Duck

It's obvious the Bible was not written as "one unified" book. When did it become one book, i.e. a single bound volume?

Also, I'm wondering what that first volume consisted of. Did it include the Apochrypha?

And when did people start referring to "The Bible" instead of "The Scriptures"?

Any suggestions?

ichabod crane

The first known list of the 27 books of the New Testament canon as accepted by orthodoxy was in the Easter letter of Athanasius, which from memory was about 367 AD. The Council of Carthage in 397 AD officially established this list of NT books.

The Jewish canon of the Old Testament is called the Tanakh, which is their Bible. The T stands for Torah (Law), N for Nevhi'im (Prophets) and K for Kethuvhim (Writings). It consists of the same 39 books as are in the Protestant Old Testament, although arranged in a different order. There is debate about when the canon of the Tanakh was settled - by late 1st or early 2nd century at the latest, maybe earlier.

The apocrypha consist of works written in Greek during the post-exilic period of Israel's history. They were not considered as part of the canon by the Jews. However, the early Christian Church was divided on the issue - from memory, Augustine was in favour of them, Jerome against. They were never officially canonized by the Roman Catholic church until the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, although they were used by many people before that time. The Eastern Orthodox church, I believe, holds the apocrypha in high regard, but generally not as a part of the canon.

The first time they were all gathered together in one book would have been after the technology permitting this was developed. I'm not sure the exact date. Collections of most or all of the New Testament can be found from the 4th and 5th century, but I'm not sure if they're all part of the same document or a bundle of documents all together.

As for the use of the word "Bible", its from the Greek word Biblion meaning "Book". Books plural in the nominative case is Biblia, from which we get Bible I would imagine. I don't know the date.

FordMadoxBrown

I'm often amused by 'Bible-beliveing ' Christians writing as if there's a huge difference in status between what's in the Bible today and what's not. In eraly Christian times a lot of writings such as the Apocalypse of Peter were accepted as Scriptural which were later deemed heretical.

As usual, History is written by the winners, and the Bible we have today is only the selection of the group who won the argument. A good anthology of the other early Christian writings is in Bart D Ehrman's 'After the New Testament , published by Oxford unversity Press of New York.

Duck

Thanks Ichabod and Ford.

Many Christians discuss the Bible as if it were one unified book when, obviously, it is a compilation of various books, bound into a single volume. Then they quote verses like "Scripture cannot be broken", "All scripture is inspired by God", and "I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book" as if these verses refer to the whole Bible as we know it today. They argue that the current Bible is inspired, immutable and infallible. And yet, the Bible itself doesn't make these claims, nor does it refer to itself as a single entity.

So I'm looking for answers to some very specific questions:

When did the books of the Bible become one volume?
Which books were part of that first volume?
When did people start referrring to the Bible (singular) instead of the Scriptures (plural)?

I've searched the internet and have not found the answers. Perhaps someone here can help.

Thanks.

Iasion

Geeetings all,

Perhaps it was the officicial "bible" ordered by Constantine.

Codex Vaticanus may be one of these originals. It is not quite the same as our modern bibles (some missing, some extras.)

Article here -
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04086a.htm

Buy a facsimile for less than $6000 -
http://www.linguistsoftware.com/codexvat.htm

Iasion