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BIBLE(from the Greek. biblia, lit. - books), a collection of ancient texts, canonized in Judaism and Christianity as Holy Scripture. The first part is recognized by both Judaism and Christianity and is called the Old Testament, the other part is called the New Testament, it was added by Christians and is recognized only by them. These terms are generated by the Christian tradition, according to which the covenant (contract, alliance), concluded by God with the Jewish people through Moses, was replaced by the New Testament, already concluded with all peoples, thanks to the appearance of Jesus Christ.

The books of the Old Testament are written in Hebrew (Biblical Hebrew); some books contain fragments in Aramaic, the everyday language of the Jews after the 4th century. BC. Jewish and Christian traditions associate the writing of the Old Testament books with the names of Jewish prophets and kings, including Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon. By now, however, it is known that many books in their present form arose rather late and are a processing of documents and legends from earlier eras. In particular, some fragments of the book of Genesis date back to the 10th century. BC, but the book acquired its modern form, probably not earlier than the 5th century. BC.

OLD TESTAMENT

CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The collection of books of Holy Scripture constitutes the biblical canon. The composition and sequence of books in the Jewish and Christian biblical canons are different. These differences go back to two biblical canons of the prerabbinic Jewish tradition: the Palestinian one, represented by the Masoretic Hebrew Bible, and the Alexandrian, represented by the Greek Septuagint, the latter being fully known only from Christian sources. The Masoretic text is accepted in modern Judaism, while the Septuagint has become the authoritative source of biblical text for many Christian churches. At the same time, among the Christian denominations there are no consensus about the biblical canon, so it is legitimate to talk about the Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and other Bibles. There are elements common to all biblical traditions: the books included in the Palestinian canon are part of all Bibles, while the Pentateuch always comes first and is characterized by the identical order of the books. The differences apply to the rest of the Old Testament: they may be related to the number of books, their order, the length of certain books, their title; there may be discrepancies in the division into books and chapters, as well as numerous textual discrepancies; the status of biblical books may not be the same.

The Protestant Bible has the same number of Old Testament books as the Hebrew Bible. In addition, the Orthodox and Catholic Bibles include books and fragments, either originally written in Greek, or that have come down to us only as part of the Septuagint (although the Hebrew and Aramaic originals of some of them have been found in modern times): the books of Tobit, Judith , Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach, 2nd and 3rd Esdras, the Epistle of Jeremiah, Baruch and 3 Maccabees; The prayer of Manasseh at the end of 2 Chronicles, some parts of the Book of Esther, a psalm placed after 150, and three fragments from the Book of the Prophet Daniel (Song of the Babylonians - 3. 24-90; the story of Susanna - Dan 13; Vila and the dragon - Dan 14).

Books or parts of them missing in the Hebrew Bible may have different statuses in Christian Churches: either they are recognized on a par with canonical books (as in the Ethiopian Bible), or they are completely rejected (this is the case in Protestantism, where such books are called apocrypha and are not included in the number bible books). in Catholic and Orthodox Bible these books are present, but the attitude towards them is somewhat different. AT catholic church they were called "deuterocanonical"; at the Council of Trent (1546) they were given the status of canonical books (the so-called "second canon"). The Orthodox Church recognizes books not included in the Palestinian canon as instructive and useful for reading; there is no uniformity in their naming: the terms “deuterocanonical” (as among Catholics), “non-canonical” or “anaginoscomena” (i.e. recommended for reading) can be used. At the same time, the most important criterion for the canonicity of a book in Orthodox Church is its use in worship. From this point of view, the Book of Wisdom of Solomon or the "non-canonical" parts of the Book of Daniel cannot be considered "non-canonical".

