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THE scope of this article does not permit the full discussion in it of the employment of Scripture, or of the estimate put upon Scripture, by either our Lord or the writers of the New Testament. It is strictly limited to what is necessary to exhibit the use of the terms 'Scripture,' 'The Scriptures,' in the New Testament and the more immediate implications of this use.
This use was an inheritance, not an invention. The idea of a 'canon' of 'Sacred Scriptures,' and, with the idea, the 'canon' itself were derived by Christianity from Judaism. The Jews possessed a body of writings, consisting of 'Law, Prophets and (other) Scriptures (K'thubhim),' though they were often called for brevity's sake merely 'the Law and the Prophets' or even simply 'the Law.' These 'Sacred Scriptures' (vd<OQx; ybet.ki), - or, as they were very frequently pregnantly called, this 'Scripture' (bytkh) or these 'Books' (~yrpsh) or, even sometimes, in the singular, this `Book' (rpsh) - were looked upon as all drawing their origin from divine inspiration and as possessed in all their extent of divine authority. Whatever stood written in them was a word of God, and was therefore referred to indifferently as something which 'the Scripture says' ( arq rma or bytkh rma or arq bytk) or 'the All-merciful says' (anmxr rma), or even simply 'He says' (rmwa awh !k or merely rmwaw) - that God is the speaker being too fully understood to require explicit expression. Every precept or dogma was supposed to be grounded in Scriptural teaching, and possessed authority only as buttressed by a Scriptural passage, introduced commonly by one of the formulas, 'for it is said' (rmanf) or `as it is written' (bytkd or bytkdk), though of course a great variety of less frequently occurring similar formulas of adduction are found.2
Greek-speaking Jews naturally tended merely to reproduce in their new language the designations and forms of adduction of the sacred books current among their compatriots. This process was no doubt facilitated by the existence among the Greeks themselves of a pregnant legislative use of gra,fw,(grafh,( gra,mma, in which they were already freighted with a certain implication of authority.3 But it is very easy to make too much of this (as e. g., Deissmann does), and the simple fact should not be obscured that the Greek-speaking Jews follow the usage of the Jews in general. It may no doubt very possibly be due in part to his Graecizing tendencies that the Scriptures are spoken of by Josephus apparently with predilection as the "Sacred Books" (i`erai. bi,bloi or i`era. bibli,a) or "Sacred Scriptures" (i`era. gra,mmata) or more fully still as the "Books of the Sacred Scriptures" (ai` i`erw/n grafw/n bi,bloi); and quoted with the formula ge,graptai or more frequently avnage,graptai - all of which are forms which would be familiar to Greek ears, with a general implication of authority.4 Perhaps, however, the influence of the Greek usage is more clearly traceable in certain passages of the LXX in which gragh, may seem to hover between the pregnant Greek sense of authoritative 'ordinance,' and the pregnant Hebrew sense of authoritative 'Scripture.' When, for example, we read in I Chron. xv. 15, "And the sons of the Levites took upon themselves with staves the Ark of God, w`j evnetei,lato Mwush/j evn lo,gw| qeou/ kata. th.n grafh,n," we scarcely know whether we are to translate the kata. th.n grafh,n (which has no equivalent in the Hebrew) by "according to the precept," or by "according to the Scriptures." Something of the same hesitancy is felt with reference to the similar passages: II Chron. xxx. 5, "Because the multitude had not done it lately kata. th.n grafh,n" (= bWtK'K;); II Chron. xxx. 18, "But they ate the passover para. th.n grafh,n" (= bWtK'K aOlB.); II Esdr. vi. 18, "And they established the priests in their courses and the Levites in their divisions for the service of God in Jerusalem, kata. th.n grafh,n bi,blou Mwush/" (= bt;k.Ki hv,m rp;s); I Chron. xxviii. 19, "All these things David gave to Solomon evn grafh|/ ceiro.j kuri,ou" (= hwO'hy. dY:mi bt'k.Bi): II Chron. xxxv. 4, "Prepare yourselves . . . kata. th.n grafh,n Daui.d . . . kai. dia. ceiro.j Salwmw.n" (= hOm Olv. bT;k.mibiW rywid; kt'k.Ki); I Esdr. i. 4, "kata. th.n grafh,n Daui.d" ktl; and especially the very instructive passage II Esdr. vii. 22, "For which there is no grafh,." Similarly in II Esdr. iii. 2, "kata. ta. gegramme,na (= bWtK'K;) in the law of Moses," ta. gegramme,na might very well appeal to a Greek ear as simply "the prescriptions"; and there are a series of passages in which ge,graptai might very readily be taken in the Greek sense of "it is prescribed," such as Josh. ix. 4, (viii. 31), II Kings xiv. 6, xxiii. 21, II Chron. xxiii. 18, xxv. 4, Neh. x. 34, (35), 35, (37), Tob. i. 6. Should this interpretation be put on these passages, there would be left in the LXX little unalloyed trace of the peculiar Jewish usage of pregnantly referring to Scripture as such by that term, and citing it with the authoritative 'It is written.' For clear instances of the former usage we should have to go to IV Macc. xviii. 14, and of the latter to Dan. ix. 13, and to the Greek additions to Job (xlii. 18).5 Philo on the other hand is absolutely determined in his usage by his inherited Jewish habits of thought. With him the Sacred books are by predilection a body of divine Oracles and are designated ordinarily either o` lo,goj with various adjectival enhancements- 'prophetic,' 'divine,' 'sacred' - or, perhaps even more commonly, "the Oracles," or even "the Oracle," (oi` crhsmoi,( ta. lo,gia( o` crhsmo,j( to. lo,gion, or even possibly the anarthrous crhsmo,j( lo,gion); and are adduced (as is also most frequently the case in the Mishna, cf. Edersheim as cited) rather with the formula, "As it is said," than with the "As it is written" which would more naturally convey to Greek ears the sense of authoritative declarations. Of course Philo also speaks on occasion (for this too is a truly Jewish mode of speech) of these "Oracles" as "the Sacred Books" (ai` i`erai. bi,bloi. "De Vita Moysis," iii. 23, Mangey ii. 163; "Quod det. pot. insid." 44, Mangey i. 222), or as "the Sacred Scriptures" (ai` i`erw,tatai grafai,, "De Abrah." i, Mangey ii; 2; i`erai. grafai,, "Quis rerum div. heres." 32, Mangey i. 495; ta. i`era. gra,mmata, "Legat. ad Caium," 29, Mangey ii. 574); and adduces them with the pregnant ge,graptai. But the comparative infrequency of these designations in his pages is very noticeable.6
What it is of importance especially to note is that there was nothing left for Christianity to invent in the way of designating the Sacred Books taken over from the Jewish Church pregnantly as "Scripture," and currently adducing their authority with the pregnant 'It is written.' The Christian writers merely continued in their entirety the established usages of the Synagogue in this matter, already prepared to their hands in Hebrew and Greek alike. There is probably not a single mode of alluding to or citing Scripture in all the New Testament which does not find its exact parallel among the Rabbis.7 The New Testament so far evinces itself a thoroughly Jewish book. The several terms made use of in it, to be sure, as it was natural they should be, are employed with some sensitiveness to their inherent implications as Greek words; and the Greek legislative use of some of them gave them no doubt peculiar fitness for the service asked of them, and lent them a special significance to Gentile readers. But the application made of them by the New Testament writers nevertheless has its roots set in the soil of Jewish thought, from which they derive a fuller and deeper meaning than their most pregnant classical usage could accord them. Among these terms those which more particularly claim our attention at the moment are the two substantives grafh, and gra,mma, with their various qualifications, and the cognate verbal forms employed in citing writings pregnantly designated by these substantives. There is nothing in the New Testament usage of these terms peculiar to itself; and throughout the New Testament any differences that may be observed in their employment by the several writers are indicative merely of varying habits of speech within the limits of one well-settled general usage.
