About
A workbench, not a lookup counter
Most Bible websites are reference tools: you go, you look something up, you leave. Looking things up is not studying. Studying is what happens when you sit with a passage, notice what it repeats, ask what it meant to the people who first heard it, and then write down what has to change in you. That work needs a workbench — and that is what this is. Blue Letter Bible is where you look things up. Berean is where you do the work.
I built it for my youngest brother, Tim. Tim is dyslexic, and the two things standing between him and deep Bible study were never spiritual or intellectual — they were mechanical. Typing a question is hard. Reading a paragraph back is hard. So in this app the microphone is load-bearing, not decorative: you can dictate your notes, ask questions out loud, search Scripture by speaking, and have the app read your own notebook back to you. If a feature would make the app harder to use by voice, it doesn’t go in.
Three things it refuses to do: it will not think for you — the Study Partner answers like a good teacher, usually with a question back, and Scripture stays the authority. It will not hold your notes hostage — your work lives on your device and exports to Markdown, Word, or paper whenever you ask. And it will not charge you. Not now, not later.
What it does
The whole workbench, briefly
Up to three English translations beside the Hebrew (WLC) or Greek (TR) original, with pronunciation under every original word. Over a hundred translations, in dozens of languages.
Tap any Hebrew or Greek word, tap a blue Strong’s number, or double-click an English word — Brown-Driver-Briggs and Thayer’s definitions open beside the text.
Six colors and an underline, with a legend that means whatever you decide it means — the inductive habit of marking repeated words, promises, and commands, kept digital.
Observation, Interpretation, Application — three boxes in order, with the right questions beside each, autosaving as you type. Studies keep your work organized by book or topic.
Dictate notes, hear chapters read aloud, hear the Hebrew and Greek spoken with speed and pause controls, ask the Study Partner out loud, and have your own notes read back.
An AI partner grounded in the passage you have open, plus four classic commentaries — David Guzik, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, John Gill, and Matthew Henry — each named on its own panel.
Ask in your own words — “where does it say God will not leave me” — or check exact words for letter-for-letter search. There’s a microphone in the search box too.
No account, no server copy of your work, no analytics watching you study. Your notes live in your browser and export whenever you want them.
The library
Every document, readable here or yours to keep
Each guide has a web edition you can read right now and a PDF you can download, print, or hand to your study group.
Every control, every tab, every voice feature — the whole app, part by part, including where your work actually lives and what to do when something goes wrong.
Why this app exists and what makes it different — the one to share with your study group when they ask what you’re using.
Study like a Berean: the inductive method — Observe, Interpret, Apply — step by step.
Describes an earlier edition; the method is unchanged. The Manual is current.The architecture: one file, no accounts, your notes on your device — and why it was built that way on purpose.
Tells the story of an earlier build; the shape it describes still holds.The Observation → Interpretation → Application discipline itself — the method the whole notebook is furniture for.
See the Dashboard at work before you open it — the short film, with captions.
Berean Dashboard Training
Learn the languages under your Bible
You don’t need seminary to touch the Hebrew and Greek — you need a map, an app that sounds every word out with you, and a good teacher on video. Here are all three.
The alphabet, how roots make word families, the names of God, and Genesis 1:1 word by word — with the exact Dashboard buttons for each step, and a gentle four-week path.
The alphabet, why endings do the work, a dozen words worth knowing on sight, and John 1:1 word by word — with the Dashboard buttons, and the same four-week path.
The teachers on video
The most-loved free courses on the internet, linked with gratitude. Watch a lesson, then trace it through real verses in the Dashboard.
Standing on someone’s shoulders
Support bolls.life
Every verse in this app arrives free, from one man in Ukraine.
The Scripture text the Dashboard shows you — every translation, every chapter, the Hebrew and the Greek — comes from bolls.life, a Bible platform built and run by Bohuslav Pavlisinec. He offers it to the world for nothing, keeps it fast on his own server, and answers letters from strangers like me with kindness. This app could not exist without his work.
The Berean Dashboard will never charge you or take a donation. If you want to give somewhere, give to him — it costs real money to keep a Bible API running for everyone, free, in the middle of everything Ukraine is walking through.
Both links go to Bohuslav’s own pages. Nothing passes through this app or through Smith For Christ.
Credits
The hands this app stands on
Scripture and original-language text from bolls.life. Commentary from David Guzik at Enduring Word, used for personal study and credited with a link to the original on every panel; and from three public-domain classics — Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, John Gill’s Exposition, and Matthew Henry. Hebrew definitions are Brown-Driver-Briggs; Greek definitions are Thayer’s. Speech in both directions is the free capability built into your own browser — the app supplies no audio of its own and records nothing.
Contact
Write to me
If the Dashboard blesses you, I’d love to hear it. If it breaks on you, I need to hear it — tell me what you pressed and what happened.