Many thanks for your interest in the Licences/Foreign Rights Department of the German Bible Society.
The publications of the German Bible Society are protected by copyright. If you wish to make use of passages of text or illustrations from them, you will require written permission from us.
Copyright Protection for Editions
of the Greek New Testament
The German Bible Society has had the matter of copyright protection for its editions of the Greek New Testament (Greek New Testament, 4th rev. edition and Nestle-Aland, 27th edition) extensively examined in juristic terms with regard to German and US copyright law. The matter was subjected to examination by legal expertise, both with regard to national legislation and to the current jurisdiction in these two countries.
The examination by external, independent experts has come to the conclusion that both the Greek biblical text of the editions mentioned – the so-called over text – and the critical apparatus are protected by copyright according to both German and US law.
The copyright protection results from the measure of originality and creativity reflected in the two above-mentioned editions, with regard to both the over text and the apparatus. Neither of these is...
- a reproduction of individual ancient manuscripts;
- nor a quasi-mechanically effected collation of readings in the sense of pure diligence;
- nor an automated selection and arrangement of readings (e.g. by means of a computer program or other automated processes).
Rather, both the constitution of the principal text and the compilation of the critical apparatus are based on creative scholarly work which can lay claim to originality. This is shown e.g. by the fact that various scholars who devote their efforts to text reconstruction arrive at different results. The decisions as to which readings are chosen for the principal text are thus by no means a foregone conclusion. While the selections are made in accordance with generally accepted scholarly principles, the specific decisions are made on an individual and subjective basis. Like the compilation of the critical apparatus, the process of text reconstruction is therefore a creative process, which gives rise to a work characterized by originality.
The degree of originality that a work must exhibit in order to be protected by copyright differs between US and German copyright law (the requirements are lower in the USA). However, according to legislation and jurisdiction in both countries, collections and collations of material that itself is not subject to copyright are expressly protected as long as they are not drawn up by purely mechanical or automatic means, but are characterized by a process of individual selection, of weighted emphasis, and of categorization (cf. §103 US Copyright Act and §§2, Art. 1 No. 1, 3 German Copyright Act). This clearly applies to the above-mentioned editions, so that there is no doubt as to their protection by copyright according to both US and German law.
