Holy Scripture in Orthodoxy. Sacred Tradition - what is it

For the revelation given by God to be unchanging, accurate, and to be passed on from generation to generation ( from generation to generation), the Lord gave people Holy Bible . God revealed Himself and His will through the prophets. He commanded them to write down everything that He proclaims to the representatives of the chosen people: Now go write it on their blackboard and write it in a book so that there is time left for the future, forever, forever.(Isaiah 30:8).

The Bible is made up of the sacred books of the Old and New Testaments. containing divine revelation of God, the world, and our salvation. Through them, God gradually (as the spiritual maturation of mankind) revealed the truth. The greatest of them is about the Savior of the world. Jesus Christ is the spiritual heart of the Bible. His incarnation, death on the cross for our sins and resurrection are the main events not only of the Holy, but world history. Jesus Christ spiritually connects both Testaments. The Old Testament speaks of His expectation, and the New Testament speaks of the fulfillment of this expectation. The Savior said to the Jews: Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and they testify of me(John 5:39).

The most important distinguishing feature bible books - historicity. The Lord communicated saving truths to the chosen people for over a thousand years in specific life circumstances. More than fifteen centuries have passed from the epiphany witnessed by Patriarch Abraham to the revelations given to the last Old Testament prophet Malachi. Among those whom the Lord chose to become witnesses of the Truth were: wise men (Moses), shepherds (Amos), kings (David, Solomon), warriors (Joshua), judges (Samuel), priests (Ezekiel). With such a great variety of personal, historical, geographical, cultural, national and other circumstances and conditions, it is amazing the unity of all biblical sacred texts. They are completely are consistent with each other and complement each other. All of them are organically woven into the historical fabric of the real world. historical life. A holistic view of the history of biblical revelations reveals to us, with all impressive clarity, the paths of Divine Providence.

Reading the Bible should begin with the Gospel, then turn to the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. And only having comprehended the New Testament books, one should proceed to the Old Testament. Then the meaning of the prototypes, prefigures and symbols will be understood, which contain prophecies about the coming of the Savior into the world, His preaching, atoning death and resurrection.

In order to undistortedly perceive the word of God, it is necessary to turn to the interpretations of the works of the holy fathers and Orthodox scholars, based on their heritage.

Inspiration of Holy Scripture

Holy books are called inspired. Many passages in the Bible show that this main feature her is the result influence of the Spirit of God on the human spirit— on the minds and hearts of people chosen and sanctified for special service. At the same time, God preserves and makes it possible to manifest individual human features. By studying the books written by Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Isaiah, and other prophets, it is easy to see their personality traits, character traits, style features. Their human word did not disappear, did not dissolve into the word of God, but quite definitely manifested itself, giving individual coloring to the sacred texts.

At the same time, the Divine truth has not diminished one iota: All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness(2 Tim 3:16).

Who Wrote the Bible

Its authors were holy people - the prophets (Old Testament) and the apostles (New Testament). The Lord Himself chose and called them. Contemporaries knew that these were God's people, and therefore their texts were treated as the word of God.

Bible books did not have to be collected. These scrolls were kept first in the tabernacle, and then in the Jerusalem temple. There were also sacred manuscripts in the synagogues (prayer houses of the Jews) mentioned in the Holy Gospel.

Canon of Scripture

Word canon translated from Greek - rule, measure, pattern. This was the name of the cane, which the builders used as a measure. Applied to Holy Scripture canonical means correct, true. Therefore, these are books recognized by the Church as the revelation of God.

How did the canon come about? Even during the lifetime of the prophets, believing Jews recognized them as God's messengers. Their books were read, copied and passed down from generation to generation. The last inspired men of the Jewish people are Ezra, Nehemiah and Malachi. They lived in the middle of the 5th century BC. Their labors finally formalized the canon of sacred books. The inspired texts were consolidated into a single corpus and divided into sections: Law, Prophets and Scriptures.

This collection of the sacred books of the Old Testament was accepted New Testament Church. The composition of the canonical books is the same, but they are distributed not in three, but in four sections.

