The Origins of the Bible

Phoenicians had access to the Papyrus plant in Biblos. The city state of Biblos became so synonymous with paper production that the Greeks used the name of the city for their word book, which was Biblia. A collection of books was called a Biblia and found its way into Latin as Biblio-Teca. In English, it gave us the word Bible, which was originally used in the sense of a collection of books.