The author states that bible translations are “bibles”, a text type that has changing religious and secular functions depending on time and place (skopos). Next to skopos, the text type “bible (translation)” is determined by the medium, the script, and the secondary nature, meaning that translations are texts derived from texts from another language and cultural world. The dynamics of bible translations as genre to a high degree determine the way in which translations reflect the genres of the biblical sources and the degree of correspondence with genres in the receiving languages. The author illustrates this using the “Statenvertaling” (“State translation”) and translations from New Guinea (Papua). In the last case translations of the Bible form a completely new text type in societies that previously only knew oral genres. The example of the Statenvertaling shows how skopos, the unique historical place and function that the text type “bible” has in a community, determines how a bible translation deals with the genres of its sources.