New App for Bible Commentaries, Verse by Verse

ElGawly

Hi,
We came with an idea and want people's input on it.

We wanna create an app on different platforms that allow people to find commentaries by Church Fathers for each individual verse, both Old Fathers, and contemporary Orthodox ones.

What do you think of such project/idea?

Do you want it to be a stand-alone Bible app with this feature, or an app with just this feature accessed through verses search.

We wanna also allow some trusted people to be editors, who can add to the commentaries too, probably after being reviewed by other trusted members.
And it will be free definitely!

What do you think of having videos 'or links?' of priests explaining the verses?

As an initiative during brainstorming phase, please provide your opinions, suggestions, feedbacks on the idea, anything that can help us deliver the right thing!

Ougai,
The unnamed yet app team

minasoliman

There has been an effort in this with "Ancient Christian Commentaries Series" (ACCS). But there are some criticisms of the effort, especially with the choice of "fathers" in some areas. It's not my personal criticism however, as I still appreciate the effort made and I think it's still useful. What I wish is something more comprehensive, and this could probably take decades. I would want maybe about (arbitrary number) 10 scholars for each book of the Bible (more or less depending on size of the book and availability of commentaries). Then there would be a review of all Patristic literature (and maybe some controversial ancient literature) to do a detailed list and analysis of the interpretations, maybe similar to ACCS, and this should be organized in order by century written. So the first commentary I would want to see is the earliest possible document that mentions it (so even the gospels would be included as "commentary" quotes if something from Genesis is discussed, and maybe pre-Christ literature), all the way to pertinent contemporary literature.

Remnkemi

Nice concepts. There is one small problem. The project will never end. Ever. The amount of work needed is so astronomical. In addition to what Mina stated, we have to remember that we don't even have a unified, end-all Bible to begin with. Even the Septuagint has multiple versions. In fact there is the IOSCS (International Organization for the Septuagint and Cognate Studies). They continue to find manuscripts and manuscript fragments that change the understanding of the Septuagint. This is only one organization. There is a new organization under the University of Göttingen that will spend the next 300 years working on the Sahidic Old Testament. (Its estimated complete is December 31, 2036). The Nag Hammadi Gnostic apocryphal texts discovered in 1945 are not complete, nor is there a finalized version yet. Migne's Patrologia Graeca is not fully translated so we don't even know if there are patristic fathers hidden somewhere. I can go on and on. 

My suggestion for your team is to limit the focus of your project. Start with one Bible book or one theme and find a handful of patristics. (This is basically what Fr John Paul did at St Paul's Brotherhood. His patristic series are categorized by themes and seasons.) Work on the premise that this is not a comprehensive archive and search tool for patristics. It will eventually get big enough to include more books and more fathers. Anything more than this will require hundreds of people with PhDs in biblical textual analysis, patristics, digital humanities, monasticism, liturgics, history, university scholarship, university credibility, time and money for the next 50 years or so. 

But I am looking forward to seeing an introductory app. Make sure it is compatible with Android.