bibliolatry

From biblio- +‎ -latry.

bibliolatry (usually uncountable, plural bibliolatries)

1. Excessive admiration for a book.
2. Specifically, excessive reverence for, or worship of, the Bible, especially as taken literally.
   • 1909, James Allanson Picton, Man and the Bible: A Review of the Place of the Bible in Human History, page 270:

     the danger of bibliolatry is only too apparent in the contemptuous references often made by Christian authorities to the uselessness of pagan literature since access to the Bible had been secured by the Church.

   • 1972, Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, Folio Society, published 2016, page 164:

     Bibliolatry led to a phobia about swearing; rejection of the Bible made it possible again, and with it a release of the repressions which gave the Puritan middle class their moral energy.

   • 1972, John Hoyles, The edges of Augustanism: the aesthetics of spirituality in Thomas Ken, John Byrom and William Law, page 97:

     The exponents of bibliolatry rely on the letter and make the spirit dependent on the letter

   • 1991, Moisés Silva, God, language, and Scripture: reading the Bible in the light of general linguistics, page 38:

     they are also committing "bibliolatry" by putting the Bible where God alone belongs

   • 1992, Frederick Burwick, Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination, page 68:

     "bibliolatry" (the fundamentalist insistence on the literal truth of "the Bible as the Word of God")

   • 2008, Michael J. Cook, Modern Jews Engage the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-being in a Christian Environment, page 267:

     Some sectors of the religious world have been accused […] of "bibliolatry," that is, valuing their Bible itself so highly that they are almost guilty of idolatry.

• bibliolater
• bibliolatrist
• bibliolatrous