Why the Bible is scripture. Sacred scripture

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The main source of knowledge about God and guidance in life for any Christian is the Holy Scriptures. All the books of Holy Scripture are collected in one large book - the Bible (translated from the Greek. Biblia - "books").

The book of books is called the Bible. This is the most widespread book on earth, it ranks first in the world in terms of circulation. The Bible is needed by nations speaking different languages, so by the end of 1988, it was fully or partially translated into 1907 languages. In addition, the content of the Bible is distributed in records on records and cassettes, which is necessary, for example, for the blind and illiterate.

The Bible is recognized throughout the world as the greatest monument of history and culture. However, for believers this is something incomparably greater: it is the written Revelation of God, the message of the Triune God addressed to mankind.

The Bible consists of two large parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The word "Covenant" means "a contract with God, the will of the Lord, according to which people will find salvation."

The Old (that is, the ancient, old) Testament covers the period of history before the birth of Christ, and the New Testament tells about events directly related to the mission of Christ.

Most of the books of the Old Testament were written in the 7th-3rd centuries BC, and by the beginning of the 2nd century the books of the New Testament were added to the Old Testament.

Different people participated in writing the Bible at different times. There were more than 50 such participants, and the Bible is not a collection of different teachings and stories.

St. John Chrysostom interprets the word "Bible" as a collective concept: "The Bible is many books that form one single". Common in these books is the idea of ​​the Divine salvation of mankind.

(http://www.hrono.ru/religia/pravoslav/sv_pisanie.html)

Holy Scripture or Bible is a collection of books written by the prophets and apostles, we believe, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The word “Bible” (ta biblia) is Greek, meaning “books”.

The main theme of the Holy Scriptures is the salvation of mankind by the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Old Testament speaks of salvation in the form of types and prophecies about the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. The New Testament sets forth the very realization of our salvation through the incarnation, life and teaching of the God-man, sealed by His death on the cross and resurrection. According to the time of their writing, the sacred books are divided into Old Testament and New Testament. Of these, the first contain what the Lord revealed to people through the divinely inspired prophets before the coming of the Savior to earth; and the second is what the Lord the Savior Himself and His apostles discovered and taught on earth.

The Old Testament books were originally written in Hebrew. The later books of the time of the Babylonian captivity already have many Assyrian and Babylonian words and phrases. And the books written during the Greek rule (non-canonical books) are written in Greek, while the 3rd book of Ezra is in Latin.

The Old Testament Scripture contains the following books:

The books of the prophet Moses or Torah (containing the foundations of the Old Testament faith): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

Historical books: the book of Joshua, the book of Judges, the book of Ruth, the books of Kings: 1, 2, 3 and 4, the books of Chronicles: 1 and 2, the first book of Ezra, the book of Nehemiah, The second book of Esther.

Teaching (edifying content): the book of Job, the Psalter, the book of Solomon's parables, the book of Ecclesiastes, the book of the Song of Songs.

Prophetic (books of predominantly prophetic content): the book of the prophet Isaiah, the book of the prophet Jeremiah, the book of the prophet Ezekiel, the book of the prophet Daniel, Twelve books of the minor prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

The Book of the Bible is Scripture, a collection of books written by God's people, inspired by the Holy Spirit, inspired by God. The Bible is divided into two main sections - Old and New Testaments.

In total, the Old Testament consists of 39 books written in Hebrew, at different times, by different people.

The New Testament consists of 27 books written in Greek. These are 4 Gospels: the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of John. And also the New Testament includes the Acts of the Apostles, 21 Apostolic Epistles and the Apocalypse. The teachings of the holy apostles, prophets and teachers of the church contain not only wisdom, but we have been given the truth, which was given to us by the Lord God Himself. This truth lies at the foundation of all life, both ours and those of the people who lived in those days. Modern preachers, theologians and pastors of the Church convey to us the interpretation of the Bible, the interpretation of Holy Scripture, that which was revealed by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth was born much later than the Old Testament was written. The stories about him were first transmitted orally, later, the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote 4 Gospels. All the main events in the life of Jesus Christ, his birth in Bethlehem, his life, miracles and crucifixion are described in the Gospels by evangelists. All 4 Gospels are based on the same oral traditions about the life of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul and his disciples wrote letters, many of which were included in the collection of books of the New Testament. The earliest complete copy of the New Testament dates back to AD 300. At the same time, the New Testament was translated into several languages, including Latin and Syriac.

The first copies of the Bible were written in Latin in beautiful, graceful handwriting. Later, the pages of the Old and New Testaments began to be decorated with patterns, flowers and small figures.

Over time, the languages ​​of peoples and nationalities change. The exposition of the Bible of the Old and New Testaments is also changing. The Modern Bible is written in a modern language that we understand, but it has not lost its main content.

The Holy Scriptures are books written by the Prophets and Apostles with the help of the Holy Spirit of God, revealing to them the secrets of the future tense. These books are called the Bible.

The Bible is a historically established collection of books that spans — by Biblical reckoning — an age of about five and a half thousand years. As a literary work, it has been collected for about two thousand years.

It is divided by volume into two unequal parts: the large one - the old, that is, the Old Testament, and the later - the New Testament.

The history of the Old Testament has been preparing people for the coming of Christ for about two thousand years. The New Testament covers the earthly period of the life of the God-man Jesus Christ and his closest followers. For us Christians, of course, the story of the New Testament is more important.

The Bible books are divided into four parts.

1) The first of them speaks of the law left by God to the people through the prophet Moses. These commandments are dedicated to the rules of life and faith.

2) The second part is historical, it describes all the events that have passed over 1100 years - up to the II century. ad.

3) The third part of the books includes moral and edifying ones. They are based on instructive stories from the lives of people famous for certain deeds or a special way of thinking and behavior.

It should be noted that of all the Old Testament books, the Psalter was the main one for the formation of our Russian worldview. This book was educational - in the pre-Petrine era, all Russian children learned to read and write from it.

4) The fourth part of the books is prophetic books. Prophetic texts are not just reading, but revelation - very important for the life of each of us, since our inner world is constantly in motion, striving to achieve the primordial beauty of the human soul.

The story of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ and the essence of his teaching is contained in the second part of the Bible - the New Testament. The New Testament consists of 27 books. These are, first of all, the four Gospels - a story about the life and three and a half years of the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then - the books that tell about His disciples - the books of the Acts of the Apostles, as well as the books of His disciples themselves - the Epistles of the Apostles, and, finally, the book of the Apocalypse, which tells about the final destinies of the world.

The moral law contained in the New Testament is stricter than that of the Old Testament. Here not only sinful deeds are condemned, but also thoughts. The goal of every person is to eradicate evil in himself. Having conquered evil, man conquers death.

The main thing in the Christian doctrine is the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, who conquered death and opened the way for all mankind to eternal life. It is this joyous sense of liberation that permeates the New Testament narratives. The word "Gospel" itself is translated from Greek as "Good News".

The Old Testament is an ancient union of God with man, in which God promised people a Divine Savior and for many centuries prepared them to receive Him.

The New Testament is that God really gave people a Divine Savior, in the person of His Only Begotten Son, who descended from heaven and incarnated from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and suffered and was crucified for us, was buried and Risen on the third day according to the Scriptures.

(http://zakonbozhiy.ru/Zakon_Bozhij/Chast_1_O_vere_i_zhizni_hristianskoj/SvJaschennoe_Pisanie_BibliJa/)

FROM VASILIEV:

The entire history and theory of Judaism, so closely related to the life and destinies of the ancient Jews, are reflected in the Bible, in its Old Testament. Although the Bible, as the sum of sacred books, began to be completed at the turn of the 11-1 millennia BC. NS. (the oldest parts of it date back to the XIV-XIII centuries, and the first records - about the 9th century BC), the main part of the texts and, apparently, the edition of the general collection dates from the period of the Second Temple. The Babylonian captivity gave a powerful impetus to the work of writing these books: the priests who had been taken away from Jerusalem had no more worries about maintaining the temple ”and were forced to concentrate their efforts on rewriting and editing the scrolls, on compiling new texts. After returning from captivity, this work was continued and, ultimately, completed.

The Old Testament part of the Bible (most of it) consists of a number of books. First, it is the famous Pentateuch ascribed to Moses. The first book (Genesis) tells about the creation of the world, about Adam and Eve, the Flood and the first Hebrew patriarchs, and finally about Joseph and the Egyptian captivity. Book two ("Exodus") tells about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, about Moses and his commandments, about the beginning of the organization of the cult of Yahweh. The third ("Leviticus") is a collection of religious dogmas, rules, rituals. The fourth ("Numbers") and the fifth ("Deuteronomy") are devoted to the history of the Jews after the Egyptian captivity. The Pentateuch (in Hebrew - Torah) was the most revered part of the Old Testament, and later it was the interpretation of the Torah that gave rise to the multivolume Talmud and formed the basis of the activities of rabbis in all Jewish communities of the world.

