Fish the Right

About

Why we made it, and how

Fish the Right retells the whole Bible as one story, in the order things happened, with the Bible itself beside it. Here is why it exists, how it’s made, and the choices behind it.

Why it exists

The Bible isn’t arranged in the order things happened. Kings and Chronicles tell the same reigns twice, the psalms and the prophets sit apart from the lives they belong to, and four Gospels tell one life. That makes it hard to read straight through, for a child most of all.

It began with a simple wish: a Bible story a child could read and understand, in an order that makes sense, that never lets go of the actual passages. So every paragraph of the Story cites the verses it retells, and they open beside it, exactly as published.

A tool, not a teacher

This site is here to present the Bible, not to preach it.

The Story tells what the text says and leaves what to make of it to you, your family and your church. The reading plan’s notes say who, when and where, and point to the passages; its words of hope are the Bible’s own. Ask answers from the text and shows you where. Nothing here tells you what to believe.

The choices behind it

No retelling is free of choices. Rather than claim there are none, here are the ones we’ve made, so you can weigh them yourself.

  • What the Story adds, marked

    The Story is being retold as a novel, a part at a time, starting with Genesis 1–11. Every event and every word anyone speaks is the Bible’s. What brings a scene to life, like what someone sees or feels, is the Story’s own, and Show what the Story adds marks all of it. Take it out and the Bible’s account is unchanged.

  • In the order things happened

    The Story puts events where they happened, and the psalms, the prophets and the letters with the lives they belong to. That order and every date are estimates, so the dates say “about”. About the dates

  • Told twice, told once

    Where two books tell the same events, as Samuel, Kings and Chronicles do, the Story tells them once and cites both. Where they differ, it says so and doesn’t try to make them agree.

  • Lists and laws summed up

    Stories are told in full. Long family lists, laws and building plans are summed up, and every verse is still cited, so the full text is one tap away.

  • Hard parts told

    War, cruelty and grief are in the Bible, and they’re in the Story. The wording is gentler for young readers, never what happened, and a note for parents says what’s coming.

  • No side taken

    Where Christians read a passage differently, the Story tells what the text says, and the notes say that readings differ without choosing between them.

  • Every book included

    The World English Bible has the books Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include, and so does the Story, marked as such. If your Bible leaves them out, a setting leaves them out of your reading plan. How the Bible came together

How it’s made

The Story is written with AI from the World English Bible, a public-domain translation, and every chapter goes through the same checks before it’s published.

  • Checked by code

    Every citation must point to a real verse, and every verse must be covered somewhere in the Story, told in full or summed up.

  • Read beside its verses

    A separate review, also done with AI, reads each paragraph beside the verses it cites, looking for anything added, changed or left out. A chapter retold as a novel is also reviewed by another company’s AI model.

  • In its own words

    Each chapter is compared with six modern translations, so the Story stays a retelling of the World English Bible and doesn’t borrow another translation’s wording.

  • Read by people

    The editors read the chapters here and correct them, and any reader can leave them a note on a passage. Other AI models, and people the editors give a key, can suggest plainer wording; an editor reads every suggestion, and nothing changes unless they accept it. Each chapter says at its end how it was made and whether the editors have reviewed it yet. A part retold as a novel goes live only once an editor has read and listened to every chapter of it.

The rest of the site follows the same rules. The reading plan’s notes are written with AI and reviewed against the verses. Ask is AI too: it answers from the passages it finds and links every one, so you can read them yourself. The read-aloud is a computer voice, and the hymnal’s two arrangements of each hymn, traditional and modern, are written by computer from its published harmony and played on sampled instruments.

Why AI

AI can be used to do harm: to deceive, to invent, to sway people. Like any powerful tool, what it does depends on whose hands it’s in and what they ask of it.

This site is meant as one small example of the other kind. Here AI serves the text rather than replacing it. It works from the Bible’s own words, under clear rules, and its work is checked by code, by a second review and by people. Every sentence points back to the verses it came from, so you never have to take its word for anything.

Who makes it

Fish the Right is made independently, by editors who would rather stay out of the picture. No church, publisher or sponsor stands behind it, and it isn’t selling anything. It’s free to read, with no ads and no trackers, and reading needs no account.

It isn’t a commentary, a church or a replacement for the Bible. The Bible is right here, and everything on the site leads back to it.

Sources and credits

The Bible
The World English Bible, from eBible.org, in the public domain. The few verses it leaves out are given from its own notes or from the public-domain LXX2012, marked as such.
Places
Where each place was and how sure that is: OpenBible.info, CC BY 4.0. The maps are Google Maps.
The library
The reference works Ask quotes for background: Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), Smith’s Bible Dictionary (1884), the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (1915) and Nave’s Topical Bible (1896), from CrossWire’s public-domain editions, and Josephus in William Whiston’s translation (1737), from Project Gutenberg. Entries that demean people for their race, people, faith or sex are left out or trimmed.
Other early writings
1 Enoch and Jubilees in R. H. Charles’s translations (SPCK, 1917), from Project Gutenberg and the Internet Sacred Text Archive. The Gospel of Mary is our own translation, from the Coptic of the Berlin Codex and from the Greek of P.Ryl. 463 as encoded by the Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri (CC BY 3.0); the photograph of its last page is the Berlin museum’s (Sandra Steiß, CC BY-SA 4.0). Our translation is dedicated to the public domain (CC0).
What others have written
Short passages from Jewish and Christian writers of the past, quoted from public-domain printings, each credited beside it with its translator and edition and linked to the printed page; the writers and editions are listed on their page.
Pictures
The timeline’s paintings and photographs come from Wikimedia Commons, each credited with its licence beside it.
Hymns
Words, tunes and harmony all published before 1931, so in the public domain in the United States. The settings come from the Open Hymnal Project and the Christian Classics Ethereal Hymnary. The recordings are arranged and recorded by Fish the Right from those settings (the melody note for note, every chord the hymnal’s own), on the Salamander Grand Piano V3 by Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0), VSCO 2 Community Edition by Versilian Studios (the organ sampled by Simon Dalzell), Virtuosity Drums and Black And Blue Basses by Versilian Studios and Karoryfer Samples, and GeneralUser GS by S. Christian Collins, made with abcMIDI, sfizz, FluidSynth and FFmpeg.
Type
Cormorant Garamond, Literata and Source Sans 3, under the SIL Open Font License.

Questions and corrections

Spotted a mistake, or have a question or an idea? Use Send feedback at the foot of any page, or select words in the Story and leave the editors a note. What we keep about you, and why, is under What we keep on the account page.