Has the original Bible come down to us? The oldest books in the world.

Most of the biblical books were written in the 8th-6th centuries BC. NS. More than three billion people consider it sacred. It is called the bestseller of all time, with nearly 6,000,000,000 copies of the Bible printed in whole or in part in over 2,400 languages.

One of the oldest editions in the world is 1500 years old. This Bible was found in 2010 in Turkey. The book is written in Aramaic. The cost of the book, the pages of which are made of real leather, is about 40 million Turkish lira. The cost of even photocopied pages is high - about 3 million.

It is possible that this book is a copy of the famous Gospel of Barnabas, which at one time was prohibited. The oldest copies of it were made in the sixteenth century, that is, they are almost three times newer than this book.

Another ancient Bible was found a year later, by a Bedouin in northern Jordan, in a cave in a remote desert area. The discovery was made in 2005-2007, but the general public about the find, which, according to scientists, will turn the whole biblical history, became known only in the spring of 2011.

By chance, a flood in one of the caves in northern Jordan revealed two secret niches containing seventy lead books connected by wire.

Each ancient manuscript, engraved on lead plates, is 5-15 pages, about the size of a regular credit card.

Research into the metal has shown that the artifact could date from the first century AD. This ancient Christian relic is believed to have been created in 70 AD. e., the first Christians to hastily left Jerusalem after its fall.

Also, scholars believe that the manuscripts constitute the Book of Revelations mentioned in the Bible, and are evidence of the non-Jewish origin of Christianity. This is evidenced by the symbols depicted on the covers: seven-candlestick lamps (Jews were strictly forbidden to depict them) and crosses related to Roman culture.

Some of the text of the most ancient Bible, written in Hebrew with the use of hieroglyphs, has already been deciphered. It talks about the Messiah, the Crucifixion and the Ascension.

This is a quote from the Bible, the Book, which is also called the Word of God. According to her, God never left His creation without His word. This word has always been with humanity: in the form of cuneiform writing on stones, hieroglyphs on papyrus, letters on parchment, and even in the form of the Man Jesus Christ, Who Himself is the Word made flesh. Probably everyone understands why people need the Word of God? Man has always thirsted and thirsts to learn the “three eternal questions”: where are we from, why and where are we going. There is only one really authoritative answer to them - the answer of the Creator of all that exists, and it is found in the Bible.
At the same time, supporters of other religions are trying to prove that it is their scriptures that are true, because they also explain the world around them in their own way. In support of their words, they point to the supposedly very ancient age of their books. Although antiquity is not synonymous with truth, it seems to many to be a convincing argument. The antiquity of pagan books, as well as some similarity of plots, allowed some philosophers to even put forward a hypothesis that the Bible is supposedly secondary to the ancient pagan books, and that, they say, Biblical Christianity borrowed its religious system from the more ancient pagan religions that preceded it. Moreover, the supporters of this hypothesis are by no means only atheists, but also people who call themselves Christians. An example is the Orthodox writer Alexander Men, who defended the theory of evolution not only in the development of earthly life, but also in religions. But is the Bible really younger than pagan sacred traditions?

The first book of the Bible is the book of Genesis, and therefore the degree of antiquity of the Bible, and hence the religion of Christians itself, depends on the determination of its age. If we agree with the point of view that the entire Pentateuch was written by Moses, and this dates back to 1600 BC, then, of course, it will be true that the Bible is younger than many Hindu, Babylonian, Egyptian and Tibetan records. However, the authorship of the entire book of Genesis behind Moses alone has long been disputed. There was even a version that the authors of the book were 4 people, designated by the letters J, E, D and P. In general, the developers of this version were deeply mistaken, attributing the authorship to some nomads who lived much later than Moses himself.

