BIBLE, The. Intrnduction. The Name. —The Phcenician port of Gebal, the modern Jebel, famed as seat of the Adonis cult and still earlier as a mart for papyrus, was called Byblos by the Greeks, whence the Greek word byblos or biblos came to denote the papyrus plant (as we say barege or nankin) and its inner pith, then the paper made therefrom, then a book or writing (Matt. i, 1, first used to denote a body of sacred writ in the Letter of Aristeas, 316). Thence the diminutive biblion with its plural biblia (often byblion, -a), meaning papers, lit tle books, books, documents, scriptures, library. In the preface to Ecclesiasticus (written tn Hebrew about 172 ac. by Joshua Sirach, turned into Greek and prefaced by his grandson Joshua about 117 a.c.) this biblia is used twice . . .
°of the Law and the Prophets and the other Biblia" . . . °also the Law and the Prophe cies and the rest of the Biblia" . . . to denote the literature of Israel, as the equivalent and in fact a translation of the Hebrew S'farim (scriptures) used in the same era in the same sense in Dan. ix, 2, "I Daniel understood from the slarim." From the Jews this term passed, along with so much other freightage of thought and word, to early Christians (first in 2 Clem. to Cor. xiv, 2), by whom it was at last extended to include all authoritative scriptures, Jewish and also Christian. In the Middle Ages this Greek neuter plural was mistaken for a Latin fem inine singular and so declined: biblia, biblice, etc. As such it has passed over into various languages of modern Europe (the Bible, die Bibel, la Bible, la Bibbia, etc.).
Other S'farim or biblia was by no means the only term applied by Jew or Christian to the scrolls in question. At first all Israel's literature was regarded as holy, if not quite equally so, merely as being written*— such was his preoccupation with religion — and not till the Middle Ages do the Jewish ex pounders (never the Talmud or Midrash) speak of the "Scriptures Holy" (sifre ha-godesh). When other books appeared, they received the special suffix °the outsiders" (ha-chitzunim), the Greek aelpokryphap ("hidden away"),— per haps as not included in Temple or Synagogue libraries. As read publicly on Sabbaths and
holidays, the books were named: (a) Miqra, "the read"; also (b) "writings the holy" (kith'be ha-qodesh), a title reappearing in Rom. i, 2 (graphais hagiais) and in 2 Tim. iii, 15 (hieragrantmata). Again, the superfious "holy" omitted, they were called (c) simply Writ (katub), and the modern phrase "the Scripture says" merely translates the Hebrew ha-katub 'omer, as the "every scripture" of 2 Tim. iii, 16 translates kol ha-katub. Once more (d) since °Law° (Torah) was the first and chief division of these "Books" the term is applied to the whole, as also in4ohn x, 34, 1 Cor. xiv 21. (e) The name " estament° (Old and d New), translating the Greek diatheke (cove nant), first used in this sense in 2 Cor. iii, 14, the most familiar to us, very naturally is rarely if ever used by a Jew to mean "Scripture"; the °Book of Covenant" or Testament (sefer ha brith) denotes the whole "Law" in Ben Sirach xxiv, 23, but properly only Ex. xx, 20-xxiii, 35.
(f) Still other less important designations are found: as Cycle (machzur), "Twenty and Four Book's,' often an acrostic was formed with the Hebrew initials (t-n-k) of Law, Prophets, Writings, and of other designations.
(g) Lastly, in the Mishnah the mark of the Holy Books is that they "defile the hands," which sounds like a tabu, but in any case the phrase "defiling the hands" came to define the °Holy Books" as canonical.
Division of the In discussing this authoritative literature, the question is first, What are these various Scriptures?; then, what is their actual literal content ?; and lastly, what is its meaning (or interpretation) ? The first question, in all its ramifications, concerns the Canon; the second, the Text and textual criticism; the third, the History of Interpreta tion and so-called °Higher Criticism." These topics, then, will be discussed in this order. As is well known and has already been observed, the whole literature falls into two grand divi sions: the Old Testament and the New, or Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and these, be ing wide apart, will require separate and dis tinct treatment..