After the Pentateuch, the Bible contains the books of the judges and kings of Israel, the books of the prophets and several other writings - a collection of psalms of David (Psalter), the Song of Solomon, Proverbs of Solomon, etc. The value of these books is different, sometimes their fame and popularity are incomparable. However, they were all considered sacred and studied by many hundreds of millions of people, tens of generations of believers, moreover, not only Jews, but also Christians.

The Bible is, first of all, a church book that fostered in readers a blind faith in the omnipotence of God, in his omnipotence, in the miracles he performed, etc. Old Testament texts taught the Jews humility before the will of Yahweh, obedience to him, as well as to the priests and prophets speaking on his behalf ... However, the content of the Bible is far from being exhausted by this. In her texts, there are a lot of deep thoughts about the universe and the fundamental principles of being, about relationships between people, about moral norms, social values, etc., which is usually found in every sacred book that claims to expound the essence of a particular doctrine.

AND dr.) - this name means books written by the Spirit of God through people sanctified by God, called prophets and apostles and usually called the Bible. priest Scripture was given so that the revelation of God would be preserved more accurately and unchanged. V priest In the Scriptures, we read the words of the prophets and apostles exactly as we would have lived with them, heard them, despite the fact that the sacred books were written several centuries and millennia before our time. priest books were written at different times, some before R.Kh., others after R.Kh., the former are called the books of the Old Testament, the latter are the books N.Z. priest books of the Old Testament, according to the testimony of Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius the Great and John Damascene - 22, in relation to how these Jews think in their original language. The calculus of the Jews is especially noteworthy because, as he says ap. Paul, they are entrusted with the word of God(Rom. 3: 2) and the New Testament Christian Church accepted the Old Testament sacred books from the Old Testament Church. St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Athanasius the Great Old Testament priest books are numbered in the following way:

1) The Book of Genesis.

4) Book Num.

5) Deuteronomy.

6) The Book of Joshua.

7) The Book of Judges and with it, as it were, an addition, the Book of Ruth.

8) The first and second books of Kings, as two parts of one book.

9) The third and fourth books of Kings.

10) The first and second books of Chronicles.

11) The Book of Ezra is the first, and the second is his, or according to Greek inscription, the book of Nehemiah.

12) Esther.

13) Book of Job.

14) Psalter.

15) Proverbs of Solomon.

16) Ecclesiastes, his.

17) Song of Songs, his.

18) Book NS. Isaiah.

19) Jeremiah.

20) Ezekiel.

21) Daniel.

22) Twelve prophets, namely: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

In the designated reckoning of the Old Testament books, the following are not mentioned: Lamentations of Jeremiah, book NS. Baruch, the book of Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, the second and third books of Ezra, three books of Maccabees and some narratives and passages attached to the canonical books, such as: Prayer of Manasseh, joined at the end of 2 Chronicles, prayer of three youths, in the book of Daniel (Dan.3: 25, 91), the story of Susanna ( Dan. 8), about Vila and the Dragon ( Dan. 14) are not mentioned precisely because they are not in the Hebrew language. However, the Church Fathers used these books, quoted many passages from them, and, according to the testimony of Athanasius the Great, they were appointed by the Fathers to be read by those entering the Church. In order to define separately the content priest Old Testament books, they can be divided into the following four categories:

a) Legislative, constituting the main foundation of the Old Testament, namely the five books written by Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Num. Deuteronomy.

b) Historical containing mainly the history of piety, such as books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

v) Teaching containing the doctrine of piety, such as: the book of Job, the Psalter and the books of Solomon,

G) Prophetic containing prophecies about the future, and especially about Jesus Christ, such as the books of the great prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and twelve other lesser ones.

Books N.Z. twenty seven. Legislative between them, those. predominantly constituting the basis of the New Testament, in all justice can be called the Gospel, which consists of four books of the Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Between the New Testament books there is also historical, namely - the book of Acts St. Apostles. Teaching books N.Z. twenty-one, namely: seven conciliar epistles, one ap. James, two Peter's, three John's and one Judas and fourteen epistles ap. Paul: to the Romans, to the Corinthians two, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians two, to Timothy two, to Titus, to Philemon and to the Hebrews. Prophetic book among books N.Z. serves the apocalypse or revelation St. John the Evangelist. (On the content of the aforementioned books cm. under separate titles for each book). The oldest of the book translations priest Scripture is a translation of the Old Testament LXX interpreters. It is composed from Hebrew into Greek in Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus 270 years before R.Kh. Slavic translation of the Bible compiled St. equalap. Cyril and Methodius, enlighteners of the Slavs in the 9th century, with Greek translation LXX... The beginning of the translation of the Bible into the generally understandable Russian language was laid at the beginning of this century by members of the Russian Bible Society, but in 61 and 62 a revised N.Z. and then began the translation of the Old Testament books, which was completed in 1875.

Bible. Old and New Testaments. Synoidal translation. Bible Encyclopedia.... arch. Nikifor. 1891.

See what "Holy Scripture" is in other dictionaries:

See Scripture ... Brockhaus Bible Encyclopedia

SACRED SCRIPTURE- books containing the fundamental ideas of a particular religion and perceived by believers as given from above through revelation. Almost each of the modern religions has its own Holy Scriptures: Buddhism - Tripitaka, Judaism - Tinakh, ... ... Eurasian wisdom from A to Z. Explanatory dictionary

Sacred scripture- - see the Bible, Holy Scripture, Canon ... Complete Orthodox Theological Encyclopedic Dictionary

SACRED SCRIPTURE- religion. books written according to religions. creed by the inspiration of God himself. Each religion has its own P. s., For example. in Tripitaka Buddhism, Torah in Judaism, Bible in Christianity, Koran in Islam, etc. All of them were created in different historical. condition ... ... Atheistic Dictionary

Holy Scripture- (Bible) title of books written by the Spirit of God through sanctified people - apostles and prophets. People need it in order to preserve God's Revelation for the descendants in an unchanged form. Therefore, when we read the books of the Sacred ... ... Orthodox encyclopedia

In theistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), a set of forms (oral tradition, texts, worship), in which the content of faith is transmitted, which has its source in Revelation; the most important part of the Holy Tradition, the Holy Scriptures. ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Scriptures are the foundational texts of any religion, which, as a rule, are recognized as divine in origin. Among the scriptures are Veda (Hinduism), Tanakh (Judaism), Bible (Christianity), Koran (Islam), Zend Avesta ... ... Wikipedia

SACRED SCRIPTURE, SACRED BOOKS- see the Holy Scripture ... Atheistic Dictionary

New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures Author: “All Scripture Inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16) Original Language: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Ancient ... Wikipedia

New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures Hardcover Book Cover

Books

• Scripture in 234 illustrations by Gustave Dore,. Since ancient times, as soon as Christianity began to spread, the first attempts to present in artistic images the most important moments from sacred history appeared. Already in the catacombs ...

Holy Scripture belongs to those books that mankind has always read and will continue to read. In addition, among these books it occupies a very special place in its exceptional influence on the religious and cultural life of innumerable human generations, both past and present, and therefore the future. For believers, it is the word of God addressed to the world. Therefore, it is incessantly read by all those seeking to get in touch with the Divine light, and everyone who wants to deepen their religious knowledge ponders over it. But at the same time, those who do not try to penetrate into the divine content of Holy Scripture continue to turn to him and are content with its outer, human shell. The language of Scripture continues to appeal to poets, and its characters, images, and descriptions continue to inspire artists and writers to this day. At the moment, scientists and philosophers have turned their attention to the Holy Scriptures. It is with regard to the Holy Scriptures that those tormenting questions about the relationship between religious and scientific contemplation arise with the greatest acuteness, which sooner or later every thinking person must face. Therefore, Holy Scripture, which has always been and continues to be a modern book, has even turned out to be a topical book in our era of upheavals and all kinds of searches.

But here we have to note that, despite all its significance, the Holy Scriptures in our era of decline in church culture have become less read and disseminated among wide circles of believers. This is especially true of us Orthodox Russian people. Of course, we did not stop trying to live according to the Holy Scriptures, but on rare occasions we live directly by them. More often than not, we are content to listen to Holy Scripture in the temple and almost never turn to the most sacred text in home reading. Nevertheless, the latter continues to be that inexhaustible treasure, always accessible to everyone, from which any believer can incessantly draw for himself the innumerable spiritual riches necessary for his growth in knowledge of God, in wisdom and strength. Therefore, the Orthodox Church persistently invites everyone to read Holy Scripture and meditate on it, ever more perfectly comprehending the revealed truths contained in it.

