History of The Bible Societies
The first organisation called The Bible Society was formed in 1779 to distribute Bibles to soldiers and seamen. 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. This was highlighted by a young girl called Mary Jones who walked over 20 miles to get a Bible in Bala.
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 occassional inclusion of these books and other issues, the Trinitarian Bible Society was founded in 1831.
Pope Gregory XVI in his 1844 encyclical Inter Praecipuas condemned both bible societies and "the publication, dissemination, reading, and possession of vernacular translations of sacred Scriptures", and subsequently Catholics did not officially participate in the Society. This encyclical was reversed by Vatican II in the 1960s.
The British and Foreign Bible Society extended its work to England, India, Europe and beyond. Auxiliary branches were set up all over the world which later became Bible Societies in their own right. Today the United Bible Societies co-ordinates the work of these separate Bible Societies. Each Bible Society is a non-denominational Christian network which works to translate, revise, print, and distribute affordable Bibles in their own land, according to the demands of all the churches in that land. Nowadays Bible Societies print Bibles according to the canons of the countries they are in e.g. Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, and inter-confessional versions. Bible Societies work with other Christian agencies and Bible translations are done on an ecumenical basis, through The International Forum of Bible Agencies.
The article Bible Societies in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition contains a comprehensive review of the recent history and then-current statistics of bible societies in Europe and America.
Read more about this topic: Bible Society
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history and/or societies:
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct their lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings. ... they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)