In terms of impacting people's lives for good, I definitely feel like religions are at their best when they are inspiratory, and at their worst when they try to impose authority.
One illustration is that of a traveler. If someone was traveling to another country with a drastically different culture than their own, they would be expected to make the effort to learn the customs and differences in that culture before they went. This would help them understand and experience things in a whole new way, gaining a broader perspective of the world than just their own ways of thinking. Essentially, taking the time to understand this other culture will be the difference between a "good" vs "bad" travel experience for them.
I believe it's similar with reading and trying to understand ancient texts. It's the difference between learning something new that can grow your perspective on the world, versus reading your own perspective into the text and simply reinforcing the ideas you already had.
But then why would you need the source material at all? You can just come to conclusions about things without relying on any source text, if grounding interpretation in the source text is not critical.
In that case, literature (and criticism in general) become about the cleverness of the interpreter rather than anything about the art itself: the effect is to first devalue the art, then to devalue the study of art. To the extent that appreciating and studying art is useful to a society, ultimately this diminishes the culture. This is more or less what we've seen happen in the post-Deconstruction era.
I totally understand that many would argue against that but if you are trying to understand the motivations for understanding the authors intent this explains why some do it.
I think this is the misunderstanding. The Christian position is that God is infallible, therefore the Bible is infallible, since God is its ultimate author.
Since that's the case, we want to understand it as well as we can. Any position I hold that contradicts Scripture is by definition wrong, therefore I want my views to match what is taught in Scripture exactly. I'll never get there perfectly because I'm a fallible sinner, but the closer the better.
That is a Christian position, but I don't believe it's the only one, especially outside the US. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_infallibility for discussion.
We should be discussing that part of it, IMO.
Surely the intent of the author when they were writing the piece, and the piece itself are both worth considering when analyzing the text?
I think reducing the consideration of the author's intention is tempting, but in fact it is a mistake to forget the human (or supernatural, for religious texts) element. This type of information is inherently relevant to understanding most any conclusions based on the work.
I need to pay more attention to a meeting, but your response is genuinely appreciated. I'll note that I agree with you on works of fiction, but what about religious texts (which claim to be pure/divine) or non-fiction (which usually claims to represent the truth).
The necessity of interpretation to understand written texts is what led to the Protestant Reformation. Later, Francis Bacon applied interpretation beyond religious texts to the "Book of Nature", which was the precursor to the Scientific Revolution. The cognitive effect of written language is fascinating and completely frames modern ways of thinking. If you find this interesting, check out The World on Paper by David Olson.
The best example of this is probably the kosher rules in the Old Testament that banned shellfish. Those rules might have made a lot of sense back when they were first written (back when seafood was very risky due to poor refrigeration), but are probably not very useful now. The issue is that because the Bible doesn't explain that reasoning, it's not possible to easily update those rules to adapt to modern food safety techniques.
Something people get out of religion is that not everything can be understood. I believe this to be intellectually true - whether because creation cannot understand the more complex creator, or because we simply evolved to understand what we need to survive but there's no reason to think we can see objective truth (see Kant's Critique of Pure reason)
Religion embodies this humility (recognition that I can't understand it all) To use your example, we follow kosher laws not because they make sense to us but because they are commandments of a higher power which we are too humble to know better than. The fact that some of these commandments also "make practical sense" almost undermines that point. Ie - just because pork is now USDA-inspected doesn't empower is to decide "oh we know better than G-d"
I have grown from an atheist to someone who tried to embody the above, but it works even if you treat it as a pure metaphor for recognizing that some things are beyond us.
How could you even begin to understand the text without knowing what they meant? Surely not by free association! Recall those ancient epics you've likely read in school. What were they? Translations. Someone rendered the original text into your language for you. To do that, they had to first understand the original text. To do that requires understanding the language(s) of the original text. To understand the language(s) of the original text, you need an adequate familiarity of the culture at the time. This is extraordinarily difficult to accomplish competently because of the breadth and depth of background knowledge required. It is incidentally why there are multiple competing translations of ancient texts (it is said that translations aren't truly possible).
