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Bible Semantic Search

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Re: Bible Semantic Search

#62
post #46

Why with a 400 year-old translation though?

I figured it was the quintessential version of the Bible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I'm not religious so cut me some slack haha. Looking back, I should've used a version using modern English.

KJV is still wildly popular and some sects even regard it as an inspired translation. Never heard that about anything else.

NKJV is more readable for people who grew up reading blog posts instead of old books and generally retains the poetry of the KJV, but it's under copyright. I think it would be allowed for a use like this though, because they explicitly allow (as do most translations) quoting up to a certain number of verses.

EDIT: Maybe not, here's the rules: https://www.harpercollinschristian.com/sales-and-rights/perm...

Seems like you'd fall afoul for the % of total text requirement.

Re: Bible Semantic Search

#63
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that's a good idea. I was considering just fully replacing the KJV with the NIV, but for people who want the KJV, having a mapping between the two versions would work. Do the verses between the two versions map each other exactly? Like they cover the same exact thing, just written in a different style?

Just remember the NIV translation of The Bible is property of Harper Collins, who is also amusingly the publisher of many tabloids and The Satanic Bible. I used to distribute a BibleGateway-ripped copy of NIV as a plugin for the open source GnomeSword project and managed to upset both Harper Collins and the open source scholar community. It was absurd and I refused to stop. I dared them to sue me for sharing the Bibl…

I thought NIV was Zondervan, bought (as you intimate) by News International (Rupert Murdoch). What I hadn't realised is Harper Collins owns Zondervan and Murdoch controls that.

Re: Bible Semantic Search

#64

While serving a mission for my church, a fellow member bought me a copy of “Strongs Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible”. I found it really fascinating to flip through correlated terms and be able to draw conceptual lines between them. It was the first time I’d ever come across something like that. It strikes me as something that is relatively rare simply because what the Bible is, in terms of popularity and commonal…

https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/gen/1/1/ss1/s_1001

BLB is great, their app works well too. I've been using it for what feels like ~2 decades.

Re: Bible Semantic Search

#65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured it was the quintessential version of the Bible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I'm not religious so cut me some slack haha. Looking back, I should've used a version using modern English.

...another reason is that KJV is not currently under copyright, unlike (as far as I know) all modern English translations.

I think there are a couple of free and open translations that are reasonable - the WEB (World English Bible) maybe.

https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/World-English-Bible-WE...

Re: Bible Semantic Search

#66
FYI it's failing for me with:

    urllib3.exceptions.ProtocolError: This app has encountered an error. The original error message is redacted to prevent data leaks. Full error details have been recorded in the logs (if you're on Streamlit Cloud, click on 'Manage app' in the lower right of your app).
    Traceback:
    File "/home/appuser/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/streamlit/scriptrunner/script_runner.py", line 475, in _run_script
        exec(code, module.__dict__)
    File "/app/bible-semantic-search/app.py", line 50, in 
        query_results = controller.query(
    File "/app/bible-semantic-search/controller.py", line 127, in query
        results = self.index.query(query_emb, top_k, namespace)
    File "/app/bible-semantic-search/pinecone_index.py", line 63, in query
        return self.index.query(

Re: Bible Semantic Search

#67
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured it was the quintessential version of the Bible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I'm not religious so cut me some slack haha. Looking back, I should've used a version using modern English.

...another reason is that KJV is not currently under copyright, unlike (as far as I know) all modern English translations.

Fun fact: in the United Kingdom, the King James Version is still copyrighted—perpetually copyrighted, in fact—by (who else?) the British monarchy.

Since the author of this app is based in the United States, he should be safe… we have a bit of precedent for ignoring royal prerogatives here :)

Re: Bible Semantic Search

#68

SBERT isn't trained on this type of archaic English and you can see it failing. It needs to be fine tuned or you should use a modern Bible translation. A clear example is the query: "homosexuality" This returns: > James 2:3 - And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool It's clearly seei…

Hey, creator of the Bible Semantic Search app here. I 100% agree with you. I hacked together this prototype for the purposes of learning the Pinecone API rather than fine-tuning a language model, but I'm still pleasantly surprised by the quality of the search results despite all the shortcomings you mentioned. The results aren't great, but they're decent. I'm surprised how well SBERT works out of the box considering…

Some modern translations might have copyright rules preventing this without express permission (which may or may not be difficult to acquire, obviously other sites/apps have done it). They all have different rules and limitations but I remember reading that the NET Bible was specifically built for more permissive copyright requirements in the Internet age.

Re: Bible Semantic Search

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go with the ESV or NASB as these are word for word translations similar to the KJV. There's also the NKJV that uses modern english. Can use modern translations on the backend and still display the KJV verse.

Most of these newer translations have licensing restrictions that prevent you from simply using them.

Do those licenses apply to using them on the backend, though? Assuming that the site displays the classic verse, and not the copyrighted verse, as GP prescribes.

Re: Bible Semantic Search

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these newer translations have licensing restrictions that prevent you from simply using them.

Do those licenses apply to using them on the backend, though? Assuming that the site displays the classic verse, and not the copyrighted verse, as GP prescribes.

I suppose that would be the same question as whether GitHub Copilot violates copyright in its code suggestions.
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