This essay, without pretending to be complete, is intended to remind the Russian reader what, according to the teaching of the Church of Christ, Holy Scripture is, and also to outline how the perplexed questions raised around Holy Scripture in our time are resolved for the believer, and to show what are those spiritual benefits that the Christian reading and meditation on the Holy Scriptures gives.

I. Holy Scripture, its origin, nature and meaning

On the titles of Holy Scripture... The ecclesiastical view of the origin, nature and meaning of Holy Scripture is revealed primarily in the names by which both in the Church and in the world it is customary to call this book. Name Sacred, or Divine Scripture taken from the Holy Scriptures itself, which more than once applies it to itself. Thus, the Apostle Paul writes to his disciple Timothy: “From childhood you know the scriptures that can make you wise for salvation by faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is divinely inspired and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that God's man may be perfect, prepared for every good work ”(). This name, like these words of the Apostle Paul, explaining the meaning of Holy Scripture for every believer in Christ, emphasize that Holy Scripture as Divine is opposed to all purely human scriptures, and that it happens, if not directly from God, then through the sending of a special gift, inspiration from above, that is, inspiration. It is he who makes Scripture “useful for teaching, reproof and correction,” since thanks to him the Scripture does not contain any falsehood or error, but testifies only to the immutable Divine truth. This gift makes everyone who reads Scripture more and more perfect in righteousness and faith, turning him into a man of God, or, as one might say, sanctifying his ... Next to this first name is another name of the Holy Scriptures: Bible... It is not found in Scripture itself, but arose from church usage. It comes from the Greek word bi blia, which was at first neuter, being the plural of the term meaning 'book'. Subsequently, it turned into a singular feminine word, began to be written with a capital letter and applied exclusively to Holy Scripture, becoming its kind of proper name: Bible... In this capacity, it has passed into all languages ​​of the world. It wants to show that Holy Scripture is a book par excellence, that is, it surpasses in its value all other books due to its Divine origin and content. At the same time, it also emphasizes its essential unity: despite the fact that it includes numerous books of the most varied nature and content, written either in prose or in verse, representing either history, or collections of laws, or sermons, or lyrics , then even private correspondence, it, nevertheless, is a single whole due to the fact that all the heterogeneous elements included in its composition contain the disclosure of the same basic truth: the truth about God, revealed in the world throughout its history and building our salvation ... There is also a third name for Holy Scripture as a Divine book: this name - Covenant... Like the first name, it is taken from Scripture itself. It is a translation of the Greek word diathe ke, which was transmitted in Alexandria in the 2nd century BC in the translation of the Hebrew holy books into Greek, the Hebrew word take... The people of Israel firmly believed that several times during their history God had deliberately appeared to him and assumed various obligations in relation to him, such as multiplying him, protecting him, granting him a special position among the nations and a special blessing. In turn, Israel promised to be faithful to God and keep His commandments. That's why take means primarily ‘contract, treaty, union’. But since the promises of God were directed to the future, and Israel was to inherit the benefits associated with them, the Greek translators in the II century BC translated this term as diaphics- testament, or testament. This last word took on an even more definite and precise meaning after the Apostle Paul, referring to the death of the Lord on the Cross, pointed out that it was the death of the Divine Testator who revealed to the children of God the right to an eternal inheritance ... Based on the prophet Jeremiah and the Apostle Paul, the Church divides Bible on the Old and New Testaments, based on the writing of the sacred books included in it before or after the coming of Christ. But applying to Scripture as to a book the title Covenant The Church reminds us that this book, on the one hand, contains a story about how the promises given by God to man were communicated and how they received their fulfillment, and on the other hand, it indicates the conditions for our inheritance of the promised goods. This is the view of the Church on the origin, nature and content of Holy Scripture, which is revealed in the names with which she designates it. Why does the Holy Scripture exist and why and how was it given to us?

About the origin of Holy Scripture... Scripture arose for the reason that God, having created the world, does not leave it, but provides for it, participates in its history and arranges its salvation. At the same time, God, relating to the world as a loving Father to His children, does not keep Himself away from man, and man in ignorance of Himself, but constantly gives man the knowledge of God: He reveals Himself to him, and that which constitutes the subject of His divine will. This is what is commonly called Divine Revelation. And since God is revealed to man, then the emergence of Holy Scripture also becomes completely inevitable. For often, even when God speaks to one person or to one group of people, He actually speaks to all human generations and speaks for all time. Go and “lift up to the children of Israel,” God says to Moses on Mount Sinai (). “Go, teach all the nations” (), says the Lord Jesus Christ, sending the Apostles to preach to the world. And since God wished to turn some of the words of His Revelation to all people, in order for these words to be preserved and transmitted in the best possible way, He providentially made them the subject of a special inspired writing, which is the Holy Scripture. But before talking about what the gift of inspiration given to the authors of sacred books carries with it and what it gives to their scriptures, let us ask ourselves how we know that among the countless books that exist in the world, only those that have become part of the Bible, should be considered divinely inspired? What makes us believers see Holy Scripture in them?

We could, of course, here refer to the entirely exclusive role and influence of the Bible in history. We could point to the power of the Holy Scriptures on human hearts. But is this enough and is it always convincing? We know from experience that often, even on ourselves, other books have a greater influence or effect than Scripture. What should cause us ordinary believers to accept the entire Bible as a collection of inspired books? There can be only one answer: this is the testimony of the entire Church. The Church is the Body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit (see). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, guiding in all truth (see), by virtue of which the Church that received Him is the house of God, the pillar and confirmation of truth (). She was given by the Spirit of God to judge the truth and doctrinal benefits of religious books. Some books were rejected by the Church as containing false ideas about God and about His actions in the world, others were recognized by her as useful, but only edifying, while others, very few, were withheld by her as inspired, because she saw that these books contain the truth entrusted to her in all its purity and completeness, that is, without any admixture of error or falsehood. The Church included these books in the so-called canon Holy Scripture. "Canon" in Greek means a yardstick, pattern, rule, law or regulation, binding on everyone. This word is used to denote a set of books of Holy Scripture, since the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, specially highlighted these books in a completely separate collection, which she approved and offered to believers as books that contain an example of true faith and piety, suitable for all times. You cannot add new books to the canon of Holy Scripture, and you cannot subtract anything from it either, and all this is based on the voice of the Holy Tradition of the Church, which has passed its final judgment on the canon. We know the history of the entry into the canon of some books of Holy Scripture, we know that sometimes this “canonization” of individual books was both lengthy and complex. But this was because the Church sometimes did not immediately realize and reveal the truth entrusted to her by God. The very fact of the history of the canon is a vivid confirmation of the testimony of Holy Scripture by Holy Tradition, that is, by the entire teaching Church. The truth of the Church's testimony about the Bible and its content is indirectly confirmed by the undeniable influence of the Bible on culture and its impact on individual human hearts. But this same testimony from the Church is a guarantee that the Bible can, both in the past and in the future, have an impact and influence on the life of every individual believer, even if the latter does not always feel it. This influence and influence grows and becomes stronger as the believer enters into the fullness of church truth.

Place of Holy Scripture as a Source of Knowledge of God... This connection between Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture shows the place in the Church of Holy Scripture as a source of knowledge of God. It is not the first source of knowledge about God, either chronologically (for before the existence of any Scripture, God revealed himself to Abraham, and the Apostles carried Christ's preaching into the world before the compilation of the Gospels and Epistles), nor logically (for the Church, led by the Holy Spirit, establishes the canon of Holy Scripture and affirms his). This reveals the entire inconsistency of Protestants and sectarians who reject the authority of the Church and her tradition and are affirmed on one Scripture, although it is attested by the very church authority that they reject. Holy Scripture is neither the only nor the self-sufficient source of knowledge of God. The sacred Tradition of the Church is her living knowledge of God, her incessant entry into Truth under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, expressed in the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, in the creations of the great fathers and teachers of the Church, in liturgical successions. It at the same time testifies to the Holy Scriptures and gives a correct understanding of it. Therefore, we can say that Holy Scripture is one of the monuments of Holy Tradition. Nevertheless, this is its most important monument due to the gift of inspiration, which the authors of the sacred books were honored with. What is this gift?

