Who wrote the Bible? Where did she come from?

Priest Afanasy Gumerov, a resident of the Sretensky Monastery, answers:

The Bible consists of the sacred books of the Old and New Testaments. These texts were written by inspired writers under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They contain divine revelations about God, the world, and our salvation. The authors of biblical texts were holy people - prophets and apostles. Through them, God gradually (as humanity matured spiritually) revealed truths. The greatest of them is about the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. It is the spiritual heart of the Bible. His incarnation, death on the cross for our sins and Resurrection are the main events of all human history. The Old Testament books contain prophecies about this, and the Holy Gospel and other New Testament texts tell of their fulfillment.

The books of the Old Testament as canonical sacred texts were collected into a single corpus in the middle of the 5th century. BC St. righteous men: Ezra, Nehemiah, Malachi, and others. The canon of the New Testament sacred books was finally determined by the Church in the 4th century.

The Bible is given to all mankind. Reading it should begin with the Gospel, and then turn to the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. Only having comprehended the New Testament books, one should proceed to the Old Testament ones. Then the meaning of prophecies, types and symbols will be understood. In order to undistortedly perceive the Word of God, it is useful to turn to the interpretations of the holy fathers or scholars based on their heritage.

Bible(from Greek βιβλία - books) or Holy Bible- a collection of Books (Old and New Testaments), compiled by the Holy Spirit (ie God) through the chosen, sanctified from God people: prophets and apostles. The collection and erection into a single book is accomplished by the Church and for the Church.

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

Orthodox Christians, when talking about the Bible, often use the term "Scripture" (it is always written with a capital letter) or "Holy Scripture" (implying that it is part of the Holy Tradition of the Church, understood in a broad sense).

Composition of the Bible

Bible (Holy Scripture) = Old Testament + New Testament.
Cm.

New Testament = Gospel (according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) + Epistles of St. Apostles + Apocalypse.
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The books of the Old and New Testament can be conditionally divided into law-positive, historical, teaching and prophetic.
See diagrams: and.

The main theme of the Bible

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

Inspiration of the Bible

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.()

The Bible was written by more than 40 people who lived in different countries: Babylon, Rome, Greece, Jerusalem ... The authors of the Bible belonged to different social strata (from the shepherd Amos to the kings David and Solomon), had different educational levels (Ap. John was a simple fisherman, Ap. Pavel graduated from the Jerusalem Rabbinic Academy).

The unity of the Bible is observed in its integrity from the first page to the last. In their diversity, some texts are confirmed, explained and supplemented by others. In all 77 books of the Bible there is some kind of unartificial, internal consistency. There is only one explanation for this. This Book was written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by the people chosen by Him. The Holy Spirit did not dictate the Truth from Heaven, but participated with the author in the creative process of creating the Holy Book, which is why we can notice the individual psychological and literary characteristics of its authors.

Holy Scripture is not an exclusively Divine product, but a product of the Divine-human co-creation. Holy Scripture was compiled as a result of the joint activity of God and people. At the same time, man was not a passive tool, an impersonal instrument of God, but was His co-worker, a partner in His good action. This position is revealed in the dogmatic teaching of the Church about the Scriptures.

Correct Understanding and Interpretation of the Bible

No prophecy in Scripture can be resolved by itself. For prophecy was never uttered by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke it, being moved by the Holy Spirit. ()

While believing in the divine inspiration of the books of the Bible, it is important to remember that the Bible is a book. 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. not only retained the letter of the word of God, but also possessed a correct understanding of it. This is due to the fact that, who spoke through the prophets and apostles, continues to live in the Church and lead it. Therefore, the Church gives us the 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.

Let us pay attention, even the apostles, who followed Christ for a long time and listened to His instructions, could not themselves, without His help, comprehend the Holy Scripture in a Christocentric way ().

Time of writing

The Bible books were written at different times for about 1.5 thousand years - before Christmas and after His birth. The former are called the books of the Old Testament, and the latter the books of the New Testament.

The Bible consists of 77 books; 50 is found in the Old Testament and 27 in the New.
11 (Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, the Epistle of Jeremiah, Baruch, 2 and 3 books of Ezra, 1, 2 and 3 Maccabees) are not inspired by God and are not included in the canon of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament.

Language of the Bible

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

The original books of the Bible were written on parchment or papyrus with a pointed reed stick and ink. The scroll looked like a long ribbon and was wound around a shaft.
The text in the ancient scrolls was written in large capital letters. Each letter was written separately, but the words were not separated from one another. The whole line was like one word. The reader himself had to divide the line into words. There were also no punctuation marks, no aspirations, no stresses in the ancient manuscripts. And in the Hebrew language, vowels were also not written, but only consonants.

Bible canon

Both Testaments were first reduced to canonical form at local councils in the 4th century: the Council of Hippo in 393. and the Council of Carthage in 397.

The history of the division of the Bible into chapters and verses

The division of words in the Bible was introduced in the 5th century by the deacon of the Alexandrian church, Eulalius. The modern division into chapters dates back to Cardinal Stephen Langton, who divided the Latin translation of the Bible, Vulgate in 1205. And in 1551, the Genevan printer Robert Stephen introduced the modern division of chapters into verses.

Classification of books of the Bible

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

Bible translations

Greek translation of the seventy interpreters – – was started by the will of the Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus in 271 BC. The Orthodox Church since apostolic times has been using sacred books translated by 70.

Latin translation - Vulgate- was published in 384 by the blessed Jerome. Since 382, ​​the blessed one translated the Bible from Greek into Latin; at the beginning of his work, he used the Greek Septuagint, but soon switched to using the Hebrew text directly. This translation became known as the Vulgate - Editio Vulgata (vulgatus means "widespread, well-known"). The Council of Trent in 1546 approved the translation of St. Jerome, and it came into general use in the West.

Slavic translation of the Bible made according to the text of the Septuagint by the holy Thessalonica brothers Cyril and Methodius, in the middle of the 9th century A.D., during their apostolic labors in the Slavic lands.

Ostromir Gospel- the first fully preserved Slavic manuscript book (mid-11th century).

Gennadiev Bible - the first complete handwritten Russian Bible. Compiled in 1499 under the leadership of the Novgorod archbishop. Gennady (until that time, biblical texts were scattered and existed in various collections).

Ostrog Bible - the first complete printed Russian Bible. It was published in 1580 by order of Prince Kons. Ostrogsky, the first printer Ivan Fedorov in Ostrog (the estate of the prince). This Bible is still used by the Old Believers.

Elizabethan Bible - Church Slavonic translation used in the liturgical practice of the church. At the end of 1712, Peter I issued a decree on preparations for the publication of the corrected Bible, but this work was completed already under Elizabeth in 1751.

Synodal translation – the first complete Russian text of the Bible. It was carried out on the initiative of Alexander I and under the leadership of St. . It was published in parts from 1817 to 1876, when the complete Russian text of the Bible was published.
The Elizabethan Bible came entirely from the Septuagint. The synodal translation of the Old Testament was made from the Masoretic text, but taking into account the Septuagint (highlighted in the text in square brackets).

The Bible is called differently: the Book of books, the Book of Life, the Book of Knowledge, the Eternal Book. Its enormous contribution to the spiritual development of mankind over many hundreds of years is undeniable. Literary texts and scientific treatises, paintings and musical works have been written based on biblical subjects. Images from the Eternal Book are imprinted on icons, frescoes, and sculptures. Modern art - cinema - has not bypassed her side. It is the most popular and read book ever held by the human hand.

However, people have long asked a question to which they have not yet given a completely unambiguous answer: who wrote the Bible? Is it really the work of God? Is it possible to unconditionally trust what is written there?

To the history of the issue

We know the following facts: The Bible was written almost two millennia ago. More precisely, a little over one thousand six hundred years. But the question is not entirely correct from the point of view of people of faith. Why? it would be more accurate to say - recorded. After all, it was created in different eras by representatives of different social strata of society and even different nationalities. And they wrote down not their own reflections, observations on life, but what the Lord prompted them. It is believed that those who wrote the Bible were guided by God himself, putting His thoughts into their minds, moving their hand over parchment or paper. Therefore, although the Book was written by people, it contains the word of God and no one else. In one of the texts, this is directly stated: it is "inspired by God", i.e. inspired, inspired by the Almighty.

But there are many inconsistencies, contradictions, "dark spots" in the Book. Something is explained by the inaccuracies of translations of canonical texts, something by the mistakes of those who wrote the Bible, something by our thoughtlessness. In addition, many texts of the Gospel were simply destroyed, burned. Many were not included in the main content, they became apocryphal. Few people know that most of the fragments of Holy Scripture were admitted to the masses after one or another Ecumenical Council. That is, no matter how strange it may seem, but played a far from the last role in the embodiment of God's providence.

Why was the Bible written, and not transmitted, let's say, its content by word of mouth? It seems, because in the oral form, one would be forgotten, the other would be transmitted in a distorted form, with the conjectures of another "narrator". Written fixation made it possible to avoid the loss of information or its unauthorized interpretations. Thus, some of its objectivity was ensured, it became possible to translate the book into different languages, to convey it to many peoples and nations.

Does all of the above allow us to assert that the authors just mechanically, mindlessly wrote down thoughts "from above", like somnambulists? Not certainly in that way. From about the fourth century onwards, the saints who wrote the Bible began to be considered its co-authors. Those. the personal element began to take place. Thanks to this recognition, explanations of the stylistic heterogeneity of sacred texts, semantic and factual discrepancies appeared.

Sections of the Bible

We all know what the Bible consists of - from the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament - everything that was before These are stories about the creation of the world, about the Jews, the people of God. It is worth mentioning that for the Jews, only the first part of the Gospel has sacred power. The Bible is not recognized by them. And the rest of the Christian world, on the contrary, lives according to the canons and commandments of the second part of the Bible.

The volume is three times the volume of the New. Both parts are complementary and separately not entirely clear. Each contains a list of their own books, which can be divided into groups: instructive, historical and prophetic. Their total number is sixty-six and was compiled by thirty authors, among whom were the shepherd Amos and King David, the publican Matthew and the fisherman Peter, as well as a doctor, a scientist, etc.

Some clarifications

It remains only to add that for people who are far from faith, the Bible is a wonderful literary monument that has survived the centuries and has earned the right to immortality.

BIBLE
a book containing the sacred writings of the Jewish and Christian religions. The Hebrew Bible, a collection of Hebrew sacred texts, is also included in the Christian Bible, forming its first part - the Old Testament. Both Christians and Jews consider it to be a record of an agreement (covenant) concluded by God with man and revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. Christians believe that Jesus Christ announced a new covenant, which is the fulfillment of the Covenant given in Revelation to Moses, but at the same time replaces it. Therefore, the books that tell about the activities of Jesus and his disciples are called the New Testament. The New Testament is the second part of the Christian Bible.
Bible text. Most of the Old Testament books are written in Hebrew (Biblical Hebrew), but there are also passages in Aramaic, which Jews spoke after the 4th century. BC. Traditionally, the authorship of the Old Testament books is attributed to several leaders who became famous in Jewish history, including Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon. However, it is now established that many of the books are later compilations of ancient traditions and documents. The Book of Genesis, for example, contains fragments written in the 10th century. BC. and dating back to the oral tradition of 800 years ago, but the entire book was probably written down in its modern form no earlier than the 5th century. BC. The New Testament books appeared during the first century after the death of Jesus. They are written in Greek, although it is possible that one or two books were originally written in Aramaic and later translated into Greek. The authors of the New Testament books are considered to be the apostles and disciples of Jesus.
Bible canon. The list of books that in a particular religion are considered divinely inspired and recognized as sacred is called the canon. The canons of the Old and New Testaments were established much later than the books that compiled them were written. The canon of the Jewish Scriptures was probably completed in the 2nd century BC. BC, during the Hasmonean era. The biblical books were divided into three groups: "Law" or "Pentateuch" (Torah), constituting the quintessence of dogma; "Prophets" (Neviim) - a collection of historical and prophetic books; "Scriptures" (Ketuvim), containing narrative material, poetic works, prayers and aphorisms of worldly wisdom. The rabbis who gathered in Jamnia at the end of the 1st c. AD, tried to resolve the issue of exclusion from the canon of some books approved before, but still left them in the Bible. The history of the Christian canon of the Old Testament developed differently. In 3-2 centuries. BC. Among the Jews of the Diaspora, who spoke Greek, a translation into Greek of Jewish religious books was carried out, which was assigned the name of the Septuagint. The books of the Septuagint are arranged in a slightly different order: the Pentateuch, the Historical Books, the Poetic and Edifying Books, and the Prophetic Books. In addition, it contains some books excluded from the rabbinical canon. When Christianity began to spread among the Greeks, they used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint. Currently, the Old Testament, used by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, is a collection of the Old Testament books arranged in Septuagint order. The Protestant Old Testament contains only those books that are recognized as canonical in Judaism, but the order of the books of the Septuagint is preserved here. Books not included in the Jewish canon are either omitted or placed in an additional section as "Apocrypha". Just as with the Old Testament, the list of Christian writings considered canonical has changed over the centuries. The modern list, including 27 canonical New Testament books, recognized at one time by most of the main Christian sects, was formed by 367. It was officially recognized as final in 405.
Hebrew Bible. The modern Hebrew Bible basically follows the canon adopted in Jamnia. In Hebrew, it is called Kitwe Kodesh ("Holy Scriptures") or Tanakh (an abbreviation of Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim). The Hebrew text is still considered official and is used in worship. Its standard text is based on the edition of the Jewish scholar of the 10th century. Moshe ben Asher, who corrected numerous scribal errors accumulated over the centuries. A widely circulated edition contains, in addition to the Hebrew original, its translation into Aramaic, as well as a commentary by Rashi, the great scholar of the 11th century. The entire Bible is revered by the Jews as sacred, but the Torah is especially revered. Every synagogue has handwritten Torah scrolls. Thanks to the rule that no scroll of the Torah can be destroyed, many of its ancient manuscripts have been preserved, which otherwise might have been lost. In the first centuries of our era, a code of oral law (Mishnah) and a commentary on it (Gemara) were formed in Judaism. They expanded the system of biblical commandments, turning it into a set of prescriptions covering all aspects of Jewish life. Mishnah and Gemara in the 6th c. were compiled into one book called the Talmud. The Talmud is a highly revered book in Judaism, the formal and ritual side of which is determined by Holy Scripture in the Talmudic interpretation. The Jewish tradition of biblical exegesis is exceptionally rich. Rabbinic texts use a sophisticated system of interpretative techniques ("middot") to explain and apply biblical texts to life. Interpretation ("derash") was carried out at various levels, and the literal meaning of the text ("peshat") retained significance on its own level. Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC - 40 AD) used an allegorical way of interpreting the Bible, thus influencing later Christian exegesis even more than Jewish. Medieval Jewish commentators on the Bible (Rashi, ibn Ezra, Kimchi, Nachmanides, etc.) were mainly engaged in identifying the literal meaning, relying on new philological methods, but along with this, the philosophical and mystical schools of interpretation flourished.

Catholic Bible. The Roman Catholic Church traditionally uses the Latin translation of the Bible. The early church in Rome used several Latin translations from the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. In 382, ​​Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome, a prominent philologist and scholar, to make a new translation of the Bible. Jerome revised existing Latin versions based on the Greek original and edited the Old Testament based on Hebrew manuscripts. The translation was completed ca. 404. Subsequently, he supplanted other Latin translations, and he began to be called "generally accepted" (Vulgata versio). The first printed book (the famous Gutenberg Bible, 1456) was an edition of the Vulgate. The Catholic Bible contains 73 books: 46 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament. Since the Old Testament here derives from the Septuagint and not from the Hebrew Bible approved by the Sanhedrin of Jamnia, there are seven books not included in the Jewish canon, as well as additions to the Books of Esther and Daniel. In addition, the Septuagint follows the order of the books in the Catholic Bible. The main canonical edition of the Vulgate was published in 1592 by order of Pope Clement VIII and was called the Clement edition (editio Clementina). It repeats the text of Jerome (404), with the exception of the Psalter, which is presented in Jerome's revision before it was revised to take into account the Hebrew originals. In 1979, the church approved a new edition of the Vulgate (Vulgata Nova), which takes into account the latest achievements of biblical studies. The first translations of the Catholic Bible into English were made directly from the Vulgate. The most famous and widely used translation was the Douay-Rheims Version, 1582-1610. However, in 1943, Pope Pius XII issued a strict order to biblical scholars in their translation activities to rely henceforth only on ancient Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts. This resulted in new translations of the Bible. The position of the Roman Catholic Church regarding the authority of the Bible was formulated at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). In contrast to the Protestant reformers, who saw in the Bible the only foundation of their faith, the fourth session of the council (1546) decreed that Tradition - the part of Revelation not written in Holy Scripture, but transmitted in the teaching of the church - has equal authority with the Bible. Catholics were not allowed to read the Bible in translations that were not approved by the church and without comments consistent with church Tradition. For some time reading Bible translations required the permission of the pope or the Inquisition. At the end of the 18th century this restriction was lifted, and since 1900 the reading of the Bible by the laity was even officially encouraged by church authorities. At the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the relationship between Scripture and Tradition was discussed: should they be considered as independent "sources of Revelation" (a more conservative point of view) or as sources that complement each other, "like two electric arcs in one searchlight."

