What Bible Parser can do

What Bible Parser is

• An online Bible study application, running in the browser at bibleparser.net, installable as an app on desktop, tablet and phone.
• Designed and developed by Didier Fontaine, philologist and independent New Testament scholar, author of studies on the Christology of Philippians 2:6 (ORCID, Academia, Areopage blog).
• Audience: from readers who know neither Greek nor Hebrew (search in French or Latin letters, every word explained in one click) to specialists (syntactic queries, apparatuses, extra-biblical corpora).
• Access: free trial without an account; personal licence at €30 for two years, one-off payment, no automatic renewal.
• Not to be confused with software libraries that parse Bible references (Python, Ruby or Flutter packages have similar names). Bible Parser is a study platform for the biblical texts, for readers, students, translators and scholars.

Key figures, and what they measure

• 179Bible versions and editions in the version selector, original languages and translations (details below)
• 30ancient non-biblical texts readable like versions (Philo, Josephus, Church Fathers, Talmuds…)
• 1.3 millionentries in 59 lexicons of the ancient languages
• 45Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias
• 11Greek and Hebrew grammars
• 60+commentaries and study-Bible notes, verse by verse
• 3.1 millionlinks between a verse and a passage in a reference work
• 230,871cross-references between verses
• 7.6 millionwords of ancient non-biblical texts, lemmatized and parsed
• 3,077biblical persons, with kinship and associates
• 1,274biblical places on the atlas
• 174journeys narrated stage by stage
• 13,857Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic words to memorize
• 37help sheets, one per function

Reading a passage

Everything starts from the displayed verse. The main screen brings together five workspaces (Passage, Exegesis, Commentaries, References, Dictionaries) and three modes (Home, Reading, Study).

The reader

• Four layouts: Parallel (versions in columns synchronized verse by verse), Interlinear (original text, transliteration, parsing and word-for-word translation), Continuous, Compare (translations set against each other line by line).
• Word hover: its equivalents light up in every displayed version, through Strong's tagging (Segond 1910, Segond 21, Nouvelle Édition de Genève and Darby are tagged).
• Pericope ruler: canonical section, title of the literary unit, progress gauge within the chapter, link to the next pericope; Explore by chapters gives the outline of the book.
• Read-aloud of the chapter, from any verse.
• Verse menu (click on its number): copy with reference, copy link, open Exegesis, Commentaries, References, cross-references, compare versions, ask the assistant.

The universal search bar

A single field (Ctrl + K) recognizes what is typed: a reference (Jn 1:18) opens the verse; a French word runs the concordance; a Greek or Hebrew lemma, accented or not, or typed in BetaCode (morfh, alhyM), opens its suggestions; a tool name (atlas, tessera) opens the tool; a sentence ending with a question mark asks the assistant. Chips restrict the scope: whole Bible, one Testament, current book or chapter. Voice input available.

The “Around the verse” panel

To the right of the text, it follows the reading and opens five tabs on the active verse:

Word

full analysis of the selected word: lemma, transliteration, Strong's number, gloss, definition, semantic domains (Louw-Nida for Greek, SDBH for Hebrew), distribution in the corpus, hapax legomena flagged; links to the Word Study, Tessera and morphological search.

Cross-references

cross-references of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and intertextual quotations, readable on hover.

Apparatus

variants of the Greek, Hebrew or Samaritan text, witnesses, Tov's BHS/LXX parallel.

Sources

quotations and attestations of the verse in ancient literature: Qumran, Church Fathers, rabbinic texts, pseudepigrapha.

World

persons mentioned (with their family tree), journeys linked to the narrative, places and maps, fauna, flora and objects mentioned.

Home screen

Verse of the day, word of the day, “did you know?”, quiz, crosswords, a date from the chronology, a vocabulary set to review on the spot and a biblical expression; resume last reading.

Greek and Hebrew, word by word and sentence by sentence

• Word card in one click on the original or translated text, without leaving the verse: form, lemma, meaning, usage.
• Syntactic analysis: the tree of the verse, Greek or Hebrew (read right to left), with a Syntactic reading explaining in plain French the role of each word and phrase (subject, verb, complement, clause).
• No special keyboard needed: Greek and Hebrew BetaCode (Hebrew final forms distinguished by case), transliteration, Strong's numbers (G3444, H1254).
• Annotated base texts: SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) for the New Testament, Masoretic text (WLC / BHS) for the Old, with annotated morphology, functions, clauses and senses; Septuagint and Nestle-Aland 28 with lemmas and morphology.

