Bible Origins

Jerome, Marinus van Reymerswaele

The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the same word in Koinē Greek: τὰ βιβλία, romanized: ta biblia "the books" (singular βιβλίον, biblion).

The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece. The Greek ta biblia (lit. "little papyrus books") was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books (the Septuagint).

Egyptian Book of the Dead written on papyrus

 Chrysostom appears to be the first writer (in his Homilies on Matthew, delivered between 386 and 388) to use the Greek phrase ta biblia ("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together.

Jean-Paul Laurens - Saint John Chrysostom and the Empress Eudoxia

Archbishop of Constantinople, the "golden-mouthed."

A scroll, also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing.

The Codex Gigas, 13th century, Bohemia.

A codex (from the Latin caudex, meaning "trunk of a tree", “block of wood” or “book”), plural codices, is a book constructed of a number of sheets of paper, vellum, papyrus, or similar materials. 

The Romans developed the form from wax tablets. The gradual replacement of the scroll by the codex has been called the most important advance in book making before the invention of the printing press.

The spread of the codex is often associated with the rise of Christianity, which adopted the format for use with the Bible early on.

The Isaiah scroll, which is a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, contains almost the whole Book of Isaiah. It dates from the 2nd century BCE.

By the 2nd century BCE, Jewish groups began calling the books of the Bible the "scriptures" and they referred to them as "holy", or in Hebrew כִּתְבֵי הַקֹּדֶשׁ (Kitvei hakkodesh), and Christians now commonly call the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible "The Holy Bible".

The Bible was divided into chapters in the 13th century by Stephen Langton.

Stephen Langton

Archbishop of Canterbury between 1207 and his death in 1228. The dispute between King John of England and Pope Innocent IIIover his election was a major factor in the crisis which produced Magna Carta in 1215. Cardinal Langton is also credited with having divided the Bible into the standard modern arrangement of chapters used today.

...and it was divided into verses in the 16th century by French printer Robert Estienne  and is now usually cited by book, chapter, and verse. 

 Estienne's pressmark, or device was called Oliva Stephanorum or the olive of the Stephens family with the words of Romans 11:20, Noli altum sapere("Do not be proud") and later Noli altum sapere, sed time ...("Be not high-minded but fear").

 The device shows a man standing by an olive tree. Scholars believe this man is Paul the Apostle who is affirming the importance of faith. This is consistent with Estienne's connection to the Protestant Reformation.The olive tree is meant to represent the tree of knowledge.

The division of the Hebrew Bible into verses is based on the sof passuk cantillation mark used by the 10th-century Masoretes to record the verse divisions used in earlier oral traditions.

The great uncial codices or four great uncials are the only remaining uncial codices that contain (or originally contained) the entire text of the Greek Bible (Old and New Testament).

Codex Alexandrinus

Codex Sinaiticus, Book of Esher

"Sinai Bible"

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus

 ...its parchment has been recycled; originally inscribed with Scriptural texts, the pages were washed (removing most of the ink) and reused for another text, and the text that was written on the recycled pages, in the 12th century, consisted of Greek translations of 38 treatises composed by Ephrem the Syrian, a prominent theologian of the mid-4th century. Manuscripts of this sort, consisting of recycled pages, are known as palimpsests. The later, "upper", text was written in the 12th century.

Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek, Latin, and Gothic.

 Early forms are characterized by broad single stroke letters using simple round forms taking advantage of the new parchment and vellumsurfaces, as opposed to the angular, multiple stroke letters, which are more suited for rougher surfaces, such as papyrus. 

Simplified relationship between various scripts, showing the development of Uncial from Roman and the Greek Uncial.

Uncial itself probably comes from St. Jerome's preface to the Book of Job, where it is found in the form uncialibus.

Habeant qui volunt veteres libros, vel in membranis purpureis auro argentoque descriptos, vel uncialibusut vulgo aiunt litteris onera magis exarata quam codices.

"Let those who so desire have old books, or books written in gold and silver on purple parchment, or burdens {rather than books} written in uncial letters, as they are popularly called."

A page of the 6th-century Codex Argenteus, in silver and gold ink on purple parchment.

The Codex Argenteus ("Silver Book/Codex") is a 6th-century manuscript, originally containing a 4th century translation of the Bible into the Gothic language. Traditionally ascribed to bishop Ulfilas.

Ulfilas (c. 311–383)

 "Little Wolf"

... a Goth of Cappadocian Greek descent who served as a bishop and missionary, is credited with the translation of the Bible into the Gothic Bible.

 He developed the Gothic alphabet - inventing a writing system loosely based on a combination of a Runic alphabet and the Greek alphabet - in order for the Bible to be translated into the Gothic language. Although traditionally ascribed to Ulfilas, analysis of the Gothic text indicates the involvement of a team of translators, possibly under his supervision.

Parts of the "Codex Argenteus", 187 of the original 336 parchment folia, were preserved at the former Benedictine abbey of Werden (near Essen, Rhineland). The abbots at Werden were imperial princes and had a seat in the Imperial Diet. While the precise date of the "Silver Bible" is unknown, it was discovered at Werden in the 16th century.