Orthodox Bible. The Orthodox Church consists of a number of related but independent churches, most of which are Greek and Slavic churches. The Bible of the Greek churches uses the Septuagint as the Old Testament and the original Greek texts of the New Testament. The Orthodox Bible is a translation of the Greek Bible into one of the dialects of the Old Bulgarian language (the language of this translation is traditionally called Church Slavonic). Like the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church bases its faith on Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture.
Protestant Bibles. There is no single Protestant Bible: all Protestant Bibles are translations made in the 16th century. during or after the Reformation. Even the King James Version has never gained the status of an official translation of the Church of England, although it is often referred to as the Officially Approved Translation (Authorized Version). In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church discouraged translations of the Vulgate for fear that without church guidance the text might be distorted or that the words of the Bible might be misunderstood. However, the Protestant reformers of the early 16th century believed that God directly addresses man through the Bible and that reading and studying the Bible is the right and duty of every Christian. Translations were needed in order to give the Bible to the majority of Christians, for whom Latin was a dead language. "How can people think about what they cannot understand?" asks one of the translators in the preface to the King James Version. The Reformers were not the first translators of the Bible (in the period after the invention of printing and before the advent of Luther's Bible, 17 editions in German were published in Germany). The Protestant Reformers either promoted translations or took it upon themselves to translate the Bible into the languages ​​of their own countries. They took as a basis not the Vulgate, but the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Greek text of the New Testament. In the early 20s of the 16th century. Luther translated the New Testament into German, Jacobus Faber into French, and William Tyndale into English. Translations of the Old Testament were made by the same translators in the next decade. Since then, many Protestant translations have been published.
Bible interpretation. During the first centuries of the Christian era, biblical texts were thought to have multiple meanings. The Alexandrian school of theology, influenced by Philo, developed a system of interpreting biblical texts as allegories, behind which were hidden truths in addition to their literal meaning. Everything in the Bible was considered from a Christian point of view, and the independent meaning of the Old Testament was actually ignored. Old Testament events and their participants have been widely interpreted as types of events and characters in the New Testament; this method of interpretation is called typological. So, Jonah, vomited on the third day from the belly of a whale, was interpreted as a prototype of Christ, who resurrected on the third day after the crucifixion. A rival theological school in Antioch developed a doctrine of the historical and literal meanings of biblical texts. This school rejected the search for allegories, except in cases of their conscious use. The Latin Church Fathers tried to find a compromise between the extreme positions of the Alexandrian and Antiochian schools. In general, theologians were attracted by the system of figurative meanings. By the 11th-12th centuries. A classification has become generally accepted that distinguishes four kinds of meanings (it is widely used to this day): 1) literal or historical meaning; 2) a figurative or metaphorical sense that relates the given text to Christ or his church; 3) an anagogical sense, revealing spiritual or heavenly truths; and, finally, 4) the moral meaning, relating to the soul and giving instructions for life practice.
Reformation. Protestant reformers of the 16th century rejected metaphorical interpretations and returned to the direct, historical meaning of the Bible. They were guided by the following principle: "The Scripture itself is its own interpreter"; they held that God directly enlightened the minds of those who, in Calvin's phrase, read "as if they had heard these words from the mouth of God himself." Nevertheless, various Protestant denominations have developed different approaches to the interpretation of biblical texts. Luther, for example, believed that the Bible contains the Word of God, but is not itself the Word of God. This position allowed him to distinguish in it books of greater or lesser spiritual significance. Quakers insisted that the Holy Spirit could enlighten a person both directly and through the Bible. The Puritans saw the Bible as a codification of the law governing any public or private activity. In the 18th century Methodists and other currents preached that in the Bible, God speaks exclusively about the salvation of man through Jesus Christ, and nothing else should be looked for in it.
Doubts about the authority of the Bible. Starting from the 17th century. the development of the natural and human sciences has given rise to new problems in the interpretation of the Bible. Astronomers, geologists and biologists painted a completely different picture of the Universe than in Holy Scripture. A number of scholars have concluded that the Bible has undergone many changes. Thus doubts were sown about the literal accuracy and traditional authorship of the biblical books. And finally, the rationalist spirit of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. reflected the secular belief in the progress of mankind and the perception of the Bible as a relic, or even simply as a collection of superstitions. The result of new research has been the suggestion that the Bible is not the unchanging Word of God, but rather the historical evidence of man's search for God. First, the Catholic Church declared as heretical the results of historical and natural science research that undermined the traditional teachings of the Church. Later, under Pope Pius XII (1939-1958), the church began to encourage scientific research, declaring that their results, provided they were true, could not affect church traditions and dogmas. Protestant theology is divided into two camps. Fundamentalists insist on the literal truth of the Bible and will not accept any study by biblical scholars or natural scientists if the results contradict the Word of the Bible. Other Protestants, especially the theologians and scientists of the so-called. historical-critical direction, are leading in new critical studies. One of the schools of Protestant thought calls for the "demythologization" of biblical thought in order to remove the contradictions between natural scientific discoveries and the pre-scientific picture of the world presented in the Bible. Other Protestants argue that God cannot be known through scientific or historical methods, and that the growing body of information regarding the authorship of the Bible books, the historical setting at the time they were written, and the changes made to them fail to negate the importance of key concepts of sin, redemption, and Revelation.
Bible studies. The scientific study of biblical texts is subdivided into two related disciplines: textual criticism and historical-critical analysis. The task of textual criticism is to restore the original text of the biblical books. Historical-critical studies analyze the authorship of the text, the time of its creation, purpose, style, form and, if possible, oral predecessors.
Textology. The need for criticism of the text arises due to the fact that the original manuscripts of the Bible have been lost, and the most ancient lists that have come down to us differ significantly. The earliest complete manuscripts of the New Testament date from the 4th century BC. Until 1947, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, containing parts of almost all the Old Testament books and written between 200 B.C. and 100 AD, scientists had at their disposal the oldest lists of the Old Testament, dating back to the 9th-11th centuries. AD, with the only exception - a fragment of the Pentateuch of the 2nd century. BC. In the era of antiquity and the Middle Ages, all texts were copied by hand and contain scribal errors. There were frequent cases of adding, changing, repeating and skipping words. Sometimes whole sections were destroyed or redrawn, often with a radical change in the meaning of the text. Biblical textual scholars from antiquity (among the Jews, starting with the Masoretes, and among Christian biblical scholars, with Jerome) strived for accuracy, their work was based on a careful comparison of handwritten versions of the text. Nowadays, the establishment of generally accepted criteria for comparing manuscripts, the improvement of knowledge of ancient languages ​​and the discovery of new manuscripts have made it possible to put textual criticism on a scientific basis.
Historical-critical method. Historical criticism marks a new phase in biblical studies and has been formed on the premise that the Bible was written by humans. Specialists in the historical-critical method (whose origins were Protestant scholars) study the Bible like any written document, and do not take into account its place in the system of church doctrine. The purpose of historical criticism is to clarify the meaning that the biblical texts had at the time of their creation, and this allows them to speak to us, modern people, in a more understandable language. The historical-critical method has questioned the literal accuracy of most biblical texts, and for this reason has caused and still causes a lot of controversy. Modern Catholic scholars also make a significant contribution to historical critical research, primarily in the field of biblical archeology. Many Jewish biblical scholars work in the field of historical criticism of both the Old Testament and the New Testament, correcting the tendency of Christian scholars (even modernists) to see in the New Testament the spiritual completion of the Old, Old Testament.
OLD TESTAMENT
The basis of the text of the Old Testament accepted in modern editions is the Hebrew Bible. Initially it contained 24 books, divided into the following three sections: I. "Law": Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. II. "Prophets", including "early prophets" ("neviim rishonim"): Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and "later prophets" ("neviim aharonim"): Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 12 "minor prophets" . III. "Scriptures": Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Chronicles. In modern editions, the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are divided into two (in the Russian Synodal Translation of the Bible, the books of Samuel and Kings are called 1-4 Books of Kings, and Chronicles - 1-2 Books of Chronicles), the book of Nehemiah is singled out from the book of Ezra, and the book of the Twelve The Prophets is divided into 12 separate books, according to the number of prophets. In the Catholic Bible there are, in addition: Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, 1-2 Maccabees, as well as additions to Esther and Daniel. All this, together with 1-2 Esdras (in the Vulgate 3-4 Esdras) and the Supplication of Manasseh, is called "apocrypha" in the Protestant Bible.
BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Pentateuch. The books describing the events from the creation of the world to the death of Moses are called the Torah, or the Pentateuch. In ancient times, the manuscripts of the Pentateuch, due to the large volume of text, could not be written on one parchment scroll of the usual size, so the Torah was divided into five books generally accepted at the present time (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), written on separate scrolls . These scrolls were kept in clay vessels (Greek teuchos), hence the Greek term Pentateuchos, "five vessels (for scrolls)". The oldest texts included in it date from the time of the "patriarchs" (18th century BC), and the latest sections could not have been written before the resettlement of the Jews in Babylon (6th century BC). In the 5th c. BC. all this material, combined and edited by the Jerusalem temple scribes, took on its present form. And only then, perhaps, in the 2nd c. BC, there was an idea of ​​the authorship of Moses. Despite the ideological, linguistic and stylistic diversity of its parts, the Pentateuch is a very integral monument. Its central theme is the connection between the fate of Israel and the plan of God, revealed in the creation of the world and man. The early narratives in the Book of Genesis - the fall of Adam and Eve, the death of mankind in the universal flood, the daring attempt of man to reach heaven with the help of the Tower of Babel - speak of the distance of the human race from its Creator, of the movement of people through wars and violence to chaos and destruction. However, with the advent of Abraham, there is hope. God chose Abraham's descendants to be a model in which "all the families of the earth shall be blessed." The following is the history of Abraham's descendants: his sons Isaac and Ishmael, the sons of Isaac - Jacob and Esau, the son of Jacob - Joseph. The book ends with a story about Joseph, who rose to a high position in Egypt. The rest of the books focus on the activities of Moses and the conclusion of the covenant between God and Israel. The Book of Exodus tells of the liberation of the sons of Israel from Egyptian slavery and how God on Mount Sinai gave laws to Moses. The book of Leviticus deals mainly with the order of worship. The Book of Numbers tells of Israel's 40-year wandering in the wilderness. It contains the results of the census of the Israelite tribes and some additional laws. In Deuteronomy, Moses instructs his fellow tribesmen before his death: he reminds them of the significance of the exodus from Egypt as an event that turned the Jews into the people of God, and briefly outlines the Law. This book ends with the story of the death of Moses on the border of the promised land. It is possible to single out four different layers of the material involved by the scribes in compiling the Pentateuch. These sources, commonly referred to as "codices", are now denoted by the Latin letters J, E, D, and P. None of them have come down to us in their original form, but scholars have reconstructed much of their supposed content and their history. The oldest of the four sources is denoted by the letter J (Yahvist). In all likelihood, it was something like a national epic, compiled in the 11th-10th centuries. BC. from the traditions kept by the Jewish tribes who lived in Canaan. J is the source of the well-known Genesis stories. Among them are the second story about the creation of the world (ch. 2), stories about Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, about the promise given by God to Abraham, about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, about how Jacob outwitted his elder brother Esau, stealing his father's blessing. Codex J also contains much of the story of the exodus from Egypt and the wanderings in the wilderness, which are discussed in the books of Exodus and Numbers. Some of the material in Codex J survived outside the Pentateuch in the Book of Joshua. The name of the source J was given by one of its features associated with the sacred name of God. In Hebrew, where no vowels were written, the name of God was written with four consonants: JHWH (or YHWH), which may have been pronounced "Yahweh." According to the Book of Exodus, this name was unknown to people until God revealed it to Moses. However, in Codex J, the name JHWH is often used in stories about events that took place before the birth of Moses. Approximately from the 4th c. BC. the Jews did not pronounce the sacred name, but replaced it with the word Adonai (Lord). Bible translations tend to take this practice into account. Thus, in the Russian translation of the Book of Genesis, the word Lord often corresponds to the abbreviation JHWH and often indicates that the phrase with this word is taken from the J tradition. E (Elohist), the second source, is not as complete as J. It is a set loosely connected narratives and laws that probably circulated within the northern kingdom, Israel. This collection originated in the 8th century. BC, when Israel and Judah were separate kingdoms. Codex E contains many important narratives: about Abraham and Hagar, about Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, about the exaltation of Joseph in Egypt. Among the legislative material is an early form of the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments (Ex. 20). This codex is denoted by the letter E, because in the narrative of events that took place before the revelation of the name JHWH, the deity is called exclusively Elohim (God). The third source, D (Deuteronomy), is a collection of documents compiled at the court during the period of Israelite judges and kings (12-8 centuries BC) and related to civil and criminal law, as well as religious matters. The version of the Decalogue in Deuteronomy 5 probably got there from D. After the kingdom of Israel was in 722 B.C. conquered by Assyria, this legislative material was written down by the surviving scribes who found refuge in the south, in Judea. It eventually formed the core of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomium), from whose Latin name the letter D is taken. The latest of the four sources of the Pentateuch, P (Priestly Code), was compiled by the Jerusalem priests in the Babylonian captivity (598-538 BC) after the fall of the Kingdom of Judah. These priests wanted to rework national memories in the light of their main task - the service of Yahweh in the Jerusalem Temple. Their final work was a combination of world history, cult rules, and genealogy based on many early sources. For example, the Decalogue in its modern form is version P, which is a reworking of versions E and D. The Priestly Code contains the first account of the creation of the world (Gen 1), as well as the account of God's contract with Abraham, which is a parallel text to text J Some chapters of the Book of Exodus, the entire Book of Leviticus, and many chapters from the Book of Numbers, which contain cult laws and make up a large part of the Pentateuch, are also included in source P.