Searching the texts

Concordance

Where a word occurs, in the chosen translation or in the original text; a French word can lead to the Greek or Hebrew words it translates. The tool keeps the translator's vocabulary distinct from the uses of the original word.

Advanced Search: words, forms, syntax, meaning

A visual query builder: place elements (a specific word or a category), refine their criteria, link them; a “You are looking for…” sentence restates the query before it runs. A query can also start from the words of a verse.

Word criteria

lemma, form or Strong's number; morphology (case, number, gender, person, tense, voice, mood; in Hebrew binyan, conjugation, state); function and clause (subject, object, predicate, adjunct; clause type, role, position); meaning (Louw-Nida domains and subdomains, SDBH); lemma frequency within a chosen scope; count of elements in the unit; pronominal references included.

Relations

same verse, same sentence, same clause; after, before, “immediately”; within n words; depends on; syntactic role; semantic role (agent, patient…); referent of, same referent; identical, different, between.

Logic

OR on an element, WITHOUT (absence within a scope), EXCEPT (remove verses), AND ALSO (union of two searches).

Helpers

Profile a word; Meaning palette (start from a notion: “prayer”, “anger”); Related words by form (root, derivatives) and by meaning, each suggestion justified; Discover (commented examples by level); Exegetical library of prepared searches; practical guides.

Results

colour-coded elements, clause highlighted; distribution by book, corpus and chapter, raw and per thousand words; lemmas, forms and domains found (over-represented domains flagged); French or original text under each hit, Septuagint rendering for Hebrew; versification mapping (Greek Ps 22 / Hebrew Ps 23).

Then

compare two searches, save, history, shareable link, CSV export; Exegetical significance: AI-assisted discussion of the results, with the matching Exegetical Memento entry.

Reproducible examples: θεός and λόγος in the same verse (NA28); ברא within three words of אלהים (annotated OT); one article shared by two nouns joined by καί (66 NT verses); “the heavens and the earth” coordinated (46 OT verses).

Tessera: concordance and co-occurrences

Concordance by lemma or by form, and computation of the words that accompany a word (collocations), with several association measures: frequency, log-likelihood (LL), t-score, mutual information (MI), Dice and log-Dice. Distributions by book, literary genre, period and corpus, in occurrences or per 10,000 words; network of collocates. Tessera covers the Greek and Hebrew Bible and ancient non-biblical corpora (pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Greek authors, Apostolic Fathers, documentary papyri…).

Word Study

The file on a Greek or Hebrew word: header with figures (occurrences, senses), Definition & analysis by sense with their distribution, concordance filtered by sense, book or corpus, Greek-Hebrew equivalents, Synonyms & Collocations, semantic domains, expressions and idioms, etymology and derivatives, articles of the available lexicons, concordance of inscriptions for Hebrew. AI summary sheet and PDF report.

Intertextuality

A graph centred on a book or chapter, with four distinct collections: UBS cross-references, Old Testament quotations in the New recorded by Bible Parser, Aland's synoptic pericopes, historical parallels Samuel-Kings-Chronicles. Classic and Thematic modes (groups computed from the connections). Example: Isaiah and the nineteen New Testament books that quote it.

Synopsis of the Four Gospels

Parallel pericopes of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John following Aland's or Boismard's arrangement, in Greek (NA27) or French (LSG); agreements highlighted by lemma or by exact wording, words shared by all columns distinguished from partial agreements.

The Exegetical Studio (Exegesis tab)

A complete exegetical investigation of one verse: text, semantics, syntax, rhetoric, cantillation, intertextuality, reception. The original text stays visible, laid out in clauses with the function of each constituent; five workspaces open beside it. Every piece of information carries a status: data, observation, analysis, hypothesis, undetermined or secondary synthesis.

