The Index

The Index of a book describes the structure of the book (in the schema attribute) and details how it is categorized in our library. It also contains meta-data about the book, such as when it was written and who the author is. To see a full Index record of a given book, see the v2 Raw Index API.

Below is a snippet from the Index record for the Book of Esther (to see the full record, click here). you'll see the book title, as well as metadata about the book. (Note: The schema field is collapsed, we will explore that in depth in this article describing the schema).

{
    "title" : "Esther",
    "categories" : [
        "Tanakh",
        "Writings"
    ],
    "schema" : {},
    "order" : [
        NumberInt(34),
        NumberInt(8)
    ],
    "authors" : [],
    "enDesc" : "The Book of Esther is one of the five megillot (scrolls), part of the section of the Hebrew Bible called Writings. It tells the story of Esther, a Jew who becomes queen of Persia and together with her cousin, Mordechai, foils a plot of the evil Haman to destroy the Jews. To commemorate the transformation from “grief and mourning to festive joy” (9:22), Esther and Mordechai establish the Purim holiday. The book of Esther is read publicly in the evening and morning of Purim.",
    "heDesc" : "מגילת אסתר, אחת מקובץ חמש המגילות שבחטיבת הכתובים שבמקרא, מספרת את סיפורה של אסתר, יהודייה שנעשית למלכה פרס, ועם דודה מרדכי מסכלת את מזימתו המרושעת של המן להשמיד את היהודים. להנצחת המהפך \"מיגון לשמחה ומאבל ליום טוב\" (אסתר ט, כב) קבעו אסתר ומרדכי את חג הפורים. מגילת אסתר נקראת בציבור בליל חג הפורים ובבוקרו.",
    "enShortDesc" : "Esther becomes queen of Persia and foils a plot to destroy the Jews, establishing the Purim holiday.",
    "heShortDesc" : "אסתר נעשית מלכת פרס ומסכלת מזימה להשמיד את היהודים, ולרגל נס ההצלה נקבע לדורות חג הפורים.",
    "pubDate" : [
        NumberInt(1488)
    ],
    "hasErrorMargin" : true,
    "compDate" : [
        NumberInt(-400),
        NumberInt(-200)
    ],
    "compPlace" : "Shushan",
    "pubPlace" : "Soncino",
    "is_cited" : true,
    "corpora" : [
        "Tanakh"
    ]
}

Versions

Each Version reflects an edition of the text. Each Version must relate to one Index. The Version will be structured according to the shape defined in the Index schema. Generally, there will be one Version reflecting the original edition of the text, and one Version for each different translation. In some cases there may be multiple variant versions of the original, or a single translation may be spread across multiple Version records.

For example, Genesis is represented by a single Index. Associated with that Index, we have close to fifty versions in multiple languages including Hebrew, English, French, Spanish, Yiddish, Ladino, Russian and German. A Version contains the metadata associated with that edition of the text, as well as the text itself. While each Version of an Index may differ slightly in its text, each Version of a given Index will all follow the exact same structure.

For example, here is the text for Genesis 1:1 across several of our versions:

You'll notice that the only real differences appear in the versionTitle for a given text, and in the translation/edition itself. All versions of the same text will definitionally share the same Index, and since they share that structure, the segments will be referred to by the same Ref.

To query aVersion, see the v3 Texts API.