Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 37

Want a few interesting Bible tidbits? You got it.

The word bible isn’t even in the Bible. Do a word search on your computer, and you’ll see that nowhere from Genesis to the Apocalypse (Revelation) is the word bible ever mentioned. But the word Scripture appears 53 times in the King James Version of the Bible, and the phrase Word of God appears 55 times. So if the word itself isn’t in the Bible, why call it the Bible? The word comes from the Greek biblia, meaning “a collection of books,” and the origin goes back even farther to the word biblos, meaning “papyrus.” In ancient times, the paper from trees to write on didn’t exist — only stone or papyrus. Imagine — stone books.

The Catholic Church gave the name Bible to the Bible — to the collection of inspired books known as the Old and New Testaments. The Church also decided which books belonged in the Bible and which were left out, because nowhere from Genesis to Apocalypse (Revelation) can you find a list of which documents belong and which don’t. Modern-day Bible publishers and editors have added the table of contents, but the contents weren’t disclosed in the sacred text itself. Why does the Bible contain four Gospels? Who decided that Matthew should come before Mark? Why isn’t the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Peter in the Bible? Who says that the New Testament contains only 27 books? What happened to the Apocalypse of Moses and the Apocalypse of Adam? The Bible doesn’t tell you what books belong in it, so the Church had to use her authority to make that decision. You can read more on this subject in the nearby section “Trusting the authority of the Catholic Bible.”