What the Berean Standard Bible is
The BSB is a modern English translation of the Bible from the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. It is produced by the Berean Bible Translation Committee in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, unfoldingWord, Bible Aquifer and OpenBible.com. It aims to read clearly in modern English while staying close to the original wording.
In 2023 the translators dedicated the BSB to the public domain. Anyone may print, quote, share or build on it without asking permission or paying a fee.
Why Rightly uses it
It is free to carry. Because the BSB is in the public domain, the whole Bible can live on your phone with no licence to renew and no reason to put it behind a subscription. That is why reading in Rightly is free and works offline.
It comes with its own interlinear. The BSB is published alongside the Berean interlinear, which aligns each English word or phrase with the Greek or Hebrew word it translates. Rightly uses that alignment for tap-a-word: tap an English word and you get the exact original word behind it, with its parsing, Strong’s number and lexicon entries (see how word study works).
English order, Greek order
John 1:1 shows why a word-level link is better than a side-by-side Greek text. In the last clause, “and the Word was God,” Greek puts the words in a different order: καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος. The interlinear keeps both orders, so tapping “God” finds Θεὸς even though it comes second in Greek and last in English. Words the translators supplied for clear English are marked in brackets, like “[the] beginning.”
How it reads in Rightly
- One column of text in a typeface chosen for long reading, with quiet verse numbers.
- Swipe between chapters; pick a book and chapter from a sheet.
- Adjustable text size.
- Highlights and notes on any verse or passage.
- Commentaries open beside the verse you are on (which commentaries).
The first release shows the text itself. The BSB’s section headings, footnotes and cross-references are not included yet, and the BSB is the only translation in the first release.