Bible reading companion

Everything you study,
in one place you own.

Lamp Bible puts translations, lexicons, commentaries, reading plans, your notes, devotionals and highlights behind a single reader — working offline, with no account, and stored in an open format you can export at any time.

Read the docs

Mac version in development.

Features

Built for reading closely

Not a verse-of-the-day app. Lamp Bible is for people who read a passage, look up a word, check a commentary, and write down what they found.

A study-grade reader

Five public-domain and openly licensed translations, most tagged with Strong’s numbers and morphology. Tap a tagged word for its lexicon entry. Red letters, headings, poetry and paragraphs are kept as published.

Learn more →

KJVsJohn 1

John 1

¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²The same was in the beginning with God. ³All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Word

λόγοςG3056330x

Strong’s Greek

logos · noun

something said (including the thought); by implication a topic (subject of discourse), also reasoning (the mental faculty) or motive; … specially, (with the article in John) the Divine Expression (i.e. Christ).

KJV Usage

account, cause, communication, doctrine, matter, preaching, reason, saying, speech, talk, thing, utterance, word, work…

Morphology

N-NSM

Study tools beside the text

Commentary, cross-references, your notes or your own writing in a panel beside the passage, scrolling with the verse you are on.

Learn more →

KJVsRomans 8

²⁸And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (Enhanced)

v. 28

we know. Rom 8:22; 2 Cor 5:1. all things. Gen 50:20; Deut 8:16; Ps 119:71; 2 Cor 4:17. the called. Rom 1:6; 9:24; 2 Tim 1:9.

Reading plans that keep up

Three public-domain Companion plans, or your own: tick off each reading, see how long the day will take at your pace, and get a reminder and a widget.

Learn more →

Wed, Oct 28

PlansAdd

The Bible Companion

3 readings · 17 min1 of 3 read

Ezekiel 33

Prophecy · 6 min

Psalm 119:1–40

Poetry · 7 min

1 Peter 3

Epistle · 4 min

Highlights with meaning

Four styles and any colour, kept in sets. Name a colour — “Promises”, “Calling” — and the meaning travels with your highlights.

Learn more →

KJVsRomans 8

²⁸And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

PromisesCalling

My Highlights

Notes anchored to verses

Write on a verse, a range or a whole chapter, in formatted text that sits beside the passage and exports as plain markdown.

Learn more →

KJVsRomans 8

²⁸And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God…

My Notes

vv.28-30

Called is the word Paul uses of himself in 1:1.^[1] Those he called he also justified — the chain never breaks.

[1]κλητός, G2822 — invited, appointed.

Search that reaches everything

One index across translations, lexicons, commentaries, books, notes, writing and highlights — by word, phrase or Strong’s number, narrowed by module, tag or highlight colour.

Learn more →

KJVs

G3056

330 results

John 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:14

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory…

Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword…

1 John 1:1

That which was from the beginning, … which our hands have handled, of the Word of life;

Revelation 19:13

And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

Sync on your terms

Keep everything on the device, sync through iCloud Drive, or use your own WebDAV server. No account, ever.

Learn more →

Settings

Sync

Sync MethodiCloud Drive

StatusConnected

Modules4 modules

Sync Now

Modules sync via iCloud Drive.

Reading Plan Settings

Reading Rate (WPM)

Writing

Write, then present

Devotionals, sermons and studies get a proper editor rather than a notes field, and go from manuscript to slides without leaving Lamp Bible.

On iPhone and iPad

Footnotes that keep count
Numbered in order of first mention, with any label you like. Tap a marker to reach its note.
Tables and scripture
Quote a passage, link a reference, and lay a comparison out in a table.
Pictures and recordings
Add photos, or record audio straight into the piece.
Present mode
Full screen, at a size you can read from a lectern.
Slides in your pocket
Open decks made on the Mac, and run a Mac presentation as its remote, with speaker notes, a timer and black-out.

Writing on iPhone and iPad →

Abide in the Vine

John 15:5

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.

Fruit is never the branch’s own work; it is what the vine does through it.^[1]

AbideBear fruitv. 4vv. 5, 8

🎵Audio

1. Compare 1 John 2:6.

AaBI

Coming to Mac

An agent at your writing desk

Open a workspace beside any piece of writing and work on it with the AI you already use — Codex, Claude Code or OpenCode, signed in with your own account. It works on the same text you do, and looks things up in your library through read-only tools.

The workspace syncs with your library, so it follows the writing to your other Macs. Your messages go to the provider you choose, never to Lamp Bible.