Points for examination

Cards flag what deserves attention in the verse: multiple senses, a variant, an expression, a construction, prominence, a figure, a discussion in a grammar. They include the articular infinitive, constructions bearing on Colwell's and Sharp's rules, the Hebrew infinitive absolute paronomasia, figures catalogued by E. W. Bullinger and chiasms identified by Nils W. Lund. Language phenomena tracked: aorist and duration, perfect, prohibitions, ἵνα, ὅτι, shared article, pronominal reference, “not… but”. Each point opens its question, data, sources, possible readings and a concordance of the phenomenon.

Chapter composition

A score of the chapter, one column per verse: units and break markers, motifs (salient lemmas measured against the rest of the Testament), semantic fields, characters (explicit mentions and pronominal reference), refrains, inclusios, linkages, zones of concentration, symmetries and chiasms (Lund's readings with page references).

Establishing the text

• New Testament: Nestle-Aland 28 variation units (segment, omission, addition, substitution, readings, witnesses). Apparatus panel: printed editions, NA28 apparatus, Laparola witness families, SBLGNT apparatus, NA27, Metzger's textual commentary, Willker's guide. Fathers cited as witnesses link to the passages where they read the verse.
• Old Testament: HOTTP (Hebrew Old Testament Text Project), Dead Sea Scrolls (fragment, line, transcription, consonantal comparison; reconstructions distinguished from preserved letters), Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint alignment, Tov's Septuagint / Masoretic table (CATSS alignment, presumed Vorlage), Mirecurensia's proposed corrections, references to Barthélemy (Critique textuelle de l'Ancien Testament) and Field's Hexapla.

Analysis

• Discourse (Greek): Stephen H. Levinsohn's annotations (Greek New Testament Discourse Features): points of departure, prominence, focus.
• Clauses (Hebrew): ETCBC clause typology, relations, phrases and functions, with the notations explained (x, X, We, Wayyiqtol).
• Masoretic accents: accented verse, units and division tree under two models, continuous dichotomy and Price's equal segments; the specific system of the poetic books (Psalms, Proverbs, Job); warning for double accentuation (Decalogue).
• Word card: form and morphology, construction and participants, discourse, annotated senses (UBS) and domains (Louw-Nida, SDBH), distribution of senses, renderings of Segond, Darby, NEG and Segond 21.

Investigate: a six-step lexical inquiry

Sense (annotated senses, lexicons, word family), Construction (participants, complements, prepositions, co-occurrences, Septuagint equivalents), Usage (biblical and external distributions and concordances), Here (sense of this occurrence, renderings, argued choice or “I leave it open”), Check (eleven reasoning pitfalls checked), Conclude (observation, analysis or hypothesis added to the file).

Connect

Map of the canon with links classified by type (OT-NT quotations, Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, UBS parallels, intertextual.bible connections); comparison of quoted texts (NT, Masoretic text, Septuagint); timeline of patristic reception in Philip Schaff's collection (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers) with the passages read in context, extended to Biblindex and the Patristic Text Archive; ancient Judaism (Philo, Josephus, pseudepigrapha, Pseudo-Philo, Qumran, Talmud) and Aramaic Targums; world of the text (persons, objects, animals, plants); articles of the Code of Hammurabi set beside legal texts.

Synthesize, write, export

• The + on each area adds its content to the verse file, with its status and sources; each item can receive a comment and questions.
• AI workshop on the retained items only: Write the sheet (exegetical study sheet), Answer my questions, Summarize; numbered references to the items, PDF export.
• Create the sheet…: exportable file even without a personal synthesis, Essential, Detailed or Complete depth, adjustable sections (text, apparatuses, morphology, senses, constructions, syntax, accents, discourse, versions, intertextuality, quotations, ancient Judaism, reception, world of the text, points for examination, grammars, introduction, synthesis), for the verse or the whole pericope; PDF, Markdown and JSON formats.

Exegetical Memento

Entries on specific difficulties (what a form allows one to say and what it cannot decide by itself): the crux, the form or construction, state of the question, texts examined, procedures, pitfalls, references; biblical examples and prepared searches to test the phenomenon elsewhere.

Commentaries, references, dictionaries

Commentaries

For the displayed passage, the study-Bible notes and commentaries that treat it, filterable (Bible notes, Modern, Classic, language) and read in a built-in reader with clickable Bible references. An AI workshop writes a cross-synthesis or answers a question from the chosen sources, each statement linked to the passage of the commentary it cites.

