Q

uestion

57

Does the Bible ever refer to itself as “the

Bible”? If not, where did the name “Bible”

come from?

Jason Boyett

A.

Biblical writers refer many times to “the scriptures” or “the Law

and the Prophets” or “the Word of God.” But you won’t fi nd any

references to “the Bible” in the Old or New Testaments. That’s

because “Bible” isn’t a biblical word.

To begin with, it’s English, and the Bible was written primarily in

Hebrew and Greek. Around the third century, people began referring to the

Christian scriptures as ta biblia ta hagia (the holy books), a phrase that comes

from byblion, the Greek word describing the Egyptian papyrus plant that was

used back then to make paper. The word byblion derived from an ancient city,

Byblos, the Phoenician port through which most of the Egyptian papyrus was

exported. (Byblos became modern-day Gebal, Lebanon.)

Anyway, without getting too deeply into etymology, the Greek phrasing

evolved into the Latin biblia sacra (holy books) and at some point in the Middle

Ages the Latin became Anglicized into the English word Bible.

Jim L. Robinson

A.

No. The word, “Bible” derives from a Greek word that means

“book.” Some texts refer to the scriptures, but never “in the fi rst

person.” The New Testament references to scripture proceed pri-

marily from the fi rst fi ve books of the Old Testament (called the Pentateuch),

some of the writings of the Prophets, and some of the wisdom writings of the

Old Testament.

Marcia Ford

A.

The Bible never refers to itself using that term because the term

didn’t come into use until several centuries after the last book of

the Bible had been written. The word “Bible”—which is always

capitalized when referring to the Word of God—stems from a Greek word

meaning “book.” Once the early church fathers determined which books

written by or attributed to followers of God were authentic and worthy to be

considered the Word of God, that collection of sixty-six books became known

as the book—the Bible.

While the Bible had been considered a sacred or holy book from its very

inception, the specifi c term “Holy Bible” fi rst appeared on what we call the