Search box

The search box can be used for opening Bible passages as well as Bible text searches.

You can enter a Bible passage in the search box (e.g. John 3) and send it with the Enter key. The Bible text will then open in the selected Bible translation.

ERF Bibleserver automatically recognizes the common abbreviations of biblical books. It is therefore not necessary to write out the biblical book in each case (e.g. Joh 3). If you add a verse or verse range, it is automatically marked and the browser scrolls to the corresponding place (e.g. John 3:16).

You can also select separate areas within a chapter (e.g. Joh 3:12-16.20-21).

Alternatively you can open a Bible passage via the icon book selection on the left side of the search box. Further information can be found in the help section book selection.

You can change the translation of the Bible passage in the search box on the right by clicking on the short form of the Bible translation (e.g. ESV). Details can be found in the section Translation selection.

ERF Bibleserver offers many ways to search the Bible text. Enter one or more terms in the search field and confirm with the Enter key. By default, the search result shows the Bible verses that best match the search terms.

There is no classic page navigation here - instead, further results are automatically loaded at the end of the hit list.

There are two different search types: the “Smart Search” (standard) and the “Classic Search”:

• The Smart Search returns a result sorted by relevance, even if there is only a partial match with the search term.
• The Classic Search is a pure keyword search. It only lists the Bible verses in which the search term actually occurs - in the order of the Bible books.

Use search filters:

With the Smart Search, you can select in the search filters whether the search should prioritize meaning-based hits or keyword-based hits (see Search filters).

In the Classic Search, there are further options that you can use directly in the search field:

• By default, only verses that contain all the terms entered are displayed (AND link). If you also want to find verses that only contain one of several terms (OR link), separate the terms in the search field with a comma.
• Terms can also be specifically excluded. In this case, the search will display Bible verses that contain term A but not term B. This works with a minus sign in front of the word to be excluded (e.g. Jesus -Christ).
• To find partial words where the term you are looking for is at the beginning of the word, you can add an asterisk (*) to the end of the word (e.g. son* also finds sons).

Further settings - such as searching for partial words within a word or searching through headings - can be found in the search filters (accessible via the funnel icon to the right of the search field).

For search terms with umlauts, you can also enter them without umlauts (e.g. Suende also finds Sünde).

The number search for numbers from 1 to 12 also finds the written-out form (e.g. 2 also finds two). This function is only available for German and English.