Examples: Calvin, Bengel (Gnomon), Godet, Lightfoot, Meyer, International Critical Commentary, Keil & Delitzsch, Lange, Alford, The Expositor's Greek Testament, Vincent, A. T. Robertson (Word Pictures), Lenski, Pulpit Commentary, Cambridge Bible, Barclay, Rashi (French translation), Thomas Aquinas (Catena Aurea), the Glossa Ordinaria, the Neuchâtel annotated Bible; notes of the Nouvelle Bible Segond, Segond 21, Jerusalem Bible, TOB, Bible en français courant, NET Bible, Darby.

References

From the verse, the library entries that refer to it, grouped by family: themes, context and cross-references, dictionaries and encyclopedias, languages and grammars, handbooks and theology; guided view, counts per section, direct opening of the article or work. Introductions to the Old and New Testament open for the current book.

Examples: Vigouroux, Dictionnaire de la Bible (5 vols.) and its Supplément (14 vols.), Calmet, Westphal, Léon-Dufour (Vocabulaire de théologie biblique, Dictionnaire du Nouveau Testament), Corswant, Hastings (Dictionary of the Bible, of Christ and the Gospels, of the Apostolic Church), McClintock & Strong, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia, The Jewish Encyclopedia, The Catholic Encyclopedia; for background, Edersheim, Schürer, Stapfer, Daniel-Rops, Chouraqui, Kitchen; indexes of Migne's Patrologies, of the Talmud, of Josephus, of Charlesworth's pseudepigrapha; Bullinger's Figures of Speech; Nave and Thompson for themes.

Dictionaries

A search portal across the lexicons: input in Greek, Hebrew, BetaCode, transliteration, Strong's number or French; results grouped by work, inflected forms reduced to their lemma; alphabetical browsing of each work; cross-references between lexicons; an AI workshop that cross-reads the chosen articles, each citation opening the article. UBS semantic dictionaries of Biblical Greek and Hebrew, Louw-Nida and SDBH domains. Two theological dictionaries in French are open to all users: DTNT (French translation of the abridged TDNT, 849 articles) and DTAT (French translation of TWOT, 3,054 articles).

Library and FactBook

The Library arranges the holdings on shelves (dictionaries, themes, context, languages, corpora, handbooks, web) and searches a term across all indexed entries, in several languages. The FactBook builds a file on a person, place or notion: articles from the works, themes, passages, network, index, visuals.

The biblical world

Biblical persons

3,077 persons; Tree, Radial and Associates views (persons named in the same verses, line weight proportional to shared verses); degrees of kinship; namesakes distinguished, uncertain links flagged.

Bible atlas

1,274 places on a high-definition relief base map of the ancient Near East; neighbouring places shown without masking, labels placed without overlap; place card: proposed identifications, coordinates, other names, every passage that mentions it; secure sites distinguished from probable or debated locations.

Biblical journeys

174 journeys narrated stage by stage (for example Paul's second missionary journey, from Antioch to Corinth, in seventeen stages).

Chronology

six sources (Gertoux, Gertoux synchronisms, Fontaine, Sacred Calendar, BibleHub, Ussher); Single, Compare (synchronized timelines) and Nest modes; chronological markers beside the verses.

Fauna, flora and realia

articles and images: Norman Hope's fauna, Robert Koops's flora, David Pritz's objects and material world, UBS images, illustrated vocabulary, archaeological notes linked to the passage.

Weights and measures

indicative conversion of lengths, weights, volumes, areas, durations and currencies, with the uncertainty of the reconstructions.

AI-assisted research and voice

AI serves as a research aid, always grounded in the platform's sources and their citations.

• Smart Search (“Ask BP”): a question in plain language (encyclopedia, grammar, syntax, exegesis); the tool selects the useful resource families (translations, biblical languages, dictionaries, grammars, apparatuses, commentaries, encyclopedias, realia, cross-references, possibly the web) and lists the sources consulted; each reference opens the work or tool behind the answer (for example Abel's grammar at the cited paragraph, or Advanced Search on the syntactic query that was run). Quick, Standard and Advanced levels; methods (word study, exegesis, textual criticism, encyclopedic, theological, homiletic) and custom methods; conversation thread; import and export. Signed-in session required.
• Specialized AI workshops: commentaries, dictionaries, Exegetical Studio, Word Study, exegetical significance of a search.
• Talk to BP: voice conversation; Bible Parser displays the passage it is talking about, presents the words and opens their cards; voice control of the application.
• Privacy: questions and AI answers are not stored on the server.