On the nature of Scripture... We can deduce the essential content of the gift of inspiration from the view of the Holy Scriptures themselves on their authors. This view is most clearly expressed in, where the Apostle Peter, speaking of the word contained in Scripture, identifies it with prophecy: “for the prophecy was never uttered according to the will of man, but the holy men of God spoke it, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (v. 21). The Old Testament Church held the same view of the authors of the sacred books as of the prophets. Until now, the Jews include our so-called historical books, that is, the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2, 3 and 4 Kings in the category of the writings of the "early prophets", which in the Hebrew Bible exist along with the writings of the "later prophets", that is books inscribed with the names of the four great and twelve minor prophets, or “prophetic books,” according to the terminology accepted in the Christian Church. The same view of the Old Testament Church was reflected in the words of Christ, dividing Holy Scripture into law, prophets and Psalms (see), as well as directly identifying all of Scripture with the sayings of the prophets (see). What, then, are the prophets with whom the ancient tradition so persistently identifies the authors of the holy books, and what conclusions follow from this regarding the nature of Holy Scripture?

A prophet, according to the very same Scripture, is a person to whom the Divine plans for the world become accessible by the Spirit of God in order to testify about them before people and proclaim the will of God to the latter. The prophets learned these plans through visions, through insights, but most often through contemplation of the actions of God, revealed in the events of God-directed history. But in all these cases, they were directly initiated into the Divine plans and received the power to be their heralds. From this it follows that all the sacred authors, like the prophets, by the will of God directly contemplated the Divine hidden secrets in order to tell them to the world. And the writing of books by them is the same prophetic preaching, the same testimony of Divine plans before people. It does not matter what facts or events inspired writers or, what is the same, prophets wrote about: about the present, about the past or about the future. It is only important that the Holy Spirit, Who is the Creator of all history, initiated them into its innermost meaning. Hence it becomes quite clear that the authors of historical books, who wrote in the 6th or 5th century BC about the sacred past of ancient Israel, turned out to be the same prophets as those non-book prophets Gad, Nathan, Ahijah, etc., through whom God once revealed before people the meaning of the events of this past. Likewise, the disciples and followers of the great prophets, the inspired editors of some prophetic books (and we clearly see from the very sacred text that, for example, the book of the prophet Jeremiah is far from all written by the prophet himself) are themselves the same prophets: the Spirit of God initiated them into those the same secrets that were revealed to their teachers in order to continue their prophetic work, at least through the written recording of their sermon. Moving on to the New Testament, we must say that the sacred writers who did not recognize Christ during His earthly life, nevertheless, were later directly initiated by the Holy Spirit into the mysteries revealed in Christ. We have absolutely clear and direct testimony of the Apostle Paul about this (see;; etc.). This is undoubtedly a prophetic phenomenon. Therefore, summing up everything that has been said about the nature of God-inspired Scripture as a kind of prophetic preaching, we must conclude that if Scripture turns out to be the most authoritative source of doctrine in the Church, then this is explained by the fact that it is a record of direct revelation of Divine truths that the compilers of Scripture contemplated in The Holy Spirit, and the same Spirit bore witness to the authenticity of their contemplations.

The doctrinal authority of Holy Scripture in the Church... So, if Holy Scripture through its dependence on Holy Tradition does not constitute the only and self-sufficient source of our knowledge of God and about God, then it is, nevertheless, the only source of doctrine, about which we can confidently say that it is nothing sins against the fullness of the Divine Truth available to us. It is it that in the greatest completeness and perfection shows the image of the saving action of God in the world. Therefore, theology, which tries to base its conclusions on the most solid authorities, referring also to Holy Tradition, constantly tests itself with the help of Scripture. In this, it only follows the above instruction of the Apostle Paul: all Scripture is divinely inspired and useful for teaching, for conviction (that is, for irrefutable proof) and for correction (). Moreover, it can be shown that all church prayers and all liturgical texts seem to be entirely woven from the words and sayings of Holy Scripture, since in divine services the Church wants to express the truths of Revelation in the same words in which they were captured by the inspired witnesses who directly contemplated them. ... And, finally, for the same reason, the Church always strives to clothe her confessions of faith and her dogmatic definitions in words and expressions of Holy Scripture.Thus, our Niceotzaregrad creed was made up of words that all but one were borrowed from Holy Scripture. Only one of his words is not in the Holy Scriptures: Consubstantial, which is why disputes arose in the Church after the First Ecumenical Council, which lasted for almost a century. These disputes ended when, as a result of the exploits and labors of the great Fathers of the Church, the saints, and, for everyone, it became obvious that, despite the fact that this word is not found in Scripture, nevertheless it corresponds to his entire teaching about the pre-eternal relationship of God Father and God the Son and about the fulfillment by God of our salvation in Christ.

So, thanks to the providential inspired recording of Divine truths revealed to the world, the Church of Christ has always and all available infallible source of knowledge of God. The authority of Scripture as the book of prophets is the authority of direct, non-false witness. However, modernity has raised a number of doubts and disputes around this source of knowledge of God. We now turn to their consideration.

II. Holy Scripture and the perplexity arising about it

About the possibility of the very fact of Holy Scripture. The first and main perplexity can be caused by the very fact of the existence of inspired Scripture. How is such a Scripture possible? We saw above that the existence of Holy Scripture is connected with the fact that God reveals himself and acts in the world. Therefore, doubts about the possibility of the fact of Holy Scripture are ultimately reduced to doubts about the existence of God and about the truth of statements about God as the Creator, Provider and Savior. To prove the possibility and truth of the Scriptures is to prove the truth of all these statements. In this area, evidence from reason does not prove, but the decisive one is the experience of faith, which, like any experience, is given the power of direct vision. And in this respect, modern mankind, however strange it may seem at first glance, finds itself in more and more favorable conditions. For if the nineteenth century was a century of doubts and a departure from faith, if the beginning of the twentieth century was an era of intensified search for a world outlook, then our era is more and more defined as an era of conscious choice between God and the struggle with Him. Among those historical catastrophes and upheavals that have occurred in our days, humanity has felt, if not yet fully realized, that God truly acts in the world, and that this is the most vital truth. This is evident at least from the fact that among people who are thoughtful, knowledgeable and generally trying to do something big and significant in this world, fewer and fewer people remain lukewarm and indifferent to God. Those who reject Him do this not for doctrinal reasons, but only because they are fighting with Him because of the place He occupies in the human heart, and those who accept Him accept Him not because of inherited habits and attitudes, but because they are looking for living fellowship. with him. And undoubtedly, many of those who are destined to read these lines, many Orthodox Russian people who have gone through various trials, dangers and troubles can confirm that they are really looking for communication with the One whom they have known from their personal experience as the true revealing in their lives. A Savior from sin and a Deliverer from all kinds of troubles, sorrows and trials. Therefore, the Holy Scriptures should be read with the firm intention to find through this reading the Living God, who acts in the world created by Him for the salvation of His creation. And anyone who begins to read Scripture in order to meet God and know Him in a more perfect way will never be unrewarded for his efforts. Sooner or later, he himself will be convinced from personal experience of the truth of the testimony of Holy Scripture about the divine action that is revealed in the world: he will perfectly understand that the salvific and providential influence of God on the world is not subject to any human or natural laws, and therefore the biblical testimony about him is not in any way may be the fruit of human inventions, but there is a matter of direct revelation from above. This will constitute the best and most sure proof that in the Bible we are dealing with genuine Divine Scripture.

Let us now turn to two questions that sometimes confuse believers: the first concerns the relationship between the Bible and science, and the second - the very content of the Bible.

The relationship between the Bible and science... Each of us has repeatedly heard statements according to which the facts given in the Bible do not correspond to the data and conclusions of modern science. In defense of the Bible, one can, of course, point to the temporary nature of scientific conclusions and theories, to the latest discoveries in various scientific fields, which seem to confirm some biblical facts. But first of all, one must bear in mind that the biblical testimony is a religious testimony: its subject is God and His action in the world. Science, on the other hand, explores the world itself. Of course, there is no doubt that scientific knowledge and scientific discoveries are from God, in the sense that He providentially advances them further and further. But all this is not religious knowledge, which has God Himself as its subject and is possible only in the order of revelation. Religious and scientific knowledge belong to completely different areas. They have nowhere to meet and therefore they simply have no opportunity to contradict each other. Therefore, the discrepancies between the Bible and science are perceived discrepancies.

