A Bible Translation Practice App
Every day, Scriptorium sets a small portion of the Greek New Testament or the Hebrew Bible on your desk — three verses, chosen to pick up exactly where you left off. You render them in your own words, with every word a tap away from its meaning. Verse by verse, your own translation of the Scriptures takes shape.
How it works
1. Open the app. Today’s verses are waiting — the next untranslated verses in the book you’ve chosen. No setup, no syllabus, no falling behind.
2. Read the original. Tap any Greek or Hebrew word for its dictionary form, meaning, and full parsing. Help when you want it, silence when you don’t.
3. Write your own words. Not the “right answer” — your rendering. Save it, and it becomes part of your translation.
That’s the whole practice. Ten minutes, most days.
Features
Your translation, accumulating
The shelf in My Translation is the point of the app: every book of the New Testament, and a growing set of Hebrew Bible books, filling in verse by verse in your own words. Reread a chapter as you rendered it. Revise a verse years later. Copy a chapter out and share it. It’s yours — in every sense.
Help that meets you where you are
Scriptorium ships the complete SBL Greek New Testament with word-by-word morphology, glosses drawn from public-domain lexicons, and the SBLGNT’s own critical apparatus for readers who want to see the textual variants. Hebrew books carry morpheme-level analysis — prefixes, suffixes, and stems each explained. If your Greek is seminary-fresh or twenty years dusty, the desk adjusts to you, not the other way around.
Study your work like a scholar
Open any chapter in side-by-side panes: the original text, your translation — or several of your translations — the Berean Standard Bible, and your own chapter notes, each scrolling independently. Two panes on iPhone, up to four on iPad and Mac. It’s the study environment of serious Bible software, wrapped around your translation.
Keep more than a streak
A daily streak keeps you honest, but the deeper progress is in the Stats page: how much of the New Testament is in your own words, your thirty-day rhythm in Greek and in Hebrew, and your progress through every book. The trainer’s spaced-repetition vocabulary decks — built from New Testament frequency tiers — quietly grow what you can read unaided.
Greek, Hebrew, or both
Work through the New Testament, the Hebrew Bible, or keep a portion of each on your desk every day. Each language remembers its own place.
Who it’s for
- Pastors and seminary graduates who promised themselves they wouldn’t lose their Greek or Hebrew
- Students who want daily contact with the text beyond flashcards.
- Curious readers ready to meet the Scriptures in their original languages, a small bite at a time.
Quiet by design
No accounts. No ads. No tracking. Your translations and notes sync privately through your own iCloud, visible to no one but you. Free to start; one small one-time purchase unlocks every book — no subscription.
FAQ
Do I need to know Greek or Hebrew already? Some familiarity helps — the app is a practice desk, not a grammar course. But every word is glossed and parsed on tap, and the vocabulary trainer builds you up from the most frequent words. Many readers use it to revive language they once had.
Which texts does it use? The SBL Greek New Testament (with its critical apparatus and MorphGNT morphology) and the Westminster Leningrad Codex via the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible, with the public-domain Berean Standard Bible as the English reference.
Is my translation really private? Yes. It lives on your devices and in your personal iCloud database. There is no server of ours, and we couldn’t read it if we wanted to.
What does it cost? Nothing to start: John, Philippians, and 1 John in Greek, and Jonah and Ruth in Hebrew, are free forever — months of daily practice. A single one-time purchase (no subscription) unlocks every other book of the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Bible as it grows.
Do I have to buy anything? No. The free books aren’t a trial — every feature works in them: glossing and parsing, the critical apparatus, revision, notes, study panes, sharing, the vocabulary trainer. Pro adds books, nothing else is held back.
If I unlock Pro on my iPhone, do I have it on my iPad and Mac? Yes. The unlock is tied to your App Store account, so it applies on all your devices and survives reinstalls — “Restore Purchases” in Settings brings it back anywhere.