About this project
A chronological reading aid for the words of Jesus.
Every Word of Jesus gathers statements directly attributed to Jesus in the New Testament and makes them searchable inside a chronological reading structure. The site is designed as a study and reference tool, not as a replacement for reading the passages in their full biblical context.
What the project contributes
The KJV wording itself is public-domain source text. The project’s original contribution is the layer around that source: a normalized chronology, continuous speaking-turn entries, source references, filters, stable saying identifiers, saved sayings, topic pathways, original editorial explanations, and explicit notes about where a harmony or red-letter boundary depends on judgment.
The goal is to solve a specific study problem. A reader should be able to ask “Where does Jesus discuss this?” and find relevant material quickly without losing the event, Gospel reference, or chronological stage in which the saying appears.
Text and chronology
The wording follows the public-domain King James Version tradition. The Gospel chronology is based primarily on Arthur Hinds’ The Complete Sayings of Jesus (1927), a chronological Gospel harmony. Wording, references, and red-letter boundaries were cross-checked against a complete KJV text and structured red-letter data used by the project.
The site does not claim that Hinds’ sequence is the only possible chronology. The Gospels do not provide a modern date for every scene, and reasonable harmonies can differ on some placements. The site therefore treats chronology as an editorial reading aid and documents that method in How the chronology was built.
Editorial method
The chronological reader is the source collection for the site’s topic guides. A guide begins by locating sayings relevant to a narrowly defined question, then groups representative passages into themes and links each quotation back to the chronological reader. Explanatory paragraphs are editorial summaries; KJV quotations and Scripture references remain visually distinct so readers can evaluate the summary against the source text.
Drafting and site production use software-assisted tools. Before publication, quoted wording, references, and reader links are cross-checked against the project’s KJV sayings collection. Automation is used to reduce mechanical work such as searching, formatting, and consistency checking; it is not treated as a source of biblical authority.
The site avoids building pages around unrelated or purely commercial keywords. New editorial pages are intended to answer recurring questions raised by the reader itself: chronology, parallel Gospel accounts, context, speaker boundaries, and major themes within the sayings.
Editorial limits
Red-letter boundaries are editorial and do not exist in the ancient manuscripts. Some passages—especially John 3:16–21 and Revelation 1:8—have disputed speaker boundaries. This project follows traditional attribution while acknowledging those limits instead of presenting them as manuscript markup.
Old Testament speeches of “the LORD” are not automatically labeled as sayings of Jesus, because doing so requires a theological inference beyond the project’s narrower rule of explicit New Testament attribution.
The number of displayed sayings is also editorial. It reflects how continuous speaking turns are divided for navigation. The number is not presented as a canonical count.
Why a harmony is useful—and risky
A harmony makes relationships visible across Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but it can also tempt readers to flatten four literary witnesses into one synthetic transcript. This site keeps references visible and encourages users to return to each Gospel’s surrounding narrative. The Gospel harmony guide explains that balance in detail.
Corrections and accountability
A project like this should be auditable. If a wording, reference, speaker boundary, chronology label, or link appears wrong, the correction matters more than preserving an earlier editorial choice. Use the Contact page to report the page or saying number and describe the issue.
The site also maintains a public GitHub project so the deployed files and revision history can be inspected.
Source summary
- Primary chronological source: Arthur Hinds, The Complete Sayings of Jesus (1927), public domain.
- Bible wording: public-domain KJV/1769 tradition.
- Site organization: 109 editorial sections spanning the Gospel chronology and later New Testament sayings.
- Topic guides: original editorial synthesis built from the chronological sayings collection.