About Verbum
Last updated: 2026-08-10
Verbum reads the Bible and early Christian literature aloud
in the languages they were written in. The name comes from the Latin
Vulgate of John 1:1 โ In principio erat Verbum.
Each chapter is a video: the original text on screen, read in a reconstructed
pronunciation, with subtitles you can switch between the original, Chinese, English,
or all three at once. Everything is aligned verse by verse โ tap a verse
to jump to it, tap a word to see its gloss and morphology.
Four languages
| Language | Corpus |
|---|
| Biblical Hebrew | Hebrew Old Testament |
| Koine Greek | Greek New Testament, Septuagint, Greek Fathers |
| Latin | Vulgate, Latin Fathers |
| Ge'ez | Ethiopian Orthodox canon (including 1 Enoch and Jubilees) |
Titles name the corpus, not the language code: the Septuagint and the
Greek New Testament share the code grc, and Old Testament books exist in both
Hebrew and Septuagint Greek โ a distinction that matters to readers.
Where the voices come from
All four voices are speech-synthesis models we trained ourselves โ
no commercial text-to-speech product covers these languages. The training recordings come
from four readers, all licensed in writing:
Jesse Orloff (Greek); LibriVox "bedwere" (Latin, Public Domain Mark 1.0);
แแฃแฅ แคแต / eathebook.org (Ge'ez); Rabbi Dan Be'eri (Hebrew).
Pronunciation follows scholarly reconstructions โ Classical/early Koine for Greek,
Ecclesiastical for Latin, the Tiberian tradition for Hebrew, and Ethiopian Orthodox
chanting practice for Ge'ez. Specialists still differ on the details; our choices are
not the only defensible ones.
Where the text comes from
- Original languages: public-domain critical editions
- Chinese: Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation (public domain)
- English: World English Bible (public domain)
- Imagery: public-domain artworks matched to each verse; where no suitable
painting exists, a calligraphy background we produce ourselves, styled after a manuscript page
More than video: a full toolkit for reading the originals
Video is produced one chapter at a time, but the text, the verse alignment and
the lexicon apply to the entire corpus โ 566 books, 11,624 chapters,
608,462 verses. Three things are open to all of it, whether or not a video exists yet:
- Read the text โ the original of any chapter with Chinese and
English alongside, and a gloss on every word: lemma, morphology, meaning.
Where a reading exists, the page links to it.
- Full-text search โ in the original, in Chinese or in English.
Greek and Hebrew queries need no accents or vowel points, and any word can be
searched by lemma, listing every inflected occurrence (ฮปฯฮณแฟณ, ฮปฯฮณฮฟฮฝ โฆ).
- Parallel columns โ the same chapter in Hebrew, Septuagint Greek, the Vulgate and
Ge'ez side by side (e.g. Jonah 1). Where the versification differs,
cells are left blank rather than forced into line.
Lexicon coverage, measured in August 2026: Greek New Testament 99.5%,
Hebrew Old Testament 97.9%, Latin Vulgate 96.1%, Septuagint 93.1%,
Apocrypha 87.0%, Latin Fathers 83.9%, Ge'ez Bible 81.5%,
Greek Fathers 78.3%. Words that are not found say so; nothing is guessed from a
near match. Latin morphology comes from William Whitaker's WORDS (public domain).
Frequently asked questions
- What is Verbum?
- A free, ad-free site with no accounts, where the Bible and early Christian literature
are read aloud in the languages they were written in โ and where the full text of
those originals can be read, searched and parsed word by word. Four languages: Biblical
Hebrew, Koine Greek, Latin and Ge'ez; 566 books, 11,624 chapters, 608,462 verses.
- Are the voices human or synthetic?
- Synthetic. All four are speech models we trained ourselves โ no commercial
text-to-speech product covers these languages. The training recordings come from four
readers, all licensed in writing. Synthetic speech can misplace stress or mispronounce
rare words.
- Which pronunciation is used?
- Scholarly reconstructions: Classical / early Koine for Greek, Ecclesiastical for
Latin, the Tiberian tradition for Hebrew, and Ethiopian Orthodox practice for Ge'ez.
Specialists differ on the details; our choices are not the only defensible ones.
- Which translations are the subtitles?
- Chinese: Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation. English:
World English Bible. Both are public domain. For books outside the 66-book canon
(such as 1 Enoch) no public-domain Chinese translation exists, so the Chinese is machine
translation by this site, not reviewed by a professional translator; the English is
R. H. Charles (1917).
- How much of the text does the lexicon actually cover?
- Measured in August 2026: Greek New Testament 99.5%, Hebrew Old Testament 97.9%,
Latin Vulgate 96.1%, Septuagint 93.1%, Apocrypha 87.0%, Latin Fathers 83.9%,
Ge'ez Bible 81.5%, Greek Fathers 78.3%. Words that are not found say so โ
nothing is guessed from a near match.
- May I use this in a church, a classroom, or my own work?
- Yes. Free to watch, share and play publicly. Credit Verbum if you redistribute the
video files; ask first about commercial resale. See the Terms.
- Do you track me?
- No. No tracking cookies, no third-party advertising or analytics, and
no raw IP addresses are stored โ only a two-letter country code and anonymous
view counts. See the Privacy Policy.
Sources and acknowledgements
This site is built on these open resources:
How you may use it
Verbum is free, ad-free and requires no account. It sets no tracking
cookies and stores no raw IP addresses. You are welcome to use it for personal study,
teaching, sermon preparation and research, and to play it publicly in churches, classrooms
and study groups. See the Terms and Privacy Policy.
Where to find it
- This site โ video, verse navigation and click-to-parse lexicon
- Read the text and search โ all 566 books, not just
those with video
- YouTube channel โ
with trilingual subtitles burned in
- Podcast / RSS: feed.xml (audio only)
Contact
This is a personal project. Corrections, requests for particular books, and licensing
enquiries are all welcome at
u97001062@gmail.com.