The position of the early fathers of the Christian Church ( see also CHURCH FATHERS) regarding non-canonical books was not unanimous: some accepted the Palestinian canon, others followed the more lengthy Alexandrian canon, recognizing Greek books that did not have a Hebrew original. Lists of canonical books were considered at local councils. For example, the Council of Laodicea (340) recognized only the books of the Palestinian canon; The 3rd Council of Carthage (397), on the contrary, equated the status of non-canonical books with the status of canonical ones. The Council of Trullo (691-692) confirmed the apostolic and council determinations on this issue. However, provisions were adopted that partly contradict each other. Namely, the Canon of Laodicea and the 85th Apostolic Canon distinguish between canonical and non-canonical books, while the 37th Canon of the 3rd Council of Carthage does not specifically distinguish between them. In subsequent eras, attempts were repeatedly made to eliminate the inconsistencies that had arisen.

This problem was again actualized in the 17th century, in the course of discussions between Protestant and Catholic theologians. The issue of the canon was also touched upon in Orthodox confessions of faith, created following the example of Protestants and Catholics. In the 18th century both in the Russian and in the Greek Churches there were many supporters of the recognition of only a limited canon, but at present the majority of theologians are in favor of a lengthy canon.

The canon of the Catholic Bible was finally fixed at the Council of Trent (1546): confirming the decisions of the Hippo (393) and 4th Carthaginian (401) Councils, he gave the status of canonical to all books included in Vulgate. The reason for this decision was the fact that the Old Testament books, which do not have a Jewish original, have long been placed in biblical collections along with canonical ones.

On the contrary, the Protestants limited the composition of the Old Testament to the Palestinian canon, while maintaining the order of the books presented in the Vulgate. Modern Protestant editions of the Bible sometimes include the deuterocanonical books as an appendix under the name "Apocrypha".

Hebrew Bible.

The Palestinian canon, which later became entrenched in rabbinic Judaism, includes 39 books (22 in Hebrew), which are divided into 3 sections: Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Scriptures); from the first letters of the titles of these sections, the Hebrew name of the Old Testament, Tanakh, is formed.

The Torah consists of the Pentateuch of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The last 3 books are law-positive, i.e. are the law, given by God through Moses to the Jewish people.

Neviim - the writings of the prophets; includes the major prophets: the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel (1 and 2 Samuel) and Kings (3 and 4 Samuel), containing religious history Jewish people from the settlement of Palestine after the exodus from Egypt, and the younger prophets containing the actual prophetic books: 3 great prophets - Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and 12 small ones - Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

Ketuvim - other books: Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations of Jeremiah and Esther. The Scriptures also include the Psalms, the books of Proverbs, Job, Daniel, the 1st book of Ezra, the books of Nehemiah and the Chronicle (1 and 2 Chronicles).

The division of the Bible in the Jewish tradition into 3 parts reflects the main stages in the formation of the biblical canon. The Pentateuch appears earlier than others. The discovery in 622 BC can be considered the beginning of its formation. "The Book of the Law" and its popular reading under King Josiah (2 Kings 22). The next section of the Jewish canon, Neviim, is first mentioned along with the Law only in the preface to the Book of Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach (132 BC), but its formation is attributed to an earlier period - the era after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, when all the available books of Holy Scripture were collected and edited under the direction of the priest Ezra (middle of the 5th century BC). Last section The Scriptures (Ketuvim) are formed by the end of the 1st c. AD For early Judaism, the main sign of canonicity was the alleged belonging of the books to the time of the prophets. The idea that Ezra was last prophet, defined the boundaries of the canon in the Ketuvim section and the rejection of many writings from the Hellenistic period.

The biblical text assigns the writing of the Pentateuch to the prophet Moses (Deut. 31.8); the Book of Job is also attributed to him in the Jewish and early Christian traditions. According to biblical chronology, Moses lived in the 15th century. BC. (cf. 1 Kings 6.1). Scientific tradition usually dates the exodus of the Jews from Egypt (the events described in the 2nd book of the Pentateuch) to the 13th century. BC. As a result of this discrepancy and as a result of the study of the text of the Pentateuch in critical biblical studies in the 18-19 centuries. the so-called "documentary hypothesis" was created, according to which the Pentateuch arose as a result of the gradual combination of various sources: the Yahwist, created in Judea c. 950–930 BC, Elohist reflecting northern tradition the Levites after 922, the priestly code that developed in Judah after the fall of Israel (722-587) or even after the return from the Babylonian captivity (538), and the so-called Deuteronomist that arose in the era of King Josiah (640-609). Opponents of this hypothesis, without rejecting it as a whole, emphasized the content and stylistic unity of the entire historical narrative from Genesis to 2 Kings, and argued that these books were collected from a number of sources by one or more editors belonging to the same circle.