Chat
Ask for a draft, a cut or a check. Its edits go straight into the draft, and every one lands in Revisions, where you can undo it.
Terminal
Your provider’s own tool, continuing the same session.
Context
Sources, an earlier talk, research notes — read-only copies for the agent to work from.
Workspace Skills
Instructions it can follow. Build Lamp Deck, built in, turns the writing into slides.

Abide in the Vine

Saved

Main Prose

Style

Body

Text

Insert

ScriptureFootnoteMedia

Abide in the Vine

Fruit is never the branch’s own work. It is what the vine does through a branch that stays.^[1]

1 Compare 1 John 2:6.

Saved642 words · 4 min read

Claude ChatTerminal

Draft

Live sync is activeRevisions (3)

Context

earlier-talk.md12 KB

Workspace Skills

Build Lamp DeckBuilt-in

ClaudeConnected

Tighten the opening, and find where else John uses “abide”.

Shortened the first sentence. The cross-references tie verse 4 to 1 John 2:6, so I added it as a footnote.

diffCopy

- Jesus says a great deal in this chapter about fruit.

+ Fruit is never the branch’s own work.

Message Claude

Coming to Mac

A writing desk on the Mac

Visual and Markdown editing, find and replace, a Details pane for series, tags and key scriptures, footnotes edited beside their marker, companion files as tabs, and a Revision History for every change.

Abide in the Vine

Saved

Replace abide2 of 4Done

remainReplaceReplace All

A branch bears fruit only while it abides in the vine. Abide in me, he says, and the fruit takes care of itself. To abide is to stay.

Details

TitleAbide in the Vine

CategoryExhortation

Series

SeriesStudies in John

Order: 4− +

Key Scripture

John 15:1–8

Coming to Mac

Slide Studio

Build a deck from the writing — scripture, quotations and speaker notes drawn from the manuscript — in eight layouts. Present full screen, export a PDF, and drive it from your iPhone.

Abide in the Vine

Play

1. Abide in the Vine

2. John 15:5

3. Fruit

“I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit…”

John 15:5

Saved6 slides

The module system

Every piece of content is a module

Translations, dictionaries, commentaries, books, reading plans, quizzes, highlights, notes and devotionals all use the same container: a compressed SQLite package with a .lamp extension. The app treats what ships with it and what you make yourself exactly the same way.

That has a practical consequence. Your notes are not rows locked inside an app database — they are a module you can export, edit as markdown, back up to your own server, and import somewhere else. So are your highlights, with the colour meanings you gave them.

It also means the library is extensible. Build a .lamp file from the published JSON schemas and the app will install it, index it for search and show it in the reader beside everything else.

Or bring what you already own. Import a Bible as USFM, OSIS, Zefania or a SWORD module — locked ones included — and it gets the same word lookups and search as the bundled translations. Long-form books install the same way, with their contents, footnotes and live scripture references.

How modules work Authoring reference

Module types

Translation: Verse text with Strong’s, morphology, headings and footnotes; Read-only
Dictionary: Lexicon entries keyed by Strong’s number or lemma; Read-only
Commentary: Verse- or pericope-keyed exposition, grouped into series; Read-only
Book: Long-form publications in chapters and sections; Read-only
Plan: Dated reading assignments across the year; Read-only
Quiz: Age-graded questions tied to a plan’s readings; Read-only
Notes: Your verse-anchored study notes; You edit
Devotional: Your long-form writing, with media; You edit
Highlights: Your highlight spans and colour themes; You edit

Your data

No account. No tracking. No network required.

The app has no sign-in and collects nothing about you. Bundled content is on the device after install, so the whole library works in airplane mode.

Offline by default

Translations, lexicons, cross-references, commentaries and plans ship inside the app. Nothing you read requires a connection.

Sync you control

Choose local-only storage, iCloud Drive — where your files stay visible in the Files app — or your own WebDAV server such as Nextcloud or Synology.

Exit at any time

Notes and devotionals round-trip through plain markdown. Modules export as .lamp packages. Nothing is trapped.

Start reading

Free, with a library included. iPhone & iPad.

Questions or a feature request? Open an issue or email lampbibleapp[at]gmail[dot]com.

Everything you study,in one place you own.

Built for reading closely

A study-grade reader

Study tools beside the text

Reading plans that keep up

Highlights with meaning

Notes anchored to verses

Search that reaches everything

Sync on your terms

Write, then present

An agent at your writing desk

A writing desk on the Mac

Slide Studio

Every piece of content is a module

Module types

No account. No tracking. No network required.

Offline by default

Sync you control

Exit at any time

Start reading

Everything you study,
in one place you own.