This is true above all in the Bible's relationship to the natural sciences. The latter have as their subject nature, that is, the physical world. Revelation concerns the relationship of the world with God, that is, that which is outside the physical world: its invisible basis, its origin and its final destination. All this is not subject to scientific experience and, as such, constitutes the field of metaphysics, that is, a philosophical discipline that asks about what is outside the natural world. But philosophy only asks about this area, while religion has a Revelation about it. The revelation here was given by God because for his eternal salvation man needs to know where he came from and where he was intended. This revelation is embodied in the Bible and therefore the latter, according to the apt words of the metropolitan (XIX century), speaks not about how heaven is arranged, but about how a person should ascend it. And if we turn to what expresses the main view of the Bible on the world and on man, then we will immediately be convinced that it is in no way subject to the judgment of natural science and, therefore, cannot contradict it. This is how the biblical view of the world and of man is defined: 1) the world and man are the creation of God, and man was created in the image and likeness of God; 2) the world and man, due to the ancestral fall into sin, are in an inappropriate, fallen state: they are subject to sin and death and therefore need salvation; 3) this salvation was given in Christ, and the power of Christ is already at work in the world, but will be revealed in all its fullness only in the life of the century to come. Natural science cannot make any judgments about the creation of the world and man, for it studies only the substance of which the already existing natural world and the human body are composed, and the metaphysical reason why this substance began to exist in time is simply inaccessible to its experience and thus not included in the area of ​​her research. Of course, the question may arise of how the days of creation should be understood, but no matter how we understand them, the very truth about God as the Creator of everything can neither be confirmed by natural scientific experience, nor refuted by it. It is also obvious that the truths about the image of God in man, about the Fall, about the impending transformation of the world are not subject to verification, for all this is not the realm of the “visible” world, which is cognized with the help of the five senses. In essence, natural science has for its lot only a very narrow sector of reality: the laws of world matter in its current state. All the rest, that is, precisely the area of ​​philosophy and religious revelation, is beyond his jurisdiction, because it is inaccessible. True, sometimes the invisible breaks into the visible, and the Bible insists on the fact of a miracle. A miracle for her lies in the abolition of the world's natural laws. She views a miracle precisely as a manifestation of the action of God the Savior in the world. It is known that science is ready to stop before a miracle and establish the facts of violation of natural laws. However, she claims that, despite the impossibility of explaining them in her present state, she hopes to find an explanation for them in the future. She, of course, will be able, through new discoveries, to multiply the number of reasons and circumstances known to the mind, the combination of which caused this or that miracle, but the invisible First Cause is forever hidden from her field of vision and therefore will always be cognizable only in the order of religious revelation. So, there can be and there is no conflict between the Bible and natural science. The same has to be established in relation to the Bible and the historical sciences.

The Bible is reproached for the fact that the historical information that it gives is sometimes at odds with what we know from history. The Bible allegedly often presents historical events differently, does not say much about it, or gives facts unconfirmed by historical science. Of course, we have not yet figured out a lot in the historical past of the peoples of the ancient East, who constituted the environment in which the Bible arose. In this respect, the incessant archaeological finds in Palestine, Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia are extremely valuable, shedding new light on this past. However, it should never be overlooked that the Bible writers, as religious witnesses, tried to see mainly the religious side of history, that is, God acting through events and revealing himself in them. This explains all the so-called discrepancies between the Bible and history. Sacred writers, of course, could keep silent about facts and events or about some of their aspects that were not of religious significance. After all, it is well known how often the testimonies of different eyewitnesses of the same fact or incident do not coincide with each other, for everyone observes and judges from his own point of view, which does not coincide with the point of view of a neighbor. Therefore, it should be assumed that secular history also often did not pay attention to and did not testify to facts that were not significant for statesmen, for diplomats or for military leaders, but paramount from a religious point of view. In this respect, a classic example is how the witnesses of secular history passed by Christ and, one might say, did not notice Him. His contemporary historians and thinkers of the Greco-Roman world do not speak about Him at all, for they were in no way captured by His appearance on the far outskirts of the empire, in provincial Palestine. Information about Christ, moreover, extremely distorted, began to appear among the Greco-Roman authors only when Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire. You just have to admit in advance that in the absence of parallel historical documents in many cases the Bible can only be checked in the light of the Bible itself. Therefore, all attempts of historical science, leading to the restructuring of the traditional biblical scheme of the sequence of events, are only scientific hypotheses, and not evidence of an unshakable historical truth. The Bible is also a document of history, but only the history of the fulfillment of our salvation by God.

About the composition of the Bible (question about the Old Testament). We have come to a question that is sometimes asked even by believers - about the presence in the Bible of certain parts to which modern knowledge, divorced from doctrinal sources, often gives only archaeological significance. Since the Bible (some believe) is a document of history, like a book written in history, shouldn't some of its parts be considered as belonging exclusively to the historical past? These questions are mainly referring to the Old Testament part of the canon. Here, of course, is often the fruit of contemporary political influences and prejudices that are by no means religious in nature. But, one way or another, in circles that consider themselves churchly, even a hostile attitude towards the Old Testament was expressed. And where there is no such attitude, bewilderment about the Old Testament still prevails: why do we need the Old Testament, since Christ has come? What is its religious use when its spirit so often falls short of the spirit of the gospel? Of course, the Old Testament only in the messianic passages of some of its books reaches the New Testament heights, but, nevertheless, it is also Holy Scripture containing genuine Divine Revelation. Christ and the Apostles, as we see from the countless references to the Old Testament found in the New Testament books, continually quoted the words of the Old Testament as containing the word of God, spoken for all time. Indeed, already in the Old Testament, such primary truths as the truths about the creation of the world, about the image of God in man, about the Fall and the improper state of the natural world were revealed to mankind, which were almost without additions perceived and confirmed in the New Testament. It is the Old Testament that speaks of those promises of God which Christ fulfilled and by which the New Testament Church lives to this day and will live by them until the end of the age. In the Old Testament, God-inspired samples of repentance, supplication, and praise prayers are given, which mankind prays to this day. The Old Testament most perfectly expressed those eternal questions addressed to God about the meaning of the sufferings of the righteous in the world, over which we also ponder; true, we have now been given the answer to them through the Cross of Christ the Savior, but it is these Old Testament questions that help us to realize all the riches of Revelation that have been taught to us in Christ. We have thus come to the main reason why the Old Testament remains necessary for our salvation to this day: it brings us to Christ. The Apostle Paul, speaking about the Old Testament law and implying by it the entire religious state of the Old Testament man, defines him as a schoolmaster or teacher to Christ. It is known that the essential for salvation is not knowledge about God, which we receive by hearsay or draw from books, but knowledge of God, which is the fruit of religious experience in a living encounter with God. And only after receiving the Old Testament revelation and going through the Old Testament religious experience, as through preliminary preparation, mankind was able to recognize and meet the Christ of God as its Savior and Lord. That which constituted the path of humanity as a whole lies in the path of each individual person. Each of us must necessarily go through the Old Testament. In order for us, as the Apostles, to open our spiritual eyes, so that we really know that Christ is the Son of God and our personal Savior, it is necessary that we also go through that true knowledge of God that the patriarchs, prophets and other witnesses of God in the Old Testament. This necessity follows from the teaching of the Apostle Paul about the Old Testament as a teacher to Christ. Christ says the same, emphasizing that the great New Testament truth about the Resurrection is available only to those who listen to Moses and the prophets (see). And He directly conditions faith in Himself by faith in the words of Moses (see). It follows from this that at some point in his spiritual growth every person living in God passes through the Old Testament in an unknown way in order to pass from it to the New Testament study of God. How and when this happens is a mystery known only to God. Obviously, this transition is carried out in different ways for each individual person. But one thing is certain: the Old Testament is inevitable in the matter of our personal salvation. Therefore, the Old Testament sacred books, in which the Old Testament religious experience we need is captured for us, find their natural place in the canon of Scripture, which contains the word that God deliberately wanted to turn to all mankind through the specially chosen inspired writers-prophets by Him. How is this word perceived by believers and what does it bring them?

III. Scripture and religious life

Scripture and the prayer life of the Church... We saw above that the Church tries to base all her theological experience on the Holy Scriptures. But, in theology, the Church prays at the same time. We also noted that she also seeks to clothe her prayers in words borrowed from Scripture. Moreover, she reads Scripture itself during her services. Here it is necessary to point out that during the annual liturgical circle the Church reads the whole of the Four Gospels, the whole book of Acts and all the Epistles of the Apostles; at the same time she reads almost the entire book of Genesis and the prophet Isaiah, as well as significant passages from the rest of the Old Testament canon. As for the Psalter, this book is normally read in its entirety during each week (that is, weekly) circle as containing the inspired samples of our supplicatory, repentant and praise-praying prayers. In addition, we note that church legislation prescribes the daily preaching of the word of God in the church by the clergy. This shows that the ideal of church life also includes the incessant listening to Holy Scripture in the church and the same incessant revelation of its content in the living preaching word. But at the same time, through the lips of her teachers and pastors, the Church calls on believers to read the Holy Scriptures at home. These persistent pastoral calls, as well as the church rules about the daily preaching of the word of God, and the whole nature of the liturgical use of Holy Scripture, clearly show that the latter is of utmost importance for every believer. What can open the spirit of each of us by constant reading into the Holy Scriptures?

