How Echo Scripture works.

Getting in

Echo Scripture is in a closed beta. Reading and searching are open to anyone. Building chains, echoes, and sheets, upvoting, commenting, and your private scratchpad need a member account.

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   Sign in with Google or an email and password.

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   Enter your invite code on the welcome page. That makes you a member — the only door into the beta.

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   That's it. Build, upvote, comment, and keep a scratchpad — all under your name.

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   Optional: round out your profile — a photo, your role and institution, a short bio, and a website. Your name on everything you publish links back to it.

Reading scripture

Open the Bible and pick a book and chapter. The text is the Berean Standard Bible. Use the chapter dropdown in the breadcrumb to jump straight to any chapter (or ← / → to move one at a time). The reading view is also a workbench: tap any verse number to open its study panel, where everything about that verse lives together. On a wide screen the panel docks beside the text (like a study Bible); on a phone it slides up from the bottom.

• Compare translations — see the verse beside the KJV, NASB 2020, NKJV, NIV, and ESV. To read a whole chapter in parallel, use Compare at the top of the reader: BSB + KJV is open to all; the modern translations are for signed-in members.
• Cross-references — the classic links for that verse, from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and ordered by how many people voted each connection up in that dataset.
• Word study — a Context | Word switch at the top of the panel splits the two jobs. Tap any word to flip to Word: its Hebrew or Greek behind the English, the Strong's entry and gloss, its cross-testament equivalent, and an inline “where this word appears” list you can open right there (with a link to the full search). Tap a second word to select the phrase between them and search it two ways — the exact English wording, or the original Hebrew/Greek words in order (which finds the same phrase even where translations differ). Switch back to Context for the cross-references, chains, echoes, and — on a Hebrew Bible verse — the verse in Hebrew (right-to-left, with vowel points) above the Greek Septuagint, the words that cross between the testaments highlighted in both; on a New Testament verse, the verse in Greek (the Nestle 1904 base text). Copy link on a word's card gives you a link that reopens the panel on that exact word. This works in the Septuagint reader too — and a Greek word with no New Testament counterpart shows its LSJ dictionary entry instead (marked LSJ).
• Places on a map — tap a place name (Jerusalem, Egypt, the Jordan…) and its word card adds a small map: where it is, how far and which direction from Jerusalem, with a few neighbors for bearings, and +/− to step between a close-up, the region, and the whole eastern Mediterranean; tap the map itself to see it full-size. That gesture — tap a verse, then tap the word — is exactly how you get there: a Places row above the verse text also lists every place in it as a shortcut straight to that word's card. About 180 places are mapped, from Genesis geography through Paul's journeys and all seven churches of Revelation — and when one name belongs to several sites (Mizpah, Ramah, Antioch), the map follows the verse you're reading: Judges' Mizpah pins Gilead, 1 Samuel's pins Benjamin.
• In chains / In echoes / In sheets — every published chain, echo, or study sheet that already cites this verse. When a list has several contributors you can filter it by author (alongside the kind-of-pattern filters and sort options), and a verse with many connections organizes them into collapsible groups by pattern kind or theme.

The texts available

The Berean Standard Bible is the base text everywhere. In a verse's focus pane, Compare translations sets it beside five others — KJV, NASB 2020, NKJV, NIV, and ESV (the copyrighted ones carry their publisher's notice).

Beyond the 66 canonical books, you can read, search, and anchor chains into a growing shelf of extra-biblical texts:

The SeptuagintSeptuagint

The ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible — the version the New Testament most often quotes. The 39 books that have a Hebrew original, in Greek, from H. B. Swete's public-domain edition (in the Septuagint's own versification). Read it, search it in Greek (with or without accents — type “πνευμα” or “πνεῦμα”), cite it in a chain, and jump to it from any Hebrew Bible verse with the “Septuagint” link — where the Greek word that renders the Hebrew (רוּחַ → πνεῦμα) is highlighted right in the verse. Don't read Greek? A “Show English (Brenton)” toggle on the Septuagint reader shows the public-domain Brenton translation under each Greek verse, where its numbering lines up with Swete's.