To the New Testament writers as to other Jews, the Sacred Books of what was in their circle now called the Old Covenant (II Cor. iii. 14), described according to their contents as "the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms" (Lk. xxiv. 44) - or more briefly as "the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. vii. 12, Lk. xvi. 16, cf. Acts xxviii. 23, Lk. xvi. 29-31) or merely as " the Law " (Jno. x. 34, I Cor. xiv. 21) or even " the 1'rophets," (Rom. xvi. 26),8 - were, when thought of according to their nature, a body of "Sacred Scriptures" (Rom. i. 2, II Tim. iii. 16), or, with the omission of the unnecessary because well-understood adjective, by way of eminence, "the Scriptures," "the Scripture," "Scripture," (Matt. xxii. 29, Jno. x. 35, I Pet. ii. 6). For employment in this designation, either of the substantives, grafh, or gra,mma, would apparently have been available; although of course with slightly differing suggestions arising from the differing implications of the forms and the respective general usages of the words. In Philo and Josephus the more usual of the two in this application is gra,mma, or, to speak more exactly, gra,mmata, - for although gra,mma is sometimes in later Greek so employed in the singular9 it is in the plural that this term most properly denotes that congeries of alphabetical signs which constitutes a book (cf. Latin, literae). In the New Testament on the contrary, this form is rare. The complete phrase, i`era. gra,mmata, which is found also both in Josephus (e. g. "Antt." proem. 3; iii. 7, 6; x. 10, 4; xiii. 5, 8) and in Philo (e. g., "De Vita Moys." i. 2, "Legat. ad Caium," 29) occurs in II Tim. iii. 15 as the current title of the Sacred Books, freighted with all its implications as such, or rather with those implications emphasized by its anarthrous employment, and particularly adverted to in the immediate context (verse 16).10 Elsewhere in the New Testament, however, gra,mmata scarcely occurs as a designation of Scripture. In Jno. v. 47, "But if ye believe not his (Moses') writings, how shall ye believe my (Jesus') words?" to be sure we must needs hesitate before we refuse to give to it this its most pregnant sense, especially since there appears to be an implication present that it would be more reprehensible to refuse trust to these "writings" of Moses than to the "words" of Jesus Himself. But on the whole, the tendency of the most recent exegesis to see in "his writings" here little more than another way of saying "what he wrote," seems justified. The only other passage which can come into consideration is Jno. vii. 15, "How knoweth this man gra,mmata, not having learned?" in which some commentators still see a reference to "the i`era. gra,mmata (II Tim. iii. 15) from which the Jewish gra,mmatei/j derived their title" (Th. Zahn, "Einleitung," ii. 99). Most readers, however, doubtless will agree that "letters" in general are more naturally meant (cf. Acts xxvi. 24 and Meyer's judicious note).11 Practically, therefore, gra,mma is eliminated; and grafh,( grafai,, in their varied uses, remain the sole terms employed in the New Testament in the sense of "Scripture," "Scriptures."
This term, in singular or plural, occurs in the New Testament some fifty times (Gospels twenty-three, Acts seven, Catholic Epistles six, Paul fourteen) and in every case bears the technical sense in which it refers to the Scriptures by way of eminence, the Scriptures of the Old Testament. This statement requires only such modification as is involved in noting that from II Pet. iii. 16 (cf. I Tim. v. 18) it becomes apparent that the New Testament writers were perfectly aware that the term "Scripture" in its high sense was equally applicable to their own writings as to the books included in the Old Testament; or, to be more precise, that it included within itself along with the writings which constituted the Old Testament those also which they were producing, as sharing with the Old Testament books the high functions of the authoritative written word of God.12 No modification needs to be made for the benefit of the few passages in which words are adduced as Scriptural which are not easily identified in the Old Testament text.13 The only passages which come strictly under consideration here are Jno. vii. 38 and Jas. iv. 5, to which may be added as essentially of the same kind (although the term grafh, does not occur in connection with them), I Cor. ii. 9, and Lk. ix. 49. It is enough to remark as to these passages that, however difficult it may be to identify with certainty the passages referred to, there is no reason to doubt that Old Testament passages were in mind and were intended to be referred to in every case (see Mayor on Jas. iv. 5, and cf. Lightfoot on I Cor. ii. 9, Westcott on Jno. vii. 38, Godet on Lk. xi. 49). In twenty out of the fifty instances in which grafh,( gragai, occur in the New Testament, it is the plural form which is employed: and in all these cases except two the article is present, - ai` gragai, the well-known Scriptures of the Jewish people, or rather of the writer and his readers alike. The two exceptions, moreover, are exceptions in appearance only, since in both cases adjectival definitions are present, raising gragai, to the same height to which the article would have elevated it, and giving it the value of a proper name (gragai, a`gi,ai, Rom. i. 2, here first in extant literature; gragai., profhtikai,,, Rom. xvi. 26). The singular form occurs some thirty times, and likewise with the article in every instance except these four: John xix. 37 'another Scripture'; II Tim. iii, 16 'every Scripture,' or 'all Scripture'; I Pet. ii. 6 'it is contained in Scripture'; II Pet. i. 20 'no prophecy of Scripture.' Here too the exceptions, obviously, are only apparent, the noun being definite in every case whether by the effect of its adjunct, or as the result of its use as a quasi-proper-name. The distribution of the singular and plural forms is perhaps worth noting. In Acts the singular (3) and plural (4) occur with almost equal frequency: the plural prevails in the Synoptic Gospels (Matt. plural only; Mk. plural 2 to 1; Lk. 3 to 1), while the singular prevails in the rest of the New Testament (Jno. 11 to 1; James 3 to 1; Peter 2 to 1, Paul 9 to 5). In the Gospels, the plural form occurs exclusively in Matthew, prevailingly in Mark and Luke, and rarely in John, of whom the singular is characteristic. The usage of the Gospels in detail is as follows: ai` gragai,, Matt. xxi.42, xxii. 29, xxvi. 54, 56, Mk. xii. 24, xiv. 49, Lk. xxiv. 27, 32, 45, Jno. v. 39; h` grafh,, Mk. xii. 10, Lk. iv. 21, Jno. ii. 22, vii. 38, 42, x. 35, xiii. 18, xvii. 12, xix. 24, 28, 36, xx. 9; anarthrous grafh,, Jno. xix. 37 (but with e`te,ra). No distinction is traceable between the usage of the Evangelists themselves and that of the Lord as reported by them. Matthew and Mark do not on their own account use the term at all, but only report it as used by our Lord: in Luke and John on the other hand it occurs not only in reports of our Lord's sayings (Lk. iv. 21, Jno. v. 39, vii. 38, 42, x. 35, xiii. 18, xvii. 12), and of the sayings of others (Lk. xxiv. 32), but also in the narrative of the Evangelists (Lk. xxiv. 27, 45, Jno. ii. 22, xix. 24, 28, 36, 37, xx. 9). To our Lord is ascribed the use indifferently of the plural (Matt. xxi. 42, xxii. 29, xxvi. 54, 56, Mk. xii. 24, xiv. 49, Jno. v. 39) and the singular (Mk. xii. 10, Lk. iv. 21, Jno. vii. 38, 42, x. 35, xiii. 18, xvii. 12), and that in all the forms of application in which the term occurs in the Gospels. So far as His usage of the term "Scripture" is concerned, our Lord is represented by the Evangelists, thus, as occupying precisely the same standpoint and employing precisely the same forms of designation, with precisely the same implications, which characterized the devout Jewish usage of His day. "Jesus," says B. Weiss, therefore, with substantial truth, "acknowledged the Scriptures of the Old Testament in their entire extent and their complete sacredness. 'The Scripture cannot be broken,' He says (Jno. x. 35) and forthwith grounds His argument upon its language."14