Holy Scripture is primarily a record of sacred history. As such, it conveys to us the facts and events through which God revealed Himself in the world created by Him and fell away from Him and brought about his salvation. It speaks of how God “many times and in many ways” spoke from ancient times in the Old Testament prophets and how He then revealed, when the due dates came, all the fullness of salvation in His Son (see). Therefore, first of all, the Holy Scripture was given to us in order to constantly revive in our consciousness everything that God has done “for us and ours for the sake of salvation”. However, constantly renewing in our memory the history of the realization of our salvation, Scripture is not limited to one reminder of the past - although sacred, but still the past. We must not forget that our religious present is based on this past. Moreover, the whole eternity that opens before us is based on it. Speaking about the salvation of the world realized in history, Holy Scripture simultaneously reveals to us our own position before God, as it was created in Christ. It testifies to us that through the atoning feat of the Lord Jesus Christ we all became children of Abraham according to the promise, a chosen people, people taken by God as an inheritance. True, Christ also filled with a new, that is, New Testament content, these Old Testament images that define our relationship to God, but basically they both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament testify to the same abiding truth: God Himself, exclusively in His own I came down into the world for the sake of a man who fell away from Him. Only after the coming of Christ is not only Israel, but none of us, in spite of our sins, is rejected before Him. And, of course, getting used to this truth, even if only purely rational, through constant reading of Holy Scripture, already instills in us the courage, hope and hope that we need to walk the path of our personal salvation.

Salvation is a gift that is not enough just to know, but which must be accepted and realized, that is, to make it a reality in life, for if the descent of God into the world and our redemption in Christ were not caused by any merit on our part, but the essence is exclusively a matter of Divine love, then our assimilation of the fruits of Christ's salvation is left to our will. God, who created us without our consent, created us free, and therefore, without our consent, he cannot make the salvation that He bestowed in Christ valid for each of us. We should therefore strive to attain righteousness through prayer and struggle with our sinfulness. This is the path of our salvation. It must first of all be found, since each human person is assigned his own path to God. But, in addition, a person, due to his weakness and his sinfulness, is often mistaken about the correct passage of the path leading to the realization of the salvation granted to him. The history of the Church knows not only heresies about God, about the God-man Christ, but also heresies about the essence and nature of salvation, as well as about the ways of acquiring it. Therefore, a person needs to have a kind of book to guide him on the path of salvation. Such a book is the same Holy Scripture, for in it, inspired by God, that is, in full compliance with the truth, the main milestones on the path to God for every human soul are attested: “May God's man be perfect, prepared for every good work” (). It is in the Scriptures that each of us finds an indication of those virtues that he must seek and achieve, working on himself and asking God for them. It is in the Scriptures that we find promises addressed to each of us about those gracious means on which we can count on for the fulfillment of our salvation. And those heroes of faith through whom God acted and built a sacred history, those whose exploits the Holy Scriptures narrate, patriarchs, prophets, righteous men, apostles, etc., remain for us living images of the passage of the path of salvation and therefore are our eternal companions in walking before God.

However, God not only gives us the correct directions in Scripture regarding the way of our salvation. He Himself, through His Providence for us, leads us along this path. He gives us grace through the sacraments of the Church, as well as in a different way, known to Him alone. Cooperating with our freedom, He Himself guides us to receive this grace. In other words, although salvation has already been given in Christ, yet its construction by God continues now, in the life of each of us. Therefore, even now, the same revelation and the same action of God continues through the events that were attested in the Scriptures. There, by the Spirit of God through sacred history, Christ was, as it were, the pre-incarnate; now the Holy Spirit enters the life of the world as a whole and of each of us separately Christ, already incarnate and having completed His saving work. But the very principle of Revelation through events or, what is the same, through history, remains the same for us. Various images and, one might say, laws of this Revelation were established and sealed by the authors of the sacred books. On their basis and by analogy with what happened in the past, we can recognize the present and even the future. At the same time, the Holy Scripture itself calls us to comprehend through the sacred past the same sacred present and sacred future. For example, the Apostle Paul, referring to the relationship between the two sons of Abraham, establishes the fact of the existence of a law in the world, according to which “as then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also now”; but, continues the Apostle, “what does the Scripture say? Drive out the slave and her son, for the slave's son will not be the heir with the free one ”(). In other words, the Apostle, on the basis of one long past fact, shows that people, free in spirit, will always be persecuted in this world, but that, despite this, the final victory belongs to them. The same Apostle Paul, asking God about the fate of Israel according to the flesh, who fell away from Him, and looking at sacred history, comprehends, on the one hand, that if God chose only Isaac and Jacob from the offspring of Abraham, then it is quite clear that He could leave in the New Testament almost the entire Jewish people (see), and that, on the other hand, if through the prophet Hosea He announced pardon to the Northern Kingdom, which had been rejected because of its sins, then it is clear that in Christ He called the Gentiles who had previously been forsaken (see. ). Considering then the action of God through all sacred history, the Apostle Paul predicts the future conversion to Christ of the same fallen Israel in the flesh and proclaims the general principle: “God has shut up all in disobedience, so that he may have mercy on all. Oh, the abyss of wealth and wisdom and knowledge of God ”(). We are all encouraged, on the basis of the same Scripture, to continue these and similar insights of the Apostle Paul and other inspired writers. Through constant reading of the Holy Scriptures, a Christian learns to understand the will of God, revealed in the events of his personal life and the life of the whole world. Holy Scripture, once compiled by the prophets and apostles in the distant historical past, turned out to be given to all Christ's mankind forever, as a tool for recognizing the times.

But that is not all. Holy Scripture can also be a tool for the ascent of a Christian person to the heights of spiritual experience. It contains a record of the word of God for transmission to all human generations. But not one verbal shell of Divine Revelation is transmitted. The most religious experience can also be transmitted, that is, that direct knowledge that the prophets - the authors of Holy Scripture - had, as initiated into the mysteries of God. The Church, as a catholic humanity of Christ, possesses a blessed catholic consciousness, in which a direct contemplation of everything that has ever been given by God to man in the order of Revelation is realized. This direct, grace-filled contemplation by the Catholic Church of the whole totality of Divine Revelation is, as we have seen, the basis of Sacred Tradition. The latter, therefore, is not, as is often believed, some kind of archive of documents, but a living, blessed memory of the Church. Thanks to the presence of this memory, the boundaries of time are erased in the consciousness of the Church; therefore, the past, the present, and the future form for her one everlasting present. By virtue of this miracle of grace-filled conciliarity, the very Divine realities that were once contemplated by all the witnesses of God, in particular the inspired compilers of the books of Holy Scripture, become directly accessible to the Church. Therefore, to the extent of his familiarization with what constitutes the mystical depth of the Church, every Christian, at least to the extent possible, gets himself direct access to those Divine truths that were once revealed to the spiritual gaze of the prophets and apostles, who recorded these insights of theirs in Holy Scripture. And, of course, constant reading of the latter is one of the most sure means of familiarizing both with what constitutes the spiritual essence of the Church and with the religious vision of the sacred writers.

But you can go even further. By leading us to Christ, the reading of Holy Scripture can in some cases enable a Christian to complete in the Holy Spirit the religious knowledge of the sacred authors. First of all, we see in Christ the fulfillment of the Old Testament messianic prophecies. But along with the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, there are also the so-called types of Christ. Their existence is noted in the New Testament writings. The latter, using examples of interpretation of prototypes, show us how, in the light of the New Testament experience, the religious experience of the Old Testament writers is complemented for believers. It is known that the New Testament books constantly refer to Christ not only the predictions of the Old Testament prophets, but also various events of the Old Testament law. All these religious facts, according to the teachings of the New Testament books, mysteriously predicted Christ, namely preforming His. The epistle to the Hebrews is especially characteristic of the interpretation of types. It shows that the Old Testament Aaronic priesthood and sacrifices received their fulfillment in the redemptive deed of Christ, who brought a one-time perfect sacrifice and presented for us as a True Intercessor before God. At the same time, the Apostle Paul in this epistle says that the entire Old Testament sacrificial ritual and the entire Old Testament priesthood in relation to the sacrifice of Christ is a shadow, that is, a shadow of future blessings, and not the very image of things (). As the letter of the book of Leviticus, which contains the laws of the Old Testament priesthood and sacrifices, shows, its compilers did not even think to talk about Christ, about whom they did not know, since He had not yet appeared in the world. Nevertheless, what they talked about did represent Christ.