Nevertheless, in the New Testament the book of Genesis is mentioned 200 times, but, mind you, it is never said that the author of any phrase is Moses! In general, the majority of modern people, and sometimes Christians, for some reason think that the prophet Moses began to write the Pentateuch only on Mount Sinai, where he also received the Tablets with the 10 Commandments. But this is not the case! The first time the command to make an entry in a certain Book is in the book of Exodus: “And the Lord said to Moses: write this for a memory in a book ...” (Ex. 17:14). What preceded this? Having crossed the dry land, the Israelites entered the Sinai Peninsula, and the Amalekites attacked them in the Rifidim area. God gave Israel victory, and this is what the Lord commanded Moses to write in the Book. Therefore, THE BOOK WAS ALREADY!

Who was the author of Genesis? - you ask. In a Christian way, you can immediately answer without hesitation: the Holy Spirit, that is, God Himself inspired the scribe-prophet to write His words into the Book. Therefore, the only question is who were these first prophets who wrote down the First Book of the Bible.
The Pentateuch was indeed written down by Moses. He was an eyewitness and participant in the events that he described in four books. The events of the book of Genesis tell about what happened long before his birth, including long and in general before someone was born. The very word “being”, which conveys the Greek word “genesis”, means, by the way, “genealogy”, “genealogical record”, that is, something clearly related to history, to the past. The Gospel of Matthew begins with this very word: “The genesis of Jesus Christ ...” Therefore, it is logical to assume that Moses simply collected, edited and rewrote what had already been written down by someone before him, accompanying all this with his remarks! Naturally, such work was carried out by him by inspiration.
God has never left humanity in the dark about Himself. At first, man had direct communication with his Creator in the Garden of Eden, and, quite possibly, he could talk with God in person after his fall. However, gradually, increasingly moving away from God, building his own earthly civilization, sometimes turning to dark forces, Satan, man lost the ability to communicate directly with the Lord. New generations of children and grandchildren were growing up, to whom it was necessary to transfer information about their origin. It was then that the need arose to tell descendants about God and His creation of the world, about the way of salvation from sin and death. In antediluvian times (before the Flood), people lived for 800-900 years, and this made it possible to limit themselves at first to only oral tradition. But in the book of Genesis we read about the development of civilization among the ancient descendants of Cain, about the development of science, music, poetry among them. Why, in fact, did we decide that they had no written language? The advantages of writing are its durability, accuracy of wording, the ability to store, accumulate, compare, view and send over distances in large volumes without the need to memorize. With the development of civilization, it is impossible to talk about the absence of writing. The writing was. And so, first one, then another person, then again and again they recorded what God said and did in their lives, not forgetting to reproduce or save the records of their predecessors. At the end of the letter, signatures are usually put. In the book of Genesis they are also there, there are several of them: 2: 4, 5: 1, 10: 1-32, 37: 2. These genealogies, tiresome for someone, over which atheists scoffed so much, are the SIGNATURES of the patriarchs who wrote the Word of God in antiquity!

However, there is no signature in the first (1: 1-2: 3) apparently completed passage. And indeed, who could have been an eyewitness to the creation of all that exists: heaven, earth, stars, plants and animals? Who could write the first chapter so accurately and clearly that it is still not refuted by any science? Only God Himself! The God! As the Tablets of the Covenant were inscribed on Mount Sinai “by the hand of the Lord Himself,” so the story of the creation of the world was written by God and then entrusted to Adam. The first chapter is the record of God Himself.

Adam's notes already speak only of what he himself witnessed. His records end at Genesis 5: 1. This, incidentally, explains why in the 1st and 2nd chapters in the original God is named differently. In the first passage, God Himself writes about Himself, and in the second narration, the man Adam writes His name. This also explains the repetition of the events of creation in chapters 1 and 2. Adam, setting out the history of the origin of all living things, including the wife of Eve, did not dare to destroy the previous words of God Himself. The two complementary views of creation have remained in Scripture. All subsequent scribes and prophets of the Bible did the same - they left the records of the previous authors word for word, sign for sign. This is how the Word of God was preserved for centuries. The first Bible consisted of only five chapters, but it was already the Bible - the Word of God. It already contained the news of the One who would be born of the “seed of the woman” and smite the serpent in the head.

