Study of the ancient Bible,
the original Codex Sinaiticus,
which is 1600 years old.
Over the course of many centuries, the Bible was rewritten and translated, how do we now know that the modern text of the Bible is not distorted and corresponds to the original source, the original Bible?
Let's look at this issue in more detail. How is the Bible translated? How, for example, did the modern Russian translation of the Bible appear?
The original Bible was originally written in ancient Greek (New Testament) and Hebrew (Old Testament). Modern Bible translations are made directly from texts written in these original languages. The Bible is a very famous book, so its translation is done in the most careful way, and this process takes scientists many years.
Thus, the fact that the Bible has been translated many times does not distort its text in any way, because translations are made from the original languages, and not from other translations.
Now let's consider the question of how the rewriting of the Bible affected the consistency of its text with the original. After all, the Bible is a very ancient book, and until the printing press was invented in 1440, it was copied by hand.
Of course, the monks and scribes copied the text of the Bible very meticulously. The Jewish scribes, for example, used a special system for checking the copies they made, in which they counted the exact number of letters and words in each book they copied, in order to prevent any errors or distortions in the Bible. However, for such a long time, which is estimated at many centuries, errors still sometimes crept into the rewritten texts. And this can now be seen by studying the manuscripts found by archaeologists.
However, how do scientists know that there are errors or distortions in a particular manuscript? This can be easily seen by comparing it with most other manuscripts and especially with earlier manuscripts. Therefore, those errors that have crept into the rewritten text over the centuries are easily eliminated by modern science, and they do not affect the text of the Bible that we use today.
1600 year old Bible Codex Sinaiticus.
The modern text of the Bible is based primarily on the earliest manuscripts, which are very close to the original source. For example, the complete text of the New Testament is presented in a manuscript from 350 known as Codex Sinaiticus. By the way, this manuscript was previously kept in St. Petersburg, but in 1933 the Soviet government sold it to the British Museum, where it is now located.
In addition, scientists have manuscripts of almost all the books of the New Testament, which date back to an even earlier time: 130-200 AD. The most famous of these manuscripts are the Bodmer Papyri (200), kept in the Bodmer Library of Geneva, the Chester Beatty Papyri (200), now in the Dublin Library, and the Rylands Papyrus P52 (130), which is the earliest excerpt from the New Testament book of the Gospel of John, which is kept in the library of the University of Ryland, Manchester.
The original Gospel of John was originally written in 90-100, so we have a manuscript that dates only 40 years later. Also, the early manuscripts of almost all the other books of the New Testament are very close to the original source, they date only 50-150 years later. The books of the New Testament were originally written between 50 and 100 AD.
In addition, scholars have at their disposal a huge number of New Testament manuscripts that date back to a later time. Their number exceeds 5,600 ancient Greek manuscripts containing the full or partial text of the New Testament.
All this makes the New Testament the most confirmed historical document of antiquity. One of the famous scholars in the field of biblical studies, F.F. Bruce wrote about this:
No other ancient literature has as much textual support as the New Testament.
Book of Isaiah, book of the Old Testament, which is 2200 years old
The Old Testament was written earlier, being completed around 400 BC. Currently, scholars have more than 200 manuscripts, which represent all the books of the Old Testament except the book of Esther, and which date from 250 BC to 70 AD. In total, there are more than 25,000 manuscripts and fragments of books of the Old Testament, dating back to different centuries.
No other work of antiquity has such a large number of manuscripts that have reached us and such a short period of time separating the earliest of them from the original. For example, the works of Plato and Aristotle, written by them in the 4th century BC. are represented in less than 10 manuscripts (Plato) and about 50 manuscripts (Aristotle). The earliest of them dates back to the 9th century AD, that is, about 1200 years after the original was written.
Much the same applies to almost all ancient literary works, with the only exception of Homer's Iliad, which is represented in more than 1,500 manuscripts, the earliest of which dates back about 500 years after the original was written. Although the complete copy of the Illiad also dates back only to the 10th century AD, that is, 1800 years after the original. And yet, the Iliad is considered the second most textually confirmed work of antiquity after the Bible.