"Prophets". Between the 9th and 5th centuries. BC. in Palestine, a movement of prophets arises, believing that God inspires them to proclaim their will to the chosen people. They scourged kings, priests and common people because they were mired in wickedness, turned away from God and neglected his laws; prophesied about the approach of divine judgment over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and called on the listeners to repent and submit to the will of God. Stories about their deeds, sermons, prophecies, which embodied the view of history as a divine judgment, dominate the second section of the Hebrew Bible, called "Prophets". The "early prophets" tell of historical events from the death of Moses (c. 1400 BC) to the death of the kingdom of Judah in the 6th century. BC. For the most part, the historical material of these books was recorded in the 8th-7th centuries. BC, although the writing of the final parts, editing and compilation of books continued until the 5th century. BC. The Book of Joshua tells of the conquest of Canaan by Joshua in the 14th century. BC. The Book of Judges speaks of the rule of military leaders-judges - Deborah, Gideon, Samson, and others in the 13th-11th centuries. BC. Samuel's books tell about the fate of the prophet and the last of the "judges of Israel" Samson, about the creation of the Jewish state under Saul and its rise under David in the 10th century. BC. The books of Kings describe the flowering of the kingdom under Solomon, its division into two kingdoms - Judah and Israel - after the death of Solomon, and also contain warnings expressed by the prophets Elijah and Elisha. At the end of the story it is said about the conquest of Israel by Assyria in 732-721 BC, the capture of Judah by the Babylonians in 598-587 BC. and of the beginning of the subsequent exile to Babylon. Although the books of the "early prophets" are historical, their authors do not care about objective registration of the events of the Jewish past. Their goal is to show the development of a certain religious principle: the well-being of a country can only be counted on if people and their leaders fulfill the terms of an agreement with God, and disasters and national catastrophes are divine punishment for malevolence and lawlessness. The view that God directs the history of his chosen people according to their good or evil deeds is drawn from the teachings of the prophets. Thus, the "early prophets" provide a historical background for the sermons and poetic works of the prophets themselves, which are summarized in books called "later prophets." The "later prophets" fall into two groups: "major prophets" - Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and 12 "minor prophets". But if you read them in chronological order, you can better understand the development of the thought of the prophets in the context of the era. According to one view, the poetic works and sermons of the prophets were preserved in oral transmission by their disciples and were written down only many years after the death of the prophets themselves. The exact dates of the compilation of these books are still a subject of controversy, and therefore all dates given are approximate. Amos (c. 751 BC) was a native of the southern kingdom of Judah, but prophesied mainly in the kingdom of Israel, in the north. A prophet of divine justice, he announced that God would destroy Israel for their social injustice and moral depravity. God requires righteous conduct, not formal observance; and his commandments apply not only to Israel and Judah, but to the whole world. Hosea (heyday of activity 745-735 BC), the only prophet from the natives of the kingdom of Israel, whose sermons have come down to our time. Like his teacher Amos, he emphasized that God loves his people even if they have stopped worshiping him. Fulfilling the command of God, he married a harlot, which symbolized the betrayal of Israel, who began to worship foreign gods. Hosea proclaimed that God suffers as a deceived husband who still loves an unfaithful wife, and that the tribulations that Israel was destined to go through would eventually bring them cleansing. Isaiah of Jerusalem (c. 740-686 BC) was, like Hosea, a disciple of Amos. He predicted (and later, while in the Kingdom of Judah, witnessed the fulfillment of his prophecy) the conquest of Israel by the Assyrians (722 BC) and the captivity of the Israelite tribes. At the same time, he announced that the "remnant" of Israel would once again turn to Yahweh and at the end of history there would be universal peace, and all mankind would be united under the rule of a descendant of King David. Isaiah was the first to express hope for the coming of the Messiah, who later had a strong influence on both Judaism and Christianity. Similarly, his idea of ​​a "remnant" that would survive Israel's destruction set the stage for the concept of the universal purpose of the synagogue and the Christian church. Only the first 33 chapters of the Book of Isaiah can be attributed to Isaiah himself, however, some parts of these chapters are later insertions.

Micah of Moreshet (c. 700-650 BC) spoke out in defense of the oppressed poor and, like Amos, warned against magical ceremonial formalism. Zephaniah, Nahum and Habakkuk (the heyday of c. 626-620 BC) continued to preach in Jerusalem the will of a just God, the absolute master of history. Habakkuk deepened Isaiah's concept of faith and developed the theme of submission to the will of God without hope of material gain. Jeremiah (626-581 BC) predicted and experienced the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. After the first siege and deportation of the Jews (598 BC), he wrote to the captives in Babylon encouraging them and strengthening their determination to resist assimilation. After the final destruction of Jerusalem (586 BC), he proclaimed that the religion of the Jewish people would survive the destruction of the state and that God would make a "new covenant" with "the house of Israel and the house of Judah" and write it on the hearts of the people (Jer 31:31- 34). The book of the prophet Obadiah (after 586 BC) is the shortest in the Old Testament. It, in essence, is a revision of the 49th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, which contains a prophecy about the death of the tribe of the Edomites who helped destroy Judah. Ezekiel (593-571 BC), the son of a Jerusalem priest, supported the spirit of the Jewish captives in Babylon. He developed the principle of individual (rather than national) responsibility for good and evil deeds. His vision of the new Temple (the last nine chapters of the book) formed the basis of the Jewish religion of the period after the captivity, which emphasized the fulfillment of the Law and cult prescriptions. An obscure prophet from the Babylonian captivity (c. 545 B.C.) is known as Deutero-Isaiah. To him belong the prophecies contained in ch. 40-55 Books of Isaiah. In a section called "The Song of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh," he interprets Israel's mission as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world and calls on the new Israel to become the light of all nations, even to the ends of the earth. Haggai (the heyday of 520 BC) and Zechariah (the heyday of 520-517 BC) preached after the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, which ended the captivity of the Jews. The Persians allowed the Jews to return to their homeland, but many chose to remain in Babylon. Haggai and Zechariah inspired those who returned to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, the so-called. Second temple. Tritoisaiah is the name of the collection of poetic works that make up Ch. 56-66 of the Book of Isaiah, both relating to the era of the Babylonian captivity and the period immediately following it (c. 500 BC). Joel and Malachi (c. 500-450 BC) ) attempted to reform the religion and morality of the Palestinian Jews. The book of Jonah (c. 400 BC), although included in the prophetic books, is not really one. This is a text full of humor, which outlines the legend of a prophet who lived in the 8th century. BC. (mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25). Jonah, who opposed the will of God and did not want to preach to the Assyrians, was punished for this: he had to spend three days in the belly of a whale and suffer a sunstroke. The book testifies that the Jewish religion of the 4th c. BC. were universalistic ideas. The purpose of the book is to show that Yahweh cares about all people, even the hated Assyrians from Nineveh.

"Scriptures" is a colorful collection of poetic works, songs, aphorisms, historical and prophetic texts. The Psalter contains hymns and prayers, partly dating back to very ancient times. Many of them were used in the Jerusalem cult between the First and Second Temples. The final selection probably dates from the 3rd c. BC. The Book of Job (c. 575-500 BC) is a dramatic poem set within the narrative frame of a folk tale. The righteous Job, one after another, suffers misfortunes that God sends to test the strength of his faith. In a series of conversations with his friends, Job tries to figure out how suffering can fall on a righteous person. At the end of the poem, God declares that his ways are inaccessible to human understanding, and Job submits to the divine will. The central character of the book is a non-Jew, in addition, there is no mention of a contract with God on Mount Sinai. The book shows a man at a crossroads in a seemingly hostile world. The date of its creation is still debated. The Book of Proverbs (c. 950-300 BC) is a collection of aphorisms and maxims of worldly wisdom. It proposes a practical philosophy of life based primarily on success, and a morality guided by prudence and common sense. The authorship of the book is traditionally attributed to Solomon, although the collection was compiled much later on the basis of many sources. Five Scrolls ("Megillot") - books that are traditionally read on five Jewish holidays. These are Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther. The Song of Songs, traditionally attributed to Solomon, is probably a collection of wedding songs from the 10th to 9th centuries. BC. It is read on the Jewish Passover when the exodus from Egypt is remembered. The Book of Ruth tells of the marriage of the wealthy landowner Boaz to the Moabite girl Ruth. Probably written between the 5th and 3rd centuries. BC, this book confirms the openness of the Jewish religion to foreigners: it says that even David had foreign ancestors. The book is read on Shavuot, or Pentecost, the spring harvest festival. The Book of Lamentations, traditionally attributed to Jeremiah, consists of five poems lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem (586 BC) and dates back to the time of the Babylonian captivity (586-536 BC). It is read on the 9th of the month of Av, on the day of fasting, when the Jews remember the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The book of Ecclesiastes, along with Proverbs and the Song of Songs, is traditionally attributed to Solomon, although it is more likely that all these books are by an unknown author of the 3rd c. BC. The book of Ecclesiastes is full of pessimistic reflections. This is a collection of aphorisms, the main meaning of which, unlike the Book of Proverbs, is that neither intelligence nor talent guarantees success to a person. The book of Ecclesiastes is associated with the autumn harvest festival of Sukkot. The Book of Esther tells about the Jewish wife of the historically unidentified Persian king Ahasuerus (in the Septuagint and the Synodal translation - Artaxerxes). Thanks to her courage, the Jewish community of Persia was saved from extermination, which was prepared for her by the evil vizier Haman. The book is read on the holiday of Purim, a spring holiday dedicated to the memory of this event. It was probably created in the 2nd century. BC. Chronicles (Chronicles), Ezra, Nehemiah are considered parts of a single book dating from about 250 BC. and written, apparently, by one of the scribes of the Second Temple. This book returns to the historical events of the books of Kings and contains additional material about David, Solomon, the Temple in Jerusalem, and the kings of Judah and Israel. The history of the Jews is brought up to the contemporary period of the author. The book describes the revival of the Jerusalem city community after the return from the Babylonian captivity (538-500 BC), the restoration of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah (444 BC) and the legislative reforms carried out by the scribe Ezra (397 BC) . The book of Daniel (c. 165-164 BC) is probably the latest in the Old Testament. It tells about the prophet Daniel, who lived in captivity in Babylon, and about the fulfillment of his prophecy about the capture of Babylon by the Persians. The final part of the book is an apocalypse, a revelation about the near end of history and the approach of the Kingdom of God. Daniel's visions depict the major ancient eastern kingdoms of the Maccabean revolt (168-165 BC).

