On THE Terms “ Brsue,”’ “ Hoty Bisue.”’
The purpose of the following note is simply to bring together what seems to be currently known of the origin of the terms ‘‘ Bible,’”’ ‘‘ Holy Bible.’’ No attempt has been made to go behind the universally accessible sources of information upon which the general public depends, in order to gather additional material. The object in view is merely to make plain how incomplete the accessible knowledge of the history of these terms is. It 1s remarkable that terms daily on the lips of the entire Western world should have been left until to-day without adequate historical explanation. The fact is, however, beyond doubt. In a short letter printed in The Expository Times a few years ago™” Eb. Nestle remarks that ‘‘nobody as yet knows how the word ‘ Bible’ found its way into the European languages”’ and represents even Theodor Zahn as declining the task of working out the story. The
51 The é6pé6n of Matt. v. 21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43 (Cf. Rom. ix. 12, 26, Gal. iii. 16) is not a formula of citation, — for which we should have the perfect, etpnxev (Heb. iv. 3, x. 9-15, xiii. 5) — but adduces the historical fact that such teaching as is adduced was given to the ancients. J. A. Alexander (on Matt. v. 21) admirably paraphrases: “‘ You have (often) heard (it said by the scribes and leading Pharisees) that our fathers were commanded not to murder, and that consequently he who murders (in the strict sense of the term) is liable to be condemned and punished under the commandment.” The subsequent instances, though in verses 27, 31, 38, 43 more or less abridged in the introductory formula, are governed by the full formula of verse 21. In point of fact the commandments adduced, (with additions to the first and last) are all found written in the Mosaic Law. But our Lord does not say that they are found there; He merely says that His hearers had often heard from their official teachers, that they were found there — ‘‘ Ye have heard that it was commanded...” So Spanheim, J. A. Alexander, etc.
53 What Zahn says, ‘Geschichte des N. T. Kanons”’ II. p. 944, is: ‘‘On the origin and earliest spread of the modern use of ‘ Bible’ among the Western peoples I do not venture to say anything.”
account which is ordinarily given is that 6uG\ta was current in Greek in the sense of ‘‘the Bible’’; that this was taken over into Latin as a feminine singular, ‘‘ Biblia’’; and that this form in turn passed thence into the several Western languages.”! There is no step of this presumed process, however, which is beyond dispute, and a great obscurity rests upon the whole subject.
Th. Zahn » enters a strong denial with respect to the basis of the development which is assumed. ‘‘For ra BiBdXia as a designation of the Old Testament,’’ he says, ‘‘no usage can be adduced.’’ More broadly still: ‘‘The mediaeval and modern employment of 7a 6.8Xia in the sense of ai ypadal, 7 ypadn, that is ‘Bible,’ is altogether alien to the ancient church.”’ The current representation on the faith of Suicer * that 7a G.GXta occurs first in the sense of ‘Bible’ in Chrysostom, he continues, is ‘‘ only a widely-spread error”’; the passages Suicer quotes do not support the representation.
To justify this last assertion Zahn examines the three passages which Suicer quotes from Chrysostom in support of his statement that ‘‘Scriptura Sacra is called Bi8rAta sempliciter,”’ and concludes that no one of them employs the term in that sense. In one of them — Hom. 10 in Genes. (Montfaucon, iv. 81) not B.BAta sempliciter, but Geta BiBrta is used. In another — Hom. 2 on certain passages of Genesis (Montfaucon, iv. 652) — Chrysostom declares that the Jews have no doubt Ta Buta, but we Christians alone tév BiBAtwy Onoavpds, — they Ta ypdupuara, we, however, both ra ypaupata and ra vonuara — not the Bible but the Pentateuch being in mind and the very point of the statement requiring us to take the
66 Credner, “Geschichte des N. T. Kanons,” 1860, p. 229: ‘‘Further it is well known that for the collection of the sacred writings in general the name ra B.BNia (Bible) occurs first in the usage of Chrysostom (cf. “Suiceri Thesaurus,’ sub voc.).” Reuss, “ History of the New Testament,’ E. T. p. 326 (§ 320): “From the time of Chrysostom the canonical collection is called simply ra @:BNa.”’ Ersch and
‘“Books”’ as merely so much paper, as the “‘letters”’ as only so much ink. It is on the third passage, however, that Suicer lays most stress, remarking of it, here ‘‘G:8dia is used absolutely and means Sacra Biblia.”’ It is found in ‘‘ Hom. ix. in Epist. ad Coloss.” (Montfaucon xi. 391) and runs as follows:
“Delay not, I beseech thee: thou hast the oracles (Adya) of God.... Hear, I beseech you, all ye who are careful for this life, and procure B.BdXia dapyaka THs Yuy7js.... If you will have nothing else, get, then, the New [ Testament: r7v xawnv used absolutely as frequently in Chrysostom ], the Apostle, the Acts, the Gospels, constant teachers,... This is the cause of all our evils, — ignorance of ras ypaddas.’’ Zahn re-
marks: “‘It is evident that the anarthrous 6.6Xta here is not a name of the Bible, but designates the category ‘Books,’ to which, among others, the New Testament belongs; books too can be means of grace and constant teachers.”