That we may gather the precise significance of h` grafh,, ai` gragai,, as a designation of the Scriptures, it will be well to attend somewhat more closely to the origin of the term in Greek speech and to the implications it gathered to itself in its application to literary documents. Its history in its literary application does not seem to have been precisely the same as that of its congener, to. gra,mma( ta. gra,mmata. Gra,mma appears to have become current first in this reference as the appropriate appellation of an alphabetical sign, and to have grown gradually upward from this lowly employment to designate a document of less or greater extent, because such documents are ultimately made up of alphabetical signs. Although, therefore, the singular, to. gra,mma, came to be used of any written thing - from a simple alphabetical character up to complete works, or even unitary combinations of works, like the Scriptures, - it is apparently when applied to writings, most naturally employed of brief pieces like short inscriptions or proverbs, or to the shorter portions of documents such as the clauses of treaties, and the like; although it is also used of those longer formal sections of literary works which are more commonly designated technically "Books." It is rather the plural, ta. gra,mmata, which seems to suggest itself most readily not only for extended treatises, but indeed for complete documents of all kinds. When so employed, the plural form is accordingly not to be pressed. Such a phrase as "Moses' gra,mmata" (Jno. v. 47) for example, need not imply that Moses wrote more than one "work"; it would rather mass whatever 'writings' of Moses are in mind into a single 'writing,' and would most naturally mean just, say, "the Pentateuch." Such a phrase as i`era. gra,mmata (II Tim. iii. 15), again, need not bring the Old Testament books before our contemplation in their plurality, as a "Divine library"; but more probably conceives them together in the mass, as constituting a single sacred document, thought of as a unitary whole. On the other hand, grafh,, in its literary application, seems to have sprung somewhat lightly across the intervening steps, to designate which gra,mma is most appropriately used, and to have been carried at once over from the 'writing' in the sense of the script to the 'writing' in the sense of the scripture or document. Although therefore it of course exhibits more applications parallel with those of gra,mma than of any other term, its true synonymy in its higher literary use is rather with such terms as h` bi,bloj (to. bibli,on) and o` lo,goj, in common with which it most naturally designates a complete literary piece, whether "Treatise" or "Book." Each of these terms, of course, preserves in all its applications something of the flavor of the primitive conception which was bound up with it. When thought of from the material point of view, as, so to say, so much paper, or, to speak more respectfully, from the point of sight of its extent, a literary work was apt therefore to be spoken of as a bi,bloj (bibli,on). When thought of as a rational product, thought presented in words, it was apt to be spoken of as a lo,goj. Intermediate between the two stood grafh, (gra,mma) which was apt to come to the lips when the work was thought of as, so to speak, so much 'writing.' As between the two terms, grafh, and gra,mma, Dr. Westcott (on Jno. v. 47) suggests that the latter 'marks rather the specific form,' the former 'the scope of the record'; and this seems so far just that to gra,mma, there clings a strong flavor of the 'letters' of which the document is made up, while grafh, looks rather to the completeness of the 'scripture.' To both alike so much of the implication of specific form clings as to lend them naturally to national and legislative employment with the implication of the "certa scriptio."15 To put the general matter in a nutshell, bi,bloj (bibli,on) may perhaps be said to be the more exact word for the 'book'; grafh, (gra,mma) for the 'document' inscribed in the 'book'; lo,goj for the 'treatise' which the 'document' records; while as between grafh, and gra,mma, gra,mma, preserving the stronger material flavor, gravitates somewhat towards bi,bloj (bibli,on) while grafh, looks somewhat upwards towards lo,goj. When in the development of the publishers' trade, the "great-booksystem" of making books gave way for the purposes of convenience to the "small-book-system," and long works came to be broken up into "Books," each of which constituted a 'volume,'16 these "Books" attached to themselves this whole series of designations and were called alike, - in each case with its own appropriate implications - bi,bloi (bibli,a) grafai, (gra,mmata) and lo,goi: bi,bloi (bibli,a) because each book was written on a separate roll of papyrus and constituted one 'paper' or 'volume'; grafai, (gra,mmata) because each book was a separate document, a distinct 'scripture'; and lo,goi because each book was a distinct 'discourse' or rational work. Smaller sections than these "Books" were properly called perioca,j( to,pouj( cwri,a( gra,mmata (which last is the appropriate word for 'clauses') but very seldom if ever in the classics, grafa,j.17
The current senses of these several terms are, of course, more or less reflected as they occur in the pages of the New Testament. In the case of some of them, the New Testament usage simply continues that of profane Greek; in the case of others, new implications enter in which, while not superseding, profoundly modify their fundamental significance; in yet other cases, there is a development of usage beyond what is traceable in profane Greek. The passages in which two or more of the terms in question are brought together are, naturally, especially instructive. When we read, for example, in Lk. iii. 4 seq. w`j ge,graptai evn bi,blw| lo,gwn `Hsai<ou tou/ profh,tou, we perceive at once that what is quoted is a body of lo,goi which are found in written form (grafh,: cf. I Cor. xv. 54, o` lo,goj o` gegramme,noj) in a bi,bloj: the bi,bloj is the volume which contains the grafh,, which conveys or, perhaps better, records the lo,goi. So again when we read in Lk. iv. 17 seq. that there was delivered to our Lord the bibli,on of Isaiah, on opening which he found the to,pon, where a given thing h=n gegramme,non, and then closing the bibli,on he remarked h` grafh. au[th is fulfilled in your ears, we perceive that the bibli,on is the concrete volume - a thing to be handled, opened and closed (cf. Rev. v. 3, 4, 5, x. 8, xx. 12), the manner of opening and closing being, of course, unrolling and rolling (Rev. vi. 14, cf. Heb. x. 7, Birt, "Das antike Buchwesen," 116); and that the grafh, is the document written in this bibli,on; while the various parts of this grafh, are formally to,poi, or when attention is directed to their essential quality as sharers in the authority of the whole, grafai, (cf. Acts i. 16, "The grafh, which the Holy Spirit spake through the mouth of" the writer).
As might be inferred from these examples, bi,bloj and bibli,on retain in the New Testament their current significations in profane Greek. Their application to sacred rather than to secular books in no way modified their general sense.18 It brought, however, to them a richness of association which prepared the way for that pregnant employment of them - beginning not indeed in the New Testament but in even earlier Hellenistic writings - to designate in its simple absoluteness the sacred volume, from which ultimately our common term "The Bible" is supposed to have descended.19 Throughout the New Testament the bi,bloj or bibli,on when applied to literary entities is just the "volume," that is to say, the concrete object, the "book" in the handleable sense. When we read of the bi,bloj of the words of Isaiah (Lk. iii. 4), or of Moses (Mk. xii. 26) or of the Psalms (Lk. xx. 42, Acts i. 20) or of the Prophets, i. e., of the Twelve "Minor Prophets" (Acts vii. 42), the meaning is simply that each of these writings or collections of writings formed a single volume.20 Similarly when we read of the bibli,on of Isaiah (Lk. iv. 17) or of the Law (Gal. iii. 10), what is meant in each case is the volume formed by the document or documents named. The Gospel of John (Jno. xx. 30, xxi. 25) and the Book of Revelation (Rev. i. 11, xxii. 7, 9, 10, 18, 19) are spoken of as each a bibli,on again because each existed in separation as a concrete unity. Accordingly (bi,bloi are things which may be burned (Acts xix. 19); bibli,a, things which may be sprinkled (Heb. ix. 19) or carried about (II Tim. iv. 13), and may be made of parchment (II Tim. iv. 13). The Book of Life presented itself to the imagination as a volume in which names may be inscribed (bi,bloj, Phil. iv. 3, Rev. iii. 5, xx. 15; bibli,on, Rev. xiii. 8, xvii. 8, xx. 12, xxi. 27); the Book of Destiny as a volume in which is set down what is to come to pass (bibli,on, Heb. x. 7, Rev. v. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, x. 8). There is no essential difference in fundamental implication when in Matt. xix. 7, Mk. x. 4 (bibli,on is used for a "bill" of divorcement, or in Matt. i. 1, bi,bloj, under the influence of the LXX, is employed of a genealogical register. In both instances it would be understood that the document in question occupied a separate piece of papyrus or parchment and was therefore an entire "paper."
