j of a genial nature, of a lofty spirit, of a strong will, and of inexhaustible patience. He died at Scranton, Penn., on the 6th of July, 1859, of disease of the heart. —Peck, Early Metho lism (N. Y. 1800, 12mo, p. 489).
Bibbins, Samuel, a Methodist Episcopal minis- ter, one of the fathers of the Black River Conference. He was born about 1708, preached for about fifty years, and died in Brutus, N. Y., Jan. 1836. "As a preach- er he was eminently owned of God," and revivals gen- erally attended his ministry. His death was espe- cially triumphant. — Minutes of Conferences, ii, 410.
Bible (Anglicized from the Greek Bi/3Xi'a, i. e. little books, libelli; Latinized Biblid), the popular des- ignation (usually in the phrase "Holy Bible") now everywhere current for the Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testament in their present collected form. The sacred books were denominated by the | Jews the writing (3"ir.?, kethib', written, or N^I??, mikra', recitation), a name of the same character as that applied by the Mohammedans (Koran) to denote their sacred volume. See Scriptures, Holy.
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The Bible is divided into the Old and New Testa- '
meats, ij -aXatd, Kai r) (caiVJj n-jft/kv;. The name Old Testament is applied to the books of Moses by Paul (2 Cor. iii, 1 1 >. inasmuch as the former covenant comprised the whole scheme of the Mosaic revelation, and the history of this is contained in them. This phrase, •• Look of the covenant," taken probably from Exod. xxiv, 7 ; 1 Mace, i, 57 Q3i(i\iov £uxQi]Kr)c), was j transferred in the course of time by a metonymy to signify the writings themselves. The word aciUljici] signifies either a testament or a covenant, but we now render it testament, because the translators of the old Latin version have always rendered it from the Sept., even when it was used as a translation of the Hebrew,
; Q, Berith' (covenant), by the word Testamentum.
The names given to the Old Testament were the Scrip- tures (Matt, xxi, 42), Scripture (2 Pet. i, 20), the Holy Scriptures (Rom. i, 2), the sacred letters (2 Tim. iii, 15), the holy books (Sanhed. xci, 2), the law (John xii, 34), the law, the prophets, and the psalms (Luke xxiv, 44), the law and the prophets (Mutt, v, 17), the law, the prophets, and the other books (Prol. Ecclus.), the books of the old covenant (Neb. viii, 8), the book of the covenant (1 Mace, i, 57 ; 2 Kings xxiii, 2).— Kit- to, s. v. See Testament.
The other books (not in the canon) were called apocryphal, ecclesiastical, and deuterocanonieal. The term New Testament has been in common use since the third century, and is employed by Eusebius in the same sense in which it is now commonly applied (Hist. Eccles. iii, 23). Tertullian employs the same phrase, and also that of "the Divine Instrument" in the same signification. See Axtilegosiena ; Apocrypha.
I. Appropriation of the term "Bible." — 1. In its Greek farm.— The application of the word Bt/3Xi'a, the Bunk*, specially to the collected books of the Old and New Testament, is not to be traced farther back than the 5th century. The terms which the writers of the New Testament use of the Scriptures of the Old arc y ypa<{ii] (2 Tim. iii, 1G; Acts viii, 32 ; Gal. iii, '22), al ypatfai (.Matt, xxi, 42 ; Luke xxiv, 27), -a itpa ypaftfiara (2 Tim. iii. 15). Bi/3Ai'oi' is found (2 Tim. iv, 13; Rev. x, 2; v, 1), but with no distinctive meaning; nor does the use of ret Xoi-.i tuv /-Jt/SAiW for the Hagiographa in the Preface to Ecclesiasticus, or of ni itpal jiijiXci in Josephus ( Ant. i, 0", 2), indicate any thing as to the use of -u f3i(3\ia alone as synonymous with t) ypa^u). The words employed by early Christian writers were nat- urally derived from the language of the New Testa- ment, and the old terms, witli epithets like 9ua, <"yi«, anil the like, continued to be used by the Greek fathers, as the equivalent "Scriptura" was by the Latin. The use of // iraXaia SiaOrjicri in 2 Cor iii, 14, for the law as read in the synagogues, and the prominence given in the Epistle to the Heb.(vii,22; viii, 6; ix, 15) to the contrast between the -uXtu't and the rain), led gradu- ally to the extension of the former to include the other books of the Jewish Scriptures, and to the application
of the latter as of the former to a book or collection of
1 ks. i if tlie Latin equivalents which were adopted
by different writ srs (Jnstrumentum, Testamentum), the latter in. ; with the most general acceptance, and per- petuated itself in the language of modern Europe. One passage in Tertullian (adv. Man-, iv, 1) illustrates the growing popularity of the word which eventually prevailed, "instrument] vel quod magis in usu est di( ire, testamenti." The word was naturally used by Creek writers in speaking of the parts of these two collections. They enumerate (e. g. Athan. Si/nop. s<ir. Script.) ra flifiXia of the Old and New Testament; and .-,- these were contrasted with the apocryphal I ka circulated by heretics, there was a natural ten- dency to the appropriation of the word as limited by the article to the whole collection of the canonical Scriptures. Jerome substitutes for these expressions the term Bibliotheca Divma (see Hieronymi Opera, ed. Martianav, vol. i, Proleg.), a phrase which this