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 collection of books rather than a single work. Originally the Bible as a whole, like the Old Testament before it, was a collection of concrete separate books at a certain spot in space and time. These books themselves, in some instances (Psalms, Proverbs, Pentateuch) libraries, were in turn made a unit by their arrangement and naming as a whole. At this point, where it was a collection of real books, the Bible was still a library, although when copied as a whole it became a book which like other similar collections is also properly, though in a derived sense, called a library (Library of American Literature, Altfranzösische Bibliothek).

This fact that the Bible is itself a library is increasingly mentioned of late, especially in Old Testament studies (Kent. Beginnings p. 1, "The Old Testament is a library." Delitzsch. Babel and Bible, p. 4, "the Old Testament, that small library of books of the most multifarious