Apocrypha. Apocryphal in Protestantism includes some relatively late (2-1 centuries BC) biblical texts that are absent in the Jewish canon, and therefore not included in Protestant editions of the Bible. This is Susanna, Wil and the Dragon, the Song of the Three Youths, which are included, as later additions, in the Book of Daniel. The Book of Tobit is a pseudo-historical short story placed by the Greek Bible between 1-3 Books of Ezra and the Book of Judith. It tells about the salvation of the pious elder Tobit, who at first went blind and went bankrupt, but then returned to his former prosperity thanks to his son Tobius, who brought wealth, a wife and a magical remedy from a distant country, which returned his father's sight. The Book of Judith is a pseudo-historical novella, absent from the Hebrew Bible, but preserved in a Greek translation from a lost Hebrew original and in a Latin translation from a lost Aramaic version. The Greek Bible places it among the historical books, between the Book of Tobit and the Book of Esther. Probably written during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes (c. 175-174), it tells of a Jewish woman who, in order to save her native city of Betulia, seduces and then beheads the enemy commander Holofernes. Jerome translated it and included it in the Vulgate on the grounds that the Council of Nicaea (325) recognized this book as part of Holy Scripture. The Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus Sirach contain aphorisms and practical life advice reminiscent of Proverbs of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. Baruch is a prophetic book attributed to the disciple of the prophet Jeremiah. At its end is usually placed a message attributed to Jeremiah. 1-2 The Books of Maccabees describe the struggle of the Jewish people for independence in the 2nd century. BC. (3 Maccabees was not included in the canon of the Catholic Bible). 1 The Book of Ezra is a revision of some parts of the Chronicles (in the Synodal translation: the books of Chronicles), Ezra and Nehemiah. 2 The Book of Ezra is a collection of apocalyptic visions. In the Vulgate, these books are called 3-4 Books of Ezra. The prayer of Manasseh is a prayer for forgiveness addressed to God, attributed to the king of Judah, who is in Babylonian captivity.
HISTORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
From the time of Moses, the religion of the Jews was based on a growing body of sacred laws. The earliest of these were probably the Ten Commandments (in their original version) carved on stone tablets. Further, among the priests and prophets of Israel, the idea of ​​the canon of Scripture was gradually formed, i.e. collections of books considered sacred, unchangeable and of unquestioned authority. The first book recognized as canonical was the Book of the Law, found in the Jerusalem Temple in 621 BC, during the reign of Josiah. Apparently, it was a code of laws of Israel, hidden in the Temple by the priests, who managed to escape from the Assyrian invaders a hundred years before this event. Josiah received it as the law of Moses. Before the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, only this book was recognized as sacred. This was probably the core of source D, later included in Deuteronomy. More than 200 years later, more writings were canonized. For the celebration of Tabernacles in 397 BC. (according to other sources - in 458 BC) the scribe Ezra read aloud the Book of the Law of Moses, which he brought to Jerusalem from Babylon, where it was kept in the Jewish community. This book, apparently, was the complete text of the Pentateuch, the first of three collections of books included in the Hebrew Bible, which was recognized as canonical. In the 2nd century BC. two more collections of sacred books were canonized - Prophets and Scriptures - which were read during divine services in the Temple and synagogues. The prophets appear to have been canonized c. 200 BC The Scriptures had an independent circulation, their composition and arrangement changed for a long time. Some rabbis of that time severely criticized and forbade the reading of Ecclesiastes, Esther, Song of Songs. In the apocryphal Book II of Ezra, written c. 50 AD, seven dozen books are mentioned, the status of which has not yet been established. And only ok. In 95 AD, after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans, a convention of rabbis in Jamnia officially drew a line under the biblical canon, approving a number of disputed books as canonical. The wisdom of Jesus Sirach was recognized as instructive, but devoid of divine inspiration. Most of the early Christians were familiar with the Old Testament from the Septuagint and often quoted from scriptures that were not included in the canon approved by the Sanhedrin of Jamnia. However, this canon was authoritative even in Christian circles, and books not included in it were shelved by local bishops or priests. Over time, they began to be called apocryphal ("hidden", "hidden"). By the 4th-5th centuries. ecclesiastical communities in the West have largely restored the authority of the Apocrypha and recommended it for reading, although some learned authorities - among them Jerome (d. 420) - have not gone so far as to include them in their list of canonical books. Under the influence of Augustine (354-430), the African councils of the late 4th c. - beginning of the 5th c. recognized the Apocrypha, but their rejection persisted for a long time. In 405, the canonicity of the Apocrypha was confirmed by Pope Innocent I. In the Roman Catholic Church, they are usually called "deuterocanonical" (forming a second, later canon). In early Protestantism, the authority of the Apocrypha was largely rejected. Martin Luther declared them to be non-canonical texts, but included most of the books in an appendix to his translation of the Bible, indicating that they were "useful and good to read." Over time, they entered most of the German, French, Spanish, Dutch and other Protestant translations of the Bible. The Apocrypha are included in the earliest editions of the King James Bible (translated from 1611) and can be found in many modern editions of the Bible. However, most Protestants view them as not entirely canonical.
Pseudepigrapha. Some biblical texts, attributed to famous biblical figures for greater authority, are usually called pseudo-epigraphs ("falsely inscribed"). These include the Odes of Solomon, the Psalms of Solomon, the Book of Enoch.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew (with the exception of the Aramaic parts of the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel), and already in antiquity there was a need for translations. These early translations are very important for the textual criticism of the Bible, because they are older than the Masoretic Bible and in them there are readings sometimes even more reliable than in the Masoretic text.
Aramaic Targums. In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Aramaic (Syriac) becomes the dominant spoken language throughout the Middle East. The Jews, gradually forgetting classical Hebrew, understood the sacred texts that were read in synagogues less and less. Thus arose the need for translations ("Targumim") from Hebrew into Aramaic. The oldest Targum that has come down to us is the Targum of the Book of Job, found among the Dead Sea manuscripts at Qumran. It was written around the 1st century. BC, but other surviving Targums appeared later among the Babylonian Jews who spoke Aramaic. The Targums are a paraphrase rather than a literal translation of the Bible. They bring many explanations and edifications, reflecting the spirit of their time. In many modern editions of the Hebrew Bible, the Aramaic Targum is given in parallel with the Hebrew text.
Septuagint. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Holy Scripture originated as a targum for Jews living in the Greek-speaking regions of the Middle East. Up to 3 c. BC. individual Greek translations were circulated. According to tradition, the unofficial nature of these translations caused discontent, and a group of 70 or 72 eminent scholars of Alexandria made an official translation for the library of King Philadelphus Ptolemy (285-247 BC). However, it is more likely that the translation that eventually became known in Latin as the Septuagint, (the Translation of the Seventy [[interpreters]]) is a collection of edited Greek oral translations recorded in the synagogues. At first, the Jews welcomed the Septuagint with approval. But with the advent of Christianity, it became associated primarily with the Christian church. Then the Jews rejected it and made new translations into Greek. In the New Testament, the Old Testament is quoted, as a rule, from the Septuagint. A great theologian and philologist Origen from Alexandria (c. 185-254) made a huge contribution to the development of biblical textual criticism and exegesis. In his monumental work Hexapla, he wrote out in six parallel columns the Hebrew original, its transcription in Greek letters, and four Greek translations: the Septuagint and the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion. Unfortunately, only a few fragments of this work have survived.
Other translations. Ancient translations of the Bible into Latin, Syriac, Ethiopian, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian and many other languages ​​have also come down to us. Some of them are made by Jews directly from the original; Christian translations were carried out mainly from the Septuagint or other ancient translations. A number of Bible translators had to first invent an alphabet for languages ​​that did not have a written language. So it was with translations into Armenian, Georgian, Church Slavonic and a number of others. The translations were very different - from literal to completely free; thus, the learned Bishop Ulfilas, who translated the Bible for the Goths, omitted the books of Kings. He considered that they would only warm up the warlike fervor of an already aggressive people.
THE TEXT OF THE HEBREW BIBLE AND TEXTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
The original manuscripts of the Old Testament have not come down to us. We have only relatively late copies of the Hebrew Bible and ancient translations. The Hebrew text is the fruit of the activity of many generations of scribes; it was often changed and distorted. Since many errors crept into the manuscript, the task of Old Testament textual criticism is to accurately restore those words that were recorded at the earliest stage of written fixation.
Texts of the scribes (sopherim). For several centuries, the text of the Old Testament, apparently, was not rigidly fixed. The scribes-scribes of the early period (c. 500 BC - 100 AD), who are called "early scribes (sopherim)", distorted the text: they made mistakes when copying, hearing a particular word incorrectly, reading or by writing it. There were spelling errors; words, lines or whole phrases were skipped, repeated or rearranged; words incomprehensible or offensive were "corrected"; inserts were made with editorial explanations and conclusions; different readings of the same text were given in succession; marginal notes were later taken as part of the original text and inserted in the wrong places. All this has led to an extraordinary variety of options. However, in Roman times, the so-called. "later scribes" begin to attempt to unify the text of Scripture. Thus, under the leadership of Rabbi Akiba (c. 50-132), attempts were made to restore the original text of the Bible; these were the first steps in textual criticism. Nevertheless, even during this period, minor changes to the text were allowed. Eighteen corrections (they are called "corrections of the scribes") touched upon words that in pious circles were considered erroneous or blasphemous. So, for example, in Hab 1:12 it was said: "O Yahweh ... You will not die" (in Hebrew - "lo tamut"). But this thought could sow doubts about the eternity of the Creator, and therefore one letter was changed, and the text became this: "We will not die" (in Hebrew "lo namut").
Masoretic Bible. In the period from the 5th c. up to 11-12 centuries. the scribes (soferim) were replaced by scholars who were called masoretes (baale-hammasorah, keepers of tradition). The text developed by the largest of the Masorites, Aaron ben Asher, formed the basis of the modern Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes avoided directly interfering with the Hebrew text of the Bible, which was considered sacred at the time, so any change was unthinkable. Instead, they collected thousands of marginalia (marginal notes) from numerous manuscripts and incorporated them into the text. Marginalia such as "kere" ("read") are so rooted in tradition that during the synagogue reading of the Bible, they were guided precisely by them, and not by the version that was in the handwritten text ("ketiv"). For example, the original Job 13:5 reads: "Behold, he (God) kills me, and I have no hope," but the Masoretes instead of "no" ordered to read "in him", and as a result it turned out: "Behold, he is kills me, but in him is my hope." The Masoretes made some important improvements in the recording of biblical texts. Hebrew writing only denoted consonants, but the Masoretes developed a system of diacritics to represent vowels. Now they could change the vocalization in the word they wanted to correct. For example, they provided the tetragram JHWH with vowel signs for the substitute word Adonai (Lord). Some Christian readers, unfamiliar with the practice of adding the vowels of one word to the consonants of another, have misread the name of God as Jehovah. There was also no punctuation in the text of the scribes. Intonation pauses or the end of a sentence were judged only by guesswork, which also gave rise to the possibility of misunderstanding. The oral tradition of the cantillation, or psalmody, was useful in indicating the correct phrasing and stress in the words of a text, but there was always the danger that the tradition would break down and not be passed on to the next generation. This is why the Masoretes developed a system of accents, small marks, similar to vowel marks, placed above or below words in text. Each of these accents, which are still printed in all modern editions of the Hebrew Bible, means a certain melodic figure, a motive consisting of one or more notes. In addition, the accent performs syntactic and phonetic functions: it divides the sentence into semantic parts by caesura and helps to establish semantic connections between the individual words of this sentence, and also highlights the stressed syllable in the word. There were several Masoretic schools with different approaches to vocalization, punctuation and "correction" of texts. Two of them, the most famous, are the schools of Moshe ben-Naftali and Aharon ben-Assher (both from the Palestinian Tiberias). The text of ben Asher became generally accepted and was followed, for example, by the famous Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204). However, in the early printed Hebrew Bible, prepared by Jacob ben-Hayim and published in Venice by D. Bomberg (1524-1525), later, mixed manuscripts were used. And only in 1937 did R. Kittel's critical edition appear, based on the authoritative text of ben Asher. Textology of the Hebrew Bible from the Renaissance to the 20th century. During the Renaissance and Reformation, an uncritical enthusiasm for the authenticity of the Masoretic text reigned for some time. Some scientists of the 16th-17th centuries. it has even been claimed that the Masoretic vowel is divinely inspired and sacred. Eventually more cautious scholars came to the conclusion that the texts of the Masoretic Bible were not exact lists from the originals, and made a detailed study of the ancient translations. At the same time, knowledge of the Hebrew language began to improve due to acquaintance with Arabic and other Semitic languages. Textological methods underwent further development during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In recent years, the discovery of new manuscripts and progress in the study of the Hebrew language have made it possible to better understand the Hebrew Bible. Significant progress has been made in the study of the Septuagint and other ancient translations. Thanks to the discovery of the Dead Sea manuscripts in Khirbet Qumran (1947), it became clear that between the 1st century. BC. and 1 in. AD there were at least several editions of the biblical text. It also turned out that the Qumran manuscripts often show a closer affinity to the Septuagint than to the Masoretic text.
HISTORICAL-CRITICAL METHOD
In the 17-18 centuries. scholars began to study the Bible, proceeding not from theological, but from historical and critical considerations. Philosophers T. Hobbes and B. Spinoza questioned the authorship of Moses in relation to the Pentateuch and pointed out a number of chronological inconsistencies that arise in the literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. The French scientist J. Astruc (1684-1766) put forward a hypothesis that the Book of Genesis belonged to two authors (Yahvist and Elohist). Considering that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, Astruc assumed that Moses used some additional sources in his work. J. Eichhorn in his work Introduction to the Old Testament (1780-1783) for the first time distinguished between the documentary sources of the Pentateuch - J, E, P and D. Not all of Eichhorn's assumptions were subsequently confirmed, but in general his approach turned out to be fruitful, and at present he is considered father of the historical-critical approach to the Old Testament. In the 1870s and 1880s, the documentary hypothesis acquired its classical form in the works of the greatest biblical scholar of that time, J. Wellhausen. In his work, Wellhausen did not limit himself to studying the sources of the Pentateuch, but tried to reconstruct the religious history of Israel in the light of Hegel's philosophy of history. He disregarded the history of the Jews recorded in the Bible before King David as legendary, ignored the person of Moses and the monotheistic ideas contained in the early sources J and E, so that the religion of the Hebrew tribes in his exposition appeared as polytheistic. He believed that in contrast to this polytheism, the prophets put forward the idea of ​​God, one for the entire universe. The opposition of these two points of view disappeared in the Jewish religion in the era after the Babylonian captivity, when the ritualism and legalism of the Jerusalem priests and the humanism of the people who compiled such books as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes won. This view has not stood the test of time. Archaeological research has shown that many elements of the religious cult, which Wellhausen attributed to the era after the captivity, are of an older origin, such as details of sacrifices and details of the design of the tabernacle of the covenant. Nevertheless, despite its shortcomings, the Wellhausen school generated an unprecedented interest in the prophets, whose contribution to the religious beliefs of Jews and Christians is universally recognized. With the development of Near Eastern archeology, the study of the Old Testament has become a special field of study in the Near East. Archaeologists have unearthed the highly advanced civilizations that surrounded the ancient Jews and have convincingly confirmed biblical stories that had been discarded as legends a century earlier. The discovery of many thousands of literary texts and inscriptions throughout the Middle East allowed Old Testament scholars to realize even more clearly the relationship of the Hebrew religion with the cults of neighboring peoples, as well as to emphasize its individuality. Growing attention is paid to the fundamental unity of the theological concepts expressed in the Old Testament, the role of worship in the formation and formulation of religious ideas, the significance of the covenant union God made with His people.
NEW TESTAMENT
God, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, gave people salvation - this is the main teaching of Christianity. While only the first four books of the New Testament deal directly with the life of Jesus, each of the 27 books seeks in its own way to interpret the meaning of Jesus or show how his teachings apply to the lives of believers.
BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The New Testament begins with four stories about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ: the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Acts of the Apostles tells about the founding of the Christian church and the missionary work of the apostles. Acts is followed by 21 epistles, a collection of letters attributed to various apostles who instructed Christian communities and individual believers in matters of doctrine, morality, and the organization of their lives. The last book of the New Testament - Revelation, or Apocalypse - is dedicated to the vision of the coming end of the world and the final triumph of good over evil.
Gospels. Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke. The first three gospels are often referred to as the synoptic gospels (Greek synopsis - joint review), because they talk about the same events related to Jesus, and cite the same sayings of him, often coinciding verbatim. The well-known stories about the birth of Jesus, about most of the miracles he performed, and all his parables are contained in the synoptic gospels, but not in the Gospel of John. The synoptic gospels differ mainly in the point of view of each, reflecting the views not only of the evangelists, but also of the Christians for whom they were written. The authorship of the first gospel is traditionally attributed to Matthew, a tax collector (collector) who became one of the first disciples of Jesus. Many, however, doubt the authorship of Matthew. It is clear that the author was Jewish and wrote for Jewish-Christian readers. In Jesus, the author sees first of all the fulfillment and embodiment of what is written in the Jewish Scriptures, he constantly repeats that the most important deeds and words of Jesus were already foretold in the Scriptures of the Jews. Matthew is the longest gospel, it contains the most complete sayings of Jesus, especially in ch. 5-7 (the so-called Sermon on the Mount). More than other gospels, Matt pays attention to the Christian church and Jesus as its founder. The Gospel of Matthew is an account of the life and teachings of Christ, which is readily read and often quoted. In the gospels of Mark and Luke, there is a closeness to the environment of the Gentiles, this is manifested both in the language and in the depicted setting. Jesus in Matthew is the one in whom the ancient prophecies were fulfilled, and for Mark he is a miracle worker. The gospel of Mark seeks to show that Jesus' messianism was hidden during his earthly life, and for this reason he was accepted by a few and without due enthusiasm. The Gospel of Luke contains much material not found in other stories about the life of Jesus, giving lengthy versions of the stories about his birth, suffering and death, about his appearances to the disciples after the resurrection. The life of Jesus is seen as a turning point in world history: the era of Israel is replaced by the era of the universal church. More than other gospels, it portrays Jesus as a friend to the poor and outcast. Most scholars agree that the similarity of the synoptic gospels is due to the fact that the authors used the common material of the tradition, and that they borrowed some materials from each other. But in questions of who borrowed from whom, who is the author of the gospels and when they were written, researchers do not agree. According to the main theory, called the "Four Document Hypothesis" (in German scientific circles the name "Two Source Hypothesis" is accepted), the earliest of the gospels and the first of the four documents is the Gospel of Mark. Mark is considered to be the source for both Matthew and Luke, since both contain virtually all of the material in the Gospel of Mark, although parts of this text are in a different order and somewhat altered. Further, Mt and Lk give a large number of sayings of Jesus common to them, which are not in Mk. They are supposed to be taken from a second document that has not come down to us, which is often denoted by the letter Q (from the German word Quelle, "source"). Finally, both Mt and Lk have their own materials. Nevertheless, some conservative scholars continue to insist on the primacy of the Gospel of Matthew. As proof of this, they cite an ancient tradition according to which Matthew wrote the very first gospel in Aramaic, later translated into Greek. In dating the synoptic gospels, scholars rely mainly on "internal evidence." A good example is the conclusions of many researchers based on the analysis of three versions of Jesus' saying about the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, which is adjacent to the apocalyptic prophecy about the end of the world and the second coming of Christ (Mk 13; Mt 24-25, Lk 19:41-44 and 21: 5-36). Mark is believed to have written his version during the Jewish National Revolt of 66-70 AD, but before the fall of the city and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. Luke, on the other hand, demonstrates knowledge of some details of the Roman siege of Jerusalem, which means that this gospel was written later. Matthew seems to have written his book after this event, and besides, his narrative suggests a higher level of development of the Christian church than in the text of the Gospel of Mark. Therefore, Mt and Luk date back to ca. 80-85 AD

