What is rendered, what is data, and what is only cited.
VerseStudy does not treat every source the same way. Scripture may be rendered from a licence-confirmed edition, some datasets supply study or relationship records, and some copyrighted works are used only as traceable citations or links. The list below states those boundaries instead of implying that every source is self-hosted, version-pinned, or freely reusable in the same way.
World English Bible Classic
Use mode: Rendered Scripture. Used for: Primary English Scripture source. Phase 6.8 preserves the exact official eBible USFM artifact and a verified Protestant 66-book normalization; the Phase 7 John snapshot and public John reader are derived from that pinned source.
Licence/status: Public domain.
Attribution: World English Bible Classic (WEB), public domain.
Version/provenance note: Official eBible WEB Classic source dated 2026-08-26.
Pinned artifact eng-web_usfm.zip: 3,244,005 bytes; SHA-256 2403c879aa6b0c9e5e43a4db6f604f7dd1a1f8f32b959c08c8a1fc32c4833e00. The repo-owned John projection contains 21 chapters / 879 present verses with per-verse and per-chapter SHA-256 checksums. eBible states that the text is public domain while the name ‘World English Bible’ is a trademark used to identify faithful copies. Phase 7 reconciled the earlier 12 John 3 pilot differences by making the pinned 2026-08-26 source canonical; the historical difference report remains documented for auditability.
STEPBible Data
Use mode: Study-data source. Used for: Greek lemma, transliteration, gloss, sense range, and lexical locator data in the existing John 3 study dataset.
Licence/status: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
Attribution: STEP Bible / STEPBible.org data, created initially by Tyndale House Cambridge and now curated by STEPBible.org, CC BY 4.0.
Version/provenance note: Rolling repository; the pilot snapshot is not pinned to a commit.
Because the current pilot snapshot is not commit-pinned, first-launch gold copy does not treat unresolved lexical detail from this rolling dataset as a launch-critical factual claim.
MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets
Use mode: Study-data cross-check. Used for: Greek linguistic and morphology cross-checks where recorded in the existing study data.
Licence/status: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
Attribution: MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets, available at https://github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-greek/.
Version/provenance note: Rolling repository; the pilot snapshot is not pinned to a commit.
The repository licence requires attribution and also notes that some incorporated datasets carry their own source/licence conditions. VerseStudy does not use this rolling snapshot to smuggle unsupported lexical claims into first-launch gold copy.
OpenBible.info Bible Cross References
Use mode: Relationship data. Used for: Verse-to-verse relationship data only; no ESV quotation text is reproduced.
Licence/status: Creative Commons Attribution.
Attribution: Cross-reference relationship data from OpenBible.info, used under CC Attribution.
Version/provenance note: Rolling dataset; the pilot snapshot is not pinned to a dated download or checksum.
OpenBible.info states that its cross-reference page content is CC Attribution unless otherwise indicated and separately identifies ESV Scripture quotations as copyrighted. VerseStudy uses the relationship data only and does not reproduce ESV quotation text from that source.
Berean Standard Bible
Use mode: Checked comparison text. Used for: A checked comparison text for John 3:16 only.
Licence/status: Public domain.
Version/provenance note: Repository snapshot is not independently version-pinned.
The publisher records the Berean Bible texts as officially placed into the public domain on 30 April 2023. The current repository comparison record is deliberately disclosed as not independently version-pinned.
Who Says That God Loves the World?
Use mode: Citation / link only. Used for: Evidence that attribution questions in John 3 remain disputed in scholarship and reception history; the work is cited, not reproduced as VerseStudy publisher content.
Licence/status: Copyrighted scholarly work; citation and link only.
Attribution: Stuart Benjamin Langley, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Version/provenance note: Doctoral dissertation, 2020.
NET Bible textual-critical note on John 7:53–8:11
Use mode: Citation / link only. Used for: Text-critical evidence for the manuscript history adjacent to John 8:12. Citation/link only: VerseStudy cites the note and paraphrases the high-level manuscript fact; it does not reproduce the note as publisher content.
Licence/status: Copyrighted study note; citation and link only.
Version/provenance note: NET Bible classic textual note, accessed 2026-09-08.
The note documents omission of John 7:53–8:11 in many early witnesses and variant placement in some later witnesses. Used only to support a qualified textual-history disclosure, not to replace Scripture text or settle every authenticity argument.
What “source-backed” means here
A source record can support a factual or textual claim without becoming VerseStudy publisher content. Citation-only sources such as the NET textual-critical note and the John 3 speaker-attribution study are linked and paraphrased at a high level where needed; their copyrighted prose is not copied into the site as if it were VerseStudy text.
Likewise, OpenBible.info is used for verse-to-verse relationship data. Its page separately identifies ESV Scripture quotations as copyrighted; VerseStudy does not reproduce those ESV quotations from the relationship dataset.
Versioning limitations are not hidden
The WEB Classic Scripture source is pinned to the verified 2026-08-26 artifact used by the John projection. Some legacy John 3 study datasets — including STEP, MACULA, OpenBible, and BSB comparison records — are not independently pinned to a source commit or dated checksum. They remain labelled as study data with that limitation. First-launch chapter copy does not rely on an unresolved lexical or historical claim merely because one of those rolling records exists.
Translations not rendered by default
VerseStudy does not assume that a familiar Bible translation is reusable merely because it is available online. A translation only enters rendered comparison text after its repository licence policy permits it. Copyrighted translation text is not silently copied into the public surface.
For the rules that separate Scripture, context, interpretation, review, and indexing, see Methodology. For publication neutrality and correction rules, see Editorial policy.