Is Hermeneus free?
Yes. There is no price, no subscription, no in-app purchase, no advertising and no account. It is built on texts that are free for anyone to use, and it is offered in the same spirit.
Which devices does it run on?
iPhone, iPad, and Macs with Apple silicon. It is coming soon to the App Store; this site will link to it when it is there.
Which texts and lexicons are included?
Texts: the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) with MorphGNT parsing; the Hebrew Bible in the Westminster Leningrad Codex with the Open Scriptures morphology; and three English Bibles, the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), the World English Bible (WEB) and the King James Version (KJV).
Lexicons (13): Abbott-Smith, Thayer, Moulton–Milligan, TBESG, Dodson and Strong’s for New Testament Greek; Liddell–Scott–Jones (LSJ) and the Middle Liddell for classical Greek; Brown–Driver–Briggs (BDB), TBESH and Strong’s for Hebrew; and Lewis & Short and Lewis’s Elementary Latin Dictionary for Latin.
Every one is credited, with its licence, on Sources & licences.
Why isn’t the Nestle–Aland, BHS, BDAG, HALOT or the ESV here?
Because they are under copyright, and Hermeneus includes only texts that are in the public domain or under an open licence that allows them to be shared, and only from sources that can legally be redistributed. That rules out, among others, the Nestle–Aland and UBS Greek New Testaments, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and Quinta, BDAG, HALOT, TDNT, and modern translations such as the ESV, NIV, NASB and NRSV.
Some older works are public domain in print but have no openly licensed digital text yet, or only one whose terms are unclear (Jastrow, Autenrieth, Sophocles’ Byzantine lexicon, for example). They are left out until a clean source exists, rather than included on a guess.
Will more texts be added?
The plan is to add more open texts over time. Candidates include other public-domain Greek New Testaments, the Septuagint, older English versions and public-domain reference works, each only after its licence has been checked.
Is my data private?
Yes. Hermeneus collects nothing. There is no account, no analytics and no tracking. Your notes, your translation, your profile and your PDFs are stored only on your device and are never sent to us or to anyone else. The privacy policy says this in full.
Does it need the internet?
Only to download it from the App Store. After that everything (reading, the lexicons, search, PDF import and OCR) works offline, including in flight mode. The app makes no internet connections of its own.
Can I import my own PDFs?
Yes: articles, books, notes, any PDF you own or have the right to use. Scanned pages are read by OCR on the device, in English, Greek, Hebrew and Latin, and every PDF becomes searchable. Your files stay on your device and only you can see them. See Library, import and OCR.
Do my notes sync between my iPhone and my Mac?
Not at present. Each device keeps its own notes, translation and library. They are included in that device’s own backups.
Is there AI in Hermeneus?
Not at the moment. An optional connector may come later; if it does, it will be off unless you choose to turn it on, and this site and the privacy policy will say clearly what it does before it ships.
I found a mistake in a text or a lexicon entry.
Please tell us at [email protected], with the reference or the headword. Some lexicons (Thayer, Moulton–Milligan) were machine-read from printed pages and have occasional errors; corrections to the Perseus lexicons are offered back to the Perseus Digital Library.
What does “Hermeneus” mean?
ἑρμηνεύς is Greek for “interpreter” (1 Corinthians 14:28) and the root of “hermeneutics”. The tagline says why: all of life is interpretation.
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