If you go the browser route, there are two approaches that I've seen that work best here (and elsewhere):

- design an addon in the wise of Firefox-like extensions. Depending on the changes that have occured within MicroB's engine for Maemo 5, you might/might not have all of the same features that you would if you built one for Firefox/Mobile Firefox (Fennec). That being said, this would enable you to pretty much graft functionality on top of some of the Bible websites out there, and then pretty much extend the browser (and maybe a widget on the homescreen) to better usages.

- develop a Greasemonkey like script that sites on top of some established library, which offers add-on like functionality, but is constrained a bit more to a specific site/resource. With this method you'd get more buy-in from the publisher of various sites, and its definitely a less of a legal hassle, But you are limited to a degree.

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Regardless of what is used to make the application, there are a few things that I'd pretty much say to keep in mind (since this is essentially a clean sheet effort)

- reading is key, therefore devote the screen to this over controls
- searching is key, therefore devote the primary navigation and toolsets to this

Personally, something along the lines of a search box-based widget that calls into a custom browser window the content from either a local or web-based bible resource would work very well. The box would have to be versatile enough to read and understand one or more versus or subjects in there.

Add a plug-in like system to enable people to save searches as RSS feeds, or export verses to the buiilt-in notepad, and you have something that is simple to use and powerful as well. Or a plugin that saves searches and bookmarks in an XML file, so that from that same search box such tags could be called up again, and then you have something versatile and befitting the open nature of the platform.

Seriously, I wish I could code, because I've had this idea for an app for an insanely long time (heck, I assisted the developers of Palm Bible+ with that UI because I was so interested in just simple reading and annotating). Because I can't, I hope these suggestions work to help you folks who are coding out a bit.