Bible Societies

Thus, the Revised French Geneva Bible of 1588, which was issued in folio, quarto and octavo, and became a standard text, bears the following note on the verso of the title: “Les frais de cet ouvrage, imprimé en trois diuerses formes en mesme temps, pour la commodité et contentement de toutes sortes de personnes, ont esté liberalemet fournis par quelques gens de bien, qui n’ont cherché gagner pour leur particulier, mais seulement de servir à Dieu et à son Église.” The Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England (founded in 1649) bore the expense of printing both the New Testament and the Bible as a whole (Cambridge, Mass., 1663—the earliest Bible printed in America), which John Eliot, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, translated into “the language of the Massachusetts Indians,” whom he evangelized. In Arnauld’s Defence (1669) of the famous Port Royal version of the New Testament in French (issued, 1667), he states that it had been printed in many forms and sizes, including very cheap editions for the poor, and goes on to describe how its circulation was promoted by “les sacrifices que s’imposaient les pieux solitaires pour faire participer les plus indigents au bienfait de leur entreprise. Dès que leur traduction fut prête, ils envoyèrent de Paris un grand nombre de colporteurs chargés de la vendre au prix de revient et même, dans certaines circonstances, à des prix réduits; et ils couvrirent la dépense par des dons volontaires” (E. Pétavel, La Bible en France, p. 152).

To meet the cost of publishing the Finn Bible in 1685, the editor, J. Gezelius, bishop of Åbo, obtained an order from the Swedish government for the appropriation of certain corn-tithes, still known as Bibel Tryck-Tunnan. When the Finnish Bible Society began to publish editions of the Scriptures, the tsar Alexander I. contributed 5000 roubles from his privy purse, and ordered that these corn-tithes should again be appropriated to this purpose for five years from 1812. In 1701 at Frankfort-On-Main there appeared a quarto edition of the Ethiopic Psalter, whose editor, H. Ludolf, writes in his preface: “Quamobrem nullum gratius officium Christianae huic nationi a me praestari posse putavi, quam si Psalterium Aethiopicum, quod apud illos non aliter quam in membrana manuscriptum habetur, et caro satis venditur, typis mandari, ejusque plurima exemplaria nomine Societatis Indicae in Habessinia gratis distribui curarem.”

In 1719 appeared the first of numerous editions of the French New Testament, connected with the name of the Abbé de Barneville, a priest of the Oratory at Paris. Impressed by the popular ignorance of the Scriptures, he himself translated, or caused others to translate, the New Testament into French from the Vulgate, and formed an association to distribute copies systematically at low prices. The prefaces to his various editions contain details as to the methods of this association, and repeatedly insist on the importance of reading the Scriptures. (On this Société biblique catholique française see O. Douen, Histoire de la société biblique protestante de Paris, Paris, 1868, pp. 46-51.)

The society’s advance was chequered by several controversies. (a) Its fundamental law to circulate the Bible alone, without note or comment, was vehemently attacked by Bishop Marsh and other divines of the Church of England, who insisted that the Prayer Book ought to accompany the Bible. (b) Another more serious controversy related to the circulation—chiefly through affiliated societies on the continent—of Bibles containing the Deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament. In 1826 the society finally resolved that its fundamental law be fully and distinctly recognized as excluding the circulation “of those Books, or parts of Books, which are usually termed Apocryphal.” This step, however, failed to satisfy most of the society’s supporters in Scotland, who proceeded to form themselves into independent organizations, grouped for the most part round centres at Edinburgh and Glasgow. These were finally amalgamated in 1861 into the National Bible Society of Scotland. (c) A third dispute turned upon the admissibility of non-Trinitarians to the privilege of co-operation. The refusal of the society to alter its constitution so as formally to exclude such persons led to the formation (1831) of the Trinitarian Bible Society, which is still in existence. (d) A fourth controversy arose out of the restrictive renderings of the term “baptize” and its cognate terms, adopted by William Carey and his colleagues in their famous “Serampore Versions,” towards publishing which the society had contributed up to 1830 nearly £30,000. Protests from other Indian missionaries led the society to determine that it could circulate only such versions as gave neutral renderings for the terms in question. As a sequel, the Bible Translation Society was founded in 1839 to issue versions embodying distinctively Baptist renderings.

By one of its original laws the British and Foreign Bible Society could circulate no copies of the Scriptures in English other than King James’s Version of 1611. In 1901 this law was widened to include the Revised English Version of 1881-1885.

From its foundation the society has successfully laboured to promote new and improved versions of the Scriptures. In 1804 the Bible, or some part of it, had been printed in about fifty-five different tongues. By the year 1906 versions, more or less complete, had been published in more than 530 distinct languages and dialects, and in 400 of these the work of translation, printing or distribution had been promoted by the society. Translations or revisions in scores of languages are still being carried on by companies of scholars and representative missionaries in different parts of the world, organized under the society’s auspices and largely at its expense. New versions are made, wherever practicable, from the original Hebrew or Greek text, and the results thus obtained have a high philological value and interest. The society’s interdenominational character has commonly secured—what could hardly otherwise have been attained—the acceptance of the same version by missions of different churches working side by side. The society supplies the Scriptures to missions of every Reformed Communion on such terms that, as a rule, the books distributed by the missions involve no charge on their funds. Except under special circumstances, the society does not encourage wholesale free distribution, but provides cheap editions at prices which the poorest can pay. On the whole it receives from sales about 40% of what it expends in preparing, printing and circulating the books.

