How to Cite the Bible in MLA & APA: Version, Chapter & Verse Rules

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Updated July 7, 2026

The Bible breaks three habits at once: there is no author to lead with, no page number to point at, and “the Bible” is not actually the name of the thing you read — you read a specific version, in a specific published edition, and both styles want to know which. Add the folklore (“you don’t cite the Bible”) and a punctuation split that even big citation sites get wrong, and scripture becomes one of the most mis-cited sources in student papers. This guide follows the MLA Style Center’s scripture posts and APA’s official religious-works page exactly, and the same rules carry over to the Quran, the Torah, and any other sacred text.

The shortest answer: in MLA, the works-cited entry starts with the italicized title of the edition you used, then the version, publisher, and year — The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998. In-text, name that edition at the first citation, then give the abbreviated book, chapter, and verse separated by a period, not a colon: (The Bible, John 3.16), and after that just (John 3.16).

What counts as the Bible or a religious text

These formats cover scripture itself: the Bible in any translation, the Quran, the Torah and Tanakh, the Talmud, the Bhagavad Gita, the Book of Mormon — any sacred text you quote or paraphrase from a published edition, in print, on a website, or in an app.

Some scripture-adjacent sources are better cited as something else:

• A commentary, devotional, or theology book about scripture is an ordinary book with an author, even when it reprints long passages.
• A study Bible’s notes and essays are editorial content, cited differently from the scripture on the same page — APA has an official pattern for this, covered below.
• A sermon or lecture on a passage follows the lecture format; cite the scripture separately if you also quote it directly.
• A verse quoted inside another work — an epigraph in a novel, a verse quoted in a journal article — is an indirect quotation; see how to cite a quote.

If you opened the text itself and took words from it, this page applies.

Information to collect before you cite

Everything comes from the title page of your print Bible or the front page of the site or app:

• The edition title, exactly as published — The New Jerusalem Bible, King James Bible, The Bible — this italicized title leads the entry in both styles, because religious works are treated as having no author.
• The version or translation — Authorized King James Version, NIV, ESV, NRSV. In MLA it sits in its own slot after the title; in APA it is usually the title.
• Editor or translator, if named — General editor, Henry Wansbrough; E. Easwaran, Trans.
• Publisher or hosting site — Oxford UP, Doubleday, King James Bible Online, Bible Gateway.
• Year of the edition you used — and, for APA, the year the version was originally published if the two differ, because APA prints both: (Original work published 1769).
• The passage’s book, chapter, and verse — canonical numbering is the locator in every style; no style wants a page number for scripture.
• URL — for an online Bible. MLA says one entry for the central site covers a sacred text spread across many pages.

The generator at / pulls the edition title, site name, and URL from a pasted passage link and formats the rest. The book-chapter-verse locator is yours to add in-text — no metadata field carries it.

One Bible, formatted in all seven styles

The edition below is the one APA Style uses in its own official religious-work guidance, so the APA row is the official reference verbatim — and it is exactly what our engine produces for this source. The MLA row applies the work-in-a-container pattern from the MLA Style Center’s official post on citing Bibles on platforms like Bible Gateway.

The source: The King James Bible read on the King James Bible Online website (www.kingjamesbibleonline.org), published online in 2017 and based on the 1769 text of the Authorized Version. Passage cited: John 3:16. Accessed July 5, 2026.

Two structural decisions split the styles. The first is the missing author. Both MLA and APA solve it the same way: the italicized title moves into the first slot, and the entry alphabetizes under it. Nobody’s name appears unless a specific person edited or translated the edition.

The second is which year counts. APA insists on both: the year of the version you used (2017) plus the original publication year of that version (1769), which then travel together into every in-text citation as 1769/2017. MLA dates the edition you held and leaves history out of it. Chicago’s author-date entry keeps both years as well — it prints (1769) 2017, the original year in parentheses before the edition year — while Harvard and the numeric styles date the 2017 edition only and treat the whole thing as an ordinary online book.

