Attributions & licences

About this page

This page exists so that translators, publishers, data maintainers, and users can see exactly what Simple Study Bible relies on, and under what terms. It is organised by resource type, with the licence or status of each item stated as a short label plus a plain-language description.

A few things to keep in mind as you read it:

• Attribution is not endorsement. Being named here reflects that Simple Study Bible uses a source, not that the source's author, publisher or maintainer has reviewed or approved of the app.
• Availability varies. Some resources are bundled, some are optional downloads, and a small number require an internet connection. A few are limited to the paid Pro edition — where that is the case, it is stated explicitly.
• An open licence on one resource does not extend to the app as a whole.Each third-party licence applies only to the specific text, dataset or package it covers.

Bible translations

This section covers the Bible versions available in the current public General edition of the app.

World English Bible (WEB)

Usage

Bundled default translation.

Source

eBible.org↗

A modern, readable English translation whose text is in the public domain. "World English Bible" is used by eBible.org to identify one specific, carefully maintained text; the name is intended to refer only to a faithful, unmodified copy of that official text, not to any unofficial revision.

World English Bible — British/International Edition (WEBB)

Usage

Optional download.

Source

eBible.org↗

A British/International-spelling edition of the World English Bible, made available as an optional download. The same trademark qualification described above applies.

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

Status

Dedicated to the public domain from 30 April 2023.

Source

berean.bible/terms.htm↗

The Berean Bible project dedicated its text to the public domain, and all uses are freely permitted without royalty. An attribution notice back to the Berean Bible project is appreciated by the publisher, though not required by the dedication.

King James Version (KJV)

Status

Public domain in many jurisdictions, including the United States. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Crown/letters-patent publishing rights continue to apply to the Authorised Version.

Availability

Optional download, not the app's default translation. The app declines to serve a KJV download to users in England, Wales or Northern Ireland because of those territorial rights; it remains downloadable elsewhere.

The King James Version is not universally free of restriction — its continuing territorial rights in parts of the United Kingdom are a live legal fact the app respects at download time, not merely a historical footnote.

Literal Standard Version (LSV)

Copyright

© 2020 Covenant Press.

Source

eBible.org↗(see also lsvbible.com↗)

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. The source USFM markup is reformatted into plain verse text for the app's reading view; the translation's own wording is not altered.

Other downloadable English translations

Optional downloads, each verified individually rather than assumed public domain:

• A Conservative Version (Walter L. Porter) — Free for distribution per the translator's own terms; not itself a public-domain dedication.
• American Standard Version (1901) — Public domain
• Darby Bible Translation (J. N. Darby, 1890) — Public domain
• Geneva Bible (1599) — Public domain
• Webster's Bible (Noah Webster, 1833) — Public domain
• Young's Literal Translation (1898) — Public domain

Original-language Greek New Testament texts

The Nestle 1904 Greek New Testament and the SBL Greek New Testament are also offered as optional downloads, grouped in the app under "Original Language" rather than as reading translations. Their sources and licences are covered inGreek and Hebrew Scripture texts below.

Online Bible translations supplied through API.Bible

The New King James Version (NKJV) and New International Version (NIV) are requested live over the internet through API.Bible↗, via a Simple Study Bible proxy service. They are not bundled with the app and are not provided as downloadable Bible databases — a chapter is fetched online and, once opened, cached on-device for offline rereading. Access is governed by API.Bible's own terms and by the copyright holder of each translation. Access to these translations through API.Bible does not imply that Thomas Nelson or Biblica endorse Simple Study Bible.

NKJV copyright

New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.

NIV copyright

New International Version®, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved.

Greek and Hebrew Scripture texts

Nestle 1904 Greek New Testament

Markup by

Jonathan Robie / Biblical Humanities↗

Usage

Optional "Original Language" download, New Testament only.

The underlying 1904 Nestle text is a public-domain critical Greek New Testament. The structured digital markup layered on top of it — verse boundaries, formatting and related metadata — is separately licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by its editor. That open licence covers the markup and dataset structure; it does not itself change the copyright status of the underlying base text, which is public domain on its own terms.

SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)

Editor

Michael W. Holmes

Published by

Logos Bible Software / Society of Biblical Literature (sblgnt.com/license↗)

Usage

Optional "Original Language" download, New Testament only; used as the app's default original-language Greek reading text and, for specific verses, cited directly in a small number of Bible Atlas and Context Gateway entries.

Hebrew Old Testament text

The app does not currently bundle or offer a standalone, separately downloadable Hebrew reading Bible in the General edition. The Hebrew text the app does work with — for interlinear display and Hebrew word study — is part of the STEPBible Tyndale Annotated Hebrew Old Testament dataset described underLexicons, interlinear and language data below.

Lexicons, interlinear and language data

Strong's Concordance

The core Strong's numbering system and glosses originate in James Strong's 19th-century concordance, now public domain. The app's Hebrew and Greek word-study lookups draw on that public-domain numbering together with supplementary etymological detail compiled from the CrossWire SWORD project (Hebrew) and from biblewebapp.com-derived data (Greek).

Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (1889)

Joseph Henry Thayer's lexicon, consulted via a MyBible-format dataset (thayer.sqlite), for Greek word-study definitions.

Hebrew Lexicon

Dataset

STEPBible TBESH (an abridged Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon)

Publisher

© Tyndale House, Cambridge — STEPBible.org↗

Used for Hebrew word-study lookups — the Old Testament counterpart to Thayer's, above.

Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)

Matthew George Easton's Bible dictionary, used for general biblical term definitions.

Interlinear data — New Testament

Dataset

STEPBible TAGNT (Tyndale Annotated Greek New Testament)

Publisher

© Tyndale House, Cambridge — STEPBible.org↗

Usage

Optional download (~22 MB). Original Greek word, transliteration, contextual English gloss, disambiguated Strong's number and morphology per word.

Interlinear data — Old Testament

Dataset

STEPBible TAHOT (Tyndale Annotated Hebrew Old Testament)

Publisher

© Tyndale House, Cambridge — STEPBible.org↗

Usage

Optional download (~49 MB), the same word-level fields as the New Testament pack above.

STEPBible.org is the umbrella Tyndale House project behind the TAGNT, TAHOT and TBESH datasets above. Rather than one blanket licence claim, this page names the three specific datasets Simple Study Bible actually uses and their common CC BY 4.0 terms.

Greek grammar display

The in-app decoder that turns SBLGNT parsing codes into readable grammar labels (for example, turning a raw tag into "verb, present active indicative, 3rd person singular") implements the published MorphGNT tagging convention. This is Simple Study Bible's own parsing code, written to that public convention — it is not a redistributed MorphGNT text dataset.

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (TSK)

Cross-reference data bundled with the app. TSK is also one of the app's 62 commentary sources — see Commentaries and study notes.

Commentaries and study notes

The General app's commentary library currently spans 65 works. 21 of these — the Church Fathers Collection — are available in the Pro edition; the remaining 44 are downloadable free of charge, with up to 10 installed at once (remove one to install another). Coverage, format and licence vary by title, so each named group below is described individually rather than under one blanket status.

Public-domain historical commentary collection

The bulk of the catalogue — around 35 titles spanning the 17th to early 20th centuries, from John Trapp (1656) and Matthew Henry (1710) through to the Pulpit Commentary (1890) and the Biblical Illustrator (1887) — consists of historical, public-domain commentaries. They were digitised as MyBible/theWord/SWORD-format study modules and individually reformatted into per-verse SQLite databases for the app; source wording is preserved.

The Treasury of David and Calvin's Collected Commentaries(see below) are also public domain, but were sourced and converted separately, so they have their own entries rather than sitting in the list above.

Modern-era works, provenance not independently reverified

A handful of titles in the same module ecosystem are 20th-century works —G. Campbell Morgan's Exposition (1920), Through the Bible Day by Day (F. B. Meyer, 1914), Ironside's Notes on Selected Books(H. A. Ironside, 1910), and Newell on Romans & Revelation (William R. Newell, 1938). These circulate as freely distributed study modules within the same commentary ecosystem as the public-domain titles above, but — unlike a 19th-century work — their individual copyright and licence status is not something this audit could independently confirm from the repository alone. They are not labelled public domain here; see the internal audit for detail.

Two further titles that previously circulated in this same ecosystem — NT Introductions & Outlines (Daniel Wallace) and Holy Gospels in One (Andre Dellerba, 2025 revision) — have been removed from the app and are no longer offered, pending written redistribution permission from the respective rights-holders. See the internal audit for detail.