During the year 1905-1906 the society’s circulation reached the unprecedented total of 5,977,453 copies, including 968,683 Bibles and 1,326,475 Testaments. Of the whole 1,921,000 volumes were issued from the Bible House, London, and 1,331,000 were in English or Welsh, circulating chiefly in England and the British colonies. The other main fields of distribution were as follows:—France, 203,000 copies; Central Europe, 679,000; Italy, 117,000; Spain and Portugal, 120,000; the Russian empire, 595,000; India, Burma and Ceylon, 768,000; Japan, 286,000; and China, 1,075,000 (most of these last being separate gospels).

The society spends £10,000 a year in grants to religious and philanthropic agencies at home. Outside the United Kingdom it has its own agencies or secretaries in twenty-seven of the chief cities of the world, and maintains depots in 200 other centres. It employs 930 Christian colporteurs abroad, who sold in 1905-1906 over 2,250,000 volumes. It supports 670 native Christian Bible-women in the East, in connexion with forty different missionary organizations. The centenary festival in 1904 was celebrated with enthusiasm by the Reformed Churches and their foreign missions throughout the world. Messages of congratulation came from the rulers of every Protestant nation in Christendom, and a centenary thanksgiving fund of 250,000 guineas was raised for extending the society’s work. During the year 1905-1906 the society expended £238,632, while its income was £231,964 (of which £98,204 represented receipts from sales). Up to the 31st of March 1906 the society had expended altogether £14,686,072, and had issued 198,515,199 copies of the Scriptures—of which more than 78,000,000 were in English.

The circulation of the Scriptures by German Bible Societies during 1905 was estimated as follows:—The Prussian Bible Society (Berlin), 182,000 copies; the Württemberg Bible Institute (Stuttgart), 247,000; the Berg Bible Society (Eberfeld), 142,000; the Saxon Bible Society (Dresden), 44,000; the Central Bible Association (Nuremberg), 14,000; the Canstein Bible Institute (Halle), the Schleswig-Holstein Bible Society, the Hamburg-Altona Bible Society and others, together 56,000.

During 1905, nine cantonal Bible societies in Switzerland circulated altogether 71,000 copies; the Netherlands Bible Society reported a circulation of 54,544 volumes, 48,137 of which were in Dutch; the Danish Bible Society circulated 45,289 copies; the Norwegian Bible Society circulated 67,058 copies; and in Sweden the Evangelical National Society distributed about 110,000 copies.

In Italy, by a departure from the traditional policy of the Roman Church, the newly formed “Pious Society of St Jerome for the Dissemination of the Holy Gospels” issued in 1901 from the Vatican press a new Italian version of the Four Gospels and Acts. By the end of 1905 the society announced that over 400,000 copies of this volume had been sold at 2d. a copy.

In France, the Société biblique protestante de Paris, founded in 1818, with generous aid from the British and Foreign Bible Society, had a somewhat restricted basis and scope. In 1833 the Société biblique française et étrangère was formed on wider lines; after its dissolution in 1863, many of its supporters joined the Société biblique de France, which dates from 1864, and represents chiefly members of the Église libre, and kindred French Evangelicals. During 1905 its issues were 34,475 copies, while the Société biblique protestante de Paris issued 8061 copies.

Of these non-British societies the most noteworthy was established in Russia. In December 1812, while “the last shattered remnants of Napoleon’s Grand Army struggled across the ice of the Niemen,” the tsar Alexander I. sanctioned plans for a Bible society, which was promptly inaugurated at St Petersburg under the presidency of Prince Galitzin. Through the personal favour of the tsar, it made rapid and remarkable progress. Nobles and ministers of state, with the chief ecclesiastics not only of the Russian Church but of the Roman, the Uniat, the Armenian, the Greek, the Georgian and the Lutheran Churches, found themselves constrained to serve on its committees. By the close of 1823 the Russian Bible Society had formed 289 auxiliaries, extending eastwards to Yakutsk and Okhotsk; and had received altogether £145,640. In 1824, however, Prince Galitzin ceased to be procurator of the Holy Synod, and Seraphim, metropolitan of St Petersburg, became president of the Russian Bible Society. And in 1826, soon after his accession, the tsar Nicholas I. issued a ukase suspending the society’s operations—after it had printed the Scriptures in thirty different languages, seventeen of which were new tongues, and had circulated 600,000 volumes from the Caucasus to Kamchatka. In 1828 Nicholas I. sanctioned the establishment of a Protestant Bible Society, which still exists, to supply the Scriptures only to Protestant subjects of the tsar (cf. Th. Schiemann, Geschichte Russlands unter Nikolaus I. vol. i. chap. ix.). In 1839 St Petersburg became the headquarters of an agency of the British and Foreign Bible Society, which enjoys special facilities in Russia, and now annually circulates about 600,000 copies of the Scriptures, in fifty different languages, within the Russian empire.

Authorities.—Besides the published reports of the societies in question, the following works may be mentioned: J. Owen, History of the First Ten Years of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 1816-1820); G. Browne, History of the Bible Society (London, 1859); Bertram, Geschichte der Cansteinschen Bibelanstalt (Halle, 1863); E. Pétavel, La Bible en France (Paris, 1864); O. Douen, Histoire de la société biblique protestante de Paris (Paris, 1868); G. Borrow, The Bible in Spain (London, 1849); W. Canton, The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 1904 foll.); J. Ballinger, The Bible in Wales (London, 1906); T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture (London, vol. i. 1903, vol. ii. 1908).