This is due to the fact that it was partly involved in those religious benefits that were fully given to the world in Christ. The Old Testament authors, without knowing it, often mysteriously came into contact with the spiritual reality that God only revealed in the Old Testament and which he gave in its entirety only through Christ. These partial revelations of the truth about the coming Christ and about His exploit explain the presence in the Old Testament of both types and messianic prophecies. The Old Testament sacred writers therefore only partially penetrated into this truth. But the New Testament authors, seeing in Christ already “the very image of things,” understood that the Old Testament, in essence, speaks of Christ, and therefore clearly saw the manifestation of the power of Christ where the very letter of the text did not allow and still does not allow it to be seen who have not yet come to know Christ. But we have seen that, by containing Divine Revelation, Holy Scripture has the wonderful property of leading believers into the religious experience of their authors. Therefore, for believers, the Old Testament unceasingly reveals the testimony of Christ. The Church Fathers undoubtedly had such a vision of Christ in all of Holy Scripture, as their interpretations of Scripture show. But for each of the modern readers of Scripture, the latter can become, by the will of God, the same always living and every time a new sounding book about Christ.

Summing up all of the above about the meaning and action of Scripture in the religious life of a Christian, we are convinced that reading it is much more than ordinary religious reading. Of course, there were times when people came to God through reading other religious books. But in all of Scripture for each of us, God Himself has laid down the objective possibility of meeting with Christ, and it will remain inherent in this book, even if it is not used by those for whom it was intended. Scripture shows us Christ working through all of sacred history. In addition, starting from Scripture, we get to know Christ in the life of the modern world and in our personal lives. Therefore, the Bible, as a book about Christ, gives us the living Christ and continually improves us in the knowledge of Him. This brings us back to the same words of the Apostle Paul about the purpose of Holy Scripture: "May the man of God be perfect, prepared for every good work."

Of course, the reading of every Christian into Holy Scripture depends on his understanding of the rest of the blessed reality of the Church. Holy Scripture was given to the Church, and in her it receives its disclosure. But we must not forget that the religious state of the historical Church in each epoch depends on the religious life of its constituent members: “whether one member suffers, all members suffer with him; whether one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it ”(). It is because of this that we will be saved with the whole Church, and not each individually. Therefore, in our era of various upheavals and unrest that have so deeply affected the life of the Church, God Himself undoubtedly shows us the way to the revival of Christ's testimony in the world and especially charges every believer with a duty to penetrate into the meaning of Holy Scripture.

See Canon 58 of the Apostles and Canon 19 of the VI Ecumenical Council.

The cover of the 2004 edition of the Russian Orthodox Bible.

The word "Bible" is not found in the sacred books themselves and was first used in relation to the collection of sacred books in the east in the 4th century by John Chrysostom and Epiphanius of Cyprus.

Composition of the Bible

The Bible is made up of many parts, which are combined into Old Testament and New Testament.

Old Testament (Tanakh)

The first part of the Bible in Judaism is called Tanakh; in Christianity, it received the name "Old Testament", in contrast to the "New Testament". The name “ Hebrew Bible". This part of the Bible is a collection of books written in the Hebrew language long before our era and selected as sacred from other literature by the Hebrew teachers of the law. It is the Holy Scripture for all Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - but canonized only in the first two named (in Islam, its laws are considered invalid, and besides, distorted).

The Old Testament consists of 39 books, in the Jewish tradition artificially counted as 22, according to the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet, or 24, according to the number of letters of the Greek alphabet. All 39 books of the Old Testament are divided into three sections in Judaism.

• "Doctrine" (Torah) - contains the Pentateuch of Moses:

• "Prophets" (Neviim) - contains books:
  • 1st and 2nd Kings, or 1st and 2nd Samuel ( considered one book)
  • 3rd and 4th Kings, or 1st and 2nd Kings ( considered one book)
  • Twelve Minor Prophets ( considered one book)

• "Scriptures" (Ktuvim) - contains books:
  • Ezra and Nehemiah ( considered one book)
  • 1st and 2nd Chronicles, or Chronicles (Chronicles) ( considered one book)

Combining the Book of Ruth with the Book of Judges in one book, as well as Lamentations of Jeremiah with the Book of Jeremiah, we get 22 instead of 24 books. The ancient Jews counted twenty-two holy books in their canon, as Josephus testifies. This is the composition and order of the books in the Hebrew Bible.

All these books are also considered canonical in Christianity.

New Testament

The second part of the Christian Bible is the New Testament, a collection of 27 Christian books (including the 4 Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of the Apostles and the book of Revelation of John the Theologian (Apocalypse)), written in c. n. NS. and that have come down to us in ancient Greek. This part of the Bible is the most important for Christianity, while Judaism does not consider it to be inspired.

The New Testament consists of books belonging to eight inspired writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James, and Jude.

In the Slavic and Russian Bibles, the books of the New Testament are placed in the following order:

• historical

The books of the New Testament are placed in this order in the most ancient manuscripts - the Alexandrian and Vatican, the Apostolic Rules, the Rules of the Councils of Laodicea and Carthage, and in many of the ancient Church Fathers. But this order of placement of the books of the New Testament cannot be called universal and necessary, in some Bible collections there is a different placement of books, and now in the Vulgate and in editions of the Greek New Testament, the Epistles of the Council are placed after the Epistles of the Apostle Paul before the Apocalypse. In one or another placement of books, many considerations were followed, but the time of writing the books did not matter much, which can be most clearly seen from the placement of the Pauline Epistles. In the order we indicated, we were guided by considerations regarding the importance of the places or churches to which the messages were sent: first, the letters written to entire churches were delivered, and then the letters written to individuals. An exception is the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is in last place not because of its low importance, but because its authenticity was doubted for a long time. Based on chronological considerations, you can place the Epistles of the Apostle Paul in this order:

• to the Thessalonians
  • 1st
• to the Galatians
• to the Corinthians
  • 1st
• to the Romans
• to Philemon
• to the Philippians
• to Titus
• to Timothy
  • 1st

Old Testament Deuterocanonical Books

Apocrypha

Jewish teachers of the law, starting from the 4th century. BC e., and the Church Fathers in the II-IV centuries. n. e., selected books in the "Word of God" from a considerable number of manuscripts, essays, monuments. What was not included in the selected canon remained outside the Bible and constitutes apocryphal literature (from the Greek ἀπόκρυφος - hidden), accompanying the Old and New Testaments.

At one time, the leaders of the Hebrew "Great Assembly" (the administrative-theological scholar of the IV-III centuries BC) and subsequent Jewish religious authorities, and in Christianity, the Church Fathers, who formed it on the initial path, worked hard, cursing, prohibiting as heretical and at variance with the generally accepted text, and simply exterminating books that did not meet their criteria. Relatively few apocryphas have survived - just over 100 of the Old Testament and about 100 of the New Testament. The latest excavations and discoveries in the area of ​​the Dead Sea caves in Israel have especially enriched science. The Apocrypha, in particular, helps us to understand what paths the formation of Christianity took, from which elements its dogmatics were formed.

Bible history

page from the Vatican Codex

Writing Bible Books

• Alexandrian Codex (lat. Codex Alexandrinus), kept in the library of the British Museum
• Vatican Codex (lat. Codex Vaticanus), kept in Rome
• Sinai Code (lat. Codex Sinaiticus), kept in Oxford, earlier - in the Hermitage

All of them are dated (paleographically, that is, based on the "style of handwriting") IV century. n. NS. The language of the codes is Greek.

In the 20th century, the Qumran manuscripts became widely known, discovered, beginning in the city, in a number of caves in the Judean Desert and in Masada.

Division into chapters and verses

The ancient Old Testament text had no divisions into chapters and verses. But very early (probably after the Babylonian captivity) some divisions appeared for liturgical purposes. The oldest division of the Law into 669 so-called parash, adapted for public reading, is found in the Talmud; the division of the present into 50 or 54 parasha dates back to the time of Masora and is not found in the ancient synagogue lists. Also in the Talmud there are already divisions of the prophets into goftars - the final divisions, this name was adopted because it was read at the end of the service.