The average reader will no doubt feel that in his examination of these passages Zahn presses his thesis a little too Par.
The contrast in the second passage between the Books and the Treasure hidden in them, between the Letter and the Sense, of course, throws the emphasis on the mere Books and the mere Letter. But this, so far from excluding, presupposes rather, the technical usage of these terms, 7a 6iBAla, Ta ypaypara, to mean “ Bible,’ ‘‘Scripture.’’ The terms are used here certainly with primary reference to the Old Testament. But this is not to the exclusion of the New. In the third passage — in which the rich series of designations of Scripture brought together should be observed: ‘‘the Oracles of God,” ‘‘the New [Testament |,” ‘‘the Scriptures,’’ — it is clear enough, no doubt, that 8.6dia is primarily a common noun. But it does not seem clear that it does not contain in itself a suggestion of its use as a proper noun. Beyond question Chrysostom means by these 6.Gdta just the Bible; just the ‘‘ Oracles of God” of which he had spoken immediately before, inclusive of the New Testament of which he immediately afterwards speaks, and constituting ‘‘the Scriptures’’ of which he speaks somewhat further on. He speaks of these Bible books as remedial, and of course he speaks generally without an article. The case is like the anarthrous lepa ypaupara of Il Tim. iii. 16, or the anarthrous ‘Bible’ when we congratulate ourselves that we live ‘‘in a land of an open Bible’’; in both of which instances the term is technical enough. When Chrysostom exhorted his hearers to get for themselves 6.8Ata which will be medicaments for their souls, they caught under the common noun 6.GXta the implication of the technical 7a fi- Bdtia. These passages of Chrysostom, after all would seem then to bear witness to the currency of the term 7a 6.8Xta as the synonym of ai ypadati, 7 ypadn.
But why should we confine ourselves to the passages cited by Suicer? Sophocles defines ra B.BXta, if not, like Suicer, as the sacred Books of the Christians, yet, similiarly, as ‘“‘the Sacred Books of the Hebrews,’”’ quoting for his definition the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus, I Mace. xii. 9 (ra &yua), Josephus, ‘Contr. Apion.,” i. 8; and Clem. Alex. [Migne] i. 668 B, Origen, [ Migne] i. 1276, C. The three Jewish citations we may leave for the moment to one side: in any case they do not present us with an absolute 7a B.GAta, meaning ‘‘the Scriptures.’ Clement and Origen take us back two hundred years before Chrysostom.
In the passage cited from Clement — it is ‘‘ Paedagog.” ili. xii. med. — Clement is speaking of the goodness of the Instructor in setting forth his salutary commandments in the great variety of the Scriptures. He had adduced our Lord’s great summary of the Law (Matt. xxii. 37-40) and His injunction to therich young man “‘to keep the commandments”; and taking a new beginning from this injunction, he enlarges on the Decalogue. ‘‘ These things,’’ he remarks, ‘‘are to be observed,’’ — and not these only, but along with them, ‘‘ whatsoever else we see prescribed for us as we read ra BiBNXia.”’ For example there is Isaiah i. 10, 17, 18, and the declaration of Scripture that ‘‘good works are an acceptable prayer to the Lord’’ — whatever the passage may be which Clement may have had in mind when he wrote this. It is scarcely disputable that by ra G:GXta here, used absolutely, there is meant just ‘‘the Sacred Books,”’ that is to say, ‘‘the Bible.’’ The immediately preceding reference is to the Decalogue, and the immediately contiguous ones are to the Old Testament. But it seems hardly possible to contend that ra 6.GdAta therefore means here either the Decalogue, or the Pentateuch, or the Old Testament, distinctively. It is altogether more probable that it is equally comprehensive with the ai ypadat of the closely preceding context. We cannot accord with Sophocles’ opinion, then, that 7a B.GAta here means ‘‘the Sacred Books of the Hebrews’’: it seems to us to mean ‘‘the Sacred Books of the Christians.’’