There is a much more marked enhancement of sense apparent in the New Testament use of lo,goj. In Acts i. 1, to be sure, it occurs in the simple classical sense of "Book"; Luke merely points to his Gospel as "the first Book" of an extended historical treatise of which Acts is "the second Book"; and there is no implication of deeper meaning. The ordinary usage of lo,goj, however, in the New Testament, is to express, in accordance with its employment in the Old Testament of the Prophetic word, the, or a, revelation from God, with no, or a very indistinct, reference to a written form. The Divine Word was, however, in the hands of the New Testament writers in a written form and allusion to this could not always f ail. In passages like Jno. xv. 25, I Cor. xv. 54, the lo,goj that is cited is distinctly declared to be written: "that the lo,goj may be fulfilled that is written in their Law"; "then shall come to pass the lo,goj that is written"; and with these there may be connected such passages as Jno. xii. 38, (cf. Lk. iv. 6): "that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled," since, although it is not expressly stated, this lo,goj too was in the hands of the New Testament writers in a written form. In this usage lo,goj is a particular passage of Scripture viewed as a divine declaration. In Matt. xv. 6 (if this reading be accepted), Mk. vii. 13 (cf. Jno. v. 38, x. 35, Rom. xiii. 9, Gal. v. 14) in accordance with a familiar usage (cf. Ex. xxxiv. 28, oi` de,ka lo,goi), the specific reference is to a divine commandment; but this commandment is thrown up in sharp contrast with "tradition" and is thought of distinctly as a written one. It is only in a passage like II Pet. i. 19 that lo,goj comes to mean the entire Old Testament, after the fashion of Philo,21 with the emphasis upon its divine character: that by "the prophetic word" here is meant not the prophetic portion of Scripture but the Scriptures as a whole, conceived in accordance with their nature as "prophetic," that is to say as a body of revelation, is made plain by the subsequent context, where this prophecy is defined by the exegetical genitive as just that prophecy which is Scripture pa/sa profhtei,a grafh/j). Thus lo,goj, under the influence of the Old Testament usage of the "Word of Jehovah," comes to mean in the New Testament specifically a divine revelation, and is applied to the Old Testament to designate it, as written in the Books which constitute it, the revealed Word of God.22
The lo,goj, now, which was contained in the bi,bloj (bibli,on) (Lk. iii. 4), and of course contained in it only in written form, was, naturally, conceived, as truly by the New Testament writers as by Greek writers in general, as a grafh,, (or in the plural grafai,). There seems to be no reason inherent in the case, accordingly, why grafh, should not occur in the New Testament in its simple classical sense of a "Treatise" or (as lo,goj does, Acts i. 1) of a "Book" or formal division of a treatise. It may very properly be considered therefore merely an accident that no instances are found in the New Testament of this general usage of the term without further implications.23 It so occurs in Josephus (" Antt. " III. viii. 10; IV. viii. 44, of books of his own) and in Philo ("De Somniis," ad init., `H me.n ou=n pro. tau,thj grafh. periei/ce - i, e., the preceding Book of the Treatise in hand); and it is repeatedly used in the LXX to designate any piece of writing (cf. II Chron. ii. 11, Neh. vii. 64, Dan. v. 5, I Mace. xiv. 27, 48). In point of fact, however, grafh, (grafai,) appears in the New Testament only in its application to the Sacred Scriptures, and only in its high technical significance of "Scripture" by way of eminence. It may be surmised that the long-established employment of the term as a designation of the Scriptures tended to withdraw it from common use on the lips of those to whom these Scriptures were a thing apart. It may even seem that a certain tendency is observable in the New Testament writers to distinguish between grafh, (grafai,) and gra,mma (gra,mmata) in favor of the former as the technical designation of the Scripture, while the latter is more freely employed for general uses. Certainly gra,mmata occurs occasionally in the New Testament for non-sacred writings (Acts xxviii. 21, Lk. xvi. 6, 7) and for sacred writings indeed but without stress on their sacredness (Jno. v. 47, cf. vii. 15), while it is only rarely met with in the pregnant sense of Scripture (II Tim. iii. 15 only) and then only in an established phrase which may be supposed to have obtained a standing of its own. There seems also in gra,mma a naturally stronger implication of the material elements of the script, which may have formed the point of departure for a depreciatory employment of the term to designate the "mere letter" as distinguished from the "spirit" (cf. Rom. ii. 27; 29, vii. 6, II Cor. iii. 6, 7). On the other hand the free employment by later Christian writers of grafh,, grafai, of secular compositions, and of both gra,mma and gra,mmata in the high technical sense of "Scripture," so far militates against the supposition that already in New Testament Greek the former were hardening into the exclusive technical designations of "Scripture." Meanwhile the simple fact remains that in the New Testament while gra,mmata is used freely, and with a single exception exclusively, without implication of sacredness, grafh, and grafai, are employed solely as technical designations of Sacred Scripture and take their color in all their occurrences from this higher plane of usage. Throughout the New Testament the grafh, which alone is in question is conceived as rather the word of the Holy Spirit than of its human authors through whom merely it is spoken (Acts i. 16), and is therefore ever adduced as of indefectible, because of Divine, authority.
It is somewhat remarkable that even on this high plane of its technical application, in which it designates nothing but the Sacred Scriptures, grafh, never occurs in the New Testament, in accordance with its most natural and, in the classics, its most frequent sense of "Treatise," as a term to describe the several books of which the Old Testament is composed. It is tempting, no doubt, to seek to give it this sense in some of the passages where, occurring in the singular, it yet does not appear to designate the Scriptures as a whole; and even Dr. Hort seems for a moment almost inclined to yield to the temptation.24 It is more tempting still to assume that behind the frequent use of the plural, ai` grafai,, to designate the Scriptures as a whole, there lies a previous current usage by which each Book which enters into the composition of these Scriptures was designated by the singular h` grafh,. In no single passage where the singular h` grafh, occurs, however, does it seem possible to give it a reference to the Book of Scripture to which the appeal is made. And the frequent employment in profane Greek of grafai, in the plural for a single document25 discourages the assumption that it, like ta. bibli,a, has reference, when used as a designation of Scripture, to its composite character as a "Divine Library." It is true that in one unique passage, II Pet. iii. 16,26 ai` grafai, bears a plural signification. But the items of which this plural is formed, as the grammatical construction implies, are not "treatises" (Huther, Kühl) but "passages" (De Wette). Peter says that the unlearned and unstable, of course, wrested the hard sayings of Paul's letters, as they were accustomed to wrest ta.j loipa.j grafa,j, i. e., "the other Scriptural statements,"27 due reverence for which should have protected them from such treatment, the implication being that no part of Scripture was safe in their hands. This is a sufficiently remarkable use of the plural, no other example of which occurs in the New Testament; it is, however, an entirely legitimate use of the plural28 and in its context a perfectly natural one, which, nevertheless, just because it is a special usage determined by its context, stands somewhat apart from the general technical use of ai` grafai, to designate the body of Scriptures and cannot guide us to its interpretation. In no other passage where ai` grafai, occurs is there the slightest hint that its plural form is determined by the conception of the Scriptures as a congeries of authoritative passages; this interpretation of the current plural form may indeed be set aside at once as outside of the possibilities of the case.
