third party services.
This specific API doesn’t attempt to handle any of the even vaguely interesting problems like versification translation or footnotes, or even more basic things like where paragraph breaks lie. Instead, it’s just verse-per-line stuff loaded into a relational database of four tables: verse ∈ chapter ∈ book ∈ translation, all indexed by auto-generated IDs rather than anything sane, leading to a supremely awkward and remarkably inefficient ID-based REST API that’s unreliable to boot. I’m afraid the more I look at it the more I say it’s simply bad, having been implemented rather than designed, so that it’s unfortunately just about useless for any actual purpose.
The barebones website doesn't discuss _anything_ about which data processors might end up with the ability to connect your IP (or even better markers) with access patterns to that API. The service didn't actively hide Cloudflare but it also didn't document it. I wouldn't know how many other services are in use right now that I didn't stumble over, or how many there will be at any time.
For a service that (if actually useful, which this isn't, so I expect it to flounder and therefore not do any actual harm) could be dangerous to use in some regions of the world, that seems reckless, as if "uhoh, this could be dangerous" was never even a consideration.
I don't know about the author's intent but licensed content seems to be one of the strongest reasons to use an API. Some translations have their own (esv.org for instance) but not all do. Unfortunately getting permission to add a translation to such an API is difficult at best and others have tried.
I'm quite (pleasantly) surprised that this is on HN's front page. I am not Christian (I am Hindu) however I do appreciate the Bible and others who are religious (and who are tolerant of my religion, too)
The Bible is like the Rosetta Stone: it's the most translated work in the world, ~800,000 words long, delimited by verse, and generally translated with great care by literate members of society.
The academic value of projects like this is immense and it's great to see it on the front page.
This speaks of "multiple translations." What I would really like are APIs to critical editions of the Greek New Testament, Septuagint, Hebrew Bible, Peshitta, Vulgate, etc. I'm not holding my breath; those are all under copyright, as I understand it, and they aren't cheap when added onto the major bible software packages.
I know of at least one public domain edition of the Byzantine majority text of the Greek NT:
I don't know anything about the non-Jewish sources, but Sefaria makes basically everything available via an API, no idea if it's free or not. A tonne of their code is available on GitHub as well.
E.g. I'm not schooled enough in animal husbandry to know the difference between donkey-sized genitals and horse-sized ones, or between donkey-sized emissions and horse-sized ones, but these people were. And they knew it well enough to say it's the genitals that are donkey-sized, and the discharge that's horse-sized, not the other way around. Probably stone you for heresy if you crossed up the words of the prophet like that.
Yes, in context it's part of a very... colorful... metaphor, but I still find the distinction hilariously specific.
The horse/donkey pairing is a poetic device; there's no intended technical distinction between the two. If you're familiar with satyrs in Roman mythology, it's sort of like a poetic comparison to them, but using terms familiar to the audience at the time.
The point of the passage is to call out Israel's spiritual lewdness and adultery in going after idols instead of worshipping the God who had made a covenant of faithfulness with them.
The upload process was taking a while and the ASV version is now complete. The KJV version is next and then I'll continue down the line of translations!
I last researched this a few years ago, but the best resource I’ve found in this space is: https://getbible.net/api
They’ve taken a different approach to retrieving content - instead of a navigable resource hierarchy you send a citation that approximates the standard format: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_citation
This matches one of the most common use cases for a Bible API: turning a citation into content.
It’s also worth scanning your content to find if there are characters that will break JSON serialization. For example, many translations distinguish supplied words by special characters: I’ve seen square and angle brackets used.
It’s not an easy domain to represent once you start handling special cases, but very worthwhile.
Wrt the comments about translations currently on the site: a lot of the newer translations standard in modern churches are under copyrights that, while quite permissive for use by individual faith-based organizations and even some commercial endeavors (like publishing), might be hard to protect in API form.
There's a relatively large but finite number of possible inputs. This could theoretically be converted into a bunch of static files that fit on Netlify or GH Pages.
