The Erasmus Project

Resources for developers of Bible software

About us
The Erasmus Project is an open source collection of public domain materials, and other resources, that have been formatted for easy use and manipulation in conjunction with software. This should not be confused with the erasmus Bible app; it is commercial software. The Erasmus Project is a not-for-profit online resource for the benefit of the whole Christian community. The material on this site is available for free to anyone who wishes to use it for any purpose, commercial or otherwise. Community collaboration, in terms of new materials, and corrections and refinements, is welcome.

Our materials
Our materials are not formatted for the end-user. Rather, they are formatted and tagged for use with Bible software. To see our tagging standard, click here.

The Erasmus Project has the final say on which materials to include and any changes made to them. We welcome a broad range of traditions, but limit the resources to those which are in agreement with the views of traditional Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Christian, and Orthodox Judaism (insofar as it is not anti-Christian). In other words, we do not include fringe material (the Book of Enoch, The Gospel of Thomas, etc), material by fringe groups (Jehovah Witness, Latter Day Saints, etc), or modern revisionist works. We may also decline material that is otherwise clearly unBiblical, but we do not require that material exactly corresponds to the individual doctrines held by those of us involved in the project. Finally, we are interested only in material that has to do with the Bible, Christianity, biographies of Christians, history of the church, and so forth - not general history, politics, or any other matter.

The Erasmus Project intentionally seeks out material that is of use to believers, whether scholars, in the ministry, or lay people. So, there is a wide variety of works that we persue, but we focus on those by respected authors such as Spurgeon, Clarke, Henry, Strongs, Calvin, Finney, Barnes, Luther, and so forth. Not to mention various Bible versions. And we tend toward those that have proven worthwhile over the centuries. At any time, we have several works in various stages of clean-up and mark-up which we will release when we feel the material is ready, but we cannot guarantee a release date and so we don't announce specifically what we are working on.

We work on some materials that are collections (such as the hymnal) and not attributable to a specific author. However, we generally don't combine authors - or multiple works of the same author - in a given reference work. You can combine things yourself as you wish.

We limit ourselves to public domain materials or materials that we've otherwise been given specific permission to include. If you find material in violation of copyright, please contact us so that we can remove it.

Updates
Updates and new materials are added to the project over time and you should check back periodically to see what is available. We also constantly review our material and, every so often, we provide updated works when we have found inconsistencies with the originals. We never knowingly release material with flaws, although we sometimes include unprocessed images until we have time to color-correct them. We may also opt to make a reference work available that is missing original Greek or Hebrew since the work may still be of use and processing missing Greek/Hebrew characters is time-consuming. We will eventually provide updates.

Much of what we have is either scanned from original sources by us, or obtained from the internet by others who have done the same. In either case, we clean up scan errors and other problems, but the intent is to provide material that is exactly as it was originally delivered in print form. No effort is made to try to force the material into some consistent form, however the use of markup tags should aid those who wish to make alterations in the presentation of the material for their own uses. Because of the possibility of changes being made to the original material that we are unaware of, we also indicate the provenance of the material. Despite our best efforts, however, some errors may be present. If you have corrections, please contact us

Warranty and endorsements
We try to include a lot of useful information, but it is provided for use at the user's discretion. No warranty with regard to the reliability of the material is made. Its use is entirely at the risk of the user.

Finally, we do not endorse anyone's use of this material nor do we try to police its use. Our focus is on providing quality material. What you do with it is up to you. Therefore, do not imply that your product or web site has our approval or endorsement. However, if you want to indicate that the material came from this site, we appreciate the exposure. Any references or links on this site to specific ministries, persons, or products are simply for the convenience of visitors to our site and do not imply an endorsement by us.