BIBLICAL LIBRARIES
steam shovel, but to call spade spade and steam shovel, steam shovel. The right way to correct the "promiscuous" use of the word library is not to deny that a library is library, or to call it archive but to use the word properly and avoid misleading use—qualifying or using neutral words when qualification is due.
A case in point is the first sentence of this introduction. To say that there were "thousands and even tens of thousands of archives" in Bible lands in Bible times is true, and to say that there were "thousands and even tens of thousands of libraries" is correct, but in both cases a flat use of the words in the beginning, before explanation is made, is misleading, for not all collections are archives and many of the collections consist of half a dozen, more or less, tablets, or little rolls, in a jar or box and all of these business documents. In a loose modern sense these collections are archives and in a narrow
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