Biblen.

Etymology: < French bible, 13th cent. (= Provençal bibla, Spanish biblia, Portuguese biblia, Italian bibbia; whence also German bibel, Dutch bijbel, all feminine) < late Latin biblia feminine singular, for earlier biblia neuter plural, the Scriptures, < Greek τὰ βιβλία, lit. ‘the books,’ in later Christian writers spec. ‘the canonical books, the Scriptures.’The Greek βιβλία was plural of βιβλίον , diminutive of βίβλος (1. the inner bark of the papyrus, ‘paper’; 2. a paper, scroll, roll, or book), which had ceased to have a diminutive sense, and was the ordinary word for ‘book,’ whether as a distinct treatise, or as a subdivision of a treatise, before its application to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. In reference to the former, see τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ‘the holy books,’ in 1 Maccabees xii. 9: in Clemens Alex. probably, and Origen ( in Joannem v. iv., ed. Lomm. I. 168) c223, certainly, τὰ βιβλία include the New Testament books. In Latin, the first appearance of biblia is not ascertained. Jerome uses bibliothēca for the Scriptures, and this name continued in literary use for several centuries. Of biblia , Becker, Catal. Biblioth. Antiq. 42, has a 9th cent. example (see also those under sense 1 below); but the evidence of the Romanic languages shows that biblia must have been the popular name, and have been treated as a feminine singular, much earlier than this. The common change of a Latin neuter plural into a feminine singular in -a (as in arma, battalia, folia, gaudia, gesta, opera, etc.) was in the case of biblia facilitated by the habit of regarding the Scriptures as one work. In Old English biblioþéce alone occurs; in Anglo-Latin biblia and bibliothēca interchange in the 11th cent. catalogue of the library of Lindisfarne; in the 13th cent. catalogue of the Durham books only biblia occurs.