Dive deep into the Bible
From big picture to smallest details:
study of the Scripture has secrets for all.

“z-Bible has an innovative approach to Bible reading. Readers are helped to engage with Scripture in a new and meaningful way, by putting stories into context.”

Terje Hartberg
Head of Global Ministry at United Bible Societies

Our project

We aim to publish the Bible in a next-generation book format—a format that we believe is better than any previous one for studying such long books.

We have developed our first prototype, which is available online, but we still have a long way to go. We need your feedback on how we could make z-Bible better.

Read more about our concept, mission and vision.

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What we have done

  • We have come to love the Bible.
  • We have analyzed the success of Google Maps with its zoomable virtual canvas.
  • We have studied theologians’ works about how to study, how to understand and how to map the Bible.

Then we put together all of these. The result is z‑Bible, a study Bible which looks and works like a map (you can read more about this here). And recently we have released a minimal viable version of z‑Bible that you can try right now:

Read z‑Bible online

We’re waiting for your feedback, so that we can develop z‑Bible based on what you would like.

Give feedback

What we are planning

If you find our concept and efforts valuable, we’ll continue our developments in the following directions:

Functions

  • note taking
  • highlighting
  • bookmarks
  • reading plans
  • social functions for study groups and small communities

Content

  • different translations
  • translator notes
  • cross-references
  • concordance
  • audio Bible
  • studies

Platforms

z‑Bible is written with standard web technologies, however, it takes us time to make it work perfectly in all browsers on all platforms. Currently it only works in Chrome and Firefox browsers, and only on Windows and Linux operating systems. We recommend using Chrome, as z-Bible performs better in it than in Firefox. We are working on providing support for all modern browsers.

We are planning to provide z-Bible on iPads, Android and Windows tablets, and in the future as a desktop application for Windows, OS X and Linux.

Feedback forum

You can suggest ideas and vote for others' ideas on our feedback forum.

Go to feedback forum

Our mission

To make Bible studying more enjoyable for the digital generation.

Our vision

People of the youngest generation read less and less paper books. We suppose this is because they feel the need for something better. And even today’s e-books are not so much better: they are not much more than just the digital replicas of paper books.

As you would probably prefer to use paper books instead of parchment scrolls, we think it is normal for the young generation to prefer the more modern formats. Throughout history, technological development has many times allowed newer book formats to appear. We think this is happening today: handheld devices are so powerful that now it is possible to invent something totally new. We are taking a step in this direction by creating a book that is written on a zoomable virtual canvas.

The teachings of the Bible are eternal, but throughout its several‑thousand‑year‑long history, its appearance has changed several times. We hope that z‑Bible will be a new stage in these series, a Bible that is easier to study, and easier to study together.

Our team

Our partners

  • “z-Bible has an innovative approach to Bible reading. Readers are helped to engage with Scripture in a new and meaningful way, by putting stories into context. We in the United Bible Societies are proud to partner with z-Bible and provide access to licensed Bible texts through our Digital Bible Library. We recommend z-Bible to young and old alike.”

    Terje Hartberg
    Head of Global Ministry at United Bible Societies

  • “In our age, functional illiteracy has a significant destructive effect on Bible reading habits. There is a vital necessity for innovative methods in facilitating younger generations’ path to the Scripture. We believe this application will serve as a such tool, therefore we highly recommend it to everyone.”

    Ottó Pecsuk, PhD
    Secretary-general of the Hungarian Bible Society

  • “In our development projects, we always prefer novel solutions. We are pleased to support an innovation that provides a new approach to the organization and comprehension of information, and radically changes the reading and studying habits of people.”

    Attila Horváth
    Managing director of 4D Soft Ltd

  • We are looking for new partners and supporters. We are open to any type of collaboration. If you are interested, please contact us at

For teachers

It is so important to study the Bible together with others! We aim to help Bible teachers and small groups to get more out of the Bible in fellowship. In the future, we are planning to roll out features that support the small-group and study group use of z‑Bible, like sharing educational materials, chat, sharing comments and thoughts.

