About SumBible
What SumBible Is
SumBible is a reference site that offers two summaries for every chapter of scripture it covers: a short highlight that captures what the chapter is really doing, and a deeper summary that draws on the original languages, the structure of the text, and the places where translations and traditions read a passage differently. It covers the Protestant Bible — Old and New Testament — and the Latter-day Saint Standard Works: the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.
SumBible does not reproduce the text of scripture. Every chapter links out to canonical online editions so you can read the passage itself, in full, somewhere it is properly presented. What SumBible adds is commentary — and commentary is meant to be read alongside the text, not instead of it.
What You'll Find Here
Each chapter page carries a highlight summary and a longer deep summary. Where they earn their place, the deep summary uses three kinds of note:
- Inline language notes — a dotted-underlined word you can hover or tap to see the underlying Hebrew or Greek term, its script, and a short gloss.
- A "Language & Translation Notes" section — a collapsible block at the foot of the summary, for longer observations about structure, word study, and links to other passages.
- Translation Compare callouts — short panels that surface a specific verse where honest translations meaningfully diverge, and explain what is at stake in the difference.
Not every chapter needs all three. A chapter with no surviving original-language text, for instance, will not have inline language notes — and that is by design.
How These Summaries Are Written
This is the part to read carefully.
Summaries on SumBible are drafted with AI assistance — at present, with Claude, via Anthropic's Claude Code — and are then reviewed and edited by a human before they are marked as published.
The drafting process is held to a few firm rules. Every non-obvious claim must be traceable to a real, published source. Any claim about an original-language word requires consulting an actual lexicon or a set of translator's notes — not guesswork. And inventing word etymologies, cross-references, or scholarly attributions is treated as a serious failure, worse than simply leaving a claim out.
Even with those rules, AI-assisted drafts can be wrong. Any chapter still marked Draft — awaiting review has been drafted but not yet checked by a human, and should be read as work in progress. A chapter loses that badge only after review. The goal here is slow, careful, accurate enrichment of personal scripture study — not a fast or comprehensive replacement for it.
What SumBible Is Not
SumBible is not a substitute for reading scripture; it is a study aid meant to send you back to the text. It is not a denominational position paper — where traditions read a passage differently, the aim is to name the disagreement, not to settle it. And it is not a verse-by-verse commentary; the deep summaries are short essays about a chapter, not annotations of every line.
Sources & Methodology
Original-language claims lean on standard reference works — among them the Brown-Driver-Briggs and HALOT Hebrew lexicons, the BDAG Greek lexicon, Strong's, and the translators' notes of the NET Bible — together with peer-reviewed commentaries and reputable academic scholarship. For the Latter-day Saint Standard Works, SumBible also draws on the Church's own reference works, such as the Bible Dictionary and the Guide to the Scriptures, and on published Latter-day Saint scholarship. Each chapter lists the specific sources behind it in a "Sources" block at the foot of the page.
Contact & Feedback
SumBible will contain mistakes, especially while chapters are in draft. If you find an error — a misquoted verse, a questionable claim, a broken link — please open an issue on the project's GitHub repository. Corrections are genuinely welcome.