1.  The word Bible comes to us from the Greek (ta biblia, the books; that is, emphatically, the sacred canonical books) through the Latin and Norman French.  In the ancient Greek and Latin churches, its use, as a plural noun applied to the whole collection of sacred books of the Old and New Testaments, can be traced as far back as the fifth century.  In the English, as in all the modern languages of Europe, it has become a singular noun, and thus signifies THE BOOK—­the one book containing in itself all the particular books of the sacred canon.

In very ancient usage, the word Law (Heb. Torah) was applied to the five books of Moses; but there was no general term to denote the whole collection of inspired writings till after the completion of the canon of the Old Testament, when they were known in Jewish usage as:  The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (see below, No. 5).  In accordance with the same usage, the writers of the New Testament speak of the “law and the prophets,” and more fully, “the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms,” Luke 24:44.  And they apply to the collected writings of the Old Testament, as well as to particular passages, the term the Scripture, that is, the writings, thus:  “The Scripture saith,” John 7:38, etc.  Or they employ the plural number:  “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures,” Matt. 22:29, etc.  Once the epithet holy is added, 2 Tim. 3:15.

In 2 Pet. 3:16, the term Scriptures is applied to at least the epistles of Paul; apparently also to the other canonical writings of the New Testament then extant.  In the usage of Christian writers, the application of this term to the books of the New Testament soon became well established; but the above is the only example of such an application that occurs in the New Testament itself.

2.  The terms Old and New Testament arose in the following way:  God’s dealings with the Israelitish people, under both the patriarchs and Moses, took the form of a covenant; that is, not a mutual agreement as between two equal parties, but an arrangement or dispensation, in which God himself, as the sovereign Lord, propounded to the chosen people certain terms, and bound himself, upon condition of the fulfilment of these terms, to bestow upon them blessings temporal and spiritual.  Now the Greek word diatheke, by which the Septuagint renders the Hebrew word for covenant, signifies both covenant, in the general sense above given, and testament, as being the final disposition which a man makes of his worldly estate.  The new covenant introduced by Christ is, in a sense, a testament, as being ratified by his bloody death.  Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20.  So it is expressly called in the epistle to the Hebrews, 9:15-17, where the new covenant, considered in the light of a testament,