Our History

Some highlights from Bible Society’s more than 200–year history:

• Bible Society began in a London tavern.
• Our first Scripture translation was during our first year of existence, 1804. It was John’s Gospel in the Canadian Indian Mohawk language.
• During the Napoleonic war, Bible Society provided Scriptures to prisoners of war.
• After the Russian royal family was murdered and the Bolsheviks took control, the Bible Society's Siberian agent Walter Davidson fled the country in 1918, arriving back in England with horrific tales. 
• During the World Wars, Colporteurs across Europe shared a common purpose in providing God's Word – but had to take arms against each other. 
• One supporter recruited his parrot who shrieked, 'Give a shilling to Bible Society'! 
• 300 people attended the inaugural meeting of Bible Society. 
• £5,945 was raised by auxiliaries (local support groups) in 1809–10, their first year of existence. 
• The cost of our first premises in 1816 was £12,000. 
• Following the end of the conflict with Napoleon in 1815, Bible Society agent Steinkopff set off on his second tour of the Continent. He travelled between 4,000 and 5,000 miles, drawing on a grant of £4,000 to form Bible Societies and make Scriptures available. 
• In the first fifty years of our existence we had supplied nearly 28 million copies of Scriptures in 152 languages and dialects. 
• By 1903 there were 5,726 auxiliaries, branches and associations in this country, as well as 2,230 Auxiliaries and branches overseas. 
• By 1904 we had supplied nearly 181 million copies of the Scriptures, spent nearly £14 million on the translation, production and distribution of Scriptures, and employed 1,000 colporteurs and Biblewomen – over half of them in India and China. 
• In 1905 Braille Scriptures were available in 17 languages. 
• In 1916 a quarter and in 1917 a third of the Society’s total Bible distribution was achieved in China, where 3 million copies were circulated in the latter year. 
• Despite all the hazards of travel and delays in communication due to the war, between 4 August 1914 and 11 November 1918, thirty-four new languages were added to the Society’s lists – an average of one for every seven weeks of the war. 
• Between 1939 and 1945, 29 new languages were added to the Society's translation list. 
• During World War II, the Society circulated an estimated 45,000,000 copies of Scripture, of which nearly 23,000,000 were issued in the first two years of war. 
• A total of over 50 million Bibles and New Testaments have been printed in China since the Amity Printing Company (APC) began in 1987. If they were lined up lengthwise they would total over 4,000 miles – more than the length of the Great Wall of China!