B. Sacred Tradition.* (* The section devoted to Holy Tradition and Patristics is available only in the form of outlines. - Note, compiler.) Another positive source of revelation is Sacred Tradition - the unwritten Word of God. Until now, we have spoken about the Word of the Living God,

Sacred Tradition 63. “If anyone wants to protect himself from deceit and remain sound in faith, he must protect his faith, firstly, by the authority of Holy Scripture, and secondly, by the Tradition of the Church. But perhaps someone will ask: is the canon of Scripture perfect and sufficient?

The meaning of the concepts "Divine Revelation", "Holy Tradition", "Holy Scripture", "Bible", "Old and New Testament" Testimony

Biblia means "books" in ancient Greek. The Bible consists of 77 books: 50 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament. Despite the fact that dozens of holy people in different languages ​​recorded it for several millennia, it has complete compositional completeness and internal logical unity.

It begins with the book of Genesis, which describes the beginning of our world - its creation by God and the creation of the first people - Adam and Eve, their fall, the spread of the human race and the growing rooting of sin and error among people. It is described how one righteous man was found - Abraham, who believed God, and God made a covenant with him, that is, an agreement (see: Gen. 17: 7-8). At the same time, God makes two promises: one - that the descendants of Abraham will receive the land of Canaan and the second, which is significant for all mankind: "and in you all the tribes of the earth will be blessed" (Gen. 12: 3).

So God creates a special people from the patriarch Abraham, and when he is captured by the Egyptians, through the prophet Moses he frees the descendants of Abraham, gives them the land of Canaan, thus fulfilling the first promise, and making a covenant with all the people (see: Deut. 29: 2-15).

Other Old Testament books provide detailed instructions related to keeping this covenant, give advice on how to build your life so as not to violate the will of God, and also talk about how God's chosen people kept or broke this covenant.

At the same time, God called prophets among the people, through whom He proclaimed His will and made new promises, including that “behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah New Testament"(Jer. 31:31). And that this new covenant will be eternal and open to all nations (see: Is. 55:3, 5).

And when the true God and true Man Jesus Christ was born from the Virgin, then on the farewell night, before going to suffering and death, He, sitting with the disciples, “taking the cup and giving thanks, gave it to them and said: drink everything from it, for this is My Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:27-28). And after His resurrection, as we remember, He sent the apostles to preach to all nations, and thus the second promise of God to Abraham was fulfilled, as well as the prophecy of Isaiah. And then the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven and sat at the right hand of His Father, and thus the word of the prophet David was fulfilled: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand” (Ps. 109:1).

The New Testament books of the Gospel narrate about the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and the book of the Acts of the Apostles tells about the appearance of the Church of God, that is, the community of the faithful, Christians, a new people, redeemed by the blood of the Lord.

Finally, the last book of the Bible - the Apocalypse - tells about the end of our world, the coming defeat of the forces of evil, the general resurrection and the terrible judgment of God, followed by a just reward for everyone and the fulfillment of the promises of the new covenant for those who followed Christ: “And to those who accepted Him, to those who believe in His name, He gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12).

The same God inspired the Old and New Testaments, both Scriptures are equally the word of God. As St. Irenaeus of Lyons said, “both the law of Moses and the grace of the New Testament, both in accordance with the times, were bestowed for the benefit of the human race by the same God,” and, according to St. Athanasius the Great, “the old proves the new, and the new testifies to dilapidated".

The Significance of Holy Scripture

By His love for us, God raises the relationship with a person to such a height that he does not command, but offers to conclude an agreement. And the Bible is the sacred book of the Covenant, an agreement voluntarily entered into between God and people. It is the word of God, which contains nothing but the truth. It is addressed to every person, and every person from it can learn not only the truth about the world, about the past and future, but also the truth about each of us, about what the will of God is and how we can follow it in our lives.

If God, being a good Creator, were willing to reveal Himself, then we should expect that He would try to convey His word to as many people as possible. Indeed, the Bible is the most widely distributed book in the world, translated into the largest number of languages ​​and published in the largest number of copies than any other book.

In this way, people are given the opportunity to know both God Himself and His plans for our salvation from sin and death.

The historical authenticity of the Bible, especially the New Testament, is confirmed by the oldest manuscripts written when eyewitnesses of the earthly life of Jesus Christ were still alive; in them we find the same text that is used today in the Orthodox Church.

The divine authorship of the Bible is confirmed by many miracles, including the annual convergence of the miraculous Holy Fire in Jerusalem - at the place where Jesus Christ resurrected, and on the very day when Orthodox Christians are preparing to celebrate His resurrection. In addition, the Bible contains numerous predictions that were fulfilled exactly many centuries after they were written down. Finally, the Bible still has a powerful effect on the hearts of people, transforming them and turning them to the path of virtue and showing that its Author still cares about His creation.

Since Holy Scripture is inspired by God, Orthodox Christians believe it unquestioningly, for faith in the words of the Bible is faith in the words of God Himself, whom Orthodox Christians trust as a caring and loving Father.

Relationship to Scripture

Reading the Holy Scriptures is of great benefit to anyone who wants to improve their lives. It enlightens the soul with truth and contains the answers to all the difficulties that arise before us. There is not a single problem that could not be resolved in the word of God, because it is in this book that the very spiritual patterns that we mentioned above are set forth.

A person who reads the Bible and tries to live in accordance with what God says in it can be compared to a traveler walking in the dead of night along an unfamiliar road with a bright lantern in his hand. The light of the lantern makes the path easy for him, allowing him to find the right direction, as well as avoid holes and puddles.

The one who is deprived of reading the Bible can be compared to a traveler who is forced to walk in impenetrable darkness without a lantern. He does not go where he would like, often stumbles and falls into the pits, hurting himself and getting dirty.

Finally, the one who reads the Bible, but does not strive to bring his life in line with the spiritual laws that are set forth in it, can be likened to such an unreasonable traveler who, passing through unfamiliar places at night, holds a lantern in his hand, but does not turn it on.

St. John Chrysostom said that “just as those deprived of light cannot walk straight, so those who do not see the ray of Divine Scripture are forced to sin, as they walk in the deepest darkness.”

Reading Scripture is not like reading any other literature. This is spiritual work. Therefore, before opening the Bible, an Orthodox Christian should remember the advice of St. Ephraim the Syrian: “When you begin to read or listen to the Holy Scriptures, pray to God like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, open the ears and eyes of my heart so that I can hear Your words and understand them and do your will." Always so pray to God to enlighten your mind and reveal to you the power of His words. Many, relying on their own understanding, have been deceived.

In order not to be subjected to error and errors when reading Holy Scripture, it is good, in addition to prayer, to also follow the advice of blessed Jerome, who said that “in a discussion about the sacred scriptures, one cannot go without a predecessor and a guide.”

Who can become such a guide? If the words of Holy Scripture were composed by people enlightened by the Holy Spirit, then, naturally, only people enlightened by the Holy Spirit can explain them correctly. And such a person becomes one who, having learned from the apostles of Christ, followed the path opened by the Lord Jesus Christ in the Orthodox Church, finally renounced sin and united with God, that is, became a saint. In other words, a good guide in the study of the Bible can only be one who has himself gone all the way offered by God in it. The Orthodox find such a guide by turning to Holy Tradition.

Holy Tradition: One Truth

In any good family there are family traditions, when people from generation to generation lovingly pass on stories about something important from the life of their ancestor, and thanks to this, the memory of him is preserved even among those descendants who have never seen him personally.

The Church is also a special kind of large family, because it unites those who through Christ were adopted by God and became the son or daughter of the Heavenly Father. It is no coincidence that in the Church people address each other with the word "brother" or "sister", because in Christ all Orthodox Christians become spiritual brothers and sisters.

And in the Church there also exists a Sacred Tradition passed down from generation to generation, going back to the apostles. The holy apostles communicated with the incarnate God Himself and learned the truth directly from Him. This truth they passed on to other people who had a love for the truth. The apostles wrote down something, and it became Holy Scripture, but they transmitted something without writing it down, but orally or by the very example of their life - this is precisely what is preserved in the Church's Holy Tradition.

And the Holy Spirit speaks about this in the Bible through the Apostle Paul: “Therefore, brethren, stand firm and hold the traditions which you have been taught either by word or by our epistle” (2 Thess. 2:15); “I praise you, brethren, that you remember everything of mine and hold fast to the tradition as I conveyed to you. For I received from the Lord Himself that which I also delivered to you” (1 Corinthians 11:2, 23).

In Holy Scripture, the apostle John writes: “I have many things to write to you, but I do not want to write in ink on paper; but I hope to come to you and speak mouth to mouth, so that your joy may be full” (2 John 12).

And for Orthodox Christians, this joy is full, because in Church Tradition we hear the living and eternal voice of the apostles, “mouth to mouth.” The Orthodox Church preserves the true tradition of the blessed teaching, which she received directly, like a son from her father, from the holy apostles.

For example, we can cite the words of the ancient Orthodox saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon. He wrote at the end II century after the birth of Christ, but in his youth he was a disciple of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, who personally knew the Apostle John and other disciples and witnesses of the life of Jesus Christ. Here is how St. Irenaeus writes about this: “I remember then more firmly than recently; for what we have learned in childhood is strengthened together with the soul and takes root in it. Thus, I could even describe the place where the blessed Polycarp sat and talked; I can depict his walk, his way of life and appearance, his conversations with the people, how he talked about his treatment of the Apostle John and other witnesses of the Lord, how he remembered their words and recounted what he had heard from them about the Lord, His miracles and teaching. Since he heard everything from the witnesses of the life of the Word, he spoke according to the Scriptures. By the grace of God to me, even then I listened attentively to Polycarp and wrote down his words not on paper, but in my heart - and by the grace of God I always keep them in a fresh memory.

That is why, when we read the books written by the holy fathers, we see in them an exposition of the same truth that was expounded by the apostles in the New Testament. Thus, Holy Tradition helps to correctly understand Holy Scripture, distinguishing truth from falsehood.

Holy Tradition: One Life

Even family tradition includes not only stories, but also a certain course of action based on life examples. It has long been known that deeds teach better than words, and that any words gain strength only if they do not diverge, but are supported by the life of the one who speaks. Often you can see that children in their lives act in the same way as their parents acted before their eyes in this situation. So, family tradition is not only the transmission of certain information, but also the transmission of a certain way of life and actions that are perceived only in personal communication and living together.

In the same way, the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church is not only the transmission of words and thoughts, but also the transmission of a holy way of life, pleasing to God and in harmony with the truth. The first saints of the Orthodox Church, such as St. Polycarp, were disciples of the apostles themselves and received it from them, while subsequent holy fathers, such as St. Irenaeus, were their disciples.

That is why, studying the description of the life of the holy fathers, we see in them the same exploits and expression of the same love for God and people that are visible in the life of the apostles.

Holy Tradition: One Spirit

Everyone knows that when an ordinary human tradition is retold in a family, with the passage of time, something is often forgotten, and something, on the contrary, is invented new, which did not really exist. And if someone from the older generation, having heard how a young member of the family incorrectly retells a story from a family tradition, can correct him, then when the last eyewitnesses die, this possibility no longer remains, and over time, family tradition passed from mouth to mouth , gradually loses some part of the truth.

But the Holy Tradition differs from all human traditions precisely in that it never loses a single part of the truth received at the beginning, because in the Orthodox Church there always exists the One Who knows how everything was and how it really is - the Holy Spirit .

During the farewell conversation, the Lord Jesus Christ said to His apostles: “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, may he be with you forever, the Spirit of truth ... He abides with you and will be in you ... The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in the name mine will teach you everything and remind you of everything that I have said to you… He will testify about me” (John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26).

And He fulfilled this promise, and the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, and since then, for all 2000 years, he has been in the Orthodox Church and remains in it until now. The ancient prophets, and later the apostles, could speak the words of truth because they communicated with God and the Holy Spirit admonished them. However, after the apostles this did not stop at all and did not disappear, for the apostles worked precisely in order to introduce other people to this opportunity. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the successors of the apostles - the holy fathers - also communicated with God and were admonished by the same Holy Spirit as the apostles. And therefore, as St. John of Damascus testifies, one "father does not oppose [other] fathers, because they were all partakers of one Holy Spirit."