The DeuterocanonDeuterocanon

1 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Additions to Esther, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, 1–4 Maccabees, the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon, from the public-domain Brenton Septuagint — plus the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151. (1 Esdras and 3–4 Maccabees are the Orthodox canon's; the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel are spliced out as their own short books rather than duplicating the Hebrew text already in the reader.)

1 Enoch · Jubilees · 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) · the Testaments · the Letter of Aristeas · the Psalms of Solomon · Megillat AntiochusPseudepigrapha

Extra-biblical Jewish writings the New Testament writers knew and sometimes quote (Jude cites 1 Enoch); 2 Esdras carries 4 Ezra, an apocalypse wrestling with the fall of Jerusalem; the Psalms of Solomon (1st c. BCE) voice the hope for a Davidic messiah that stands behind the Gospels; Megillat Antiochus tells the Hanukkah story. R. H. Charles's public-domain translations (the Psalms of Solomon in G. Buchanan Gray's, by Gray's verse numbering), plus Megillat Antiochus from the Open Siddur Project and 2 Esdras from the public-domain KJV Apocrypha.

The Mishnah · Midrash Rabbah · the Talmud · Pirkei DeRabbi EliezerRabbinic

The foundational rabbinic library — read for how it preserves Second-Temple debate and illuminates the world behind the New Testament. The whole Mishnah and Midrash Rabbah, the Babylonian Talmud (cited by daf, e.g. Berakhot 2a), and Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer. Kulp & Sefaria (CC BY), the William Davidson Edition (CC BY-NC), and Friedlander (public domain).

The Tannaitic MidrashRabbinic

The earliest verse-by-verse midrash on the Torah (~2nd–3rd c. CE) — the Mekhilta on Exodus, the Sifra on Leviticus, and the Sifrei on Numbers and Deuteronomy. Exegetically the closest rabbinic layer to the New Testament era. Rabbi Shraga Silverstein's translations (CC BY), via Sefaria.

Targum Pseudo-JonathanTargum

The expansive Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy) — how Second-Temple and early-rabbinic Judaism read and retold each verse. J. W. Etheridge's 1862 English translation (public domain), via Sefaria.

Targum Jonathan (Isaiah)Targum

The authoritative Aramaic targum to the Prophets — famed for its overtly messianic rendering of the Isaiah 52–53 Servant Song, a direct window onto the New Testament's own reading of Isaiah. Isaiah only for now (the one Prophets book with a clean complete public-domain English). C. W. H. Pauli's 1871 “Chaldee Paraphrase” with the pointed Aramaic alongside, via Sefaria.

The Apostolic FathersApostolic Fathers

The earliest Christian writings after the New Testament — 1 Clement, the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp, the Didache, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, Diognetus — read for how the first generation after the apostles quoted and re-used scripture. J. B. Lightfoot's 1891 translation (public domain), cited by chapter. English only.

JosephusJosephus

The first-century Jewish historian — the Antiquities (a retelling of the biblical story), The Jewish War, the Life, and Against Apion — read for the world behind the New Testament and how a Jewish writer of the era retold scripture. William Whiston's 1737 translation (public domain), cited by book/chapter/section. English only.

Philo of AlexandriaPhilo

The first-century Hellenistic-Jewish philosopher whose allegorical reading of the Greek Torah and Logos theology stand behind the New Testament's own categories — the Word of John 1, the heavenly pattern of Hebrews, Paul's allegory of Hagar and Sarah. Nearly 40 treatises in the Loeb Classical Library translation (Colson & Whitaker, 1929–1937; public domain), via Sefaria, cited by treatise and section. English only.

One note: the word study and cross-references are built for the Berean text. The extra-biblical books are English only — fully readable, searchable, and citable in a chain, but without the original-language tools.

Searching

One search page, three things to search: The Bible (the default), Extra-biblical texts, and Community — the published chains, echoes, and public study sheets, matched by title, author, and their written content. Searching the Bible has three modes: English text, the original languages, and Meaning.

The text, in English

spirit waters

Bare words require all of them in a verse, in any order.

“living water”

Wrap a phrase in quotes to match it exactly, word for word.

lamb OR sheep

Put OR between terms to allow either one.

lamb NEAR/5 silent

NEAR/k finds two words within k words of each other — “as a lamb before the shearer is silent” (Acts 8:32). Bare NEAR defaults to 5.

