Society of Biblical Literature
American learned society
The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), founded in 1880 as the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, is an American-based learned society dedicated to the academic study of the Bible and related ancient literature. Its current stated mission is to "foster biblical scholarship". Membership is open to the public and consists of over 8,300 individuals from over 100 countries. As a scholarly organization, SBL has been a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies since 1929.
History
Calvin Stowe, husband of novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, served as Professor of Biblical Literature at the innovative Lane Seminary—at the time one of the nation's leading seminaries—in the 1830s.
The eight founders of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis first met to discuss their new society in Philip Schaff's study in New York City in January of 1880. In June of that year, the group had its first annual meeting with eighteen people in attendance. The new society drew up a constitution and by-laws and discussed several papers. Membership dues were set at three dollars. By the end of the year, membership had grown to forty-five and publication of the meeting proceedings was in the planning stages.
“Society of Biblical Literature” enters the record as american learned society. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Society, Biblical and Literature can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7552393. VIAF identifies the subject as 145989504. The Library of Congress control number is n79038458. 4 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1880 and 1929.
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This entry incorporates text from “Society of Biblical Literature” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.