The passage cited by hatha from Origen is “‘Contra Celsum”’ v. 60 (Ed. Koetschau, 1899, li. p. 63: 22. 23). In it the Hebrew Scriptures are clearly referred to by 7a 6rBria. It declares that Jews and Christians alike ‘‘confess that 7a Bi- Gta were written by the Divine Spirit.’”’ But it does not follow that 7a B.8A\ta means with Origen the Old Testament as distinguished from the New, though Koetschau seems inclined to hold this to be the fact. ‘‘The Books of the Holy Scriptures,’ he writes (Prolegom. i. p. xxxii.), “are with Origen generally designated deta BiBrta, ypadn (ypadat) or ypappara; those of the Old Testament, 6.8ria, tahara ypadn or radara ypappara.’’ This would seem to say that the absolute 7a fu- BXta with Origen is the synonym not of 4 ypa@y but of 7 7a- Nata ypady, not of Ta ypadupyata but of Ta madara ypapmara. There seems to be nothing in the Contra “ Celsum,” to be sure, which will decisively refute this opinion. There we read of ‘‘the sacred Bi8Xta of the Jews”’ or ‘‘ of the Hebrews ’’ (Koetschau, i. 304, 26; 305, 6): of ‘“‘the G:GAta which the prophets wrote in Hebrew” (ii. 208, 22; cf., i. 291, 12), or simply of ‘“‘the Bi8rta of the Jews”’ (ii. 93, 18); but nowhere else than in v. 60 (so far as Koetschau’s confessedly incomplete index indicates) do we meet with absolute 7a 6.6dia in the sense of ‘The Scriptures.” *’ But what shall we make of a passage like
then, will I give thy treasures for a spoil.’ And he gave the treasures of the Jews to us, for they were the first to believe Ta \dyia Tod Geod, and only after them did we believe, God having taken the \éy.a away from them and given them to us. And we say that ‘the kingdom shall be taken away from them by God and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof’ has been said by the Saviour and shall be fulfilled. Not that 7 ypad7 has been taken away from them, but now, though they have the Law and the Prophets they do not understand the meaning that is in them. For they have ra 6.BAta. But how was the kingdom of God taken from them? The meaning tv ypadav was taken from them,” etc. It is
worth while to pause and note the rich synonymy of ‘“‘the Scriptures”? here. And, noting it, we may well ask whether, if ra BiGAta, because it is used here with the eye on the Hebrew Scriptures, is to be taken as meaning distinctively the Hebrew Scriptures, this same is not true also of 7a \oyra and n ypabn and ai ypadat. There is a subtle propriety in the adjustment of these three terms to the exact place in which each appears in the argument. Aéyra emphasizes the divine origin of the Scriptures; 8.GAta looks upon them from the point of view of their external form; ypad7, of their significant contents. The terms could not be interchanged without some loss of exactness of speech: 6.8dta accordingly stands where it does because it expresses the externalia of the Scriptures, sets them before us as ‘‘nothing but books’? — so much paper. But in their general connotation the three terms are coextensive, and there is no reason for narrowing Ta B.BAta to ‘the Old Testament”’ because it refers to the Old Testament here, which will not apply as well to ra \oyra and to 4 ypadn, ai ypapat. There is preserved for us in the “‘ Philocalia’’ (Ch. v., ed. Robinson, 1893, pp. 48-48) a remarkable fragment of the Fifth Book of Origen’s ‘Commentary on John’ (ed. Preuschen, 1903, pp. 100-105), in which Origen, speaking to the text, ‘‘ Of the making of many books there is no end,’’ rings the changes on 8:GXtov and B.BAta and leaves a strong impression on the reader’s mind that to him 7a 6.6\ta would be exactly synonymous with 7a eta BiBdia. ‘‘ But since,” says he
(Preuschen, p. 103, 12), ‘‘the proofs of this must be drawn from T7s Delas ypadjs, it will be most satisfactorily established if I am able to show that it is not in one Book only that it is written among us concerning Christ — taking ra BiBdta in its common sense. For we find it written in the Pentateuch,”’
etc. Origen here, by telling us that 7a B.GX\ia has a common sense, tells us also that it has a special sense, and that in this special sense it includes alike the New Testament in which we should expect to find Christ spoken of, and the Pentateuch where also He is spoken of; in a word it is the exact synonym of 77 deta ypady.®
If we do not quite learn from Clement and Origen, therefore, — as Sophocles would have us learn — that, because it is used of the Sacred Books of the Hebrews, 7a B.BXia means distinctively the ‘‘Sacred Books of the Hebrews,” we do learn what Zahn would not have us learn, that it is used absolutely in the sense of ‘‘the Sacred Scriptures.’’? We must now take note of the fact, however, that Zahn’s primary object was to deny not that 7a B.BdAia, absolutely used, could mean ‘‘the Sacred Books,”’ but precisely that it could mean the Sacred Books of the Hebrews — the Old Testament. His primary statement is that no usage can be adduced of 7a 6.Bria as a designation distinctively of the Old Testament. He is discussing the reading of a clause in II Clemens Rom. xiv. This clause couples together (in the Constantinople MS. followed by Lightfoot) ra 6iBXia Kai ot adarToXoL, which, as Lightfoot remarks, is a rough designation of the Old and New Testaments. On the testimony of the Syriac version Zahn reads ta B.BAla Tay tpodyTav Kat ot aroaToXoL, and to strengthen his position argues that absolute 7a BiBXia
58 Preuschen indexes the following further occurrences of the plural 7a BiBdia (apart from the passage, pp. 100-105) in the ‘Commentary on John:”’ p. 40, 21, Ta THs Kas SeaOhkns BrBrta; 117, 19, de’ Srdwv rdv ayiwy BiBriwv. At p. 9, 24 Origen opens an inquiry as to why raira ra BiBdia — that is the Gospels, — are called by the singular title of eayyédtov.