Thus, we can be sure that the modern text of the Bible is not distorted and is completely consistent with its original original. This is confirmed by hundreds of early biblical manuscripts that were written only 50 to 250 years after the original, and tens of thousands of other later copies.
- about the Bible:
The Hebrew title for the book of Genesis is Bereshit (In the Beginning). The title itself is the first word of the book. The Russian title "Genesis" is a translation of the Greek title of this book according to the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, carried out in the 3rd century BC) and means "Origin". Genesis is a book about what began to be. The book tells about the origin of heaven and earth, about the creation of man and his fall, about God's promise of a Savior and about God's covenant with man.
The first book of the Bible, Genesis, contains no mention of an author. However, it is generally accepted that Genesis, like the entire Pentateuch (the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), was written by Moses. The basis for this is, firstly, the Jewish spiritual tradition, which has always recognized (and recognizes) the authorship of Moses. Christianity also agrees that the author is Moses. Doubts regarding the author of the book of Genesis (as well as the time of writing this book) were raised by negative criticism already in modern times. At the same time, critics cannot agree on the author, and their statements are speculative in nature, since they lack justification and are based solely on a subjective and formal approach to the text. Moreover, this approach completely ignores the main distinctive feature of the book of Genesis - its inspiration and the inspiration of the author.
The author of the book of Genesis was a man who not only received the greatest revelations of God, but was also able to accept these revelations, understand them and present them in such a way that they were accessible to both his contemporaries and distant descendants. The author of the book of Genesis was able to combine the tradition of God's personal revelation to man, which is reflected in the line Abraham - Isaac - Jacob, with the idea of the Most High - the Creator of heaven and earth, and everything that fills them.
The one who wrote this book had to have personal communication with the living God and at the same time have a mindset addressed not to subjective experiences, but to global, universal problems of existence, far beyond the personal and national. And only Moses could be such a person. By the will of God, it was he, the only one, who turned out to be the focus of Egyptian scientific knowledge and Jewish revealed spirituality. The richest factual (historical, geographical, ethnographic, etc.) material available in the book of Genesis, its literary form and artistic techniques directly and indirectly testify not only to the highest education of its author, but also indicate the Egyptian origin of this education. According to the testimony of ancient writers - Strabo, Aristotle, Plato - Egypt in ancient times served as a world archivist and historiographer. And the richest material, preserved and accumulated by the Egyptian priests for centuries, by the will of the Almighty, was provided to Moses, the adopted son of the daughter of Pharaoh. Besides Moses, only Joseph had such an opportunity to become acquainted with the “wisdom of Egypt.” But the Bible nowhere says that Joseph, unlike Moses, took advantage of this opportunity (Acts 7:22).
Egypt raised a thinker in Moses. The Jewish spiritual tradition instilled in him the knowledge of the One God, and one day in the desert, after fleeing Egypt, the knowledge of God turned for Moses into the knowledge of God as the One Existing (Ex. 3:14).
In Ex. 3:6 This is the first time God calls Himself by this name, but Moses was able to understand that Jehovah is the God of revelation. And he consistently expressed this understanding in the book of Genesis: all cases of using the name of God - Jehovah - in one way or another indicate the relationship between God and man.
An equally important argument in favor of the fact that the book of Genesis was written by Moses, and he did this in the first years of the exodus from Egypt, is the fact that this book contains the original history of the people of Israel and their covenant with God - the inheritance of the Promised Land. The book of Exodus shows that the Jews left Egypt as miserable refugees with a slave mentality; Only a few retained the memory of the One God, and the bulk of the people were ready to renounce both Moses and God, who through Moses led them and spoke to them. They no longer remembered God, Who had brought them to Egypt, and were ready to exchange Him for a golden calf, and the Promised Land for Egyptian cauldrons of meat. The reading of the book of Genesis in the Tent of Meeting (along with the reading of the Law) opened the eyes of the Jews to who they were, where they came from, and where they were going. And the revelation about the One God - the Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth - instilled faith that the Almighty, who created the whole earth, is Almighty and He will fulfill His covenant with their father, Abraham, and will give them the promised part of the earth He created. Without the book of Genesis, the Jews would never have emerged from the Sinai desert as the people of Israel.