Pett's Commentary on the Bible

Author

Dr Peter Pett, 2013

Source

BibleSupport.com↗

Published as public-domain material by the source distributor. Source text courtesy of BibleSupport.com; converted to SQLite and reformatted for mobile display by Simple Study Bible, with the source wording not intentionally altered. This page relies on BibleSupport.com's published status rather than a personal confirmation from Peter Pett.

Mark Dunagan's Commentaries on the Bible

Author

Mark Dunagan

The author's published site states that the material may be used and distributed for personal and public use. Converted to SQLite and reformatted for mobile display by Simple Study Bible; the source wording has not been intentionally altered. This is not labelled public domain, since the author's own site does not use that wording.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Author

Don Fleming © 2005

Publisher

Bridgeway Publications

Supplied directly by the publisher, on condition that it remains free (non-Pro) within the app. It is not licensed for redistribution outside that permitted use. Converted from the publisher-supplied file to SQLite for mobile display; wording is unchanged.

You Can Understand the Bible (Bob Utley)

Author

Dr. Bob Utley

Publisher

Bible Lessons International

Source

freebiblecommentary.org↗

Verse-by-verse and phrase-by-phrase study guide commentary, used by permission of Dr. Utley. Converted from an e-Sword module to SQLite for mobile display; the verbatim Bible-text quotation at the start of each note was removed, keeping only Dr. Utley's own commentary. This edition covers all 27 New Testament books and 22 of 39 Old Testament books — a 2014 snapshot of the source module; Dr. Utley's live site now covers the whole Bible across 32 volumes.

NET Bible Translators' Notes

Publisher

Biblical Studies Press / Thomas Nelson © 2019

Source

netbible.com/net-bible-copyright↗

Over 60,000 translator, study and text-critical notes from the NET Bible, Full Notes Edition, used by permission of Biblical Studies Press / Thomas Nelson for the notes only — the NET Bible translation text itself is intentionally not included or distributed by this app. Extracted from the publisher-supplied EPUB and converted to SQLite for mobile display; note wording is unchanged.

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Publisher

Tyndale House Publishers © 2022

Source

tyndaleopenresources.com↗

Verse-by-verse study notes, book introductions and theme articles, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Converted to SQLite and reformatted for mobile display; source wording is preserved. As an adaptation of a ShareAlike-licensed work, this converted form remains available under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 terms as the source.

unfoldingWord Translation Notes

Designed by

unfoldingWord

Developed by

Door43 World Missions Community

Publisher

unfoldingWord © 2022

Source

git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_tn↗, release v89↗

Open-licensed exegetical notes providing historical, cultural and linguistic background for Bible translators, designed by unfoldingWord and developed by the Door43 World Missions Community. Simple Study Bible uses the official v89 release — all 27 New Testament books and 27 Old Testament books, 54 of 66 books in total; the 12 Old Testament books not yet included in the official release (among them Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel) are not part of this download. Free optional download. Converted from the release's TSV files into a passage-indexed SQLite database and reformatted for safe mobile display; source note wording has not been intentionally altered. As an adaptation of a ShareAlike-licensed work, the Translation Notes content and this converted database remain available under the sameCC BY-SA 4.0 terms↗as the source. Per the source licence, the original work is credited as available fromunfoldingword.org/utn↗. This attribution does not imply endorsement of Simple Study Bible by unfoldingWord or the Door43 World Missions Community.

Calvin's Collected Commentaries

Source

CrossWire Bible Society↗ — SWORD module CalvinCommentaries v1.1

Underlying text

Christian Classics Ethereal Library↗

John Calvin's commentaries, collected from the CCEL and converted to SWORD format by Luke Plant, then converted again to SQLite for the app; wording has not been intentionally altered. Covers Genesis–Joshua, Psalms, Isaiah–Malachi and Matthew–Jude, excluding several books.

The Treasury of David

Author

C. H. Spurgeon, completed 1885

Source

CrossWire Bible Society↗ — SWORD module TDavid v2.1, underlying text CCEL↗

Spurgeon's exposition of the Psalms, converted from the SWORD module to SQLite; wording unaltered.

