SOTS was inaugurated at King's College, London on 3 January 1917, in response to a felt need for better public engagement with the Old Testament and greater collegiality among those studying it.
[5] The Society serves the varying needs of its members for support of their scholarly activities in the study of the Old Testament through such activities as organizing meetings (save during the years of World War 2,[6] commissioning and promoting publications, and representing scholars of the Old Testament on other academic bodies.
The winter meeting in the first week of January is at different academic institutions in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland.
At regular intervals SOTS publishes volumes of essays which aim to provide an overview of the state of the study of the Old Testament at the time of publication.
[8] The Society has also sometimes commissioned other multi-essay volumes devoted to specific topics, such as Documents from Old Testament Times (ed.
Wiseman; Oxford, 1973), The World of Ancient Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives (ed.
Clements; Cambridge, 1989), and SOTS at 100: Centennial Essays of the Society for Old Testament Study (ed.