For Immediate Release: September 25, 2007

Yale University Press Acquires
Anchor Bible Series from Doubleday

New York and New Haven— The Anchor Bible Series, a prestigious collection of more than 115 volumes of biblical scholarship, has been acquired by Yale University Press from Doubleday.  Yale University Press will publish all backlist and new volumes in the series, to be renamed Anchor Yale Bible, going forward.  Stephen Rubin, President and Publisher of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, and John Donatich, Director of Yale University Press, jointly announced the deal today.  Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

This sale will enable Doubleday to enhance its existing focus on publishing general religious titles for the trade market.  Yale University Press will be adding a highly-regarded line of books that strengthens its existing publishing program and serves its mandate to publish serious works that further scholarly investigation and advance interdisciplinary inquiry.  Yale Press plans to develop the series with new interdisciplinary ways of studying the bible while taking advantage of the new technologies within digital platforms.

Conceived in 1956 under the guidance of the distinguished biblical scholar William Foxwell Albright (1891 – 1971), the Anchor Bible Series is comprised of:

• The Anchor Bible Commentary Series, a book-by-book translation and exegesis of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Apocrypha that today includes more than 80 volumes;
• The Anchor Bible Dictionary, a six-volume set that contains more than 6,000 entries from 800 international scholars;
• The Anchor Bible Reference Library, an open-ended series that includes more than 25 volumes focused on archeology, anthropology, history, languages, literature, philosophy, and theology, among other areas of scholarship.

Under the 50-year general editorship of noted biblical scholar David Noel Freedman, the entire series today has more than three million copies in print.
Under the agreement, Yale University Press will be able to publish all the remaining volumes in the Anchor Bible Commentary Series, beginning in 2008.  All existing inventory and open orders for books in the series are being transferred from Doubleday to Yale University Press, which plans to make all three series available in digital versions.

Said Stephen Rubin, “The Anchor Bible has been an integral part of Doubleday’s history, and we are proud of the lasting—and unparalleled—contributions to interfaith biblical scholarship made by the many distinguished authors we have had the privilege of publishing under this unprecedented series.  We believe we have found, in Yale University Press, the perfect home for each of the many volumes in the series that have already been published as well as for those yet to come.”

John Donatich confirmed that, “The Anchor Bible Series fits perfectly with the Press’s goals and objectives, adding to our already distinguished list in religious history and providing a foundation for new areas. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to develop the series, revising and updating these classic texts for a wider group of students, seminarians, scholars, and the general public as well as customizing them for a new generation of digital users.”

Doubleday
Doubleday is a division of Random House, Inc., the largest English-language trade publisher in the world, whose parent company is Bertelsmann AG.

Yale University Press
Founded in 1908, Yale University Press is one of the largest and most distinguished American university presses. It publishes over 320 books a year in a wide range of disciplines including history, American studies, literature, art and architecture, languages, philosophy, politics, religion, reference, music, and the sciences.

To learn more about the Anchor Yale Bible Series, please contact Heather D’Auria, Publicity Director, Yale University Press, at 203-432-8193 or heather.dauria@yale.edu.