I was asked to review the Bible.is iPhone app. In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I received the app for free. That’s not all that impressive, however, because that offer is available to everyone. Faith Comes By Hearing, the makers of Bible.is, is not charging for the program. (In October 2009, I reviewed the BibleStick, which is produced by this same group)
Faith Comes By Hearing has recorded audio Bibles in over 400 languages. In the Bible.is app, they combine these recordings with the text, allowing you to read along while listening. Not every version available has both audio and text; some have only one or the other.
Reading plan
The app also allows for bookmarking, highlighting, taking notes, etc., but in their own words: “we’re leaving the heavy lifting to Logos, OliveTree, and others who are doing an awesome job there.” There is an included Bible reading plan that looks quite nice.
For people who enjoy listening to audio Bibles, this app is a tremendous value. If you’ve priced audio Bibles, you know they can be expensive. With this app, you can get any number of them for free.
For those without an iOS device, the Faith Comes By Hearing website also allows for the downloading of many audio Bibles. And if you use an Android phone, you should have a Bible.is app soon. They also plan to add apps for Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian-based phones. Plus, there is a service that will provide daily SMS text messages of a Bible-reading plan, with the option to listen to that text through your phone’s web browser.
Multiple languages
So, do I recommend this app? Yes… if you’re not like me. I’ve discovered that I don’t enjoy listening to the audio Bibles. At first I was thinking, “This one’s too dull. This other one’s too dramatic. This one has too many sound effects.” Finally I realized that I was the problem. I just don’t like ANY audio Bible, at least not any that I’ve heard.
I also dislike the fact that the app seems locked into portrait mode. I like to read in landscape. Switching between versions is not smooth, though they anticipate fixing that soon. The multilingual aspects of the app only serve those of us who are bilingual; the Bible texts are in other languages, but the program itself is only in English. (I’m told they are also working on that)
If you think you’d like to listen to the Bible, give this app a try. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great service. And you can’t beat the price!