So, Holy Tradition is not only the transmission of certain information about the truth and an example of living in truth, but also the transmission of communion with the Holy Spirit, Who is always ready to remind about the truth and make up for everything that a person lacks.

Sacred Tradition is the eternal, never aging memory of the Church. The Holy Spirit, always acting through the Fathers and Teachers of the Church faithfully serving God, protects it from any error. It has no less power than Holy Scripture, because the source of both is the same Holy Spirit. Therefore, living and studying in the Orthodox Church, in which oral apostolic preaching continues, a person can learn the truth of the Christian faith and become a saint.

What is the visible expression of Holy Tradition

So, Sacred Tradition is the truth received from God, passed from mouth to mouth from the apostles through the holy fathers up to our time, preserved by the Holy Spirit living in the Church.

What exactly is the expression of this Tradition? First of all, the most authoritative expressions of it for Orthodox Christians are the resolutions of the Ecumenical and Local Councils of the Church, as well as the writings of the holy fathers, their lives and liturgical hymns.

How exactly to determine the Holy Tradition in certain specific cases? Turning to the mentioned sources and keeping in mind the principle expressed by St. Vincent of Lyrins: "That which everyone believed, always and everywhere in the Orthodox Church."

Relation to Sacred Tradition

St. Irenaeus of Lyon writes: “In the Church, as in a rich treasury, the apostles in full put everything that belongs to the truth, so that everyone who wishes can receive from her the drink of life.”

Orthodoxy has no need to seek the truth: it possesses it, for the Church already contains the fullness of the truth taught to us by the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit through the apostles and their disciples, the holy fathers.

Turning to the testimony that they showed in word and life, we comprehend the truth and embark on the path of Christ, along which the holy fathers followed the apostles. And this path leads to union with God, to immortality and a blissful life, free from all suffering and all evil.

The Holy Fathers were not just ancient intellectuals, but the bearers of spiritual experience, holiness, from which their theology was nourished. All the saints dwelt in God and therefore had one faith, as the Gift of God, as a sacred treasure and, at the same time, a norm, an ideal, a path.

Voluntary, reverent and obedient adherence to the holy fathers, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, delivers us from the bondage of lies and gives us true spiritual freedom in the truth, according to the Lord’s word: “Know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

Unfortunately, not everyone is ready to do this. After all, for this you need to humble yourself, that is, overcome your sinful pride and pride.

Modern Western culture, based on pride, often teaches a person to consider himself the measure of everything, to look down on everything and measure it with the narrow limits of his mind, his ideas and tastes. But such an approach serves a disservice to those who perceive it, because with such an approach it is impossible to become better, more perfect, kinder, and even simply smarter. It is impossible to expand the scope of our reason unless we recognize that there is something greater, better and more perfect than ourselves. It is necessary to humble our “I” and recognize that in order to become better, we must not evaluate everything true, holy and perfect by ourselves, but, on the contrary, evaluate ourselves in accordance with it, and not only evaluate, but also change.

So every Christian must subordinate his mind to the Church, place himself not above and not on the same level, but below the holy fathers, believe in them more than in himself - such a person will never stray from the path leading to eternal victory.

Therefore, when an Orthodox Christian opens a spiritual book, he prays to the Lord that He bless this reading and let him understand what is useful, and during the reading itself he tries to be disposed with openness and trust.

Here is what St. Theophan the Recluse writes: “Sincere faith is the denial of one's mind. It is necessary to bare the mind and present it as a blank slate to faith, so that it draws itself on it as it is, without any admixture of third-party sayings and positions. When the mind has its own positions, then, after writing the positions of faith on it, a mixture of positions will appear in it: the consciousness will be confused, encountering a contradiction between the actions of faith and the mind’s philosophizing. Such are all who, with their wisdom, enter the realm of faith... They get confused in faith, and nothing comes out of them except harm.”

Preliminary Information

Concept of Holy Scripture

Holy Scripture or the Bible is a collection of books written by the prophets and apostles, as we believe, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Bible is a Greek word meaning "books". This word is put in Greek with the article "ta", in the plural, that is, it means: "Books with a certain content." This definite content is God's revelation to people, given in order for people to find the way to salvation.

The main theme of Holy Scripture is the salvation of mankind by the Messiah, the incarnated 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 divinely inspired prophets before the Savior came to earth; and the second is what the Lord Savior Himself and His apostles discovered and taught on earth.

Initially, God, through the prophet Moses, revealed what later formed the first part of the Bible, the so-called. Torah, i.e. Law, consisting of five books - the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. For a long time, it was this Pentateuch that was the Holy Scripture, the word of God for the Old Testament Church. But immediately after the Torah, the Scriptures appeared, supplementing it: the book of Joshua, then the book of Judges, the books of Kings, Chronicles (chronicles). Complement the books of Kings, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The books of Ruth, Esther, Judith and Tobit depict separate episodes in the history of the chosen people. Finally, the books of Maccabees complete the history of ancient Israel and bring it to its goal, to the threshold of the coming of Christ.

Thus, following the Law, comes the second section of Holy Scripture, called the Historical Books. And in the Historical books there are separate poetic creations: songs, prayers, psalms, as well as teachings. In later times, they compiled whole books, the third section of the Bible - Teacher's books. This section includes the books: Job, Psalter, Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach.

Finally, the works of St. prophets who acted after the division of the kingdom and the captivity of Babylon, made up the fourth department of the Holy Books, the books of the Prophets. This section includes books: Prop. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Epistle of Jeremiah, Prop. Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel and 12 minor prophets, i.e. Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

This division of the Bible into Legislative, Historical, Teaching and Prophetic books was also applied to the New Testament. The gospels are legislative, the Acts of the Apostles are historical, the epistles of Sts. Apostles and the Prophetic Book - Revelation of St. John the Evangelist. In addition to this division, the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament are divided into canonical and non-canonical books.

Why We Love Scripture

The Old Testament writings, firstly, are dear to us because they teach us to believe in the One true God and to fulfill His commandments and speak of the Savior. Christ Himself points to this: "Search the Scriptures, for through them you think you have eternal life, and they testify of Me," He said to the Jewish scribes. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the Savior puts into Abraham's mouth these words about the rich man's brothers: "They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them." Moses is the first five books of the Old Testament Bible, and the prophets are the last 16 books. In a conversation with the disciples, the Savior pointed out, in addition to those books, also the Psalter: "everything written in the law of Moses, the prophets and psalms about me must be fulfilled." After the Last Supper, “having sung, they went up to the Mount of Olives,” says the Evangelist Matthew: this indicates the singing of psalms. The words of the Savior and His example are enough for the Church to carefully treat the named books - the Law of Moses, the prophets and psalms, to protect and learn from them.

In the circle of books recognized by the Jews as sacred, besides the Law and the Prophets, there are two more categories of books: a number of teaching books, of which one Psalter is named, and a number of historical books. The Church accepted the circle of sacred Jewish books in the Greek translation of seventy interpreters, made long before the birth of Christ. The apostles also used this translation, since they wrote their own epistles in Greek. This circle also included books of sacred content of Jewish origin, known only in Greek, as they were compiled after the establishment of the official list of books by the Great Synagogue. The Christian Church added them under the name of non-canonical. Jews do not use these books in their religious life.

In addition, Holy Scripture is dear to us because it contains the foundations of our faith. Thousands of years separate us from the time when the sacred books of the Bible were written, so it is not easy for a modern reader to be transported to the atmosphere of that time. However, when getting acquainted with the era, with the task of the prophets and with the peculiarities of the language of the Bible, the reader begins to better understand its spiritual richness. The inner connection between the Old Testament and New Testament books becomes apparent to him. At the same time, the reader of the Bible begins to see in the religious and moral issues that concern him and modern society not new, specific problems, say, of the 21st century, but the primordial conflicts between good and evil, between faith and unbelief, which have always been inherent in human society. .

The historical pages of the Bible are still dear to us because they not only truthfully recount the events of the past, but put them in the right religious perspective. No other secular ancient or modern book can equal the Bible in this respect. And this is because the assessment of the events described in the Bible is given not by man, but by God. Thus, in the light of the word of God, the mistakes or correct solutions to the moral problems of past generations can serve as a guide for solving contemporary personal and social problems. Getting acquainted with the content and meaning of the sacred books, the reader gradually begins to love the Holy Scripture, finding more and more pearls of Divine wisdom during repeated readings.

By accepting the Old Testament Holy Scripture, the Church showed that she is the heir of the extinct Old Testament Church: not the national side of Judaism, but the religious content of the Old Testament. In this heritage, one thing has eternal value, while the other has died out and has significance only as a remembrance and edification, such as the statutes about the tabernacle, about sacrifices, and the prescriptions for the daily life of the Jew. Therefore, the Church disposes of the Old Testament inheritance completely independently, in accordance with her fuller and higher understanding of the world than that of the Jews.

Of course, a great distance of centuries separates us from the time of writing the books of the Old Testament, especially its first books. And it is no longer easy for us to be transported into that structure of the soul and into that environment in which these divinely inspired books were created and which are presented in these books themselves. This gives rise to perplexities that confuse the thought of modern man. Especially often these perplexities arise when there is a desire to harmonize the scientific views of our time with the simplicity of the biblical ideas about the world. There are also general questions about the extent to which Old Testament views correspond to the New Testament worldview. And they ask: why the Old Testament? Are not the teachings of the New Testament and the Scriptures of the New Testament sufficient?

As for the enemies of Christianity, from time immemorial, attacks against Christianity begin with attacks on the Old Testament. Those who have gone through a period of religious doubt and perhaps religious denial indicate that the first stumbling block to their faith was thrown to them from this area.

For a believer, or for a "seeker" to acquire it, Holy Scripture is a science for life: not only a young student, but also the greatest theologian, not only a layman and a novice, but also a higher spiritual rank and a wise elder. The Lord bequeathed to the leader of the Israelite people Joshua Nun: "Let not this book of the Law depart from thy mouth, but meditate in it day and night" (Is. Joshua 1:8). The Apostle Paul writes to his disciple Timothy: "From childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation" (2 Tim. 3:15).

Why should you know the Old Testament?

"Church hymns and readings reveal to us two series of events: the Old Testament, as a prototype, as a shadow, and the New Testament, as an image, truth, acquisition. In worship, comparisons of the Old and New Testaments are constant: Adam - and Christ, Eve - and the Mother of God "There is an earthly paradise - here is a heavenly paradise. Through the wife of sin, through the Virgin salvation. Tasting the fruit to death - communion of the Holy Gifts to life. There is a forbidden tree, here is a saving Cross. It says: you will die a death, - here: today you will be with me in "There's a flattering serpent - here is the evangelist Gabriel. There it is said to the wife: You will be in sorrow - here it is said to the women at the tomb: Rejoice. The parallel is drawn throughout the two Testaments. Salvation from the flood in the ark is salvation in the Church. Abraham's three strangers - and the gospel truth of the Holy Trinity The sacrifice of Isaac - and the death of the Savior on the cross The ladder seen in a dream by Jacob - and the Mother of God, the ladder of the descent of the Son of God to earth The sale of Joseph by the brothers - and the betrayal of Christ Jude Oh. Slavery in Egypt and the spiritual slavery of humanity to the devil. Exodus from Egypt - and salvation in Christ. The crossing of the sea is baptism. The fireproof bush is the ever-virginity of the Mother of God. Saturday Sunday. The rite of circumcision is the sacrament of Baptism. Manna - and the New Testament Lord's Supper. The law of Moses is the law of the gospel. Sinai - and the Sermon on the Mount. Tabernacle - and the New Testament Church. The Ark of the Covenant - and the Mother of God. The serpent on the staff is the nailing of sin to the cross by Christ. The flourishing rod of Aaron is rebirth in Christ. Such comparisons can be continued further.

New Testament understanding, expressed in hymns, deepens the meaning of Old Testament events. By what power did Moses divide the sea? - The Sign of the Cross: "Moses having drawn the Cross with a straight rod, cut off the Black." Who led the Jews through the Red Sea? - Christ: "The horse and the rider in the Red Sea ... Christ has shaken, but Israel has been saved." What was prefigured by the uninterrupted flow of the sea after the passage of Israel? - A prototype of the imperishable purity of the Mother of God: "In the Red Sea, the image of the Unskilful Bride was sometimes written ..."