The activity of the prophets from Amos to Malachi dates back to the 8th-5th centuries. BC. Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, the book of Proverbs, the Psalms are traditionally dated to the lifetime of their authors, Kings David and Solomon, i.e. 10th c. BC.; critical science is inclined to attribute only certain parts of them to this time. Other books in the Scriptures section are also dated to the period after the Babylonian captivity.

Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament.

1. The most ancient manuscripts.

The oldest manuscripts of the biblical text that have come down to us are small silver scrolls containing a fragment of the book of Numbers (Numbers 6. 24-26) - Aaron's blessing. They were found in Jerusalem in 1979 and date back to the 7th-6th centuries. BC. The text of these scrolls is somewhat different from the generally accepted. It is believed that they served as amulets. 2nd–1st centuries BC. the papyrus of Nash (containing the text of the 10 commandments and one of the most important liturgical texts in Judaism, “Hear, O Israel...”), as well as most of the Qumran manuscripts found in 1947 and subsequent years (their publication lasted half a century and was completed only in 2003) are dated. About 190 scrolls were found in Qumran and other places in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, they are fragments of the Old Testament books (only one scroll - the Book of the Prophet Isaiah - has been completely preserved) ( see also DEAD SEA SCROLLS). Most scrolls with fragments of the Book of Psalms (36), Deuteronomy (29) and Isaiah (21), the Books of Ezra and Chronicles (1 scroll each) are represented worse; The Book of Esther is missing. In addition, among the Qumran manuscripts there are fragments of almost all non-canonical books (except 1 Macc) that were not included in the Jewish canon, but included in the canon of the Septuagint, as well as apocrypha (Books of Jubilees, Enoch, Testament of Levi, etc.). One of the scrolls contains a fragment of the Hebrew original of the Book of Jesus, the son of Sirach, previously known only in Greek translation and in later fragments found in the Cairo geniz (a special dungeon for storing sacred objects). Most of the Dead Sea manuscripts have different readings from the Masoretic text. Before the discoveries at Qumran, it was believed that there were 3 types of Hebrew text of the Old Testament: Septuagint protographer, Masoretic and Samaritan. Analysis of the Dead Sea manuscripts allows us to distinguish at least 5 types of text. Probably before the 2nd c. AD the Hebrew text of the Old Testament did not have stability, and only as a result of the philological activity of rabbinic scholars did a variant form that formed the basis of the Masoretic text, which was recognized in most of the Jewish world.

9th or 8th c. Fragments of the books of the Hebrew Bible, discovered in Cairo at the end of the 19th century, date back to AD; they contain a text that is already very close to the Masoretic. Some of the manuscripts contain Masoretic vowel marks, all 3 vocalization systems of the consonant text are presented: Palestinian, Babylonian and Tiberian. Some books are already in the form of a codex rather than a scroll.