Church Fathers Collection (Pro edition)

Source

HistoricalChristianFaith / Commentaries-Database↗

Verse-by-verse comments from 21 early and medieval Christian writers — including Augustine, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Ambrose, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Tertullian and Thomas Aquinas — drawn from public-domain translations (notably the Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series). Provenance varies work by work; texts are presented as historical witnesses, and their inclusion does not endorse every view expressed by every writer. The same collection supplies the patristic quotations shown in the app's Doctrinal Threads ("In the Fathers' Own Words").

Bible Atlas and geographical data

The Bible Atlas combines open map datasets, public-domain reference works, first-party and AI-generated basemap artwork, and original Simple Study Bible editorial synthesis.

Natural Earth

1:10m land and lake vector data, used to generate the app's bundled offline coastline and water-body assets. No attribution is legally required for this dataset; it is credited here as good practice.

OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding Data

Source

github.com/openbibleinfo/Bible-Geocoding-Data↗

Place names, verse references, coordinates, confidence scoring, and geometry for regions and rivers. Some of this dataset's own data may derive from OpenStreetMap and so may carry its separate Open Database Licence (ODbL) obligations.

Pleiades Gazetteer of Ancient Places

pleiades.stoa.org↗ — used as a coordinate and identification cross-check for ancient Greco-Roman sites.

OpenHistoricalMap

openhistoricalmap.org↗ — the interactive historical map layer, filtered to around AD 50 for New Testament context. Dedicated to the public domain under CC0 except where individual features note otherwise.

MapLibre GL JS

BSD 3-Clause licence — maplibre.org↗, the rendering engine behind the interactive map.

Terrain and relief

Three offline shaded-relief layers (Galilee; Judea, Samaria & Perea; the Southern Levant) are generated in-house from Mapzen Terrain Tiles — SRTM-derived elevation data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, distributed by Mapzen/Tilezen (a Linux Foundation project) via the AWS Open Data Registry↗. This is a modern shaded relief shown for orientation only — it does not represent ancient topography or support archaeological identifications.

ChurchMaps.info regional basemaps

Three public-domain historical raster maps — Ancient World: Age of Patriarchs,Apostle Paul's Journeys, and Palestine: New Testament Times — cropped and compressed for offline use, with the app's own pins, routes and study text overlaid.

Additional regional basemap artwork

A further set of regional basemaps (covering, for example, the Ancient Near East, the Exodus and wilderness journey, Paul's Aegean journeys, and the united and divided kingdom periods) are first-party or AI-generated artwork produced for the app rather than third-party licensed cartography. The app's own pins, routes and study text are overlaid on all of them.

Reference works

Background checks for Atlas place descriptions draw on Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897, public domain, via CCEL) and the original 1915 edition of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (public domain; the later Eerdmans/Bromiley revision is not, and is not used).

Original Atlas editorial work

Place descriptions, confidence and accuracy notes, routes, journey explanations and theological summaries are original Simple Study Bible editorial content unless otherwise stated. A further, larger set of narrowly-scoped historical citations (for example, individual passages of Josephus in the public-domain Whiston translation, or a specific museum or reference-site record) supports individual Atlas Insight and Context Gateway entries passage by passage; these are too numerous and too narrowly scoped to list individually here and are cited in place within the app itself.

Accuracy note: ancient site identifications can be approximate, traditional, regional or disputed. Some layers use modern geographical data for visual orientation; ancient conditions may have differed.

Theographic Bible Metadata

Source

robertrouse/theographic-bible-metadata↗

An earlier development pass generated a set of place records from this open Bible knowledge graph. That generated data file is still present in the codebase but is not currently used by the live Atlas rendering pipeline — it is recorded here for transparency about retained material, not as an active production dependency.

Additional reference data

Beyond the lexicons and Atlas datasets above, a small number of individually-cited historical and classical sources support specific verses or passages elsewhere in the app — most often in Bible Atlas Insight entries and Context Gateway background material. Representative examples include:

• Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews — public-domain Whiston translation (1737), consulted for specific, individually-inspected passages used as independent historical corroboration alongside the biblical text, not as a source for the biblical narrative itself.
• Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary (1879) — public domain, via the Perseus Digital Library, consulted for individual word entries.
• Cassius Dio, Roman History — public-domain Loeb/Cary translation (1917), hosted at LacusCurtius (University of Chicago), consulted for a specific administrative detail.

