Daily Broadside | How Much Do You Know About the Bible?

I will be traveling over the long weekend, so there will be no posts Monday or Tuesday next week.

How about ending this week on a lighter note? Even though this blog is meant to examine the intersection of faith, culture and politics, I tend to get bogged down in the circus that is our current political state of affairs—amirite?

Some time ago I mentioned that I was developing a “bible basics” class for people who are either new to the Christian faith or who want to fill in the gaps of what they know about the Bible. I’m now planning to turn that material into a book and have been doing some further research to supplement what I originally did for the class.

When I talk about “bible basics” I make no assumptions about what people do or don’t know about the Bible. For instance, if I asked you why we call the Bible, “the Bible,” would you know? Do you know where that word came from?

No?

Well, it’s your lucky day, because I’m going to tell you.

Papyrus

The story starts around 3000 BC, when the Egyptians developed the use of papyrus as a primative form of paper (the word “paper” comes from the word papyrus), which offered advantages over materials like clay tablets and animal skins. The earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus use dates back to mid-2500 BC.

For those of you keeping track, that’s some 4,500-5,000 years ago.

As the Egyptians perfected the manufacture of papyrus, their product became well known and demand for “Egyptian papyrus” was high. They kept the method of production secret, guaranteeing a monopoly on the papyrus market.

One of the most important cities to the papyrus trade was Gebal, a port city on the coast of ancient Phoenicia, located about twenty miles north of the city of Beruit in modern-day Lebanon. Gebal, which played a unique role as an intermediary between Egypt and the rest of the ancient world, imported the famed Egyptian papyrus and then exported it to the Aegean region (the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey and south to the island of Crete).

And there is where we begin to pick up hints of the ancient roots of the word “Bible.”

Byblos

Papyrus was adopted by and used extensively by the Greeks. They got their papyrus from the Phoenician traders and called the city of Gebal, “Byblos” (βίβλος)—pronounced BIB-loss, their word for papyrus. More specifically, “biblos” referred to the inner fibers of the stalk of the papyrus reed, from which the rolls (or sheets) of papyrus were made.

Byblion

Once a scroll had been made from papyrus, the Greeks called it a “biblion” (βιβλίον), a diminutive of Byblos meaning “little scroll” (similar to how we say “booklet,” the diminutive of “book”). Eventually it came to refer to any written work (almost always scrolls at that time) and meant “scroll.”

Biblia

“Biblia” (βιβλία) was the plural of biblion, meaning “scrolls.” Greek speaking (Hellenistic) Jews called their scriptures ta biblia (τὰ βιβλία), “the scrolls.” Ta biblia gradually came to mean “the books” as the codex, precursor to the modern book, began to replace scrolls as the favored form of written works.

The earliest Christian use of ta biblia (the books) is said to be 2 Clement 2:14 (c. 150 AD): “The books and the apostles declare that the church . . . has existed from the beginning.” The earliest known use of “ta biblia” to refer to both the Old and New Testaments together was by John Chrysostom in the late fourth century AD.

Note that the word “biblia” is plural, so when it is used by Clement to refer to “the books” he is talking about multiple books, e.g. the individual books that were considered scripture (the canon of scripture that we know today was not fully formed). The sense of a singular “book” when referring to the scriptures had not yet developed, until …

… the Greek phrase was adopted into Latin, where it gradually lost its plural sense became biblia sacra (“holy book”). The word “biblia” was then loaned as a singular into the languages of Western Europe, including Old French.*

Bible

In Old French, the word “biblia” became bible (pronounced BEEB-leh), and was eventually adopted by Old English, replacing biblioðece as the ordinary word for “the Scriptures” in the early 14th century.

The sense of a “book” once associated with the etymology of the word Bible has become obsolete, and instead is now understood to mean any authoritative work (e.g. The Hunter’s Bible; The Football Fitness Bible), but specifically about the Christian scriptures.

And that’s why the Bible is called “the Bible.” The English word comes to us via the Old French “bible” from the Medieval Latin biblia, from the Greek βιβλία (biblia), the plural of βιβλίον (biblíon), originally a diminutive of βίβλος (bíblos), meaning “papyrus” because the Greeks got their rolls of papyrus from the Phoenician city of Gebal (Byblos).

Now you know something basic about the Bible that you didn’t know before. Impress your friends at church this weekend!

See you next week.

* The image is of a German Bible published in 1894 that I own. It has the word “Biblia” on the spine.

Daily Broadside | What Bible Do You Read?

Daily Verse | Nehemiah 9:17
“But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.”

Wednesday’s Reading: Nehemiah 11-13

Wednesday and a bit of rabbit trail this morning. Usually, I’m posting my latest take on Brandon and the nutters in Washington who are driving this country off a cliff while listening to Beyonce’s Formation. Not today.

I believe that politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from faith. Our faith individually and collectively reflects our spiritual life, and our spiritual life reflects, to some degree or another, our interaction with scripture.

One of my kids is on a focused search for her ‘forever’ Bible, one that she can get now and use for a lifetime. We’ve talked a lot about what translation to use, what kind of features she’d like, and what ‘trim level’, (i.e. quality) she’d like to have.

As we’ve been researching Bibles, it amazes me what’s available. According to this 2006 story in The New Yorker magazine,

[T]here are distinctions within each category. There are study Bibles that focus on theology, on historical context, or on practical applications of Biblical teachings. There are devotional Bibles for new believers, couples, brides, and cowboys. On an airplane recently, I saw a woman reading a surfers’ Bible very similar to the proposed skaters’ one. The variety is seemingly limitless. Nelson Bible Group’s 2006 catalogue lists more than a hundred titles.