Law(or law-positive books) contained Divine prescriptions and determined all aspects of the life of the chosen people - religious, moral, legal. He accurately defined the relationship of man to God and between people. The purpose of the laws was to educate the people in piety and obedience to God. The ultimate goal is to be a schoolmaster to Christ (see: Gal 3:24), that is, to save the people from the temptations of polytheism and pagan vices and prepare them for the coming of the Savior.

historical books teach to see the ways of Divine Providence leading humanity to salvation. They show how the Lord decides the fate of not only individual peoples, but also of each person. Through all biblical historical books, the idea that the well-being of the people depends on fidelity to the Law of God runs like a core. Apostasy from God leads to national disasters. The way to get rid of them is repentance and correction of life.

teaching books instruct in the faith and give lessons in spiritual wisdom. They speak of Divine love and beneficence, of the immutability of His promises. They teach thanksgiving, the fear of God, prayer, the fight against sin, and repentance. Teaching books reveal the meaning and ultimate goal of human life - righteousness and life with God. The psalmist David addresses the Lord: fullness of joy is before your face, blessedness is in your right hand forever (Ps 15:11).

prophetic the books explain the significance of the Covenant and the law for pleasing God and keeping the commandments. The prophets were the messengers of the will of God, the keepers of true theology. They proclaimed the Coming of the coming Savior of the world and the establishment of the eternal Kingdom of God. The prophetic books are the spiritual bridge between the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament books, the most important events of the New Testament are predicted by prophecies, symbols and types. “The New Testament is hidden in the Old, the Old is revealed in the New,” says Blessed Augustine.

The composition of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament established by the Orthodox Church includes fifty books: thirty-nine canonical and eleven non-canonical.

Non-canonical books were written by reverent people, but they did not grasp the meaning of texts created directly by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Created by spiritually experienced people, they are edifying and intended for moralizing reading. For this reason, the Christian Church from ancient times intended them for the benefit of its children. For example, St. Athanasius the Great (4th century) speaks of this in his 39th holiday epistle. After listing the canonical books, he adds: “For greater accuracy, I add that, in addition to these books, there are others not included in the canon, which, however, were established by the fathers to be read by the newly coming and wishing to be instructed by the word of piety, these are: the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobias” (Creations. M., 1994. Vol. 3. S. 372).

All canonical Old Testament books were written in Hebrew. Only some sections of the books of the prophet Daniel and Ezra, written during and after the Babylonian captivity, are compiled in Aramaic.

All New Testament the sacred books (four Gospels, Acts of the Holy Apostles, fourteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, seven conciliar epistles) were written by the apostles during the 1st century A.D. ). Our confidence in the divine origin of the books of the New Testament is based on the words of the Savior. On the eve of His suffering on the Cross, He told His disciples that His Father would send the Holy Spirit, Who will teach you everything and remind you of everything that I have told you(John 14:26).

Christian communities perceived as the word of God not only the Gospel, but also the Acts of the Holy Apostles and the Epistles. There are direct indications for this in the texts: I received from the Lord Himself what I also passed on to you(1 Cor 11:23); this we say to you by the word of the Lord(1 Thess 4:15). Already in apostolic times, the Churches passed on to each other the letters of the apostles addressed to them (see Col 4:16). The members of the primordial Church knew the sacred texts of the New Testament well. From generation to generation, sacred books were reverently read and carefully kept.

By the middle of the 2nd century, all four of our canonical Gospels were known in all the Churches, and only they were recognized as Holy Scripture. A then-living Christian writer named Tatian made an attempt to combine all four Gospels into a single narrative (he called his work “Diatessaron,” that is, “According to the four”). However, the Church preferred to use all four gospel texts in the form in which they were written by the apostles and evangelists. Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd century) wrote: “It is impossible that the number of the Gospels should be greater or less than they are. For since there are four directions of the world in which we live, and four main winds, and since the Church is scattered over the whole earth, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel and the Spirit of life, it is necessary for her to have four pillars, blowing incorruption from everywhere and giving life to people. "(Against heresies. Book 3, ch. 11).

The New Testament holy books were written in Greek. Only the Evangelist Matthew, according to the early Church historian Papias of Hierapolis (d. 160 A.D.), wrote down the words of his Master Jesus Christ on Hebrew, then his work was translated into Greek.

The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments made up a single book - the Holy Bible, which has been translated into all languages ​​and is the most readable book in the world.

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 9th century, from the Greek translation LXX. The beginning of the translation of the Bible into a generally understandable 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.

Throughout the Christian world, it is customary to consider as Holy Scripture all the books that were written by the Prophets and Apostles under the "dictation" of God's Holy Spirit. God Himself shared the secrets of the future with His faithful servants, and they carried it through their records to all people, piercing time. All these books are collected under a single title - Holy Scripture or the Bible.