If we may not speak quite so decisively of the possibility of the plural form resting on a conception of "the Scriptures" as made up of a collection of Books, it may at least be said that there is nothing in the New Testament use of the term to remove the general unlikelihood of that construction of it. There are indeed two or three passages in which grafai, might appear at first sight to designate a body of documents. Such are, for example, Rom. xvi. 26, where we read of grafai, profhtikai,, and especially Matt. xxvi. 56, where we read of grafai, tw/n profhtw/n. In the case of Rom. xvi. 26, however, the very natural impression that here we have mention of the several books which constitute the second of the sections of the Jewish canon, known as "The Prophets," is almost certainly an error (cf. Vaughan in loc.). It is very unlikely that the "prophetic writings" with this mention of which this epistle closes are any other than the "Holy Scriptures" of the prophets with mention of which it opens (Rom. i. 2); and it is quite clear that these "Holy Scriptures" are much more inclusive than the writings of the second section of the Jewish canon, - that they embrace in fact the entirety of Scripture, thought of here as of prophetic, that is, revelatory, character (cf. Meyer, Weiss, Oltramare in loc.; Bleek on Heb. i.1). Nor need the "Scriptures of the prophets" of Matt. xxvi. 56 have any different meaning (cf. Swete on Mk. xiv. 49, Morrison in loc.). It is quite true that the term "The Prophets" is sometimes in Matthew (v. 17, vii. 12, xxii. 40) and in the other Gospels (Lk. xvi. 16, 29, 31, xxiv. 44, Jno. i. 45) and in the rest of the New Testament (Acts vii. 42, xiii. 15, xxiv. 14, xxviii. 23, Rom. iii. 21) a technical term designating the second section of the Jewish canon; but it is equally true that it is sometimes used much more inclusively. For example in Matt. ii. 23 the reference seems to be quite generally to the Old Testament considered as a prophetic book (cf. Meyer in loc.); and in Matt. xi. 13, "all the prophets and even the law prophesied," the Pentateuch is expressly included within the prophetic word (cf. II Pet. i. 19). Passages like Lk. i. 70, xi. 50 show that by these writers the whole Old Testament revelation was thought of as prophetic in character, while Lk. xviii. 31 is certainly entirely general (cf. Acts iii. 24). The most instructive passages, however, are doubtless those which follow one another so closely in Lk. xxiv. 25, 27, 44. It can hardly be doubted that the same body of books is intended in all three of these references, which merely progressively discriminate between the parts which make up the whole. The simple "prophets" thus becomes first "Moses and indeed all the prophets" (cf. Hahn in loc.) - further defined as the "whole Scripture" - and then "the Law of Moses, and the Prophets and the Psalms." The term "the Prophets" occurs thus in this brief context in three senses of varying inclusiveness, and apparently lends itself as readily to the widest as to the narrowest application. In these circumstances there seems no reason why in Matt. xxvi. 56 "the Scriptures of the Prophets" should be narrowed beyond the inclusiveness of the suggestion of "the Scriptures" of the immediately preceding context (xxvi. 54) or of its own parallel in Mk. xiv. 49. In other words there is every reason to believe that in this passage the defining adjunct "of the Prophets" does not discriminate among the books which make up the Scriptures and single out certain of these as prophetic, but rather describes the entire body of Scripture as prophetic in origin and character, that is to say as a revelation from God.29 Grafai does not here, then, mean "books" "treatises," but ai` grafai,, as in verse 54 and in the parallel passage, Mk. xiv. 49, means the one Divine book. That Lk. xxiv. 27, evn pa,saivj tai/j grafai/j, lends itself readily to the same interpretation requires no argument to show. If ai` grafai, is employed in a singular sense, then pa/sai ai` grafai means just the whole of the document so designated, and is the exact equivalent of pa/sa h` grafh, or pa/sa grafh, (II Tim. iii. 16 taken as a proper noun). The truth seems to be, therefore, that as there is no example in the New Testament of the use of h` grafh, in the sense of one of the Books of Scripture, so there is no trace in its use of ai` grafai, of an underlying consciousness of the composition of the Scriptures out of a body of such Books.30 Whether the plural ai` grafai,, or the singular h` grafh,, is employed, therefore, the meaning is the same; in either case the application of the term to the Old Testament writings by the writers of the New Testament is the outgrowth of their conception of these Old Testament writings as a unitary whole, and designates this body of writings in its entirety as the one, well-known, authoritative documentation of the Divine revelation. This is the fundamental fact with respect to the use of these terms in the New Testament from which all the other facts of their usage flow.
In saying this, we are brought at once, however, face to face with what is probably the most remarkable fact about the usage of h` grafh, in the New Testament. This is its occasional employment to refer, not merely, as was to be expected from its form and previous history, to Scripture as a whole, nor even as, had it so occurred in the New Testament, would have been only a continuation of its profane usage, to the several treatises which make up that whole, but to individual passages of Scripture. This employment finds so little support in profane Greek, in which gra,mma rather than grafh, is the current form for the adduction of clauses or fragmentary portions of documents,31 that it has often been represented as a peculiarity of the New Testament and Patristic Greek. Thus, for example, we read in Stephens' "Thesaurus" (sub voc.): "In the New Testament and ecclesiastical books, h` grafh, and ai` grafai, are used of the sacred writings which are commonly called 'The Holy Scriptures.' But grafh, is sometimes in the New Testament employed peculiarly of a particular passage of Scripture." And Schaefer adds to this merely a reference to a passage in one of the orations of Valckenaer, where commenting on Acts xvii. 2-3, he remarks that, in the New Testament, "passages of the Old Testament such as are also designated perioca,vj to,pouj and cwri,a are sometimes also called grafa,j."32 The usage does not seem, however, to be peculiar to the New Testament and the Church Fathers: it occurs also, though rarely, in the LXX and Philo, and may claim therefore to be at least Hellenistic.33 It is probably the outgrowth of the habit of looking upon the Scriptures as a unitary book of divine oracles, every part and passage of which is clothed with the authority which belongs to the whole, and which is of course manifested in all its parts. No doubt this extension of grafh, from a designation of Scripture as a whole to a designation of any given fragment of Scripture, however small, was mediated by the circumstance that in adducing the authority of 'Scripture' for any doctrine or practice, it was always inevitably not the whole of 'Scripture' but some special declaration of 'Scripture' which was especially in mind as bearing upon the particular point at the moment in hand. The transition was easy from saying "The Scripture says, namely in this or that passage," to saying of this and that passage specifically, "This Scripture says" and "Another Scripture says." When the entirety of Scripture is "Scripture" to us, each passage may readily be adduced as "Scripture" also, because "Scripture" is conceived as speaking in and through each passage. A step so inviting was sure to be taken sooner or later. Whenever therefore grafh, occurs of a particular passage of Scripture, so far from throwing in doubt its usage of Scripture as a whole, conceived as a unitary Divine authority, it rather presupposes this usage and is an outgrowth of it. It cannot surprise us therefore that h` grafh, occurs in the New Testament side by side in the two senses, and designates indifferently either Scripture as a whole, or a particular passage of Scripture, that is, is used indifferently "collectively" as it has not very exactly been called, and "particularly."