The Codex Vaticanus, Uncial 03,  is regarded as "the oldest extant copy of the Bible,  the oldest extant manuscript of the Greek Bible (Old and New Testament).

The Codex is named after its place of conservation in the Vatican Library, where it has been kept since at least the 15th century.

The manuscript became known to Western scholars as a result of correspondence between Erasmus and the prefects of the Vatican Library. 

Pope Sixtus IV Appoints Bartolomeo Platina Prefect of the Vatican Library, fresco by Melozzo da Forlì, 1477

The scene shows the Pope, seen slightly from below, faced by the kneeling humanist Bartolomeo Platina.

In 1451, bibliophile Pope Nicholas V sought to establish a public library at the Vatican, in part to re-establish Rome as a destination for scholarship. Nicholas combined some 350 Greek, Latin and Hebrew codices inherited from his predecessors with his own collection and extensive acquisitions, among them manuscripts from the imperial Library of Constantinople. Pope Nicholas also expanded his collection by employing Italian and Byzantine scholars to translate the Greek classics into Latin for his library. The knowledgeable Pope already encouraged the inclusion of pagan classics.

Pope Nicholas V

. A key figure in the Roman Renaissance, Nicholas sought to make Rome the home of literature and art.

Nicholas' death in 1455 prevented the completion of his vision of a public library, but it was finished in 1475 by his successor Pope Sixtus IV, and named the Palatine Library.

 The number of manuscripts is variously counted as 3,500 in 1475 or 2,527 in 1481, when librarian Bartolomeo Platina produced a signed listing.

Pope Sixtus IV, pro-humanist.

Bartolomeo Platina

 ...was an Italian Renaissance humanist writer and gastronomist.

... became a member of the Platonism-influenced Roman Academy founded by Julius Pomponius Laetus.

Papal academies in Rome...were associations of learned individuals and not institutes for instruction.

In Rome, as in Florence, Renaissance academies aimed to reproduce the traditions of the Academy of Plato, promoting the cultivation of philosophy, "love of wisdom"...especially characterized by Renaissance Platonism and its neoplatonic ideas. 

One of several meeting places for scholarly events and discussion was the house of the Cardinal and Byzantine Greek exile  Basilios Bessarion, which itself has come to be referred to as an academia (academy). His extensive library (which he bequeathed to the city of Venice) was at the disposal of his many house guests for study of new humanistic learning.

 A circle of humanists has become known as the "Roman Academy" (Accademia Romana) of Pomponio.

...a circle of friends who shared in the pagan-influenced humanism which was becoming characteristic of the Renaissance in Rome... Pomponio devoted his energies to the enthusiastic study of classical antiquity and became the centre of a group of like-minded friends, each of whom assumed a classical name (his was Julius Pomponius Laetus, or Laetus for short)...humanists with neo-pagan interests and an epicureanstance, such as Bartolomeo Platina and Filippo Buonaccorsi.

 The oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE.

Set of scrolls comprising the entire   the canonical collection of Hebrew scriptures.

The Hebrew Bible is also the textual source for the Christian Old Testament. The form of this text that is authoritative for Rabbinic Judaism is known as the Masoretic Text (MT) and it consists of 24 books, while the translations divide essentially the same material into 39 books for the Protestant Bible, and into 46 books for the Catholic Bible.

Modern scholars seeking to understand the history of the Hebrew Bible use a range of sources, in addition to the Masoretic Text. These sources include early Greek (Septuagint) and Syriac (Peshitta) translations, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls and quotations from rabbinic manuscripts.

Fragment of a Septuagint, A column of uncial book from 1 Esdras in the Codex Vaticanus c. 325–350 CE

Manuscript on parchment of the book is Peshitta, Syrian Aramaic translation of the Bible. May Edessa Greece, 9th century. Displayed in the National Library at Givat Ram, Jerusalem

The consensus within biblical scholarship, though not universal, is that the Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century AD, and that the New Testament of the Peshitta was translated from the Greek. This New Testament, originally excluding certain disputed books (2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation), had become a standard by the early 5th century. 

An 11th-century Syriac manuscript...written from right to left.

Edessa, an important early centre of Syriac Christianity... in Upper Mesopotamia,
Antiochia on the Callirhoe
Syriac Christianity is the form of Eastern Christianity whose formative theological writings and traditional liturgy are expressed in the Syriac language...the West Syriac tradition is the Divine Liturgy of Saint James...The East Syriac Rite is noted especially for its eucharistic Qurbana of Addai and Mari

Christ Pantocrator (Deesis mosaic detail)

The Liturgy of Saint James or Jacobite liturgy is the oldest complete form of the Eastern varieties of the Christian liturgy still in use among certain Christian Churches.
It is based on the traditions of the ancient rite of the Early Christian Church of Jerusalem, as the Mystagogic Catecheses of St Cyril of Jerusalem imply. Forming the historical basis of the Liturgy of Antioch...

