Society of Biblical Literature

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Society of Biblical Literature is a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies with the stated mission to "Foster Biblical Scholarship". Membership is open to the public, including 7200 individuals from over 80 countries. Membership benefits include access to job listings and discounts on publications.

The founding meeting took place among eight founders in the New York City office of Philip Schaff, in January 1880. Eighteen people attended the first annual meeting in June of that year.

The society's ongoing activities include an annual meeting in North America that it claims is "the largest international gathering of biblical scholars". There are annual regional meetings throughout the United States and an additional annual meeting held outside North America.

The society publishes three serials:

an academic journal, the Journal of Biblical Literature
a review of relevant publications, the Review of Biblical Literature
a newsletter, the SBL Forum

The society provides some helpful electronic resources for biblical scholarship. The society's handbook of style provides guidelines for academic publications, including a detailed system of romanization of Hebrew. The society also distributes high-quality fonts for biblical languages free of charge on its web site. Some of the fonts are in the public domain, while others are offered to individual scholars for non-profit use only.

The society is active in technology research for biblical scholarship, maintaining affiliations with technical organizations such as OASIS and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).