If not, I'm claiming that ASAP. All the royalty money.

As far as I know copyright expires after 70 years.
So technically the bible is public domain.

Depends on the version. And if you consider God as the ultimate creator who asked 40 people to write his book, and I suppose its true it's still copyrighted. But I don't know

My fan fiction depends on the answer

New point: How are people flashing around Bibles sent to jail?

The bible is not copyrighted. Copyright laws didnt exist thousands of years ago, and even if they did, the rights would've expired by now.

And you can't copyright a book you did not write; and you're probably not the first to think about copyrighting the Bible.

You can plagiarise any verse of the Bible because with originates from 2000BC-95AD. if we take the Bible as a compilation made by 40 people, then add the copyright period as the lifetime of the author(s)+70 years. Since books were made at different times, they would get expired in different eras.

Ok, so let's take the last book, Revelation and see the creator's death age (John the Apostle, 100AD) and add the 70 years I mentioned. So all the books of the Bible were open for plagiarism since 170AD

If you made a derivative work, like a new translation, you would be entitled to copyright protection, but only for the derivative work you created. For example, if you translated the Bible into Klingon or Gangsta, you would receive copyright protection once you put that creation into a fixed medium.

However, someone else could also independently translate the Bible into Klingon, and they would not be interfering in your copyright rights, unless you could show they used your translation.

But that being said, like someone else above posted, someone else's version may currently be under copyright protection. King James Version? Very unlikely not. NIV? maybe.

But you could also google something this easy:
http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/16377/what-major-translations-of-the-bible-are-in-the-public-domain

funny how a 2 millenium old book's translations can make money.

That's religion for ya, stew.

@Bane, no, its just copyright law. A 2000 year old book about atheism that was just translated would also receive the same protection.

Should people receive protection for their creative expressions? Translations are creative expressions.

A similar thing happens with music. Like Beethoven's 5th symphony? Well, play it on the piano yourself, or find a copy that is not under copyright. Downloading a copy recorded last year during a concert recital infringes on the rights of the pianist performing that public domain song.

@pooh, reread what stew said, and then mine. Thanks!

Guess I really don't know why you had me do that. Stewie said something silly, You added something wrong, I gave you an answer that directly corrected your wrong statement...

Are we all up to speed now?