Now consider again the knowledge you need to interpret text in its historical context. If you've just unearthed some text from an ancient civilization no one knows much of anything about, this is going to be damn near impossible and full of speculation even when you manage to produce a plausible translation. There's also the question of the status of the text: what is it supposed to be? In the case of the Bible, you need the continuous Tradition through which to interpret it. You need to interpret it synoptically or run the risk of making ad hoc judgements unhedged by other parts. (This is why Sola Scriptura fails; not only is it self-refuting, as in, nowhere in the Bible is this principle declared, not that this would lend any credence to the claim, but you lack the interpretive apparatus to interpret the text in the first place, leading to all sorts of weird claims and inferences. Not only that, but the Bible itself was compiled in the fourth century in light of this Tradition. How else would you establish the canon if not by drawing on the Tradition?)
> They're fallible like everyone else, and therefore might be wrong.
Yeah? Check out the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. The Catholic Church states that Holy Scripture is free from error[0]. So your view is not universally shared.
> In terms of impacting people's lives for good, I definitely feel like religions are at their best when they are inspiratory
What is your view of religion, of Christianity? Its purpose? What is this "inspiration" and what is it for? What does it inspire? If your answer is "to become a better person" or something of that sort, then we must ask: how so? Either some truth is being communicated which makes you better by virtue of knowing it as well as the change it effects in you, or whatever is being said is fraudulent and useless and ought to be discarded (put aside partial truths for the moment). And because Christianity concerns the ultimate things, it means that all of your life is oriented by it, and it means that it must help you with respect to your ultimate end, something you can fail at attaining.
As I have written elsewhere, everyone has a religion, so the question is "is it any good?", which is to say "is it true?", and not "do you live by one?". Man cannot do without religion because he cannot live without an orientation or a direction in life, he cannot live without an Ultimate, so much so that he will fill that void with all sorts of garbage. He needs to know at least the necessary part of the big picture and a way of living in accordance with it. You may find bits of pieces of truth scattered among the religions, valuable insofar as they contain the truth especially about ultimate things, but Man does not subsist on religious dabbling. And here the Catholic Church asserts clearly its claim to the fullness of truth.
> and at their worst when they try to impose authority.
This seems to misunderstand the purpose of authority. The purpose of authority is to safeguard teachings from corruption and manipulation and make them available over the centuries so you don't end up with a proliferation of confusion and error. Don't let the centuries of caricatures of the Big Ol' Mean Church fool you!
[0] https://www.catholicherald.com/faith/what_is_biblical_inerra...
https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/if-christians-read...
Written by Resident Contrarian (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=residentcontrarian.su...)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
For example, the pro-LGBT and anti-LGBT churches have drastically different views of many verses.
-1 Corinthians 1:10 (ESV)
“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.”
-Romans 16:17 (ESV)
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
-Galatians 1:6-10 (ESV)
Paul was writing each letter to different churches based on things he knew were happening at that particular church.
A verse without context is popular but has very little meaning.
You need look no further than Philippians 4:13, in which Paul is talking about being able to be content in prison. Context matters.
But seriously, it really is a mix. A church can most certainly shape its members beliefs, but many people will also leave a church over issues like these.
One idea I have is to use a ML recommendation model that would use theological preferences as inputs. The trick would be how to personalize that model for a given user before knowing what content they want or would be put off by. Perhaps that could be part of the onboarding process though.
Please don't.
If I want machine learning based AI augmented recommendations, that's literally the entire internet at this point outside a few niche circles.
A Bible app does not need to go down that path.
Do you see your app as being useful to people researching more philosophical aspects of the Bible? (For instance: I'm atheist to the core, but I'm curious about the impact Stoicism had on the Bible.)
This is a very loosely held opinion, though I'm not willing to go back and forth on it, and I doubt my flag will change anything one way or another.