for ‘“‘the Old Testament”’ is unexampled. We have already seen enough to prove to us that absolute 7a BiBAta was quite readily used to designate the Old Testament — because the Old Testament was part of the Scriptures, that is of 7a 6.6\ia in their pregnant sense. But whether ra Bi6A\ta was used distinctively of the Old Testament — when the Old Testament was set over against the New —is another question.
This question need not wait long, however, for an answer. It cannot be doubted, and it is not doubted, that the Jews called their sacred writings, by way of eminence, ‘‘the Books.”’ As Zahn very exactly declares * the Hebrew o™5o7 (Mishna Megilla i. 8) certainly underlies the usage of at ypadat, 7 ypad7n in the general sense of ‘‘the Bible.’’ The antiquity of this phrase may be estimated from its occurrence in Daniel ix. 2: ‘‘I Daniel understood by ‘the Books’...’’: ‘that is,’ says Driver, commenting on the passage, ‘“‘the sacred books, the Scriptures”’ (cf. => in Ps. xl. 8, Is. xxix. 18). The Greek rendering of this passage gives us to be sure ai BiBXo. rather than ra BiBAta. But already in I Macc. xll. 9 we have the full phrase of which ra 6.6Xia is the natural abbreviation —7a B.BX\ta Ta G&yva, while Josephus gives us the parallel 7a tepa BiGAia: and. from these phrases ra 6.B8ria could not fail to be extracted, just as ypadat, was extracted from ai adytar ypadat, ai iepat ypadat, and the like. We meet with no surprise therefore the appearance of Ta 6.Bria in II Clems. xiv, as a distinctive designation of the Old Testament. It only advertises to us, what we knew beforehand, that the Old Testament was ‘‘the Books’’ before both Old and New Testaments were subsumed under that title, and that usage, in a community made up partly of Jews, for a time conserved, without prejudice to the equal authority of the New Testament Books, some lingering reminiscence of the older habit of speech. How easily the Old Testament might continue to be called ra B.6Xla after the term had come to include New Books as well, may be illus- trated by a tendency which is observable in the earlier English usage of the word “ Bible”’ (persisting even yet dialectically) to employ it of the Old Testament distinctively — as in the phrase ‘‘ The Bible and the Testament,’ — not, of course, with any implication of inferiority for the New Testament books.” How long such a tendency to think of the Old Testament especially when the term ra 6.8d\ia was heard continued to manifest itself in the early church, it would require a delicate investigation to determine. It is enough for the moment to note that II Clems. xiv witnesses to the presence of such a tendency in the first age, while such phrases as meet us in Melito of Sardis *' — ra madara BiBNia, Ta THS TWadaas drabjKyns BiGAta — warn us that the new conditions of the New Covenant with its New Books were already requiring a distinction, among the 7a B.BA\ia by way of eminence, between the New and the Old Books which made up the whole. Ta 6:6dta in a word to Jew and Christian alike meant just ‘‘the Holy Books,” ‘‘the Books” by way of eminence, by the side of which could stand no others; and though ear and lip needed a space to adjust themselves to the increased content of the phrase when Christianity came bringing with it its contribution to the unitary collection, yet the adjustment was quickly made and if the memory of the earlier usage persisted for a while, 7a 6.6Xia in Christian circles meant from the beginning in principle the whole body of Sacred Books and rapidly came to mean in practice nothing less.
