Open Bible Data on GitHub
Master list of external repositories we're forking (or considering forking) as open-data sources for study development — see the develop-bible-study skill for how this data gets used, and the note on our copyright approach in references/README.md.
Sourced partly from biblenerd/awesome-bible-developer-resources, a curated list of Bible developer resources — good place to check first when we need a new data type.
Rule we're following: a repository's own license (MIT, CC0, etc.) only covers their code/compilation — it does not override the copyright status of third-party text they've bundled in (a Bible translation, a lexicon). Every entry below is checked for this specifically, because at least one candidate below gets it wrong.
Status key
- ✅ Fork — license confirmed fully open (CC BY, CC0, public domain), safe to fork into
references/open-data/unconditionally - 🟡 Fork, restricted — usable now under the license's terms, but not unconditionally open (e.g. non-commercial-only) — goes in
references/restricted-data/, notopen-data/. Fine to keep public as long as this site stays non-commercial; revisit if that ever changes. - ⚠️ Verify — promising, but license isn't confirmed yet; don't fork until it is
- ❌ Skip / partial only — contains content we can't safely redistribute; do not fork wholesale
Bibles & manuscripts
| Repo | What it is | License | Status | Our fork / submodule |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| scrollmapper/bible_databases | 140 Bible versions + cross-reference databases (SQL/CSV/JSON) | Repo/schema: MIT. Per-translation copyright not documented | ✅ Forked, ⚠️ filter on use | ding0t/bible_databases → references/open-data/scrollmapper-bible-databases/. ~12GB on disk (GitHub's compressed-size estimate of ~4.2GB undersold it) — full repo, kept for the update path. Confirmed-safe translations: KJV, ASV, YLT, AKJV, Darby, Webster, BSB, LEB, NHEB, OEB, plus Greek (Byz, TR, StatResGNT), Latin Vulgate, Syriac Peshitta. Does not appear to include NIV/ESV/NASB — still verify the specific translation before citing it in a study. |
| scrollmapper/bible_databases_deuterocanonical | Deuterocanonical, extra-biblical, and related texts | Not yet confirmed — verify per-text before citing | ✅ Forked | ding0t/bible_databases_deuterocanonical → references/open-data/scrollmapper-bible-databases-deuterocanonical/ |
| openscriptures/morphhb | Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) + morphological/lemma tagging | WLC text: public domain. Tagging: CC BY 4.0 | ✅ Forked | ding0t/morphhb → references/open-data/morphhb/. The Hebrew original-language source AGENTS.md's word-study requirement points at. |
| openscriptures/GreekResources | Septuagint word-list/lemma/lookup tooling (NOT the LXX text itself — see notes) | CC BY 4.0 (confirmed in README) | ✅ Forked | ding0t/GreekResources → references/open-data/greek-resources/. The repo's own maintainers deliberately exclude the actual Septuagint text because the CCAT source is restrictively licensed — good model to follow. Attribution: credit the Open Scriptures Septuagint Project. |
| alshival/super_bible | CSV Bible text dumps, several English + Spanish versions, built for LLM training data | Repo claims CC0-1.0 | ❌ Skip | Not forked. Includes a full ESV CSV (super_bible_ESV.csv). The ESV is a commercially copyrighted Crossway translation with a published permissions policy (free quotation up to 500 verses under conditions, not wholesale redistribution) — a CC0 declaration by this repo's maintainer doesn't and can't waive Crossway's copyright. If we want any of its clearly-public-domain files later, re-source them individually and verify each one, not via a blanket fork. |
| javascripture/javascripture | Bible data bundled with a JS project (gh-pages/bibles) |