If you look at the Bible from the other side, then it can be considered a collection of historical stories. All the books of the Prophets and Apostles in the Bible are collected and located in chronological order their writings, and they tell about the life of people, about all the events that took place on earth from its beginning and over the next five and a half millennia. The Bible contains books that have been written over two thousand years.

As a literary work, this book is absolutely priceless. The Bible is priceless. This is a completely unique, inimitable literary masterpiece and monument. And for believers, it is also a kind of instruction for life and a guide to action.

Holy Scripture or the Bible within itself is divided into two parts - the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament is most Bible, and it describes more ancient events. The New Testament, smaller in volume, tells us about a later time.

In the Old Testament part of the Holy Scriptures, the authors of the books prepared people for the coming of Christ, told about the foundation of the Earth and life on it, and explained the spiritual Divine laws of being. And the New Testament authors, evangelists and disciples of Christ himself, tell us about the amazing coming and life of Jesus, the God-man, on Earth.

The entire Old Testament of the Bible has a more varied theme. From the very beginning, it tells about how God created the world: the luminaries, the Earth, man, animals and birds. The oldest part of the Bible is devoted only to this topic.

Further, the Bible tells us what laws God established for His people through Moses. The commandments that were given to the Jews through the first great prophet are still the basic rules Christian faith and life in general.

The following section of the Old Testament details historical events that took place for a whole thousand years, until the beginning of the second century new era. Then follow books of a moral and edifying nature. All life stories individual people or the socio-political events of that time described in these books - each of them has meaning and teaching for any person living today.

There are books in the Old Testament that are distinguished by their poetry and lyrical content. These include the book of Psalms of King David and the Song of Songs of King Solomon. They reveal the inner spiritual world of a person who loves and worships God the Creator.

The last books that make up the Old Testament are prophetic. These are not just predictions of the future, these are peculiar revelations and appeals of those former prophets to all of us. They reveal the soul and heart of God Himself - the Father, who wants to convey to his children all love and understanding, holiness and righteousness. These books teach a person to live in such a way that his heart is open to Him, the Father and the creator of the whole Earth. The entire Old Testament is made up of thirty-nine books.

The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books that describe the earthly life of Jesus Christ (four Gospels), his disciples - followers (acts of the Apostles), letters, or rather, messages of the disciples themselves to different peoples and the book of Revelations, which gives a complete picture of the last days life on earth.

The goal of the entire teaching of Holy Scripture is to teach a person to live righteously, to eradicate all evil in himself, thereby conquering spiritual death. This is what the Holy Scripture is, the Bible, the book that is the oldest book that ever existed on earth.

Cover of the modern 2004 edition of the Russian Orthodox Bible.

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

Composition of the Bible

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

Old Testament (Tanakh)

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

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

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

• "Prophets" (Nevi'im) - contains books:
  • 1st and 2nd Samuel, or 1st and 2nd Samuel ( count as one book)
  • 3rd and 4th Kings, or 1st and 2nd Kings ( count as one book)
  • Twelve minor prophets count as one book)

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

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

All these books are also considered canonical in Christianity.

New Testament

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

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

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

• historical

The books of the New Testament are also placed in this order in the most ancient manuscripts - the Alexandrian and Vatican, the Rules of the Apostles, the Rules of the Councils of Laodicea and Carthage, and in many ancient Church Fathers. But such an arrangement of the books of the New Testament cannot be called universal and necessary, in some Bible collections there is a different arrangement of books, and now in the Vulgate and in the editions of the Greek New Testament the Catholic Epistles are placed after the Epistles of the Apostle Paul before the Apocalypse. In this or that placement of books, many considerations were guided, but the time of writing the books did not have of great importance, which can be most clearly seen from the placement of the Epistles of Paul. In the order indicated by us, we were guided by considerations regarding the importance of the places or churches to which the messages were sent: first, the letters written to whole churches were placed, and then the letters written to individuals. The exception is the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is in last place, not because of its low significance, but because of the fact that its authenticity has long been doubted. Based on chronological considerations, the Epistles of the Apostle Paul can be placed in this order:

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

Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament

Apocrypha

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

At one time, the figures of the ancient Hebrew "Great Assembly" (administrative-theological scholars of the synclite of the 4th-3rd centuries BC) and subsequent Jewish religious authorities, and in Christianity, the Fathers of the Church, who formalized it on the initial path, worked hard, cursing, banning as heretical and out of line with the accepted text, and simply destroying books that didn't meet their criteria. Relatively few apocrypha have survived - just over 100 Old Testament and about 100 New Testament. The latest excavations and discoveries in the area of ​​the Dead Sea caves in Israel have especially enriched science. Apocrypha, in particular, help us to understand the ways in which the formation of Christianity took place, from what elements its dogma was formed.