We cannot agree with Zahn, then, that the usage of ra B.6Xta in the early church provides no basis upon which the development of our term ‘‘Bible’’ could have taken place. But when we come to take the next step in the development of that term, we are constrained to assent to Nestle’s declaration that nobody knows how the term “‘ Bible” found its way into the European languages. The Latins did not take
60 See the passages from the Oxford ‘Dictionary of the English Language,’’ in note 82 below. 61 Otto: ix. 414.
over the Greek word £.8Xia, or its cognate BiBdo, to designate the Biblical books. They had in their own Liber a term which had already acquired a pregnant sense ‘‘in religion and public law’? — as expressing ‘‘a religious book, Scripture, a statute book, codex” °; and which therefore readily lent itself to employment as the representative of the pregnant Greek terms which it translates, though it scarcely seems to have attained so absolute a use. Accordingly we find in use in the early church side by side with such Greek phrases as Ta BiBAla THs Tadaas, THs Kaw7s Scabhkns, the Latin phrases, Libri veterts, novi testamentr, (federis):° and over against the Greek 6.8dia kavovixd, the Latin libri regulares, or as Rufinus puts it, libri inter canonem conclusi.“ Jerome gave currency to the very appropriate term Bibliotheca as the designation of the corpus of the Sacred Books; and this term became later the technical term perhaps most frequently employed, so that Martianaeus in his “‘ Prolegomena in divinam bibliothecam Hieron.” i. §$1,° speaking de nomine Bibliothecae Dwine, can very fairly say, ‘‘among the ancients, the sacred volume which we, at the present time, call Biblia, obtained the name of Bibliotheca Divina.” There is no trace of such a word as “‘ Biblia”’ in Patristic Latin, and no such word is entered in the Latin Lexicons, — not even in
harmlessly intended and was not in contradiction of the usage followed by Christ Himself, when the Holy Scripture was called a Bibliotheca.... As, however, that designation ‘Bibliotheca’ never became the dominant one, and the Biblical one, ‘the Scripture,’ alone ultimately maintained itself, so the comprehensive name, ‘the Bible,’ attained general currency in the West before the ninth century.”’ On
this last point, he had already said, (p. 232 note 1): ‘‘As a popular designation ‘Biblia’ was in use long before its earliest provable occurrence in the ninth century,” with appeal to: “Eb. Nestle, Beil. zur Allg. Z. 1904, No. 90, p. 117,” — an article to which we have not access, though possibly we have its essential contents in the contemporarily printed note in the Expository Times, mentioned at the beginning of this discussion. It can be said that ‘Bibliotheca’ never became the dominant designation of the Scriptures only in contrast with such a designation as ‘‘the Scriptures.’’
the great Latin ‘“‘Thesaurus”’ now publishing by the German Universities. We shall have to come to Du Cange’s “Gloss. Med. et Inf. Latinitatis’’ to discover it. And when we discover it we are told very little about it except of its existence in the Latin of the early middle ages, and shortly afterwards in the vernaculars of the West.
There seems to be no serious inherent difficulty in conceiving the passage of a Greek neuter plural into Latin as a feminine singular. The thing appears not to be unexampled, and so might have happened to 6.6Xia. What we lack is clear evidence that 8.Gdta did pass into “‘ Biblia,’’ and exact information of the stages and processes by which the feat was accomplished. And the difficulty of the problem is vastly increased by the circumstances that the time when the transference is supposed to have taken place was not a time when there was rich intercourse between the East and the West, in which borrowing of terms would have been easy and natural; and that there was no obvious need upon the part of the West for such a term, which would render its borrowing of it natural. Yet the term is supposed to have been taken over with such completeness and heartiness as to have become the parent of the common nomenclature of the Scriptures in all the Western languages.” The difficulties raised by these considerations are so great that one finds himself questioning whether the origin of the term ‘‘ Biblia” in Mediaeval Latin and of its descendants in the Western languages can be accounted for after the fashion suggested, and whether some other conjectural explanation of their origin might not wisely be sought for — as, for example, a contraction of the commonly current term ‘“bibliotheca.’’ ® Some color might be lent to such a conjecture by the fact that ‘‘ Biblia’ and its descendants seem to have been from the first in use not
68 The Latin ‘‘ Thesaurus”’ tells us that “‘ bibliotheca ’’ occurs in titles variously contracted: ‘Compendia in titulis: by., byb., bybl., byblio., bibliot.,”’ and in even completer forms.
merely in an ecclesiastical but also in a common sense — as designations, that is, not merely of the Scriptures but of any large book.® Appeal might be made also to the ease with which the two terms ‘ Biblia’ and ‘ Bibliotheca’ took one the other’s place down at least to the fifteenth century.”” What we need, however, is not conjectures but a series of ascertained facts, and these are at the moment at our disposal in very insufficient measure.
