An agency for the translation and dissemination of the Bible. The first was the Van Canstein Bible Society, formed in Germany in 1710, but the modern movement really began with the British and Foreign Bible Society, formed in London in 1904. The United Bible Society now provides a worldwide network of autonomous societies, protestant and evangelical in the main, responsible for the translation of the Bible in well over 1500 languages, and distributing copies at subsidized prices.
A Bible society is a non-profit organization (usually ecumenical Protestant in makeup) devoted to translating, publishing and distributing the Bible for free or at subsidized low cost. Traditionally Bible society editions contain only the Protestant canon of Scripture, without any notes or commentary; Most or all Protestants have in common the principle of sola scriptura, and many believe that distributing free copies of the Bible is an effective form of evangelism; this makes Bible societies an attractive form of common action for Protestants of different denominations. 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.
Catholicism
Catholics believe that the Bible cannot be reliably interpreted without the aid of tradition and Catholic Church teachings, and that evangelism requires more personal contact than simply giving away the text of the Bible. Until the development of ecumenical Bible translations (by joint committees of Catholic and Protestant translators) in recent decades, Catholics were suspicious of Protestant Bible translations, which they saw as biased and inaccurate compared with Church-approved translations by Catholic scholars. Historically, opposition by Catholic bishops to Protestant Bible societies has been particularly strong in Latin America and in Quebec. These reasons led Pope Leo XII to condemn the work of Protestant Bible societies in Ubi Primum (1824). The Societa di San Geronimo was a Catholic Bible society which distributed Catholic translations of the Gospels in Italian.
Since the development of ecumenical translations, there has been an increase in cooperation between Catholics and Protestants with respect to Bible societies; some Bible societies (especially in Latin America) include approved Catholic translations (with the entire Catholic canon) among the versions of the Bible they distribute.
Current Bible societies
The United Bible Societies (UBS) is a worldwide association of Bible societies.
Notable Bible societies include:
The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698) The British and Foreign Bible Society (1804) The International Bible Society (1809) The American Bible Society (1816) The Bible Society In Australia (1817) The Colombian Bible Society (1825) The Trinitarian Bible Society (1831) Gideons International (1899) Pioneers Bible Translators (1970) Sociedad Bíblica Chilena (1972)
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