Not found in README | ⚠️ Verify | Not forked. Need to check the actual bibles/ data files and their source before deciding. |
| berean.bible (Berean Standard Bible / Berean Greek Bible) | Modern, readable English translation + Greek critical text | CC0 — dedicated to the public domain, April 2023. Confirmed on their terms page: "all uses are freely permitted," commercial use explicitly allowed. Only ask: don't call a modified derivative "Berean." | ✅ Covered, not separately forked | No single canonical GitHub source exists (BSB text is scattered across ~15 unofficial hobby repos). Already have it via scrollmapper/bible_databases above — a dedicated fork would be redundant. Revisit only if we need the canonical USFM form specifically (see usfm-bible/examples.bsb). |
| unfoldingWord/hbo_uhb (UHB) | Lexically tagged, morphologically parsed Hebrew OT | CC BY-SA 4.0 (confirmed) | ⚠️ Blocked on mechanism | Hosted on Door43 (Gitea), not GitHub — gh repo fork doesn't cross platforms. Forking there needs a separate Door43 account and a different process than everything else in this doc. Holding off rather than half-doing the "fork for permanence" pattern; revisit if a study specifically needs UHB over morphhb. |
| LogosBible/SBLGNT | SBL Greek New Testament, the standard academic critical text | CC BY 4.0 (confirmed — SBL & Logos Bible Software, copyright holders since 2010) | ✅ Forked | ding0t/SBLGNT → references/open-data/sblgnt/. Commercial use allowed. |
| ETCBC/bhsa | Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia with deep linguistic/syntactic annotation (text-fabric format) | CC BY-NC 4.0 — non-commercial only (confirmed: "do not use the data for commercial applications without consent; contact the German Bible Society" for commercial use) | 🟡 Forked, restricted | ding0t/bhsa → references/restricted-data/bhsa/. Off the table if this site ever monetizes. |
Lexicons & original language
| Repo | What it is | License | Status | Our fork / submodule |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| openscriptures/HebrewLexicon | BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs) outline linked to Strong's | CC BY 4.0 (BDB/Strong's underlying content itself is public domain) | ✅ Forked | ding0t/HebrewLexicon → references/open-data/hebrew-lexicon/. Primary Hebrew lexicon source for the develop-bible-study skill's word-study phase. |
| openscriptures/strongs | Strong's Dictionaries of Hebrew and Greek | No repo-level LICENSE, but confirmed via the data files themselves: Hebrew/Greek dictionary XML declares Public Domain; the JS/JSON compilation header declares Copyright 2010, Open Scriptures. CC-BY-SA. |
✅ Forked | ding0t/strongs → references/open-data/strongs/. Caveat: the same XML also embeds TWOT (Theological Wordbook of the OT, Archer & Harris, Moody Publishers) entry numbers as cross-reference pointers — those numbers are explicitly marked Copyright © 1980 by the Moody Bible Institute in the header. Only bare TWOT reference numbers are present here (fine to keep/cite), not TWOT's actual descriptive text — don't merge in TWOT prose from elsewhere under the assumption it's covered by this same license. |
| STEPBible/STEPBible-Data | Strong's-tagged texts, lexicons (incl. Tyndale brief Hebrew/Greek lexicons), morphology, TSK-style cross-references | CC BY 4.0 (confirmed in README) | ✅ Forked | ding0t/STEPBible-Data → references/open-data/stepbible-data/. Broadest single source — covers lexicon and cross-reference needs below in one place. Attribution required: credit "STEP Bible" linked to www.STEPBible.org. |