Time and circumstances of writing
The book of Genesis was most likely written between 1471 and 1405. BC The sixty-six years between these dates include the time of the Jews' wanderings in the desert (40 years) and the discrepancy between the supposed dates of Moses' birth: some researchers place his birth at 1551 BC, others at 1525.
Apparently, the awareness of the urgent need to write this book arose (and perhaps only became stronger) in Moses after he came down from Mount Sinai and saw a pagan bacchanalia in the camp of the people he knew (see Exod. 32).
Difficulties of interpretation
The difficulties of interpreting the book of Genesis are explained, on the one hand, by the specifics of the book itself, which represents a synthesis of world history and the revelation of God, on the other hand, by the diversity of presentation and the originality of the narrative language, including capacious symbolic images along with unambiguously concrete concepts, and the author himself does not explain or explain unfolds these images. This feature is not characteristic exclusively of the book of Genesis, but expresses the general principle of the presentation of sacred texts in antiquity, which provided for the recording of truth in a form that did not distort the truth itself, but required oral interpretation. The author of the book of Genesis consistently maintained this principle and thereby allowed subsequent generations to correlate the contents of the book with the level and originality of thinking of their era.
The above can be clearly illustrated using the example of the image of a serpent (3.1). Christian exegesis identifies the serpent with Satan, but for Moses’ contemporaries (especially for previous generations) the very concept of Satan did not exist, and what stands behind the word “Satan” was expressed in other symbols and images. Thus, archaeological data made it possible to establish that in the Neolithic era there was a common idea among the peoples of the Nostratic language group (from which the Indo-European - Japhetic, Semitic and Hamitic linguistic communities emerged) - the idea of the "god" of the underworld, i.e. a deity who lives in the bowels of the earth. This deity was credited with the possession of wisdom, he owned all the treasures hidden in the earth and “managed” the kingdom of the dead. Animals were dedicated to him - mainly reptiles, i.e. those whose way of life (movement) was closely connected with the land. These animals included snakes. In addition, there was a tradition of identifying this deity with the animal dedicated to him, and the name of the animal (or its image) was perceived as a designation of the deity himself. This deity was never thought of by the Creator, since he himself was created. Thus, Moses chose the most understandable designation for his contemporaries for the entity that centuries later was identified with Satan.
As for the difficulties allegedly arising in connection with the names of God in ch. 1 (Elohim) and ch. 2 (Jehovah), as well as other places of Scripture that “contradict” each other (for example, 1.28 and 2.22), these “problems” were perfectly commented on by the Jewish philosopher and theologian Mosheben Maimon (Maimonides, 1135-1204 .), whose works influenced such thinkers as Thomas Aquinas and Spinoza: “Whenever in our books we encounter a story whose reality seems impossible, a narrative that contradicts ... common sense, we can be sure that this story contains an allegory that hides a deeply hidden truth; and the greater the discrepancy in the letter, the deeper the wisdom of the spirit." In other words, when reading Scripture, we should ask the question “why?” (“What is this done for?”) rather than “How?” ("how is this possible?"). There is an answer to the last question that is common to both the Old and New Testaments - nothing is impossible for God.
Characteristics and themes
Since some features and main themes of the book of Genesis have already been discussed in general above (see Introduction: Author. Difficulties of interpretation), and a more detailed interpretation will be offered directly in the comments to the text, it seems advisable to note only those points that are used by negative criticism for various reasons. kind of speculation. Similar moments include points of contact between the book of Genesis and ancient literary monuments (in particular, the “Epoem of Gilgamesh”, Sumer, 3rd millennium BC).