Heb 1:5, Ps 2:7, 2 Sam 7:14

Paste a list of references (separated by commas or semicolons) and search answers with those verses themselves — plus one-tap links to compare them side by side or start a chain or echo from them. A single reference like John 3:16 works too. The same list works in Jump to a verse (⌘K).

Berean · KJV

Toggle which translation you search; sort by relevance or by most matches.

Choose your texts

Tick any set of texts to search — just the Mishnah and Talmud, or the Berean beside 1 Enoch. Your selection is carried in the page's link, so a bookmark or a shared link reopens the exact same set.

Choose your books

Within the Bible, limit a search to one book or a group of books — just Genesis, just the Gospels, just the Prophets — instead of scanning all 66.

The original languages

A single word is traced across the testaments — Echo bridges the Hebrew of the Hebrew Bible to the Greek of the New Testament, so one search shows it in three groups in reading order: the Hebrew, its Greek rendering in the Septuagint, and the New Testament Greek. Equivalents reached by a looser lexical match are marked “by shared meaning.”

ruach

Type it however you have it: the actual Hebrew or Greek characters (with or without vowel points or accents) if you have that keyboard, a transliteration like “ruach,” an English gloss like “spirit,” or a Strong's number — any of them resolves the word.

lamb

One word is traced across the testaments on the Hebrew↔Greek bridge, in reading order: its Hebrew (כֶּבֶשׂ, the Passover lamb), then its Greek rendering in the Septuagint (ἀμνός), then its New Testament Greek (ἀμνός, the Lamb of God) — three groups, every rendering of the word highlighted. Connections you'd miss searching the English surface alone.

ruach mayim

Two or more words, with a Match toggle: All words (every word, anywhere), Any word (either one), or In order (directly consecutive).

σειρήν

The Septuagint's vocabulary runs well past the New Testament's. A Greek word that never appears in the NT — σειρήν, “siren” — has no Strong's number, but it still resolves against the LSJ lexicon, with everywhere it occurs in the Septuagint.

You can also start one of these searches straight from a verse: tap two words in a verse's focus pane to select the phrase between them, then search the exact English or the original words in order — each previewing how many verses it finds. (The “robe of many colors” turns up four verses across Genesis 37 and 2 Samuel 13.) The original-words search matters when translations render the same phrase differently — it follows the Hebrew or Greek, not the English wording. No need to know a Strong's number — the words you tap already carry them.

By meaning

The Meaning mode finds verses by sense, not by the words themselves — describe what you're looking for in your own words and it ranks the closest verses, even ones that share almost no wording with what you typed. “a shepherd who leaves the flock to find one lost sheep” or “God's spirit hovering over the waters at creation” each surface the passages they describe. Write a full sentence — a plain-language description works far better than a keyword, and better than a phrase copied straight out of a verse (matching exact wording is what the English text search above is for). Pick which text to search from the menu — the Berean, or any of the extra-biblical corpora (Enoch, Jubilees, Philo, the Talmud, and the rest). Meaning search is a members-only feature. (Experimental.)

Two ways to hold a connection

Same connection, different shape: a chain follows a thread forward, one verse leading to the next; an echo holds the passages side by side so a whole scene shows at once. (A sheet, further down, gathers chains, echoes, and your own prose into something you can teach from.)

A chain, taken apart

Two verses, and the one sentence that earns the link.

1. 1Hosea 11:1

   When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son.

   ↓

   Hosea looks backward — “My son” is Israel, called out of Egypt at the Exodus. Matthew takes that same line and presses it onto the child Jesus, carried out of Egypt by Joseph. The link isn't that both mention Egypt; it's that Matthew reads Jesus as recapitulating Israel's story. Saying why is the whole point.

2. 2Matthew 2:15

   …So was fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”

Notice what does the work: not the shared word “Egypt,” but the claim that Matthew is reading Jesus through Israel's story. A good link paragraph is an argument someone could agree with — or contest.

An echo, taken apart

Two passages side by side, and the words that bind them.