In Great Lent, on the first week and on the fifth, we gather in the church for the repentant touching canon of St. Andrew of Crete. Examples of righteousness and failures pass before us in a long chain from the beginning of the Old Testament to its end, followed by New Testament examples. But only knowing sacred history are we able to fully understand the content of the canon and be enriched by its edifications.

This is why knowledge of Bible history is not just for adults; lessons from the Old Testament are preparing us and our children for conscious participation and understanding of worship. But other reasons are even more important. In the speeches of the Savior and in the writings of the Apostles there are many references to persons, events and texts from the Old Testament: Moses, Elijah, Jonah, the testimonies of the prophets. Isaiah, etc.

The Old Testament gives reasons why mankind needed salvation through the coming of the Son of God.

Let us not lose sight of the direct moral edification. As Ap. Paul: "And what else can I say? I will not have time to tell about Gideon, about Barak, about Samson and Jephthah, about David, Samuel and (other) prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, did righteousness, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, avoided the edge of the sword, were strengthened from weakness, were strong in war, drove away the armies of strangers ... Those whom the whole world was not worthy, wandered through deserts and mountains, through caves and gorges of the earth "(Heb. 11:32 -38). We also use these guidelines. The Church constantly puts the image of the three youths in the cave of Babylon before our thought.

Led by the Church

“In the Church, everything has its place, everything has its correct illumination. This also applies to the Old Testament Scriptures. We know by heart the ten commandments of the Sinai legislation, but we understand them much deeper than the Jews understood them, because they are illuminated and deepened for us by the Mount on the Mount There are many moral and ritual laws in the Mosaic legislation, but among them there is such an exalted call: "Love your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and love your sincere as yourself" - only through the gospel did they light up for us with their full brilliance. There is no longer any tabernacle or the temple of Solomon: but we study their structure because many symbols of the New Testament are contained in their institutions. Readings from the prophets are offered in the temple not in order to know the fate peoples surrounding Palestine, but because these readings contain prophecies about Christ and the events of the Gospel.

But it so happened that in the 16th century a huge branch of Christianity abandoned the leadership of Church Tradition, all the wealth of the ancient Church, leaving as a source and guide of faith one priest. Scripture - the Bible in its two parts of the Old and New Testaments. This is what Protestantism did. Let us give it its due: it burned with a thirst for the living word of God, it fell in love with the Bible. But it did not take into account the fact that the sacred writings were collected by the Church and belong to her in her historical apostolic succession. It did not take into account that just as the faith of the Church is illuminated by the Bible, so the Bible in turn is illuminated by the faith of the Church. One demands the other and lean on each other. Protestants gave themselves with all hope to the study of one Holy Scripture, hoping that, following exactly along its path, they would see this path so clear that there would no longer be any reason for disagreement in the faith. The Bible, consisting of three quarters of the Old Testament, has become a reference book. They studied it to the smallest detail, checked it against the Hebrew texts, however, at the same time, they began to lose the ratio of the values ​​of the Old and New Testaments. It appeared to them as two equal sources of one faith, mutually complementing one another, as two equal sides of it. Some groups of Protestantism have taken the view that, with the quantitative predominance of the books of the Old Testament, it occupies the first place in terms of significance. This is how Judaizing sects appeared. They began to put the Old Testament faith in the One God above the monotheism of the New Testament with its divinely revealed truth about the One God in the Holy Trinity; the commandments of the Sinai legislation are more important than the gospel teaching; Saturday is more important than Sunday.

Others, if they did not follow the path of the Judaizers, failed to distinguish the very spirit of the Old Testament from the spirit of the New, the spirit of slavery from the spirit of sonship, the spirit of the law from the spirit of freedom. Impressed by certain passages of the Old Testament Scriptures, they abandoned that all-encompassing fullness of worship of God, which is confessed in the Christian Church. They rejected the external forms of spiritual and bodily worship, and in particular destroyed the symbol of Christianity - the cross and other sacred images. By this they moved themselves to the condemnation of the Apostle: "How are you - shunning idols, sacrilegious?" (Rom. 2:22).

Still others, embarrassed either by the simplicity of the narration of ancient legends, or by the harsh nature of antiquity, especially manifested in wars, Jewish nationalism, or other features of the pre-Christian era, began to be critical of these legends, and then of the Bible itself in its entirety.

Just as it is impossible to eat only bread without water, although bread is the most essential for the body, so it is impossible to eat only Holy Scripture without the grace-filled irrigation given by the life of the Church. Protestant theological faculties, designed to be on guard for Christianity and its sources, while working on the study of the Bible, got a kind of sore mouth. They were carried away by the critical analysis of the texts of the Old and New Testaments and gradually ceased to feel their spiritual power, they began to approach the sacred books as ordinary documents of antiquity, with the techniques of positivism of the 19th century. Some of these theologians began to compete with each other in inventing theories of the origin of certain books, contrary to the sacred tradition of antiquity. In order to explain the facts of predicting future events in the sacred books, they began to attribute the very writing of these books to later times (to the time of these events themselves). This method led to the undermining of the authority of Holy Scripture and the Christian faith. True, the simple Protestant milieu of believers has ignored and still partly ignores this so-called biblical criticism. But since the pastors went through a theological school, they themselves often turned out to be conductors of critical thought in their communities. The period of biblical criticism began to wane, but this vacillation led to the loss of dogmatic faith in a large number of sects. They began to recognize only the moral teaching of the Gospel, forgetting that it is inseparable from the dogmatic teaching.

But it often happens that even good undertakings have their shadow sides.

So, a big deal in the field of Christian culture was the translation of the Bible into all modern languages. Protestantism fulfilled this task to a great extent. However, in the languages ​​of our modern times, it is more difficult to feel the breath of ancient times; not everyone can understand and appreciate the simplicity of biblical tales. It is not for nothing that the Jews strictly cherish the Hebrew language of the Scriptures, avoid printed Bibles for prayer and reading in synagogues, using parchment copies of the Old Testament.

The Bible has spread in millions of copies all over the globe, but has not the reverent attitude towards it decreased among the human masses? This refers to the inner workings of Christianity.

But new circumstances came from outside. The Bible was brought face to face with the scientific research of geology, paleontology, archeology. An almost hitherto unknown world of the past appeared from under the earth, determined in modern science by an age of a huge number of millennia. The enemies of religion did not fail to use the data of science as a weapon against the Bible. They put her on the platform of the court, saying in the words of Pilate: "Don't you hear how many people are testifying against you?"

Under these conditions, we must believe in the holiness of the Bible, its correctness, its value, its exceptional greatness as a book of books, the true book of mankind. Our business is to protect ourselves from embarrassment. The Scriptures of the Old Testament come into contact with modern theories of science. Therefore, let us look into the Old Testament Scriptures in their essence. As far as science is concerned, objective, impartial, genuine science will itself, in its conclusions, be a witness to the truth of the Bible. Father John of Kronstadt instructs: “When you doubt the truth of any person or event described in Holy Scripture, then remember that all “God-inspired Scripture is,” as the Apostle says, it means it is true, and there are no fictitious persons, fables in it. and fairy tales, although there are parables, and not one’s own tales, where everyone sees that the speech is inflow.The whole word of God is one truth, integral, indivisible, and if you recognize as a lie any one legend, saying, word, then you you sin against the truth of all Holy Scripture, and its original truth is God himself."

(Protopresbyter M. Pomazansky).

The Inspiration of Scripture

The main feature of the Bible, which distinguishes it from all other literary works, giving it unquestioned authority, is its divine inspiration. By it is meant that supernatural, divine illumination, which, without suppressing the natural forces of man, elevated them to the highest perfection, protected them from mistakes, communicated revelations, in a word, guided the entire course of their work, thanks to which the latter was not a simple product of man, but, as it were, the work of God himself. This is a fundamental truth of our faith that leads us to recognize the books of the Bible as inspired by God. The apostle Paul first used this term when he said, "All Scripture is inspired by God" (2 Tim. 3:16). "Prophecy was never uttered by the will of man," testifies the holy Apostle Peter, "but holy men of God spoke it, being moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21).

In the Slavic and Russian languages, we usually define the Scriptures with the word "sacred", which means having grace in itself, reflecting in itself the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Only the Gospels are always accompanied by the word "holy", and before reading it, we are called to pray for a worthy hearing of it: "And we pray that we may be vouchsafed to hear the holy Gospel of the Lord God." We are obliged to listen to him standing: "Forgive (standing) let us hear the holy Gospel" reading. When reading the Old Testament scriptures (paroemias) and even psalms, if they are not read as prayers, but for edification, such as kathismata at Matins, the Church allows you to sit. Ap words. Paul's "star differs from star in glory" are applicable to the sacred books. All Scriptures are inspired by God, but the subject of their speech elevates some of them over others: there are the Jews and the Old Testament law, here - in the New Testament - the Savior Christ and His Divine teaching.

What is the inspiration of Scripture? - The sacred writers were under guidance, which at the highest moments turns into illumination and even direct revelation of God. "I had the revelation of the Lord" - we read in the prophets, and in App. Paul, and John (in the Apocalypse). But with all this, writers use the usual means of cognition. For information about the past, they turn to oral tradition. "What we have heard and learned, and what our fathers have told us, we will not hide from their children, proclaiming to the coming generation the glory of the Lord and His power..." days of old" (Ps. 43:1; 77:2-3). Ap. Luke, who was not one of the 12 disciples of Christ, describes the gospel events "according to a careful study of everything from the beginning" (Luke 1:3). Then, sacred writers use written documents, lists of people and family lineages, state reports with various indications. In the historical books of the Old Testament there are references to sources, such as in the books of Kings and Chronicles: "other things about Ahaziah ... are written in the annals of the kings of Israel", "other things about Joatham ... in the annals of the kings of the Jews." Original documents are also cited: the first book of Ezra contains a number of verbatim instructions and reports related to the restoration of the Jerusalem temple.

The sacred writers did not have the omniscience that belongs to God alone. But these writers were saints. "The sons of Israel could not look at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face" (2 Cor. 3:7). This holiness of writers, purity of mind, purity of heart, consciousness of loftiness and responsibility in fulfilling their calling was expressed directly in their writings: in the truth of their thoughts, in the truth of their words, in a clear distinction between the true and the false. Under inspiration from above, they began their recordings and performed them. At certain moments, their spirit was illumined by the highest blessed revelations and mysterious insight into the past, like the prophet Moses in the book of Genesis, or into the future, like the later prophets and apostles of Christ. It was like a vision in a fog or through a veil. "Now we see, as it were, through a dim glass, guessingly, then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know, just as I am known" (1 Cor. 13:15).

Whether attention is paid to the past or to the future, there is no account of time in this insight - the prophets see "far as near." That is why the evangelists depict two future events: the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, predicted by the Lord, so that both of them almost merge into one perspective of the future. "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed in His own power," said the Lord (Acts 1:7).

Divine inspiration belongs not only to Holy Scripture, but also to Holy Tradition. The Church recognizes them as equal sources of faith, for the tradition that expresses the voice of the entire Church is also the voice of the Holy Spirit living in the Church. All our divine services are also inspired by God, as it is sung in one of the prayers: “Witnesses of the truth and preachers of piety, we will worthily honor in inspired songs.” Particularly divinely inspired is the Liturgy of the Holy Mysteries, called by the high name "Divine Liturgy".

(Protopresbyter M. Pomazansky).

But the inspiration of the authors of sacred books did not destroy their personal, natural features. God does not suppress the free will of man. As can be seen from the words of the Apostle Paul: "And the spirits of the prophets are obedient to the prophets" (1 Cor. 14:32). That is why in the content of St. books, especially in their presentation, style, language, nature of images and expressions, we observe significant differences between individual books of Holy Scripture, depending on the individual, psychological and peculiar literary characteristics of their authors.

The image of Divine revelation to the prophets can be represented by the example of Moses and Aaron. To tongue-tied Moses, God gave his brother Aaron as mediators. To Moses’ perplexity, how he could proclaim the will of God to the people, being tongue-tied, the Lord said: “You (Moses) will speak to him (Aaron) and put words (Mine) into his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and I will teach you what you should do, and he will speak instead of you to the people. So he will be your mouth, and you will be to him instead of God" (Ex. 4:15-16).

