BibleGateway is an evangelical Christian

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

designed to allow easy reading, listening, studying, searching, and sharing of the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

in many different versions and translations, including English, French, Spanish, and other languages. Its mission statement is "To honor

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by equipping people to read and understand the Bible, wherever they are". The website is free to use, but also offers Bible Gateway Plus, a membership program with enhanced services. It is currently owned by

Zondervan Zondervan is an international Christian media and publishing company located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States. Zondervan is a founding member of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA). It is a part of HarperCollins, Ha ...

. Bible Gateway's engagement features include the ability to display a single Bible verse in many English Bible translations, the ability to display and compare up to five Bible translations side by side at once, its daily Blog, more than 60 email devotions, Bible reading plans and verses-of-the-day, a free mobile app, audio Bibles, video interviews, Bible reference books, shareable widgets, advanced search tools, Bible Gateway Blogger Grid, a retail store, and the Bible Gateway Deals discount program. Bible Gateway's online bookstore offers more than 500,000 Christian resources. It is an affiliate of Christianbook.com.

History

Founded by Nick Hengeveld in 1993 at Calvin College,

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, Bible Gateway was initially planned as a static

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presentation of the

. In 1995, the site moved to the new Gospel Communications Network (a part of Gospel Communications International). The Bible Gateway website was originally written as a CGI script in

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. Later versions were written in C++, PHP, and

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. Bible Gateway gradually expanded its database by acquiring the rights to more English and foreign language translations, including translations published by International Bible Society, The Lockman Foundation, and Wycliffe Global Alliance. In late 2008,

(the

Evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of th ...

Christian publisher of the NIV and TNIV Bible and a wholly owned subsidiary of

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

) acquired Bible Gateway from Gospel Communications. The sale of the site came after two years of continued financial difficulties on the part of the donation-driven GospelCom ministry. In June 2009, Joseph Park was hired as president of BibleGateway.com. Park was co-founder and former CEO of Kozmo.com, which was the subject of the documentary film '' e-Dreams''. He was also co-founder and former CEO of Askville, which was owned by

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and closed in 2013. In May 2010, Rachel Barach replaced Park (who became Senior Vice President of Consumer Products at parent company HarperCollins Digital, Consumer) as General Manager of Bible Gateway. , Bible Gateway hosts 232 versions of the Bible, in 74 different languages. Its Alexa ranking was #744.

References

{{HarperCollins Android (operating system) software BlackBerry software Christian websites Electronic Bibles Internet properties established in 2008 IOS software Online Scripture Search Engine Universal Windows Platform apps Bible versions and translations Internet properties established in 1993