Gospel of John. The fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, differs from the synoptics in its focus, material used, and composition. In addition, it paints a portrait of Jesus in significantly different colors than the synoptic gospels. The author is driven not simply by narrative or biographical interest; the main thing for him is to state the only religious idea: Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. The first part of the gospel tells about a series of miracles performed by Jesus, with an explanation of their spiritual meaning, which Jesus himself gives. The concluding part contains a series of conversations Jesus had with his disciples at the Last Supper. In signs and discourses, the true nature of Jesus and his role as the bearer of divine Revelation become clear. One of the church fathers, Clement of Alexandria, wrote: "After the other evangelists recorded the facts of history, John wrote the spiritual gospel." Most researchers agree that the fourth gospel was written not by the apostle John, but perhaps by one of John's assistants or disciples and was apparently created at the end of the 1st century.
Acts of the Apostles. Luke is generally accepted as the author of the Acts of the Apostles. The first half of the book traces the early history of the Christian community led by Peter. The second tells of Paul's missionary activities from the time of his conversion to Christianity until his imprisonment in Rome. The Acts of the Apostles - the second volume of Luke's work - was written shortly after his gospel. This is the first attempt by a Christian author to write a history of the church.
The Epistles of the Apostles. The corpus of 21 epistles, placed in the New Testament after Acts, is attributed to the apostle Paul and the disciples of Jesus - James, Peter, John and Jude. At present, however, the traditional authorship and dating of the epistles are the subject of scholarly debate.
The Epistles of the Apostle Paul. The traditional headings of the 14 epistles attributed to Paul contain the names of communities or the names of the people to whom they were addressed. In the Bible, messages to communities are printed before messages to certain individuals, and within each group they are arranged in order of their size, the most lengthy at the beginning. Most scholars agree that Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon are authentic. It is very likely that Paul also wrote Colossians, while his authorship of 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians is doubtful. Many scholars believe that 1-2 Timothy and Titus were not written by Paul. And practically no one today will argue for Paul's authorship of Hebrews. Paul wrote his epistles after 50, and he died in the 60s. The chronology of his epistles has not been definitively established, but he probably began with 1 Thess, the oldest document of the Christian church. The four great epistles - Gal, 1-2 Cor, Rome - may have been written after him, and the epistles Phlp and Phlm were the last. If Paul was the author of 2 Thess, then it was probably written shortly after 1 Thess; if he wrote the message Kol, then it appeared at about the same time as the message Flm. The central point of Paul's teaching can be formulated as follows: salvation is available to the entire human race - both Gentiles and Jews - through faith in Jesus Christ. 1 Thess assures the congregation that at the second coming of Christ both dead and living Christians will be with God; it ends with a series of instructions on the duties of Christians in life. 2 Thes advises not to be impatient while waiting for the second coming. In Galatians, Paul begins by defending his authority as an apostle and gives some interesting autobiographical details. He then argues that salvation requires primarily faith in Jesus Christ, not the observance of the Jewish Law. 1 Corinthians contains Paul's admonitions on dissension, immorality, conversion of Christians to pagan courts, marriage, idolatry, and the like, issues that troubled this most dysfunctional of the communities he founded. The epistle contains a majestic hymn of love (ch. 13) and a discourse on immortality (ch. 15). 1 Cor, like Gal, provides evidence for Paul's claim to the apostolate. Romans is the most complete exposition of Paul's theology. In it he considers the problem of the relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians in the context of a detailed discussion of the problem of sin and salvation. The letter to the Colossians warns against the delusion that combines the desire to become like angels with the performance of Jewish religious rites. Flm is a private letter to a friend asking him to forgive a runaway slave. Philp is a friendly letter to the community in Philippi with an expression of love, joy for them and gratitude for the donations sent. Ephesians rather dryly sums up the issues that Paul has already touched on. It lacks the immediacy and emotionality of other Pauline letters. Traditionally, it is considered together with Flp, Kol and Flm as one of the so-called. the epistles of bonds written at the end of Paul's life. The "pastoral epistles" (so called 1-2 Tim) form a special group. Their style and content differ significantly from the style and content of other letters of Paul. They reflect a later stage in the development of the Christian Church and were written, apparently, at the end of the 1st century. The Epistle to the Hebrews is wrongly placed in the corpus of the Pauline epistles. This is a lengthy sermon, sustained in good rhetorical traditions, distinguished by smoothness of style and eloquence. It argues that the death of Jesus is the perfect sacrifice that abolished the sacrificial system that existed in the Jewish religion. Researchers agree that the Apostle Paul could not be its author, and date it to 60-80 years.
Other messages. The last seven epistles are called "catholic" ("catholic"). This name suggests that they are addressed to the "universal" church, and not to an individual or a particular community. Unlike the Pauline epistles, their titles contain the names of the authors. The Epistle of James is a moralistic treatise in the tradition of Jewish "literature of the wise." The author argues with Paul's point of view (or rather, with its radical interpretations) that salvation can only be achieved by faith, and argues that faith must be supported by pious deeds. If its author was indeed James of Jerusalem (brother of the Lord), then it was written before 62 (the year of Jacob's death). However, a significant number of researchers attribute it to the end of the first century. 1 Peter also deals with moral issues and encourages believers to humbly endure persecution. If the author of the epistle is Peter, then the persecution in question may be that of Nero in the 60s; if the author lived in a later period, then the persecution of Domitian in the 90s is meant. 2 Peter warns against false teachers and states that the Day of Judgment has been postponed for a while to give people an opportunity to repent. Most scholars doubt the authorship of Peter and attribute the document to the first half of the 2nd century BC. In this case, this epistle is the latest book of the New Testament. 1 The epistle of John is traditionally attributed to the author of the fourth gospel (regardless of whether it was the apostle John or someone else). It contains the teachings of the Fourth Gospel. There is less agreement in academia over the authorship of Ying 2-3, which are short notes; it is possible that they were written towards the end of the author's life. All three epistles probably belong to the end of the 1st century. The Epistle of Jude, the last in the corpus, appeals to believers to avoid heresies and return to orthodoxy. Perhaps it was written at the end of the 1st c.
Revelation of John the Evangelist. Revelation (Apocalypse), the last book in the Bible, continues the tradition of Jewish apocalypses. The author, in vivid symbolic visions, paints pictures of the struggle between good and evil; the culmination of this battle is the defeat of the forces of evil, the resurrection of the dead and the second coming of Jesus, who judges at the end of the world. The book is traditionally attributed to the apostle John, but stylistic differences between the Apocalypse, the Gospel, and the Epistles of John lead scholars to doubt that they were written by the same hand. The book apparently dates back to the reign of the emperor Domitian (81-96). She had the greatest influence on the Pentecostal and Adventist Protestant churches.
NEW TESTAMENT CANON
"Canon" refers to scriptures that are held to be the highest authority. In the 1st century such a holy scripture for Christians was the Hebrew Bible. The books of the New Testament were created gradually, and acquired canonical status much later. By the middle of the 2nd c. many Christian works passed around. In addition to the texts that were eventually included in the canon, there were many other gospels, deeds, epistles and apocalypses, now called the New Testament Apocrypha. Some of them, such as the Gospel of Peter, contain the core of an authentic tradition. Others, such as the Gospel of the Infancy of Thomas, are folk tales and legends designed to satisfy popular curiosity and fill in gaps in Jesus' lives. Another group of writings, such as a collection of texts discovered in the 20th century. near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, is of a Gnostic nature and has been condemned as heretical. One group of books, written shortly after the age of the apostles, was held in special esteem and for a time was regarded almost as sacred writing. Their authors are called "apostolic men". The epistles of Ignatius of Antioch give an idea of ​​the church organization at the beginning of the second century; they preach the ideal of martyrdom. In the First Epistle of Clement, one of the first bishops of Rome, a protest is made against the removal of some of the leaders of the Corinthian church. The Second Epistle of Clement is a sermon on the Christian life and repentance. The Shepherd of Hermas is a moralistic treatise, riddled with cryptic symbolism, and the Epistle of Barnabas is somewhat reminiscent of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but is more allegorical. The Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), in addition to moralistic arguments about the "two ways" of life and death, contains a number of instructions on the celebration of church sacraments, on church organization and discipline. By the end of the 2nd c. some Christian religious books clearly acquire a canonical status: for example, from the writings of the early Christian apologist Justin Martyr, we know that Christians read "memoirs of the apostles" before the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist. Most lists of Christian books from this period include the four gospels, all of the Pauline epistles (with the exception of Hebrews), and the First Epistles of Peter and John. Other books, and above all Revelation and the Epistle to the Hebrews, were rejected, while many writings of the "apostolic men" were considered divinely inspired. There were at least two criteria for inclusion in the lists of authoritative Christian books: apostolic authorship and widespread use in a particular local church. Over time, a line was drawn under the canon. In the 2nd century Marcion, head of a heretical sect in Asia Minor, compiled his own canon of Holy Scripture. There was no place in it for the entire Old Testament, and of all Christian texts, the abridged version of the Gospel of Luke and a heavily edited selection of Paul's epistles were included in this list. Marcion's activity seems to have prompted the church to draw up its own canon in order to protect itself from heretical writings and to prevent the penetration of heretical false teachings into already recognized books. In the end, the main criterion for inclusion in the New Testament canon was the authorship of the apostles. The first list of authoritative books, which is completely identical to the content of our New Testament, was compiled by St. Athanasius in 367.
TEXTS, TRANSLATIONS AND TEXTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
Greek text. Several papyrus fragments found in Egypt are the oldest New Testament manuscripts to date. The earliest of these, a passage from John 18 (Jesus before Pilate), was written c. 110. About 150-200 there are two larger fragments: one from the Epistle to Titus, the other from the Gospel of Matthew. The oldest papyri containing sufficient text for attribution were written c. 200-250. One of them contains part of the Gospel of John, the other contains passages from all four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and the third contains passages from the epistles of Paul. In total, more than 70 papyrus fragments have come down to us, on which almost half of the text of the New Testament is written. In the 4th c. papyrus began to give way to more durable parchment. Two almost complete Greek copies of the Bible date from this century: the Vatican Codex (Codex Vaticanus), stored in the Vatican Library, and the Codex Sinaiticus, accidentally discovered in a Greek monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, in a basket for old manuscripts to be burned. After the 4th c. the number of Greek manuscripts is increasing. To date, more than 5,000 manuscripts are known. The first printed edition of the Greek New Testament, called the Complutensian Bible (Biblia Complutensis), appeared in 1514. However, it did not circulate until 1516, when the Greek New Testament was published under the editorship of the humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam. His text was hastily prepared, using late and often unreliable manuscripts. In some places, Erasmus corrected the Greek text, coordinating it with the text of the Vulgate. Nevertheless, his text formed the basis of many subsequent editions of the Greek New Testament, and it was from it that the early Protestant Reformers made their translations. From 1546 to 1551, the Parisian printer Robert Estienne (Stefanus) produced 4 editions of the Greek New Testament, containing the text of Erasmus with marginal readings taken from the Complutensian Bible and other sources. His 1551 edition provided the basis for later English translations, including the King James Version.
ancient translations. Early translations of the New Testament date back to the 2nd century. The first Latin translations appeared probably in North Africa. Soon they compiled an authoritative translation (the so-called Itala Vetus, Itala Vetus), which by the time of Jerome had an almost canonical status. At the end of the 4th c. Jerome revised and significantly corrected the Itala, thus creating his own translation, the Vulgate. In the East, the New Testament books were translated in the 2nd century. into Syriac. Like the Old Latin translations, they were unified at the end of the 4th century. The standard translation was called the Peshitta, or "common" translation. It remains the official text of the Jacobite and Nestorian churches. It contains 22 of the 27 recognized books, not including 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. Other ancient translations, in whole or in fragments, have come down to us in Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopian, Nubian, Gothic, Old Church Slavonic, and six dialects of the Coptic language.
Textology, or text criticism. The task of textual critics is to establish with maximum reliability the original version of a particular text. In the case of a book as ancient as the New Testament, textual scholars study the various readings (variants) in the manuscripts to determine which one is most likely to be the original version and which one can be discarded. Textual scholars have at their disposal an impressive amount of material: papyri, more than 5,000 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 manuscripts of ancient translations, and 80,000 New Testament quotations in the writings of the church fathers. No one knows how many different variants of the same phrase they contain. Over 30,000 different readings were recorded in a survey of 150 manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke. In establishing the most likely original reading of a New Testament passage, textual scholars follow certain standard rules. The general rule is that the older the manuscript, the more likely it is to follow the original. However, this rule can be misleading, as late manuscripts of one family often retain correct readings that were corrupted in earlier manuscripts of another family. Simple misspellings of scribes are easy to detect - often they are associated with memory errors (for example, a scribe could accidentally insert a reading from one gospel into another). Often, however, the scribe deliberately altered the text, either to correct or improve it, or to bring it into line with his theological views. So, suspicious places in the text should be checked for compliance with their style and the concept of the work as a whole. Shorter readings are generally preferred over longer ones, which may contain later additions. Readings in overly regular or slick Greek are often discarded because the authors of the New Testament books used everyday language that was far removed from classical literary Greek. For the same reason, of the two readings, the more difficult to understand is often chosen, since the other may be the result of an editorial simplification by the scribe. Although the preference for one or the other often depends on the taste and intuition of the researcher, there is no doubt that today we have the Greek text of the New Testament, which is much closer to the original than the text that worked with the scientists who stood at the origins of critical research and relied on for the edition of Erasmus. So, for example, 1 John 5:7-8 in the Synodal translation reads as follows: "For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And three testify on earth: spirit, water and blood; and these three are one. The words in italics are missing from the original text. The dubious passage goes back to Latin manuscripts made in Spain or North Africa, possibly in the 4th century. It is missing from all Greek manuscripts made before 1400, and is omitted in modern critical editions of the New Testament.
HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL RESEARCH METHODS
The historical-critical approach to the study of the New Testament - an attempt to understand the text in the context of the historical circumstances of its occurrence and taking into account the literary forms and genres that its authors resorted to - has often caused controversy. Much of the historical-critical approach was due to the desire to reconstruct the true teachings of Jesus and the early Christian community. Researchers leaned towards two extreme positions. Some critics saw Jesus as a preacher of a pure and simple message about the universal brotherhood of man and universal love, and believed that this message was distorted by the introduction of other elements: teachings about the relationship of Christ to God, prophecies about the imminent end of the world, myths, as well as borrowings from popular religious cults. The task of criticism was to purify Christianity of these alien elements and restore the original teaching of Jesus. Other scholars have emphasized that the theological elements in the New Testament are not necessarily foreign; many of them were already present in the very teaching of Jesus. According to this view, the New Testament is a presentation of the Christian message in terms understandable to a person who lived in the 1st century. The figure of the "historical Jesus", whose teachings were thought to be at odds with those of the religion that had formed under his name, first appeared in the work of G.S. Reimarus (1694-1768). Reimarus was a deist, i.e. believed in a God who can be comprehended by reason alone and manifests his power in the immutable laws of nature. Rejecting miracles and Revelation, Reimarus tried to separate the historical Jesus from the figure of Christ, the suffering Redeemer of mankind; such an idea of ​​Christ, Reimarus believed, arose among the apostles after the death of Jesus. D. F. Strauss returned to the question of the historical Jesus in The Life of Jesus (1835-1836). Strauss insisted on a fundamental difference between what he called the "inner core" of the Christian faith (which he traced back to Jesus himself) and the "myths," the miraculous and supernatural elements that were introduced into the image of Jesus and his teachings. FK Baur (1792-1860) focused on the history of the early Christian community. Influenced by the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel, he viewed the history of the early church as a struggle between two currents - adherents of the observance of the Jewish Law (Petrinists) and Christianity free from the Law (Paulinists), which led to the emergence of "early Catholicism" (i.e. to the formation of the church with its hierarchy, cult and fixed doctrine). Perhaps the most popular result of the historical-critical studies of the 19th century. was the work of E. Renan "The Life of Jesus". In the second half of the 19th century scholars have been concerned with what we can learn from the gospels about the "real" Jesus. Studies of this period have usually taken the form of a comparison between Paul's Christological conception and the simpler reconstructed image of the historical Jesus. So, for A. von Harnack (1851-1930), Jesus was first of all a rabbi who interpreted the Jewish religion in his own way, emphasizing that God is the Father of all people, which means that all people are brothers. At the beginning of the 20th century there was a strong backlash against the concept of "liberal Jesus" (i.e. the image of Jesus in liberal theology). This rejection was expressed by A. Schweitzer in From Reimarus to Wrede (1906; the second edition was published under the title History of the Study of the Life of Jesus, 1913). Schweitzer and his associates believed that the "liberal" image of Jesus ignored the world around him in which Jesus lived and taught; indeed, liberal theologians simply cleared the biblical image of Jesus of those elements that contradicted the ideals of the 19th century, declaring them to be later interpolations. Schweitzer proved that many of these elements were already present in pre-Christian Judaism. In particular, he singled out the ideas present in pre-Christian Judaism about the end of the world, about the coming of God or his Messiah, about the judgment of the world and about the beginning of a new age, in which the Dominion of God will be established. Other researchers have looked for external influences that would allow the history of the Christian movement to be explained without resorting to an analysis of Judaism. Focusing on the pagan cults of New Testament times, they revealed their similarities with the religious practices of the early Christians. In particular, it has been argued that the Eucharist is reminiscent of the ritual meals of the mystery cults of Dionysus, Attis, and Mithras. Some scholars, following the tradition of the liberal school, have noted the radical change which the Christian religion underwent in the passage from Jesus to Paul; others, revealing the influence of pagan rituals on the outer side of early Christianity, insisted on the unique originality of its content. J. Wellhausen founded in his time a "radical school" of historical criticism, which distinguished between the historical Jesus, who had no messianic claims, and the post-Easter community, which proclaimed him Messiah and Lord. In line with this approach, a concept was developed according to which the gospel narratives were not the foundation of the early Christian community, but its product. In 1919 C. L. Schmidt suggested that the Gospel of Mark, which forms the backbone of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, was a collection of church narratives that had previously circulated independently. The study of this oral, pre-literary stage of the gospels led to the emergence of an influential and controversial school of form analysis (Formgeschichte), led by M. Dibelius (1883-1947) and R. Bultmann (1884-1976). In the form-analytical method, clearly defined content units of the text, called forms, are distinguished from the material of the gospels, which gradually crystallized in the oral tradition until the moment of their written fixation in the gospels. These forms include miracle stories, sayings of Jesus and parables, myths and legends about the birth of Jesus and his life, brief scenes from the life of Jesus, ending with a laconic saying like the famous "to Caesar, Caesar's." While pointing out the similarities of some gospel passages with folklore, many form-analysts question the historicity of some gospel stories, such as the miracle stories that followed Jesus' death on the cross. After the First World War, historical-critical studies increasingly focused on the mental forms of the New Testament - on the main ideas of the proclamation of Jesus. It has been argued that many of the thought forms in which the teachings of Jesus are expressed do not make sense to modern man. Thus, the idea of ​​the end of the world or the second coming of the Messiah on a cloud does not correspond to modern experience. However, the fact that in the 20 conservative and fundamentalist Protestant denominations have survived and continue to emerge, testifies to the enormous gap between the views of professional critics and many believers who read the Bible. To overcome this gap, the method of researching the history of editions (Redaktionsgeschichte), which has been successfully developed since the middle of the 20th century, can be useful. Whereas form-analysts such as Bultmann focused on classifying certain formal elements in a text and determining the place and role of these elements in the life of the church before they were written down, revision history researchers tried to figure out how these elements were brought together and used by the real authors of the New Testament.
