BIBLES 19 BICARBONATE institutions; and, on June 29, 1816, a bull denouncing them was launched by- Pope Pius VII. BIBLES, THE SEVEN, the seven principal Bibles of the world are the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Eddas of the Scandinavians, the Tripitikes of the Buddhists, the Five Kings of the Chinese, the three Vedas of the Hindus, the Zend Avesta and the Scriptures of the Christians. The Koran is, except the Eddas, the most recent of these seven Bibles and not older than the 7th cen- tury of our era. It is a compound of quotations from the Old and New Testa- ments, the Talmud and the Gospel of St. Barnabas. The Eddas of the Scan- dinavians was first published in the 14th century. The Tripitikes of the Budd- hists contain sublime morals and pure aspirations, but their author lived and died in the 6th century before Christ. The sacred writings of the Chinese are called the Five Kings, king mean- ing web of cloth or the warp that keeps the threads in their place. They con- tain the best sayings of the best sages on the ethico-political duties of life. These sayings cannot be traced to a period higher than the 11th century be- fore Christ. The three Vedas are the most ancient books of the Hindus, and it is the opinion of Max Miiller, Wilson, Johnson and Whitney that they are not older than 11 centuries before Christ. The Zend Avesta of the Persians is the grandest of all these sacred books next to our Bible. Zoroaster, whose sayings it contains, was born in the 12th cen- tury before Christ. BIBLIA PAUPERUM (Bible of the poor), the name for block books com- mon in the Middle Ages, and consisting of a number of rude pictures of Biblical subjects with short explanatory text ac- companying each picture. BIBLICAL CRITICISM, the science which has for its objects (1) to decide which books are entitled to have a place in the Scripture canon, and (2) to bring the text of these canonical books to the utmost possible degree of purity. In prosecuting the first of these aims, the Biblical critic must not be confounded with the Christian apologist; the func- tion of the former is a strictly judicial one, while the office of the latter is that of an advocate. One important subject of investigation is as to what Old Testa- ment books were recognized as divine by the ancient Jewish Church or Syna- gogue; as also what New Testament books were at once and universally wel- comed by the early Christian Church, and what others were for a time par- tially rejected, though they ultimately found acceptance everywrhere. Biblical Criticism has received its highest devel- opment in the hands of German schol- ars, who attacked its problems v/ith an energy and destructiveness which, for a time, threatened to leave little of the authority or authenticity of the text. In recent years a reaction from these radical methods has set in, and while scholars recognize the necessity of ap- plying the laws of criticism to the sa- cred texts, there is a pronounced dis- position, founded on archaeological and philological researches, to leave the authority of the texts unimpaired, un- less there is unquestioned reason for disputing it. BIBLIOGRAPHY, the science or knowledge of books, their authorship, the dates of their first publication, and of the several editions they have gone through, with all other points requisite for literary history. This, it will be per- ceived, is not the meaning of the word in Greek. The Greek term generated the French hiblio graphic, with the meaning (identical with neither the Greek nor the English one) of acquaintance with an- cient writings and skill in deciphering them. About A. D. 1752 the modern sense of the word was arising, though the old one still held its ground. Finally, in 1763, the publication of De Bure's "Bib- liographie Instructif" established the new meaning, and gave the deathblow to the old one. It was not the first book which had appeared on literary history, Conrad Gesner's "Bibliotheca Univer- salis," containing a catalogue of all the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin books he knew, had long preceded it, having ap- peared in 1545. BIBLIOMANIA, the passion of the book miser, which impels to the gather- ing and hoarding of books without re- gard to their literary value or practical utility; or, in its nobler aspects, in An- drew Lang's phrase, the "love of books for their own sake, for their paper, print, binding and for their associa- tions, as distinct from the love of litera- ture." The word in English is modern, having been introduced from France about 1750. BIBRACTE (be-brak'te) , a town of ancient Gaul; was the capital of the ^dui, whom Cjesar once defeated; the modern Autun. BICARBONATE, a name given to the acid carbonates of potassium (KHCO^), sodium (NaHCO.), ammonium (NH,.- HCOi), etc. Also a carbonate dissolved