| jcuenod/dictionary (Mounce's Concise Greek-English Dictionary) | William D. Mounce's concise NT Greek dictionary | All-rights-reserved. README states: "Copyright 1993 All Rights Reserved www.teknia.com/greek-dictionary" — free for non-commercial, non-revenue use provided the notice stays visible. Not a CC/PD license. | 🟡 Forked, restricted | ding0t/dictionary → references/restricted-data/mounce-dictionary/. The copyright notice must be kept visible wherever this data is used/displayed — that's a condition of the grant, not just a courtesy. |
| Clear-Bible/macula-greek | Per-word Greek NT (SBLGNT) morphology, lemma, gloss, and Louw-Nida semantic domain codes | CC BY 4.0 (Biblica, confirmed in LICENSE.md). Underlying sources (Nestle1904, SBLGNT, Berean Interlinear, Cherith glosses) are all PD or CC BY 4.0. Caveat: the Louw-Nida domain field (@ln, @domain) is drawn from UBS's MARBLE project "used with permission" to Clear-Bible specifically per their own license notes — not itself a blanket CC grant. Cite carefully, same spirit as the TWOT caveat on the strongs fork above. |
✅ Forked | ding0t/macula-greek → references/open-data/macula-greek/. ~970MB. The file that actually matters is the flat per-token TSV at SBLGNT/tsv/macula-greek-SBLGNT.tsv — turns the print-only Louw & Nida citation in the develop-bible-study word-study-method into a queryable local source. |
| Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew | Per-word Hebrew OT (WLC) morphology, lemma, gloss, and SDBH semantic domain codes — the Hebrew-side equivalent of Louw-Nida, which is Greek-only | CC BY 4.0 (Biblica, confirmed in LICENSE.md) |
✅ Forked | ding0t/macula-hebrew → references/open-data/macula-hebrew/. ~2.7GB on disk (similar scale to bible_databases above). The flat TSV at WLC/tsv/macula-hebrew.tsv is Git-LFS tracked — git-lfs must be installed locally or the submodule checkout is just an LFS pointer stub, not real content. |
| fhardison/hebrew-vocab-tools | Python query layer over morphhb + HebrewLexicon (both already forked above): lemma/Strong's/gloss lookups, plus paragraph/pericope chunking keyed to actual Masoretic markers (sof pasuq, samekh/pe) rather than modern chapter breaks |
CC BY 4.0 (confirmed in README) | ✅ Forked | ding0t/hebrew-vocab-tools → references/open-data/hebrew-vocab-tools/. Small (~9.5MB). Stagnant since 2022 but a finished, single-purpose tool — fine for this use. |
Cross-references
| Repo | What it is | License | Status | Our fork / submodule |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| STEPBible-Data (above) | Includes TSK-style cross-reference data | CC BY 4.0 | ✅ Forked | See above — no separate source needed unless it turns out incomplete. |
| scrollmapper/bible_databases (above) | Includes cross-reference databases | MIT (schema) | ✅ Forked | See above — cross-ref tables come along with the Bible text fork. |
Not pursuing
- openscriptures/api — archived, GPL-2.0, application code rather than data. No reason to fork for a static-content repo.
- openscriptures/openscriptures, openscriptures/openscriptures_site — archived legacy code, not data.
- scrollmapper/book_list — worth a look later if we need an index of what Scrollmapper's databases cover, not needed yet.
- authenticwalk/mybibletoolbox-data — ~3GB aggregator repackaging MACULA, UBS/SDGNT, TBTA, and eBible data as AI-context YAML/SQLite. No repo-level LICENSE despite mostly-clean per-file source/license metadata inside — not safe to fork wholesale. It's what led us to fork MACULA Greek/Hebrew directly (above) instead of going through this unlicensed proxy. Revisit only if a specific need arises that MACULA/SDGNT alone don't cover (e.g. TBTA's semantic-role parses — license unconfirmed).
Backlog — from awesome-bible-developer-resources, not yet checked
Listed so nothing gets silently dropped; pull one of these in when a study actually needs it, and verify its license before forking (same process as everything above).
