About Free Scripture
Who makes it, how the stories are written, and where the Bible text comes from.
This is a place to read the Bible. Four translations, every book and chapter, laid out to be read on any screen. There are also Bible stories told in plain words, one scene at a time.
The translations are the Berean Standard Bible, the King James Version, the World English Bible, and the Bible in Basic English. All four are in the public domain. The King James text here includes the Apocrypha.
You can read straight through a book, jump to a chapter, or find a verse for what you are going through and pass it to someone.
How the stories are written
Each story follows the Bible closely, in short sentences. Every paragraph shows the verses it comes from, so you can check it. Words in bold quotes are the Bible's exact words.
Boxes marked Imagine the scene are imagination, not Scripture. We never make up words and put them in someone's mouth.
The stories are written from a Lutheran (ELCA) point of view. Each one is checked line by line against the Bible text: every quotation word for word, and every paragraph against the verses beside it. When we find a mistake, we fix it.
Luther and the Jewish people
Many story pages share a short thought from Martin Luther. He helped people see that God's love is a gift, not something we earn. We still learn from that.
But Luther also wrote terrible things about Jewish people, especially late in his life, as in On the Jews and Their Lies (1543). He called for cruel acts against them. Those words were wrong. For centuries, people used them to spread hatred, and the Nazis later used them too.
In 1994, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) said so plainly in its Declaration to the Jewish Community. It said, “we reject this violent invective,” and it expressed “deep and abiding sorrow” over the harm it caused. It promised to oppose hatred of Jewish people in the church and in the world.
We agree. Jesus was Jewish. So were his mother and his first followers. Quoting Luther does not mean we agree with everything he said.
Your privacy
This site has no accounts, no cookies, no analytics, and no tracking of any kind. We do not know who you are, what you read, or when you visit. Your reading preferences and your last-read position are saved on your own device and never sent to a server.
There are no ads and nothing for sale. This is a free tool, built the way the web used to work.
Connected to Digital Lutheran Church
Free Scripture provides the Bible text for Digital Lutheran Church, which offers daily prayer offices, pastoral care, the Lutheran library, and this Sunday's lectionary readings. If you are looking for more than the text itself, that is where to go.
Free Scripture is a tool from Hope for Americans, built in Flagstaff, Arizona.