2. The activity of the Masoretes, the vocalization of the consonantal text, the Masorah, cantillation marks.

From about the 6th c. AD the philological school of the Masoretes begins to operate (from the Hebrew word masorah - “tradition, tradition” (of reading and rewriting the biblical text)), which replaced the school of scribes (Heb. soferim) and lasted until the 10th century. Her task was to develop a stable text of the Holy Scriptures. Strict editing was carried out; old texts that did not meet the requirements of stability were withdrawn from circulation (at the same time, as sacred objects, they were not destroyed, but were buried in the genizah). The Masoretes also conducted a vocalization of the text, since up to 6 c. Hebrew writing was consonantal (i.e., the manuscripts had no signs for writing vowels), and the tradition of reading the text of Holy Scripture was transmitted orally. This oral tradition, in addition to vocalization, also included the rules of intonation (cantillation) and the division of the text into verses, half-lines, etc. Obviously, the need to fix the oral tradition to eliminate doubts about the correct pronunciation of the text, its understanding and interpretation existed for a long time, but only in the 6th-7th centuries. AD the first diacritics for vowels appeared, which were later organized into a system. The first system of vocalizations was the Palestinian (or South Palestinian); Subsequently, the Masoretes of Tiberias in Palestine developed the Tiberias (subscript) voicing system, and in Yemen - superscript, called the Babylonian. From the 10th c. the Tiberian vowel system becomes dominant, and further retains its dominant position in the Jewish communities of Europe and other countries (only in Yemen the Babylonian tradition was preserved). The development of the Tiberian system of vowels is associated with the activities of two families (or schools) of the Masoretes (9th-early 10th century AD): Bnei Asher and Bnei Naftali. Approximately from the 12th century. the ben Asher school system became standard. It is believed that it is most accurately reflected in the Aleppo Codex. The tasks of the Masoretes also included the storage and enhancement of knowledge about the consonant composition of the text, the rules for writing it, about the discrepancies in the existing manuscripts, etc., therefore, in the manuscripts processed by the Masoretes, there are special marks - “masorah”. There is a small masorah - marks on the margins of manuscripts, a large masorah - under the text, and the final one - at the end of each book; in a broad sense, the term "macopa" also includes vowel marks and cantillation marks.

As a result of the activities of the Masoretes, incorrect readings in the biblical text were revealed; however, the corrected version was not included in the manuscripts, but was transmitted in the oral tradition. When reading the biblical text in the synagogue, the incorrect reading (ketiv - "what is written") was replaced by the correct one (kere - "what is being read"). For example, Job 13:5 reads: “Behold, He kills me, and I have no hope,” but the Masoretes instead of “no” ordered to read “in it”, therefore it turns out: “Behold, He kills me, but in Him my hope." Handwritten Torah scrolls kept in synagogues and used for liturgical reading were never provided with vowels and cantillation marks.

3. The most important medieval manuscripts.

At the moment, more than 6 thousand Jewish medieval manuscripts are known, about half of them are dated before 1540; 6 of them date back to the 10th century, 8 to the 11th century, 22 to the 12th century; in addition, there are 6 fragments dated before 1200 AD. Some of the manuscripts contain the entire text of the Hebrew Bible, but there are also separate manuscripts of the Pentateuch, the Prophets. Some manuscripts contain only one book. Separate manuscripts include, along with the Hebrew text, a translation into Aramaic (the so-called Targum) or into Arabic, sometimes placed after each (for the Torah) or every three (for the Prophets) verses, so that the texts in 2 languages ​​replace each other.

One of the most authoritative medieval manuscripts is the Aleppo Codex, created around 925. In the Middle Ages, this manuscript served as a model for correcting books, and is currently used in the preparation of modern scientific publications, in particular, the text of the Aleppo Codex is the basis of a new multi-volume critical edition of the Old Testament undertaken at the University of Jerusalem in Israel. The Aleppo Codex is a standard text with Tiberian vowels, vowel marks and cantillation marks introduced by Aaron ben Asher, one of the founders of this vowel system. This codex contained the full text of the Hebrew Bible, but as a result of a fire that occurred in 1948 in Aleppo, where the codex was kept at that time, significant parts at the beginning and at the end of the manuscript were lost. The surviving text begins with Deut 28:16 and ends at Canto 3:12. The manuscript is now kept in Jerusalem.

The oldest dated manuscript of the Hebrew Bible is the Leningrad Codex. The codex dates back to 1009, its voicing is close to the Aleppo codex. As well as the Aleppo Codex, the manuscript faithfully conveys the Tiberian Masoretic tradition of signs for vowels and ben Asher's cantillation signs. The Leningrad Codex was used in the preparation of the 3rd edition of Biblia Hebraica (Stuttg., 1929–1937), as well as in all editions of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), where the manuscript is reproduced almost unchanged.

