Is the Bible Open? | Hacker News Reader

Is the Bible Open?

benkaiser.dev

6 pointsbenkaiser9 comments

Here are some resources:

1. The Lexham English Bible is a hyper-literal translation from 2010 that allows free non-commercial use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexham_English_Bible

2. The KJV is of course out of copyright. The KJV 1900 is quite good. https://biblia.com/bible/kjv1900/john/1

3. The Berean Study Bible contains an English translation together with morphology under a permissive license, but not as permissive as LEB. https://berean.bible/terms.htm

4. You can find Hebrew morphology online at the openscriptures project. https://hb.openscriptures.org The license for morphology data is Creative Commons 4 but the scripture text is public domain

5. You can find Greek texts with morphology at the Society of Biblical Literature, which allows free non-commercial use of their greek new testmanent (sblgnt) https://sblgnt.com SBL also publishes many of the most widely used greek and hebrew fonts and many ancient manuscripts (https://www.sbl-site.org)

6. You can find copies of many greek new testament manuscripts and a free apparatus online at https://greeknewtestament.net

No but this one was: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/2ruc4l/wikiwrit_the_...

It is down now.

The initial "No" seems unjustified given the author mentions several open versions of the Bible, including the World English Bible.

In theory maybe, but in practice the available translations are unfamiliar to most and few people would have a paper copy available.

I get that a translation effort from original sources used to be something only a sponsored organisation could do, but modern software approaches have shown ways of getting it done.

I would love a open source kind of project that has a full software development like approach.

Specifically I would like not just the translated text, but also easy access to the original texts and references to the attesting artifacts supporting those texts, plus embedded reference aids all under an open license.

Yes, if you change the question from "is the Bible open" to "is my favorite translation of the Bible open" then there's a different answer.

Are there any copyright restrictions preventing the sort of tools you would love to have?

https://biblehub.com/revelation/22-19.htm Sure you can edit it but it is a no because of God's curse on people that edit the Bible.

God's curse is not a copyright restriction.

All the discussion so far has been about adding to, not taking away.

Translations need editing to keep them accurate as language changes.

That's not the same as trying to edit the underlying text.

Yes and no.

Android is open source, but it's encumbered enough to be a schlep to build a full working system.

Biblical source materials are sorta similar. There are a lot of good source materials from the previous two centuries, but a lot of modern tools are under restrictive copyrights.

We have actually learned a lot more about the original texts, Hebrew/Greek vocabulary that's only available in copyrighted materials.

Also, English is constantly evolving and most of the unencumbered translations read a bit strangely already (Think ASB).

So it's not fully locked down, but it feels kind of like doing iOS development without a Mac.

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