βίβλος and βιβλίον

Earlier this year I started incorporating Scripturial into my Greek learning. Early on, Scripturial introduced βιβλίον as “book”. So for the last few months, thinking about “book” I reached for βιβλίον. I recently encountered Βίβλος and was a bit confused. I thought βιβλίον was a neuter noun referring to “book”. Βίβλος appeared to be a masculine noun that also referred to book or scroll.

The Lexham Theological Wordbook confirmed what I thought I knew about βιβλίον:

βιβλίον (biblion) n. neut. scroll, document. A written document. This is most common term for a scroll in the NT.

The entry for βίβλος surprised me though:

βίβλος (biblos). n. fem. book. Refers to any written composition, including sacred books.

βίβλος is a feminine noun that refers to any written composition?

As I often do with questions that I guess have rudimentary answers, I quickly asked ChatGPT (to the extent I can verify its answers; they seem fairly trustworthy with lexical questions in Ancient Greek). ChatGPT told me that βιβλίον is “diminutive” (originally referred to a little Βίβλος) and eventually became the most common usage. NIDNTTE confirmed and expanded this suggestion:

Presumably, the word came to mean “papyrus” because this writing material was exported to Greece through Byblos, where the plant was prepared. The diminutive form βυβλίον/βιβλίον referred to a strip of βίβλος, thus a piece of writing material, and then by extension it came to mean “document, letter” (Hdt. 3.128.2–3); eventually it too could refer to a scroll or book and thus could be used synonymously with βίβλος (a “doubly diminutive” form βιβλίδιον is attested as early as Demosth.). From the pl. τὰ βιβλία, “the books,” derives Lat. biblia and thence Eng. Bible… In the LXX the term βίβλος occurs almost 30× (βύβλος only in 2 Chr 17:9; Dan 9:2 [Th.]; 1 Esd 1:31), but βιβλίον c. 185×.

Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), 511.

Already by the time of the Septuagint, it looks like βιβλίον was far more common. Even in the New Testament, I found 10 instances of βίβλος and 34 for βιβλίον.

Even after multiple years of personal study in Ancient Greek, the mere gender of a word can get the best of me! There’s much to be curious about here. What came first, the origin of papyrus (The port city Byblos) or the word for papyrus? What characteristic of language do we see in the way the diminutive form became most common? Learning never ends and the language is more than my understanding of it.