It should be immediately noted that it would be much more strange if the book of Genesis completely dropped out of the history of mankind and its culture. Moses wrote for people, and he set forth Divine revelations in the context of human history, illuminating the key moments of this history with the light of Divine truth. As an example, let us turn to the story of the Great Flood, which is not only a scientifically reliable truth, but also in an artistically reinterpreted form is reflected in the literary traditions of almost all peoples. If we recall the cultural and linguistic community of people of the post-Flood period, which the Bible speaks of (Gen. 11:1) and which is confirmed by linguistic and archaeological data, then again the reasons for the discrepancies in the presentation of the same fact by different historians are more worthy of attention than those moments where this discrepancy is absent.
The coincidence of some provisions of the biblical teaching about God and the world, set out in the book of Genesis, with the ideas of pagan peoples should not cause any problems for a person who thoughtfully reads the Bible, since the book of Genesis purposefully and consistently conveys the idea of God as the One Source of true knowledge and revelation. Moreover, the book of Genesis emphasizes that in the persons of Adam, Noah and Melchizedek, humanity had a single and common revelation of God. Another question is how far people managed to preserve this revelation in its original form. But, of course, even the most rethought and mythologized legends, distorted by perverted religious ideas, always retain some elements of the original truth, confirmation of which is the theme of the Fall, which in one form or another is reflected in the myths and tales of all mankind. The book of Genesis contains a direct revelation of God, written down by man who received this revelation, i.e. between the revelation and its written recording there is a minimally short period of time, which guarantees the reliability of the revelation and its safety from distortion.
It must be remembered that the Bible is inspired Scripture and requires a spiritual attitude. The Apostle Paul wrote about the spiritual approach to the Holy Scriptures in general and to the book of Genesis in particular: “... these were images for us” (1 Cor. 10:6; see also Gal. 4:22-31). The figurative system of the book of Genesis often does not allow an unambiguously literal understanding of the text and requires that the spiritual be correlated with the spiritual (1 Cor. 2:13). Mainly this refers to “the economy of the mystery, which was hidden from eternity in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ” (Eph. 3:9). The book of Genesis contains many typical prophecies about Jesus Christ, the Redeemer promised by God to all mankind. The interpretation of these prophecies requires a deep understanding of the symbolic system of the First Book of Moses, especially since this symbolism runs through the entire Old Testament to the New.
I. Prologue: The Creation of Heaven and Earth (1.1 - 2.3)
II. Origin of heaven and earth (2.4 - 4.26)
A. Trial of Adam and Eve in Paradise (2.4-25)
B. The Fall and its consequences (3.1-24)
C. Increase of sin among the descendants of Cain (4:1-24)
D. Godly Remnant (4,25,26)
III. Genealogy of Adam (5.1 - 6.8)
A. Genealogical line of Seth - covenant line (5:1-32)
B. Increase of sin before the flood (6:1-8)
IV. Genealogy of Noah (6.9 - 9.29)
A. Preparations before the flood (6.9 - 7.10)
B. Flood and salvation (7.11 - 8.19)
B. God's covenant not to devastate the earth (8.20 - 9.17)
D. Prophecy about the sons of Noah (9:18-29)
V. Genealogy of Shem, Ham and Japheth (10.1 - 11.9)
A. Table of Nations (10.1-32)
B. Increase of evil in Babylon (11:1-9)
VI. Genealogy of Shem (11.10-26)
VII. Genealogy of Abraham (11.27 - 25.11)
A. Pedigree (11.27-32)
B. Abrahamic Covenant: land and people (12.1 - 22.19)1. Relocation to the Promised Land (12:1-9)
2. Liberation from Egypt (12:10-20)
3. Lot's separation and departure from the Promised Land (13:1-18)
4. Victory over the eastern kings (14.1-24)
5. God's covenant confirmed (15:1-21)
6. Hagar and Ishmael rejected (16:1-16)
7. God's covenant is confirmed (17:1-27)
8. Sarah will have a son (18:1-15)
9. Rescue of Lot from Sodom (18.16 - 19.38)
10. Defense from the Philistines (20.1-18)
11. Birth of Isaac and blessing in the Promised Land (21:1-34)
12. God's oath to bless the world through the descendants of Abraham (22:1-19)B. Transition of the narrative to Isaac (22.20 - 25.11):
1. Rebekah's family (22,20-24)
2. Death of Sarah (23.1-20)
3. Rebekah given to Isaac (24:1-67)
4. Isaac is the only heir (25.1-6)
5. Death of Abraham (25.7-11)
VIII. Genealogy of Ishmael (25.12-18)
IX. Genealogy of Isaac (25.19 - 35.29)
A. Rivalry in the family (25.19-34)