- Open Hebrew Bible — aligned historical codices
- CATSS — LXX morphological analysis and textual variants (watch for CCAT restrictions, same issue GreekResources deliberately worked around)
- Perseus Digital Library — ancient Greek texts with annotations
- Codex Sinaiticus (XML) — check license, British Library involvement suggests possible NC restriction
- Open Greek New Testament (OGNT / CNTR) — NA28-equivalent text
- Robinson's Greek Texts — Byzantine/Majority text
- unfoldingWord Greek NT (UGNT), Literal Text (ULT), Simplified Text (UST) — likely CC BY-SA 4.0 like
hbo_uhbabove, not individually confirmed yet - Open Bibles (Bible Innovations) — aggregator of PD/CC translations, worth checking as a second source alongside scrollmapper
- Abbott-Smith Manual Lexicon, Dodson Greek-English Lexicon, Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ) — Greek lexicons, likely public domain (pre-1929 sources) but not confirmed per-repo
eBible.org (not GitHub — fetched at build time, not forked)
eBible.org is a plain file host, not a git repo, so the fork-under-ding0t-and-submodule mechanics below don't apply. Rather than vendoring raw USFM into this repo (one file dump per translation would sprawl, and there's no git history to pin against for reproducibility the way a submodule commit gives us), references/build/build.py's ingest_ebible() downloads each translation's USFM zip on demand into a gitignored references/build/cache/, strips a couple of markup quirks the installed BibleOrgSys doesn't handle cleanly (see the function's own comments), and ingests straight into bible-text.db. Nothing here is pinned to a specific upstream revision — re-running the build re-fetches current content. Each source's license is checked individually (ebible.org/find/show.php?id=<id>) before adding; not everything listed there is public domain.
| eBible.org id | What it is | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
eng-web |
World English Bible (WEB) — full Bible | Public Domain (confirmed on-page) | AGENTS.md's preferred WEB translation, previously not actually present (scrollmapper's bundle only has the unrelated older "Webster"/"RWebster" PD translations, despite a stray empty WEB.db stub suggesting otherwise). |
grcbrent |
Brenton Septuagint — actual Greek LXX text (verified by downloading and reading it directly, not just the license text — "Brenton" commonly implies his English translation, so this was worth checking) | Public Domain (confirmed on-page) | Fills a real gap: GreekResources above deliberately excludes LXX text because the CCAT source is restricted. grclxx (Orthodox Media Network) is a near-identical edition of the same text — skipped as redundant rather than forking both. |
grc-tisch |
Tischendorf 8th ed. Greek New Testament — a third distinct NT critical-text lineage alongside SBLGNT (CC BY 4.0, above) and Byzantine/TR (via scrollmapper, restricted-nc) | Public Domain (confirmed on-page) | |
heb |
Delitzsch Hebrew Bible — OT+NT translated into Hebrew | Public Domain (confirmed on-page) | Our first Hebrew New Testament text. Likely the same underlying translation as scrollmapper-HebModern (currently flagged unknown license in that fork) but independently confirmed PD here — worth reconciling later rather than assuming they match. |
Known data-quality caveats (see ingest_ebible()'s own notes for full detail): some NT editions double-tag words (\w + non-standard \ww) or use USFM 3.0 \w word|attr\w* syntax the installed BibleOrgSys doesn't strip cleanly — handled with a regex pass before loading, verified against Rev 13:10 and John 3:16. LXX/deuterocanonical chapter-verse numbering can diverge from Masoretic/English versification (Psalms, Daniel, Esther especially) — don't assume (book, chapter, verse) lines up across works without checking.
Fork mechanics
Once a row above is ✅: fork under ding0t on GitHub, add as a git submodule at references/open-data/<name>/, and record the fork URL + submodule path in this table.
Once a row is 🟡: same fork/submodule process, but the target is references/restricted-data/<name>/ instead — kept separate so the public/commercial-safety boundary stays a directory boundary, not something to remember. references/open-data/ stays unconditionally-safe; references/restricted-data/ is safe under current (non-commercial) use and needs a second look only if that ever changes.
See the develop-bible-study skill for how the resulting data gets used, and keep anything not ✅ or 🟡 out of references/ entirely — that's what makes this repo safe to make public again (or to monetize, for the 🟡 tier) without a content audit.