BIBLE TRANSLATIONS INTO ENGLISH
The history of translations of the Bible into English falls into two periods: the Middle Ages and the Modern Age.
Middle Ages.
Old English period. From the 7th century, when the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity, until the Reformation, the only Bible that was considered authoritative in Britain was the Vulgate. The earliest attempts to translate the Bible into Anglo-Saxon cannot, strictly speaking, be called translations. These were loose verse retellings of well-known biblical stories. One ancient manuscript contains poems formerly attributed to the monk and poet Caedmon of Whitby (flourished c. 670), but now attributed to the 9th or early 10th century. Another corpus of rhythmic paraphrases is attributed to Cynewulf, who lived approximately in the same era as Caedmon. The first attempts at a true translation of the Bible were made in the 8th century. Bishop Aldhelm of Sherborne (d. 709) - probably the author of the translation of the Psalter. Bede the Venerable (673-735) translated the Lord's Prayer and part of the Gospel of John. King Alfred (849-899) translated the Ten Commandments and a number of other biblical texts. The manuscript known as the Vespasian Psalter, written c. 825, contains the earliest example of a particular type of translation called "glossa". The glosses were supposed to serve as an aid to the clergy and fit between the lines of the Latin text. They often followed the Latin word order, which was quite different from the Anglo-Saxon word order. Around 950, one gloss was inserted into a lavishly illuminated manuscript (the so-called Lindisfarne Gospels), the Latin text of which was written ca. 700. Soon after this, similar glosses began to be inscribed in other manuscripts. By the end of the 10th c. There have already been many translations. The West Saxon Gospels (10th century) are a complete translation of the gospels, possibly by three translators. Around 990, Elfric, famous for his learning, translated several books of the Old Testament, including the entire Pentateuch, the books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, and several books from the Old Testament apocrypha. His translations, often strayed into prose retelling, he often inserted into sermons. Ælfric's work, the West Saxon Gospels, and numerous translations of the Psalms are all that was done in the Old English period towards a complete translation of the Bible. After Ælfric, Bible translations were no longer made: Britain plunged into the "dark ages" of the Norman conquests.
Middle English period. In a calmer 13th c. translation activity resumed. Many new translations of the Bible into English fall under the category of devotional literature rather than actual translation; thus, for example, the Ormulum of the monk Ormes (c. 1215) is a rhythmic translation of the gospel passages used in the mass in combination with sermons. Around 1250, a rhymed retelling of the books of Genesis and Exodus appeared. Three translations of the Psalter appeared c. 1350: An anonymous verse translation, a translation of the Psalter attributed to William of Shoreham, and a translation with commentary by the hermit and mystic Richard Rolle of Gempol. In the 13th-14th centuries. various parts of the New Testament were translated by unknown authors.
Wycliffe Bible. By the end of the 14th century The first complete translation of the Bible into English appeared. It was the Wycliffe Bible, a translation initiated and directed by John Wycliffe (c. 1330-1384). Wycliffe insisted that the gospel is the rule of life and that all people have the right to read it "in the dialect in which they know best the teaching of Christ." He insisted that the Bible in English was needed to spread this teaching. The Wycliffe Bible is almost certainly not translated by Wycliffe himself, but by his collaborators. There are two versions of the translation. The first was begun by Nicholas of Hereford, one of Wycliffe's followers, and completed by another hand c. 1385. A later and less ponderous translation was probably made by another follower of Wycliffe, John Perway (c. 1395). After Wycliffe's death, his views were condemned and the reading of his Bible banned. Because of Wycliffe's unorthodox teachings and the intransigence of his supporters, the vernacular Bible became associated in orthodox minds with heresy. Although translations of the Bible were also undertaken in other European countries, in England, before the Reformation, no one undertook translations of the Bible. Despite the ecclesiastical curse, the Wycliffe Bible was often copied, and some parts of it were later borrowed by William Tyndale, the first of the reformed translators. Protestant translations: from Tyndale to the New English Bible. The Protestant translators of the Reformation abandoned the Vulgate as their primary source. In the course of comparing the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible with the Latin text of the Vulgate, inconsistencies and inaccuracies were discovered. In addition, reformist translators who had broken with the Roman Catholic Church were unwilling to base their translations on the Latin Bible.
Tyndall. The first English Protestant translator of the Bible was William Tyndale (c. 1490-1536). Tyndall studied Greek at Oxford and Cambridge, and Hebrew, presumably in Germany. He attempted to have his translation of the New Testament printed in Cologne, but the church authorities forced him to move to Worms, where he completed the edition. A large format edition was published at Worms in 1525; it came to England the following year and was immediately burned. Despite the church curse, reprints followed one after another, many came to England from the Netherlands. The first volume of the Old Testament in Tyndall's translation appeared in 1530; Tindal was arrested, in prison he continued to work on the Old Testament, but in 1536, as a heretic, he was burned at the stake in Vilvoorde near Brussels. The rejection of Tyndall's translation was mainly due to its purely Protestant tone. Although King Henry VIII broke with Rome in the early 1530s, he was not at all sympathetic to Tyndall's views. Moreover, the translator's desire to erase from the Bible all traces of Catholic worship prompted him to replace some terms: "church" was replaced by "community", "priest" by "elder", "repent" by "repent" and so on. In addition, Tyndall's translation was modeled on the New Testament in Martin Luther's German translation.
Coverdale. In 1534 the Anglican Church petitioned the king for an English translation of the Bible. Archbishop Cranmer, the architect of Henry VIII's religious policy, took several steps on his own initiative to support the petition, but was unsuccessful. When Miles Coverdale, who was once an employee of Tyndale, completed his work and published in Germany the first complete Bible in English (1535), it soon got to England and was sold there without any objections from the authorities. Coverdale did not have Tyndall's learning. He borrowed from Tyndall the translation of the New Testament and part of the Old Testament, but since Coverdale obviously did not speak Hebrew, he had to complete Tyndall's work, translating from Latin (although he looked into the writings of Luther, into the Zurich Bible and consulted with contemporary scholars) . The language of Coverdale's translation is more melodious than Tyndall's; The psalter in his translation (the 1539 revision for the Great Bible) is still used in the Anglican Missal (Book of Public Worship), and for its literary merit it is often preferred to the King James Version of the Psalms.
Bible Matthew. In 1537 Henry VIII was persuaded to give his highest approval to the idea of ​​an English Bible; thus a "new translation" was born. It was believed to be a translation of a certain Thomas Matthew, although the real publisher was, apparently, another collaborator of Tyndale - John Rogers; the text itself was compiled from the translations of Tyndall and Coverdale, with the addition of many doctrinal notes. A fictitious translator was required in order to avoid a scandal in connection with the actual publication of the work of the executed Tyndall.
Big Bible. In 1538, a royal decree was issued, according to which each parish was obliged to purchase a copy of the Bible for its church, and the parishioners had to reimburse half the cost of the book. The decree was probably not about the Matthew Bible, but about a new translation. In 1539 a new translation appeared, and this hefty volume was called the Great Bible. The editor was Coverdale, but the text was a revision of Matthew's Bible rather than the Coverdale translation of 1535. The second edition of 1540 is sometimes called the Cranmer Bible (prefaced by Archbishop Cranmer). The Big Bible became the official text, while other translations were banned.
Geneva Bible. The coming to power of the Catholic Mary Stuart horrified the English Protestants. To avoid persecution, many of them emigrated and settled in Geneva, in those years the center of radical Protestantism. Under the leadership of the Scottish Calvinist John Knox, and possibly with the participation of Coverdale, the English community in Geneva produced in 1557 the New Testament and the Psalter, and in 1560 a complete edition of the Bible, the so-called. The Geneva Bible (also known by the playful name of the Pants Bible, or the Breeches Bible, because Genesis 3:7 is translated as follows: "and they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves pants"). The Genevan Bible was strikingly different in format from previous translations. There were several small-format editions of the New Testament, but the English Bible was intended to be read during church services with commentaries by clergy. It was typed in an old Gothic type, was large and very heavy; often, for safety, she was chained to a music stand. The Genevan Bible used a clear Latin script and was much smaller in size. It had the usual numbering of individual verses, as well as introductions to books and notes, maps of biblical history, a summary of Christian doctrine, an index and a glossary, various forms of prayer were given, notes were attached to the psalms. In a word, it was a very complete guide; its fullness and small size contributed to the formation of the habit of reading at home. The Genevan translation was, to a certain extent, the most scientific translation of its time. The text of the Great Bible (1550) was taken as the basis, which was then significantly improved by the editors, who corrected many errors and inaccuracies. The Geneva Bible almost immediately won recognition and popularity, but until 1576 it was not published in England. Although Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, the Anglican hierarchs were hostile to the Geneva Bible and sought to delay its publication. Once printed, it went through 140 editions and was produced during the lifetime of a generation, even after the publication of the King James Bible. It was the Bible that Shakespeare knew and quoted.
Episcopal Bible. Cranmer's conservative successor in the chair of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, prevented the spread of the Geneva Bible. In 1568 he published his own edition, the Episcopal Bible. The name suggests that it was a collective effort by Anglican bishops who completed the task in just two years; they used the Great Bible as a basis, deviating from it only in those cases where it conflicted with the Hebrew or Greek texts. The Bishop's Bible often borrows passages from the Geneva Bible where its advantages in terms of translation accuracy are not in doubt. Upon completion, the Bishop's Bible replaced the Greater Bible as the official Bible of the Church of England.
King James Bible. The Puritan John Reynolds proposed the need for a new authoritative translation, addressing him to King James I in 1604. James approved the idea and appointed translators - "the men of science, fifty-four in number." The translators were divided into four groups, meeting at Westminster, Cambridge, and Oxford; each group took a part of the Bible, the initial, draft translation of which had to be approved by all members of the "company". A committee of 12 supervisors reviewed the first versions of the translation. The Bishop's Bible was chosen as the main text, but Tyndall's, Coverdale's, Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and even the Catholic translation of the New Testament (published in 1582) were also involved in the work. The King James Bible was published in 1611: it took two years and nine months to translate, another nine months to prepare the manuscript for printing. The first edition was a large volume in folio, the text was typed in Gothic type. The King James Version would never have gained popularity if it had not been soon reprinted in small format and in Latin types (qualities that at one time ensured the widespread circulation of the Geneva Bible). For nearly 400 years, the King James Version has held the status of an official translation. In England, it is called the Officially Approved Translation (Authorized Version), although neither the royal house nor Parliament issued any official acts on this matter. Moreover, there is no doubt that the Authorized Translation became the Bible of the Anglican Church, as well as those who broke away from it in the 17th and 18th centuries. religious associations; it has the same status in the Protestant denominations of the United States. The king's printer held the right to publish the King James Bible, so it could not be published in the English colonies in the Americas until they gained independence from England. As a result, the first Bible printed in America was not the King James Bible, but John Eliot's translation for the Algonquin Indians (Up-Biblum God, 1661-1663). In the 18th century two universities provided editors (Paris from Cambridge and Blaney from Oxford) to correct the typographical errors and distortions that had crept in. In the United States, in the publication of N. Webster (1833), obsolete turns were replaced by more modern ones. This editorial work testifies to the efforts characteristic of the 19th century. and aimed at modernizing the old text.
Corrected translation (The Revised Version). The movement towards modernizing the language of the old translation reached a climax in 1870, when, at the initiative of the council of the clergy of the Diocese of Canterbury and York, a committee was appointed to revise the text of the King James Bible. The revised translation (New Testament, 1881; Old Testament, 1885; Apocrypha, 1895) is still of value to scholars for its brevity and proximity to the original biblical texts in Hebrew and Greek, but has not been able to replace the King James Version. The Revised Standard Version. The first US edition of the Revised Translation included readings by American experts who worked with the English editors. In 1901, these readings were included in the text of the edition, which was called the American Standard Translation (The American Standard Version). It formed the basis for the Revised Standard Translation, prepared with the support of the International Council for Religious Teaching (1937). Dean L. E. Weigl of Yale University made a general revision of this translation (the New Testament came out in 1946, the Old Testament in 1952).
New English Bible. In sharp contrast to the various revisions of the translations stands the attempt made in England to create an authoritative text of the English Bible for the 20th century. The New English Bible (New Testament, 1961; New Testament, Old Testament and Apocrypha, 1969) is a completely new, fresh translation of the original texts into 20th century natural, spoken English, which avoids both archaic constructions of the 17th century and literal copying of Greek phrases. This translation thus breaks with a tradition dating back to Tyndall. The translation was published with the support and participation of all Christian churches in Great Britain with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church.
English Catholic translations of the Bible. Douai-Rheims translation. The resistance of the Catholic Church to the idea of ​​translating the Bible into national languages ​​weakened during the Counter-Reformation. In 1582, the Reims New Testament appeared, translated from the Vulgate by G. Martin at the English College in Reims (France). It was followed by a translation of the Old Testament (1609-1610) made in the French city of Douai. It was started by Martin, and completed by Cardinal William Allen, president of the college, with his collaborators R. Bristow and T. Worthington. It was a painstakingly executed translation, made from the Vulgate, in many places sinning with an abundance of Latinisms and a literal copying of the original. In the period from 1635 to 1749, only the New Testament of the Due-Rheims translation was reprinted (6 times). However, in 1749-1750, Bishop Richard Challoner made numerous amendments, which, one might say, revived the Douai-Rheims translation to a new life.
Translation by Knox. The most important English Catholic translation in the 20th century. is a translation by Ronald Knox, published in 1945-1949. Knox has dealt extensively with the problems of translation, and his version is distinguished not only by accuracy but also by elegance. The Knox Bible is a translation officially approved by the church.
Westminster Bible. The English Jesuits began in 1913 the preparation of a new translation of the Bible made from the original languages ​​(i.e. from Hebrew and Greek). The New Testament from the Westminster Bible (as the translation was called) was published in 1948 under the direction of J. Murray and K. Latti.
Jerusalem Bible. In the second half of the 20th century There were two Catholic translations into English and French, called the Jerusalem Bible. A French commentary translation (from the original texts) was made at the Dominican Bible School in Jerusalem and published in 1956. In 1966 English scholars made their own translation, also from the original texts.
New American Bible. In the United States, the Bishops' Committee for the Fellowship of Christian Doctrine funded a series of Bible translations from the original languages ​​of Hebrew and Greek. Translations of individual books, prepared with the support of this fraternity, began to appear in 1952, and the complete New American Bible was released in 1970. It replaced the old Douai-Rheims translation.
Bible translations for Jews. Translations of the Bible specifically for the Jews began to be done relatively recently. In the 18th century two translations of the Torah were published, one of them was made by the Jewish scholar I. Delgado (1785), the other by D. Levy (1787). However, the first complete translation of the Hebrew Bible was published in England only in 1851, its author was A. Benish. In 1853, I. Lizer published a translation in the USA, which became universally recognized in American synagogues. After the publication in England of the Revised Translation (1885), English Jews began to use this edition, providing it with notes and some readings that deviated from the English versions (this work was carried out by Jewish scholars). In 1892, the American Association of Jewish Publishers began preparing their own translation of the Hebrew Bible, based on the text of Aaron ben Asher (10th century), but taking into account ancient translations and modern English versions. This translation was published in 1917 and replaced Leeser's as the standard English translation of the Bible for American Jews. In 1963-1982 a new version of the American Jewish Publishers Association's translation was released. Her style is emphatically modern and free from the influence of the King James Bible. The publication is characterized by an abundance of notes, which provide options for translations and interpretations.
Other translations. From the beginning of the 16th century many unofficial translations have been made without the support or approval of any church groups. Incomplete translations (Psalms, prayers, passages from the gospels) appeared in a series of prayer books from 1529 to 1545. T. More translated individual parts of the Bible while imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534-1535. R. Taverner prepared in 1539 a new edition of Matthew's translation. Around 1550, J. Cheek translated the Gospel of Matthew in an unusual, touching style. In the 18th century Several translations have appeared that have only historical value. Among them, it is worth noting the translations of D. Mace (1729), E. Harwood (1768) and J. Wakefield (1791). Modern non-church translations trace their history back to the translation of E. Norton, a Unitarian pastor, who in 1855 published his translation of the gospels. The New Testament was popular for the 20th century. (The Twentieth Century New Testament, 1898-1901); New Testament of Moffat (Moffat "s New Testament, 1913); Goodspeed's New Testament (1923), which, together with translations of the Old Testament, became part of the American translation (An American Translation, 1931). Of the most popular publications, one can name J. B. Philips' arrangement for modern colloquial English (New Testament in Modern English, 1958). The Revised Standard Version Common Bible (1973), based on the 1952 Revised Standard Translation, has been approved for use by Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic denominations. The Good News Bible, a modern English translation of the Bible, was released by the American Bible Society in 1976. the literary style of the original King James Version, and Reader's Digest Bible, a condensed version of the Revised Standard Translation.
LITERATURE
canonical gospels. M., 1992 Teaching. Pentateuch of Moses. M., 1993 Bible Encyclopedia. M., 1996 Metzger B. Textology of the New Testament. M., 1996 Metzger B. Canon of the New Testament. M., 1999