Divisions into chapters of Christian origin and made in the XIII century. or Cardinal Gugon, or Bishop Stephen. When compiling a concordance on the Old Testament, Gugon, for the most convenient indication of places, divided each book of the Bible into several small sections, which he designated with letters of the alphabet. The now accepted division was introduced by the Bishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton (died in). In G. he divided the text of the Latin Vulgate into chapters, and this division was carried over into the Hebrew and Greek texts.

Then in the XV century. Rabbi Isaac Nathan, when compiling a concordance in Hebrew, divided each book into chapters, and this division is still retained in the Hebrew Bible. The division of poetry books into verses is already given in the very property of Jewish versification and therefore of very ancient origin; it is found in the Talmud. The New Testament was first divided into verses in the 16th century.

The poems were numbered first by Santes Panino (he died in the city), then, around the city, by Robert Etienne. The current system of chapters and verses first appeared in the English Bible in 1560. Division is not always logical, but it is too late to abandon it, all the more to change anything: for four centuries it has settled in links, comments and alphabetical indexes.

The Bible in the religions of the world

Judaism

Christianity

If the 27 books of the New Testament are the same for all Christians, then Christians have major differences in their views on the Old Testament.

The fact is that where the Old Testament is cited in the books of the New Testament, these quotes are most often cited from the Greek translation of the Bible of the 3rd-2nd centuries. BC e., called, thanks to the legend of 70 translators, the Septuagint (in Greek - seventy), and not according to the Hebrew text adopted in Judaism and called by scientists Masoretic(after the name of the ancient Jewish biblical theologians who ordered the sacred manuscripts).

In fact, it was the list of the Septuagint books, and not the later "cleansed" collection of Masoretes, that became traditional for the Ancient Church as a collection of books of the Old Testament. Therefore, all the Ancient Churches (in particular, the Armenian Apostolic Church) regard as equally gracious and divinely inspired all the books of the Bible, which were read by the apostles and Christ himself, including those referred to in modern biblical studies as "Deuterocanonical".

Catholics, in the same way, trusting the Septuagint, adopted these texts into their Vulgate - an early medieval Latin translation of the Bible, canonized by Western ecumenical councils, and equated them with the rest of the canonical texts and books of the Old Testament, recognizing them to be equally inspired. These books are known to them as Deuterocanonical, or Deuterocanonical.

The Orthodox include 11 Deuterocanonical books and insertions into the rest of the books in the Old Testament, but with a note that they "have come down to us in the Greek language" and are not part of the main canon. They put insertions in canonical books in brackets and specify them with notes.

Characters from non-canon books

• Archangel Sariel
• Archangel Jerahmiel

Bible Sciences and Teachings

see also

• Tanach - Hebrew Bible

Literature

• Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg: 1890-1907.
• McDowell, Josh. Evidence for Bible Reliability: A Cause for Reflection and a Basis for Decision: Per. from English - SPb .: Christian Society "Bible for All", 2003. - 747 p. - ISBN 5-7454-0794-8, ISBN 0-7852-4219-8 (en.)
• Doyel, Leo. Covenant of eternity. In search of biblical manuscripts. - SPb .: "Amphora", 2001.
• Nesterova O. E. The theory of the plurality of "meanings" of Holy Scripture in the medieval Christian exegetical tradition // Genres and forms in the written culture of the Middle Ages. - M .: IMLI RAN, 2005 .-- S. 23-44.
• Kryvelev I.A. Book about the Bible. - M .: Publishing house of socio-economic literature, 1958.

Footnotes and sources

Links

Bible texts and translations

• More than 25 translations of the Bible and its parts and a quick search in all translations. Ability to create hyperlinks to places in the Bible. Ability to listen to the text of any of the books.
• Literal translation from Greek of some books of the New Testament into Russian
• Review of Russian translations of the Bible (with the ability to download)
• "Your Bible" - Russian Synodal translation with search and comparison of versions (Ukrainian translation by Ivan Ohienko and English King James Version
• Interlinear translation of the Bible from Greek into Russian
• The text of the Old and New Testaments in Russian and Church Slavonic languages
• Bible at algart.net - online cross-referenced Bible text, including the complete Bible on one page
• Electronic Bible and Apocrypha - the revised text of the Synodal Translation
• Superbook is one of the most complete Bible sites with non-trivial but very powerful navigation

The word "Bible" is not found in the sacred books themselves, and was first used in relation to the collection of sacred books in the east in the 4th century by St. John Chrysostom and Epiphanius of Cyprus.

The Bible books were written at different times - before the birth of Christ and after his birth. The former are called the books of the Old Testament, and the latter are called the books of the New Testament. The Bible books are called Holy Scripture and are part of the Holy Tradition of the Church.

The books of the Old Testament were written in the Hebrew language (with the exception of some parts of the books of Daniel and Ezra, written in Aramaic), the New Testament - in the Alexandrian dialect of the ancient Greek language - Koine.

The original Bible books were written on parchment or papyrus with a pointed reed stick and ink. The scroll looked like a long ribbon and was wound on a shaft.

The text in the ancient scrolls was written in large capital letters. Each letter was written separately, but the words were not separated from one another. The whole line was like one word. The reader himself had to divide the line into words. There were also no punctuation marks, no aspirations, no accents in the ancient manuscripts. And in Hebrew, vowels were not written either, but only consonants.

Biblical canon

The Bible consists of 66 books; 39 is found in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. The books of the Old Testament are artificially counted as 22, according to the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet, or 24, according to the number of letters of the Greek alphabet (for this reason, some of the books are combined).

In addition, the Old Testament includes 11 so-called second-canon books (see), which the Church does not put on a par with the canonical books, but recognizes them as edifying and useful.

The composition of the books of the Bible (Biblical Canon) took shape gradually. The books of the Old Testament were created over a significant period of time: from the XIII century. BC NS. until the IV century. BC NS. It is believed that the canonical books of the Old Testament were put together by the scribe Ezra, who lived approximately 450 BC. NS.

Both Testaments were first brought into canonical form at local councils in the 4th century: the Council of Ippon in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397.

The division of words in the Bible was introduced in the century by the deacon of the Alexandrian church, Eulalius. Modern chapter divisions trace their origins to Cardinal Stephen Langton, who divided the Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, in d. In year Geneva printer Robert Stephen introduced the modern chapter division into verses.

The main theme of the Bible is the salvation of mankind by the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God Jesus Christ. The Old Testament speaks of salvation in the form of types and prophecies about the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. The New Testament sets forth the very realization of our salvation through the incarnation, life and teaching of the God-man, sealed by His death on the cross and resurrection.

The Bible books of the Old and New Testaments are classified into Legislative, Historical, Teaching, and Prophetic. For example, in the New Testament, the Gospels are Legislative, the Acts of the Apostles are Historical, and the Epistles of Sts. Of the Apostles and the Book of Prophecy - the Revelation of St. John the Evangelist.

The main feature of the Bible that distinguishes it from all other literary works, giving it indisputable authority, is its inspiration, which, nevertheless, did not suppress the free will and personality of the authors. That is why we observe significant differences between individual books of the Bible, depending on the individual, psychological and peculiar literary characteristics of their authors.

While believing in the inspiration of the books of the Bible, it is important to remember that the Bible is the book of the Church. According to God's plan, people are called to be saved not alone, but in a society that the Lord leads and dwells in. This society is called the Church. The Church has not only preserved the letter of the word of God, but also has a correct understanding of it. This is due to the fact that the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the prophets and apostles, continues to live in the Church and lead it. Therefore, the Church gives us the right guidance on how to use her written wealth: what is more important and relevant in it, and what has only historical significance and is not applicable in New Testament times. The proclaimed self-sufficiency of Scripture ("Sola Scriptura") by Protestants generates many conflicting interpretations of the Bible, depriving the sacred texts of their true meaning.

Bible translations

The Septuagint - the Greek translation of seventy interpreters, was begun by the will of the Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus in 271 BC. Since the apostolic times, the Orthodox Church has been using the sacred books translated by 70.

Vulgate - Latin translation, was promulgated in 384 by Blessed Jerome. Since 382 blessed Jerome of Stridon translated the Bible from Greek into Latin; at the beginning of his work he used the Greek Septuagint, but soon switched to using the Hebrew text directly. This translation became known as the Vulgate - Editio Vulgata (vulgatus means "widespread, common knowledge"). The Council of Trent in the city approved the translation of St. Jerome, and he came into general use in the West.

The Slavic translation of the Bible was made according to the text of 70 interpreters by the holy Thessalonian brothers Cyril and Methodius, in the middle of the century AD, during their apostolic labors in the Slavic lands.