Du Cange can tell us only that the word “ Biblia”’ occurs in the “‘Imitatio Christi” I i. 3,” and in the “ Diarium Belli Hussitici,’”’ adding a quotation from a Chronicle, at the year 1228, to the effect that ‘‘Stephen, archibishop of Canterbury... made postils super totam Bibliam.”’ To this Diefenbach in the ‘“Glossarium,” which he published (1857) as a supplement to Du Cange, merely adds an intimation that certain fifteenth century glossaries contain ‘‘ Biblia’’ in the sense of a “large book,’’ ” as also ‘‘Biblie” and ‘‘Bibel”’ (German). Becker in his “ Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui’’ is able to cite earlier examples of “Biblia” from old catalogues of libraries. The earliest — from the ninth century — comes from the catalogue of an unknown French library; next in age are two twelfth century examples — one from Monte Cassiro and the other from Stederburg in Brunswick. The English Latin catalogues in which he finds it begin with one of the books at Durham, dating from 1266,” and by that
6° See Diefenbach’s addenda to Du Cange, sub voc. ‘‘ Biblia.”” The Oxford Dictionary gives English examples from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries: e. g. 1377, Lang. “ Piers Pl.” B. xv. 87; ‘Of this matere I mygte mak a long bible”’; 1542, Udall, Erasm. ‘‘ Apophth,” 205a, ‘‘When he had read a long bible written and sent to hym from Antipater.” (The quotation from Z. Boyd 1629 does not seem to us to belong here).
73 Cf. Eb. Nestle, The Expository Times, xv. pp. 565-566. The citation given in the Oxford Dictionary from an Anglo-Latin occurrence of ‘‘biblia’’ in 1095 — viz. from the Catalogue of the Lindisfarne books — Nestle shows to rest on an error. This catalogue dates from the fourteenth or fifteenth century.
time the word was already in use in English,” and of course in French,” since the English usage rests on the French. How early it appears in the modern European languages we lack data to inform us. The German examples which Diefenbach quotes are from the fifteenth century and those which Heyne gives from the sixteenth,” while Grimm cites none earlier than the seventeenth. But if the Low-German “‘ Fibel’’ is really a derivative of ‘‘ Bibel,’’ the common use of ‘‘ Bibel”’ must have antedated the fifteenth century.” Littré gives no French example earlier than Joinville, who wrote at the beginning of the fourteenth century (13809). Its French usage must go well back of this, however, for as we have seen it had come from French into Middle English by that date. The name in ordinary use throughout the Middle Ages for what we call the ‘“‘Bible’’ was ‘‘ Bibliotheca,’’ and we accordingly find that in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) “ bibliothéce’’ alone occurs in this sense.” From the fourteenth
% Littré (“Dictionaire de la Langue Francaise’ I. sub voc.) cites only: “HIST. xiii’s. — Un cordelier vint 4 li au chastel de Yeres [Hiéres ] et pour enseigner le roi, dit en son sermon, que il avoit leu la Bible et les livres qui parlent des princes mescreans, Jornv. 199.”’ To this may be added Joinville, ‘‘ Histoire de Saint Louis,’”’ Paris, Didot, 1874, p. 310 (cxi. 569): ‘ L’endemain s’ala logier li roys devant la citei d’Arsur que l’on appelle Tyri en la Bible.” On p. 320 (cxili. 583) “Bible” occurs in the sense of ‘‘ Balista,”’ cf. Du Cange, sub voc. ‘‘ Biblia I.”’ The Century and the Standard Dictionaries both record this usage for English.
76 Heyne, ‘Deutsches Wérterbuch”’ I. 1890, tells us sub voc. that Bibel is a borrowed word from the Greek neuter-plural Biblia, ‘‘ Books,” which since the late Middle-High-German, as in Middle Latin, has been looked on as a feminine singular, first in a form nearer to the Latin, and afterwards in that now current — with a reference to Diefenbach. His earliest citations are from Luther, who still has (“D. christliche Adel,’ 1520) “die biblien, das heilig gotis wort,’’ but elsewhere (“‘ Wider die himlischen Proph.’’ 1525): ‘‘aus meine verdeutschten bibel.”’
77 Cf. F. Kluge, “Etymologisches Wérterbuch d. deutschen Sprache,’ 62. ed. 1905 sub voc. “‘Fibel,’’ where we are told that it was entered in Low-German Glossaries of the fifteenth century (first in 1419), was used by Luther, and duly | registered since Henisch 1616. Kluge classifies ‘‘ Bibel’”’ as a Middle-High-German word.”
