Bible society

In recent years they also are increasingly involved in advocating its credibility and trustworthiness in contemporary cultural life.

In an extant letter, dated 331, Emperor Constantine requested Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, to provide him with fifty copies of the Old and New Testaments for use in the principal churches in Constantinople.

[1] The first book printed in Europe was the Latin Bible, and Copinger estimates that 124 editions of the Vulgate had been issued by the end of the 15th century.

Notwithstanding the oppositional attitude adopted by the Roman Catholic Church at and after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the translation and circulation of the Bible were undertaken with greater zeal, and in a more systematic fashion.

Early in the 18th century it printed editions in Arabic, and promoted the first versions of the Bible in Tamil and Telugu, made by the Danish Lutheran missionaries whom it then supported in south India.

Although perceived as Protestant, from the early days the British and Foreign Bible Society was officially ecumenical, and allowed inclusion of the Apocrypha.

Pope Gregory XVI in his 1844 encyclical letter Inter praecipuas condemned both Bible societies and "the publication, dissemination, reading, and possession of vernacular translations of Sacred Scriptures" which did not abide by the general rules and decrees of the Catholic Church, and subsequently Catholics did not officially participate in the Society.