The in-text citation for the same passage:

• MLA: (The Bible, John 3.16) at first citation, then just (John 3.16) — period between chapter and verse
• APA: (King James Bible, 1769/2017, John 3:16) or narrative King James Bible (1769/2017) — book spelled out, colon between chapter and verse
• Chicago: in the text or a note only — (John 3:16 KJV) at first citation, then (John 3:16); usually no bibliography entry at all
• Harvard: (King James Bible, 2017, John 3:16)
• Vancouver: (1) or superscript ¹ — name the verse in your prose
• AMA: in-text only, book spelled out, version in parentheses: John 3:16 (KJV)
• IEEE: [1]

How to cite the Bible in MLA

The MLA Style Center’s rule is that there is no special rule: “Create a works-cited-list entry for scriptural writings as you would for any other source: follow the MLA format template.” For a published edition of the Bible, the MLA 9 template comes out as:

Title of Edition. Version, contributor if named, Publisher, Year.

The Style Center’s own two examples:

The New Jerusalem Bible. General editor, Henry Wansbrough, Doubleday, 1985.

The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998.

The italics rule matters as much as the template. Titles of specific published editions are italicized — but general references to scriptural works like the Bible, the Talmud, and the Koran are not, and neither are version names standing alone. So you write: the Bible, the King James Version, but The Bible. Authorized King James Version in the works-cited entry, because there you are naming a published edition.

The in-text citation has a version-first logic. At the first citation, give the first element of the works-cited entry — the italicized edition title — plus the abbreviated book name, then chapter and verse separated by a period, not a colon:

(New Jerusalem Bible, Ezek. 1.5-10)

That is the MLA Handbook’s own example (note it trims the leading The from the title). Every later citation from the same edition needs only book, chapter, and verse — (Gen. 1.1) — until you switch versions, at which point you name the new edition once and the cycle restarts. Book-name abbreviations (Gen., Ezek., 1 Cor.) come from the MLA Handbook’s appendix; short names like John or Acts are not abbreviated.

The variants you are most likely to need:

Citing verse after verse from one chapter. The MLA Style Center answered this in a post published January 29, 2025 — recent enough that most guides have not caught up. Once the book and chapter are established in your prose, “you can spell out the word verse the first time and treat it as implied for the citations that follow”: first (verse 6), then just (12–14), with en dashes for verse ranges. The works-cited entry in that post is another good model: The Bible. Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha, Oxford UP, 1997.

Bible Gateway, YouVersion, or another Bible platform. MLA’s official post on Bible apps gives two options. Name the translation in your prose and cite the app or site alone:

Bible Gateway. Version 42, Bible Gateway / Zondervan, 2016.

Or put the translation in the entry as a work inside a container:

The Bible. King James Version. Bible Gateway, version 42, Bible Gateway / Zondervan, 2016.

The second option is what the table above uses for King James Bible Online. Either way, one entry for the central site is enough even though every chapter lives at its own URL — MLA says so directly.

How to cite the Bible in APA

The APA 7 treatment is on APA Style’s official “Religious work references” page, and the page flags it plainly: “This guidance is new to the 7th edition.” Religious works are “usually treated as having no author,” so the reference template is:

Title of Version. (Year). Publisher or Site. URL (Original work published Year)

APA’s official examples:

King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (Original work published 1769)

The Bhagavad Gita (E. Easwaran, Trans.; 2nd ed.). (2007). The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation.

The date element trips people up, so here is the official rule verbatim: “Use the year of publication of the version that you used in the date element of the reference.” When that version is a republication of an older text — the online KJV was published in 2017 but reproduces the 1769 text — both years go in, and “when two dates appear in the reference, include both years in the in-text citation, separated with a slash, the earlier year first”: 1769/2017.

In-text, APA tells you to “cite a chapter or verse in the text using canonical numbering rather than page numbers,” with the book name spelled out and a colon between chapter and verse. The official example: the person vowed to “set me as a seal upon thine heart” (King James Bible, 1769/2017, Song of Solomon 8:6). Parenthetical and narrative forms:

(King James Bible, 1769/2017) — narrative: King James Bible (1769/2017)

APA’s italics rule mirrors MLA’s: “When referring to the Bible generally or to versions of the Bible generally, do not use italics (e.g., the King James Version of the Bible, the New Revised Standard Version, Holy Bible, the Septuagint).” Italics belong only to the titled work in the reference and its in-text citation.

