The Wired Christian

Try this: go to Google and try searching for “scripture” or “bible” or “bible verse”. What is the first listing that you see? That’s right, BibleGateway.com is the top dog. Not only because they have great SEO (search engine optimization), but because the site is a great research tool. The title says it all, “A searchable online Bible in over 50 versions and 35 languages.”

Research

There are three different ways you have to lookup scripture on BibleGateway: 1) by passage 2) by keyword and 3) by topic. Passage is just what it sounds like. You enter the book, chapter and verse or appropriate ranges and you get back what you asked for. The keyword is more of search based of a word or multiple words and/or phrases that you are looking for within the scripture. Then the topical search does a keyword search through either Nave’s Topical Bible or Torrey’s New Topical Textbook. These three methods in addition to the many different translations and languages gives you an extremely wide variety of ways to look at God’s word.

Under the Additional Resources heading there are also listed Audio Bibles, Commentaries, eBooks, Dictionaries, Study Tools and Reading Plans.

Web Authors

Web authors and bloggers also have tools at there disposal to integrate scripture into their sites now! BibleGateway gives you several options to use under the Use On Your Website header. There are instructions for linking to BibleGateway when quoting scripture so that when a reference is made someone could click on the link and read further into the passage if they wanted to. You can also add a BibleGateway search form on your website. They also provide a Verse of the Day in several delivery options including a plain HTML code method, an RSS feed, a Web Service call or an embedded Flash object.

Conclusion

BibleGateway has been around since 1995 (and the site design shows it). Sorry. It’s not a Web 2.0 site. It’s not flashy. It’s not glamorous. What it is… God’s word delivered in a very easy to retrieve manner. So go on over and get your verse on!

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