From an HN moderation point of view, religious tolerance follows from the value of intellectual curiosity, which is what we're optimizing for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Not all religious posts are on topic, of course (most aren't), but they are when there's overlap with intellectual curiosity, the same as with other divisive themes (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), and when that's the case, tolerance is paramount.
Religious tolerance has been a prime principle of intellectual culture for many centuries. If you zoom out to a historical perspective, it's clear that it's in all our interests to practice it, regardless of what our religious or irreligious views may be. We don't have to hold the same views to respect each other, and the art of interesting discourse with people who hold different views is something we should all cultivate, assuming that we have the intellectual curiosity that the HN guidelines speak of.
From a different angle: the problem with mobile apps as Show HNs is that they're not easy to try out (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) without going through the rigamarole of installing them. But that's a problem with the entire category, and as long as we haven't disallowed them (which we're not going to), this submission seems as valid as any other.
Please consider that there are varying perspectives on HN beyond your own and that sharing an app which allows people to study the Bible isn't forcing a worldview on anyone.
Even if I don't like the product, it's certainly worth a discussion at least.
The problem is, unless I'm misunderstanding something about HN, they can not vouch until the submission is already dead.
You're not out of bounds to suppose this will have some bad comments, but I do think it's presumptuous to bet there will be no interesting discussion. There in fact has already been both - a lot of interesting discussion, and a little bit of bad comments. I encourage you to flag bad comments while they are still the minority, and only resort to flagging the submission if they take over, since, again, nobody can vouch for the submission until it's dead, at which point there will be fewer people to vouch for it, as it will be hidden.
Edit: Actually, maybe vouch is only for comments, and not for submissions? I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I think my suggestion still makes sense.
One big thing that I noticed that would keep me from switching from my current Bible app, KJV Bible Lite, is that there's no offline mode. I can't load any chapters without a connection. I like that there are several translations available, but generally, the text isn't so big that it couldn't simply be stored locally.
Also, while I really like the idea of videos being available, there are tons of textual commentaries available for each book and chapter of the Bible. I have a few physical copies from various authors and publishers that I like to reference while studying. I'm not sure how viable it would be to include in an app like this due to various factors (eg: I'm not sure if a lot of the known commentaries in print are available online, especially for free from their publishers), but it would be an excellent addition. Especially too, I'm already reading the Bible. I think that switching to watching a video could take me out of the flow of reading once the video was over.
I'm going to keep using this and see if it can give me a better experience than KJV Bible Lite
But there are Bible apps that include a number of public domain commentaries.
I'm definitely not a fan of the idea of the distraction of video within a Bible app, so I think I'll pass on checking out the app, personally.
In other words there is an underserved market of people who want St Gregory Palamas and St Porphyrios in their Bible app.
Is the video content curated? By whom and how?
Are you charging the video suppliers? What's the model for you and for them?
If not, do you have copyright coverage for the videos?
This seems like a challenging app space for an independent developer
The video content is reviewed (currently by me via an admin portal). All the videos are publicly available (Youtube and Vimeo).
A real business model is TBD. It's currently more of a "passion project" but if I can gain enough traction I think there's some interesting ideas for monetization and partnerships.
Thanks, very interested to learn about your product.
https://www.cambridge.org/bibles/about/rights-and-permission...
It's good to be the King. Or Queen.
Any possibility for an option to list/read/explore the deuterocanonical books, i.e. for translations that have them, e.g. the RSV[1]?
Also, there are freely accessible texts of the Knox translation[2] and Douay-Rheims (Challoner revision of 1752)[3] online, the latter from multiple sources:
https://www.newadvent.org/bible/
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1581/1581-h/1581-h.htm
The Douay-Rheims (Challoner) text is certainly in the public domain.
As for the Knox translation, I'm aware newadvent.org arranged permissions with the Westminster Diocese who hold the copyright; maybe they'd be open to giving similar permissions for your app?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Standard_Version#Post-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Bible
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay%E2%80%93Rheims_Bible#Cha...