Under constant persecution for his prophecies, Jeremiah decided one day to stop preaching altogether. But he could not resist God for a long time, because the prophetic gift "was in his heart like a burning fire, enclosed in his bones, and he was weary holding it" (Jer. 20:8-9).

While believing in the divine inspiration of the books of the Bible, it is important to remember that the Bible is the book of the Church. According to the plan of God, people are called to be saved not alone, but in a society that is led and inhabited by the Lord. This society is called the Church. Historically, the Church is divided into the Old Testament Church, to which the Jewish people belonged, and the New Testament Church, to which Orthodox Christians belong. The New Testament Church inherited the spiritual wealth of the Old Testament - the word of God. The Church has not only preserved the letter of the word of God, but also possesses 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 guide it. Therefore, the Church gives us correct 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.

History of the Sacred Books

The sacred books in their modern fullness did not immediately appear. The time from Moses (1550 BC) to Samuel (1050 BC) can be called the first period of the formation of St. Scriptures. The inspired Moses, who wrote down his revelations, laws, and narratives, gave the following command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord: "Take this book of the law and lay it on the right side of the ark of the Lord your God" (Deut. 31:26). Subsequent sacred writers continued to attribute their creations to the Pentateuch of Moses with the command to keep them in the same place where it was kept - as if in one book. Thus, we read about Joshua that he "wrote his words" "in the book of the law of God," that is, in the book of Moses (Is. Joshua 24:26). In the same way, it is said about Samuel, a prophet and judge who lived at the beginning of the royal period, that he "explained to the people the rights of the kingdom, and wrote in a book (obviously already known to everyone and existed before him), and laid before the Lord", i.e. on the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, where the Pentateuch was kept (1 Sam. 10:25).

During the time from Samuel to the Babylonian captivity (589 years BC), the elders of the Israelite people and the prophets were the collectors and keepers of the sacred Old Testament books. The latter, as the main authors of Hebrew writing, are very often mentioned in the books of Chronicles. One should also keep in mind the remarkable testimony of the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius ​​about the custom of the ancient Jews to revise the existing texts of Holy Scripture after any vague circumstances (for example, prolonged wars). It was sometimes, as it were, a new edition of the ancient divine Scriptures, which was allowed to be released, however, only by God-inspired people - the prophets, who remembered the most ancient events and wrote the history of their people with the greatest accuracy. Worthy of note is the ancient tradition of the Jews that the pious king Hezekiah (710 BC), with his chosen elders, published the book of the prophet Isaiah, Proverbs of Solomon, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes.

The time from the Babylonian captivity to the time of the Great Synagogue under Ezra and Nehemiah (400 years BC) is the period of the final completion of the Old Testament list of Holy Books (canon). The main work in this great work belongs to the priest Ezra, this sacred teacher of the law of the God of heaven (Ezra 7:12). With the assistance of the scholar Nehemiah, the creator of an extensive library, who collected "tales about kings, prophets, about David and letters from kings about sacred offerings" (2 Mac. 2:13), Ezra carefully revised and published in one composition all the inspired writings that were before him and included in this composition both the book of Nehemiah and the book with his own name. Then the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, who were still alive, were, without a doubt, employees of Ezra and their creations, of course at the same time, were included in the list of books collected by Ezra. From the time of Ezra, divinely inspired prophets cease to appear among the Jewish people, and books published after that time are no longer included in the list of sacred books. So, for example, the book of Jesus the son of Sirach, also written in Hebrew, with all its ecclesiastical dignity, was no longer included in the sacred canon.

The antiquity of the sacred Old Testament books is evident from their very content. The books of Moses tell so vividly about the life of a man of those distant times, so vividly depict the patriarchal life, so correspond to the ancient traditions of those peoples, that the reader naturally comes to the conclusion that the author himself is close to the times he tells about.

According to experts in the Hebrew language, the very style of the books of Moses bears the stamp of the deepest antiquity: the months of the year do not yet have their own names, but are simply called the first, second, third, etc. months, and the books themselves are called simply by their initial words without special names, for example. BERESHIT ("in the beginning" - the book of Genesis), VE ELLE SHEMOT ("and these are the names" - the book of Exodus), etc., as if to prove that there were no other books, to distinguish from which would require special names. The same correspondence with the spirit and character of ancient times and peoples is seen in other sacred writers who lived after Moses.

By the time of Christ the Savior, the Hebrew language in which the Law was written was already a dead language. The Jewish population of Palestine spoke a common language for the Semitic tribes - Aramaic. Christ also spoke this language. Those few words of Christ that the evangelists cite literally: "talifa kumi; abba; Eloi, Eloi, lamma savakhvani" - all these are Aramaic words. When, after the Jewish War, the existence of small communities of Judeo-Christians ceased to exist, then the Holy Scripture in the Hebrew language completely disappeared from the Christian environment. It was pleasing to the will of God that, having rejected Him and betrayed its purpose, the Jewish community turned out to be the only custodian of the Holy Scripture in the original language, and, contrary to its will, became a witness that everything that the Church of Christ says regarding the ancient prophecies about Christ the Savior and God's preparation of people for acceptance of the Son of God, is not invented by Christians, but is a genuine, many-sidedly affirmed truth.

A very important feature of the sacred books of the Bible, which determines the varying degree of their authority, is the canonical nature of some books and the non-canonical nature of others. To find out the origin of this difference, it is necessary to touch upon the very history of the formation of the Bible. We have already had occasion to notice that the Bible includes sacred books written in different epochs and by different authors. To this it must now be added that, along with genuine, inspired books, there appeared in different epochs also unauthentic or non-inspired books, with which, however, their authors tried to give the appearance of genuine and inspired books. Especially many such writings appeared in the first centuries of Christianity, on the basis of Ebionism and Gnosticism, such as the "first gospel of James", "the gospel of Thomas", "the Apocalypse of St. Peter", "Apocalypse of Paul", etc. Therefore, an authoritative voice was needed, which I would clearly define which of these books are really true and inspired by God, which ones are only edifying and useful (not being inspired by God), and which ones are directly harmful and false. Such guidance was given to all believers by the Christian Church itself in its list of so-called canonical books.

The Greek word kanon, like the Semitic kane, originally means a reed stick, or in general, any straight stick, and hence, in a figurative sense, everything that serves to straighten, correct other things, for example. "carpenter's plumb", or the so-called "rule". In a more abstract sense, the word kanon received the meaning of "rule, norm, pattern", with which meaning it occurs, by the way, in St. Paul: "To those who walk according to this rule (kanon), peace and mercy be upon them, and to the Israel of God" (Gal. 6:16). Based on this, the term kanon and the adjective kanonikos derived from it began to be applied quite early to those sacred books in which, according to the tradition of the Church, they saw the expression of the true rule of faith, its model. Already Irenaeus of Lyon says that we have "the canon of truth - the word of God." And St. Athanasius of Alexandria defines "canonical" books as those that serve as a source of salvation, in which alone the teaching of piety is indicated. The final distinction between canonical and non-canonical books dates back to the time of St. John Chrysostom, Bl. Jerome and Augustine. Since that time, the epithet "canonical" has been attached to those sacred books of the Bible that are recognized by the entire Church as inspired by God, containing the rules and patterns of faith - in contrast to the books "non-canonical", i.e., although instructive and useful, ( for which they are placed in the Bible), but not inspired and "apocryphal (apokrifos - hidden, secret), completely rejected by the Church and therefore not included in the Bible. Thus, we should look at the sign of the" canonicity "of known books as a voice Church Tradition, which confirms the inspired origin of the books of Holy Scripture.Consequently, in the Bible itself, not all of its books have the same meaning and authority: some (canonical) are inspired by God, contain the true word of God, others (non-canonical) are only edifying and useful, but they are not alien to the personal, not always infallible opinions of their authors.This distinction must be kept in mind when reading the Bible, for a correct assessment and an appropriate attitude to incoming in her books.

Question of "non-canonical" books

(Bishop Nathanael Lvov)

The question of the canon, i.e., which of the pious writings can be considered truly inspired by God and be placed along with the Torah, occupied the Old Testament Church during the last centuries before the Nativity of Christ. But the Old Testament Church did not establish a canon, although it did all the preparatory work. One of the milestones of this preparatory work is noted in 2 Maccabees, which says that Nehemiah, "assembling a library, collected the stories of the kings and the prophets and of David, and the letters of the kings" (2:13). To an even greater extent, the selection of books for the translation of 70 interpreters, solemnly conciliarly accomplished by the Old Testament Church, prepared the establishment of the canon of the most sacred books.

Both events could with some right be considered the establishment of the canon, if we had a list of books that the righteous Nehemiah collected as sacred or that were chosen for translation by God's chosen interpreters. But we do not have an exact list for either event.

The division between recognized and unrecognized, canonical and non-canonical was established by the Jewish community only after the rejection of Christ the Savior by the leaders of the Jewish people, after the destruction of Jerusalem, on the verge of the 1st and 2nd centuries after the Nativity of Christ, by a meeting of Jewish rabbis in Mt. Jamnia in Palestine. Among the rabbis, the most prominent were Rabbi Akiba and Gamaliel the Younger. They established a list of 39 books, which they artificially reduced into 24 books, combining into one: the books of Kings, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and 12 books of the minor prophets, according to the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This list was accepted by the Jewish community and introduced into all synagogues. It is the "canon" according to which the books of the Old Testament are called canonical or non-canonical.

Of course, this canon, established by the Jewish community, which rejected Christ the Savior and therefore ceased to be the Old Testament Church, which lost all right to God's heritage, which is Holy Scripture, such a canon cannot be binding on the Church of Christ.

Nevertheless, the Church reckoned with the Jewish canon, for example, the list of sacred books established by the Local Holy Council of Laodicea was clearly compiled under the influence of the Jamne list. This list does not include the Maccabees, or Tobit, or Judith, or the Wisdom of Solomon, or the third book of Ezra. However, this list does not completely coincide with the list of the Jewish canon, since the list of the Laodicean Council includes the book of the prophet Baruch, the epistle of Jeremiah and the 2nd book of Ezra, excluded by the Jewish canon (in the New Testament, the Laodicean Council did not include St. John the Theologian in the canon of Revelation) .

But in the life of the Church, the Laodicean canon has not received a predominant significance. In determining its sacred books, the Church is guided to a much greater extent by the 85th Apostolic Canon and the Epistle of Athanasius the Great, which include 50 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament. This wider choice was influenced by the composition of the translation books of the 70 interpreters (Septuagint). However, the Church did not unconditionally submit to this choice, including in its list books that appeared later than the translation of the 70, such as the Maccabees and the book of Jesus the son of Sirach.

The fact that the Church accepted the so-called "non-canonical" books into her life is evidenced by the fact that in divine services they are used in exactly the same way as the canonical ones, and, for example, the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, rejected by the Jewish canon, is the most read from the Old Testament for divine services.

The 11th chapter of the book of the Wisdom of Solomon speaks so prophetically clearly about the sufferings of Christ, as there can be no other place in the Old Testament, except the prophet Isaiah. Is this the reason why the rabbis assembled in Jamnia rejected this book?

Christ the Savior in the Sermon on the Mount cites, although without references, words from the book of Tobit (cf. Tov. 4:15 with Matt. 7:12 and Luke 4:31, Tov. 4:16 with Luke 14:13), from the book of the son of Sirach (cf. 28:2 with Mt. 6:14 and Mark 2:25), from the book of the Wisdom of Solomon (cf. 3:7 with Mt. 13:43). The Apostle John in Revelation takes both the words and images of the book of Tobit (cf. Rev. 21:11-24 with Tov. 13:11-18). The Apostle Paul in his epistles to the Romans (1.21), to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:20-27; 2:78), to Timothy (1 Tim. 1:15) has words from the book of the prophets. Baruch. At ap. James has a lot of common phrases with the book of Jesus the son of Sirach. Epistle to the Hebrews Paul and the book of the Wisdom of Solomon are so close to each other that some moderately negative critics considered them the creation of the same author.

All the countless hosts of Christian martyrs of the first centuries were inspired to exploit by the most holy example of the Maccabean martyrs, about whom the 2nd book of Maccabees tells.