Editions of the Hebrew text.

The Hebrew Bible was published in its entirety in Soncino (Italy) in 1488 (one-volume edition with voiced text, without Targum and comments).

At the initiative of Pope Leo X, a polyglot (Jewish, Greek, Latin) was created in 1514–1517. It was published in 1522 in the Spanish city of Alcala and named, after the Roman name of this city Complutum, the Complutensian polyglot. In preparing the text, ancient manuscripts and previous editions were taken into account.

In 1515, Daniel van Bomberg, a Christian merchant from Antwerp, founded a Jewish printing house in Venice and, together with the Augustinian monk Felix Pratensis, published in 1516-1517 the "Rabbinic Bible" - an edition of the Old Testament that combined the biblical text proper (based on the study of a large number of manuscripts), Targum, Masorah and Rabbinic commentaries.

Jacob ben Chaim ben Adoniahu, a Jewish scholar from Tunisia, prepared for the Bomberg Printing House the 2nd edition of the "Rabbinic Bible" (1524-1525), which was supplied with a small and a large masorah. Applying the critical methods of his time, he used many of the Masorah handwritten sources as well as the Masoretic books. The Second Rabbinic Bible, based on the tradition of ben Asher, enjoyed special authority for several centuries.

The first experience of the scientific edition of the Hebrew Bible belongs to Z. Beru. In separate volumes, together with the German biblical scholar Franz Delitzsch, he published in Leipzig most of the Heb. Bibles (1869–1894). Behr made an attempt to reconstruct the original texts of ben Asher in accordance with the Masorah. However, he did not have at his disposal ancient manuscripts, so he edited the Masoretic books on the basis of the principles adopted in manuscripts of a later origin.

K.D. Ginzburg also used as the main material for the reconstruction of the original text of the Masorah. In 1880-1905 he published 4 volumes of the Masorah. He used 73 manuscripts and some old editions.

In 1906, in Leipzig, the German Protestant biblical scholar R. Kittel published a biblical text based on the 2nd Rabbinical Bible. The publisher supplied him with a critical apparatus based not only on Jewish manuscripts, but also on ancient Targums; the results of textual and linguistic research were also taken into account. The publication contains a large number of conjectures. In 1913 (Leipzig) and 1929-1937. (Stuttgart) Kittel's Bible has been reprinted. The peculiarity of the Stuttgart edition is that it was based on the Leningrad Codex, which is one of the most authoritative sources of the Jewish text. Discrepancies between the 2nd Rabbinic Bible and the main text of this edition are fixed; for the first time, variants present in manuscripts with Babylonian vowels were taken into account. Kittel's 4th Edition Bible (Stuttgart, 1954) reflects the readings of the Qumran manuscripts for the Books of Isaiah and Habakkuk. This edition is abbreviated as BH (Biblia Hebraica); the continuation of this tradition is BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia), published by W. Rudolph and C. Elliger in 1967–1977; it is the most authoritative and sought-after source for textual research and academic work. At present (beginning of the 21st century) a new edition of the BHS is being prepared, which will include data from the Masorah and the Qumran scrolls. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, on the initiative of M. Goshen-Gotshtein (1925–1991), began work in 1975 on the creation of a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible based on the Aleppo Codex.

Septuagint.

The oldest translation of the Old Testament into Greek is called the Septuagint, or the translation of the Seventy (abbreviated as LXX), after the number of 72 interpreters who, according to legend, in 285-247 BC. at the request of the Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Torah was translated into Greek; the composition of the Septuagint reflects the Alexandrian canon of the Bible. Later, between 285 and 150 BC, among the Jews of Alexandria, for whom Greek was already native, a translation was made of the rest of the books of Holy Scripture, including books and fragments that were absent from the Palestinian canon ( cm. Canon of the Old Testament).