Who was the second author of the Bible after Adam? Perhaps it was his son Seth, but it is possible that it was one of his great-grandchildren, because Adam himself lived for 930 years. However, we know for certain that Noah was the last scribe and keeper of the Word of God before the Flood. He not only preserved the Holy Scriptures inherited from his predecessors, but also turned out to be the first post-Flood patriarch to have this Word, because all people were destroyed. From him, the Bible, supplemented by the story of the Flood, passed to Shem, from that - to Eber, Falek, and, ultimately, to Abraham. Not all of them wrote something in the Bible, but they could just be the custodians and copyists of the true Word of God, the people responsible for passing the Bible on to the next patriarch. It is likely that some copies of this Bible were distributed throughout the then world, preached and copied by everyone. In this respect, the king of Salem Melchizedek is remarkable, who was at the same time the priest of the true God, to whom the patriarch Abraham brought tithes. This suggests that people who believe in true God in ancient times have always been, had true concepts about God, about the creation of the world, and even served Him.

The last signature in Genesis goes to 37: 2. Then there is a story about the sons of Jacob, about the resettlement of the Israelites to Egypt, that is, about the history of the emergence of the Israeli people. A book with such content could well have existed among those ancient Jews who were to be taken out of Egyptian captivity by Moses.
Moses, as a direct descendant of Abraham (this is again reported by genealogy), who studied and lived in the court of Pharaoh in complete safety, had and kept these Sacred Records of his ancestors. They, apparently, were scattered, written on papyri or some other short-lived material. It was Moses who systematized them, rewriting and combining them into a single Book, for which he was given 40 years of life in the wilderness, when he was hiding from Pharaoh. This book was later called the FIRST BOOK OF MOSES.

After Moses, the Bible passed to Joshua, about the commission to write down which we read in Joshua. 1: 7-8. Then the Israelite judges, the prophet Samuel, kings and priests also kept and kept on record in the Word of God. By the time of Jesus Christ, the Old Testament was known in a Greek translation (called the Septuagint) far beyond the borders of Judea. So the ancient Bible has come down to our days absolutely undistorted, which is confirmed by the data of archaeological finds. For example, the ancient Qumran papyri found in 1947 with the records of the books of the Old Testament confirmed that for 2,000 years the text did not undergo any distortion.

At the time of the coming to earth of God Himself, who became man, Jesus Christ, the authority of the Bible was fully confirmed by Him, and the Bible was presented to Christians as “the faithful prophetic Word”. Therefore, summing up the above, we Christians have every right to assert that we are the heirs and custodians of the Records, leading their origin FROM THE CREATION OF THE WORLD! The Bible is the oldest book in the world, the most unique, harmonious, consistent, self-consistent and the truest!

The writings of people of other religions, alas, are only faint shadows and echoes of this Book. It is like information from a “damaged phone” that has something different at the output from what was at the input. We have already said that the people of antiquity were aware of true faith in the true God. All nations descended from the same people - Noah and his sons, who had a complete understanding of the true state of affairs in the world. After the Babylonian pandemonium, and this was a revolt of the new population of the Earth against God, different peoples were formed, which were scattered around the planet. Naturally, they lost a single language, they could not or did not want to read the Sacred Texts in the original, or maybe they deliberately refused. Perhaps, after finding their national languages ​​and scattering, they began to recreate the old Biblical stories from memory, coloring them with their own fantasies and plots, supplemented and distorted by subsequent generations. It is quite possible that the forces of darkness - the devil - will also intervene through their supporters in the ministers of cults. Revelations, dreams, and signs inspired by Satan could have been added to the true Word of God and thus distorted the true face of God's original religion. As a result, we have today that all the religious texts of the world in the description of some ancient events are often very similar, being inherently more or less an exact copy of the Original. Certainly, some distorted versions of the Original look very nice and logical, but nevertheless, for the correct solution of the basic questions of life and death, only the guidance of a trustworthy verified Original - the Bible of Christians is needed.

