Where Did the Word Bible Come From

[box]RVWD is my abbreviation for Religious Vocabulary Word of the Day. (You can read my introduction to the RVWD series here.) I do not intend for these word investigations to be exhaustive, but I hope they stimulate some thinking about assumptions. Possibly they will help with honest evaluations about what is truth and what is unnecessary baggage in life. [/box]
The word bible is not in “the collection of writings” commonly referred to as The Bible. So, where did it come from and why is it so strongly associated with this particular collection? It has to do with Greek roots and papyrus.
It goes something like this: biblio, biblion, biblia. Or book, (little?) book, books. Considered to be of first importance, the words inspired and preserved over time by God were given the title in capital letters and called “Ta Biblia,” as meaning “The Books.” One could say it is similar to how believers of Jesus Christ referred to themselves as following The Way. (Acts 9:2, 18:26, 19:9, 22:4, 24:14) There is evidence of “The Bible” being commonly of spoken of as such in the 3rd century AD. (one source for this information was etymonline.com)
The adjectives hagia (Greek for holy) or sacra (Latin for sacred or holy) were added at some point to emphasize the unique origins and purpose of The Books. When the words came to be used in Old English, it was rendered bibiodece (derived from the Latin bibliotheka), utilizing the idea of a library or repository, perhaps in an attempt to acknowledge it’s depth of meaning and many authors. After a while, however, this was shortened again to “The Bible.”
There was a Phoenician port city (apparently in the region now known as Lebanon) that was known for exporting papyrus, one of the chief writing materials during the time of Christ and for a while afterward. Some sources say it was named “Byblos” and thus written works came to be known as “biblios,” but other sources say it is unclear if the books were named for the city or the city was named for the books. Either way, the term became a way of referring to the scrolls of papyrus that had been written upon, and it was subsequently transferred in meaning to the newer invention of pages sewn together.
It does not seem to have been until the last couple of hundred years that the term “bible” was more broadly applied to any written work purporting to be an authoritative and thorough resource for a given subject. This does not seem to include other religious writings, at least in the English language. For these cases, the English word “scriptures” is more often heard.
The word scripture and the term The Word of God will be saved for study in other RVWD articles. However, I will leave you thinking about the possibility that “The Bible,” “The Scriptures,” and “The Word of God” are not necessarily as completely interchangeable as you might think. Still, when people say “The Bible,” they do usually mean the historically recognized documentation of some very specific plans (past, present, and future) of a fascinating, one-of-a-kind God.