Edit: it's definitely still copyrighted, and they're explicit that using the translation in full requires a license [0].
Male/Female/Trans/Nonbinary/Other, race, religion, age, industry, occupation, etc.
I know it's kinda hokey/a little reddit esque, but a "HN Demographic Survey" would be cool.
Potentially even more so since verses often require additional historical context besides the interpretation.
Other pages load ok in it, and I tried some other links. But maybe it's just me?
(using safari on ipad)
(similarly, searching for "spark bible" brings up nothing)
Is it region-restricted? I'm not in the USA.
EDIT: ah by using the footer App Store link I get a page in the App Store with a dialog saying that the app isn't available in my region. I tried using both links again, and yeah for some reason the floating footer link shows the informative error, but not the upper one. Spooksies...
How is your taxonomy handled ? Could you break it down for us?
Best site I've found personally is yallversion.com . It replaces "you" in any translation with "y'all" (or other 2nd person plurals) based on the original koine greek. I've been studying koine, so the side-by-side view works and highlighting words between different versions is what makes it so useful to me, but the "y'all" stuff is honestly amazing in it's own right.
English is an interesting language. It doesn't get this confusing with most of the other languages I know.
Maybe I'm weird about it but reading the Bible for me is personal enough that I don't want to use an app that collects my identifier and tracks usage data. I'd rather pay for something I can use offline or anonymously. Non-profits seem preferable for this sort of thing as well imo.
Could you talk a little bit about technical challenges that you may have encountered during development?
The biblical texts are actually rendered in a WebView and the native code communicates back/forth to the WebView with a basic javascript bridge. I wasn't sure this approach would work at first, but it's actually worked out quite nicely.
Handling theological bias has actually been one of the bigger challenges (not technical of course). People have such drastically different views and prejudices of the Bible that I'm always walking a careful line of what resources are approved vs not.
Would much prefer to see this as a new UI for Crosswire than an independent effort. I know tons of people using Crosswire
How do you curate, is this an automated process?
The value of thumbnails for videos that are all "talking heads", even if shown fixed in place (like e.g. in YouTube playlists) is also doubtful; text with duration, name of the speaker, title of the video and possibly date etc. would be more compact, more information-rich and more elegant.
God bless you and this project.
How do you add the resources? I assume this isn't via weekly iOS app updates?
Spark Bible is a free app I built for iOS & Android. The idea is that many millions of people read the Bible regularly and want it to impact their lives for good. However, the Bible is also quite difficult to understand.
There is a lot of foundational knowledge people only get through graduate education in theology or biblical studies (e.g., understanding the differences between ancient near eastern cultures vs today’s cultures). My goal is for Spark Bible to make that type of knowledge and learning more accessible to the average Bible reader.
Either way, seems like a cool app!
> Solid Bible education is now just a tap away for every chapter of the Bible.
It seems like you're not vetting the content at all. I'm not sure this will really consistently lead to being "smarter" or "more educated". You can find a wealth of manipulative, toxic "religious leaders" on YouTube.
Edit:
I see this comment [0] from OP:
> Currently there's an admin back-end where videos are manually reviewed and given applicable Bible references before they show up within the app.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=27595782&goto=item%3Fi...
I however still miss a german Bible version (Elberfelder or Luther) - or it was not clear how to find the other languages versions.
Just one other idea: I regularly need to do live translations and like the history if a side by side view is optionally viewable that would be great. Thanks
The Bible is deeply personal to me and just like I don't anyone knowing what I asked my doctor about or what I bought at the pharmacy I don't want to share everything I read in it.
Feature request: When i click on a verse, one option is to provide that verse as provided by the various bible translations ( similar to bible.cc ), with the word differences highlighted.
For lack of space, just a handful of translations can be picked ( by the user ahead of time via the settings )
BTW NOAB is available on Kindle, which is far better than any "app" IMHO.