Metropolitan Anthony accurately defines: “The holy books of the Old Testament are divided into canonical, which are recognized by both Christians and Jews, and non-canonical, which are recognized only by Christians, while the Jews have lost them” (Experience of the Church of St. Catechism, p. 16).

All this indisputably testifies to the high authority and divine inspiration of the holy books of the Bible, incorrectly, or rather, ambiguously referred to as non-canonical.

We dwelled on this issue in detail because Protestantism, obediently following the Jewish canon, rejects all books rejected by the Jews.

Original Appearance and Language of Scripture

The language of the sacred books

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

Much of the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. In Aramaic written in the Old Testament 2-8 chapters of the book of Prop. Daniel, 4-8 chapters of the I book of Ezra and the book of Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach.

The 2nd and 3rd books of Maccabees and the entire New Testament, except for the Gospel of Matthew, are written in Greek in the Old Testament. In addition, both the Gospel of Matthew and all the books of the Old Testament not recognized by the Jewish canon have survived only in Greek, and have been lost in the Hebrew or Aramaic original.

The first translation of Holy Scripture known to us was the translation of all the books of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, completed by the so-called 70 (more precisely, 72) interpreters in the 3rd century BC.

Demetrius Phalareus, a learned nobleman of the Hellenistic Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus, set out to collect in the capital of his sovereign all the books that existed then all over the world. Judaea at that time (284-247 BC) was subordinate to the Egyptian kings, and Ptolemy Philadelphus ordered the Jews to send to the Alexandrian library all the books that they had, attaching to them a Greek translation from them. Probably none of his contemporaries understood that this, typical of bibliophiles, the desire of the king and his nobles to compile the most complete collection of books would be of such importance for the spiritual life of mankind.

The Jewish high priests took this task with extreme seriousness and a sense of responsibility. Despite the fact that by this time, in fact, the entire Jewish people were concentrated in one tribe of Judah and the Jews could safely take upon themselves the fulfillment of the wishes of the Egyptian king, however, quite rightly and holyly wishing that all Israel would take part in such a matter, the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people established fasting and increased prayer throughout the people and called on all 12 tribes to elect 6 translators from each tribe so that they would jointly translate the Holy. Scripture in Greek, the most common language then.

This translation, which was thus the fruit of the conciliar feat of the Old Testament Church, was called the Septuagint, i.e. Seventy, and became for Orthodox Christians the most authoritative presentation of the Holy. Scriptures of the Old Testament.

Much later (apparently, around the 1st century BC for the Old Testament part of the Holy Scriptures and around the beginning of the 2nd century AD for the New Testament part), a translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Syriac language appeared, the so-called . Peshitta, which in all important respects coincides with the translation of the Septuagint. For the Syrian Church and for the Eastern churches associated with the Syrian Church, the Peshitta is as authoritative as the Septuagint is for us, and in the Western Church the translation made by Blessed Jerome, the so-called. The Vulgate (which in Latin means exactly the same as the Aramaic Peshitta - "simple"), was considered more authoritative than the Hebrew original. This may seem strange, but we will try to clarify it.

By the time of Christ the Savior, the Hebrew language in which the Law and most other books of the Old Testament were written was already a dead language. The Jewish population of Palestine spoke a language that was then common to the Semitic tribes of Asia Minor - Aramaic. Christ the Savior also spoke this language. Those few words of Christ that the holy evangelists cite in a literal transmission: "talifah kumi" (Mk. 5:41), "abba", in the Lord's address to God the Father (Mk. 5:41), the dying cry of the Lord on the cross "Eloi , Eloi, lamma savakhthani" (Mark 15:34) are Aramaic words (in the Gospel of Matthew, the words "Eloi, Eloi" - My God, My God - are given in the Hebrew form "Either, Or", but the second half of the phrase in both gospels are given in Aramaic).

When, during the 1st and 2nd centuries, after the storms of the Jewish War and the uprising of Bar Kokhba, the existence of Jewish-Christian communities ceased, then the Holy Scriptures in Hebrew disappeared from the Christian environment. It turned out to be pleasing to the will of God that the Jewish community, which had rejected Him and thus betrayed its main purpose, received a different assignment, becoming the only custodian of the Holy Scripture in its original language and, against its will, became a witness that everything that the Church of Christ says regarding ancient prophecies and types about Christ the Savior and about God's Fatherly preparation of people for the acceptance of the Son of God, is not invented by Christians, but is the true truth.

When, after many centuries of divided existence in different and, moreover, warring circles, in the Greek and Aramaic translations of St. The Scriptures and in translations from the Greek and Aramaic on the one hand and the Hebrew original on the other hand, when they were all brought to comparison, it turned out that in everything more or less important, with rare exceptions, they are identical. This agreement is evidence of how carefully they preserved the sacred text of the Divine words, how gloriously justified humanity's trust in God, which entrusted the absolute Truth to the care of weak and limited human forces.

But if the texts coincide so much in all the main things, then why does the Greek translation still remain more authoritative for Orthodox Christians, and not the Hebrew original? - Because by the grace of God he was kept in the Church of Christ from apostolic times.

Targums and other ancient translations

In addition to the ancient translations of Scripture, there are more or less free transcriptions of it into Aramaic, the so-called. targums, i.e. interpretation.

When the Hebrew language fell out of use among the Jews and Aramaic took its place, the rabbis had to use it to interpret the Scriptures in the synagogues. But they did not want to completely leave the precious heritage of the fathers - the original of God's Law - and therefore, instead of a direct translation, they introduced explanatory interpretations in Aramaic. These interpretations are called targums.

The most ancient and famous of the Targums are the Babylonian Targum on the entire Holy Scriptures, compiled in the 1st century BC. by a certain rabbi Onkelos, and the Jerusalem Targum is somewhat later, attributed to Joyathan ben Uziel, compiled only on the Torah. There are also other, later Targums. Although both of the most ancient of them appeared before the Massoretic reform, the text interpreted by them almost coincides with the Massoretic one, firstly, because the Targums came from the same rabbinic environment from which the Massorites came out, and secondly, because the text of the Targums (surviving to us only in the later lists) was subjected to processing by massorets.

In this regard, the Samaritan Targum, which was compiled in the 10th-11th centuries, is very important, but which takes as its basis for interpretation not the Masoretic, but the pre-Assoretic Jewish text, which largely coincides with the text of the Septuagint.

The original appearance of the Holy Books

The books of Holy Scripture did not come out of the hands of sacred writers in appearance as we see them now. They were originally written on parchment or papyrus (the stems of plants native to Egypt and Israel) with a cane (a pointed reed stick) and ink. Strictly speaking, it was not books that were written, but charters on a long parchment or papyrus scroll, which looked like a long ribbon and was wound around a shaft. Scrolls were usually written on one side. Subsequently, parchment or papyrus ribbons, instead of being glued into scroll ribbons, for ease of use, began to be sewn into books.

The text in the ancient scrolls was written in the same 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 and, of course, sometimes did it wrong. There were also no punctuation marks, no aspirations, no stresses in the ancient manuscripts. And in the ancient Hebrew language, vowels were also not written, but only consonants.

The division into chapters was made in the 13th century A.D., in the edition of the Latin Vulgate. It was accepted not only by all Christian nations, but even by the Jews themselves for the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. The division of the biblical text into verses, according to some Bible scholars, for sacred books written in poetic meters (for example, psalms) began in the Old Testament church. But all the sacred books of the Old Testament were divided into verses already after the Nativity of Christ by Jewish scholars - the Masoretes (in the 6th century). The division into verses of the New Testament text appeared at a relatively late time in the middle of the sixteenth century. In 1551, the Parisian printer Robert Stephan published the New Testament divided into verses, and in 1555 the entire Bible.

He also owns the numbering of biblical verses. Christians in the III-V centuries adopted the division of the New Testament books into perekops, chapters and types, i.e. departments read for worship on certain days of the year. These departments were not the same in different churches.

The liturgical division of the New Testament Scripture into conceptions, currently accepted in the Orthodox Church, is attributed to St. John of Damascus.

List of Old Testament Books

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

Historical books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Kings: 1, 2, 3 and 4, Chronicles: 1 and 2, 1 Ezra, Nehemiah, 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, the Twelve books of the minor prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

In addition to these books of the Old Testament list, the Greek, Russian and some other translations of the Bible contain the following so-called "non-canonical" books. Among them: the book of Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, the book of Jesus the son of Sirach, the Second and Third Book of Ezra, the three Maccabean books. As already mentioned, they are called so because they were written after the list (canon) of sacred books was completed. Some modern editions of the Bible do not have these "non-canonical" books, while the Russian Bible has them. The above titles of the sacred books are taken from the Greek translation of 70 interpreters. In the Hebrew Bible and in some modern Bible translations, several Old Testament books have different titles.

So, the Bible is the voice of the Holy Spirit, but the Divine voice sounded through human intermediaries and human means. Therefore, the Bible is a book that has its earthly history. She didn't show up right away. It was written by many people over a long period in several languages ​​in different countries.

An Orthodox Christian can never "contradict the Bible" in anything, whether small or large, consider even one word obsolete, out of date, or false, as Protestant and other "critics", enemies of God's word, assure us. . "Heaven and earth pass by, but the words of God do not pass by" (Matt. 24:35) and "Heaven and earth will sooner pass away than one tittle from the Law be lost" (Luke 16:17), as the Lord said.

Summary of Translations of Scripture

Greek translation of the seventy interpreters (Septuagint). The closest to the original text of the Scriptures of the Old Testament is the Alexandrian translation, known as the Greek translation of the seventy interpreters. It was started by the will of the Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus in 271 BC. Wanting to have in his library the sacred books of Jewish law, this inquisitive sovereign ordered his librarian Demetrius to take care of acquiring these books and translating them into the Greek language that was generally known at that time and the most widespread. Six of the most able men were chosen from each Israelite tribe and sent to Alexandria with an exact copy of the Hebrew Bible. The translators were placed on the island of Pharos, near Alexandria, and completed the translation in a short time. The Orthodox Church since apostolic times has been using sacred books translated by 70.

Latin translation, Vulgate. Until the fourth century AD, there were several Latin translations of the Bible, among which the so-called ancient Italic, made according to the text of the 70, enjoyed the greatest popularity for its clarity and special closeness to the sacred text. But after bliss. Jerome, one of the most learned Fathers of the Church of the 4th century, published in 384 his translation of the Holy Scriptures in Latin, made by him according to the Hebrew original, the Western Church gradually began to abandon the ancient Italic translation in favor of Jerome's translation. In the 11th century, by the Council of Trent of Jerome, the translation was introduced into general use in the Roman Catholic Church under the name of the Vulgate, which literally means "common translation."

The Slavic translation of the Bible was made according to the text of 70 interpreters by the holy Thessalonica brothers Cyril and Methodius, in the middle of the 9th century AD, during their apostolic labors in the Slavic lands. When the Moravian prince Rostislav, dissatisfied with the German missionaries, asked the Greek emperor Michael to send capable mentors of the faith of Christ to Moravia, imp. Michael sent Sts. Cyril and Methodius, who thoroughly knew the Slavic language, and even in Greece began to translate the Divine Scripture into this language. On the way to the Slavic lands, Sts. the brothers stopped for some time in Bulgaria, which was also enlightened by them, and here they did not a little work on the translation of St. books. They continued their translation in Moravia, where they arrived around 863. It was completed after the death of St. Cyril of St. Methodius in Panonia, under the auspices of the pious prince Kocel, to whom he retired due to civil strife in Moravia. With the adoption of Christianity under St. Prince Vladimir (988), the Slavic Bible, translated by Sts. Cyril and Methodius.

Russian translation. When, over time, the Slavic language began to differ significantly from Russian, for many, reading St. Scripture became difficult. As a result, the translation of St. books into modern Russian. First, by order of the imp. Alexander the First and with the blessing of the Holy Synod, the New Testament was published in 1815 at the expense of the Russian Bible Society. Of the Old Testament books, only the Psalter was translated, as the most commonly used book in Orthodox worship. Then, already in the reign of Alexander II, after a new, more accurate edition of the New Testament in 1860, a printed edition of the law-positive books of the Old Testament appeared in Russian translation in 1868. The following year, the Holy Synod blessed the publication of historical Old Testament books, and in 1872 - teaching. Meanwhile, Russian translations of individual sacred books of the Old Testament often began to be published in spiritual journals; so we finally saw the complete edition of the Bible in Russian in 1877. Not everyone sympathized with the appearance of the Russian translation, preferring Church Slavonic. The Russian translation was supported by St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, later Bishop Theophan the Recluse, Patriarch Tikhon and other prominent archpastors of the Russian Church.

