Contact :: General Questions

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or feedback you may have. But first, we ask that you check if your question has already been answered in our FAQs below.

How do I get permission to use BLB content?

See our Permissions page for more information.

Why are you called the Blue Letter Bible?

Back in 1996, in the early days of the World Wide Web and when the Blue Letter Bible first came out, hyperlinks were pretty much always blue in color. Our vision has always been to provide free Bible study software in which the Bible is the center of the experience with study resources that link off of every word in the Bible. With hundreds of thousands of links that were all blue, we decided to call it the Blue Letter Bible as a play on the more commonly referenced red-letter editions of Scripture.

The name Blue Letter Bible has endured and is a constant reminder to us all to make the Bible the center of our study.

Who operates BLB?

The Blue Letter Bible is a ministry of the non-profit organization Sowing Circle. For more information about Blue Letter Bible, please refer to our short piece on the history of Blue Letter Bible.

What denomination is BLB?

We have chosen not to be affiliated with any denomination or ministry; we have people who help from all different denominations and non-denominations. We pray that we might be faithful to the scriptures and glorify Jesus (Ephesians 4).

Know that our statement of faith, mission, and resources are grounded in the historical, conservative Christian faith. While this dictates our publication policy, it does not define the extent of our fellowship.

How is BLB funded?

Developing free Bible study software requires a lot of prayer, work, and resources. For 15 years our parent ministry, Sowing Circle, totally funded the operating costs of Blue Letter Bible—but that has changed. Since 2010, we have been required to raise support from outside sources to provide our users around the world with the comprehensive web-based Bible study tool that you have come to enjoy. In 2018, over 50% of our budget needs were met by gifts from individual donors. It is our prayer to see BLB totally funded by gifts from individuals as soon as possible.

Where can I donate?

We are grateful the Lord has placed it upon your heart to support BLB! You can donate to us here.

Why am I seeing inappropriate or malicious advertising pop-ups?

Advertising must not contradict the conservative, historic theological perspective that we hold to, in accordance with our statement of faith on our website. We have a strict advertising policy for approving and rejecting ad campaigns, and will not allow anything contrary to this to be delivered on our site. The only place you will ever see advertisements on our site is in the clearly designated advertising sections along the right side of our website labeled as "Sponsors."

Any innappropriate advertising that appears in your browser is not associated with Blue Letter Bible advertising. If this occurs it is likely that you may have a malicious Browser Helper Object (BHO) plugin or program installed on your computer. While some BHO plugins can be helpful, others can be very harmful and are often installed on an unprotected system without the user's knowledge or consent. We strongly recommend that you (if you have not done so already) download, install, and run anti-virus and/or anti-malware software to check your computer for whatever software is showing these advertisements. There are many free services available for removing unwanted malware and BHO's.

Do you have a mailing address for my tax deduction claim?

Our mailing address is:

Blue Letter Bible
PO Box 80670
Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688

How do I gain permission to use the literature found on BLB.org?

Please advise us of exactly what you want to use from the Blue Letter Bible and how you would like to use it. Provided you use the whole of our content and do not divide and republish it, you may use our material (i.e. printing out a page from the Blue Letter Bible and citing that you got it from us is fine).

Can BLB provide a link to my site?

With over 1,000,000 users of the Blue Letter Bible per month, we receive several requests to add links to various other Christian minitries. If we were to add all these links, the number would make the page ineffective. There are other jump sites for Christian ministries, and we leave this task to their expertise.

Will BLB host my study material?

At this time, we are not soliciting new material.

Do you have tracts for people to order and hand out?

Our mission is to facilitate an in-depth study of God's Word through an online interactive reference library that is continuously updated from the teachings and commentaries of selected pastors and teachers who hold to the conservative, historical Christian faith. For free tracts you can go to As Chosen to Serve, a ministry that supplies free witnessing materials world-wide.

Can I use the term “Sowing Circle” for a congregation?

Unfortunately, the name Sowing Circle is copyrighted and trademarked. Therefore, we cannot give permission to violate such according to copyright laws and our fiduciary responsibility to the ministry. We pray that the Lord will guide you to an appropriate name that reflects the same aspects of ministering together for His kingdom.

Is the URL “blb.org” for sale?

Thank you for your interest, but Blue Letter Bible has no intention of selling the URL. We encourage you to enjoy the search functions we supply free of charge to aid you in studying the Bible.

Who authored the definitions in the BLB lexicon?

