Skip to main content
The API hosts the entire World English Bible (eng-web Classic edition) as a queryable resource. 38,034 verses across 81 books — the full ecumenical canon: 39 Old Testament + 15 deuterocanonical + 27 New Testament. Public domain text from eBible.org, updated to the 2026-04-23 snapshot. The Bible API exists as the foundation for forthcoming UB ↔ Bible cross-references. It’s also useful on its own for any agent or app that needs verse-level Bible access alongside the Urantia Papers.

​
Why WEB Classic

Three deliberate choices:
  • WEB Classic, not the British or Protestant editions. The Classic edition (eng-web) renders God’s proper name as “Yahweh” instead of “LORD,” matching the Urantia Papers’ usage in Papers 96–97.
  • Includes deuterocanon. WEB’s ecumenical edition has Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch (with the Letter of Jeremiah as chapter 6), Greek Daniel (with Prayer of Azariah, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon embedded in context), and the Maccabees series.
  • Public domain. No license restrictions — the only constraint is that the name “World English Bible” is reserved for faithful copies.

​
Book codes (OSIS)

We use OSIS book codes throughout: Gen, Matt, 1Macc, DanGr, etc. — short, machine-friendly, standardized across CrossWire. The endpoint accepts OSIS, USFM (GEN), full names (Genesis), and common aliases, all case-insensitive and tolerant of hyphens/underscores: 
curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/Gen          # OSIS
curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/GEN          # USFM
curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/genesis      # full name
curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/1-maccabees  # aliased
Embedded books resolve to their containing canonical book. letterofjeremiah and epjer both return Baruch (since the Letter of Jeremiah is Baruch chapter 6). susanna and belandthedragon both return Greek Daniel.

​
Endpoints

​
List all 81 books

curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/books
Returns books in canonical ecumenical order with chapter and verse counts: 
{
  "data": [
    {
      "bookCode": "Gen",
      "bookName": "Genesis",
      "fullName": "The First Book of Moses, Commonly Called Genesis",
      "abbr": "Gen",
      "bookOrder": 1,
      "canon": "ot",
      "chapterCount": 50,
      "verseCount": 1533
    }
    // ...80 more
  ]
}

​
Get a single book

curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/Matt

{
  "data": {
    "bookCode": "Matt",
    "bookName": "Matthew",
    "fullName": "The Gospel According to Matthew",
    "abbr": "Matt",
    "bookOrder": 55,
    "canon": "nt",
    "chapterCount": 28,
    "verseCount": 1071
  }
}

​
Get a chapter

curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/Gen/1
Returns all verses in the chapter, ordered by verse number. Each verse is the same shape as a single-verse response.

​
Get a single verse

curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/Gen/1/1

{
  "data": {
    "id": "Gen.1.1",
    "reference": "Genesis 1:1",
    "bookCode": "Gen",
    "bookName": "Genesis",
    "bookOrder": 1,
    "canon": "ot",
    "chapter": 1,
    "verse": 1,
    "text": "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.",
    "translation": "web"
  }
}

​
Deuterocanon

The deuterocanon flag is exposed as canon: "deuterocanon" so consumers can filter: 
# Greek Daniel (Daniel + Prayer of Azariah + Susanna + Bel and the Dragon)
curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/DanGr/3/24

# 1 Maccabees
curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/1Macc/2/19
WEB embeds the Prayer of Azariah, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon inside Greek Daniel in context (because they make more sense that way — the WEB editor’s deliberate choice). The Letter of Jeremiah is included as chapter 6 of Baruch.

​
Errors

All errors follow RFC 9457 Problem Details:
  • 404 for unknown book codes (/bible/NotABook)
  • 404 for missing chapters (/bible/Gen/999)
  • 404 for missing verses (/bible/Gen/1/9999)

