How reading here works
How we hold Scripture — and which voices read it.
What you can do here
- Choose which edition you read
- The list of editions on the Scripture page. The one you pick is remembered.
- Keep a verse, or reflect on it
- Tap any verse.
- Copy a verse
- Tap a verse, then “Copy”. The reference and the edition come with it.
- Hold a verse in mind
- Tap a verse, then “Hold this verse”. It thins a little each time you come back.
- Mark a verse
- Tap a verse, then choose a mark. What each one means is yours to decide.
- See where a chapter happens
- At the foot of a chapter, where places in it are known. Disputed locations say so.
- Keep a note on a chapter
- At the foot of any chapter. It stays with the chapter, in any edition, and no other member can read it. We do not read it. But we are able to — there is no technical barrier here.
- See where every edition came from
- “What we hold, and how we know”, at the foot of the Scripture page.
- See the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic behind a verse
- Tap any verse. Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament, Greek in the New.
- Where the translators pointed
- Tap a verse. Where an edition carries cross-references, they sit beside the actions.
- Where our editions differ
- Tap a verse. A note appears only on the verses where our editions differ.
- Hear a chapter read aloud
- “Listen”, at the top of the chapter.
- Read in one language, hear another
- The box beside “Listen”.
- Two editions at once
- “Read two editions side by side”, on the Scripture page.
- Find a passage or a phrase
- The box on the Scripture page.
- The translators’ notes
- The small mark in the text, where an edition carries them.
- Coming back to where you stopped
- It happens on its own. The Scripture page shows where you were.
- Books you have not opened here
- On the Scripture page, beneath where you were.
- Turn suggested passages off
- “Hide suggested passages”, at the foot of the Scripture page. The way back is in the same place.
- Your own history with a chapter
- It appears at the top of a chapter, when there is something to show.
What this page records
Where you stopped reading
You did not ask us to remember this. When you have been on a chapter for a little while, we keep the chapter you were in and how far down you had got — nothing else, and only for editions you actually opened. It is what puts “You were in…” on the Scripture page. It is never counted, never scored, and never shown to anyone but you.
Verses you are holding
When you choose to hold a verse, we keep which verse it is and how far it has thinned. We do not keep whether you remembered it — nothing here is testing you, and the page has no way to know.
Which chapters you have opened here
The same record that remembers where you stopped also tells us which books you have opened on this site. That is what “There is also…” is drawn from. It says nothing about what you have read anywhere else, and we have no way to know that.
A verse you make your guiding verse
If you choose one, we keep the reference, the words themselves, and which edition they came from — so it can be shown to you exactly as you chose it, even if you later read in another edition. You asked for this one; you can change it or clear it whenever you like.
Whether you want suggested passages
The Scripture page can show suggested passages, and there is a control to turn them off. We keep that choice, and nothing else about it.
Verses you have marked
We keep which verse, which mark, the edition you were reading, and when. We do not know what your marks mean, and we never guess.
Notes you write while reading
Your note is kept exactly as you wrote it, with the chapter it belongs to. Nothing reads it back to you differently, nothing summarises it, and it is never sent to anyone. When you save it, it is checked once, the same way every other thing you write here is, so that we can offer help if you are in trouble. Nothing else reads it, and we keep nothing from that check. Google does not use it to train their models, and we have turned off the setting that would have let them hold it.
The Hebrew is not ours, and we keep nothing about your reading of it
The Hebrew words, their transliteration and their meanings come from the Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament, made at Tyndale House in Cambridge and shared under a licence that asks us to credit them. We show their wording, not ours — we do not translate it, tidy it, or choose between meanings. Opening it records nothing.
Some of it stays in your browser
Your chosen edition, the language you hear it read in, which hints you have already seen, and any note you have written but not yet saved are kept by your own browser. We do not keep a copy, and clearing your browser data removes them.
All of it goes when you go
If you erase your account, every one of these records is removed with it. Not anonymised, not archived — removed.