BLB Investigation & Decision
Source: BLB Infrastructure Investigation (March 2026)
Background
Blue Letter Bible (blueletterbible.org) was investigated as a potential primary data source due to its comprehensive scripture study platform: 26+ Bible translations, full OT/NT interlinear with Strong's numbers and morphology, 50+ commentary authors, 10 dictionaries/encyclopedias, ~14,300 Strong's lexicon entries, and cross-references for all 31,102 Bible verses.
Decision: DO NOT SCRAPE
BLB explicitly prohibits all scraping on their Permissions page:
"Blue Letter Bible does not give permission to scrape any content from BLB's websites... There are sites that have public domain content available for full download, please use those sites. Scraping data from our site may lead to a user being blocked from our site."
Key Factors
| Factor | Detail |
|---|---|
| Explicit policy | Permissions page prohibits all scraping, including public-domain content |
| No public API | Entire site is ColdFusion server-rendered HTML (.cfm) — no JSON/REST/GraphQL endpoints |
| Legal risk | Even public-domain texts (KJV, Strong's) are prohibited from scraping; commentary content is separately copyrighted per author |
| Technical barrier | ~77,000+ pages at polite crawl rates = ~64 hours of scraping time |
Scope Reference
The following table summarizes BLB's data inventory — framed as the scope of content we need to replicate from open-source alternatives:
| Content Type | BLB Coverage | Open-Source Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Bible translations | 26+ (11 public domain, 13+ copyrighted) | scrollmapper (140), ebible.org (1,000+) |
| Interlinear Hebrew/Greek | Full OT (WLC) + NT (TR/mGNT) with Strong's + morphology | STEPBible TAHOT/TAGNT, morphhb, MorphGNT |
| Strong's Lexicon | H1–H8674, G1–G5624+ with BDB/Thayer's | STEPBible TBESH/TBESG/TFLSJ, OpenScriptures |
| Cross-references | TSK-based, all verses | scrollmapper (~340K entries) |
| Commentaries | 50+ authors (most copyrighted) | Public-domain subset from CCEL/Gutenberg |
| Dictionaries | 10 reference works (7 public domain) | scrollmapper, various SWORD modules |
Conclusion
All critical BLB data has open-source equivalents with permissive licenses. The open-source-first approach provides equivalent or superior coverage without legal risk. BLB remains a useful reference for validating data completeness but must not be used as a data source.