The B-I-B-L-E: A Song History

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This short chorus, which spells out the word Bible letter by letter, has no known author; Hymnary.org lists both its words and its tune as anonymous and in the public domain.[1][2] The earliest printing that Hymnary.org links to the text is in Children's Hymns and Songs, a 1924 collection edited by Joseph Kennel for the Mennonite Publishing House in Scottdale, Pennsylvania.[1][3] It also appeared in Songs and Choruses for Fishers of Men, issued by the Tabernacle Publishing Company of Chicago in 1928, and in Songs of Cheer for Children the following year.[4][5][6] Among the sources consulted here, no earlier printing or firm authorship was found.[1]

Open medieval manuscript Bible with columns of Latin text and painted, gilded initials

Bible, tempera and gold on parchment; leather binding, ca. 1250–75. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

Hymnary.org's index finds it in a steady run of books from the 1930s through the 1950s, many of them children's or chorus collections, and counts it in 25 hymnals in all.[1] Hymnary.org's entry for a 1952 book, Youth Melodies and Action Songs, carries a note suggesting that children hold up their Bibles as they sing it.[7] Credits still vary: the 1994 Ambassador Hymnal names Dwight Uphaus as author and calls the tune traditional, while other hymnals list it as anonymous or by an unknown author.[8][1] Mike Anderson includes it in Sunday Songs For Kids, a collection of Christian songs for children in standard notation, with chords that let them be played on dulcimer, guitar, banjo or other chording instruments, published by Fingers Of Steel.[9]

Our book that contains the song "The B-I-B-L-E"

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "The B-I-B-L-E".
  2. Hymnary.org: "[The B-I-B-L-E]" (tune).
  3. Hymnary.org: "Children's Hymns and Songs" (1924).
  4. Hymnary.org: "Songs and Choruses for Fishers of Men, #42: The Bible".
  5. Hymnary.org: "Songs and Choruses for Fishers of Men" (1928).
  6. Hymnary.org: "Songs of Cheer for Children, #27: The Bible".
  7. Hymnary.org: "Youth Melodies and Action Songs, #34".
  8. Hymnary.org: "Ambassador Hymnal, #355: The B-I-B-L-E".
  9. Fingers Of Steel: "Mike Anderson, Sunday Songs For Kids".
  10. Image: Bible, tempera and gold on parchment; leather binding, ca. 1250–75. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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