B. Covenant blessings transferred to Isaac (26:1-35)
B. Jacob steals Esau's blessing (27:1-40)
D. The blessings of the covenant belong to Jacob; his escape (27.41 - 32.32)1. Meeting with an angel in Bethel (28.10-22)
2. Conflict with Laban (29.1-30)
3. Birth of the fathers of the twelve tribes (29.31 - 30.24)
4. Jacob's prosperity and his flight from Laban (30.25 - 31.55)
5. Meeting with angels in Mahanaim and Penuel (32.1-32)D. Reconciliation between Esau and Jacob (33:1-17)
E. Transition of the narrative to Jacob: the path from Shechem to Mamre and the deaths that happened along this path (33.18 - 35.29)
X. Genealogy of Esau (36.1 - 37.1)
XI. Genealogy of Jacob (37.2 - 50.26)
A. Joseph's Dream of Dominion (37.2-11)
B. Family sins (37.12 - 38.30)
V. Joseph was appointed ruler over Egypt (39.1 - 41.57)
D. Joseph's cunning and his reconciliation with the family in covenant with God (42.1 - 45.28)
D. Transition to the book of Exodus (46.1 - 50.26)1. Migration to Egypt (46.1-30)
2. Living in the land of Goshen (46.1-30)
3. Jacob blesses the twelve tribes (48.1 - 49.28)
4. The death of Jacob and his burial in the land of Canaan (49.29 - 50.14)
5. The death of Joseph in Egypt and the promise of the land of Canaan (50:15-26)
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1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.
3 And God said: Let there be light. And there was light.
4 And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning: one day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate water from water.
7 And God created the firmament, and separated the water that was under the firmament from the water that was above the firmament. And so it became.
8 And God called the firmament heaven. And there was evening and there was morning: the second day.
9 And God said: Let the water that is under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And so it became.
10 And God called the dry land earth, and the collection of waters he called seas. And God saw that [it] was good.
11 And God said, “Let the earth produce green grass, grass yielding seed, fruitful trees, bearing fruit according to its kind, in which is its seed on the earth.” And so it became.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, grass yielding seed according to its kind, and tree bearing fruit, in which is its seed according to its kind. And God saw that [it] was good.
13 And there was evening and there was morning: the third day.
14 And God said: Let there be lights in the expanse of heaven to separate the day from the night, and for signs, and seasons, and days, and years;
15 and let them be lamps in the firmament of the heaven to give light on the earth. And so it became.
16 And God created two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars;
17 and God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light on the earth,
18 and to rule the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that [it] was good.
19 And there was evening and there was morning: the fourth day.
20 And God said: Let the water bring forth living things; and let the birds fly over the earth, across the firmament of heaven.
21 And God created the great fish and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that [it] was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.
23 And there was evening and there was morning: the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And so it became.
25 And God created the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the cattle according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to their kinds. And God saw that [it] was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that moves on the earth.
27 And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed that is on all the earth, and every tree that has fruit yielding seed; - [this] will be food for you;
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to every thing that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food. And so it became.
31 And God saw everything that He had created, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning: the sixth day.
1 Thus are the heavens and the earth and all their hosts perfect.
2 And God finished on the seventh day His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done.
3 And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, for on it He rested from all His works, which God had created and created.
4 This is the origin of heaven and earth at their creation, at the time when the Lord God created earth and heaven,
5 and every bush of the field that was not yet on the earth, and every herb of the field that was not yet growing, for the Lord God did not send rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the land,
6 but steam rose from the ground and watered the entire face of the earth.
