Bible

the Scriptures. The word is of Greek origin, signifying a book or books. Both meanings are retained. At time of prayers, the head of the family says, "Hand me `The Book.'" In the plural, the Bible is a library of the sacred literature of the Hebrews contained in sixty-six books. With the exception of a few chapters, the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament were written originally in Hebrew. The twenty-seven books of the New Testament were written wholly in Greek.

It is convenient to divide the books of the Old Testament into five groups. The first five books are called the Pentateuch (pen-ta-took); Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther are historical; the book of Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon are poetical. In the original Hebrew they have the form of poems. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are the four greater prophets, the other writers from Hosea to Malachi are the twelve minor prophets.

The New Testament is divided into the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Acts, the Epistles, and the Revelation of St. John.

The country of the Hebrews lay in the great pathway between the Euphrates and the Nile, the cradles of ancient civilization. The route of travel bent northward to avoid the sands of Arabia. The Hebrews were buffeted back and forth by the two powers, and afterward came under the sway of the Greeks and Romans. It is not strange, therefore, that the phraseology of the Scriptures should be colored by a sojourn in many lands. From a literary point of view, however, the Scriptures of the Old Testament are related closely to the literature of Babylonia. The New Testament is decidedly Greek in its style and wording.

The translators have had much difficulty in finding English equivalents for the names of peoples, cities, coins, weights and measures, herbs, shrubs, trees, flowers, animals, birds, serpents, and insects. The names in the original are drawn from many sources and lands, and many have not been identified with certainty.

The question of just what writings should be accorded a place in the Bible is yet an open one. A compromise of long standing assigns a number of books a half way position in what is known as the Apocrypha. None of the original manuscripts have been preserved. It is impossible to state or even infer the number of copyings through which the texts have passed before the oldest manuscripts now known were written. The oldest Hebrew copies date from the tenth century. The oldest Greek copies date from the fourth century. The first printed book was a part of the Old Testament in Latin. The first complete printed Bible is believed to have been issued in 1488. Luther's Bible was completed in 1534. The text of the Dutch Bible was adopted in 1637; the French Geneva Bible in 1535; the Danish Bible in 1550, and finally, after revision, in 1647; the Swedish in 1541. The standard English Bible of the Catholic church is known as the Douay Bible. It was published in France in 1609.

Caedmon paraphrased the Bible story in Anglo-Saxon about 670 A. D. King Alfred translated portions, but his Bible has been lost. The first considerable translation into English was accomplished by Wyclif 1380-2. Tyndale's Bible appeared in 1525. A score of other translations appeared from time to time. The ordinary text is that known as the King James Bible. It is known among Protestants as the Authorized Version. It was prepared in the reign of James I by a committee of forty-seven scholars and appeared in 1611. This is the Bible of English speaking peoples, the "Book" of family devotions, the source of literary allusions, the book that gave form to the English language and shape to Anglo-Saxon civilization.

A Revised Version was decided upon by the Church of England in 1870. Two companies of twenty-seven divines each were organized. A committee of Americans was invited to cooperate. The revision of the New Testament appeared in 1881; the Old Testament was ready in 1884. The changes from the King James Bible are numerous, but most of them are of minor character.

Bibles are published entire in over a hundred different languages. In 1907 partial copies were issued in 409 languages. There are about eighty Bible societies engaged in circulating the Scriptures. The British and Foreign Bible Society alone issues not far from 4,000,000 copies annually. The American Bible Society issues half as many. It was organized in 1816 and has circulated over 75,000,000 copies. This society sells the New Testament as low as six cents per copy, and the entire Bible for seventeen cents.

See Tyndale; Wyclif; Douay; Printing; Septuagint