This site (variorumbible.net) is produced by Mitchell Barnes Powell, a resident of Ohio, and all its content that I have produced or will produce in the future is hereby released under the Creative Commons CC0 License.

One fine day in 2026, I realized that variorumbible.net was an unclaimed domain name, and I could not let this stand.

The title Variorum Bible is a reference to the Bible of a similar name, the Variorum Reference Bible, published in 1888 by T. K. Cheyne, S. R. Driver, et al. Thanks to the munificence of the folks behind archive.org, you can read it in facsimile whenever the urge strikes, and it can be found at

https://archive.org/details/holybiblecontain00chey/page/n6/mode/1up

The biblical text itself that one can find in the Variorum Bible is utterly commonplace, the KJV, which was almost universally used then by English-speakers. Its interest lies in its notes, about which I will let the first preface to the work speak for itself:

In the Variorum foot-notes, which distinguish this edition from other Reference Bibles, the method of the notes in the margin has been extended until a digest of the best accredited Various Readings and Renderings of the Texts, or, in other words, a conspectus of the really tenable opinions upon difficult or imperfectly translated passages in the Authorised Version–whether due to the incorrectness of the Hebrew or Greek Text used, or to inaccurate translation of a text correct in itself–is laid before the English reader.

How nice it would be to have a conventional biblical text annotated with “a conspectus of the really tenable opions upon difficult or imperfectly translated passages”!

The original Variorum Reference Bible, though no doubt useful, is now dated by nearly a century and a half of scholarship, and it would be nice to have a modern one.

I can picture, in my mind’s eye, a central column of biblical text, with notes off to the side explaining difficult bits, illustrating textual variants, and explaining the reasons for and against various renderings, with hyperlinked footnotes showing just who in biblical studies has supported or argued for each.

It seems like a distant dream at the moment, of all the collecting and sifting that would be required to build such a thing, but I’d like to pick away in that general direction, and that’s what this website is for.