Supporters of pagan religions, such as the Hindus, say that their scriptures are true because they are the oldest. For Christians, this is, of course, a weak argument, because Satan, the opponent of true faith in God, is also a very ancient person, and could well have been the author of very ancient, alternative to the Divine Bible, scriptures. But in fact, it turns out that, indeed, the most ancient Book is also the most true! This is the Bible! But it is true not because it is older than other books, but because it traces its origin from God Himself - the Creator of everything visible and invisible. To know it and live by it means going to the true God and to the eternal life given by Him through Jesus Christ!

26.02.2012

Despite the fact that the Bible is one of the oldest books in existence, in fact, no one has seen the really old editions of it before. And two years ago, during a raid in southern Turkey, a 1,500-year-old book was taken from the smugglers. The book is written in Aramaic, that is, the same language that Jesus once spoke. This is the real value, not the refrigerators and televisions that modern people are chasing!

Historians were delighted. Now the book is under reconstruction, it was provided for this only recently, and before it was in court. The Vatican asked to study the book in more detail and try to translate it into a language accessible to modern society. The cost of the book, which pages are made of real leather, is about 40 million Turkish lira. The cost of even photocopied pages is very high - about 3 million.

It is possible that this book is a copy of the famous Gospel of Barnabas, which at one time was prohibited. The oldest copies of it were made in the sixteenth century, that is, they are almost three times newer than this book.

The Gospel of Barnabas is close to the Muslim concept of the son of God, but at the same time it contradicts the modern canons presented in the New Testament.

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The Bible is rightfully considered one of the oldest and most influential literary creations of mankind. Its texts are actively studied all over the world, but despite this, no scientist can say with certainty the age of this book.

The Bible and world religions

Some of the texts that make up the Bible are sacred not only to Christianity, but also to many other Abrahamic religions, such as Islam, Judaism, and lesser known denominations such as Rastafarianism and Karaimism. Adherents of these religions make up just over half of the world's population.

Of course, each religion has its own Scripture and believes in it in its own way, but the oldest stories of the Old Testament form the backbone of all Abrahamic religions.

Influence of the Bible

It should be noted separately that no other book has been able to achieve such popularity and have such an impact on the social development of mankind over generations and millennia, as the Bible. In fact, most of the history of our era was determined by the Bible (Tanakh, Koran) and the attitude of man towards it.

There is a lot of controversy about where the first biblical scriptures and various books came from, but what can science tell us about their age?

Various options

First, it is important to remember that there is no single Bible as such today. Throughout history, there have been a huge number of copies, editions and translations. Secondly, different religions use different scriptures for their own purposes and may interpret them ambiguously by adding or abbreviating texts.

The basis for Christian Scripture was the Vulgate Bible, translated from Greek into Latin in the fourth century. The Bible was first printed in 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg, the famous inventor of the printing press. However, the oldest scriptures are considered to be the Hebrew Bible, or Tanach.

First manuscripts

The oldest manuscripts containing biblical texts are the Silver Scrolls, found in Jerusalem in 1979. They date back to the seventh century BC and contain the oldest known quotations from the Pentateuch.

In second place are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from the fourth century BC to the third century AD. Thus, the age of the primary sources of the biblical texts known to us is 2,700 years. But this does not mean that their age is the same as the age of Scripture itself. The earliest stories of the Old Testament were passed down by word of mouth, and Genesis was first recorded around 1450 BC. It turns out that the biblical records are about three and a half thousand years old.

Chapter three

History of the Old Testament

CHAPTER THREE. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FIRST HUMANS. The fourth chapter of the book of Genesis begins with a short and rather clear remark that after the expulsion from paradise, the biblical “forefathers” first of all took care of leaving behind posterity. “Adam knew Eve, his wife; and she