Do you read the Bible? - According to the Online Etymology Dictionary the word Bible is from Anglo-Latin biblia, traced from the same word through Medieval Latin and Late Latin, as used in the phrase biblia sacra ('holy books'). This then stemmed from the term , which derived from biblion , which was originally a diminutive of byblos, possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician port from which Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece.