Ever read a Bible verse and wished you could hear how the earliest Christians understood it? Catena puts the words of more than 100 Church Fathers beside every verse, so you can read Scripture with the understanding of 2,000 years of influential Christians, for free.^1
Tap any verse and read what the Fathers said about it: over 100,000 passages of commentary from Fathers of the East and the West, arranged verse by verse.^1 You can also read the Fathers in full, not only in excerpts, in a library of over 1,500 complete texts that includes Athanasius, Augustine, Chrysostom, Cyril, Basil, Gregory, Origen, Ambrose, and Ephrem, with every Scripture reference inside a text opening the verse itself.^1 One search reaches across Scripture, commentary, the Fathers, their books, and talks, and you can highlight, take notes, build collections, sync across devices when signed in, and save books offline.^1
Catena carries over 220 Bible translations in 71 languages, including the Van Dyck Arabic Bible and the Bohairic Coptic New Testament, plus a Hebrew and Greek interlinear, parallel passages, related verses, footnotes, and cross-references.^1 It also brings verse-tagged video and podcast Bible studies and sermons, each transcribed and tagged to the verses it teaches on, so you can open a verse and jump to the moment it was preached.^1 Daily readings cover the Coptic, Ethiopian, Catholic, and Byzantine traditions, with the Synaxarium, feasts, and fasting seasons.^1
Founded in 2015 in Ontario, Canada by a group of Coptic Orthodox Christians, Catena is built and kept by Christian volunteers, engineers, designers, editors, and servants scattered across the world who dedicate their free time to this work.^3 Their mission is evangelizing the timeless faith of the Early Christian Church, founded by the apostles, for the edification of all Christians around the world.^3 The name Catena comes from the Latin word for chain: each verse is linked to a chain of commentary spanning centuries of Christian thought.^1
Why Christians Love It"This app is excellent both for personal devotional study and as a teaching aid." - App Store review^5
Notable- Recently rebuilt from the ground up, ending a long stretch in which the mobile apps had not been updated since early 2023^1
- Available on iOS, Android, and the web at catenabible.com, and completely free^1
- Includes the deuterocanonical books, with the Arabic Van Dyck Bible and its deuterocanonical books added in the rebuild^2