7 And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
8 And the Lord God planted a paradise in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man whom he had created.
9 And the Lord God made out of the ground every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 A river came out of Eden to water Paradise; and then divided into four rivers.
11 The name of one is Pison: it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
12 and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and onyx stone.
13 The name of the second river is Gihon: it flows around the entire land of Cush.
14 The name of the third river is Hiddekel: it flows before Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 And the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou shalt eat,
17 But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.
18 And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone; Let us create for him a helper suitable for him.
19 The Lord God formed from the ground all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air, and brought them to man to see what he would call them, and that whatever man called every living soul, that would be its name.
20 And the man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the air, and to all the beasts of the field; but for man there was no helper like him.
21 And the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs and covered that place with flesh.
22 And the Lord God created a wife from a rib taken from a man, and brought her to the man.
23 And the man said, Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she will be called woman, for she was taken from man.
24 Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and they will be one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.
1 The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God created. And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?
2 And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat fruit from the trees,
3 Only from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, do not eat it or touch it, lest you die.
4 And the serpent said to the wife: No, you will not die,
5 but God knows that on the day you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And the wife saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge; and she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave it also to her husband, and he ate.
7 And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed together fig leaves and made aprons for themselves.
Original or copy?
The originals of biblical books - that is, manuscripts written by the prophet Moses or the apostle Paul -, of course, have not reached us. The material for writing in their times was papyrus - wide, long sheets made from the stems of a plant common in the Nile Delta and some other wetlands of the Middle East, or, much less commonly, parchment - specially tanned animal skin. But parchment was too expensive, and papyrus was too short-lived - rarely did any papyrus book last longer than half a century.
In fact, all the originals of ancient manuscripts that have reached us are scraps of private correspondence and business papers that were once thrown into Egyptian trash heaps (only in Egypt the dry climate allowed them to be preserved), and inscriptions on hard surfaces (clay tablets, shards, stones) . And all ancient literary works have come down to us in later copies. The first known copies of Homer's poems are no less than half a millennium distant from the death of their creator. The manuscripts of the Iliad, the most read and revered work in ancient Greece, have reached us a little over six hundred, the tragedies of Euripides - about three hundred, and the first six books of the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus are generally preserved in a single copy of the 9th century.
For comparison: today more than five thousand manuscripts are known containing certain parts of the New Testament. The earliest of them were made on papyri in Egypt at the turn of the 1st-2nd centuries. AD, just a few decades after the death of the apostles. They, in particular, contain passages from the Gospel of John, written at the very end of the 1st century.
But how, in fact, is it known that this or that manuscript actually contains the original text of Homer’s poems or the Bible? Nowadays, it is quite easy to detect a fake. Manuscripts are studied and compared - as for the New Testament, an entire scientific institute in the German city of Münster is engaged in this. And then, a few manuscripts may turn out to be fake, but not a thousand.
But even in cases where an ancient text has reached us in one or two copies, its authenticity can be confirmed or rejected based on many data. Is the author confused about the historical details of the period he describes? Is he familiar with the geography of the place where the action takes place? What language does he write in, what words does he use? Is his evidence corroborated by independent sources? Is his book quoted by other authors, is it known to readers of more recent times? So distinguishing a fake is not at all as difficult as it seems at first glance.
In the five thousand New Testament manuscripts that have reached us, there are some discrepancies (we will talk about this in more detail in the next issue of the magazine), but we will not see any other Message than the Gospel in them. None of them say that Jesus was not the Son of God or did not die on the Cross. If all this is the result of some huge gang of forgers working throughout the Mediterranean no later than the beginning of the 2nd century AD, then it is obviously impossible to create any plausible history in this world at all.
