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meaning, that his knowledge and virtue were the only blessingsthat were peculiarly his own, since they could not be taken fronthim. He expired while pleading for one of his friends.

BIATHANAT1, [from /2i«, violence, and Aomto;, death,] thesame with suicides.

BIBERACH, a free city of Germany, in Suabia , 17 miles S.W. of Ulm,

BIBERSBERG, a town of Lower Hungary, 15 miles N. ofPresburg . Lon, 17. 30. E. Lat.43. 12. N.

BIBLE, [Gr. &§*&, the book,] the name applied by Chris-tian 's by wav of eminence to the holy scriptures of the Old andNew Testaments; known also by various other appellations, as,the Sacred Books, Holy Writ, inspired Writings, Scriptures, &<•.The Jews styled the Old Testament , micra ; which signifies Les-son or Lecture. 'The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments ,contain the revelations of God , and are therefore justly received asthe foundation of all true religion, Jewish or Christian . The Jew sindeed acknowledged only the Old Testament, the correctingand arranging of which is unanimously ascribed to Ezra . Some ofthe ancient fathers, on no other foundation than that fabulous andapocryphal book, the 2d book of Esdras, pretend that the Scrip-tures were entirely lost at the Babylonish captivity, and that Ezra restored them all again by divine revelation. It is certain that inthe reign of Josiah there was no other book of the law extant, be-sides that found in the temple by Ililkiah ; from which original,copies were immediately transcribed, and search made for all theother parts of the Scriptures, (2 Kings xxii.) by which means copiesof the whole were multiplied among the people, w ho carried themwith them into their captivity. After the return of the Jews frontthe Babylonish captivity, Ezra collected as many copies as hecould of the sacred w ritings, and out of them all prepared a correctedition, arranging the several books in their proper order. Thesebooks he divided into three parts. I. The Law. II. The Prophets.HI. The Cetubim or Ilagiographia, i. c. The Holy Writings.I. The Law contains ; 1. Genesis; 2. Exodus; 3. Leviticus ; 4.Numbers; 5. Deuteronomy . If. 'The writings of the Prophetsare, 1. Joshua ; 2. Judges, with Ruth; 3. Samuel; 4. Kings; 5.Isaiah; 6. Jeremiah, with his Lamentations; 7. Ezekiel ; 8.Daniel The 12 minor prophets; 10. Job; 11. Ezra; 12. Ne-hemiah ; 13. E-ther. III. And the Ilagiographia consists of, 1.The Psalms; 2. The Proverbs. 3. Ecclesiastes; 4. The Song ofSolomon . This division was made for the sake of reducing thenumber of the sacred books to the number of the letters in theiralphabet, which amount to 22. Afterwards the Jews reckoned24 books in tlieir canon of scripture, in disposing of which thelaw stood as in the former division, and the prophets were distri-buted into former and latter. The former prophets are, Joshua ,Judges, Samuel, Kings. The latter prophets are, Isaiah, Jeremiah ,Ezekiel , and the 12 minor prophets. And the Ilagiographia con-sists of The Psalms, the Proverhs, Job, the Song of Solomon ,Ruth, the Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra , theChronicles. Under the name of Ezra, they comprehend Nehe-miah . This order hath not always been observed, but the varia-tions from it are of no moment. ’The five books of the law are di-vided into 54 sections. This division many of the Jews l\old tohave been appointed by Moses himself; but others, with moreprobability, ascribe it to Ezra . The design of this division was,that one of these sections might be read in tlieir synagogues everysabbath-day. 'The number was 54, because in their intercalatedyears a month being then added, there were 54 sabbaths. Inother years, they reduced them to 52, by twice joining togethertwo short sections. Till the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes ,they' read only the law ; but the reading of it being then prohi-bited, they substituted in the room of it 54 sections out of theprophets; and when the reading of the law was restored by theMaccabees , the section which was read every sabbath out of thelaw served for their first lesson, and the section out of the prophetsfor their second. These sections were divided into verses, ofwhich division, if Ezra was not the author, it was introduced notlong after him, and seems to have been designed for the use of (heTargumists or Chaldee interpreters: for after the return of theJews from the Babylonish captivity, when the Hebrew languageceased to be tlieir mother tongue, and the Chaldee grew into useinstead of it, the custom w r as that the law should be first read in theerigina] Hebrew , and then interpreted to the people in the Chal-dee language, for which purpose these shorter sections were very

