YHWH እግዚአብሔር

How to use it

Two ways in — read the ready-made Bible, or build your own.

There’s nothing to sign up for and nothing runs in the cloud. Pick the path that fits you: download the finished Ethiopian Tewahedo Study Bible and start reading, or install the free desktop program and assemble an edition that’s exactly yours.

Read the ready-made Bible → Build your own →

Path 1 — Read the Ready-Made Ethiopian Bible

The fastest way in. The full Ethiopian Tewahedo Study Bible is a single ebook file — the complete canon in English, with the whole study apparatus and the original languages built in. No program required; it opens in any e-reader.

Step 1 — Download the File

On the Releases page, pick the version for your reader:

Step 2 — Open It on Your Device

A walk-through for each kind of device:

Step 3 — Read, and Tap for More

Read normally. Where a verse carries study notes, you’ll see a small ◈ diamond with a count beside it — ◈16 means sixteen distinct notes. Tap it and the notes open in a single tidy panel, gathered into a cascade that reads like the Bible itself: verse, then category, then source, then the notes.

Each kind of note opens its own labelled group, in a fixed most-useful-first order — every group heading pairs the category’s manuscript symbol with its name spelled out, and a thin coloured stripe down its left edge marks the category at a glance (the structure holds even on a black-and-white e-ink screen). Inside a group, each source is named once — a short line in italics, such as Easton’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary (1897) — with its notes stepped in beneath, and the topical indexes merged into one de-duplicated line at the end. Nothing is dropped; the notes are only grouped and tidied. The full symbol legend is on the home page.

A separate marker opens the verse in its original languages (Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic). Use the reader’s own table of contents to move between books and chapters, and the reader’s controls for font size, spacing, and theme — the Bible follows your reader’s settings.

Tip. On Kobo, if pop-ups don’t open, make sure you sideloaded the .kepub.epub (not the plain .epub).

Optional — The Kobo Font Pack

Kobo’s quick-look popup uses the device’s own reading font — which usually can’t draw Hebrew, Greek, Geʽez, or Arabic. The fix is one step: download the free font pack and unzip it. Inside are three fonts in five files — Cardo in regular, bold, and italic (that’s three of the files), plus one Geʽez font and one Arabic font. Copy all five files into a folder named fonts at the top of your Kobo’s drive while it’s connected by USB, then eject. On the device, set your reading font to Cardo — it draws Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, while the Geʽez and Arabic files cover those two scripts, so every popup renders properly.

If popups lose Hebrew, Greek, Geʽez, or Arabic (hollow boxes), especially after you sideload a new .kepub.epub: the font pack is probably still installed — Kobo sometimes forgets to apply it. While reading, tap the centre of the page → Aa → Font face → switch away from Cardo (e.g. Publisher Default) → open Font face again → re-select Cardo. One deselect/re-select cycle usually restores translation scripts in the Footnote preview; no USB reinstall needed.

Path 2 — Build Your Own Edition

The desktop program lets you shape your own study Bible from one big storehouse of Scripture and study — choose the books, the notes, the languages, and the look — then export a clean ebook. It runs entirely on your own computer: no account, no cloud, and no internet connection needed once it’s installed.

Step 1 — Install the Program

From the Releases page, download the build for your system:

Step 2 — Launch It

Open the program. It runs locally in its own window — there’s no website to log into and no data leaves your machine. You’ll start from the full storehouse and narrow it down to your edition.

Step 3 — Choose Your Starting Edition

Four canon-shaped study editions ship as ready-made starting points. Each is a complete, working recipe — pick the one nearest to the Bible you want, then adjust anything about it (or build from the full storehouse instead):

Other traditions — a Tanakh-only Bible, a denser scholarly apparatus, and more — are built through the customize console, not as separate pre-made SKUs. Start from whichever canon edition is closest, then tune books, notes, commentary streams, and languages to match.

Step 4 — Work Through Your Edition

The builder follows the shape of a Bible, so you set things at whatever level you like — the whole Bible, a single book, a chapter, or one verse. Take it in this order:

  1. Confirm your canon & tradition. Your starting edition already set the books; change the canon here if you want a different shape — anything from the Tanakh up to the full Ethiopian Tewahedo canon.
  2. Choose your notes. Turn whole families of study notes on or off — cross-references, Hebrew & Greek word studies, historical and cultural background, literary analysis, commentary by tradition, topical indexes, and more. The rule is most specific wins: switch a family off across the whole Bible but back on just in Genesis, or flip a single note by hand.
  3. Choose the original-language popups. Pick which verse pop-ups appear — Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex), Greek (Septuagint and Byzantine New Testament), Latin (Clementine Vulgate), and Arabic (Van Dyck) — for the whole Bible or down to a single verse.
  4. Make it yours. Pick a theme, set your cover and title pages, and fill in your own title, publisher name, copyright, and any editors’ names.
  5. Add reading plans (optional). Daily or monthly reading schedules appear as navigation aids in the finished book.

Step 5 — Export Your Ebook

When your edition is ready, export it. The program assembles a standards-compliant EPUB 3 and validates it against the W3C epubcheck tool to zero errors and zero warnings. The finished file opens with a “Your Edition” page that lists exactly what’s inside — the real note counts and the languages you kept.

Step 6 — Read It on Your Device

Move the exported file to your reader exactly as in Path 1, Step 2 above — the plain .epub for Apple Books, Android apps, and computer readers. For tap-to-read pop-ups on a Kobo, convert your export to the .kepub form first — the free kepubify tool does it in one step (the same step the ready-made Kobo file uses).

Verify your download

Every release is posted with a SHA256SUMS.txt, and comparing the checksum confirms your copy arrived complete and unaltered. The commands for each system are on the Releases page.

It’s free, it runs on your own computer, and it never asks you to turn off any protection. Something confusing or wrong? Tell me on the feedback page.