We used the Strong's system but the actual Greek and Hebrew to implement the numbers. By doing this we obtained about 15000 corrections in the Strong's concordance by using the work of Larry Pierce, the author of the Online Bible (OLB - an installable digital Bible program for PC and later Mac).

It was Larry Pierce at the Online Bible that combined what Dr. Strong cited and what Dr. Thayer cited in his abridged Thayer's 1889 Greek-English Lexicon. This resulted in the Thayer's Greek Definitions module for the OLB. Larry and the developers of OLB did the same with the Old Testament in that they combined Dr. Strong's citings with Brown, Driver, and Briggs’ work on the Gesenius Lexicon.

Originally, the Greek text of the New Testament according to the Nestle-Aland 26th edition/UBS 3rd edition (N26) as included as part of the Online Bible software program, and the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia text (BHS) of the Hebrew Old Testament were extensively adapted, altered, proofed, and corrected by Maurice A. Robinson and Larry Pierce from texts conforming to that distributed by the External Services Division of the Center for Computer Analysis of Texts (CCAT) of the University of Pennsylvania.

BLB obtained permission for the Lexicon information from Larry Pierce early in its inception. Subsequently, we have added facsimile images of both Thayer’s and Gesenius’ Lexicons to our language tools..

Larry Pierce has published “Tense Voice Mood” which is a database of parsings for every verb in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Hebrew and Nestle-Aland, Byzantine Majority, and Textus Receptus 1550 Greek texts. Verbs’ forms are assigned numbers like Strong's numbers. The parsings are based on two 19th century works edited by George V. Wigram: Analytical Greek Lexicon of the New Testament and Englishman’s Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament.

BLB Strongs is not the same as my Exhaustive Strongs Concordance. Why is that?

We used the Strong's system but the actual Greek and Hebrew to implement the numbers. By doing this we obtained about 15000 corrections in the Strong's concordance by using the work of Larry Pierce, the author of the Online Bible (OLB - an installable digital Bible program for PC and later Mac).

It was Larry Pierce at the Online Bible that combined what Dr. Strong cited and what Dr. Thayer cited in his abridged Thayer's 1889 Greek-English Lexicon. This resulted in the Thayer's Greek Definitions module for the OLB. Larry and the developers of OLB did the same with the Old Testament in that they combined Dr. Strong's citings with Brown, Driver, and Briggs’ work on the Gesenius Lexicon.

Originally, the Greek text of the New Testament according to the Nestle-Aland 26th edition/UBS 3rd edition (N26) as included as part of the Online Bible software program, and the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia text (BHS) of the Hebrew Old Testament were extensively adapted, altered, proofed, and corrected by Maurice A. Robinson and Larry Pierce from texts conforming to that distributed by the External Services Division of the Center for Computer Analysis of Texts (CCAT) of the University of Pennsylvania.

BLB obtained permission for the Lexicon information from Larry Pierce early in its inception. Subsequently, we have added facsimile images of both Thayer’s and Gesenius’ Lexicons to our language tools..

Larry Pierce has published “Tense Voice Mood” which is a database of parsings for every verb in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Hebrew and Nestle-Aland, Byzantine Majority, and Textus Receptus 1550 Greek texts. Verbs’ forms are assigned numbers like Strong's numbers. The parsings are based on two 19th century works edited by George V. Wigram: Analytical Greek Lexicon of the New Testament and Englishman’s Hebrew and Analytical Greek Lexicon of the New Testament and Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament.

We have subsequently added Strong's definitions to both our Hebrew and Greek Lexicon pages.

What is the original publication date of the "Treasury of Scripture Knowledge?"

1836. Our BLB copy has been altered to add about 100K more references.

Who narrated the audio bible for BLB?

Stephen Johnston has gained an international reputation as an award-winning narrator, receiving both an Emmy and a New York Film Critics Award. He has narrated and sold more translations of the audio Bible than any other person in history.

Are you going to add more versions of the Bible to BLB?

Over the years, we have had numerous requests to provide additional translations. Many of these have indeed been added, yet there is always room to grow. Still, the Blue Letter Bible programming and design team is very small. Therefore, we continually are seeking the Lord's guidance as to the best use of the limited time and resources available to us.

Was your question not answered above? Please fill out the following form to submit your questions and feedback. Since we do not have full-time staff assigned to answer emails, we will attempt to respond in a timely manner. Your patience and understanding are appreciated.