History of the Bible

page from the Vatican Codex

Writing the Books of the Bible

• Codex Alexandrinus (lat. Codex Alexandrinus), held in the British Museum Library
• Vatican Codex (lat. Codex Vaticanus), kept in Rome
• Codex Sinaiticus (lat. Codex Sinaiticus), stored in Oxford, formerly in the Hermitage

All of them are dated (paleographically, that is, on the basis of the “handwriting style”) of the 4th century BC. n. e. The language of the codices is Greek.

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

Division into chapters and verses

The ancient Old Testament text was not divided into chapters and verses. But very early (probably after the Babylonian captivity), some divisions appeared for liturgical purposes. The oldest division of the Law into 669 so-called parshas, ​​adapted for public reading, is found in the Talmud; the current division into 50 or 54 slops dates back to the time of the Masorah and is not found in ancient synagogue lists. Also in the Talmud there are already divisions of the prophets into goftars - the final sections, this name was adopted because they were read at the end of the service.

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

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

The verses were first numbered by Santes Panino (died in 1992), then, near the city, by Robert Etienne. The current system of chapters and verses first appeared in the 1560 English Bible. The division is not always logical, but it is already too late to refuse it, let alone change anything: for four centuries it has settled in links, comments and alphabetical indexes.

The Bible in the Religions of the World

Judaism

Christianity

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

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

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

The Catholics also, having trusted the Septuagint, accepted these texts into their Vulgate - the early medieval Latin translation of the Bible, canonized by Western ecumenical councils, and equated them with the rest of the canonical texts and books of the Old Testament, recognizing them equally inspired by God. These books are known to them as Deuterocanonical or Deuterocanonical.

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

Non-canonical book characters

• Archangel Sariel
• Archangel Jerahmiel

Sciences and teachings related to the Bible

see also

• Tanakh - Hebrew Bible

Literature

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

Footnotes and sources

Links

Bible texts and translations

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

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

But here it must be noted that, in spite of all its significance, Holy Scripture, precisely in our era of the decline of church culture, has become less read and distributed among wide circles of believers. This is especially true of us Orthodox Russian people. Of course, we have not stopped trying to live according to the Holy Scriptures, but in rare cases we live directly by them. Most often, we are content with listening to the Holy Scriptures in the temple and almost never turn to the sacred text itself in home reading. Nevertheless, the latter continues to be that inexhaustible treasury always accessible to everyone, from which any believer can unceasingly draw for himself the incalculable spiritual riches necessary for his growth in the knowledge of God, in wisdom and in strength. That's why Orthodox Church persistently invites everyone to read the Holy Scripture and meditate on it, more and more completely comprehending the revealed truths contained in it.

This essay, without claiming to be complete, aims to remind the Russian reader what, according to the teachings of the Church of Christ, Holy Scripture is, and also to outline how the puzzling questions raised in our time around Holy Scripture are resolved for the believing consciousness, and to show what those spiritual blessings which are given to the Christian by reading the Holy Scripture and meditating on it are contained.

I. Holy Scripture, its origin, nature and meaning

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

On the Origin of Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture arose for the reason that God, having created the world, does not leave it, but provides for it, participates in its history and arranges its salvation. At the same time, God, treating the world as loving father to His children, does not keep Himself at a distance from man, and man in ignorance of Himself, but incessantly gives man the knowledge of God: He reveals to him both Himself and that which is the object of His divine will. This is what is commonly called Divine Revelation. And since God reveals himself to man, the emergence of Holy Scripture becomes absolutely inevitable. For often, even when God speaks to one person or one group of people, He actually speaks to all human generations and speaks for all time. Go and “speak to the children of Israel,” God says to Moses on Mount Sinai (). “Go and make disciples of all peoples” (), says the Lord Jesus Christ, sending the Apostles to preach to the world. And since God wished to address some of the words of His Revelation to all people, in order for these words to be the best way preserved and transmitted, He providentially made them the subject of a special inspired record, which is the Holy Scripture. But before talking about what the gift of inspiration given to the authors of sacred books carries in itself and what it gives to their writings, let us ask ourselves how we know that among the countless books that exist in the world, only those that are included in the Bible, should be considered inspired? What makes us believers see them as Scripture?

