Friends,

We’re publishing a couple days early this week … here is Common Christianity #818 (7-19-22), “What’s the Word? Part 2.” Oh, my word! I have some explaining to do, but that’s not why the column is early; we’re heading to northern Michigan lake country with family next week. See the column just below, or at our blog CommonChristianity, or on social media.  God bless!

Bob

-- -- --

Spirituality Column #818

July 19, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What’s the Word? Part 2

By Bob Walters

“The book of the generation of Jesus Christ …” – Matthew 1:1 KJV

Sometimes it takes making a mistake to learn something important.

And Praise God!  I made a mistake.  But the correction was entertaining.

Last week (#817, 7-5-22) in this space we discussed how one should pay attention to the English translation of Greek Bible words because words like “Word,” for example, have various Greek roots and meanings, i.e., Logos, logo, rhema, lexi … etc.

But let’s not rehash that here.  When most English speaking people “of the Book” – the Bible – see the word “Greek,” they either run and hide, or fall asleep. 

But stick around … awake … for this one.

In that previous column I said, “The word Bible does not appear in the Bible.”  Well, look at the first words of Matthew 1:1, above: “The book.”  In Greek, the first word of the New Testament is “Byblos,” the mother word that gives us, in English, “Bible.”

I thank good friend, pastor, and former professor and college president Dave Faust for the fix.  Folks who know Dave as a wonderful preacher may not know he’s also a beast with biblical Greek; he tested out of it in college.  Of my column error Dave wrote to me, gently but immediately, “That’s not correct …,” and schooled me with only minor abrasions in the Greek woodshed.

In essence Dave noted that in the Bible, “… ‘byblos’ (roll, scroll, book) is used several times. In fact, it’s the first word of the New Testament (see above) … understood as a roll or scroll that contained written words.” Dave went on to point out that “Byblos” was an ancient city in Lebanon, that “biblia” (2 Tim 4:13) were small, personal scrolls, and that “parchments (Greek membranae)” were “more valuable documents copied on animal skins instead of papyrus.”  This stuff fascinates me.

Proving the accuracy of my notion that serious scholars have more sophisticated resources than my simple Google search format (e.g., Matthew 1:1 in Greek), Dave provided this specific link for the verse at biblestudytools.com. Bible study friend and professor Jeff Dodge, who I mentioned a couple weeks ago, suggests “Logos” software.

Obviously, there was no “Bible” yet when the New Testament of “The Bible” was being written, compiled, canonized, and sanctified in the Holy Spirit.  In Jesus’s time there were the Hebrew “scriptures” (graphe) on scrolls which we now call the Old Testament of the Bible, but the “Bible” wasn’t the “Bible” as we know it until the second, third, or fourth century after Christ.  A case can even be made for the late first century.

But that’s a different discussion/debate for a different day.

My main point, that the word “Bible” isn’t in the Bible, is technically sort of true but linguistically mainly wrong.  Thanks to Dave’s corrective (and web link), I looked into “byblos” a little deeper.  Its most common usage is in the phrase “book of life” (Psalm 69:28) cited in Philippians 4:2 and Revelation 3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 20:12, 20:15, and 21:27.

That’s the “book of life,” as in, “the lamb’s book of life” (Rev 21:27).  Of any book, Bible, byblos, graphe, or membranae in the world, that’s the book I want to be in.

Whatever it’s called, in any language … even Greek.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thanks mentor Dr. George Bebawi for the phrase, “Praise God! I made a mistake.” Confess, repent, and move on.  It’s all you can do.