Research project A secular bible: Bibel 2000 at the intersection between religion and politics in postwar Sweden

The starting point for the study is that for the biblical texts to fit in the postwar welfare state, with a purportedly secular state as both organizer and funder of the translation project, the Bible was apprehended in terms of culture rather than religion. Bibel 2000 can thus be understood as an institutional embodiment of the normative concepts associated with the welfare state: rationalization, progress, and standardization. This will be studied within a theoretical framework of institutional translation. By perceiving Bibel 2000 as a ”translation event,” it will be possible to understand the translation not primarily as a text but as a process with temporal qualities in connection to the postwar societal institutions during the decades in which the translation work took place.

The study will be conducted during three years, generating important new knowledge on how the informal societal and political institutions of the period interacted with the Bible, and vice versa. The study will hereby show how the Bible as a cultural and historical artefact has continued to hold a role also in what is generally perceived as highly secularized societies.