Of course, we could refer here to the absolutely exceptional role and influence of the Bible in history. We could point to the power of the action of Holy Scripture on human hearts. But is it enough and is it always convincing? We know from experience that often, even on ourselves, other books have a greater influence or effect than the Holy Scriptures. What should make us ordinary believers accept the entire Bible as a collection of inspired books? There can be only one answer: it is the testimony of the whole Church. The Church is the Body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit (see). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, instructing all truth (see), by virtue of which the Church that has received Him is the house of God, the pillar and affirmation of the truth (). It is given to her by the Spirit of God to judge the truth and doctrinal usefulness of religious books. Some books were rejected by the Church as containing false ideas about God and His actions in the world, others were recognized by her as useful, but only instructive, while still others, very few, were retained by her as inspired by God, because she saw that these books contain the truth entrusted to it in all its purity and completeness, that is, without any admixture of error or falsehood. The Church included these books in the so-called canon Holy Scripture. "Canon" in Greek means a measure, a model, a rule, a law or a decree binding on everyone. This word is used to designate a set of books of Holy Scripture, since the Church, led by the Holy Spirit, has specially singled out these books in a completely separate collection, which she approved and offered to believers as books that contain an example of true faith and piety, suitable for all times. New books cannot be added to the canon of Holy Scripture, and nothing can be taken away from it, and all this is based on the voice of the Holy Tradition of the Church, which delivered its final judgment on the canon. We know the history of the entry into the canon of some books of Holy Scripture, we know that sometimes this “canonization” of individual books was both lengthy and complex. But it was so because the Church sometimes did not immediately realize and reveal the truth entrusted to her by God. The very fact of the history of the canon is a vivid confirmation of the witnessing of Holy Scripture by Holy Tradition, that is, by the entire teaching Church. The truth of the church's testimony about the Bible and its content is indirectly confirmed by the indisputable influence of the Bible on culture and its impact on individual human hearts. But this same ecclesiastical testimony is a guarantee that the Bible can, both in the old days and in the future, have an impact and influence on the life of each individual believer, even if the latter does not always feel it. This impact and influence grows and strengthens as the believer enters into the fullness of church truth.

Place of Holy Scripture as a source of knowledge of God. This connection between Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture shows the place in the Church of Sacred Scripture as a source of knowledge of God. It is not the first source of knowledge about God, neither chronologically (because before the existence of any Scripture, God revealed himself to Abraham, and the Apostles carried Christ's sermon to the world before the compilation of the Gospels and Epistles), nor logically (for the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, establishes the canon of Sacred Scripture and affirms his). This reveals the entire inconsistency of Protestants and sectarians who reject the authority of the Church and its traditions and affirm themselves on Scripture alone, although it is witnessed by the same church authority that they reject. Holy Scripture is neither the only nor a self-sufficient source of knowledge of God. The Holy Tradition of the Church is her living knowledge of God, her unceasing entry into the Truth under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, expressed in the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, in the works of the great Fathers and Teachers of the Church, in liturgical rites. It both testifies to Holy Scripture and gives its correct understanding. Therefore, we can say that Holy Scripture is one of the monuments of Holy Tradition. Nevertheless, it is his most important memorial because of the gift of inspiration, which was granted to the authors of sacred books. What is this gift?

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

The prophet, according to the Scripture itself, is a person to whom the Divine plans for the world become available by the Spirit of God in order to testify about them before people and proclaim last will God's. The prophets recognized these plans through visions, through insights, but most often through contemplation of the actions of God, revealed in the events of God-directed history. But in all these cases, they were directly initiated into the Divine plans and received the power to be their spokesmen. From this it follows that all the sacred authors, like the prophets, by the will of God directly contemplated the Divine hidden mysteries in order to tell them to the world. And the writing of books by them is the same prophetic sermon, the same testimony of the Divine plans before people. It does not matter what facts or events the inspired writers or, what is the same, the prophets wrote about: about the present, about the past, or about the future. The only important thing is that the Holy Spirit, Who is the Creator of all history, initiated them into its innermost meaning. Hence it becomes quite clear that the authors of historical books, who wrote in the 6th or 5th century BC about the sacred past of ancient Israel, turned out to be the same prophets as those non-bookish prophets Gad, Nathan, Ahijah, etc., through whom God once revealed people the meaning of the events of this past. Also the disciples and followers of the great prophets, the inspired editors of some prophetic books (and we clearly see from the very same sacred text that, for example, the book of the prophet Jeremiah is by no means all written by the prophet himself) are themselves the same prophets: the Spirit of God initiated them into the same mysteries that were revealed to their teachers, in order to continue their prophetic work, at least through written sealing their sermons. Turning to the New Testament, we must say that the sacred writers, who did not recognize Christ during His earthly life, nevertheless later were directly initiated by the Holy Spirit into the mysteries revealed in Christ. We have absolutely clear and direct testimonies of the Apostle Paul about this (see ; ; etc.). This is undoubtedly a prophetic phenomenon. Therefore, summing up everything that has been said about the nature of inspired Scripture as a kind of prophetic preaching, we must conclude that if Scripture turns out to be the most authoritative source of dogma in the Church, this is due to the fact that it is a record of the direct revelation of Divine truths, which the compilers of Scripture contemplated in Holy Spirit, and the same Spirit testified to the authenticity of their contemplations.

