Nogan's Bible Handbook: Reference Bible

"In the past," explained the writer of Hebrews 1:1, "God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways..." Then later in his second letter, the Apostle Peter wrote in 1:21, "For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." The Bible is like a small library that contains many books written by numerous authors. The word "Bi-ble" comes from the Greek, biblia, meaning a plurality of books. It took more than 1100 years for these books to be penned and it would take many more before a single list of books known, as "the Bible" would come together into a single volume.