We are looking for Bible teachers who would like to cooperate with us in designing these new functions, so that they best fit the needs of teachers and students. If you are interested, please contact Bernát at

The z‑Bible concept

z-Bible is a concept book, purposed to improve how people study the Bible. By concept book, we mean that we are experimenting with new ideas, with features you would have never thought a book could have. We are trying to create a tool that helps you study the Bible better, more efficiently and more usefully.

Well-known authors have written a lot about how to understand and study the Bible. Mel Lawrence, for example, has written in his How To Understand the Bible (emphasis ours):

“If you […] read a single line on a random page, one thing is certain: you would not understand it. That is because we receive meaning through words by seeing them in their context. One of the most helpful things we can do to understand the Bible better is to gain a clear comprehension of the whole sweep of the biblical text. To see the big picture.”

Robert M. West has written in How to Study the Bible (emphasis ours):

”It’s the best to get the big picture of a text, then the context, and finally the details. This is starting with the bird’s-eye view and going down to the worm’s-eye view.”

Unfortunately, when you are reading a conventional Bible, you can easily get overwhelmed with the details. It is not easy to see the big picture of the more than 1,000 pages of text. One good solution, of course, is to use one or more Bible study guides along with your Bible. But instead of this, we want to create a solution by putting Bible itself into a new format. And this is where zooming comes in.

For a moment, think about a geographic atlas. In a printed version, you can see the big picture of an area on one page, and the details on other pages. But in a digital version, where zooming is available, you can smoothly change the view between the big picture and the details. Because of the zooming, you have gained a better overview and you can navigate very easily in a huge amount of information.

Analogously, we have basically created an atlas of the Bible. We have arranged the Scripture on a virtual zoomable canvas, instead of pages. In the opening view you see the Old and the New Testament, like two continents. If you zoom in, you’ll see the book groups and the books appear, just like countries. Further zooming takes you to the bigger sections, then to the stories, and finally to the Biblical text. We chunked the Bible into 3,138 sections and arranged them hierarchically, based on the outline of Prof. Thomas L. Constable, ThD in the Old testament, and of Prof. Daniel B. Wallace, PhD in the New Testament.

To help you understand the context, we have integrated Biblical studies, maps, pictures, and videos into z‑Bible. These materials appear alongside the Scripture. Wherever you go in the Scripture, you can see the relevant part in the study, and, vice versa, if you move to another study, the relevant Bible verses will appear.

So basically, in z‑Bible, we have visualized the studying method proposed by the two scholars cited above. You can smoothly zoom between the bird’s-eye view and the worm’s-eye view, you can study the big picture and the details, keeping an eye on the context on each level.


Interested? Try z-Bible now!
Do you think our project is worth supporting? Donate to support z-Bible!

Contact

We are z-Bible Foundation. You can reach us by email at

Our mailing address is:

Telepy utca 24. II.
Budapest
H-1096
Hungary

Sources and Copyrights

The Text of the Bible

World English Bible - Public Domain

The headlines of the Old Testament is based on the Constable's Expository Notes, with the permission of Dr. Thomas L. Constable

The headlines of the New Testament is based on Daniel B. Wallace: New Testament: Introductions and Outlines, with the permission of bible.org

Knowledge Base

Map: OpenBible - Geocoding, Mapbox, OpenStreetMap

Videos from The Bible Project

Wikipedia - Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

Daniel B. Wallace: Matthew: Introduction, Argument and Outline, with the permission of bible.org

From the Creation to the Cross - a series from Bob Deffinbaugh, Tom Wright, Donald E. Curtis, Imanuel Christian, Jim Ellis, Gordon Graham and Hampton Keathley IV, with the permission of bible.org

Keith Krell: The Book of Beginnings: Genesis, with the permission of bible.org

Studies in the Gospel of Matthew - from Bob Deffinbaugh, Hugh T. Blevins Jr., Lenny Correll, Imanuel Christian, Colin McDougall, Steve Sanchez, Tom Wright and Janes Davis, with the permission of bible.org