On the Doctrinal Authority of Holy Scripture in the Church. So, if Holy Scripture, through its dependence on Holy Tradition, does not constitute the only and self-sufficient source of our knowledge of God and about God, then it is, nevertheless, the only source of dogma, about which it can be said with all confidence that it is in no way sins against the fullness of the Divine Truth accessible to us. It is it that in the greatest completeness and perfection shows the image of the saving action of God in the world. Therefore, theology, which tries to base its conclusions on the most solid authorities, referring also to Holy Tradition, constantly tests itself with the help of Scripture. In this, it only follows the above instruction of the Apostle Paul: all Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof (that is, for irrefutable proof) and for correction (). Moreover, it can be shown that all church prayers and all liturgical texts seem to be entirely woven from the words and sayings of Holy Scripture, since in worship the Church wants to express the truths of Revelation in the same words in which they were captured by divinely inspired witnesses who directly contemplated them. . And, finally, for the same reason, the Church strives always to clothe in words and expressions in Holy Scripture her confessions of faith and her dogmatic definitions. Only one of his words is not found in Holy Scripture: consubstantial, which is why disputes arose in the Church after the First Ecumenical Council, which lasted almost a whole century. These disputes ceased when, as a result of the exploits and labors of the great fathers of the Church, saints, and, it became obvious to everyone that, despite the fact that this word does not occur in Scripture, nevertheless it corresponds to all his teaching about the eternal relationship of God Father and God the Son and about God's realization of our salvation in Christ.

And so, thanks to the providential inspired record of the Divine truths revealed to the world, the Church of Christ always has at its disposal an infallible source of knowledge of God. The authority of Scripture as a book compiled by the prophets is the authority of direct, unfalse testimony. However, modernity has raised a whole series of doubts and disputes around this source of knowledge of God. We now turn to their consideration.

II. Holy Scripture and the Confusions That Arise About It

On the possibility of the very fact of Holy Scripture. The first and main bewilderment can be caused by the very fact of the existence of inspired Scripture. How is such Scripture possible? We saw above that the existence of Holy Scripture is connected with the fact that God is revealed and active in the world. Therefore, doubts about the possibility of the fact of Holy Scripture ultimately come down to doubts about the existence of God and the truth of statements about God as the Creator, Provider and Savior. To prove the possibility and truth of the Scriptures is to prove the truth of all these claims. In this area, proofs from reason do not prove, but the decisive thing is the experience of faith, which, like any experience, has been given the power of direct vision. And in this regard, modern humanity, however strange it may seem at first glance, finds itself in more and more favorable conditions. For if the 19th century was the age of doubts and a departure from faith, if the beginning of the 20th century was the era of an intensified search for a worldview, then our era is more and more defined as the era of a conscious choice between God and the struggle with Him. Among those historical catastrophes and upheavals that have occurred in our days, humanity has felt, if it has not yet fully realized, that God is truly working in the world, and that this is the most vital truth. This can be seen at least from the fact that among people who think, are knowledgeable, and in general are trying to do something big and significant in this world, there are fewer and fewer people who are lukewarm and indifferent to God. Those who reject Him do so not for doctrinal reasons, but only because they fight Him because of the place He occupies in the human heart, while those who accept Him do not accept Him because of inherited habits and attitudes, but because they seek living fellowship. with him. And undoubtedly, many of those who are destined to read these lines, many Orthodox Russian people who have gone through various trials, dangers and troubles, can confirm that they are really looking for communion with the One Whom they have come to know from their personal experience as the true one revealed in their lives. Savior from sin and Redeemer from all sorts of troubles, sorrows and trials. Sacred Scripture must therefore be read with the firm intention of finding through this reading the Living God acting in the world He created for the salvation of His creation. And anyone who begins to read the Scriptures in order to meet God and know Him more perfectly will never go unrewarded for their efforts. Sooner or later, he himself will be convinced from personal experience of the truth of the testimony of Holy Scripture about the Divine action unfolding in the world: he will perfectly understand that the saving and providential influence of God on the world is not subject to any human or natural laws, which is why the biblical testimony about him is in no way may be the fruit of human inventions, but there is a matter of direct revelation from above. This will constitute the best and surest proof that in the Bible we are dealing with genuine Divine Scripture.