It has often, no doubt, been called in question whether both these senses do occur side by side in the New Testament. Possibly a desire to erect some well-marked and uniform distinction between the usage of the plural ai` grafai, and the singular h` grafh,, has not been wholly without its influence here. At all events the suggestion has every now and then been made that the singular h` grafh, bears in the New Testament the uniform sense of 'a passage of Scripture,' while it is the plural, ai` grafai,, alone which designates the Scriptures in their entirety. The famous Rationalist divine, Johannes Schulthess, for example, having occasion to comment briefly on the words pa/sa grafh. qeo,pneustoj, II Tim. iii. 16, among other assertions of equal insecurity, makes this one: "grafh, in the singular never means in the New Testament bi,bloj, much less the entirety of tw/n i`erw/n gramma,twn, but some particular passage."34 Hitherto it has been thought enough to meet such assertions with a mere expression of dissent. Christiaan Sepp, for example, meets this one with equal brevity and point by the simple observation: " Passages like Jno. x. 35 prove the contrary."35 But a new face has been put upon the matter by the powerful advocacy of the proposition "that the singular grafh, in the New Testament always means a particular passage of Scripture," by the late Bishop Lightfoot in a comment on Gal. iii. 22 which has on this account become famous. We must believe, however, that it is the weight of Dr. Lightfoot's justly great authority rather than the inherent reasonableness of the doctrine which has given this opinion the great vogue which it appears to enjoy at present among English-speaking scholars. It was at once confuted, it is true, by Dr. C. J. Vaughan in a note on Rom. iv. 3; and in his own note on this passage Dr. Lightfoot seemed almost (not quite) persuaded to admit a doubt as to the usage of John, while reiterating, with respect to Paul at least, that in the matter of the use of grafh, in the singular of a single passage of Scripture "practice is absolute and uniform." Dr. Westcott took his stand by Dr. Lightfoot's side (see on Jno. ii. 22, x. 35) and labored to show that John's usage conforms to the canon asserted; and Dr. Hort, though with some apparent hesitation with respect to John and Paul - the only portions of the New Testament, it will be noticed, of which Drs. Westcott and Lightfoot express assurance - inclined on the whole to give his assent to their general judgment (on I Peter ii. 6). With more hesitancy, Dr. Swete remarks merely that "grafh, is a portion of Scripture," at least "almost always when the singular is used" (on Mk. xii. 10). General agreement in the view in question is expressed also, for example, by Page (Acts i. 16), Knowling (Acts viii. 32), Pummer (Lk. iv. 21), A. Stewart (Hastings' BD. I 286). It is difficult to believe, however, that the reasons assigned for this view are sufficient to bear the weight of the judgment founded on them. They suffice, certainly, to show - what is in itself sufficiently remarkable, - that h` grafh, is repeatedly ernployed in the New Testament of a particular passage of Scripture. But the attempt to carry this usage through all the instances in which the singular appears involves a violence of exegetical procedure which breaks down of itself. Out of the thirty instances in which the singular, h` grafh, occurs, about a score prove utterly intractable to the proposed interpretation, - these nineteen to wit: Jno. ii. 22, vii. 38, 42, x. 35, xvii. 12, xix. 28, xx. 9, Acts viii. 32, Rom. iv. 3, ix. 17, x. 11, xi. 2, Gal. iii. 8, 22, iv. 30, I Tim. v. 18, Jas. iv. 5, I Pet. ii. 6, II Pet. i. 20.36 In point of fact, therefore, in some two-thirds of the instances where grafh, is employed in the singular, its reference is to the Scripture as a whole, to that unitary written authority to which final appeal was made. In some of these passages it is no less than impossible to take it otherwise. In Jno. ii. 22, for example, there is absolutely no definite passage suggested, and Westcott seeks one to which to assign the reference only under the pressure of theory. The same is true of Jno. xx. 9, where the reference is quite as broad as in Lk. xxiv. 45. In Jno. x. 35 the argument depends upon the wide reference to Scripture as a whole, which forms its major premise. In Gal. iii. 22 there is absolutely nothing to suggest a reference to a special text rather than to the general tenor of Scripture, and Lightfoot supplies a special text only conjecturally and with hesitation. The personification of Scripture in such passages as Jas. iv. 5, Gal. iii. 8 carries with it the same implication. And the anarthrous use of grafh, in I Pet. ii. 6, II Pet. i. 20, cf. II Tim. iii. 16, is explicable only on the presupposition that h` grafh, had become so much the proper designation of Scripture that the term had acquired the value of a proper name, and was therefore treated as definite without, as with, the article. If anything were needed to render this supposition certain, it would be supplied by the straits to which expositors are brought who seek to get along without it.37 Dr. Hort, for example, after declining to understand grafh, in I Pet. ii. 6 of Scripture in general, because he does not find "a distinct and recognized use of this sort," finally suggests that we should render "simply, 'in writing,"' so that "perie,cei evn grafh|/ shall be held equivalent to 'it stands written."' But he is compelled to add: "That the quotation was authoritative, though not expressed, was doubtless implied, in accordance with the familiar Jewish use of the words 'said,' 'written,"' - apparently not realizing that, if the quotation is authoritative then, "It stands written" is the equivalent of the authoritative employment of this phrase in the adduction of what is specifically Scripture, and therefore means here distinctly not, "It stands written - somewhere," but "It stands written in the (technically so-called) Scripture." This seems, therefore, to be only a roundabout way of saying that grafh, here means and definitely refers to the authoritative Scripture, and not any 'writing' indifferently. The same is inevitably true of II Pet. i. 20. It is impossible that by "every prophecy of Scripture" the writer can have meant "every prophecy which has been reduced to writing."38 He undoubtedly intended the prophecies written in the Old Testament alone (cf., Bigg, Kübel, Keil in loc.); and this is but another way of saying that anarthrous grafh, is to him a technical designation of the Old Testament, or, in other words, that he uses it with precisely the implications with which we employ the term, "Scripture."39 In the presence of such passages as these there seems to be no reason why we should fail to recognize that the employment of grafh, in the New Testament so far follows its profane usage, in which it is applied to entire documents and carries with it a general implication of completeness, that it in its most common reference designates the Old Testament to which it is applied in its completeness us a unitary whole.40
It has seemed worth while to enter somewhat fully upon this matter, not only on account of its intrinsic interest and the importance given it in recent expositions, but also because the issue throws into a high light what is after all the fundamental fact about the New Testament use of h` grafh,, ai` grafai,. This is the implication which they bear not only of the uniqueness of the body of religious writings which they designate, entitling them to be spoken of as together, in a supereminent sense, "the Scriptures," or rather "the Scripture," or even "Scripture"; but also, along with this, of their irreducible unity, - as constituting in their entirety a single divinely authoritative "writing." Francke is quite within the limits of clear fact, when he remarks,41 "The contemplation of the entire body of Scripture as a unitary word, in all its parts equally resting upon a single authority, and therefore possessing the same authority everywhere, forms the most essential presupposition of the designation of the collection of the written word as the grafh,." It only needs to be added that the same is true of its designation as ai` grafai,. What requires emphasis, in a word, is that the two designations h` grafh, and ai` grafai, are, so far as our evidence goes, strictly parallel; and neither is to be derived from the other. That the application of ai` grafai, to the Scriptures does not rest on a previous application of h` grafh, to each of the Books of Scripture, we have already had occasion to show. It is equally important to observe that the application to Scripture of h` grafh, is not a subsequent development resting on a previous usage by which Scripture was known as ai` grafai,. The contrary assumption is often tacitly made and it is sometimes quite plainly expressed, as, for example, in the concluding words of Dr. Lightfoot's note on Gal. iii. 22, where he tells us that "the transition from the 'Scriptures' to the 'Scripture' is analogous to the transition from ta. bibli,a to the 'Bible."' Precisely what is meant by the last clause of this statement is perhaps not perfectly clear. It is obvious, of course, that the designation of the Scripture as ta. bibli,a antedates the misunderstanding of this term as a feminine singular, whence arose the Latin "Biblia" and our "Bible" treated as a singular - if this be really the history of the origin of these latter terms; but Dr. Lightfoot can hardly have meant that the use of h` grafh, as a designation of the Scripture arose similiarly through a misunderstanding of ai` grafai, as a singular. It would seem that he can only have meant that the progress was in both cases from a view of the sacred books which was fully conscious of their plurality to a conception of them which has swallowed up their plurality in a unitary whole. There is no proof, however, that such a movement of thought took place in either case. The fact seems to be that ai` grafai, was used from its earliest application to Scripture in a singular sense, in accordance with a current usage of the term in profane Greek. And we lack evidence that the Scriptures were known as ta. bibli,a before they were known as h` bi,bloj.42 These two modes of speaking of Scripture appear to have been rather parallel than consecutive usages. And it is probable that the same is true of the designations ai` grafai, and h` grafh, as well. It is true enough that we meet with ai` grafai,, though somewhat rarely and perhaps ordinarily in the phrase [ai`] i`erai. grafai,, in Philo43 and Josephus, whereas h` grafh, of Scripture in general is said to occur first in the New Testament.44 But it is not probable that we are witnesses of the birth of a new usage in either case; and the evidence is too meagre to justify a pronouncement on the relative ages of the two forms. And in proportion as we recognize the singular sense of ai` grafai, and the rooting of both usages in a precedent Jewish mode of citing Scripture as the unitary Law of God, does all the probability of the proposed development pass away. In any event when the New Testament was in process of writing it was much too late in the day to speak of the formation of a sense of the unitary uniqueness of the Old Testament or of the rise of a usage in designating the Old Testament in which that sense would first come to its manifestation. Both that sense and modes of expressing it were an inheritance of the New Testament writers from a remote past, and find manifestation in the whole body of Jewish literature, not merely in the usage of the Rabbis, but in the pages of Philo as well. The truth seems to be that whether ai` grafai, is used or h` grafh, or anarthrous grafh, the implication is the same. In each case alike the Old Testament is thought of as a single document, set over against all other documents by reason of its unique authority based upon its Divine origin, on the ground of which it is constituted in every part and declaration the final arbiter of belief and practice. We need not, then, seek to discover subtle reasons for the distribution of these forms through the New Testament, asking why truly anarthrous grafh, is employed only by Peter (cf. II Tim. iii. 16); why John and Paul prevailingly use the singular, Matthew uniformly and Mark and Luke prevailingly the plural; and why our Lord is reported as employing the two numbers indifferently. These things are at most matters of literary habit; at least, matters of chance and occasion, like our own indifferent use of 'The Scriptures,' 'The Scripture,' 'Scripture.'
