Bible Translations

A translation is one specific edition of the Bible. You address it with a translation identifier — the value every query's translation argument expects.

Identifier shape

Identifiers follow a <language>-<edition> pattern:

eng-web        World English Bible
eng-kjv        King James Version
spa-rv1909     Reina Valera 1909
spa-bes        La Biblia en Español Sencillo

The first three letters are the ISO 639-3 language code; the rest identifies the edition. Identifiers are stable and case-sensitive.

Do not try to construct one by guessing. Use translations to discover what exists.

Discovering what is available

GraphQL

query {
  translations {
    identifier
    name
    language
    note
  }
}

cURL

curl https://bibleql.org/graphql \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BIBLEQL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{"query":"query { translations { identifier name language note } }"}'

Ruby

require "bibleql"

client = BibleQL::Client.new(
  api_key: ENV.fetch("BIBLEQL_API_KEY"),
  api_url: "https://bibleql.org/graphql"
)

client.translations.each do |t|
  puts "#{t.identifier} — #{t.name} (#{t.note})"
end

Node.js

import { BibleQLClient } from "bibleql-js";

const client = new BibleQLClient({
  apiKey: process.env.BIBLEQL_API_KEY!,
  apiUrl: "https://bibleql.org/graphql",
});

const translations = await client.translations();

translations.forEach((t) => console.log(t.identifier, t.name, t.note));

Response

{
  "data": {
    "translations": [
      {
        "identifier": "bul-bulgarian",
        "name": "Bulgarian Bible",
        "language": "bul",
        "note": "Public Domain"
      },
      {
        "identifier": "chi-cuv",
        "name": "Chinese Union Version",
        "language": "chi",
        "note": "Public Domain"
      },
      {
        "identifier": "chi-cuv-simp",
        "name": "Chinese Union Version",
        "language": "chi",
        "note": "Public Domain"
      },
      // ... 44 more
    ]
  }
}

The note field carries the license, which matters — see below. hasStemming and concordanceIndexedAt tell you whether concordance will work for that translation.

For one translation with its full book and chapter structure:

GraphQL

query {
  translation(identifier: "eng-web") {
    identifier
    name
    language
    languageName
    abbrev
    note
  }
}

cURL

curl https://bibleql.org/graphql \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BIBLEQL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{"query":"query { translation(identifier: \"eng-web\") { identifier name language languageName abbrev note } }"}'

Ruby

require "bibleql"

client = BibleQL::Client.new(
  api_key: ENV.fetch("BIBLEQL_API_KEY"),
  api_url: "https://bibleql.org/graphql"
)

translation = client.translation("eng-web")

puts translation.name

Node.js

import { BibleQLClient } from "bibleql-js";

const client = new BibleQLClient({
  apiKey: process.env.BIBLEQL_API_KEY!,
  apiUrl: "https://bibleql.org/graphql",
});

const translation = await client.translation("eng-web");

console.log(translation.name);

Response

{
  "data": {
    "translation": {
      "identifier": "eng-web",
      "name": "World English Bible",
      "language": "eng",
      "languageName": "English",
      "abbrev": "WEB",
      "note": "Public Domain"
    }
  }
}

Language versus translation

These are different things and it is easy to conflate them:

Language: Spanish (spa)
  ├── spa-rv1909    Reina Valera 1909
  ├── spa-bes       La Biblia en Español Sencillo
  ├── spa-pddpt     Palabra de Dios para ti
  └── spa-vbl       Versión Biblia Libre

You pass a translation identifier to translation, never a bare language code. See Languages for querying by language.

The documentation locale you are reading is also unrelated: es is a documentation language, spa-rv1909 is a Bible translation.

Licensing

Check the license before redistributing text

Translations do not share one license. The note field on every translation tells you which one applies, and it is your responsibility to honour it.

Most of what BibleQL serves is public domain or openly licensed:

License	Meaning
Public Domain	No restrictions
CC BY 4.0	Attribution required
CC BY-SA 4.0	Attribution required, derivative works share the same license

Public domain examples include eng-web, eng-kjv, eng-asv and spa-rv1909. Openly licensed examples include spa-bes (CC BY 4.0) and spa-vbl (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Some translations in the underlying dataset are copyrighted, all rights reserved. Those are not part of the open corpus, and holding an API key does not grant you a license to them. If a translation's note is not a public domain or Creative Commons statement, assume you need permission from the rights holder before redistributing its text.

Displaying attribution is good practice regardless — translationName and translationNote come back on every passage response precisely so you can render a credit line.

Which translation should examples use?

If you are building something and need a safe default:

• English — eng-web (World English Bible, public domain, modern language)
• Spanish — spa-rv1909 (Reina Valera 1909, public domain, and the only translation with semantic search embeddings)

Feature support varies

Not every translation supports every query:

Feature	Requirement
passage, verse, chapter, search	All translations
concordance, concordanceIndex	Translation must be indexed — check concordanceIndexedAt
semanticSearch	Translation must have embeddings — currently spa-rv1909 only
Stemmed concordance matching	Check hasStemming

Each guide states its own requirement.