78 The Oxford Dictionary says: “In O. E. bibliotheca alone occurs.’”’ Nestle l. c. says: ‘‘The name commonly used throughout the Middle Ages was Bibliotheca’”’; and accordingly in O. E. and all mediaeval writers this term is used for.
century on, however, ‘‘Bible”’ takes the place of ‘‘ Bibliothéce.’’ Chaucer uses it freely in both the ecclesiastical and common senses.”? Purvey uses it as a word well-known in common currency, referring naturally to ‘‘the Bible late translated,’’ and to that ‘‘simple creature”’ (as he called himself) ‘‘who hath translated the Bible out of the Latin into the English.” The rapidity with which the term entered into general usage may be divined from the examples given by Richardson and Murray.
These lexicographers record no example, however, of the occurrence of the compound term, ‘‘The Holy Bible.” It seems that this combination was somewhat late in establishing itself as the stated designation of the sacred book in English. It first finds a place on the title-page of an English Bible in the so-called ‘‘ Bishops’ Bible,’”’ the earliest issue of which dates from 1568: “The. holie. Bible. | conteynyng the olde | Testament and the newe.” | ® It, of course, continues on the title-pages of the numerous subsequent issues of this edition,” but it does not otherwise occur on the title-page of English Bibles until the appearance of the Douai Old Testament of 1610: ‘‘The | Holie Bible |....’? The Rheims trans- complete Mss. of Old and New Testaments. The Anglo-Saxons also used “‘gewrit’’ when speaking of the Bible.
79In the ecclesiastical sense: ‘Canterbury Tales:” Prolog. 1. 438, ‘His studie was but litel on the Bible’’; ‘“Pardoner’s Tale,’’ 1. 4652, ‘‘Looketh the Bible, and ther ye may it leere’”’; ‘‘The Wife’s Preamble,” 1. 10729, ‘He knew of hem mo legendes and lyves | Than been of goode wyves in the Bible.” In the general sense: ‘Canterbury Tales,” Prol. to Canon’s ‘‘ Yeoman’s Tale,” 1. 17257, “To tellen al wolde passen any Bible | That owher is”; “House of Fame,” 1. 1334 (Book ii. 1. 244), If all the arms of the people he saw in his dream were described, ““men myght make of hem a Bible twenty foote thykke.”’
80 The editio princeps of the English Bible (Coverdale, 1535) bears the title: “Biblia | The Byble: that | is the holy Scrypture of the | Olde and New Testament.” Matthew’s Bible, of 1537, has: ‘The Byble, | which is all the holy Scrip- | ture: In whych are contayned the | Olde and Newe Testament —” Taverner’s Bible, of 1539, has: ‘‘The most | sacred Bible, | whiche is the holy scripture, con- | teyning the old and new testament.” The very popular and frequently reprinted “Genevan Bible” called itself, edition 1560: ‘The Bible | and | Holy Scriptures | conteyned in| the olde and Newe | Testament.”
lators, in the preface of their New Testament, published in 1582, had indeed spoken of ‘“‘the holy Bible”’ as ‘‘long since translated by us into English, and the Old Testament lying by us for lacke of goode meanes to publish the whole in such sort as a worke of so great charge and importance requireth’”’; from which we may learn that, though the volume of 1610 contains only the Old Testament, the term ‘‘The Holie Bible’’ upon its title is not to be confined to the Old Testament, as sometimes the phrase was confined in its Old English use.” The adoption of the term ‘‘The Holy Bible”’ for the title-page of King James’ version of 1611: ‘The | Holy Bible, | conteyning the Old Testament, | and the New |,” finally fixed it as the technical designation of the book in English.
It is natural to assume that the current title of the Vulgate Latin Bible with which we are familiar — “‘ Biblia Sacra”’ — lay behind this English development; but it would be a mistake to suppose that this was by any means the constant designation of the Latin Bible in the earlier centuries of its printing. A hasty glance over the lists of editions recorded in Masch’s Le Long (iii.) indeed leaves the impression that it was only after the publication of the “‘authorized’”?’ Roman edition of 1590, ‘‘ Biblia Sacra Vulgatae Editionis,’’ that this designation finally established itself as regular; though it was, of course, frequently employed before that. The original edition of John Fust and Peter Schoeffer indeed is described by Le Long (p. 98) as ‘“‘Biblia Sacra Latina juxta Vulgatam editionem II vol. in folio.’ And the title of the great Complutensian Polyglot (1514-1517) is given as ‘‘ Biblia Sacra.”’ ® But these are not the actual titles of these books, and it is
82 In the Oxford Dictionary are found the following examples of this odd usage from the sixteenth century: Rastell, ‘Bk. Purgat.”’ I. 1. ‘‘ Neyther of the bokys of the olde byble nor of the newe testament”; 1587, Golding, ‘De Mornay,’’ xxiv. 357, ‘‘Certaine bookes which we call the Bible or Olde Testament.” It may not be out of place to note that Rastell wrote as a Romanist, Golding as a Protestant controversialist.