Two uncommon words — “desire” and “rule over” — return in the same order just one chapter apart. Set side by side, the parallel is unmistakable: the disordered pull the fall introduced between the woman and the man is now the pull between Cain and the sin at his door. An echo paints those shared words in matching color across both passages at once; a chain would only walk you from one to the next.

Build a chain

Open the Chains page and hit New chain. A new chain opens in the Guided wizard, which walks you through it a step at a time (switch to Full edit any time to see every field at once, or Preview to see it as a reader will):

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   Enter your verses

   Add two or more passages that form a thread — type a reference, paste a list, or browse by book. A link can be one verse, a range within a chapter, or a labeled span (“the Joseph story, Genesis 37–50”).

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   Explain each link

   Between every pair, write a sentence or two answering why they connect — not that they share a word, but what one passage is doing to the other. That explanation is the part a reader can weigh.

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   Add a title

   Name the chain — the short handle readers see in lists and search.

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   Add the big idea

   State the thesis in a sentence or two: what the whole chain shows, read as one argument. It's the frame a reader takes the links through.

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   Options, then publish

   Everything else is optional — tag the kind of pattern, add a credit or sources (see Power tools below). Save a draft to keep working, or publish under your byline, open for upvotes, comments, and extension.

Build an echo

Open the Echoes page and hit New echo. It's the same Guided wizard as a chain, for passages held side by side rather than in sequence:

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   Pin your passages

   Two or more — the passages you want a reader to see at once.

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   Name threads and highlight

   Name up to twelve threads, then select the shared words in each passage; matching colors line up across the columns so the parallel shows at a glance. Turn on א or α to tag the Hebrew or Greek words themselves.

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   Title, big idea, options

   Same as a chain — and the same discovery helpers (✦ Find verses, ✦ Suggest connections, a Similar echoes panel) are here too.

You build an echo as panels. A simple echo is one panel — a passage beside another. When a single verse draws on several others at once, put one passage on the left and stack as many as you like on the right, then Add panel below for a different shape each time. Rearrange as you go: drag a passage card to move it within a column, to the other side, or into a different panel — or use the ↑/↓ and ⇄ controls on each card.

Build a sheet

A sheet is for teaching. Open a new sheet (from the Sheets hub, in the Community menu), give it a title, then stack blocks in any order with Add block:

Prose blocks also support footnotes, the way a paper does: put your cursor where the marker belongs, click the x¹ button in the toolbar, and type the note. Markers number themselves across the whole sheet and renumber automatically when you add, remove, or reorder — readers get a Footnotes list at the bottom with each number linking both ways, and it's included when the sheet is printed. Click any marker to edit or remove its note.

Reorder blocks with the up/down arrows, and flip between the Edit and Preview tabs to see it as a reader will. Then choose a visibility: keep it a draft (only you), unlisted so anyone with the link can open it — the natural fit for handing a class a study packet — or public so it joins the Sheets list and turns up in Community search.

Groups

A group is a private, invite-only circle — a Sunday class, a study group, a cohort — where only members see the discussion. It's a separate space from the public comments under chains and echoes: nothing said in a group ever becomes public. Any member can start one from Community → Groups, name it, and invite people in. A group can also opt into being publicly searchable (Manage Group → “Publicly searchable”): anyone can then find it in the Find a group section of the Groups page and see its name and description — but its discussions and materials stay members-only, and joining still takes an invitation.

Joining — a leader invites you by name from Manage Group on the group's page; you get a notification and an email, and the invitation waits on your Groups page to accept or decline. You need to be a member of the group itself, on top of your regular Echo Scripture membership, to see anything inside it. For people not yet on Echo Scripture, a site admin can mint a sign-up link that creates the account and adds them to the group in one step — so a whole class can join with a single link.

Leaving & closing — any member can leave a group from its page. A leader can close a group when a class ends: everything stays readable, but no new discussions or replies can be posted, and it can be reopened at any time. An owner can also delete a group outright, which permanently removes it and everything in it.

Discussions — every group holds its own discussion board: a title and a rich-text body, with nested replies the same one-level-deep way comments work elsewhere (reply to a reply and it @-mentions the person you're answering). Whoever started a discussion can edit its opening post, and a leader can pin a discussion to keep it at the top. When someone replies in a discussion you started or took part in, you get a notification (it follows the same reply preferences as the rest of the site), and the group's page marks each discussion with what's new since your last visit.

