It is generally a Good Idea to make sure that anything you do, no matter what it is, is legal before doing it. In that sense, quoting the Bible could be a bit of a Bad Idea.

My initial thoughts were to use the text of either the NIV or ESV on this website. I am no expert on English translations of the Bible, but I know enough people trust these translations to be comfortable with them. Both of them, however, are relatively news works (meaning that they were creating within the last 50 years) and still under copyright. That means that I cannot use these texts without the expressed written permission of the copyright holders.

Both the ESV and NIV have similar terms of use, presented here in part:

The [ESV/NIV] text may be quoted (in written, visual, or electronic form) up to and inclusive of [1,000 for ESV, 500 for NIV] verses without express written permission of the publisher, providing that the verses quoted do not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted account for [50 for ESV, 25 for NIV] percent or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted.

The fact that I would like to include the passage a particular study deals with within that study, means that, over time, I would be quoting several complete books of the Bible. One can argue that it'll be separated over various studies and thus not be cited all at once, but I don't think that it going to float, seeing as how I placed this entire website as a whole under a single copyright.

The solution thus appears to be using a translation of the Bible of which the copyright has expired or been waived (i.e. which is within the public domain). This limits me pretty much to translations such as KJV, ASV and WEB. I'll tentatively go with the latter for my Bible studies. But I'll still use NIV for my various TIM presentations for the time being. I'll make another post if I change my mind.

It should be noted that both of the abovementioned copyright notices do invite one to apply for special permission to reproduce their respective texts, but I'm not too confident of my chances. Still, I guess I should at least try at some point, or else I won't have any reason to complain. But this whole episode has led me to discover a convenient way of automatically including Bible passages in my website by only adding the passage reference in a special manner. I would prefer keeping the current system, but it only works for public domain versions of the Bible.

PS If anyone notices or suspects a copyright violation on this website, feel free to contact me and I'll remove the content in question if a violation has indeed taken place.

PPS I have updated the Licensing & Copyright section of this website.