Collier Encyclopedia. - Open society. 2000 .

Jewish rabbis from the 4th c. BC e., and the people who stood at the cradle of Christianity 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 apokryufos - hidden), accompanying the Old and New Testaments.

At one time, the leaders of the Hebrew "Great Synagogue" (the administrative-theological scholarly synagogue of the 4th-3rd centuries BC) and subsequent Jewish circles and communities of authority for believers, and in Christianity, the figures who formalized it on the initial path, worked hard, cursing, forbidding as heretical and diverging from the generally accepted text, and simply destroying books that are objectionable to them. That is why relatively few apocrypha have survived - over 100 of the Old Testament and about 100 of the New Testament. The latest excavations and discoveries near the Dead Sea and in Egypt 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. The Old Testament apocrypha is less cleaned up by later zealots of the strictest monotheism and therefore helps to clarify the political roots of the Hebrew religion.

Apocryphal literature is very useful for atheistic exposure of the "sacred" mysteries of religious teaching.

As we have already mentioned, for Jews and Christians the canonical content of the bibles they accept is the "word of God", the revelation of God himself to the sinful earth and people. Therefore, they speak of the "inspiration" (in other theological writings - divine inspiration) of the Bible.

However, even here the same content is not put into this concept by everyone.

So, the Hebrew theologians-soferim (scribes) even counted the number of letters in the Torah and how many times which letter of the alphabet occurs in which book so that something from the “god-given scripture” does not fall out or be distorted.

Protestants today, while not denying the idea of ​​"inspiration" of the Bible, leave in it, however, as the "word of God" only separate parts. Here, for example, are the views of Anglican theologians. "Holy Scripture", like the person of Christ, has two - divine and human - nature. The divine nature of the writers was inspired by the holy spirit; human nature, in their purely human being, is brought in by the writers themselves. This nature is not controlled by the holy spirit. Divine nature shows us history, life, morality, human nature brings dramaturgy, poetry, myths.

Even Catholics today are retreating from the gospel concept of "inspiration."

Of the Christian trends, perhaps the most conservative in their views on the Bible and its "inspiration" are Orthodoxy, especially Russian Orthodoxy, and sectarians. However, the Orthodox also read the entire Bible as the "word of God", but allow human variations in the presentation of its "truths" by writers "inspired" by God.

The different content invested by churchmen and sectarians in the concepts of "God's word", "inspiration" allows them to maneuver in internal church practice and in clashes with unbelievers. In front of fanatical or trusting believers in their shepherds, they talk about the verbal, that is, literal, "inspiration" of the Bible and use its most naive legends. In front of believing intellectuals and vacillators, they speak of all the slippery and revealing places in the Bible as "human contributions", in disputes with unbelievers they leave to God only moral prescriptions and a few prophecies, and they themselves recognize everything else as human documents of ancient epochs and thereby bypass those dangerous for them. places.

Another important difference of opinion cannot be overlooked. The Old Testament undoubtedly took shape among the Jews, partly in Palestine, partly in Mesopotamia during the period of captivity. It also included elements borrowed from the surrounding peoples. A number of the myths of the book of Genesis and others date back to Sumer and Babylonia, the book of Job is of Arabian origin, the book of Proverbs is rooted in Egyptian aphoristic literature, the book of Ecclesiastes is related to the Greek philosophy of the Hellenistic era, many psalms have Mesopotamian and Egyptian parallels, the novel about Joseph the Beautiful has something in common with the Egyptian tale of two brothers, etc.

Many works of the New Testament, although they deal with Palestine, were written outside of Palestine, and their authors did not know the situation in Palestine well. Separate passages from the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle to the Hebrews go back to the sources created by Palestinian Christians. The author of the Gospel of John apparently used the writings of the Qumran sectarians.

Historical content of the Bible

The Bible contains historical material. These are the books of Joshua (very relatively) and Judges, the books of Kings and Chronicles, partly the books of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, some minor prophets, the books of I Ezra, Nehemiah and the three Maccabees. Some other books also give something for history - the Pentateuch, Psalms, etc. But here it should be remembered everywhere that all these books are not chronicles, not historical records, but multiple revisions of historical sources and traditions by religious figures of ancient Jews - prophets and priests, compiled with the utilitarian purpose of consolidating and exalting certain religious ideas. Hence the partiality of these documents, the clearly falsified elements in them, the distortion of the historical perspective, anachronisms, etc.

Example. Important historical figures in the history of the ancient Jews were King Saul, King Jeroboam II and some others. But they were realist politicians and did not indulge the priests of the cult of Yahweh. Therefore, they are vilified and belittled in every possible way. Kings David and Solomon were not distinguished by cleanliness and morality in their personal lives, they were ferocious exploiters of their own and neighboring peoples, but they fully supported the religion and the cult of Yahweh, and therefore the Bible presents them as examples of holiness, greatness and piety.

Second example. An analysis of the I-III books of Kings shows that the cult of Yahweh in the era they describe only began to stand out from the ancient Hebrew henotheistic polytheism of the tribes, and the Bible is compiled in such a way that supposedly the Jews by the era described (X-IX centuries BC) are already almost not half a millennium were consistent monotheists, worshipers of the one god Yahweh.

Thus, in a comparative study, involving different materials, one can single out the historical grain from individual books of the Bible. The Bible then becomes an important historical document.

If an ordinary unprepared person, a believer, touched in advance by their "divine" origin, turns to these same materials, these books and materials will hopelessly confuse him and strengthen him in gross superstitions and anti-historical ideas.

Myths and Tales in the Bible

The Bible includes a large number of ancient tales and myths. This should include the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis, and the myths about the ancestors of the Jewish people - the "patriarchs" Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his 12 sons, and the myths about the "legislator" Moses, the stay of the Jews in Egypt, in the Sinai desert, and myths about the Jewish invasion of Palestine and many others

For a scientist-researcher, these myths, like any ancient monuments of the history of human society, provide important data on the connections of the Jews with the surrounding peoples. After all, it is far from an accidental circumstance that the cosmogony and anthropogony of the Jews clearly date back to the Chaldean myths, the legends of the flood and pandemonium have their roots in Babylonian literary monuments and history. The myths about the patriarchs draw pictures of the life of the ancient tribal system. The myth of Cain's murder of Abel draws from the standpoint of pastoral nomads the emergence of conflicts between pastoralists and farmers.

The Bible and Ancient Literary Monuments

The Bible has absorbed a number of ancient literary monuments, which are the national heritage of the Hebrew and some other peoples and the universal cultural heritage.

This may include novels about Abraham, Jacob and his sons, about Joseph the Beautiful, about Samson the Bogatyr, short stories about judge Jephthah and his daughter, about Tobit, Judith, Ruth, Esther, about Susanna, a poem about the meaning of suffering - about Job Long-suffering, a poem about love that is not afraid of difficulties - the Song of Songs, many songs and ballads of historical, heroic, mourning, praising nature, like the song of De-vora, David's song on the death of Saul and his sons, the 103rd psalm and others. This includes didactic aphoristic collections such as Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, two books of Wisdom, etc. This includes a number of fables-parables of both the New and Old Testaments...

Scholars and literary critics study these works of art of antiquity with interest. But it is worth approaching them for a person who believes in the "inspiration" of "scripture", and now Judith, Ruth, Esther, Susanna fall into the Orthodox calendar as historical characters, although they are not akin to historical figures, but to such literary images as Tatiana Larina, Natasha Rostov, etc. The love-ethical poem Song of Songs, which glorifies the warm embraces and caresses of the beloved, turns into an allegory of love for Yahweh and the chosen people (in the mind of a Mudaist), Christ and the Church (in the mind of a Christian). She interprets the church and other literary monuments included in the Bible in the plan she needs.

Socio-political documents

The works included in the Bible were not created abstractly and theoretically. Their authors loved and hated, waged a tense social and political struggle. That is why the Bible gives us a whole series of socio-political and class documents of the corresponding eras. Here is the subtle policy of the representatives of the reigning dynasty, a highly educated person for his time - the prophet Isaiah - the author of 1-39 chapters of the book of Isaiah (VIII century BC), and cruel jeremiads - denunciations of the prophet of the markets and squares of Jerusalem - Jeremiah (VII- VI centuries BC), and the sharp attacks of the shepherd Imos on the rich, and bitter attempts to understand the causes of the catastrophe that befell the country, the patriotic priest Ezekiel, who was captured, and his dreams of the coming revival of the people.

In the Bible we find the first editions of the records of the codes of Yahvist and Elohist, and apocalyptic reflections on the fate of the world and the Jews, belonging to the figure of Palestine enslaved by the Greek-Syrians, known under the name of the prophet Daniel, and the same reflections of the author of the first book of Christianity - the Apocalypse - about the fate of Christians and Jews groaning under the heel of Rome.

medical supplies

There are in the Bible medical and sanitary-hygienic prescriptions of ancient times, evidence of the purely human character of the Bible. They are generated not by the omniscience of heaven, but by the corresponding level of human development.

For example, chapter 13 of the book of Leviticus, speaking of leprosy, a disease that even today is rarely cured by medicine, indicates the existence of curable and incurable forms. In fact, it turns out that under the term "tsaraat" (leprosy), the Bible means skin diseases: from scabies and eczema to syphilis and leprosy itself. Similarly, people used to say that he died "from the stomach", while medicine today distinguishes dozens of gastric diseases.

A medical and hygienic prescription turns into outright witchcraft, stating what a priest should do with a person who has been healed of leprosy, more precisely, from some kind of skin disease. The priest must slaughter the sacrifice (ram) and anoint with its blood "the edge of the right ear of the one being cleansed", and "the thumb of his right hand", and "the big toe of his right foot". Then, pouring oil on your left hand, sprinkle it "from your right finger seven times" in front of the altar, and then, anointing the same places that you smeared with blood, put the rest of the oil "on the head of the one being cleansed" in order to "purify before the Lord" (Lev. 14:24-29).

The New Testament also knows the same witchcraft prescriptions. The Epistle of James (chapter 5, vv. 14-15) says that elders should anoint the sick with oil. It was this passage in the Bible that gave birth in Orthodoxy to the “sacrament” of unction, or unction, with witchcraft anointing seven priests, seven shavings, seven times, a number of certain places of the sick person with a mixture of wine and vegetable oil.

Some prescriptions are quite understandable as the requirements of the people's, human cleanliness of those times and the rules of the hostel. So, in Deuteronomy, it is prescribed on behalf of God for all Israelites to have a shovel in the campaign and bury their excrement with it, so as not to pollute the camp.

Religious texts and prescriptions

The religious texts and prescriptions contained in the Bible speak not of the glory of God, not of the spirituality of the deity, but of the policy of the priests who fed from the altar; about ancient magic and superstitious notions.

So, in the book of Leviticus (chapters 1-7; God, by personal revelation, gives Moses an order what sacrifices to make to him. He does not forget either meat (calf, goat, ram, bird) or bread (bread, cakes, cereals, flour), no fats (oils), does not forget the requirement to salt this food.Salt was then an expensive delicacy.Does not forget the dessert (fruits).

God provides the best pieces of his cooks - the priests-sacrifice-bearers. At the same time, God is saturated - he smells "a pleasant fragrance" (Lev., 1: 17; 2: 12; 3: 5, etc.).

In the book of Leviticus (chapter 19, article 19) there are religious prescriptions of a purely magical, magical nature such as prohibitions - taboo: "do not bring your livestock with a different breed; do not sow your field with two kinds of seeds; in clothes made of heterogeneous threads, wool and linen, do not dress."

In the same chapter of this book (23-25) it is forbidden to touch the first three Harvests of fruit trees, the fourth is proposed to be given to the spiritual fathers, and only from the fifth harvest is it allowed to start using the fruits of one's labors. The absurdity of these prescriptions needs no comment.

Contradictions in the Bible

For a scientist, it is simple and clear that, written in the slave-owning era, fixing the myths, documents and legends of the communal-clan system, patriarchal and the period of eastern monarchies-despotisms, the Bible must necessarily reflect the level of morality, ethical norms and ideas of that era, household traditions, etc. n. The believer, on the other hand, believes that God, as the source of morality, necessarily reveals in the Bible once and for all the same sounding, eternal moral principles and laws.

The Bible carries the contradictions of different eras and errors in reflecting everyday and moral and ethical norms, since it was created by many people and for a long time.

Here are some examples of biblical contradictions.

The myths of the two groups of Jewish tribes - Yahvist and Elohist, which formed the basis of the first five books of the Bible - gave rise to a number of contradictions in the first chapters of the book of Genesis.

In one place (1:20-27) the process of creation of life took place in this order: birds and reptiles, fish, animals, then a man, and a man and a woman at the same time.

And in the second chapter (7-25), first man was created, then animals and birds, and finally woman from the rib of a man.

In one version of the story about the global flood, every creature was taken into the ark in pairs (7: 14-16), and in another version - the unclean in pairs, and the clean ones in seven pairs (7: 1-3; 8:20).

The duration of the flood was also estimated differently: 40 days (7:4, 11-12, 17; 8:6) and 150 days (7:24).

In the historical books of the Bible (Judges, Kings, 1-2 Chronicles) there are a number of similar contradictions and errors. Thus, the duration of the era of judges, based on different chapters of the Bible, is determined at 450 years, 400 years, 333 years. In accordance with the data of historical science, this period lasted about 200 years.

Numerous contradictions in moral and everyday prescriptions are explained by the difference in the eras in which they were created.

So, in Exodus (20: 5) it is said that children up to the third and fourth generation bear responsibility for the sins (crimes) of the fathers. In another book (Ezekiel, 18:20) only the sinning soul is responsible for sins, it will die; the son will not bear the guilt of the father.

New Testament contradictions are well known.

Which genealogy of Christ is correct?

Matthew (1:1-17) has 42 ancestors from Abraham, and Luke (3:23-38) has 56 generations of ancestors from Abraham and there are big differences in names.

Where was the childhood of Christ?

Matthew (2:20-23) names Egypt, where Jesus' parents fled immediately from Bethlehem, where Christ was born, then his family returned to Nazareth.

Luke (2.20-52) says otherwise, the first 40 days in Bethlehem, then in Nazareth, until at least 12 years.

There are many examples of contradictions and errors.

Miracles and prophecy in the Bible

In the eyes of the believer, the most reliable evidence of "inspiration", the divine background of the Bible, has always been the miracles and prophecies of the "word of God."

Historians and ethnographers first of all single out a whole series of miracles in the Bible, which should be attributed to wandering plots, favorite themes of ancient fairy tales, and universal human type myths typical of almost all religions. This is what the Bible and the creators of its traditions have absorbed and adopted from the universal treasury of fairy tales, myths, and legends. This, for example, includes such miracles as the destruction by Elijah the Prophet of detachments sent to arrest him with the help of lightning (2 Kings, 1). This includes the myth of the ascension of Elijah in a chariot drawn by fiery horses (ibid., 2). The ego is very reminiscent of the Greek myth of the sun god Helios riding a chariot across the sky.

The miracle of the prophet Elisha with an ax that fell into the water and floated up when Elisha threw a chip into the river (2 Kings, 4) is a plot known in the tales of dozens of peoples, including Russians. He was born when the first metal objects were of great value, their loss was a significant loss, and people in trouble, due to their ignorance, resorted to sorcerers, healers, witchcraft and magic tricks, in this case to magic by similarity.

