In principium Erat Verbum

The antiquity of libraries is a venerable antiquity, extending in most traditions to the very beginnings of the world-indeed in some even earlier. According to several religions, one author has pointed out, were book collections before the creation of man; the Talmud has it that there was one before the creation of the world, the Vedas say that collections [of books] existed before even the Creator created himself, and the Koran maintains that such a collection coexisted from eternity with the uncreated God.' Best known in western thought is the Judeo-Christian concept that goes one step further and identifies books with the Creator himself-a concept best expressed in the opening words of the Gospel according to St. John. In the beginning was the word ... ; the word preceded all else in being. Could anything else have come into being thereafter, if it had not been for the earlier existence of the word to give it meaning? The word pre-existed all other phenomena in order to perpetuate that phenomena. The word has been endowed in many ancient cultures with great mystical powers. The curse is an example. Although in western civilization the curse has to a large measure degenerated into a hollow uttering of a meaningless phrase, among many people the strength of the word pronounced as a curse is still a compelling strength. The hexes which are still practiced among some superstitious folks are remnants of the original belief in the power of the word. Black magic is no longer practiced in the western world, but as late as the Renaissance, Abracadabra was a word with which to conjure or cast spells and had about it an aura of awful preternaturalism. An interesting convolution was the not infrequent practice in medieval scriptoria of appending colophons to manuscript books pronouncing excommunication upon

Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · Psychology

• Origins of the American College Library, 1638-1800

  S E Morison, Louis Shores•The New England Quarterly•1935

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