1.
It is no secret that Jimmie has a penchant for
the French language. French was the first foreign language I studied from
scratch that I found a knack with. Though I have hardly mastered the language
(I have not dedicated the time and energy), my love for it endures. I even love
Polish the same way, for Polish is the “French” of Slavic languages.
2.
I am fond of pointing out that, by some
estimates, of the core vocabulary that English speakers and writers usually use,
up to 7 out of 10 words come from French.
3.
Avoiding French would, logically, be hard to do,
for we as we sit at our table
(French), on our chairs (French),
eating beef (French) and vegetable (French) salad (French) with a fork
(French), off our plates (French), and
downing it fresh (French) fruit (French) juice (French), we all are surrounded, immersed and enriched by la richesse de la langue Française. Ou la
la!
4.
Nor is our belief system outside the bounds of a
little French finesse. We have faith
(French), which leads to repentance (French),
which in turn (to Christians and Jews, and in a modified form to my Muslim and
Hindu brothers and sisters) leads to baptism
(French).
5.
So what is in a name? Take the Holy Bible, Old
and New Testaments. This tome is the singularly greatest record in the history
of mankind, making no exaggeration. I put forward that The Bible, when properly
understood (herein is the catch), inspired the best in civil law, art, music
and whet mankind’s appetite for the moral, the spiritual, the sublime in life.
The Old Testament was the foundation of the New Testament. Both tomes, Old and
New, are revered in the Qur’an as the Tawrat (Torah), Zabur (Psalms to David),
and Injil (Gospel to Jesus). The Bible along with The Book of Mormon contain,
say Latter-day Saints, the “fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”.
6.
So I put it forward for consideration: Where does
the name “Bible” come from, and what does it mean?
7.
Well, if you have gotten my drift thus far, you’d
be right. To cut to the chase, our word “Bible” came from, you guessed it (you
had a 7/10 chance of getting it right), French: la Bible.
8.
Wonderful! But consider this. In English, “Bible”
is singular, for we say “one Bible”. The plural would be “2 (or more) Bibles”.
The same is true of our donor language, French: “une Bible” and “deux Bibles”.
9.
The knowledge that English obtained the name “Bible”
from French, however, only transfers to sunny French soil the issue of
provenance: Where did the French get their name “Bible” from? The French got
their name, predictably, from Latin: (French) Bible < (Latin) Biblia. The
same pattern of singular vs. plural was present in Latin, hence “una Biblia”
vs. “duo Bibliis” (‘one Bible’ vs. ‘two Bibles’).
10.
The knowledge that the French name “Bible” came
from the Latin name “Biblia”, again, only transfers the issue of origin to the
lovely landscapes of Italy. But where did the Romans get the name “Biblia”
from? The predictable answer is, the Romans got the name “Biblia” from Greek: τὰ βιβλία, tà Biblía.
11.
Only here, the interesting thing is, that the
pattern of singular : plural does not hold up, for the Greek name “Biblía” is
already plural. So if the Greek name “Biblía” is plural, what was the singular
and what did it mean? Well, herein is no mystery at all. The singular of the
Greek name Biblía is βιβλίον biblion, and
it meant “book”.
12.
In the fourth century
A.D., Latin-speaking and Greek-speaking congregations came together to form a
church that would inherit the legacy (so to say) of first century Christianity.
Thus was born the Greco-Roman Catholic Church, and its first leader or pope,
Emperor Constantine, commissioned councils to settle doctrinal variations, establish
unity in belief and practice, and then to create a single tome of Christian
scripture. By the fifth century A.D. the process had come to fruition, and the
result was the union of the Hebrew scriptures (in Greek translation) to the
(recently) approved Christian scriptures (much of them in Greek translation) as
a single book of holy writ. Greek scribes christened this tome, (a work which
was destined to become no less than the greatest single book in world history),
modestly, “ τὰ βιβλία, tà Biblía”, ‘the Books’.
13.
The reader may be
wondering, “But if “ta Biblía” meant ‘the Books’ in Greek, how did “in Biblia” (‘the
Bible’) in Latin come to be singular, and hence, singular in French, “la Bible”,
and singular in English, “the Bible”?
14.
The answer is, quite easily. Greek had three
grammatical genders for nouns (and adjectives): masculine, feminine, and
neuter. Latin had two grammatical genders for nouns and adjectives: masculine
and feminine. The Greek word book, βιβλίον biblion, was
neuter singular. The Greek word phrase “the books”, “τὰ βιβλία, tà Biblía”, was neuter plural.
However, Latin had the suffix –ia, only in Latin –ia denoted feminine singular
nouns: acrimonia ‘acrimony’, harmonia ‘harmony’ et al. Latin speakers
naturally heard the Greek name “Biblía”, a plural in Greek, as a singular in
Latin. Latin speakers then treated “Biblia” as a singular noun, and from thence
we reach English were “Bible” is singular.
15.
So in summary, here is the word origin:
Singular Plural
English: One Bible Two
Bibles
French: Une Bible Deux
Bibles
Latin: Una Biblia Duo
Bibliis
Greek: ένα βιβλίον δύο βιβλία
éna biblion dúo biblía
‘one book’ ‘two
books’
16.
Perhaps the most cited example of the Greek term
biblion ‘book’ in the Bible
comes from the Book of Revelation. Of the books that in the fourth and fifth
centuries A.D. were accepted as canonical by the nascent Greco-Roman Catholic
Church, the Book of Revelation was the second-to-last book to have been
written. The book of Revelation was placed as the last book in the most copies
of the New Testament, though in one, the Codex Alexandrinus, the Book of
Revelation is the third-to-last book, inasmuch as the Codex Alexandrinus
contains two erstwhile canonical tomes, 1 Clement and 2 Clement, both of which
fell out of favor in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. when some of their
doctrines were found to be out of harmony with the recently held doctrinal
declarations.
17.
I will quote from the KJV of Revelation 22:19:
And if any man shall take away from the words of the
book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life,
and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
18.
This verse mentions book three times: “words of the book of this prophecy”, “book of
life”, “this book”. In all three instances a form of the Greek singular βιβλίον biblion is
used. This is of interest because for the last fourteen hundred years, many
Christians have taken this verse to be a reference to the entire Biblical tome,
as if the Apostle John had written: “And if any man shall take away from the
words of the Bible…” However, in my calculation, the reader should ponder two
things: (1) John wrote his Book of Revelation circa 90 A.D. and his Gospel in
circa 95 A.D., both of which predated the formation of the New Testament by
some 300+ years, and (2) had John intended the reader to understand that his
warning against the unauthorized editing of his work (unfortunately a common
practice with every known work of scripture to have survived unbroken transmission
from prophet to the public over the last three millennia), he would presumably have
used “τὰ βιβλία, tà Biblía”
as his expression.
19.
The etymological chain that leads from the
English name “Bible” all the way to the very question as to whether the Bible
itself allows for more sacred writ is a rather interesting series of facts and
questions. I will leave them to the reader to ponder. It may be all French to
many of us, but the matter is, in the very least, actually textual.
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