They also write, “The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year.” Estimates of Bibles currently in print worldwide are between 5 and 6 billion.

We’ve initially settled on a leather-bound New International Version (NIV), wide margins, Jesus’ words in red text, cross-references, and a concordance. It’s similar to my everyday bible, which is a Zondervan NIV Wide Margin Bible, published in 2001 with the 1984 text. I had it rebound after the cover and spine began to fall apart. I write, underline and highlight in my bible, so it was important to me to keep it and extend its life.

Coincidentally, I’m putting together a ‘Bible Basics for Beginners’ course for my church this fall and one of the topics we’ll cover is “How to Choose a Bible.” There are so many variations and features to choose from that I’m thinking of creating a matrix that would help someone figure out what’s important to them and what Bibles meet their criteria.

All of this leads me to wonder what kind of Bible you read and why. If you’re so inclined, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What version do you use and why? What format do you use? What features are important to you? Why did you choose the Bible you use?

Daily Broadside | Astonishing News That Has Nothing to Do with Politics

Daily Verse | 1 Kings 4:31
[Solomon] was wiser than any other man, including Ethan the Ezrahite—wiser than Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol.

Tuesday’s Reading: 1 Kings 5-8

It’s Tuesday and there have been some interesting tidbits that I wanted to call to your attention, especially since tracking the devolution of the United States is like watching a dumpster fire onboard a train jumping the tracks and arcing into the abyss in slow motion. It’s awful, but you want to see what happens.

Except I don’t mind tearing my eyes away for a minute to give them a rest.

308-Year-Old Stradivarius Violin Being Sold at Auction This Summer

A 308-year-old violin that was played on movie music from Hollywood’s Golden Age – including “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz – could fetch as much as $20 million this summer, which would make it the most expensive instrument ever sold at auction.

The violin was handcrafted in Italy in 1714 by Antonio Stradivari, the famed craftsman who made violins for the ultra-rich, including King James II of England, King Charles III of Spain and Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany.

It’s remarkable that such an instrument still has life in it, and its provenance works on several different levels to make it valuable. The first is its age, the second is its maker, and the third is its link to one of the most iconic American movies ever made and one of that film’s most iconic songs. It’s literally holding a piece of history in your hands.

Speaking of history, the next item is also connected to a well-known historical moment.

Fabric from Actress Laura Keene’s Bloodied Dress For Sale

A blood-stained fabric swatch that’s said to come from a dress worn at the time of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination is going up for sale.

The small rectangular strip reportedly belonged to actress Laura Keene, who starred in an onstage production of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the day of Lincoln’s assassination, April 14, 1865.

While this one is sort of macabre, there’s something compelling about holding a physical object in your hand that “was there” when that moment happened, as though by possession it connects you to the moment. The relic of the tragedy gives us literal color and texture that words or primitive photos could only approximate. “So that’s what it looked like,” we say.

And finally, there’s this, which makes concrete something that up until now, was conceptual and disputed.

Curse Tablet Found on Mount Ebal Suggests Early Literacy Came to Israel

“Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse… thou shalt set the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon Mount Ebal.” (Deuteronomy 11:26, 29)

Now an official curse has been found, engraved on a lead tablet that dates to the biblical age and had sat in the detritus of an excavation of Mt. Ebal for decades, the Associates for Biblical Research of Houston, Texas announced on Thursday.

This is very exciting. What we have here is a tiny piece of folded lead (about the size of a postage stamp) on which is proto-alphabetic writing also known as Sinaitic script or proto-Canaanite script. If it’s dating is confirmed, it will be the earliest-known Hebrew text by several hundred years, and the first to contain the Hebrew name of God, YWH (or YHWH), also known as the tetragrammaton.

Consisting of 40 ancient proto-Sinaitic letters on a lead sheet that was subsequently folded, and could only to be read by tomographic scanning, the inscription reads:

“Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW.
You will die cursed.
Cursed you will surely die.
Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.”

It’s a warning to those who break the terms of a covenant. The amulet was discovered on top of Mt. Ebal at the site of Joshua’s altar, where scripture reports he built one after entering the Promised Land.

Critics say that the accounts of Joshua and the Israelites were written hundreds of years after the events they claim to report. If the dating holds up, it’s more likely that the accounts in the “Old” Testament were contemporaneous, being written down as the Israelites walked through a parted Red Sea, trudged through the desert and crossed the Jordan.

Archeology always confirms the Bible’s accounts, never contradicts them.

Daily Broadside | 7 May 20

“But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.”
Genesis 19:26

I remember discovering that this is the whole “story” of Lot’s wife and being amazed that it’s only one verse. But there is so much packed into it.

Lot and his family were told not to look back: “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!” (v.17).

That “look back” apparently demonstrated the depth of longing in her heart for her life in Sodom and, whether because she dragged her feet or was punished in that moment, it led to her death. She was consumed by the burning sulfur rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah (v24) and she became a pillar of salt, a monument to disobedience.

We get further insight and confirmation as Jesus tells us of his eventual return in Luke 17:26-30:

“It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

“It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything.

Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.”

This gives us some insight into why Lot’s wife looked back: she was trying to keep her life. She didn’t want to let go of it. But she couldn’t have it both ways.

It’s the same, Jesus says, with following him. Either you let go of your old life and follow, or you hold on to it and are destroyed.

Remember Lot’s wife!