Our History

History of Bible Society Lebanon – How it all started

The Bible distribution work in Lebanon & Syria dates back to 1820, when some missionaries covered the region under the umbrella of American and British Bible Societies. On September 9, 1950, a group of Christian national leaders – clergy, businessmen, and lawyers – formally organized the Bible Society with the single-minded conviction that the widespread distribution of Bibles was the most effective way to change lives and reform society.

Bible Society is rooted in the rich heritage of the middle-Eastern Churches’ Bible tradition. We remember the many Arabic translations of the Bible that had benefited from Syriac and Coptic previous translations. For more than 50 years the Bible Society has worked with Christian and other Biblical scholars from every tradition to translate, produce, and distribute the Scriptures. Bible Society was responsible for the whole Levant region – Syria, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf States. As a national Bible Society, it became an associate member of the United Bible Societies – a worldwide fellowship that today includes national Bible Societies in 135 countries – in 1983 and a full member in 1996. More than 6.5 billion copies of the Scriptures have been distributed through the efforts of this global fellowship.