I tried something like this before with Netlify, but if it takes too long to upload, it will time out. In my case, we were converting the PokeAPI.co Rest API from a dynamic Python service to a static API that served simple JSON files, to cut costs. But there are so many Pokémon and so much associated data that Netlify couldn't handle it. We ended up going with Firebase, which seems to work pretty well.
https://pokeapi.co is a Rest and GraphQL API for Pokémon data, mostly used for educational purposes.
The Rest API uses Firebase's static hosting with some small use of lambda functions for pagination. It worked fine on Netlify with partial data, but with the full dataset it refused to work, and support wasn't any help.
The GraphQL API is a separate service that I believe makes use of Prisma and a DB. I wasn't involved with the GraphQL API so I don't know the details.
… hmm. Well, reloaded it and it worked second time, showing that it’s got two translations: KJV and ASV, both public domain.
(I observed similar errors in other URLs from time to time.)
The key thing to this API seems to be its structure, that it’s relational like SQL but without joins, exposing the foreign keys and you have to look things up that way. This isn’t a model that makes much sense to me, so I’m curious if you’ve got any explanation of why or where this model might make sense.
As an example, if you wanted to look up Exodus 3:4 in the ASV:
• https://freebibleapi.com/api/translation, then (using jq syntax) `select(.name == "English ASB") | .id` (that’s a very weird name for the ASV, incidentally), yields 35.
It needs four sequential requests. If you want to avoid that, you need to cache the list of translations, book IDs, chapter IDs, verse IDs… and as soon as you’re doing any of that, I question why you’d use such an API rather than just storing the full text of the translation/s yourself, as a JSON blob for example if you’re keeping things simple.
IDs for access rather than semantic identifiers seems very strange, since there are meaningful identifiers that won’t be changing: you can give a short string for translations (ASV, KJV), some form of book name for the books (I’d suggest OSIS book abbreviations <https://wiki.crosswire.org/OSIS_Book_Abbreviations>), and chapter and verse numbers. Autogenerated IDs are just unnecessary obstruction.
I’d also merge each pair of URLs, e.g. /translation/35 gives the translation object, and /translation/35/book gives the array of its children: I’d merge them to just one route, yielding {...translation, "books": [...books]}. Same for book and chapter. (Verse would be unchanged as it doesn’t have any children.)
Taking it all together, accessing just Exodus 3:4 in the ASV would go from being /api/translation/35/book/15/chapter/525/verse/15835 to being /api/ASV/Exod/3/4.
Your current /api/book, /api/chapter and /api/verse routes don’t fit into this picture; I’m again curious if you think they’re actually useful—they feel more like things that just happened because of how an API generator worked.
I really appreciate your in-depth comment and suggestions!
I agree, it was a first pass to make the data available. I have since created a new '/api/natural/' endpoint that allows you to query by translation short name, book number, chapter number, and verse number. I figured having the unique IDs would allow for less cumbersome endpoint URLs `/api/verse/123` instead of having to always drill-down starting with the translation `/api/translation/ASV/book/1/chapter/1/verse/123`.
I'll definitely look into merging the URL pairs. I think that would be really useful.
Your method sounds similar to the system I used for <http://literature.conman.org/bible/>. I also correct for spelling mistakes. Right now it only returns HTML, and only has the King James version of the Bible, but it was an example I wrote over 20 years ago to see about addressing Bible verses on the web.
For specifying references in a machine-friendly way, I reckon OSIS’s references are probably the best idea, minus the ability to refer to portions smaller than a verse (which is two features: sub-identifiers and fine-grained references). See osisRef in <https://ebible.org/osis/OSIS2_1UserManual_06March2006_-_with...>. My main complaint about osisRef is that it only allows contiguous ranges. Anyway, OSIS references will yield results like Rev.13.18, Exod.20.3-Exod.20.17, Gen.6.9-Gen.9.17.
