Collatio

About

Collatio sets editions of the Bible side by side, verse by verse, so that one passage can be read in several translations at once. It asks for no sign-up, keeps no account, and shows no text by sample: every edition is open in full, and the comparison is the product itself.

The editions

The collection holds public-domain texts: the Hebrew and Greek originals, the Latin Vulgate, and Catholic translations into Portuguese, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch — enough to follow a passage from the language it was written in to the form it is read in today.

How the editions are aligned

Editions do not number the Bible the same way, and that is where the difficulty of setting them side by side lies. The tradition that follows the Septuagint and the Vulgate joins the Hebrew Psalms 9 and 10 into one; from there on, the whole psalter runs a number behind. Hebrew Psalm 23 — “The Lord is my shepherd” — is Psalm 22 in the Vulgate. These are not two similar psalms: it is one psalm with two numbers.

So each edition is recorded with the numbering scheme it actually follows, and the comparison aligns by passage rather than by the printed number. Asking for Psalm 23 returns the right psalm in every column, even where not every column calls it by that number.

Digitised texts carry faults of their own, too: a footnote the scan counted as half a verse, a repeated chapter, a verse broken in the wrong place. Where the source file departs from the printed page, the difference is corrected by an explicit amendment, kept in a file of its own and applied as the text is ingested. The source file is never edited: every change stays visible as a change, and the site can be rebuilt at any time from what it started with.

And where an edition simply does not carry the passage asked for — because its canon is another, or because it lacks the book — the column says so, rather than showing the nearest verse.

Who maintains it

Collatio is an independent project, maintained by one person, unaffiliated with any publisher, diocese or religious institution. Corrections to the text and suggestions for new editions are welcome: Contact