BibleGateway.com - Tutorial

Bible Gateway puts a lot of tools at your disposal. So where do you begin? These tutorials will walk you step-by-step through the most popular tasks at Bible Gateway.

First, let's walk through some of the highlights.

  1. The search bar provides recommendations to passages to help you find what you're looking for more quickly. As you type, you'll see recommended verses, passages and topical searches appear to help you narrow your focus.
  2. Our home page is the perfect starting point. You'll find the Verses of the Day, links to articles that will help you learn more about the Bible, becoming the perfect starting point for your day.
  3. You will stay engaged as you read and go deeper into your Bible studies. As you move through the Bible and begin to read larger passages, you'll find premium resources, available with Bible Gateway Plus, alongside the book, chapter and verse you are already reading. Answering questions you have as you read the Bible has never been easier.
  4. We offer a lot of other tools and resources to support you—Bible reading plans, devotionals, Bible reference works, a mobile app, and more—but at its core, Bible Gateway is about engaging with the text of the Bible. Specifically, we make the Bible available in a variety of different languages, versions, and translations for you to read and study.
  5. You'll find your favorite translation from over 200 in 70+ languages.
  6. You can compare up to 5 translations translations in parallel, or side by side or a single verse in all English or Spanish translations at once.

    If you're new to the Bible, you might find these questions-and-answers useful:



    Creating a Bible Gateway Account




    All of Bible Gateway's basic features are available for free. However, some advanced features—such as the note-taking and highlighting features mentioned above—require that you be logged into a free Bible Gateway account in order to use them. Creating a Bible Gateway account is free, easy, and gives you access to the following advanced Bible Gateway features:

    It's easy to create a free Bible Gateway account—just follow the steps outlined here.


    All of Bible Gateway's basic functions can be accessed through the Search Bar, which you can find near the top of most pages on Bible Gateway. It looks like this (click to enlarge):


    The Search Bar lets you interact with the Bible in the following ways:

    • Browse to any part of the Bible
    • Look up a specific Bible passage, such as John 3:16
    • Search for a name, location, or any other keyword in the Bible
    • Select or change the version of the Bible you want to read

    How to browse to any part of the Bible

    If you want to browse to and read through any part of the Bible, you can do so by clicking Bible Book List directly below the search form. Doing so opens up a complete list of the books of the Bible, ordered as they appear in print Bibles:


    This list shows each Bible book in the Bible version that is selected in the Search Bar's drop-down menu. Note that while the list of Bible books is the same across most Bible versions, it does differ across some translations. For example, some Bibles on Bible Gateway contain the deuterocanonical books while others do not. Also, some of the Bible translations on Bible Gateway may only contain the New Testament or another subset of the complete Bible text.


    How to look up a specific Bible passage

    If you know exactly which Bible passage you want to read, you can type it into the search form and click Search to read it. The search form is quite versatile; you can enter Bible references in different ways. For example, the search form recognizes the following search terms:

    • Genesis 1:1 (the standard way that Bible verses are described)
    • Genesis 1:1-10 (a Bible passage encompassing several verses)
    • Genesis 1-3 (multiple contiguous Bible chapters)
    • Genesis 1-2,5 (more than one Bible chapter, not necessarily contiguous)
    • Genesis 1:1, John 3:16 (Bible passages from different books)
    • Gn 1:1 (Bible Gateway recognizes most common Bible book abbreviations)

    How to select or change the version of the Bible you want to read

    The drop-down menu to the immediate left of the Search button indicates the Bible version or translation that Bible Gateway will use when performing your search and displaying the results:


    By default, Bible Gateway searches the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible. However, you can change this by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting a different Bible version from the resulting list. Bible Gateway will remember your selection and, going forward, will use your last selected Bible version when performing searches, until you close your browser session. You can set your own default Bible version by visiting the Preferences page and choosing a default Bible version there.

    Digging deeper: advanced searches

    Now that you've gotten familiar with the basic search features, you've probably noticed some of their limitations. What if you want to do a search for something a bit more complex? Or what if you want to see your search results in several different versions at the same time, or restrict your search to a specific section of the Bible? The answer is to do an advanced search.

    There are two types of advanced search at Bible Gateway: the Passage Lookup and the Keyword Search. Click on the links below to learn more about these advanced features:


    Bible Reading Tips and Tricks

    Once you've looked up the Bible passage you want to read (using any of the above techniques), you'll spend most of your time on Bible Gateway reading Scripture. Once you're on a Bible passage page, you have a number of tools to customize your reading experience. Below are links to tutorials to walk you through the use of these features:


    With Bible Gateway, you have access to many resources to enhance and deepen your understanding of the Bible.


    A Bible Gateway Plus membership upgrades your Bible study experience with these great features:

    • A complete digital Bible study library, with no expensive software to install.
    • Reduced ads on Bible Gateway.
    • Access to 40+ study & reference books including the NIV Study Bible and the newly-added Essential Bible Dictionary.
    • A risk-free, 14-day trial—you can cancel any time.