The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-06-09
THE BOOK THAT IS
 THE .'BEsT SELLER"
Daily Sales of the Bible, 10000 Copies, Exceed the Annual Sales of Most Popular
 Novels.


 close of the fifteenth century. within the first fifty years of It's publication. there were 124 editions of the Bible in Latin printed in various cities of Flu | rope, and the total number of known | editions in this language alone previous to the year 1900 is moro than 1000. l 'The circulation of the Bible in those days was limited. of course. to Europe. Now. the Scriptures are circulated among nearly all the nations of the earth. This is shown in the number of languages into which the Bible has been translated. The Rev.James S. Dennis published in 1902. in his Cen tennial Survey of Foreign Missions an authoritative chronology and history of Bible translation. According to his sum- mary of results. the number of ancient and standard versions of the Bible is 22, and the number of modern mission ary versions Is 456, of which 446 were made during the nineteenth century Since Dr. Dennis's tables were com piled. 36 new names have appeared in the list of Bible versions, bringing the number up to 492. Of these 121 are in African languages. 52 in American languages. TIT in Asiatic languages. so In languages of Australia and Ocean lea. and 52 in European languages Taking the 22 ancient and standard versions of the Scriptures and the mod
 
 we have a total of 514 versions. Of these, 40 have become obsolete. leaving 46S versions as the number now in circulation.
 "As it stands to-day. the Bible is thus published in every written lan- guage of the earth. It has been our policy to put 1t into every language, ever since Knott a member of the first hand of missionaries, translated 1t into the Tahithan language, and so started the movement of spreading Bibles all over the world. It Is a curious feature of this movement that at its inception there were a number of languages without whitten characters. Into these the missionaries obviously could not translate and publish the Bible They therefore set to work and formed written characters for those languages which were without them, and thus made permanent translations of the Bible. In this way there have been as many as 150 written languages cre- ated by tie missionaries during the last century simply for the purpose of get ting the Bible into the hands of hitherto uneducate d races.
 "As soon as the Bible is translated into one of these non European lan- guages there is not much trouble in selling it. As one of our agents in China writes us: For many years our work has consisted largely of creating demar,d for the Scriptures. The past two yesLrs have found us unequal to supplying the existing demand. The question was formerly How many people may be urged to buy?" Now 1t sis. SHow many books can we sup ply. how many men to distribute them?" Only the answers to these questions set the limit to our opportunities
 The American Bible Society spends hot ty.k ture and distribution of the Bible. and get back about s200.oo0. Besides our printing establishment in New York, we have offices in Shanghai, Bangkok, To- kohama. Beirut. and Constantinople These five foreign offices publish quite as many Bibles as we do here, and at a much less cost. In Korea only the | New Testament has been translated so far. In China. the complete Bihle was published as early as 1925, while in Japan the translation was made twen- tyfive years ago. and Is sold for 40 cents q copy.
 of course. our Bible society like that of England, is in business for the purpose of supplying Bibles at the low est possible price. and in carrying out this purpose we cannot avoid suffering financial loss as the above figures show. Before the invention of the art of printing the Bible was the most ex- pensive book in the world. Even after the invention of printing the Bible could not be obtained for a long time exagpt at fabulous prices. At so late period as that of the Amer l ican Revolution the very cheapest edi- l tions of the Bible were valned at not less than two dollars volume. To- day the American Bible Society fur nishes the entire Scriptures in German for 30 cents, in English for 17 cents The New Testament in English is sold by us for 5 cents. The English So- | olety publishes a complete Bible in English for 12 cents. and a New Testa- ment for cents. In foreign languages we use the same paper and binding | that we do here. and in some countries, | like Japan, we can print and sell our books cheaper and without loss. as. for instance, the New Testament for 4 | cents Our Accents Bible coulN be printed and sold in Jaran for 10 cents | The most expensive Bible on our list is one that Is bound in flexible seal | skin and printed on the best India paper which Is sold for SIS. Our vari ! ation in price Is thus from IT cents to 1 the last-named figure.
 'Whether we will be able to reduce the price of the Bible still further in the future is largely question of in l creased endowments As 1t Is. to-day our society and the kindred oFganisa- tion in Great Britain have succeeded in making the Bible the very cheapest book in the world. as well as one the l number of whose sales are many mill ] Hons in advance of the best seller on record in all literature"
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