Materials — a shelf of materials on the group's page: a sheet, a chain, an echo, or an outside link, each with a short note (“read before week 3”). It's the class handout rack — members see it right under the discussions. Any member can share a material of their own; leaders can additionally reorder, edit, or remove anything on the shelf.

Sharing a chain, echo, or sheet — any member can share their own chain, echo, or sheet to a group they belong to, right from that chain/echo/sheet's own page. Group members can read it even while it isn't published publicly — a way to workshop something with your class before it's ready for everyone. It shows up under Shared in this groupon the group's page.

One honest note on privacy: group discussions never appear in Recent activity, Community search, or notifications outside the group itself. A chain, echo, or sheet you anchor to a discussion, though, keeps whatever visibility it already had when you published it — an unlisted or public sheet is still readable by anyone with its link, group membership or not. The discussion is the private part.

Power tools, when you want them

Behind a “More options” disclosure, every chain and echo can carry a richer vocabulary. None of it is required — a casual chain never shows it — but it's there when an insight needs it.

Mode

How explicit the connection is: Quotation, Allusion, Echo, Typology, Fulfillment, or Inversion — from a verbatim citation down to a faint suggestion.

Reuse function

What the later text does to the earlier one: Explain, Enhance, Expand, Adjust, or treat it as a Pattern instance.

Original author

When the whole argument comes from someone else — a scholar, a book, a sermon — name them here. It shows as "After …" under the byline, distinct from Credit below.

Credit (hat-tip) & Sources

Credit a teacher, commentary, or scholar, and gather numbered citations — borrowed insight is welcome, uncredited borrowing isn't.

This vocabulary comes straight from the scholarship of inner-biblical interpretation. The method explains where each field comes from and how to weigh a connection.

Collect as you read

Interact with the community

Every published chain and echo opens for discussion. The point isn't a leaderboard; it's a community testing connections in the open.

Comment — leave a comment to extend a reading, add a source, or push back. Use Reply to keep a back-and-forth together as one thread instead of scattering it down the page (replying to a reply @-mentions the person you're answering). Mention anyone by typing @ and picking their name — in a comment or in the prose you write while authoring — and it links to their profile and notifies them.

Upvote — vote up the connections that hold up. Upvotes sort a verse's lists of chains and echoes, floating the strongest to the top — a signal you give, not a score to game.

Messages — reach another member privately — to thank an author whose chain you built on, ask a question that doesn't belong in a public comment, or coordinate. Open someone's profile and choose Message, or start one from /messages (under the menu beneath your name in the header, with a badge for unread). Conversations are private to the two of you; you can block anyone and report a problem to the team.

Notifications collect under the menu beneath your name in the header — a dot on your avatar flags unread ones, and the Notifications row opens to a peek of your recent items (also at /notifications): you're notified when someone mentions you, replies to your chain or echo, or sends you a message. You get these in-app and by email — each channel has its own toggles in your profile, so you can keep either, both, or neither.

Community etiquette

This is a community of people who care about reading scripture well. A few norms keep it that way.

Own your claim

Every chain carries a byline. You're not curating an anonymous consensus — you're making an argument and standing behind it. Write the link paragraph as if someone will push back, because they can.

Credit where you found it

If a connection came from a commentary, a teacher, or a scholar — Hays, Schnittjer, Alter, anyone — add a hat-tip or a citation. Borrowed insight is welcome; uncredited borrowing isn't.

Speculative is fine — just say so

A devotional thought and an airtight quotation are both welcome here. Label a stretch as a stretch. The community ranks connections; it never silences them. Confidence is something you signal, not something you fake.

Disagree by building

If a chain misses, say so in the comments — or trace your own counter-reading. The goal is to test connections together, not to win. Extend before you dismiss.

Seed what you can defend

Trace patterns you could explain to a skeptical friend. Invented parallels dilute the signal for everyone; well-attested ones make the whole web more trustworthy.

Hit a bug or have an idea? The feedback link in the footer goes straight to us.