One of the outgrowths of the conception of the Old Testament as a unitary Divine document, of indefectible authority in all its parts and declarations, was the habit of adducing it for the ordinary purposes of instruction or debate by such simple formulas as 'It is said,' 'It is written,' with the pregnant implication that what is thus adduced as 'said' or 'written' is 'said' or 'written' by an authority recognized as Divine and final. Both of these usages are richly illustrated in a variety of forms and with all high implications, not only in the New Testament at large, but also in the Gospels, and not only in the comments by the Evangelists but also in reported sayings of our Lord. We are concerned here particularly only with the formula "It is written," in which the consciousness of the written form, the documentary character, of the authority appealed to is most distinctly expressed. In its most common form, this formula is the simple ge,graptai, used either absolutely, or, with none of its authoritative implications thereby evacuated, with more or less precise definition of the place where the cited words can be found written. By its side there occurs in John the resolved formula gegramme,non evsti,n; and in the latter part of Luke there is a tendency to adduce Scripture by means of a participial construction.45 These modes of citation have analogies in profane Greek, especially in legislative usage.46 But, as Cremer points out, their use with reference to the Divine Scriptures, as it involves the adduction of an authority which rises immeasurably above all legislative authority, so is freighted with a significance to which the profane usage affords no key. In the Gospels, - if we may take the Gospels as an example of the whole - of the two forms, ge,graptai alone occurs in Matthew (ii. 5, iv. 6 in the narrative; iv. 4, iv. 7, 10, xi. 10, xxi. 13, xxvi. 24, 31 in the report of our Lord's words) and in Mark (i. 2 in the narrative; vii. 6, ix. 12, 13, xi. 17, xiv. 21, 27 in the report of our Lord's words), and predominantly in Luke (ii. 23, iii. 4, iv. 10 in the narrative; iv. 4, 8, vii. 27, x. 20, xix. 46, xxiv. 46 in the report of our Lord's words), but only once in John (viii. 17 in the report of our Lord's words). In the latter part of Luke the citation of Scripture is accomplished by the aid of the participle gegramme,non ([cf. iv. 17] xviii. 31, xx. 17, xxi. 22, xxii. 37, xxiv. 44), while in John the place of the formula ge,graptai (viii. 17 only) is taken by the resolved form gegramme,non evsti,n (ii. 17, vi. 31, x. 34, xii. 14, cf. 16, in the narrative; vi. 45, [viii. 17], cf. xv. 25, in the report of our Lord's words). The significance of these formulas is perhaps most manifest when they are used absolutely, where they stand alone in bare authoritativeness, without indication of any kind whence the citation adduced is derived, the bald adduction being indication enough that it is the Divine authority of Scripture to which appeal is made. Instances of this usage are found in the Gospels for ge,graptai in Matt. iv. 4, 6, 7, 10, xi. 10, xxi. 13, xxvi. 24, 31, in Mk. vii. 6, ix. 12, 13, xi. 17, xiv. 21, 27, in Lk, iv. 4, 8, 10, vii. 27, xix. 46, xx. 17, xxii. 37; for gegramme,non evsti,n in Jno. ii. 17, vi. 31, xii. 14, [16]. In only a single passage each in Matthew and Mark is there added an indication of the source of the citation (Matt. ii. 5, "it is written through the prophet"; Mk. i. 2, "it is written in Isaiah the prophet"). In Luke such defining adjuncts are more frequent (ii. 23, in the law of the Lord; iii. 4, in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet; x. 26, in the law; xviii. 31, through the prophet; xxiv. 44, in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms, i. e., in Scripture, verse 45). In John also such definitions are not relatively rare (vi. 45, in the prophets; viii. 17, in your law; x. 34, in your law; xv. 25, in the law). These fuller passages while they identify the document from which the citation is drawn, in no wise suggest that the necessity for such identification was felt; by their relative infrequency they rather emphasize how unnecessary such specification was except as an additional solemn invocation of the recognized source of all religious authority. The bare "It is written" was the decisive adduction of the indefectible authority of the Scriptures of God, clothed as such, in all their parts and in all their declarations, with His authority. We could scarcely imagine a usage which would more illuminatingly exhibit the estimate put upon Scripture as the expressed mind of God or the rooted sense of its unity and its equal authoritativeness in all its parts.47
We should not pass lightly over this high implication of the employment of absolute ge,graptai to adduce the Scriptural word, and especially the suggestions of its relative frequency. No better index could be afforded of the sense of the unitary authority of the document so cited which dominated the minds of the writers of the New Testament and of our Lord as reported by them. The consciousness of the human authors, through whom the Scriptures were committed to writing, retires into the background; thought is absorbed in the contemplation of the divine authority which lies behind them and expresses itself through them. Even when explanatory adjuncts are added indicating where the words to which appeal is made are to be found written, they are so framed as not to lessen this implication. Commonly there is given only a bare reference to the written source of the words in mind;48 and when the human authors are named, it is not so much as the responsible authors of the words adduced as the intermediaries through whom the Divine authority expresses itself.49 In the parallel usage by which the Scriptures are appealed to by "It is said" and similar formulas the implication in question is perhaps even more clear. In Matthew, for example, Scripture is often cited as "what was spoken through (dia,) " the prophets (ii. 23) or the prophet (xiii. 35, xxi. 4), or more specifically through this or that prophet - Isaiah ([iii. 3], iv. 14, viii. 17, xii. 17, cf. Jno. xii. 38), or Jeremiah (ii. 17, xxvii. 9) or Daniel (xxiv. 15). In a few passages of this kind the implication is explicitly filled out, and we read that the Scripture is spoken "by the Lord" (u`po. kuri,ou) through (dia,) the prophet (i. 22, ii. 15, cf., xxii. 31, "Have ye not read what was spoken by God to you," that is, in their Scriptures; Acts i. 16, "The Scriptures which the Holy Ghost spoke before through the words of David"; xxviii. 25, "The Holy Ghost spoke through Isaiah the prophet to your fathers"). A similar use of eivrhme,non or ei;rhtai, occurs in the writings of Luke, whether absolutely (Lk. iv. 12, [Rom. iv. 18]) or with indication of the place where it is said (Lk. ii. 24, Acts xiii. 40); and here too we find occasionally a suggestion that the human speaker is only the intermediary of the true speaker, God (Acts ii. 16, dia, the prophet Joel). It is possibly, however, not in the Gospels that the general usage illustrated by these passages finds its fullest or most emphatic expression; but rather in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the Scriptures are looked upon almost exclusively from the point of sight of this usage. Its height perhaps is attained in the designation of Scripture as ta. lo,gia (Rom. iii. 2, cf. Acts vii. 38, Heb. v. 12, I Pet. iv. 11) and the current citation of it by the subjectless fhsi,n (I Cor. vi. 16) or le,gei (Rom. xv. 10, II Cor. vi. 2, Gal. iii. 16, Eph. iv. 8, v. 14), the authoritative subject being taken for granted.50 In the Gospels, however, we have sufficient illustration of the same general method of dealing with Scripture, side by side with their treatment of it as documentary authority, to evince that their writers and Jesus as reported by them, shared the same fundamental viewpoint.51
ON THE TERMS "BIBLE," " HOLY BIBLE."
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 is 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 ago52 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.53 The account which is ordinarily given is that bibli,a 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.54 There is no step of this presumed process, however, which is beyond dispute, and a great obscurity rests upon the whole subject.