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

On the relationship between the Bible and science. Each of us has repeatedly heard statements according to which the facts given in the Bible do not correspond to the data and conclusions. modern science. In defense of the Bible, one can, of course, point out the temporary nature of scientific conclusions and theories, latest discoveries in various scientific branches, which seem to confirm some biblical facts. But first of all, we must keep in mind that biblical evidence is religious evidence: its object is God and His action in the world. Science explores the world itself. Of course, it is certain that scientific knowledge and scientific discoveries- from God, in the sense that He provides them further and further. But all this is not religious knowledge, which has God Himself as its object and is possible only in the order of revelation. Religious and scientific knowledge belong to completely different fields. They have nowhere to meet and therefore they simply do not have the opportunity to contradict each other. Therefore, the differences between the Bible and science are imaginary differences.

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

The Bible is reproached for the fact that the historical information that it gives sometimes diverges from what we know from history. The Bible, as it were, often presents historical events in a different way, does not say much, or cites facts unconfirmed by historical science. Of course, we still have not figured out much in the historical past of the peoples of the ancient East, who constituted the environment in which the Bible arose. In this regard, the incessant archaeological finds in Palestine, Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia are extremely valuable, pouring everything new and New World. But, however, one should never lose sight of the fact that the authors of the Bible, as religious witnesses, tried to see mainly the religious side of history, that is, God acting through events and revealing himself in them. This explains all the so-called discrepancies between the Bible and history. Sacred writers, of course, could keep silent about facts and events, or about some of their aspects that did not represent religious significance. After all, it is well known how often the testimonies of different eyewitnesses of the same fact or incident do not coincide with each other, for everyone observes and judges from his own point of view, which does not coincide with the point of view of a neighbor. Therefore, it must be assumed that secular history also often did not pay attention and did not testify to facts that were of no importance to statesmen, diplomats or military leaders, but of paramount importance from a religious point of view. In this regard, the classic example is how the witnesses of secular history passed by Christ and, one might say, did not notice Him. Contemporary historians and thinkers of the Greco-Roman world do not talk about Him at all, for they were not at all captivated by His appearance on the far outskirts of the empire, in backwater Palestine. Information about Christ, moreover, extremely distorted, began to appear in Greco-Roman authors only when Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire. We must simply recognize in advance that, in the absence of parallel historical documents, in many cases the Bible can only be verified in the light of the Bible itself. Therefore, all attempts of historical science, leading to the restructuring of the traditional biblical scheme of the sequence of events, are only scientific hypotheses, and not a certificate of unshakable historical truth. The Bible is also a document of history, but only the history of God's realization of our salvation.

