A Comprehensive History
OF THE BOOKS OF
THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE,
Written Expressly for this Edition
BY
REV. BERNARD O’REILLY, L. D. (LAVAL.)
Author of “Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church,” “A Life of Pius IX.,” “The Mirror of True Womanhood,” “True Men as we Need Them,” etc., etc.
The Whole Beautifully Illustrated with Appropriate and Select Scripture Subjects.
Copyright, 1884.
INTRODUCTORY.
Most dear to the hearts of children in a family blessed with the best of parents and brought up to the practice of all that is most ennobling, is every monument of the dead or absent father’s love.
Were it so to happen that such a father, whose whole life had been one of self-sacrifice and incomparable devotion to the interest of his dear ones, should bequeath them in dying, not only a share forever in his wealth and honor, but his last will and testament to be kept continually before their eyes in the home he had created for them—how would they not reverence this ever-present memorial of their worshipped parent’s loving care? How would they not, in perusing every line and word of this last declaration of a father’s tender forethought, find their own hearts moved by its undying eloquence—as if a hidden fire lived in each word to warn their own souls to gratitude, to generosity, and to all nobleness of life? This is precisely what we have in that Book of books, the Bible.[1] What we know of God’s dealings with man proves Him to be much more of the parent than of the lord and master. Indeed when the Son came down in person to redeem and to teach the world, He taught us to call the Infinite God, with whom He is eternally one in the unity of the Godhead, by the sweet and endearing name of Father.
This was only restoring the supernatural relation which existed between God and man from the beginning of the latter’s creation. For it is a doctrine of the Catholic faith, that Adam was raised by his all-bountiful Creator to the divine rank of adopted child of God. This rank with its privileges and prospective glory Adam forfeited by his sin; and this rank Christ, the Second Adam, restored to us, thus repairing the ruin caused by our first parent.
And because the Heavenly Father’s purpose was, from the beginning, to raise us all up in Christ to the dignity from which we had fallen in Adam, therefore His wisdom provided means by which Adam and his descendants could still recover a claim to their lost rank and inheritance. A Saviour was promised them in Christ; and they were required to believe in that Saviour, to hold fast to that promise, to profess that faith openly, and fulfil all the other conditions required by their Divine Benefactor as distinguishing those who were to have a share with the future Redeemer and Restorer.
This new covenant or testament, made by our merciful Father between Himself and Adam with his posterity, was preserved and cherished among the descendants of Seth, who were, in view of their living faith in the one true God and the promised Saviour, called “the Sons of God” in the midst of a sinful world. It was this same living faith that saved Noe and his sons from the flood which swept their guilty brethren off the face of the earth. And when they came forth from the Ark, or ship, in which the hand of God had guarded them, their Preserver renewed His covenant with them, and once more enjoined, with increased solemnity, the duty of holding on invincibly to the Faith of Adam, of Abel, of Seth, and of Henoch.
When, in the course of time, the great bulk of mankind, now spread over the earth, forgot God and the faith in His most merciful Promise, Abraham was raised up as Noe had been to keep that faith alive in his family and descendants. To that family, become a people—God’s own chosen people—the covenant was renewed more solemnly than ever before on Mount Sinai; and Moses, the deliverer and guide of that people, was inspired to write, for the instruction of all future time, the story of the creation of the world, of man’s origin, of his elevation and fall, and of the Promise thus successively committed, like God’s will and testament, to Adam, to Seth, to Noe, to Abraham, and to Moses in behalf of our fallen and disinherited race.
To the five books (Pentateuch) left us by Moses others were added age after age, completing the story of God’s dealings with mankind, till God’s own Son at length came down on earth, uniting our human nature with His Godhead, and to all who receive him as their Redeemer He giveth “power to be made the Sons of God.”
Of Him—the Saviour, the Promised One—the Old Testament is full as well as the New. What wonder, then, seeing that God’s faithful servants under the law of nature, and God’s chosen people under the Mosaic law, were alike, upon earth, the Family of the Almighty Father—what wonder, if in that family, men and women, generation after generation, loved to make of the Sacred Scriptures the subject of devout and most profitable meditation?
Before the coming of Christ, how believing and yearning souls were wont to weigh the words of the oft-repeated Promise, and to
- ↑ The word “bible” is of Greek origin. The Egyptian reed papyrus (ancient Egyptian papu) was called βίβλος, byblos, by the Greeks, and from its innermost bark or cuticle, covering the pith, was made the papyrus or paper which, when written upon, was denominated βίβλος. A bundle of these scrolls was given the name of βίβλίον—and the nominative plural βιβλία, was adopted by the Latins, and employed to designate what we now call the Bible, that is, the collection of inspired books of both the Old and the New Testaments.
