A Bible Society is a non-profit organization (usually ecumenical Protestant in makeup) devoted to 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; but in recent decades this principle has been relaxed somewhat, and such editions typically have at least some notes on alternate translations of words, or variations in the different available manuscripts. 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.

Catholics believe that the Bible cannot be reliably interpreted without the aid of tradition and Church teaching, and that evangelism requires more personal contact than simply giving away the text of the Bible. In some cases free distribution of Bibles has simply led to these copies being used for profane purposes. Also, 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. These reasons led Pope Leo XII to condemn the work of Protestant Bible societies in Ubi Primum (1824). Pope Pius IX in Qui Pluribus (1846) repeated and expanded on his predecessors reasoning. 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 include approved Catholic translations (with the entire Catholic canon) among the versions of the Bible they distribute.

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 Trinitarian Bible Society (1831)
• Gideons International (1899)

External links

• The American Bible Society
• The International Bible Society
• James M. Gillis, "Bible Societies" in the Catholic Encylopedia (1907)