On the composition of the Bible (the question of the Old Testament). We have come to the question, which is sometimes asked even by believers, about the presence in the Bible of some parts, to which modern knowledge, divorced from doctrinal sources, often attaches only an archaeological significance. Since the Bible (some think) is a document of history, like a book written in history, should not some parts of it be regarded as belonging exclusively to the historical past? These questions have in mind mainly the Old Testament part of the canon. Here, of course, the fruit of modern political influences and prejudice is by no means of a religious nature. But, one way or another, in circles that consider themselves ecclesiastical, even a hostile attitude towards the Old Testament was expressed. And where such an attitude no, there is still perplexity about the Old Testament: why do we need the Old Testament, since Christ has come? What is its religious use when its spirit so often does not correspond to the spirit of the gospel? Of course, the Old Testament only in the messianic passages of some of its books reaches the heights of the New Testament, but, nevertheless, it is also Holy Scripture, which contains genuine Divine Revelation. Christ and the Apostles, as we see from the countless references to the Old Testament found in the New Testament books, continually cited the words of the Old Testament as containing the word of God spoken for all time. Indeed, already in the Old Testament, such paramount truths as the truths about the creation of the world, about the image of God in man, about the fall into sin and the improper state of the natural world, were revealed to mankind, which were almost without addition accepted and confirmed in the New Testament. It is the Old Testament that speaks of those promises of God that Christ fulfilled and by which the New Testament Church lives to this day and will live by them until the end of time. In the Old Testament, God-inspired examples of repentant, supplicatory and glorifying prayers are given, which humanity prays to this day. The Old Testament most perfectly expressed those eternal questions addressed to God about the meaning of the suffering of the righteous in the world, which we also think about; True, we have now been given an answer to them through the Cross of Christ the Savior, but it is precisely these Old Testament questions that help us to realize all the richness of Revelation given to us in Christ. We thus approached that main reason according to which the Old Testament remains necessary for our salvation to this day: it brings us to Christ. The Apostle Paul, speaking about the Old Testament law and meaning by it the entire religious state of an Old Testament person, defines him as a schoolmaster, or teacher to Christ. It is known that what is essential for salvation is not the knowledge of God that we receive by hearsay or draw from books, but the knowledge of God, which is the fruit of religious experience in a living encounter with God. And only having received the Old Testament revelation and having passed through the Old Testament religious experience, as through preliminary preparation, mankind was able to recognize and meet the Christ of God as their Savior and Lord. What constituted the path of humanity as a whole lies on the path of each individual. Each of us must necessarily go through the Old Testament. In order for our spiritual eyes to be opened, as for the Apostles, so that we really know that Christ is the Son of God and our personal Savior, it is necessary that we also first pass through that true knowledge of God, which the patriarchs, prophets and other witnesses of God in the Old Testament. This necessity stems from the teaching of the Apostle Paul about the Old Testament as a teacher to Christ. Christ speaks of the same thing, emphasizing that the great New Testament truth about the Resurrection is available only to those who listen to Moses and the prophets (see). And He directly conditions faith in Himself by faith in the words of Moses (see). It follows from this that at some point in their spiritual growth, every person who lives in God passes through the Old Testament in an unknown way in order to pass from it to the New Testament theology. How and when this happens is a mystery known only to God. Obviously, this transition is carried out differently for each individual. But one thing is certain: the Old Testament is inevitable in the work of our personal salvation. Therefore, the Old Testament sacred books, in which the Old Testament religious experience we need is recorded for us, find their natural place in the canon of Scripture, which contains the word that God deliberately pleased to address to all mankind through God-inspired writers-prophets specially chosen by Him. How is this word perceived by believers and what does it bring them?

III. Holy Scripture and Religious Life

Holy Scripture and the prayer life of the Church. We have seen above that the Church tries to base all her theological experience on Holy Scripture. But while theologizing, the Church prays at the same time. We also noted that she also strives to clothe her prayers in words borrowed from Scripture. Moreover, she reads the Scripture itself during her divine services. Here it is necessary to point out that during the annual liturgical cycle the Church reads the entire Four Gospels, the entire book of Acts and all the Epistles of the Apostles; at the same time, she reads almost the entire book of Genesis and the prophet Isaiah, as well as significant passages from the rest of the Old Testament canon. As for the Psalter, this book is normally read in its entirety during each weekly (that is, weekly) circle as containing inspired examples of our prayers of supplication, repentance, and glorification. In addition, we note that church law requires the clergy to daily preach the word of God in the temple. This shows that the ideal of church life includes both unceasing listening to the Holy Scriptures in church and the same unceasing disclosure of its content in the living preaching word. But at the same time, through the lips of her teachers and pastors, the Church calls on the faithful to constant home reading of the Holy Scriptures. These persistent pastoral appeals, as well as the church rules on the daily preaching of the word of God, and the whole nature of the liturgical use of Holy Scripture, clearly show that the latter is spiritual food of absolutely exceptional importance for every believer. What can be revealed to the spirit of each of us by constant reading into the Holy Scriptures?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summing up all that has been said above about the meaning and effect of Scripture in religious life Christian, we are convinced that reading it is something much more than ordinary religious reading. Of course, there were cases when people came to God through reading other religious books as well. But in all Scripture for each of us, God Himself has laid down the objective possibility of meeting with Christ, and it will remain inherent in this book, even if it is not used by those for whom it is intended. Holy Scripture shows us Christ at work throughout sacred history. In addition, starting from Scripture, we come to know Christ in the life of our contemporary world and in our personal lives. Therefore, the Bible, as a book about Christ, gives us the living Christ and constantly perfects us in His knowledge. This brings us back to the same words of the Apostle Paul about the purpose of Holy Scripture: “that the man of God be perfect, equipped for every good work.”

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

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