Th. Zahn55 enters a strong denial with respect to the basis of the development which is assumed. "For ta. bibli,a as a designation of the Old Testament," he says, "no Usage can be adduced." More broadly still: "The mediaeval and modern employment of ta. bibli,a in the sense of ai` grafai,, h` grafh,, that is 'Bible,' is altogether alien to the ancient church." The current representation on the faith of Suicer56 that ta. bibli,a 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 bibli,a simpliciter," 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 bibli,a simpliciter, but qei/a bibli,a is used. In another - Hom. 2 on certain passages of Genesis (Montfaucon, iv. 652) - Chrysostom declares that the Jews have no doubt ta. bibli,a, but we Christians alone tw~n bibli,wn qhsauro,j, - they ta. gra,mmata, we, however, both ta. gra,mmata and ta. noh,mata - not the Bible but the Pentateuch being in mind and the very point of the statement requiring us to take the "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 "bibli,a 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 (lo,gia) of God.... Hear, I beseech you, all ye who are careful for this life, and procure bibli,a fa,rmaka th/j yuch/j. . . . If you will have nothing else, get, then, the New [Testament: th.n kainh,n used absolutely as frequently in Chrysostom], the Apostle, the Acts, the Gospels, constant teachers, . . . This is the cause of all our evils, - ignorance of ta.j grafa,j." Zahn remarks: "It is evident that the anarthrous bibli,a 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 far.
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, ta. bibli,a, ta. gra,mmata, 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 bibli,a 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 bibli,a 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 i`era. gra,mmata of II 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 bibli,a which will be medicaments for their souls, they caught under the common noun bibli,a the implication of the technical ta. bibli,a. These passages of Chrysostom, after all would seem then to bear witness to the currency of the term ta. bibli,a as the synonym of ai` grafai,( h` grafh,.
But why should we confine ourselves to the passages cited by Suicer? Sophocles defines ta. bibli,a, 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 Macc. xii. 9 (ta. a[gia), 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 ta. bibli,a, meaning "the Scriptures." Clement and Origen take us back two hundred years before Chrysostom.
In the passage cited from Clement - it is "Paedagog." iii. 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 the rich 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 ta. bibli,a." 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 ta. bibli,a 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 ta. bibli,a 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` grafai, of the closely preceding context. We cannot accord with Sophocles' opinion, then, that ta. bibli,a here means "the Sacred Books of the Hebrews": it seems to us to mean "the Sacred Books of the Christians."
The passage cited by Sophocles from Origen is "Contra Celsum" v. 60 (Ed. Koetschau, 1899, ii. p. 63: 22. 23). In it the Hebrew Scriptures are clearly referred to by ta. bibli,a. It declares that Jews and Christians alike "confess that ta. bibli,a were written by the Divine Spirit." But it does not follow that ta. bibli,a 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 qei/a. bibli,a( grafh, (grafai,) or gra,mmata; those of the Old Testament, bibli,a, palaia. grafh, or palaia. gra,mmata." This would seem to say that the absolute ta. bibli,a with Origen is the synonym not of h` grafh, but of h` palaia. grafh,, not of ta. gra,mmata but of ta. palaia. gra,mmata. There seems to be nothing in the Contra " Celsum," to be sure, which will decisively refute this opinion. There we read of "the sacred bibli,a of the Jews" or "of the Hebrews" (Koetschau, i. 304, 26; 305, 6): of "the bibli,a which the prophets wrote in Hebrew" (ii. 208, 22; cf., i. 291, 12), or simply of "the bibli,a 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 ta. bibli,a in the sense of "The Scriptures."57 But what shall we make of a passage like the following from the 'Fourteenth Homily on Jeremiah' (§ 12: Ed. Klostermann, 1901, p. 117, line 4)? "'For thy sins, 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. lo,gia tou/ qeou/, and only after them did we believe, God having taken the lo,gia 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 h` grafh, 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 ta. bibli,a. But how was the kingdom of God taken from them? The meaning tw/n grafw/n 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 ta. bibli,a, 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 ta. lo,gia and ai` grafai,. There is a subtle propriety in the adjustment of these three terms to the exact place in which each appears in the argument. Lo,gia emphasizes the divine origin of the Scriptures; bibli,a looks upon them from the point of view of their external form; grafh,, of their significant contents. The terms could not be interchanged without some loss of exactness of speech: bibli,a 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. bibli,a to "the Old Testament" because it refers to the Old Testament here, which will not apply as well to ta. lo,gia and to h` grafh,, ai` grafai,. There is preserved for us in the "Philocalia" (Ch. v., ed. Robinson, 1893, pp. 43-48) 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 bibli,on and bibli,a and leaves a strong impression on the reader's mind that to him ta. bibli,a would be exactly synonymous with ta. qei/a bibli,a. "But since," says he (Preuschen, p. 103, 12), "the proofs of this must be drawn from th/j qei,aj grafh/j, 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 ta. bibli,a in its common sense. For we find it written in the Pentateuch," etc. Origen here, by telling us that ta. bibli,a 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 h` qei,a grafh,.58
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, ta. bibli,a 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 ta. bibli,a, 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 ta. bibli,a 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) ta. bibli,a kai. oi` avpo,stoloi, which, as Lightfoot remarks, is a rough designation of the Old and New Testaments. On the testimony of the Syriac version Zahn reads ta. bibli,a tw/n profhtw/n kai. oi` avpo,stoloi, and to strengthen his position argues that absolute ta. bibli,a for "the Old Testament" is unexampled. We have already seen enough to prove to us that absolute ta. bibli,a was quite readily used to designate the Old Testament - because the Old Testament was part of the Scriptures, that is of ta. bibli,a in their pregnant sense. But whether ta. bibli,a 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 declares59 the Hebrew ~yrpsh (Mishna Megilla i. 8) certainly underlies the usage of ai` grafai,( h` grafh, 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. rps in Ps. xl. 8, Is. xxix. 18). The Greek rendering of this passage gives us to be sure ai` bi,bloi rather than ta. bibli,a. But already in I Macc. xii. 9 we have the full phrase of which ta. bibli,a is the natural abbreviation - ta. bibli,a ta. a[gia, while Josephus gives us the parallel ta. i`era. bibli,a: and from these phrases ta. bibli,a could not fail to be extracted, just as grafai,, was extracted from ai` a[giai grafai,( ai` i`erai. grafai,, and the like. We meet with no surprise therefore the appearance of ta. bibli,a 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 ta. bibli,a after the term had come to include New Books as well, may be illustrated 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.60 How long such a tendency to think of the Old Testament especially when the term ta. bibli,a 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 Sardis61 - ta. palaia. bibli,a( ta. th/j palaia/j diaqh,khj bibli,a - warn us that the new conditions of the New Covenant with its New Books were already requiring a distinction, among the ta. bibli,a by way of eminence, between the New and the Old Books which made up the whole. Ta. bibli,a 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, ta. bibli,a 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 ta. bibli,a 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 over the Greek word bibli,a, or its cognate bi,bloi, 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"62; 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. bibli,a th/j palaia/j( th/j kainh/j diaqh,khj, the Latin phrases, Libri veteris, novi testamenti, (fœderis):63 and over against the Greek bibli,a kanonika,, the Latin libri regulares, or as Rufinus puts it, libri inter canonem conclusi.64 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. § 1,65 speaking de nomine Bibliothecae Divinæ, can very fairly say, "among the ancients, the sacred volume which we, at the present time, call Biblia, obtained the name of Bibliotheca Divina."66 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 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 bibli,a. What we lack is clear evidence that bibli,a 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.67 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."68 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 merely in an ecclesiastical but also in a common sense - as designations, that is, not merely of the Scriptures but of any large book.69 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.70 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. 3,71 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,"72 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 1266,73 and by that time the word was already in use in English,74 and of course in French,75 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,76 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.77 Littré gives no French example earlier than Joinville, who wrote at the beginning of the fourteenth century (1309). 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.78 From the fourteenth century on, however, "Bible" takes the place of "Bibliothéce." Chaucer uses it freely in both the ecclesiastical and common senses.79 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." | 80 It, of course, continues on the title-pages of the numerous subsequent issues of this edition,81 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 translators, 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.82 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."83 But these are not the actual titles of these books, and it is 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.84 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, 1543, 1559, 1564); Knoblauch's contemporary edition, on the other hand, (Argentorati, 1522) has rather: "Biblia sacrae scripturae Veteris omnia" (p. 314).85 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, 1532), "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 growing Latin custom in the designation of their Bibles, although examples of the simple nomenclature persist (e. g., La Bible qui est toute la sainte eseriture, 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. bibli,a 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."
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