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1. Bible societies are organizations for the distribution of the Bible. The foundations of the Bible society movement may be traced to the Reformation understanding of the Bible as the sole authority in matters of faith and to the concept of the priesthood of all believers. This understanding led to Luther’s translation of the Bible into German and to similar undertakings for other languages. The demand of Pietism for the wider circulation of the Word of God (P. Spener) spurred increased distrib…

1. General Bible versions are subject to the same rules of translation as other texts, but with some qualification because of their special character. For the modern translator, it must first be determined which form of the text should serve as the basis for translation: the earliest attested form, or the form established by Masoretic scholars in the 9th/10th century for the Hebrew Bible and the standard text of 16th-century Renaissance scholarship for the Greek NT. Then it must be decided whether…

1. OT MSS 1.1. Background In antiquity the materials used for Bible MSS were leather, parchment, and papyrus. The parchment was prepared from the skins of sheep, goats, antelopes, and other animals. Papyrus, which was made from the pith of the papyrus plant that grows in the marshes of the Nile, was imported from Egypt but usually did not last long in damp climates. The usual form for a literary document was the scroll (see, for example, Jeremiah 36; Ep. Arist.  177), especially for Jewish Scriptures used in worship services. In Christian circles scrolls were supplanted by …