A web application that provides an interactive platform to explore the Bible alongside historical Christian commentaries from the early Church Fathers (Ante-Nicene Fathers and Post-Nicene Fathers collections).

Live site: https://historicalchristian.faith/

This is the reference implementation/demo of the SQLite file compiled from our Commentaries-Database. It also contains a frontend interface to our Writings-Database.

Any changes made in master branch on this repo will reflect on the website within a couple minutes.

• Browse any Bible passage with associated patristic commentaries
• Supports flexible URL patterns:
  • /matthew/1/all - Full chapter view
  • /matthew/1/5 - Single verse
  • /luke/3/16-28 - Verse ranges
• Each commentary card displays:
  • Church Father's name (linked to Wikipedia)
  • Year written (AD)
  • Full commentary text with "Read More" for longer passages
  • Source attribution with links to original texts
• Sequential navigation with Previous/Next buttons
• Dropdown menus for book, chapter, and verse selection

• Browse complete historical Christian writings organized by Church Father
• Hierarchical tree navigation using jsTree
• Two-panel layout with sidebar navigation and content viewer
• Deep-linking support for specific documents and sections

• Introduction to the project with educational quotes from C.S. Lewis, John Wesley, Martin Luther, Jerome, and Augustine
• Multi-language support via Google Translate (10+ languages)

Backend:

• PHP
• SQLite3 (two databases: data.sqlite for commentaries, kjv.sqlite for Bible text)
• Apache with mod_rewrite for clean URLs

Frontend:

• HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript
• Bootstrap 5.3
• jQuery
• jsTree (for hierarchical navigation)
• Font Awesome 6.0
• Google Fonts (Lora, Open Sans)

├── index.php                 # Landing page
├── bible-view.php            # Main Bible commentary viewer
├── bible-view-helpers.php    # Helper functions (book normalization, lookups)
├── bible-view.css            # Custom styles for commentary view
├── by_father.php             # Historical writings browser
├── .htaccess                 # URL rewriting rules
├── sitemap_generator.php     # SEO sitemap generation
├── update_db.php             # Database update utility
├── data.sqlite               # Compiled commentaries database
├── kjv.sqlite                # King James Bible text database
└── kjv/
    ├── bible_kjv.csv         # Source CSV for KJV
    └── kjv_sqlite.py         # Script to populate KJV database

The .htaccess file rewrites clean URLs to PHP parameters:

• /matthew/1/5 → bible-view.php?book=matthew&chapter=1&verse=5
• Supports extensive book name abbreviations (e.g., "Matt", "Mt", "1Cor", etc.)

Commentaries (data.sqlite):

• Location encoding: chapter * 1,000,000 + verse
• Commentary entries can span multiple verses (location_start, location_end)
• Metadata: father name, text, source title, source URL, year

Bible Text (kjv.sqlite):

• KJV verses with location encoding for efficient range queries

1. Compile a SQL file from the Commentaries-Database [Or just download the latest SQL file release]. Rename this file to data.sqlite
2. Move the data.sqlite file to this Website-Interface directory.
3. Run kjv/kjv_sqlite.py to populate the kjv.sqlite with the King James Bible so that the relevant Bible verses for a user's query will show (KJV chosen because in the public domain)
4. Now serve the files via a PHP webserver, and it should just work.

• Commentaries-Database - Source data for patristic commentaries
• Writings-Database - Historical Christian writings (hosted on GitHub Pages)

• https://catenabible.com

  • The most polished app, and a wonderful bible companion!
  • It's a closed database, which contains data from a wide variety of sources (not just the ANF/NPNF series)
  • Negatives:
    • It identifies the person behind a quote, but not the work in which the quote appears.
    • Its commentaries are tied only to individual verses (and not passages that span multiple verses)
    • Its commentaries from the ANF/NPNF often are lacking context / are cut off.

• https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/e-catena/

  • A wonderful quick reference
  • Only includes citations from the ANF/NPNF
  • But does identify the work in which a quote appears, AND provides a link directly to that work!

• https://www.catholiccrossreference.online/fathers/

  • Similar to earlychristianwritings.com/e-catena
  • Uses citations from the ANF/NPNF
  • Identifies the work in which a quote appears, AND provides a link directly to that work!

• https://www.biblindex.org/

  • The most... scholarly?
  • Laborious to use
  • Requires a bigger brain than I have.

• Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture

  • Contains commentaries from a wide variety of sources, many of which appear to be custom translated just for this product!
  • Identifies the work in which a quote appears, and often provides good historical background!
  • The commentaries shown are not exhaustive, but are curated... usually with just a couple chosen per verse.
  • Costs enough to empty your wallet.