Learning

Memorization

13,857 Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic words; entry points By scene (illustrated scenes and plates of biblical life, each item linked to its word), By domain, By frequency, By book (the vocabulary of a chapter before reading it); timed exercises: find the meaning, find the original word, cloze verses, pairs; spaced review (a known word comes back later, a missed one sooner); daily session; progress saved to the account.

Mind map

around a verse, five angles: linguistics, intertextuality, context, theology, concrete concepts; editable map, presentation, export.

Other tools

• Translator's Workshop (Hermeneutika): sustained translation project on one or more books, source text (Masoretic text, Septuagint, Greek NT), parallel versions, translation columns, notes, project glossary, rhetorical panel, synchronization and community sharing.
• Bibliography manager, reference detector, optical character recognition (OCRacle), Unicode / BetaCode converter, text translation, image to Base64, QR code.
• Summarize the chapter and Explore by chapters.

The Tools palette groups them in families: Ask, Read, Search, Biblical world, Learn, More tools.

Versions and corpora

The version selector arranges the texts in tabs. Counts are taken from the selector; editions marked “analysis” or “interlinear” carry lemmas and morphology.

Offline: six texts remain readable without a connection once loaded (BHS, Septuagint, SBLGNT, Louis Segond, TOB, New World Translation 2018). Commentaries, dictionaries and AI functions need a connection.

Lexicons, grammars, apparatuses

Lexicons of the ancient languages (59 works, 1.3 million entries)

• Greek: Liddell-Scott-Jones, Louw & Nida, Grand Bailly and abridged Bailly, Pape, Lust-Eynikel-Hauspie (Septuagint), Sophocles (Roman and Byzantine periods), Hesychius, the Suda, Moulton & Milligan, Thayer, Abbott-Smith, Cremer, Trench (synonyms), Autenrieth and Cunliffe (Homer), Slater (Pindar), UBS semantic dictionary of Biblical Greek, DTNT, Pigeon, Vine, biblical idioms (Babut, van den Heever, Fontaine).
• Hebrew and Aramaic: Brown-Driver-Briggs, Gesenius, Jastrow, Klein, Sander & Trenel, Feyerabend, TWOT and its French translation DTAT, Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database (SAHD), UBS semantic dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (SDBH), Pigeon, Nelson.
• Latin, Syriac, Coptic: Gaffiot, Lewis & Short, Quicherat; Peshitta Aramaic lexicon, Sureth dictionary; Crum and two other Coptic dictionaries.

Grammars (11)

Abel, Grammaire du grec biblique; Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research and its French translation by Montet; Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek; Carrez, Grammaire grecque du Nouveau Testament; Boxus, Précis de grammaire grecque; Conybeare & Stock, A Grammar of Septuagint Greek; Joüon, Grammaire de l'hébreu biblique; Gesenius-Kautzsch, Hebrew Grammar; Touzard, Grammaire hébraïque abrégée; unfoldingWord Hebrew Grammar.

Apparatuses and textual criticism

NA28, NA27 and SBLGNT apparatuses; BHS apparatus; Septuagint apparatus; HOTTP (Barthélemy et al., two levels) and Critique textuelle de l'Ancien Testament; Dead Sea Scrolls variants; Samaritan Pentateuch compared with the Masoretic text; Tov's BHS/LXX parallel; Solid Rock (Hebrew and Greek); textual commentaries of Metzger and Willker.

Access, devices, limits

• Without an account: the full interface with the Segond, the Hebrew Bible, the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint, first chapter of each book.
• Personal licence: €30 for two years, all tools and all versions of the licence, updates included; one-off PayPal payment, no automatic renewal; credentials by e-mail, usually within minutes. After two years, access continues free of charge, without guarantee.
• Devices: Windows, macOS, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, in a recent browser; installable as an app. Most functions need a connection.
• Stated limits: annotations (syntax, senses, referents) reflect the choices of their sources; coverage of commentaries, apparatuses and articles varies by book and verse; AI answers are syntheses to be checked against the sources they cite.

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