A Bible society is a non-profit organization, usually nondenominational in makeup, devoted to translating, publishing, and distributing the Bible at affordable prices. In recent years they also are increasingly involved in advocating its credibility and trustworthiness in contemporary cultural life. Traditionally Bible society editions contain scripture, without any doctrinal notes or comments, although they may include non-sectarian notes on alternate translations of words, or variations in the different available manuscripts.
History of Bible production
The production and distribution of bibles are issues that have engaged the attention of Christian leaders for centuries. In an extant letter, dated 331, Emperor Constantine requested Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, to provide him with fifty copies of the Old and New Testaments for use in the principal churches in Constantinople. In 797, Charlemagne commissioned Alcuin to prepare an emended text of the Vulgate; multiple copies of this text were created, not always accurately, in the famous writing schools at Tours.
The first book printed in Europe was the Latin Bible, and Copinger estimates that 124 editions of the Vulgate had been issued by the end of the 15th century. The Italian Bible was printed a dozen times before 1500, and eighteen editions of the German Bible had already been published before Martin Luther's version appeared. From medieval time and then again accompanying the Protestant Reformation, there was a marked increase in interest in the scriptures. Notwithstanding the oppositional attitude adopted by the Roman Catholic Church at and after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the translation and circulation of the Bible were undertaken with greater zeal, and in a more systematic fashion.
Similar organizations which are not called Bible societies
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England was incorporated by an ordinance of parliament in 1649, and reincorporated in 1661, after the Restoration. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) was founded 1698. It published the King James Version of the English Bible, and translated and published editions of the Bible in other British languages such as Welsh and Manx. Early in the 18th century it printed editions in Arabic, and promoted the first versions of the Bible in Tamil and Telugu, made by the Danish Lutheran missionaries whom it then supported in south India. The earliest New Testament published in 1767, and Old Testament 1801 in Scots Gaelic were published by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) founded in 1709.
In 1710, the Canstein Bible Institute for the mass production of affordable Bibles was founded in Halle, Brandenburg-Prussia, by Karl Hildebrand, Count of Canstein.
History
The first organisation called "The Bible Society" was formed in 1779 to distribute Bibles to soldiers and seamen, which became the Naval and Military Bible Society in 1804. The French Bible Society, instituted in 1792, came to an end in 1803, owing to the Napoleonic Revolution. Leftover funds were given to Bible production in Welsh. The modern Bible society movement dates back to the foundation of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804 when a group of Christians sought to address the problem of a lack of affordable Bibles in Welsh for Welsh-speaking Christians. Although perceived as Protestant, from the early days the British and Foreign Bible Society was officially ecumenical, and allowed inclusion of the Apocrypha. As a reaction to the occasional inclusion of these books and other issues, the Trinitarian Bible Society was founded in 1831. Pope Gregory XVI in his 1844 encyclical letter Inter praecipuas condemned both Bible societies and "the publication, dissemination, reading, and possession of vernacular translations of Sacred Scriptures" which did not abide by the general rules and decrees of the Catholic Church, and subsequently Catholics did not officially participate in the Society.