I wonder whether the discussion maybe has lost the original
intention of Franz' question.
I image his scenario as being this: he has a electronic resource
with quotations from the bible which he might has marked up as
@cRef="#VUL_GN_20" or something like that. He wants to have these
things turned into links (or tool tip content harvested from links,
or index entries etc) in the publication of his resource. This
should be done automatically and should result in URLs that would be
stable over time. What he needs in order to get that, is something
we would call "canonic URLs" which is a sort of a PURL.
Franz would generate links from his given information via xslt (or
another technology) in the process of publishing and would rely on
the stability of such a URL because as a PURL, the institution
behind bible.org would guarantee for it. Technically there would be
a resolver behind what only looks like an URL but is simply a given
"name" in fact. And that resolver resolves to the actual technical
address ...
The question for the quality and reliability of the text remains.
This is connected to the trustworthiness of the institution behind
bibleserver.com.
And an address like http://www.bibleserver.com/VUL/1.Mose20 has to
be understood as a "default". So even more complex systems are
possible here. If there were variant editions of the Vulgata from
which texts have been taken, then
http://www.bibleserver.com/VUL/1.Mose20 would just result in what
would be stated to be the "canonic" version of that verse. But
http://www.bibleserver.com/VUL/editionX/1.Mose20 would lead to a
specific edition, and
http://www.bibleserver.com/VUL/editionX/1.Mose20/image would lead to
a digital image of the printed page instead of the "default"
presentation of the text as text ...
No need to say, that we want to have these "canonic addresses" not
just for the bible but for potentially everything (that we want to
talk about).