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What Is a Bible?
You already know, and you already know what a woman is too
A paragraph in one of Doc Burford’s essays drew my attention today and sparked thought in a different direction. When we use the word “book,” Doc says, sometimes we’re talking about an object (i.e., bound sheaves of paper on the shelves) and other times we’re talking about what makes one title different from another (e.g., Empire of Neomemory isn’t Riddle of the Labyrinth).
“‘I have a pile of books in my room’ refers to the physical object, but ‘seven billion copies of a book called The Bible have been sold,’ refers to the ideas contained within the Bible and not one specific physical container. Does that make sense? There’s ‘The Bible’ as stories about Jesus and stuff, and then there’s like, a single physical object with ‘The Bible’ written on the cover.”
It gets more complicated, because the Bible, unlike most other books, doesn’t have a single author and wasn’t published all at once in the modern sense of going to press. Doc continues:
“There is no ‘original’ Bible, in the sense that no one author sat down and wrote ‘the Bible,’ because it’s a compilation of other writings from other authors, right? Like, the book — this time now referring to a section of the Bible, rather than a physical book or a book-as-concept — of Isaiah is not written by the same person who wrote the book of Revelations, right?”
And there isn’t one “correct” compilation, nor is there even a single dominant opinion—that is, there’s more than one canon. Different ancient writings were grouped by different ancient people for their own purposes, and over the centuries, religious authorities formed their own collections. Some texts were deliberately censored or changed to fit a dogma or a political need. Christian movements use different versions of what they call the Bible, and Judaism and Islam have their own traditions involving the same texts. Most people, most of the time, read Biblical texts in their own languages, not the original ancient languages.
And Yet, We Know What a Bible Is and Isn’t
To review:
This is a Bible.