The Bible is the book of the Church
The Bible says not only about Christ, but also about itself something fundamentally different than, for example,. This is one of those obvious platitudes that people tend to forget. Muslims believe that the Koran is a revelation of God, sent down to one single person - Muhammad, who wrote it down “under the dictation” of God and did not add a single word of his own. Therefore, for them, any earthly text of the Koran is just a copy of the heavenly Koran, the true Word of God, above which there is nothing on earth, has not been and never will be. First there was the Koran, then Islam was born from it. Therefore, by the way, the Koran, from the point of view of Islam, is untranslatable: any translations of it are just auxiliary aids, and only the Arabic text can be considered authentic.
For a Christian, the Word of God that came down to earth is, first of all, not a book, but a Person, Jesus Christ, who existed from eternity and founded his life on earth. They say that once an Orthodox priest in the USA met with a street preacher of one of the Protestant denominations. “Would you like me to tell you about a church that is based on the Bible?” – he happily suggested. “Do you want me to tell you about the Church that wrote the Bible?” - the priest answered him.
And he was right, because Christ Himself did not leave us any written texts. Even the Gospel was first transmitted as oral history, and the epistles were written by various apostles (primarily Paul) as pastoral instructions on various specific occasions. And by the time the last book of the New Testament, the Gospel of John, was completed, the Christian book had already existed for more than half a century... Therefore, if we want to understand the Bible, we need to turn to the Christian Church, for it is primary.
Where did the biblical canon come from?
But where did we even get the idea that the Bible is Holy Scripture? Maybe this is just one of the collections of ancient tales, of which there are many? At all times there were even more people who called themselves prophets, messengers, Christs - what, should we believe everyone, recognize everyone’s writings as Scripture?
A book can become Scripture only in a community of believers who accept its authority, determine its canon (exact composition), interpret it, and finally rewrite it. Christians believe that all this happened not without the participation of the Holy Spirit, Who spoke in the authors of biblical books, and whose help we need today for a correct understanding of this book. But the Spirit does not abolish the human personality; rather, on the contrary, He allows it to reveal itself in its entirety.
And since this process unfolds in history, the idea of a once and for all given Revelation, which all subsequent generations can only fulfill, is alien to Christianity. No, just as Christ is the incarnate Son of God, so Christianity itself is embodied in our earthly history, with all its internal unity, acquiring some new features and characteristics in each generation and in each people.
Therefore, the New Testament canon - the list of books included in the New Testament - did not take shape right away. Thus, in the East, for a long time they treated the book of Revelation with some caution, probably because of its mystical nature, and in the West - the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews, because both in style and in content it differs markedly from his other epistles ( although it does not contradict them). However, Christian theologians added, even if he did not write this message, it was written by the Church in any case.
But as far as the Gospels are concerned, everything is simple. From the very beginning, the Church knew those four Gospels, which were included in the canon of the New Testament, and we will not find any others in any list that has reached us. It was in them that the Church saw the familiar and beloved image of Christ, and it simply did not need anything else.
One gets the feeling that the Fathers did not consider the exact composition of the Bible in the first place and did not even particularly try to eliminate obvious discrepancies: there was simply no particular practical need for such a canon. The rules of the Councils of Laodicea and Carthage do not draw any line between true and heretical books, but merely determine which books can be read in the church as Scripture. If in one church the Revelation of John the Theologian is read, and in another not, there will be nothing terrible in this discrepancy, as long as some heretical work does not take the place of this book.
Fierce disputes flared up in the West already in the era of the Reformation, and they concerned only the Old Testament. However, these were disputes not only about the exact composition of the Biblical canon, but also about its meaning. Protestants spoke at the same time about the exclusive authority of Scripture, which is fundamentally different from all other books. This principle is called Sola Scriptura– only Holy Scripture can serve as the basis for the doctrine of the Church. If so, then the question of what is and is not included in Scripture becomes vital indeed. For example, Catholic theologians, in support of the idea of purgatory (and in general the idea that the earthly Church can influence the posthumous fate of its members) cited the story of the 2nd Book of Maccabees ( 12: 39-45) about Judas Maccabee’s offering of a cleansing sacrifice for his dead brothers. For Catholics, this book is part of Scripture, and therefore, prayer for the dead is prescribed by the Bible. But from the point of view of Protestants, this book is not biblical, and even if in itself it is good and interesting, the statements of its author do not have doctrinal authority.