83 This is the actual title of the Antwerp Polyglot, 1569-1572, and of Walton’s Polyglot, 1657; bu; not of the Paris Polyglot.
not until near the opening of the second quarter of the sixteenth century that ‘‘ Biblia Sacra”’ begins to appear on the title-pages of the Latin Bibles which were pouring from the press.*? Osiander’s edition (Norimbergae, 1522) has it: ‘‘ Biblia sacra utriusque Testamenti,” (p. 309), and of course transmitted it to its reprints (1523, 1527, 1529, 1530, 1548, 1559, 1564); Knoblauch’s contemporary edition, on the other hand, (Argentorati, 1522) has rather: ‘‘ Biblia sacrae scripturae Veteris omnia’’ (p. 314). Among Catholic editions, one printed at Cologne in 1527: ‘‘Biblia sacra utriusque Testamenti’’ (p. 178), seems to be the earliest recorded by Le Long, which has this designation. It seems to have been, however, a Paris edition of the next year (1528): “ Biblia sacra: integrum utriusque testamenti corpus completens,”’ (repeated in 1534, 1543, 1548, 1549, 1550, 1551, 1552, 1560) which set the fashion of it. Somewhat equivalent forms appear by its side, such as: ‘‘ Biblia Bibliorum opus sacrosanctum”’ (Lugduni, 15382), ‘‘Biblie sacre Textus’”’ (Lugduni, 1531), and especially ‘‘ Biblia Sacrosancta’”’ (Lugduni, 1532, 1535, 1536, 1544, 1546, 1556, 1562: Basiliae 1547, 1551, 1557, 1562, 1569, 1578). But none of these became fixed as the technical designation of the volume, as Biblia Sacra tended to become from the opening of the second quarter of the sixteenth century, and ended by fairly becoming before that century closed.
The Romance languages seem to have followed this grow-
8 The editio princeps has no title page; and the Complutensian Polyglot no general title-page. Cf. Fr. Kaulen, “Geschichte der Vulgata,”’ 1868, pp. 305-6: — ‘The first editions contain only the naked text of the Vulgate, together with the Introductions of St. Jerome and the old Argumenta, as they appear already in the ‘Codex Amiatinus.”’ A proper title is at first not present; and neither the sheets nor the pages show numeration. Instead of the title, the front page bears commonly a heading in large type: Incipit prologus sanctt iheronymi, incipit epistola scti theronymi ad paulinum, prologus biblie, and the like. The folio edition of Basle, 1487, bears as title merely the one word, ‘Biblia.’... In a Nuremberg Bible of 1471 there stands for the first time as title, ‘Biblia Vulgata’... By far the most common title is ‘Biblia Latina,’ accompanied in later editions by some addition giving the contents.”
ing Latin custom in the designation of their Bibles, although examples of the simple nomenclature persist (e. g., La Buble qui est toute la sainte escriture, Geneva, 1562, 1622, 1638, 1657, etc.). Among the Teutonic races, other than the English, however, it has been slower in taking root. German Bibles still call themselves ‘‘Biblia, das ist: die gantze Heilige Schrift,’ or in more modern form, ‘‘ Die Bibel, oder die ganze Heilige Schrift,’ and Dutch Bibles similiarly, ‘‘ Biblia, dat is de gantsche H. Schrifture,”’ or more modernly, ‘‘ Bijbel, dat is de gansche Heilige Schrift.’’ Doubtless ‘‘die heilige Bibel”’ or ‘‘de heilige Bybel’’ — though not unexampled, — would seem somewhat harsh and unusual to Teutonic ears. Strange to say they would take more kindly apparently to such a phrase as “‘ Das heilige Bibelbuch.”’
Our common phrase, ‘‘The Holy Bible,” thus reveals itself as probably a sixteenth century usage, which has not yet been made the common property of the Christian world. In its substantive, it rests on an as yet insufficiently explained mediaeval usage, not yet traced further back than the ninth century. This usage in turn is commonly assigned for its origin to a borrowing from the Greek churches of their customary use of Ta BiBAta to designate the Scriptures. Behind this lies a Jewish manner of speech. This appears to be all that can as yet be affirmed of the origin of our common term: ‘‘ The Holy Bible.”’
T; My Nod: -s bt ee ee var Cor ns he tly i eae ie / x,