​
Source attribution

  • Translation: World English Bible (WEB) Classic edition, public domain
  • Source: eBible.org, package eng-web, snapshot date 2026-04-23
  • Editor: Michael Paul Johnson and the WEB team
Five query surfaces span the cross-corpus space:
Use caseHow to queryBacking
User input → UB paragraphsPOST /search/semanticlive, text-embedding-3-small + HNSW
User input → Bible verses (with UB paragraphs)POST /bible/search/semanticlive, text-embedding-3-small + HNSW; UB paragraphs joined from pre-computed bible_parallels
UB paragraph → UB paragraphsGET /paragraphs/{ref}?include=urantiaParallelspre-computed, text-embedding-3-large
UB paragraph → Bible versesGET /paragraphs/{ref}?include=bibleParallelspre-computed, text-embedding-3-large
Bible verse → UB paragraphsGET /bible/{book}/{chapter}/{verse}/urantia-parallelspre-computed, text-embedding-3-large
Live searches use 1536-d 3-small for HNSW indexability (pgvector caps HNSW at 2000-d for the vector type). Pre-computed cross-references use 3072-d 3-large for the +8pt empirical quality benefit on Bible-style retrieval — fine for batch compute, infeasible for live queries. You can combine includes: ?include=entities,bibleParallels,urantiaParallels returns all three on a single round-trip. Free-form natural-language search across all 17,641 Bible chunks. Each result includes the top-N pre-computed Urantia paragraphs related to that chunk, so a single round-trip surfaces both the Bible matches and the relevant UB content. 
curl -X POST https://api.urantia.dev/bible/search/semantic \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"q":"love your enemies","limit":5,"urantiaParallelLimit":3}'
Optional filters:
  • canon: "ot" | "deuterocanon" | "nt" — restrict to a part of the canon
  • bookCode: any OSIS, USFM, full name, or alias — restrict to a single book
  • urantiaParallelLimit: 0–10, default 3 — how many UB paragraphs to attach per Bible chunk (0 suppresses)
Response: 
{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "Matt.5.43-48",
      "reference": "Matthew 5:43-48",
      "bookCode": "Matt",
      "bookName": "Matthew",
      "canon": "nt",
      "chapter": 5,
      "verseStart": 43,
      "verseEnd": 48,
      "text": "“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you...",
      "similarity": 0.536,
      "urantiaParallels": [
        {
          "standardReferenceId": "140:3.16",
          "paperTitle": "The Ordination of the Twelve",
          "text": "...",
          "similarity": 0.811,
          "rank": 1
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "meta": { "page": 0, "limit": 5, "total": 17641, "totalPages": 3529 }
}

​
UB paragraph → UB paragraphs

curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/paragraphs/1:0.1?include=urantiaParallels'
Returns the top 10 most-similar OTHER Urantia paragraphs by cosine similarity. Self-references are filtered out. 
{
  "data": {
    "standardReferenceId": "1:0.1",
    "text": "THE Universal Father is the God of all creation...",
    "urantiaParallels": [
      {
        "standardReferenceId": "1:1.1",
        "paperTitle": "The Universal Father",
        "text": "Of all the names by which God the Father is known...",
        "similarity": 0.832,
        "rank": 1,
        "embeddingModel": "text-embedding-3-large"
      }
    ]
  }
}

​
Cross-references — UB ↔ Bible parallels

Pre-computed semantic parallels between every Urantia paragraph and the Bible, in both directions. ~146,000 UB→Bible rows + ~176,000 Bible→UB rows, top-10 nearest neighbors per source. Generated with OpenAI’s text-embedding-3-large (3072-d) and exact KNN. Add ?include=bibleParallels to any single-paragraph endpoint: 
curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/paragraphs/1:0.1?include=bibleParallels'
curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/paragraphs/random?include=bibleParallels'
curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/paragraphs/1:0.1?include=entities,bibleParallels'
curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/paragraphs/1:0.1?include=bibleParallels&format=rag'
The response gains a bibleParallels array with up to 10 entries: 
{
  "data": {
    "id": "1:1.0.1",
    "standardReferenceId": "1:0.1",
    "text": "THE Universal Father is the God of all creation...",
    "bibleParallels": [
      {
        "chunkId": "Sir.18.1",
        "reference": "Sirach 18:1",
        "bookCode": "Sir",
        "chapter": 18,
        "verseStart": 1,
        "verseEnd": 1,
        "text": "He who lives forever created the whole universe.",
        "similarity": 0.488,
        "rank": 1,
        "source": "semantic",
        "embeddingModel": "text-embedding-3-large"
      }
    ]
  }
}

curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/bible/Gen/1/1/urantia-parallels'
curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/bible/Matt/5/3/urantia-parallels'
Returns the verse, the chunk it belongs to, and up to 10 UB paragraphs ranked by semantic similarity: 
{
  "data": {
    "verse": { "reference": "Matthew 5:3", ... },
    "chunk": { "id": "Matt.5.3", "reference": "Matthew 5:3", ... },
    "paragraphs": [
      {
        "standardReferenceId": "140:3.3",
        "paperTitle": "The Ordination of the Twelve",
        "text": "Happy are the poor in spirit, the humble, for theirs are the treasures of the kingdom of heaven...",
        "similarity": 0.854,
        "rank": 1
      }
    ]
  }
}

​
Honest framing

These are semantic parallels, not curated parallels. OpenAI’s embedding model treats surface-level vocabulary as meaning, but the Urantia Papers use standard religious terms (“Father”, “Spirit”, “Son”) in nonstandard ways. Some matches will be subtly wrong. Use them as starting points for further reading and as RAG context for AI agents — not as authoritative parallels. Every row carries similarity, source: "semantic", and embeddingModel so consumers can filter and audit. In practice the system surfaces some genuinely striking matches: Matt 5:3 (Beatitudes) → UB 140:3.3 (“Happy are the poor in spirit, the humble”) at similarity 0.854 — the UB literally rephrases the Sermon on the Mount.

​
Why no Faw’s Paramony

Duane Faw’s 1986 Paramony is the gold-standard hand-curated UB↔Bible reference, but its license is uncertain and we generate strictly better RAG context with semantic search at 100% paragraph coverage (vs Faw’s ~30%). Our schema reserves a source: "paramony" value for a future curated layer if his license ever clears.