Other translations of the Bible. The Bible was first translated into French in 1160 by Peter Wald. The first translation of the Bible into German appeared in 1460. Martin Luther in 1522-32 again translated the Bible into German. The first translation of the Bible into English was made by Bede the Venerable, who lived in the first half of the 8th century. A modern English translation was made under King James in 1603 and published in 1611. In Russia, the Bible was translated into many native languages. So, Metropolitan Innokenty translated it into the Aleutian language, the Kazan Academy - into Tatar, and into others. The most successful in translating and distributing the Bible into different languages ​​were the British and American Bible Societies. The Bible has now been translated into over 1200 languages.

At the end of this note on translations, it must be said that every translation has its advantages and disadvantages. Translations that seek to literally convey the content of the original suffer from heaviness and difficulty in understanding. On the other hand, translations that seek to convey only the general meaning of the Bible in the most understandable and accessible form often suffer from inaccuracies. The Russian Synodal translation avoids both extremes and combines maximum closeness to the meaning of the original with ease of language.

Holy Scripture and Worship

(Bishop Nathanael Lvov)

During the daily worship in the Orthodox Church, as is known, the process of accomplishing the whole work of saving people is repeated in its main features: Vespers begins with a remembrance of the creation of the world, then recalls the fall of people, speaks of the repentance of Adam and Eve, of the bestowal of the Sinai Law, ending with the prayer of Simeon the God-Receiver. Matins depicts the state of the Old Testament humanity before the Coming into the world of Christ the Savior, depicts the sorrow, hope, expectation of the people of that time, speaks of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Nativity of the Lord. The Liturgy reveals the whole life of Christ the Savior from the Bethlehem manger to Golgotha, Resurrection and Ascension, introducing us into reality through symbols and reminders, because in Holy Communion we receive not a symbol, but actually His very Body, His very Blood, that very Body, that The very Blood that He gave at the Last Supper in the Upper Room of Zion, that very Body, that very Blood that suffered at Golgotha, rose from the tomb and ascended into heaven.

The repetition in Divine services, at least in the most brief outline, of the entire process of preparing mankind for the acceptance of the Lord, is necessary because both processes - historical and liturgical - have essentially the same goal: both here and there a weak, infirm, inert, carnal person is needed. to prepare for the most great and terrible: for a meeting with Christ - the Son of God - and for union with Him. The goal is one, and the object is the same - a person. Therefore, the path must be the same.

In the historical process, the preparation of people for the acceptance of the Son of God is closely connected with Holy Scripture, not only because this process is described in Scripture, but also because it was precisely Scripture from the moment it appeared that the souls of people were most of all prepared for spiritual growth, which made them able to meet Christ. According to church tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary at the moment of the gospel of the Archangel was reading the book of the prophet Isaiah, in any case, thanks to the knowledge of the prophecy of Isaiah, She could understand and accept the gospel. John the Baptist preached in fulfillment of the Scriptures and with the words of the Scriptures. His testimony, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” which gave the Lord the first apostles, could be understood by them only in the light of Scripture.

Naturally, from the very beginning, the process of individual preparation of each individual person for the acceptance of the Son of God, i.e. Divine service turned out to be most closely connected with the same instrument of God by which humanity was historically prepared for the same thing, i.e. with Holy Scripture.

The very act of the entry of the Lord and Savior of our Jesus Christ into the world in the Sacrament of Transubstantiation is a very brief act, just as it was brief when it was first performed by Christ Himself in the Zion Room at the Last Supper. But the preparation for it, for this act, was everything sacred, everything good in the entire previous history of mankind.

The Last Supper is brief, and its repetition in the Divine Liturgy is also brief, but the Christian consciousness understands that this most important act in the universe cannot be started without worthy appropriate preparation, for the Lord says in Scripture: “Cursed is everyone who does the work of God negligently” and “Who eats and drinks [Communion] unworthily, he eats and drinks condemnation to himself, not considering the Body of the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:29).

A worthy preparation for the acceptance of the Son of God in the historical process was chiefly the Holy Scriptures. It is, i.e. careful reverent reading of it can be a corresponding preparation for the acceptance of the Son of God and in the process of liturgical service.

That is why, and not just out of imitation of the synagogue, as is often interpreted, from the very beginning of Christian history, Holy Scripture has taken such a comprehensive place in preparing Christians for the Mystery of the Eucharist and for the communion of St. Mysteries of Christ, i.e. in worship.

In the early Church, in the very first years of its existence, in Jerusalem, when the Church consisted mainly of Jewish Christians, the reading and singing of the Holy Scriptures was performed in the sacred language of the Old Testament Church, in the language of ancient Hebrew, although the people, who then spoke Aramaic , the Hebrew language was almost incomprehensible. To clarify the Holy Scriptures, its text was interpreted in Aramaic. These interpretations were called targums. In Christianity, targums mean interpretations of the Old Testament in the sense of its fulfillment and fulfillment in the New Testament.

These interpretations of the Old Testament were made by the holy apostles themselves and were for the original Church a substitute for the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, which, as such, did not yet exist.

Thus, despite the absence of the New Testament books in the original Church, essentially Christian worship from the very beginning consisted of hearing and learning from the Divine verbs of both Testaments. And the interpretation by the holy apostles of the Old Testament Scriptures - the Law, the Prophets and Psalms, was the most important part of the preparation for St. Eucharist worship.

Examples of such Christian interpretations of the Old Testament are the homilies preserved in the Acts of the Apostles by St. Peter and the First Martyr Stephen.

Later, when pagan Christians began to predominate in the Church, the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament began to be read and explained in Greek, which was then generally understood throughout the known world. Soon the books of the New Testament also appeared, first the epistles of the apostles, then the Gospels and other apostolic writings, also written in Greek.

At the same time, a providentially important circumstance was that the apostolic Church did not have to take care of creating a translation of the Old Testament into the new sacred language of the Church - into Greek.

This translation by the Providence of God had already been prepared in advance by the inspired feat of the Old Testament Church, which created such a translation of all the sacred books of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. This translation is called the translation of the 70s, or in Latin the Septuagint.

Levels of Understanding

The meaning of Holy Scripture, that is, those thoughts that the sacred writers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, set forth in writing, is expressed in two ways, directly through words and indirectly through persons, things, events and actions described by words. There are two main types of meaning of Holy Scripture: In the first case, the meaning is verbal or literal, and in the second, the meaning is objective or mysterious, spiritual.

Literal meaning

Sacred writers, expressing their thoughts in words, use these latter sometimes in their own direct meaning, sometimes in an improper, figurative meaning.

For example, the word "hand" in public usage means a certain member of the human body. But when the psalmist prayed to the Lord "send your hand from on high" (Ps. 143:7), he uses the word "hand" here in a figurative sense, in the sense of general help and protection from the Lord, thus transferring the original meaning of the word on the subject of the spiritual, higher, insane.

In accordance with such uses of words, the literal meaning of Holy Scripture is divided into two types - into the proper literal and the non-proper or literal-figurative sense. So, for example, and Gen. 7:18 the word "water" is used in its proper, literal sense, but in Ps. 18:2 - figuratively, in the sense of sorrows and disasters, or in Is. 8:7 - in the sense of a hostile army. In general, Scripture uses words in a figurative sense when it speaks of higher, spiritual things, for example, about God, His properties, actions, etc.

mysterious meaning

Since the persons, things, actions, events described to convey a mysterious meaning are taken by sacred writers from different areas, are placed in unequal relationships between themselves and to expressed concepts, the mysterious meaning of Scripture is divided into the following types: prototype, parable, apologist, vision and symbol.

A prototype is a type of the mysterious meaning of Scripture, when sacred writers communicate concepts about any higher objects through church-historical persons, things, events and actions. Thus, for example, the Old Testament writers, while narrating about the various events of the Old Testament Church, very often under them reveal individual events of the New Testament Church through them.

In this case, the prototype is the pre-image of what belongs to the New Testament, which had to be fulfilled in Christ the Savior and the Church founded by Him, contained in the persons, events, things and actions of the Old Testament. So, for example, Melchizedek, the king of Salem and the priest of the Most High God, according to 14 ch. book of Genesis, he went out to meet Abraham, brought him bread and wine and blessed the patriarch, and Abraham, for his part, offered Melchizedek a tithe of the booty. Everything that Scripture tells in the present case is an actual church-historical fact.

But besides this, the narration of the 14th chapter of Genesis also has a deep, mysteriously transformative significance in relation to New Testament times. The historical person of Melchizedek, according to the explanation of the Apostle Paul (Heb. 7), represented Jesus Christ: the actions of blessing and offering tithes did not indicate the superiority of the New Testament priesthood over the Old Testament: the objects taken out by Melchizedek - bread and wine, according to the explanation of the Church Fathers, pointed to the New Testament sacrament of the Eucharist . The passage of the Israelites across the Black Sea (Ex. 14), in addition to its historical significance, at the direction of the Apostle (1 Cor. 10: 1-2), prefigured the New Testament baptism, and the sea itself contained, according to the explanation of the Church, the image of the Unsophisticated Bride - the Virgin Mary . The Old Testament Paschal lamb (Ex. 12) represented the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world - Christ the Savior. According to the Apostle (Heb. 10:1), the entire Old Testament was a type, a shadow of the future blessings of the Old Testament.

When sacred writers, in order to elucidate certain thoughts, use for this person and event, although unhistorical, but quite possible, usually borrowed from everyday reality, in this case the mysterious meaning of Scripture is called inflow or simply a parable. Such, for example, are all the parables of the Savior.

In the apologist, human actions are attributed to animals and inanimate objects, human actions that are impossible for them in reality, actions that are impossible for them in reality - for a visual representation of some truth and to enhance the edifying impression. Such is the apologist in Su. 9:8-15 - about the trees that chose a king for themselves, or an apology from the prophet Ezekiel - about two eagles (17:1-10), also an apologist for Joash the king of Israel (2 Kings 14:8-10-2; Par. 25 :18-19) about thorns and cedar.

There are also some extraordinary types of Divine Revelation in Scripture. So often the prophets, patriarchs and other chosen men, sometimes in a conscientious state, sometimes in dreams, were honored to contemplate some events, images and phenomena with a mysterious meaning, indicating a future event. These mysterious images and phenomena are called visions. Such, for example, are the visions of Abraham when God entered into a covenant with him (Gen. 15:1-17), Jacob's vision of the mysterious ladder (Gen. 28:10-17), the vision of the prophet Ezekiel (27) of a field with human bones, etc.

The mysterious meaning of Scripture is called a symbol, when the thoughts of Scripture are revealed through special external actions, which, at the command of God, were performed to His chosen ones. So the prophet Isaiah, at the command of the Lord, walks naked and barefoot for three years as an omen of future disasters for the Egyptians and Ethiopians, when the Assyrian king takes them into captivity naked and barefoot (Is. 20). The prophet Jeremiah, in the presence of the elders, broke a new earthen vessel in commemoration of the destruction coming to Jerusalem (Jer. 19).

Methods of explanation borrowed

a) from the Scripture itself

In the first place, therefore, one should consider the interpretations by the sacred writers themselves of various passages of Scripture: such interpretations of the Old Testament are especially numerous in the books of the New Testament. For example, to the question - why did the Old Testament law allow divorces on various occasions? The Savior answered the Pharisees: "Moses, because of your hardness of heart, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so" (Matthew 19:8). Here is a direct interpretation of the spirit of the Mosaic legislation, given in relation to the moral state of the Old Testament man. The explanations of the ancient prophecies of the Old Testament types in the books of the New Testament are very numerous. An example is Mt. 1:22-23; Is. 7:14; Matt. 2:17-18; Jer. 31:15; And he. 19:33-35; Ref. 12:10; Acts. 2:25-36; Ps. 15:8-10.