convenient. Sec “ The Christian Prophet and his Work,’’ a sermonby Dr. Clarke. It is thought Ezra published the scriptures in theChaldee chaiacter : for that language being generally used amongthe Jews, he thought proper to change (lie old Hebrew characterfor it, which hath since that time been retained only - bv the Sa-maritans , among whom it is preserved to this day. Prideauxis of opinion that Ezra made additions in several parts of the Bible ,where any thing appeared necessary for illustrating, connecting,or completing the work; in which he appears to have been as-sisted by the same Spirit, in which it was first written. Amongsuch additions is to be reckoned the last chapter of Deuteronomy ,wherein Moses seems to give an account of his own death andburial, and the succession of Joshua after him. To the samecause our learned author thinks are to be attributed many other in-terpolations in the Bible , which created difficulties and objectionsto the authenticity of the sacred-text, noways to be solved with-out allowing them. Ezra changed the names of several placeswhich were grown obsolete, and instead of them put their newnames, by which they were then called in the text. Thus it is,Unit Abraham is said to have pursued the kings who carried Lotaway captive, as far as Dan ; whereas that place in Moses 's timewas called Laisli ; the name Dan being unknown till the Danites,T ug after the death of Moses , possessed themselves of it. TheJewish canon o! Scripture was then settled by Ezra , yet not so butthat several variations have been made in it. Malachi , for in-stance, could not he put in the Bible by him, since that prophet isallowed to have lived after Ezra ; nor could Nehemiah he there,since that book mentions (chap. xii. 22.) Jaddua, as high-priest,and Darius Codomannus, as king of Persia , who were at least100 years later than Ezra . It may be added, that in the first bookof Chronicles, the genealogy of the sons of Zerubbabel is carrieddown for so many generations, as must necessarily bring it to thetime of Alexander; and consequently this hook, or at least thispart of it, could not be in the canon in Ezra ’s days. It is pro-bable, the two books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah , Esther, andMalachi, were adopted into the Bible in the time of Simon theJlist, the last of the men of the great synagogue. The Jews , atfirst, were very reserved in communicating their scriptures tostrangers : despising and shunning the Gentiles, they would notdisclose to them any of the treasures concealed in the Bible . Wemay add that the people bordering on the Jews , as the Egyptians,Phoenicians, Arabs , &c were not very curious to know the laws orhistory of a people, whom in their turn they hated and despised.Their first acquaintance with these books was not till after theseveral captivities of the Jews, when the singularity of the Hebrew laws and ceremonies induced several to desire a moie particularknowledge of them. Josephus seems surprised to find such slightfoot-steps of the scripture history interspersed in the Egyptian,Chaldean, Phoenician, and Grecian history ; and accounts for ithence, that the sacred hooks were not as yet translated into Greekor other languages, and consequently not known to the writers ofthose nations. Tire first version of the Bible was that of the Sef-ti/agin’t into Greek, by order of that patron of literature, PtolemyPhiladelpints; though some maintain, that the whole was not thentranslated, but only the Pentateuch ; between which and theother books in the Septuagint version, critics find a great di-versity in point of style ana expression, as well as of accuracy.The division of the (scriptures into chapters, as we at present havethem, is of modern date. Some attribute it to Stephen Langton ,archbishop of Canterbury , in the reigns of John and Henry 111.But the true author of the invention was Hugo de Sancto Caro,commonly called Hugo Cardinalis, because he was the first Do-minican that ever was raised to the degree of cardinal. This Hugoflourished about A. 1). 1240. He wrote a comment on the scrip-tures, and projected the first concordance, which is that of thevulgar Latin Bible . 'The aim of this work being for the moreeasily finding out of any word or passagem the scriptures, he found itnecessary to divide the book into sections, and the sections intosubdivisions; for till that time the vulgar Latin Bibles were with-out anv division at all. These sections are the chapters into whichthe Bible hath ever since been divided. Bnt the subdivision of thechapters was not then into verses, as it is now. Hugo’s method ofsubdividing them was by the letters A, B, C, I), E, E, G, placedin the margin at equal distances from each other, according to thelength of the chapters. The subdivision of the chapters into verses,as they now stand in our Bibles, had its original from a famous

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