The same category of miracles includes numerous walking on water, as on dry land, of the same Elijah (1 Sam., 2), Elisha (ibid.), Christ (Matt., 14, Mk., 6, etc.). These are fabulous expressions of the dreams of ancient people about dominance over the elements, about the triumph of man over nature. They have countless parallels in the myths and fairy tales of various peoples. Tales about the saturation of hundreds by Elisha (2 Kings, 4), and Christ of thousands of people with a few loaves (Mk., 6, etc.), about miracles with the multiplication of products among people, who were patronized by the prophets Elijah (2 Kings, 17) and Elisha (2 Kings, 4) - are related to people's dreams of satiety, of "self-assembly tablecloth". It is characteristic that such miracles in the Bible are always attributed to mythical characters (Elijah, Elisha, Christ), and not obviously historical, real personalities. Where the chronicles speak, miracles recede.

The wandering plots in the legends about Christ include myths about his immaculate conception (Annunciation) (Luke 1) and ascension (Luke 24 and Acts 1).

The myths of the Middle East, Greco-Roman, Hindu and Buddhist religions are full of mysterious conceptions of gods and heroes and the ascension of gods to heaven. These are all naive dreams of ancient people about communication with mighty "celestials". After all, if the paths between heaven and earth have already been laid, it can be hoped that they will open to others.

The second category of miracles very typical of the Bible are natural miracles, as they are sometimes called. Here, in essence, there was no miracle, but a natural phenomenon that at one time struck the imagination of people, moreover, people of little education. The stories about him, full of amazement, then overgrown with exaggerations, fell into songs, where they hyperbolized, took on the form of absolutely supernatural phenomena. Let's show this kind of "miracles" on several examples.

As established by science, in general, the Jews have never been in Egypt and never "came" from it. The legends of the exodus and wanderings in the deserts seem to have entered the popular memory from the stories of a small group of Jews who, together with nomadic tribes known collectively as the Hyksos ("lords of foreign countries"), came to Egypt; during the exile of the Hyksos, they were captured by the Egyptians, and then fled.

Talking about the oppression and their troubles in Egypt, the fugitive Jews added: "Well, the Egyptians, on the other hand, God or the gods did not spare" - and told what kind of troubles Egypt does not fall on. Passing from mouth to mouth, these stories took shape in a coherent legend about the systematic "executions" that God sent to the oppressors (see Ex. 7-10).

A case of fabricating a miracle out of nothingness is found in the book of Joshua (10). The Jews, children of deserts and steppes, were bad in the siege of cities, they lacked skills and equipment. And so, fortunately for them, the kings of the five Canaanite city-kingdoms entered into a coalition and decided to give the Jews a battle. This suited the steppes. They had to defeat and destroy the enemy in the field, so that the bloodless cities would then fall into their hands without much resistance. But the battles then stopped at night. And so the Jews passionately dreamed that they had enough time For a complete victory And there was enough time to destroy the enemy's manpower. From here came the legends that God granted the prayers and stopped the sun in its daytime movement.

And another moment. Trying to hide from the valley into the mountains and escape from extermination, the defeated climbed the slopes, causing rockfalls and screes - a frequent and natural phenomenon in the mountains. This unexpected assistance of nature to the victors turned into a stone rain in legends: supposedly a god from the sky threw blocks at the retreating ones.

Something very peculiar happens with the miracle of the resurrection of Christ. Today it is clear to scientists that Christians, creating the myth of Christ, borrowed the cults of the annually dying and resurrecting gods of green nature, common in the East (and in particular, in Egypt), such as Osiris. In the mysteries of such cults, the nobles and the elders played out the rite of burial, the "coffin" was mourned by mourners, at the appointed hour of a certain day, the priests announced that God had risen and appeared to them as alive. In the New Testament, stories of burial, resurrection, and ascension are found in all four evangelists and in the Acts of the Apostles.

From these texts, we learn that notable people buried Christ, that three Marys mourned him (the name is not only from Mariam, that is, "lady of the sea" - Aramaic, but also from Marg - "bitter", a Jewish root - so often they called mourners in the East) that there was a resurrection at dawn on Sunday and Christ then appeared to testify of his revival to the apostles-disciples. Before us stands the outline of the ritual of the mysteries of Osiris and other dying and resurrecting gods, turned into the greatest miracle of Christianity.

Curious information gives us an analysis of biblical prophecy. It should be avenged that in ancient times, dreams were often considered as "prophecy" and "revelations from above" with the aspirations, fears or superstitions of people revealed in them. When people did not yet know much, the line between dream and reality seemed to them insignificant. Dreams were perceived as observations or information of the soul, received during all the absences "to the next world", during the sleep of the body. These dreams were interpreted, conclusions were drawn from them.

So, for example, Abraham was going to change his place of residence. God appeared to him in a dream and told him where to go (Gen. 12). Abraham is heartbroken about childlessness. And God allegedly consoles him in a dream: "Be patient, you will have more offspring" (Gen., 15).

This is especially clear in the books of the Prophets. The New Testament also speaks of dreams-revelations of the future, the "revelation" in a dream to Joseph not to drive the sinning Mary out of the house (Mt., 1: 20); the dream of the Magi - do not visit Herod (Matt. 2:12); Joseph's dream is to flee to Egypt (Matthew 2:13).

Along with the superstitious attitude to dreams, hallucinations and self-hypnosis, which were considered as prophecies, there are prophecies of a realistic order in the Bible. These are prophecies about conquests, invasions, occupations, military troubles. The "father" of these prophecies was, of course, not God, but human common sense and a realistic assessment of the emerging political situation.

In the ancient world, Palestine was truly the "navel of the earth", the great crossroads of the world.

Each of the great powers, fighting with another, laid its military roads through this Palestinian crossroads. Here they always either fought or expected war, looking with alarm at which of the neighbors is filled with strength, rises on the crest of the next historical "ninth wave".

Is it surprising that when in the VIII century. BC e. the whole East trembled in anticipation of the Assyrian invasion, these forebodings-prophecies permeated the books of the prophet Isaiah, and when in the 7th-6th centuries. BC e. hegemony passed to the Neo-Babylonian kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar, his contemporary - the prophet Jeremiah began to prepare the population and the government for impending events (see the book of Jeremiah). Anticipating Jeremiah, Habakkuk marked the beginning of the strengthening of Babylonia with lingering anxieties for the future of his homeland, and Nahum announced the decline of the Assyrian rapists with vengeful haste.

These forebodings: who will be the next conqueror, what new storm will fall on the inhabitants of Palestine? - permeate a good third of the Old Testament.

Wars and invasions have always been expected here from century to century.

That is why, with a certain amount of fantasy, gullibility, and gullibility in the Bible as "revelation from above," it is easy to fasten the biblical forebodings of war to any military thunderstorm of any age ... And people, trusting the Bible as the "eternal" "word of God," did this.

Entire lists can be made of which events in world history have not been associated with the same events in the Bible!

If such prophecies are real in themselves, and one has to protest only against transferring them to other times and epochs, then another type of Bible prophecy is based on a deliberate distortion of the truth in the Bible itself.

The Jewish priest Ezekiel, a historical figure, described (Ezek., 38-39) the invasion of the Scythians (Gog from the country of Magog), which was in his years in the Middle East (VI century BC). He was his eyewitness. Later editors filed his true story as a prophecy. And six centuries later, the ignorant author of the Apocalypse also introduced Gog and Magog into his book as characters who will appear in the world in the "last times." Moreover, he confused Magog - the name of the country, a geographical concept, and Gog - a prince, a man, with the names of tribes and made them two nations (Rev., 20: 7).

Believers tremble before Gog and Magog, despite the fact that this prophecy, as has been shown, has no reasonable basis.

The book of Daniel describes the change of four powers - Babylonian, Persian, Greek (Alexander the Great) and Roman (ch. II), the struggle of the Greeks and Persians, the fate of the Greco-Syrian and Greco-Egyptian powers (ch. VII and VIII), the sequence of events in zone of Palestine in the GuG-I centuries. BC e. (Ch. XI). All this is presented by the editors of the Bible as the story of a writer who lived in the 6th century. BC e. So, these are wondrous prophecies, absolute providence of the future. But in fact? The most serious studies of the book of Daniel led scholars to the conviction, to the knowledge that it was written in the 2nd century BC. BC e., i.e. after the events described.

The third type of prophecy is when the desired was taken for being. These are the apocalypses. In them, in a covert form, people express their aspirations and hopes.

The history of the first written Christian book, the Apocalypse, or the Revelation of John the Theologian, gives us a brilliant example of this. Let us focus our attention precisely on the Apocalypse of John, since among Christians, among other prophecies, it is literally a scarecrow for the gullible and gullible.

The Apocalypse is the final book of the Bible. This is a relatively small work, consisting of 404 verses. According to Christians, this is the last work of the Bible written in terms of time, relating to the first half of the 2nd century BC. n. e. Its author is allegedly the Apostle John, the youngest disciple of Jesus Christ, who survived all the others and died at the age of over 100 years. Such are the data of church legends and traditions.

In fact, everything is not so. A philological analysis of the language, vocabulary, style and word shows that the book cannot in any way be recognized as written by the author of the Gospel of John and the three Epistles of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian. There is no reason to believe that these works were written by the Apostle John. This very eloquent fact testifies to the inconsistency of church tradition. Judging by the text of the book, it was written by a man who enjoyed great authority in the early Christian communities, who, in all likelihood, was called John. But we can't say more about him yet.

In the 17th chapter of the Apocalypse, the vision of the "Babylonian harlot" is told, sitting on a beast with seven heads. And here is the decoding of what is described:

"And the angel said to me: Why are you amazed? I will tell you the secret of this woman and the beast that bears her, which has seven heads and ten horns" (7).

"Here is the mind that has wisdom. The seven heads are the seven mountains on which the woman sits..." (9).

For the ancients, this was a true decoding: after all, only one city of antiquity "sat on seven mountains" - Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire. That's who in the eyes of the writer is the accursed "Whore of Babylon". But why is it then "Babylonian" and not Roman? Rome was very strong, and it was clearly not safe to criticize it. And Babylon has been in ruins for centuries. And only by planting the "whore of Babylon" on seven mountains, the author thereby gave a complete decoding of the true address, against whom his scripture is directed.

When was it done? Reading. "And seven kings, of which five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come, and when he comes, he will not be long" (10).

Rome has long been a republic. The kings (Caesaris) appeared in it at the turn of our era. It is easy to count them: "five fell" - these are Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. "There is one" is the sixth Caesar, Galba. He ruled from June 9, 68 to January 15, 69. At that time, an uprising of the legions was already underway, of which some predicted Vitellius to the throne, others Otto (it was Otto who ascended the throne). One of them is the one that "has not yet come."

"And the beast that was and is not, is the eighth, and out of the number of seven, and will go to destruction" (11).

In the East, at that time, the uprising of the False Nero thundered. That's who the "beast", "antichrist". Not something distant, future, coming. No, the writer suffered from the pain of his time and dreamed of God's punishment of today's enemies, his own and his people, all the offended and oppressed.

Any game on the Apocalypse, as on a book that predicts the future fate of the world, is a speculation of dark, and sometimes unscrupulous people, with the aim of intimidating believers.

Particularly noteworthy are the prophecies of the Old Testament, interpreted in the New Testament as having come true. This makes a great impression on the believers who read the gospel and strengthens them in the faith.

Scientists have long established that between the books of the Old and New Testaments there is not direct, but reverse continuity. It was not the Old Testament that foretold the events of the New Testament and the New Testament is not the fulfillment of the Old, but the writers and editors of the New Testament books, and mainly the compilers of the later books of the New Testament, the gospels, sought out the texts of the Old Testament, which, in their opinion, could refer to the messiah, and from them they composed and formed legends about Jesus.

So what we have here is not a "fulfillment of prophecy", but a counterfeit of prophecy.

bible parables

In the preaching activity of today's churchmen and sectarians, the gospel parables of Christ are very popular. A parable is a very popular form of allegorical story in the East, leading the reader or listener to certain thoughts and considerations. In modern terms, this is a fable.

Parables knew the entire Ancient East. Many of them have come down to us in the literature of the Eastern peoples.

Knew them and the Old Testament - the literature of the ancient Jews.

There are especially a lot of parables political and morally accusatory.

So, in the book of Judges (9: 7-20), Jotham, who survived the massacre perpetrated by his stepbrother, but illegitimate (from a concubine) brother, addresses a parable-fable (about trees that chose a king for themselves) to the inhabitants of the city of Shechem that accepted the usurper.

In the book of Ezekiel (16 and 22), in parables-fables about a girl thrown up, raised by God and then indulged in debauchery and deceived God, and about two sisters who fornicated with oncoming and transverse, Ezekiel allegorically draws the betrayal of the Jewish people of the kingdoms of Judea and Israel God - Jehovah.

Parables-fables were the literature of bazaars, squares, a favorite form of preaching for wandering preachers. It is not surprising that many of them entered the gospels, reflecting the usual and most everyday stories and turns.

a) Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 ... grain sown in the field. The enemy sowed weeds there. As long as everything grows together. In the harvest, the grain will be gathered, and the weeds will be burned.

b) Matthew 13:31-32 ... mustard seed. They sow - it is tiny, but it will grow into a mighty tree.

c) Matt. 13:38 ... leaven in three measures of flour, which leavens the whole dough.

d) Matt., 13-44 ... a treasure, having found it, a person sells everything in order to acquire a plot with a treasure.

e) Matt. 13:45-46 ... a pearl, for the acquisition of which a person sells everything ...

f) Matthew 13:47-50 ... a net that pulls out every kind of fish. Good ones are taken, bad ones are thrown away.

The same parables are found in parallel texts of other gospels.

Parables "a" and "e" replace the moral stimulus of human behavior with intimidation with a "whip" - the fear of hell. Both end with the expression: "And they will cast them into the fiery furnace: there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Parables "b" and "c" are built on the idea that a person should give himself entirely to God.

Parables "d" and "e" develop this idea in the direction that it is necessary to "sell" everything that is available (earthly, human, universal) and surrender only to the "acquisition" of God. Here, selfish personal salvation becomes the norm. It is not for nothing that merchants and money-grubbers act as fabled images to suggest this. The explanations given are not our interpretation; they are built on the basis of "patristic" interpretations of the "word of God."

Along with this, the acquirers of personal salvation are instilled with the idea that the world, life in it, cannot give them

nothing, and even the fact that they experience good things in life is done only by the grace of God, therefore, again, God and his "kingdom" should come first, and not life, people, society:

a) Luke 16:13 - one cannot serve two masters, that is, God and life, the world, people.

b) Matthew 6:26 - even the birds do not reap, they do not sow, but God fed them, without participating in worldly life.

c) Matthew 6:27-30 - and flowers grow carefree with God's help.

Not to mention the absurdity of comparisons (birds and plants live in the struggle for existence, and far from being dependent on the Lord God), here a person is called to turn his back on the labors and cares of the world and go into the mysticism of faith. After all, even monks cannot live in monasteries if they do not work or exploit the work of those who revere them and believers.

The gospels also included some folk parables and close observations. So, Matthew (7:24-27) and Luke (6:48-49) have arguments about a house built on sand, and a house on a rocky foundation - a symbol of work, a society built on false and correct teachings. Of course, Christians consider themselves "correct" here.

A number of peoples have similar sayings and sayings.

Matthew (9:16-17) has parables that new wine is poured into new wineskins, and old clothes are not patched with new cloth - a symbol that new content requires new forms for its expression.

There are also such parables in the gospels that kept Christians in suspense of constant expectation of the second coming and the Last Judgment:

a) Matt. 24:42-44 - about the waking owner.

b) Matthew 24:45-51, Luke 12:36-48 - about slaves who did not expect the arrival of their master, who took them by surprise.

Thus, with rare exceptions, the parables-fables of the Gospels serve ideas that are hostile to people, lead away from life, call for selfish personal salvation, and are permeated with echoes and concepts of bygone eras.

Apostolic Epistles

The epistles are very important in the Bible for understanding the principles and practices of Christianity. These are, in essence, instructive and conciliatory letters, which during the period of their formation were exchanged, often through messengers-apostles, by early Christian communities.

It can be seen from the messages that early Christianity was born in a struggle of opinions and personalities, and not in a reverent gathering of people around a once and for all truth, that in Christianity there were both good people and rather unsympathetic carriers of various vices, and that this was by no means an icon-painting collection of holy samples. Christianity for all ages, but representatives of human society with all the advantages and disadvantages inherent in people.

From here we learn about the points of view of the church on a number of practical issues that arose before a new form of religion (church and state, church and government, believers and unbelievers, family relations, fathers and children, attitude towards women, etc.).