Reference books which deem themselves "The XYZ Bible!"
Reference books which deem themselves "The XYZ Bible!"
Ah, yes, the Bible on learning XYZ the right way. But I can only see such titles as suggesting the inner content is antithetical to communicating something clearly, concisely and in a way that doesn't leave the learner with even more questions.
This reminds me of when young atheists get upset at "Oh my God". Like, yeah, we don't believe in gods but the phrase has a meaning devoid of religion.
I always tell them to stop saying "bye" because it's a shortening of "goodbye," which is a shortening of "god be with ye."
I've always been an atheist. Maybe that's why saying "goodbye" or even "oh my god" doesn't bother me.
My understanding is that "Bible", as a word, has nothing to do with religion. It was adopted by Christianity, but it didn't start there. To put it another way, it's kinda like how the main character in Doctor Who is just called "The Doctor". The Bible is a religious text, a bible is just a book that aggregates information together.
It became so only in that Jews and subsequently early Christian’s would refer to their scriptures as “the book” or “the holy book”. Bible comes from the Greek by way of Latin, “biblia”
It’s in the same vein as, say, Pentecostal evangelists referring to it as “The Good Book”, or “The Good Word”.
Keep in mind, for a very long time, the only book many Jews or Christian’s were likely to see on anything approaching a regular basis was indeed scripture- and that remained true until Gutenberg did his thing.
(It should be noted that literacy in the first century was generally low. There was some instruction if you attended synagogue, and specifically were looking to become a rabbi. This is also true in Roman and Greek societies.)
I believe you have the etymology backward... it came from Latin via Greek via the Phoenician city of Byblos, which exported papyrus scrolls.
I found "The Drug User's Bible" to be a genuinely useful ressource.