Another no less important way is to demolish parallel or similar passages of Scripture. Thus, the word "anointing", used by the Apostle Paul without any explanation (2 Cor. 1:21), is repeated by the Apostle John in the sense of an outpouring of the grace-filled gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 John 2:20). Thus, regarding the literal and proper meaning of the Savior's words about eating His flesh and blood (John 6:56), the Apostle Paul leaves no doubt when he says that those who eat bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord (1 Cor. 11:27).

The third way is to study the composition or context of speech, i.e. explanation of known passages of Scripture in connection with previous and subsequent words and thoughts that are directly related to the place being explained.

The fourth way is to clarify the various historical circumstances of the writing of a particular book - information about the writer, about the purpose, occasion, time and place of writing it. Knowing the purpose of writing the Epistle to the Romans of the Apostle Paul: to refute the false opinion of the Jews about their predominant position in the Christian Church, we understand why the apostle so often and persistently repeats about justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone, without the works of the Jewish law. Bearing in mind also that the Apostle James wrote his epistle about the misunderstood teaching of the apostle Paul about justification by faith, one can understand why he teaches with particular force in his epistle about the necessity for salvation of works of piety, and not only faith.

b) From various auxiliary sources

Auxiliary sources of interpretation of the Holy Scriptures include:

Knowledge of those languages ​​in which the sacred books are written - mainly Hebrew and Greek, because in many cases the only way to understand the true meaning of this or that place in Scripture is to clarify its meaning from the word formation of the original text. For example, in Proverbs. 8:22 the saying "The Lord created me ..." is more accurately translated from the Hebrew original: "The Lord acquired (acquired) me ..." in the sense of "begotten." In Gen. 3:15 the Slavic expression about the seed of the woman, that it will "guard" the head of the serpent, is more precisely and clearly translated from the Hebrew so that it will "wipe off" the head of the serpent.

Comparison of different translations of the Holy Scriptures. Knowledge of ancient geography, and especially the geography of the Holy Land, as well as chronology (dates of events), in order to have a clear knowledge of the succession of historical events set forth in the Holy Books, as well as to clearly represent the places where these events took place. This also includes archaeological information about the manners, customs and rituals of the Jewish people.

The mood of the soul when reading the word of God

One should begin to read the Holy Scriptures with reverence and readiness to accept the teachings contained in it as Divine Revelation. There should be no place for doubts, the desire to find shortcomings and contradictions in Scripture.

There must be sincere faith in the truth, importance, and saving power of what is being read, since it is the word of God, transmitted through the mediation of holy men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Reverence is inseparable from a special spiritual fear and joy. These feelings should be kindled in oneself when reading the word of God, remembering the words of the Psalmist (Ps. 119:161-162). According to the saying of the All-Wise, "wisdom will not enter into an evil soul" (Wisdom 1:4). Therefore, for a successful study of the word of God, integrity of heart and holiness of life are essential. Therefore, in the prayer read before the start of the teaching, we ask: "cleanse us from all filth."

Remembering our weakness in everything, we must definitely know that without the help of God, the knowledge of His word is impossible.

Harmony of two revelations

Some of the topics covered by the Bible are also areas of scientific study. Often, when comparing those with others, bewilderment and even, as if, contradictions arise. In fact, there are no contradictions.

The fact is that the Lord reveals himself to man in two ways: directly through the spiritual illumination of the human soul and through nature, which, by its structure, testifies to the wisdom, goodness and omnipotence of its Creator. Since the Source of these revelations - internal and external - is one, the contents of these revelations must complement each other and under no circumstances can be in conflict. Therefore, it must be recognized that between pure science, based on the facts of the study of nature, and Holy Scripture - this written witness of spiritual illumination - there must be complete agreement in everything related to the knowledge of God and His works. If throughout history there have sometimes been sharp conflicts between representatives of science and religion (mainly of the Catholic faith), then with a careful acquaintance with the causes of these conflicts, one can easily be convinced that they arose due to a pure misunderstanding. The fact is that religion and science have their own individual goals and their own methodology, and therefore they can only partially touch in some fundamental issues, but they cannot completely coincide.

"Conflicts" between science and religion arise when, for example, representatives of science express arbitrary and unfounded judgments about God, about the root cause of the appearance of the world and life, about the ultimate goal of human existence, etc. These judgments of learned people have no support in the very facts of science, but are built on superficial and hasty generalizations, completely unscientific. Similarly, conflicts between science and religion also arise when the representatives of religion wish to derive the laws of nature from their understanding of religious principles. For example, the Roman Inquisition condemned Galileo's doctrine of the rotation of the earth around the sun. It seemed to her that since God created everything for the sake of man, then the earth should be in the center of the universe, and everything should revolve around it. This, of course, is a completely arbitrary conclusion, not based on the Bible, because being in the center of Divine care has nothing to do with the geometric center of the physical world (which, perhaps, does not even exist). Atheists at the end of the last century and at the beginning of this century sneered at the Bible's account of God's original creation of light. They ridiculed the believers: "Where could the light come from when its source, the sun, did not yet exist!" But today's science has gone far from such a childishly naive idea of ​​light. According to the teachings of modern physics, both light and matter are different states of energy and can exist and pass into each other, regardless of star bodies. Fortunately, such conflicts between science and religion resolve themselves when the fervor of controversy is replaced by a deeper study of the issue.

Not all people can find a healthy harmony of faith and reason. Some people blindly believe in the human mind and are ready to agree with any theory, the most hasty and untested, for example: about the appearance of peace and life on earth, regardless of what the Holy Scripture says about this. Others suspect scientists of dishonesty and malice and are afraid to get acquainted with the positive discoveries of science in the fields of paleontology, biology and anthropology, so as not to shake their faith in the truth of Holy Scripture.

However, if we adhere to the following provisions, then we should never have serious conflicts between faith and reason:

Both Scripture and nature are true and mutually confirming witnesses of God and His works.

Man is a limited being, who does not fully understand either the secrets of nature or the depth of the truths of Holy Scripture in full measure.

What seems contradictory at this time can be explained when man better understands what nature and the Word of God are telling him.

At the same time, one must be able to distinguish the exact data of science from the assumptions and conclusions of scientists. Facts always remain facts, but scientific theories based on them often change completely when new data appears. Similarly, direct evidence of Scripture must be distinguished from interpretations of it. People understand Holy Scripture to the extent of their spiritual and intellectual development and the available stock of knowledge. Therefore, one cannot demand from the interpreters of Holy Scripture perfect infallibility in matters concerning both religion and science.

The theme of the emergence of the world and the appearance of man on earth is given by the Holy Scriptures only in the first two chapters of the book of Genesis. It must be said that in all world literature no book has been read with greater interest than this divinely inspired book. On the other hand, it seems that no other book has been subjected to such cruel and undeserved criticism as the book of Genesis. Therefore, in a number of subsequent articles, I would like to say something in defense of both this sacred book itself and the content of its first chapters. The forthcoming articles are supposed to cover the following topics: about the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, about the author and circumstances of writing the book of Genesis, about the days of creation, about man as a representative of two worlds, about the spiritual qualities of primitive man, about the religion of primitive people, about the causes of unbelief, etc. d.

Dead Sea Scrolls

A. A. Oporin

Over the years, not only have critics denied the reality of the historical events described in the Bible, but they have also questioned the authenticity of the books of Scripture themselves. They argued that the books of the Bible were not written by the people whose names appear in the titles, that their writing did not match the biblical dating, that all the prophecies were written backdating, and that the books of the Bible abound in a huge number of later inserts; finally, that the modern text of the Bible differs sharply from that which was many hundreds of years ago. Even some theologians and believers began to agree with this. But the true children of God, remembering the words of Christ: "Blessed are those who have not seen and believed" (John 20:29), always believed in the veracity of Scripture, although they did not have material evidence. But the time has come when such evidence appeared, and today scientists no longer question the fidelity, truth and immutability of the Bible.

Qumran community

One summer day in 1947, a Bedouin boy, Mohammed ed-Dhib, was tending a herd and accidentally discovered ancient leather scrolls in one of the caves. This cave was located 2 kilometers from the northwestern coast of the Dead Sea, in the town of Qumran. These few leather scrolls, sold for next to nothing by a little shepherd, prompted a sensational excavation.

Systematic excavations began in 1949 and continued until 1967 under the direction of R. De Vaux. In the course of them, a whole settlement was dug out, which died in the first century AD. This settlement belonged to the Jewish sect of the Essenes (in translation - doctors, healers). Along with the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Essenes were one of the branches of Judaism. They settled as a community in remote places, trying to have almost no contact with the outside world. They had common property, they did not have wives, believing that by doing so they would bind themselves to the sinful world. True, the presence of women and children in the community was not strictly prohibited. The Essenes strictly observed the letter of the law, which, according to them, could only save a person. The founder of the doctrine was a teacher of righteousness, who lived in the second century BC, who at one time parted ways with the religious circles of Israel and established his community in a monastic way.

During the Jewish War, the community perished, but managed to hide their scrolls in hidden places, where they lay until 1947. It was these scrolls that produced a kind of explosion in the scientific world. The Essenes were actively engaged in the study and rewriting of the Holy Scriptures, as well as the compilation of various commentaries on its individual books. The fact is that before this discovery, the most ancient original of Scripture belonged to the tenth century A.D., which gave reason to critics to assert that over the thousand years that have passed since the fall of the Kingdom of Judah, the text has changed dramatically. But the discovery at Qumran silenced even the most zealous opponents of the Bible. Hundreds of texts of all the books of the Old Testament, except for the book of Esther, were found in eleven caves. When conducting a comparative analysis of them with the modern text of the Bible, it turned out that they are completely identical. Not a single letter of Scripture has changed in a thousand years. In addition, the authorship of the books of the Bible, which are in their titles, was proved. Even many places and chronology of the New Testament have been confirmed, such as the dating of the letter of the apostle Paul to the Colossians and the Gospel of John.

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religious books that make up the Bible. In Judaism, only the Old Testament is considered sacred; in Christianity, the Old and New Testaments. In Islam, the Quran plays a role similar to the holy scripture.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

SACRED SCRIPTURE

Mt 21:42, 22:29, etc.) - this name refers to books written by the Spirit of God through people sanctified from God, called prophets and apostles and usually called the Bible. Holy Scripture is given so that the revelation of God may be preserved more accurately and unchangeably. In the Holy In Scripture, we read the words of the prophets and apostles exactly as if we lived with them, they were heard, despite the fact that the sacred books were written several centuries and millennia before our time. Holy books written at different times, some before AD, others after AD, the first are called the books of the Old Testament, the second - the books of the New Testament. Holy books of the Old Testament, according to Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius the Great and John of Damascus - 22, in relation to how these Jews think in their original language. The number of the Jews is especially noteworthy because, as St. Paul, they were entrusted with the word of God (Rom. 3:2) and the New Testament Christian Church received the Old Testament sacred books from the Old Testament Church. St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Athanasius the Great Old Testament priests. The books are numbered in the following way: 1) The Book of Genesis. 2) Exodus. 3) Leviticus. 4) Book of Numbers 5) Deuteronomy. 6) The Book of Joshua. 7) The book of Judges and with it, as it were, its addition, the book of Ruth. 8) The first and second books of Kings are like 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 of his, or according to the Greek inscription, the book of Nehemiah. 12) Esther. 13) Book of Job. 14) Psalter. 15) Proverbs of Solomon. 16) Ecclesiastes, his own. 17) Song of Songs, his own. 18) The book of the prophet 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 aforementioned counting of the Old Testament books, the following are not mentioned: Lamentations of Jeremiah, the book of St. 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, the three books of Maccabees and some narratives and passages attached to the canonical books, somehow: Prayer of Manasseh, attached at the end of 2 books. Chronicles, the prayer of the three youths, in the book of Daniel 3:25-91, the story of Susanna (Dan 8), the Wil and the Dragon (Dan 14), are not mentioned precisely because they are not in the Hebrew language. However, the Fathers of the Church used these books, cited many passages from them and. according to the testimony of Athanasius the Great, they are appointed by the fathers for reading by those entering the Church. In order to separately determine the content of the sacred. 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, Numbers, Deuteronomy, b) Historical, containing mainly the history of piety, somehow books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. c) Teaching, containing the doctrine of piety, such as: the book of Job, the Psalter and the books of Solomon, d) Prophetic, containing prophecies about the future, and most of all, about Jesus Christ, such as the books of the great prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and twelve other smaller ones. There are twenty-seven books of the New Testament. Law-positive between them, i.e. predominantly constituting the basis of the New Testament, in all fairness, we can call the Gospel, which consists of four books of the Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Between the New Testament books there is also a historical one, namely, the book of the Acts of the Holy Apostles. There are twenty-one teaching books of the New Testament, namely: seven epistles, one ap. James, two Peter's, three John's and one Judas and fourteen Epistles of St. 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 Jews. The prophetic book among the books of the New Testament is the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John the Evangelist. (For the contents of the said books, see under the individual titles of each book.) The oldest of the translations of the books of St. The Scriptures are a translation of the Old Testament by LXX interpreters. It was compiled from Hebrew into Greek in Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus 270 B.C. The Slavic translation of the Bible was compiled by St. Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius, enlighteners of the Slavs in the IX century, from the Greek translation LXX. The beginning of the translation of the Bible into a commonly understood Russian language was laid at the beginning of this century by members of the Russian Bible Society, but in 61 and 62 the revised New Testament was published and reprinted and then it was already committed to the translation of the Old Testament books, which was completed in 1875.

