Using Ancient Paths means agreeing to what follows. It is short, and it says what we actually do.
What this is
Ancient Paths is a concordance over a library of Christian writing that is in the public domain or licensed for this use. It finds what those authors wrote and shows it to you, quoted and attributed to the person who wrote it.
It is not a teacher, a pastor, or a counsellor, and it does not give legal, medical or financial advice. It will not tell you what a verse means in its own voice. That is a deliberate design, not a limitation we are working around. The authors it quotes disagree with each other, were often wrong, and are not endorsed by us. Read them as you would read any book: as a person exercising judgement.
It is a preview
The product is early and access is limited. Things will change, break, and occasionally go away. We do not promise it will be available at any particular moment, and we may change or discontinue features. Keep your own copy of anything you would be sorry to lose.
Your account
Keep your sign-in details to yourself; what happens under your account is your responsibility. You must be 13 or older. Tell us if you think somebody else is using your account.
Your work stays yours
The notes, studies and documents you bring remain yours. You give us only the permission we need to run the service for you: to store your material, index it so you can search it, and show it back to you. We do not publish it, sell it, or train models on it. By uploading something you confirm you have the right to use it that way.
Fair use of the library
Read, search, quote and cite freely: that is the point. What we ask you not to do is bulk-extract the corpus, scrape it with automated tools, work around usage limits, resell access, or try to reach other people’s data. Those things cost us real money and put the service at risk for everyone else using it.
The library, and how to report a work
Every work is included on the basis that its text is in the public domain or licensed to permit this use, and each carries a record of the edition it came from. Editions are where this gets difficult: a modern translation or a revised edition of an old book can carry its own copyright even when the original does not.
If you hold rights in something we are showing, or you believe a work is wrongly included, write to hello@ancientpaths.app with the work and what you believe the problem is. We will take it out of circulation while we check, rather than argue first. That is the standing policy, and we apply it to ourselves: when our own review finds a doubtful edition, it comes down the same day.
Machine-written text
Quotations are reproduced verbatim from the source and checked against it before you see them. The choice of which sources and quotations to show is made by software, and so is the occasional one-line summary beside a quotation. Both can be wrong. Every quotation links to the work it came from so you can check it, and you should.
No warranty, and limits
The service is provided as it is, without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent the law allows. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, and our total liability to you is limited to what you have paid us, which today is nothing. Some places do not allow these limits, in which case they apply to you only as far as local law permits.
Ending it
You can stop using Ancient Paths at any time and ask us to delete your account. We may suspend an account that is breaking these terms or putting the service at risk, and we will say why when we do.
Changes, and the law that applies
If these terms change, the date at the top changes too, and material changes will be told to anyone with an account. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, and the courts of California will hear any dispute that cannot be settled between us.
See also the Privacy policy. Anything unclear: hello@ancientpaths.app.