The Origin of the Bible - Flipbook - Page 13
THE BIBLE
F. F. Bruce
T H E W O R D “ B I B L E ” is derived through Latin from the
Greek word biblia (books), specifically the books that are acknowledged as canonical by the Christian church. The earliest Christian
use of ta biblia (the books) in this sense is said to be 2 Clement
2:14 (c. a.d. 150): “The books and the apostles declare that the
church . . . has existed from the beginning.” (Compare Dan. 9:2,
“I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures,” where the reference
is to the corpus of Old Testament prophetic writings.) Greek biblion (of which biblia is the plural) is a diminutive of biblos, which
in practice denotes any kind of written document, but originally
one written on papyrus.
A term synonymous with “the Bible” is “the writings” or “the
Scriptures” (Greek hai graphai, ta grammata), frequently used in
the New Testament to denote the Old Testament documents
in whole or in part. For example, Matthew 21:42 says, “Have
you never read in the Scriptures?” (en tais graphais). The parallel
passage, Mark 12:10, has the singular, referring to the particular text quoted, “Haven’t you read this Scripture?” (ten graphen
tauten). 2 Timothy 3:15 (RSV) speaks of “the sacred writings” (ta
hiera grammata), and the next verse says, “All Scripture is Godbreathed” (pasa graphe theopneustos). In 2 Peter 3:16 “all” the letters
of Paul are included along with “the other Scriptures” (tas loipas