> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://urantia.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Bible API - World English Bible (eng-web) > Query the entire World English Bible (eng-web) including deuterocanon. 38,034 verses across 81 books, public domain, OSIS book codes, forgiving alias resolution. 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](https://ebible.org/Scriptures/eng-web_usfm.zip), 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: ```bash theme={null} 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 ```bash theme={null} curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/books ``` Returns books in canonical ecumenical order with chapter and verse counts: ```json theme={null} { "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 ```bash theme={null} curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/Matt ``` ```json theme={null} { "data": { "bookCode": "Matt", "bookName": "Matthew", "fullName": "The Gospel According to Matthew", "abbr": "Matt", "bookOrder": 55, "canon": "nt", "chapterCount": 28, "verseCount": 1071 } } ``` ### Get a chapter ```bash theme={null} 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 ```bash theme={null} curl https://api.urantia.dev/bible/Gen/1/1 ``` ```json theme={null} { "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: ```bash theme={null} # 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](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9457.html) 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](https://ebible.org/), package `eng-web`, snapshot date 2026-04-23 * **Editor:** Michael Paul Johnson and the WEB team ## Cross-references and search Five query surfaces span the cross-corpus space: | Use case | How to query | Backing | | -------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | User input → UB paragraphs | `POST /search/semantic` | live, `text-embedding-3-small` + HNSW | | **User input → Bible verses (with UB paragraphs)** | `POST /bible/search/semantic` | live, `text-embedding-3-small` + HNSW; UB paragraphs joined from pre-computed `bible_parallels` | | **UB paragraph → UB paragraphs** | `GET /paragraphs/{ref}?include=urantiaParallels` | pre-computed, `text-embedding-3-large` | | **UB paragraph → Bible verses** | `GET /paragraphs/{ref}?include=bibleParallels` | pre-computed, `text-embedding-3-large` | | **Bible verse → UB paragraphs** | `GET /bible/{book}/{chapter}/{verse}/urantia-parallels` | pre-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. ### Bible semantic search 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. ```bash theme={null} 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: ```json theme={null} { "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 ```bash theme={null} 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. ```json theme={null} { "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. ### Get the Bible verses related to a UB paragraph Add `?include=bibleParallels` to any single-paragraph endpoint: ```bash theme={null} 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: ```json theme={null} { "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" } ] } } ``` ### Get the UB paragraphs related to a Bible verse (reverse query) ```bash theme={null} 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: ```json theme={null} { "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.