The Orthodox world has not known such large-scale and fundamental disputes over the merits of the books of Tobit, Judith, etc. As a result, a situation has arisen where the Orthodox, following the Council of Laodicea, recognize the same books as canonical as Protestants, but include the Bible and non-canonical books, like Catholics. Thus, the Biblical canon turns out to be smaller than the Bible itself!
But this may seem strange only in the context of the Reformation, and not in the East, where the task was not to separate Scripture from Tradition. Orthodox theologians sometimes depict them in the form of concentric circles: in the very center is the Gospel, then other biblical books (it is clear that the Epistles of Paul are more important for us than Leviticus), then the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils, the works of the Fathers and other elements of Tradition, up to pious customs of individual parishes. The periphery must necessarily be consistent with the center, verified by it - but it is not so important where exactly Scripture ends and Tradition begins, where exactly the Maccabean books or epistles are placed. It is more important to determine the degree of their authority relative to other books and customs.
The boundaries between truth and falsehood, between faith and superstition, between churchliness and heresy are much more important than the boundaries between Scripture and Tradition, which, like many other things in the Church, serve as evidence one Spirit().
Magazine "Foma"
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The land was desolate, there was nothing on the earth. Darkness hid the ocean, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.
3 And then God said, “Let there be light!” and the light shone.
4 God saw the light and knew it was good. Then God separated the light from the darkness.
5 And He called the light day, and the darkness night. And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was day one.
6 Then God said, “Let there be something to divide the waters in the middle!”
7 And God created the air and divided the water in the middle. Some of the water was above the air, and some was under the air.
8 God called the air heaven. And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was day two.
9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the sky close together so that there may be dry land.” And it was so.
10 God called the dry land earth, and the closed waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good.
11 And then God said: “Let grass, grain, and fruit trees grow on the earth. Fruit trees will bear fruit with seeds, and each plant will produce its own seeds according to what kind of plant it is. Let these plants be on the earth." And it became so.
12 Grass, grain, and trees grew on the ground, bearing fruits and seeds. Each plant produced its own seeds according to what kind of plant it was. And God saw that it was good.
13 And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was day three.
14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the sky. They will separate the days from the nights, serve for special signs and indicate the times for sacred meetings. And they will also serve to indicate days and years.
15 These lights will be in the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so.
16 And God created two great lights: one greater light to rule over the day, and another lesser light to rule over the night. God also created the stars
17 And he placed all these lights in the heavens to shine on the earth.
18 He placed these lights in the heavens to rule over day and night and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
19 And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was day four.
20 Then God said, “Let the water be filled with a multitude of living creatures, and let birds fly in the air above the earth.”
21 And God created sea monsters, created every living thing that moves in the sea. There are many different animals in the sea, and they were all created by God! God also created all kinds of birds that fly in the sky. And God saw that it was good.
22 God blessed these animals and commanded them to multiply and fill the seas. God commanded the birds on land to produce a great multitude of birds.
23 And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was day five.
24 Then God said: “Let the earth give birth to many living creatures, many different animals, and let there be large animals and small creeping animals of every kind, and let these animals give birth to other animals.” And it was so.
25 And God created all kinds of animals: wild animals, domestic animals, and every small creeping thing. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said: “Now let us create man.” Let us create people in our image and likeness. They will have dominion over all the fish in the sea and over all the birds in the sky, they will have dominion over all the large animals and over all the small creatures that crawl on the earth.” .
27 And God created people in His own image and likeness, created men and women, blessed them and said to them:
28 “Have children so that the number of people will multiply. Fill the land and own it. Have dominion over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, have dominion over every living creature that moves on the earth."
29 God said, “I give you all the grain and all the fruit trees that bear fruit with seeds. Grains and fruits will be your food.
30 I also give the animals all green plants. All the animals on earth, all the birds in the sky and all the creeping things on earth will feed on them." And so it was.
31 God looked at everything He had created and saw that it was all very good. And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was day six.