Rigid formats are so much easier to work with. Once you’re allowing any flexibility, you get into all kinds of hot water of disappointed expectations. Will you support “2K”, “2 Ki”, “IIKgs”, “II Kng”, “2 Kings”, &c. as all referring to what OSIS calls 2Kgs? Support at least “:”, “.”, “v”, “vv” as a chapter/verse divider? If I ask you for “2 Mose 3:4”, will you resolve that to Exod.3.4? (German has 1–5 Mose instead of Genesis–Deuteronomy.) It’s all kinds of fun; most tooling does a fairly poor job of it in my experience. libsword, by far the most popular foundation for open-source Bible software, does quite poorly in certain cases that keep on annoying me. (Perhaps I should submit patches like adding 1K and 2K as abbreviations and tweaking its reference parser which is a bit of a monstrosity, but I’m just choosing to start from scratch for my own software focused on Bible reading which I’m working on, a domain that no one has made any serious attempt on, as I judge it.)
No one has asked before. Also, I only have an English version (the King James in particular). I don't see much of an issue with adding alternative book names (I also support two letter abbreviations) other than working on a twenty-plus year old Apache module.
I originally planned on supporting non-contiguous ranges, but gabe up on that to get something out.
Gathering all of the different translations in a structured format can take a lot of time which is what gave me the inspiration to remove that step from anyone wanting to create an application with a more comprehensive set of data.
Why not train GPT-2 or 3 with these texts, so we can get AI commentary and maybe some new scripture? I’m curious how a neural network will reconcile different versions of the Creation and Christ’s birth. If GPT can simulate someone’s girlfriend maybe it can simulate Augustine or Aquinas.
"Therefore God called upon his angels to come and to save the earth and her inhabitants from destruction. And they did so. And God said, “Let every creature breathe safe by the Spirit of the Lord through Jesus Christ, that his spirit may be like unto this day.” And God called upon the angels and promised them."
As one who cares deeply about the Bible, my comment upon it is that it’s super inaccurate in style and doctrine, and very clearly draws considerably upon extrabiblical sources. As simple examples, the Old Testament section (whose faults are more obvious than the Synoptic Gospels section) talks of Jesus, who wasn’t yet born; treats “Satan” in a way that is clearly inspired by Christian writings from hundreds of years after Jesus, entirely unsupported in the Old Testament (the concept of a supernatural devil as part of their religion is largely just not found in the Old Testament, it being introduced after the exile; if you look for “satan” transliterated in the Old Testament, you tend to only find it in 1 Chronicles 21:1, Job 1–2 and Zechariah 3:1–2, and “devil” is nowhere at all in the Old Testament) and not really supported by the New Testament either; talks of the Holy Ghost and kingdom of God/heaven in a way also entirely absent in the Old Testament, but more after the style of the New Testament (true of a few more things as well); and talks of angels as mortal and capable of evil in a way entirely unsupported by both testaments, but present in various subsequent Christian teachings. It’s frankly more an imitation just of the style of formal English from a few hundred years ago, with some religiosity in its content, but not in the slightest bit plausible or coherent as far as something that would actually be in the Bible.
(It’s fun taking things seriously and seeing where it gets you.)
Right now it only has two Bible translations – KJV and ASV – KJV includes these books, but in this website's copy of it they are missing. In the KJV, they were relegated to a separate section called the "Apocrypha". Catholics and Orthodox oppose that name, and that segregation. Protestants viewed them as having "lesser authority", primarily on the argument that Jews do not consider them to be scripture. By contrast, the Catholic Church declared the Deuterocanon to be of equal authority to the rest of the Bible at the Council of Trent, and many Orthodox adopt the same view.
Starting in the 19th century, there was a movement among Protestants to exclude these books from the Bible entirely, rather than simply relegate them to a separate section as previous generations of Protestants had done. As a result, the majority of contemporary Protestant Bibles omit them. Even the majority of contemporary printings of the KJV are missing those books, although in doing so those printings are being inauthentic to the intentions of its original translators and editors.
The other translation this site has, the ASV, is an early 20th century American revision of the late 19th century English Revised Version. The English Revised Version included the "Apocrypha" section, but following this movement against these books among Protestants, the ASV excluded it. (A minority of printings of the ASV do include an "Apocrypha" section, but that is taken from the English Revised Version, it did not form part of the American revision process.)