# A Biblical Model for Licensing The Bible
“...freely you have received; freely give.” - Mathew 10:8
Christians believe that Jesus’ words are the very words of God and were freely given to mankind at great cost to Jesus himself who left behind every comfort to take on human flesh and share in our suffering.
Likewise, far be it from us to create any paywalls or other barriers that hinder others from creating experiences that glorify the word of God.
In our search to find a partner who was willing to share a full, quality English translation of the Bible with the world free of charge and without usage restrictions via an API we could tragically only find a single partner who was willing and able. We are tremendously grateful beyond words to the Berean Bible team (opens new window) that has made this API possible.
The creation of the Berean Bible was born out of necessity as the leadership had provided BibleHub (opens new window) as a service to the general public and had years first-hand experience of licensors providing then revoking licenses upon updates, term limits running out, and many other related issues. At long last the BibleHub team decided to create their own translation to ensure an English translation could freely be used by the world without publisher or licensor restrictions.
If you have or know of any other translations of the Bible that are likewise willing to make texts available free of charge and without usage restrictions please contact us at hello@helloao.org
Lastly, we pray every copyright holder or publisher of Biblical texts that restricts their usage via a license seriously and carefully considers what Jesus might say to them upon His return.
Thank you!
-The AO Lab Team
# Your License to this API
This API, and the source code behind it (opens new window), is freely available for you to use under the MIT license, a copy of which has been included below for your benefit.
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2022 AO Lab
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
# Your License to the BSB Text
The Berean Bible and Majority Bible texts are officially dedicated to the public domain (opens new window) as of April 30, 2023.
All uses are freely permitted.
# Attribution Notice (appreciated but not required):
The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible, BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub (opens new window), Discovery Bible (opens new window), OpenBible.com (opens new window), and the Berean Bible Translation Committee. This text of God's Word has been dedicated to the public domain (opens new window).
# About Us
AO Lab (opens new window) is a non-profit company dedicated to loving and living out the Word of God. The goal of this project is to make the Bible freely available to anyone who should need it in a format that is optimized for use by applications.
We are excited to partner with the BSB team (opens new window). Without their help and support, this API would not be available.
If you’d like to learn more about the BSB please click here (opens new window).