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learned father probably borrowed from 2 Maccabees, ii, 13, where Nehemiah is said, in " founding a library" (J3i/3\ioQr)Krj), to have "gathered together the acts of
the kings, and the prophets, and of David, and the epistles of the kings concerning the holy gifts." But although it was usual to denominate the separate books in Greek by the term Biblia, which is frequently so ap-
\ plied by Josephus, we first find it simply applied to the entire collection by St. Chrysostom in his Second
' Homily, "The Jews have the books (j8i/3Xia), but we have the treasure of the. books ; they have the letters (ypafifiara), but we have both spirit and letter." And again, Horn, ix in Epist. ad Coloss., "Provide your- selves with books (jii/iXia), the medicine of the soul,
! but if you desire no other, at least procure the new
j (k(uv)'i), the Apostolos, the Acts, the Gospels." He also adds to the word fii/lXia the epithet divine in his
! Tinth Homily mi Genesis: "Taking before and after
i meals the divine books" (ra 6tTa /lijlXia), or, as we should now express it, the Holy Bible. It is thus applied in a way which shows this use to have already become familiar to those to whom he wrote. The liturgical use of the Scriptures, as the worship of the Church became organized, would naturally favor this
'application. The MSS. from which they were read would be emphatically the books of each church or monastery. And when this use of the word was es- t iblished in the East, it was natural that it should pass gradually to the Western Church. The terminology of that Church bears witness throughout (e. g. Epis- copus, Presbyter, Diaconus, Litania, Liturgia, Mona-
! chus. Abbas, and others) to its Greek origin, and the history of the word Biblia has followed the analog}' of those that have I een referred to. Here, too, there was less risk of its being used in an)' other than the higher
j meaning, because it had not, in spite of the introduc- tion even in classical Latinity of Bibliotheca, Bibliopola, taken the place of libri, or libelli, in the common speech
i of men.
I 2. The English Form. — It is worthy of note that " Bi-
l hie" is not found in Anglo-Saxon literature, though B'.bliothece is given (Lye, Anglo-Sax. Diet.) as used in the same sense as the corresponding word in mediaeval Latin for the Scriptures as the great treasure-house of books (Du Cange and Adelung, s. v.). If we derive from our mother-tongue the singularly happy equiva- lent of the Greek tvayyiXiov, we have received the word which stands on an equal eminence with "Gos- pel" as one of the later importations consequent on the Norman Conquest and fuller intercourse with the Con- tinent. When the English which grew out of this union first appears in literature, the word is already naturalized. In P. Brunne (p. 290), Piers Plowman (1016, 4271), and Chaucer (Prol. 437), it appears in its distinctive sense, though the latter, in at least one pas- sage (House of Fame., bk. iii), uses it in a way which in- dicates that it was not always limited to that meaning. From that time, however, the higher use prevailed to the exclusion of any lower ; and the choice of it, rather than of any of its synonymes, by the great translators of the Scriptures, Wickliffe. Luther, Coverdalc, fixed it beyond all possibility of change. The transforma- tion of the word from a plural into a singular noun in all the modern languages of Europe, though originat- ing probably in the solecisms of the Latin of the 12th century (Du Cange, s. v. Biblia), has made it fitter than it would otherwise have been for its high office as the title of that which, by virtue of its unity and plan, is emphatically the Book.
1 1. The Bt ok as a Whole.— The history of the growth of the collections known as the Old and New Testa- ment respectively will be found fully under Canox. It falls within the scope of the present article to indi- cate in what way and by what steps the two came to be looked on as of co-ordinate authority, and therefore as parts of one whole — how, i. e. the idea of a completed Bible, even before the word came into use, presented
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