Despite the fact that the translation, unlike the original, did not have the status of a sacred text in the view of the Jews, the Septuagint was widely used in the Jewish diaspora of the Greco-Roman ecumene; when in the first centuries A.D. Christianity spreads in the Roman Empire, it accepts the Septuagint as the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament; at the same time, by the time of the emergence of Christianity (since the canonization of the Ketuvim section had not been completed), the biblical canon was still open.

The new theological interpretation of the Old Testament determined a different, in comparison with the Jewish tradition, distribution of books in the Christian Septuagint by sections. So, the Pentateuch was now perceived primarily as a story about the first stages of the history of mankind and the chosen people (therefore, it looks natural to draw it closer to historical books). The prophetic books proper (which were called senior prophets in the Hebrew Bible) were singled out in a special section; as containing messianic, i.e. relating to Jesus Christ, prophecies, they were placed at the end of the corpus. The book of Daniel, which in the Jewish tradition belonged to the section of Ketuvim, was also included among the prophetic ones, because. and it contains significant prophecies about Christ. The books of the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon and Maccabees are absent from the Palestinian canon; their authority for Christianity is explained by the fact that of all the Old Testament it is in these books that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the immortality of the soul is most fully revealed.

Depending on the content of the Old Testament books in the Christian tradition are divided into the following three groups:

1) law-positive and historical:

a) law-positive - this is the Pentateuch, which tells about the creation of the world and man, about the first pages of the history of mankind, about the Old Testament patriarchs, about the prophet and legislator Moses, who led the Israeli people out of Egyptian slavery, about the forty-year wanderings of the Jews in the desert; The Pentateuch contains an exposition of religious, moral and legal laws;

b) historical books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-4 Kings, 1, 2 Chronicles, 1 Esdras, Nehemiah, as well as 2 Esdras, 1-3 Maccabees and 3 Esdras (Maccabees and 3 Esdras) not included in the Palestinian canon as relating to the later period of the Old Testament history are located in the Slavic-Russian Bible at the end of the corpus) - contain a story about the resettlement of the Israeli people in Canaan - the promised land, about wars with local peoples, about the time of the reign of military leaders (traditionally referred to as judges) and about the establishment of a monarchical reign, about the rise and fall of the Israeli (Northern) kingdom, about the prophets and kings of this period, about the collapse of the Northern kingdom, the destruction of Jerusalem and the forced transfer of Jews to Babylon;

2) teaching books - this is Job, the Psalter, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon, Judith, Esther, Tobit, the book of the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach; they were written by biblical sages and had different sides to the subject human life, manifestations of the human spirit, tried to solve the problems of the existence of evil and suffering, as well as the meaning of life.

3) prophetic books: 3 great (according to the volume of their books) prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel), Daniel and 12 minor prophets, as well as the Lamentations of Jeremiah and the non-canonical Epistle of Jeremiah and the book of the prophet Baruch; these books contain a sermon by the prophets of Israel, directed against the moral and religious distortion of the idea of ​​the Covenant of God with people and predicting the coming of the Kingdom of the Messiah.

Christianity attaches exceptional importance to the text of the Septuagint, because it is in it that there are readings that underlie some dogmas (eg Is 7. 14). The Orthodox Church accepts the Septuagint as the authentic text of the Old Testament, in contrast to the Masoretic text, in comparison with which significant discrepancies are revealed in many places. Christian scholars who belonged to the Alexandrian and Antiochian theological schools were subjected to 3 - early. 4th c. the text of the Septuagint to a number of revisions, which resulted in the emergence of 3 main editions of the translation of the Seventy: Origen's, Lucian's (the most widely used) and Isichiev.

Manuscripts of the Septuagint.

To date, more than 2 thousand fragments and copies of the Septuagint are known, dating back to the 2nd century BC. BC. - 16th century AD (excluding lectionaries and patristic quotations from the Old Testament books). The manuscript tradition of the Psalter is most fully represented: more than 750 lists of this book have come down to us.

