Institute for Biblical Content
A Bible society adhering to Open Access principles, a consortium of specialists in linguistics, religious studies, archeology and textual criticism.
Actions
Propagate existing content
We replicate and host several Open Access Bible translations in different languages.
- We hunt for less available translations requiring effort to be transformed and put online.
- Institute's Multilingual Bible Reader
Produce new content
We produce Bible translations into several selected languages and release these into the Public Domain. We engage professional linguists and translators specializing in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek:
- Endow nations with accessible and high-quality translations of the Bible;
- Contribute to the standardization and uniformization of the international Biblical terminology.
Develop collateral content
We aggregate and maintain repositories of ancient Christian and Judeo-Christians texts, always in Open Access.
- We host Paracalypsis, a library of ancient texts, ancient Christian writers and Judeo-Christians.
- We populate Christianity-, Judaism- and Bible- related parts of the OARC's archive Intangible Textual Heritage.
The Basics
In the 21st century, the only truly Open content is that which is easily discoverable (that is, well web-indexed) and readily propagated (that is, easily reproducible). The intitative for Open Access to Research Content provides for better visibility of scientific and educational knowledge through simple and robust web and paper publishing and populazation models.
The Premises
The concept of Open Access is endemic to Abrahamic religious, European civilizational and scientific traditions.
The need to provide reproducible, verifiable and refutable discourses dominated in Judaism and Christianity and endowed with exemplary status some corpuses of their content: primary (writings) and derivative (commentaries and commentaries on commentaries). It came into general use that the access to these bodies of writings should be free and universal.
In the Middle East, medieval Islamic thought established similar prerogative of direct access with respect to the received texts.
In the XVI c., European Christianity instituted the sovereignty of the Bible for religious purposes and imposed it through the printing technology. The culture of unlimited access has then contributed to the advent of the positivist science in the XIX—XX cc.
I have always militated for the Bible and educational content being Openly Accessible in national languages. "So that every ordinary person and a citizen, through reading or listening, could understand what is needed for their spiritual fulfillment."
(1517)
Francysk Skaryna, PhD
Bible translator, first Belarusian—Russian—Ukrainian bookprinter
Entity
History
The Institute for Biblical Content is an international consortium of specialists in ancient and modern linguistics, religious studies, archeology and textual criticism. Originally refered to as “Summer Institute of Biblical Studies”, the Institute has been held as a scientific summer school since the mid 1990s in different locations around the world. The formalization as a stable entity took place in 2003 and the Open Access orientation has been articulated since 2012.
Key dates:
1996 First SIBS, Bratislava
2003 Registration, Paris
2012 OA enrollment, Tokyo
Presence
Our activities span worldwide and we engage specialists affiliated with scientific institutions in France, Iran, Australia, Tajikistan, Belarus, Indonesia. The Institute is headquartered in Paris (France).
Funding
The Institute constitutes a scientific interest group with regard to the French nomenclature, and as such we do not receive any funding from denominational, or non-, organizations.
However, the French Governmental Services may sporadically contribute to the work of the Institute through a funding grant distributed by the French Development Agency, notably within one of their Open Access actions.
Indexing
IBC strives to monitor research and communication activities in scientific disciplines adjacent to its sphere of interest. We identify high-quality content and federate researchers in diverse fields of biblical studies.
The Institute maintains a dedicated curated directory of expert resources on the following topics:
- General Biblical Studies
- Hebrew Bible / Early Judaism
- General Hebrew Bible
- Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East
- New Testament / Early Christianity
- General New Testament
- Gospels, Jesus
- Paul, deutero-Paulines
- Greco-Roman Culture
- Christian Origins and NT Apocrypha
- Textual Criticism, Translation, and Linguistics
- General Textual Criticism
- Old Testament and aNE Textual Criticism
- New Testament and Early Christian Textual Criticism
- Theory and Reception
This nomenclature falls within the scope of the Section 32 of the CNRS, “Ancient and medieval worlds”
Assets
Library of ancient texts, ancient Christian writers, Judeo-Christians.
This engine hosts several Open Access Bible translations.
Intangible Textual Heritage is an Open Access archive of quintessential texts of our civilization. IBC contributes to its Christian and Judeo-Christian sections.
A curated directory of expert resources on different topics of Biblical Studies: Early Judaism, Early Christianity, Textual Criticism and Linguistics, Theory and Reception.