All people of the globe can read the Bible in whole or in part in their native language.

We Orthodox are often reproached for not reading the Bible as often as, for example, Protestants do. To what extent are such accusations justified?

The Orthodox Church recognizes two sources of knowledge of God - Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. And the first is an integral part of the second. After all, initially the sermons of the holy apostles were delivered and transmitted orally. Holy Tradition includes not only Holy Scripture, but also liturgical texts, decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, iconography, and a number of other sources that occupy an important place in the life of the Church. And everything that is said in Holy Scripture is also in the Tradition of the Church.

Since ancient times, the life of a Christian has been inextricably linked with biblical texts. But in the 16th century, when the so-called “Reformation” arose, the situation changed. The Protestants abandoned the Holy Tradition of the Church and limited themselves to the study of the Holy Scriptures. And therefore, a special kind of piety appeared among them - reading and studying biblical texts. I want to emphasize once again: from the point of view of the Orthodox Church, Holy Tradition includes the entire volume of church life, including Holy Scripture. Moreover, even if someone does not read the Word of God, but regularly visits the temple, he hears that the entire worship service is permeated with biblical quotations. Thus, if a person lives the church life, then he is in the atmosphere of the Bible.

Holy Scripture is a collection of different books and by the time of their writing, and by authorship, and by content, and by style.

How many books are included in Holy Scripture? What is the difference between the Orthodox Bible and the Protestant Bible?

Holy Scripture is a collection of books, different books, and by the time they were written, and by authorship, and by content, and by style. They are divided into two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Orthodox Bible has 77 books, while the Protestant Bible has 66.

- What caused such discrepancy?

The fact is that in the Orthodox Bible, more precisely in the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, in addition to 39 canonical books, there are 11 more non-canonical ones: Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, the Epistle of Jeremiah, Baruch, the second and third books of Ezra, three Maccabean books. In the "Large Christian Catechism" of St. Philaret of Moscow, it is said that the division of books into canonical and non-canonical is caused by the absence of the latter (11 books) in Jewish primary sources and their presence only in Greek, i.e. in the Septuagint (translation of 70 interpreters). In turn, the Protestants, starting with M. Luther, abandoned non-canonical books, erroneously assigning them the status of "apocryphal". As for the 27 books of the New Testament, they are recognized by both Orthodox and Protestants. We are talking about the Christian part of the Bible, written after the birth of Christ: the New Testament books testify to the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ and the first decades of the existence of the Church. These include the four Gospels, the book of the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles of the apostles (seven - catholic and 14 - the apostle Paul), as well as the Revelation of John the Theologian (Apocalypse).

Dobromir Gospel, beginning (?) of the 12th century

The main thing is to have a sincere desire to know the Word of God

How to study the Bible correctly? Is it worth starting knowledge from the first pages of Genesis?

The main thing is to have a sincere desire to learn the Word of God. It is better to start with the New Testament. Experienced shepherds recommend getting acquainted with the Bible through the Gospel of Mark (that is, not in the order in which they are presented). It is the shortest, written in simple and accessible language. After reading the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John, we move on to the book of Acts, the apostolic letters and the Apocalypse (the most complex and most mysterious book in the entire Bible). And only after that you can proceed to the Old Testament books. Only after reading the New Testament, it is easier to understand the meaning of the Old. After all, the Apostle Paul did not say in vain that the Old Testament legislation was a schoolmaster to Christ (see: Gal. 3: 24): it leads a person, as if a child by the hand, to let him understand for real what happened during the Incarnation, what is the incarnation of God in principle for a person ...

It is important to understand that reading the Holy Scriptures is part of spiritual achievement.

- And if the reader does not understand some episodes of the Bible? What to do in this case? Who to contact?

It is advisable to have on hand books that explain the Holy Scriptures. We can recommend the creations of the blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria. His explanations are short, but very accessible and deeply ecclesiastical, reflecting the Tradition of the Church. The conversations of St. John Chrysostom on the Gospels and the Apostolic Epistles are also classic. If you have any questions, it would be nice to consult with an experienced priest. It must be understood that reading the Holy Scriptures is part of a spiritual achievement. And it is very important to pray, to purify your soul. After all, even in the Old Testament it was said: wisdom will not enter an evil soul and will not dwell in a body enslaved to sin, for the Holy Spirit of wisdom will move away from wickedness and evade foolish thinking, and will be ashamed of the approaching unrighteousness (Wisdom 1: 4-5) .

Before studying the Holy Scriptures, you need to familiarize yourself with the works of the Holy Fathers

- So, you need to prepare in a special way for reading the Holy Scriptures?

Experienced elders in the monasteries gave the novice a rule: before studying the Holy Scriptures, you must first familiarize yourself with the works of the holy fathers. Bible reading is not just the study of the Word of God, it is like prayer. In general, I would recommend reading the Bible in the morning, after the prayer rule. I think it's easy to allocate 15-20 minutes to read one or two chapters from the Gospel, the apostolic epistles. So you can get a spiritual charge for the whole day. Very often, in this way, answers appear to serious questions that life poses to a person.

Ostromir Gospel (1056 - 1057)

The main postulates of Scripture - the voice of God, sounding in the nature of each of us

Sometimes there is such a situation: I read it, understood what it was about, but it doesn’t suit you, because you don’t agree with what is written ...

According to Tertullian (one of the church writers of antiquity), our soul is a Christian by nature. Thus, biblical truths are given to man from the very beginning, they are embedded in his nature, his consciousness. We sometimes call it conscience, that is, it is not something new that is not characteristic of human nature. The main tenets of the Holy Scriptures are the voice of God that resounds in the nature of each of us. Therefore, first of all, you need to pay attention to your life: does everything in it agree with the commandments of God? If a person does not want to listen to the voice of God, what other voice does he need? Who will he listen to?

The main difference between the Bible and other books is the revelation of God.

Once St. Philaret was asked: they say, how can one believe that the prophet Jonah was swallowed by a whale, which has a very narrow throat? In response, he said: "If it had been written in the Holy Scriptures that it was not the whale that swallowed Jonah, but Jonah the whale, I would have believed it." Of course, today such statements can be perceived with sarcasm. In this regard, the question arises: why does the Church trust the Holy Scriptures so much? After all, the Bible books are written by people...

The main difference between the Bible and other books is its divine revelation. This is not just the work of some outstanding person. Through the prophets and apostles, the voice of God Himself is reproduced in an accessible language. If the Creator addresses us, how should we treat this? Hence such attention and such trust in the Holy Scriptures.

What language were the Bible books written in? How did their translation affect the modern perception of sacred texts?

Most of the Old Testament books are written in Hebrew (Hebrew). Some of them have survived only in Aramaic. The already mentioned non-canonical books have come down to us exclusively in Greek: for example, Judith, Tobit, Baruch and Maccabees. The third book of Ezra in its entirety is known to us only in Latin. As for the New Testament, it was mainly written in Greek - in the Koine dialect. Some biblical scholars believe that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew, but no primary sources have come down to us (there are only translations). Of course, it would be better to read and study biblical books, relying on primary sources, originals. But this has been the case since ancient times: all the books of the Holy Scriptures were translated. And therefore, for the most part, people are familiar with the Holy Scriptures translated into their native language.

All people of the globe can read the Bible in whole or in part in their native language

- It would be interesting to know: what language did Jesus Christ speak?

Many believe that Christ used the Aramaic language. However, when talking about the original Gospel of Matthew, most biblical scholars point to Hebrew as the language of the Old Testament books. The debate on this topic continues to this day.

According to Bible Societies, back in 2008, the Bible, in whole or in part, was translated into 2,500 languages. Some scientists believe that there are 3 thousand languages ​​in the world, others point to 6 thousand. It is very difficult to define the criterion: what is a language and what is a dialect. But we can say with absolute certainty that all people living in different parts of the globe can read the Bible in whole or in part in their own language.

The main criterion - the Bible must be understandable

- Which language is more preferable for us: Russian, Ukrainian or Church Slavonic?

The main criterion - the Bible must be understandable. Traditionally, Church Slavonic is used for worship in the Church. Unfortunately, it is not taught in public schools. Therefore, many biblical expressions require clarification. By the way, this applies not only to our era. This problem also arose in the 19th century. At the same time, a translation of the Holy Scripture into Russian appeared - the Synodal translation of the Bible. He passed the test of time, had a huge impact on the formation of the Russian language in particular and Russian culture in general. Therefore, for Russian-speaking parishioners, I would recommend using it for home reading. As for the Ukrainian-speaking parishioners, the situation here is a bit more complicated. The fact is that the attempt of the first complete translation of the Bible into Ukrainian was made by Panteleimon Kulish in the 60s of the 19th century. Ivan Nechuy-Levitsky joined him. The translation was completed by Ivan Pulyuy (already after Kulish's death). Their work was published in 1903 by the Bible Society. In the XX century. the translations of Ivan Ogienko and Ivan Khomenko became the most authoritative. Many people are now trying to translate all or part of the Bible. There are both positive experiences and difficult, controversial moments. So, it would probably be incorrect to recommend any specific text of the Ukrainian translation. Now the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is translating the Four Gospels. I hope that this will be a successful translation both for home reading and for liturgical reading (in those parishes where Ukrainian is used).

VII century. Four Evangelists. Gospel of Kells. Dublin, Tritini College

Spiritual food should be given to a person in the form in which it can bring spiritual benefits.

In some parishes, during the divine service, a biblical passage is read in their native language (after reading in Church Slavonic)...

This tradition is typical not only for our parishes, but also for many foreign parishes, where there are believers from different countries. In such situations, liturgical passages from Holy Scripture are repeated in their native languages. After all, spiritual food should be given to a person in the form in which it can bring spiritual benefits.

From time to time, information appears in the media about some new biblical book that was allegedly previously lost or kept secret. It necessarily reveals some "sacred" moments that contradict Christianity. How to treat such sources?

In the last two centuries, many ancient manuscripts (manuscripts) have been discovered, which made it possible to coordinate the view of the study of the biblical text. First of all, this concerns the Qumran manuscripts found in the Dead Sea region (in the Qumran caves). Many manuscripts were found there, both biblical and gnostic (that is, texts that distort Christian teaching). It is possible that in the future many Gnostic manuscripts will be found. It should be recalled that even during the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The church fought against the heresy of Gnosticism. And in our time, when we are witnessing a craze for the occult, these texts appear under the guise of some kind of sensation.

We read the Word of God not to memorize, but to feel the breath of God Himself

By what criteria can one determine a positive result from regular reading of the Holy Scriptures? By the number of memorized quotes?

We do not read the Word of God to memorize. Although there are situations, for example in seminaries, when such a task is set. Biblical texts are important for the spiritual life, to feel the breath of God Himself. Thus, we partake of those grace-filled gifts that are in the Church, learn about the commandments, thanks to which we become better, we draw closer to the Lord. Therefore, the study of the Bible is the most important part of our spiritual ascent, spiritual life. With regular reading, many passages are gradually memorized and without special memorization.