History and Documents

The Society for New Testament Studies or SNTS, as it is commonly referred to in its abbreviated form, is a learned society. Its full Latin name is Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.

A proposal to establish the society was first put forward at the Faith and Order Conference at Edinburgh in 1937 by Professor J. de Zwaan of Leyden. A letter was sent out to interested parties and the first formal meeting to turn that proposal into a reality took place at Carey Hall, Selly Oak, Birmingham, from 14–16 September, 1938. A motion to found the Society was proposed by C. H. Dodd and H. G. Wood, which was unanimously carried. The first general meeting was planned for 20–22 September 1939. As the first Secretary stated it in the initial Bulletin of the Society: 

We were well set for the raising of the curtain on the first full act of our play; but alas, instead September 20th saw us not in conference in Birmingham but shut up in our own countries, debarred from contact with one another by "the dread arbitrament of war".

Because the Second World War interrupted its proceedings, the Society did not hold its first General Meeting until 1947 in Oxford, after which it has met on a regular annual basis with the exception of the Covid pandemic in 2020.