A study Bible with editors and notes is the one case where names return to the author slot. APA’s official example:

Kaiser, W. C., Jr., & Garrett, D. (Eds.). (2006). NIV archeological study bible: An illustrated walk through biblical history and culture. Zondervan.

Cite the scripture inside it by canonical numbering — (Kaiser & Garrett, 2006, Genesis 1:20) — but cite the editors’ annotations by page, the way you would any authored commentary: (Kaiser & Garrett, 2006, footnote to Genesis 1:12, p. 4).

Edge cases

You put a colon in an MLA citation. The single most common Bible-citation error, and some heavily trafficked citation sites actively teach it. MLA separates chapter and verse with a period — (Ezek. 1.5-10) — while APA and Chicago use a colon — (Song of Solomon 8:6), (1 Cor. 13:4). Your Bible prints John 3:16 with a colon on the page; in an MLA paper it still becomes John 3.16.

You were taught the Bible needs no citation. That was APA 6, and it has been wrong since 2019. APA 7 requires a reference list entry for the Bible — the religious-works guidance is explicitly labeled new to the 7th edition — and MLA has always wanted a works-cited entry naming the edition. What MLA lets you skip is repetition: name the edition at the first in-text citation only, then cite bare book, chapter, and verse — (Gen. 1.1) — until you change translations. APA is stricter: it keeps the italicized title and both years in every in-text citation — (King James Bible, 1769/2017, John 3.16) — never dropping to a bare book-chapter-verse.

You are quoting a run of verses from the same chapter. Use the MLA Style Center’s January 2025 rule: establish the book and chapter in prose, cite (verse 6) the first time, then bare numbers with en dashes — (12–14). No competitor summary of MLA Bible rules covered this at the time of writing; it comes straight from style.mla.org.

You read it in a Bible app. YouVersion and similar apps carry dozens of translations, which is why MLA’s official answer gives the two-option format above — cite the app alone and name the translation in prose, or nest the translation inside the italicized app container. In APA, apps follow the same religious-work template as websites: version title, year, the app’s publisher, URL or store link.

You compare translations. Give each edition its own works-cited or reference entry, and name the edition in-text every time the version in play changes — the version-first rule exists precisely because wording and even verse numbering diverge between translations.

The Quran, the Torah, or another scripture. Every rule on this page generalizes. MLA: italicized edition title, translator, publisher, year — The Qur’an. Translated by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, Oxford UP, 2008 — cited by sura and verse with MLA’s period, (Qur’an 2.255). APA: the official religious-works page uses The Bhagavad Gita as its second example, and the same pattern serves the Torah, the Talmud, and the Book of Mormon. In both styles, generic references — the Quran, the Torah — stay roman.

You need Chicago style. Chicago is the biggest outlier: the Bible is cited in the text, parentheses, or notes only and normally gets no bibliography entry at all. Give the abbreviated book, then chapter:verse with a colon, never a page number, and name the version at the first citation: (1 Cor. 13:4 NRSV), then (1 Cor. 13:13). Chicago accepts either the traditional or the short abbreviation list — pick one and stay consistent. The Chicago row in the table above is the author-date reference entry our engine builds when an instructor asks for one anyway.

You need AMA, IEEE, or Harvard. AMA 11 treats the Bible as a classical work: cite it in the text only, book names spelled out, version in parentheses — Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (NRSV) — with no reference-list entry. As with Chicago, the AMA, Vancouver, and IEEE rows in the table above are what our engine formats when an instructor requires a listed entry anyway. IEEE’s reference guide has no religious-text rule and defers to Chicago for cases it does not cover, so follow the Chicago pattern in an IEEE paper rather than inventing a bracketed template. Harvard has no single governing body; institutional guides typically cite Version (Year) Book chapter:verse, and the Harvard row in the table matches that pattern. If your department publishes its own variant, it wins.

The principle underneath all of it: name the exact published edition once — italicized, in the works-cited list or reference list and at your first in-text citation — then point at passages the way scripture has always been navigated, by book, chapter, and verse. MLA joins them with a period, APA and Chicago with a colon, and no style anywhere wants a page number.

Editorial methodology and sources