Each such citation is scoped in the app to the single fact or passage it supports and is not treated as a general authority beyond that use, consistent with Simple Study Bible's editorial practice of citing precisely rather than broadly.

Christian classics and public-domain books

The in-app Christian Library currently offers 46 classic theological, devotional and prayer works — including titles by John Bunyan, Andrew Murray, Jonathan Edwards, Richard Baxter, Charles Finney and C. H. Spurgeon, spanning roughly 1418 to the early 20th century. Each is retrieved live from theChristian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL)↗, whose catalogue consists of historical, public-domain Christian literature.

Morning and Evening

Author

Charles H. Spurgeon (d. 1892)

Source

ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/morneve↗

Spurgeon's classic daily devotional — 366 morning and 366 evening readings, used for the app's daily-devotional feature.

Audio, narration and artwork

Be Still ambience

The instrumental and ambient tracks in Be Still, the app's devotional listening space, are produced for Simple Study Bible using AI-assisted music generation guided by a detailed in-house creative brief. They are first-party content, not licensed from a third-party music library.

Greek and Hebrew pronunciation audio

Generated with

SpeechGen.io↗

Word-level Greek and Hebrew pronunciation audio, distributed as downloadable packs. AI-generated using SpeechGen.io from biblical Greek and Hebrew lexical forms, then reviewed and curated for Simple Study Bible. SpeechGen permits commercial use of generated speech. The distributed audio files are synthetic speech outputs rather than recordings commissioned from individual speakers.

Text-to-speech and speech recognition

Scripture read-aloud and voice dictation use text-to-speech and speech-recognition services provided by your device, operating system, or the open-source Capacitor plugins listed under Open-source software below. Available voices and processing are controlled by that provider, not by Simple Study Bible.

Study Hub, Atlas and commentary artwork

Study Hub hero art, commentary cover images, and app iconography are first-party design assets created for Simple Study Bible — commentary covers, for example, are in-house generated flat-design artwork, not scanned or reused publisher covers. Atlas basemap and relief imagery is covered separately underBible Atlas and geographical data above. General app iconography uses the Lucide icon set — see Open-source software.

Open-source software

Simple Study Bible is built on open-source software. The lists below name the principal runtime dependencies of the mobile app and the website, each under its own licence — not every transitive package. All third-party packages remain subject to their own licence files and notices, whether or not individually named here.

Mobile application

• React & React DOM — MIT — react.dev↗
• Capacitor (core, Android, CLI) — MIT — capacitorjs.com↗
• sql.js — MIT — SQLite compiled to WebAssembly for in-browser/WebView database access
• MapLibre GL JS — BSD 3-Clause — interactive map rendering
• DOMPurify — Apache 2.0 / MPL 2.0 — HTML sanitisation
• date-fns — MIT — date utilities
• Lucide React — ISC — lucide.dev↗ icon set
• cordova-plugin-purchase — MIT — Google Play purchase handling for Pro
• @capacitor-community/speech-recognition — MIT — voice dictation
• @capacitor-community/text-to-speech — MIT — Scripture read-aloud
• @capacitor-mlkit/barcode-scanning — MIT — book-scanning in the Library
• @openhistoricalmap/maplibre-gl-dates — date-filtered historical map styling
• Vite — MIT — build tooling

Public website

• Astro — MIT — astro.build↗, the site framework and static build pipeline
• TypeScript — Apache 2.0 — type checking
• Sharp — Apache 2.0 — image optimisation, used internally by Astro's build-time image pipeline

Original content and non-endorsement

Simple Study Bible's software, original editorial writing, artwork, curated databases and design remain proprietary unless a section above specifically identifies otherwise. Third-party licences described on this page apply only to the individual component they cover; an open licence on one resource should not be assumed to extend to Simple Study Bible as a whole. Trademarks — including "World English Bible," "New International Version," and "New King James Version" — remain the property of their respective owners. Being named on this page does not imply that any author, publisher, dataset maintainer or service provider endorses Simple Study Bible.

Corrections and contact

We aim to credit every source accurately. If you believe an attribution is incomplete or incorrect, get in touch via the contact page.