A West Syriac Rite liturgy of the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church holding paterissa (crozier)

Eastern-style crosier of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch with serpents representing the staff of Moses
The Liturgy is associated with the name of James the Just, the brother of Jesus and patriarch among the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Church was an early Christian community located in Jerusalem, of which James and Peter were leaders. Paul was affiliated with this community, and took his central kerygma [preaching of salvation], as described in 1 Corinthians 15, from this community.
The Jerusalem church escaped to Pella during the siege of Jerusalem by the future Emperor Titus in 70 and afterwards returned, having a further series of Jewish bishops until the Bar Kokhba revolt in 130. Following the second destruction of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the city as Aelia Capitolina, subsequent bishops were Greeks.
Aelia Capitolina  COLONIA AELIA CAPITOLINA was a Roman colony, built under the emperor Hadrian on the site of Jerusalem, which was in ruins following the siege of 70 AD, leading in part to the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136 AD. Aelia Capitolina remained the official name of Jerusalem until 638 AD, when the Arabs conquered the city and kept the first part of it as 'إلياء' (Iliyā')

The remaining two arches of the gateway in 1864; the smaller arch was incorporated in the Basilica of Ecce Homo.
Pontius Pilate's Ecce homo speech as described in John 19:13
Ecce homo ("behold the man") are the Latin words used by Pontius Pilate in the Vulgate translation of the Gospel of John, when he presents a scourged Jesus Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, to a hostile crowd shortly before his Crucifixion. The original New Testament Greek: "ἰδοὺ ὁ ἄνθρωπος", romanized: "idoù ho ánthropos", render the most English Bible translations, e.g. Douay-Rheims Bible and King James Version, as "behold the man".

Ecce Homo, Caravaggio, 1605

The Convent of the Sisters of Zion is a Roman Catholic convent of the Congregation of Notre-Dame de Sion, located near the eastern end of the Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem, a processional route in the Old City of Jerusalem, believed to be the path that Jesus walked on the way to his crucifixion. 


 The convent was built in 1857 by Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne. The site includes the Church of Ecce Homo, also known as the Basilica of Ecce Homo, named for Pontius Pilate's Ecce homo speech.
Father Ratisbonne was a French Jew who converted to Catholicism and became a Jesuit Catholic priest and missionary. He later was a co-founder of the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, a religious congregation dedicated to the conversion of Jews to the Catholic faith.


The Saint Thomas Christians, also called Syrian Christians of India, an ethnoreligious community of Indian (Malayali) Syriac Christians from Kerala, India, who trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century.

St. Thomas Christians, as depicted by the Portuguese in the 16th century Códice Casanatense

Archdeacon Thomas, or Mar Thoma I, the leader of the Coonan Cross Oath and head of Malankara Nasranis
The terms Syrian or Syriac relate not to their ethnicity but to their historical, religious, and liturgical connection to Syriac Christianity. The term Nasrani was derived from Semitic languages and refers to Christians in general.

Saint Thomas Christian cross

Thomas Mar Athanasius Metropolitan of Malankara with Kathanars and Deacons of the Reformist faction 1877

Symbol of Mar Thoma Church.


The Samaritan Pentateuch, also known as the Samaritan Torah  is a text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, written in the Samaritan alphabet and used as scripture by the Samaritans. It constitutes their entire biblical canon.



Samaritan High Priest and Abisha Scroll, 1905

A page from Leviticus, in the Samaritan bible
An abjad  is a type of writing system where each symbol or glyph stands for a consonant, leaving the reader to supply the appropriate vowel.

It first became known to the Western world in 1631, proving the first example of the Samaritan alphabet and sparking an intense theological debate regarding its relative age versus the Masoretic text. This first published copy, much later labelled as Codex B by August von Gall, became the source of most Western critical editions of the Samaritan Pentateuch until the latter half of the 20th century.


The Psalms scroll, one of the Dead Sea scrolls.

These differences have given rise to the theory that yet another text, an Urtext of the Hebrew Bible, once existed and is the source of the versions extant today. However, such an Urtext has never been found, and which of the three commonly known versions (Septuagint, Masoretic Text, Samaritan Pentateuch) is closest to the Urtext is not fully determined.

Urtext in biblical studies refers to the assumption that there once was a uniform text of the Hebrew Bible to precede both the Septuagint (LXX) and the Masoretic Text (MT). Since the 19th century there has been much scholarly work to regain this Urtext. 


The Codex Amiatinus is the earliest surviving complete manuscript of the Latin Vulgate, produced around 700 A.D in the north-east of England, at the Benedictine monastery of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow.

Portrait of Ezra, from folio 5r at the start of Old Testament
 It was produced around 700 A.D in the north-east of England, at the Benedictine monastery of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria and taken to Italy as a gift for Pope Gregory II in 716.

An illumination of Christ in Majesty, surrounded by the Four Evangelists, at the start of the New Testament in the Codex Amiatinus written at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow
[see my entry, "Christianity Comes to Albion" for more on Codex Amiatinus]