Old Testament manuscripts mostly originally included only one or a few books. Collections of biblical books of the following type are known: 1) the Pentateuch; 2) the Octateuch (Genesis - Ruth); 3) historical books (1 Samuel - 2 Esdras, Esther, Judith and Tobit); 4) books attributed to Solomon (Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs); 5) poetry books; 6) 12 minor prophets; 7) 4 books of the great Prophets. Various groups could unite, for example, all the prophetic books and Genesis - Tobit, or the prophetic and poetic books. The Septuagint has been edited many times, making it difficult to reconstruct its original text.

Based on the analysis of the structural and functional status of manuscripts, their handwriting and the material on which they are written, several types of manuscript sources are distinguished:

1. Papyri. This handwriting type stands out on the basis of the writing material - sheets made from processed reeds. The papyrus is the oldest fragment that has come down to us. In papyrus ser. 2 in. BC. contains the earliest surviving Greek biblical text. Currently, more than 360 papyri are known, and their number is constantly growing.

2. Uncials. They are distinguished by the nature of the letter and writing material. Parchment served as the material for uncial manuscripts, the text is written in large, “capital” letters, there are no stresses and aspirations, the number of abbreviations is small; the form of the manuscript is a codex. The most important uncials, containing almost the complete text of the Old Testament, are the Vatican (4th century), Sinai (4th century) and Alexandrian (5th century) codes.

3. Minuscule. They are distinguished on the basis of cursive writing, which arose in the 9th century. Manuscripts of this type are characterized by abbreviations, as well as continuous writing of letters (ligatures), which speed up copying and save writing material, which was served by parchment, bombycin, and from the 12th century. paper. Minuscules, despite their late origin, often give very ancient readings. For example, in one of the minuscules of the 10th c. the translation of the Book of the Prophet Daniel in the Septuagint version has been preserved (while all other manuscripts contain this book in the translation of Theodotion).

4. Lectionaries (collections of fragments of Old Testament books read during worship) for the most part date from the time after the 10th-11th centuries. and usually contain the Lucian edition. About 150 sources are known.

Editions of the Septuagint.

The Greek Old Testament was first printed in its entirety as part of the Complutensian Polyglot (1514–1517); in preparing the Old Testament text, 2 currently identified minuscules from the Vatican Library and, probably, several manuscripts that were in Spain at that time were taken as a basis. One of the Vatican manuscripts used contains the text in the Antioch edition.

In Venice, in 1518–1519, the Aldina Bible (Aldina, after the owner of the publishing house Alda Manutia) was printed. It is possible that some Venetian manuscripts, currently stored in the National Library of St. Mark in Venice.

Among the first printed editions of the Septuagint, the so-called Sistine Bible (Sixtina Romana), which was published in 1587 in Rome on the initiative of Pope Sixtus V, enjoyed the greatest authority. For the first time, the Vatican Codex, one of the best uncials, was taken as the basis of the text; the missing fragments were filled in with the text of other manuscripts. During the 17-19 centuries. more than 20 editions of the Bible were published, following the text of the Old Testament of the Sistine Bible.

Some publishers of the Septuagint already in the 16th century. noted discrepancies and suggested corrections. Meanwhile, the critical apparatus appeared only at the end of the 18th century; the merit of its creation belongs to the English scientists R. Holmes and P.J. Parsons, who in 1788-1827 published the five-volume Septuagint at Oxford. Its main text reproduces the Old Testament of the Sistine edition, and also takes into account readings of about 300 Greek manuscripts, evidence of ancient translations (Old Latin, Coptic, Arabic, Slavonic, Armenian and Georgian) and biblical quotations in patristic writings. In addition, variants of printed editions of the Septuagint are given: the Complutensian polyglot, the Aldin Bible, etc.

K. Tischendorf in his editions (1850, 1856, 1860, 1869) gives a revised text of the Sistine edition, taking into account readings of several uncial manuscripts.

The critical edition of the Septuagint, published by A. Ralphs in 1935, has received the greatest distribution at the present time. Ralphs made an attempt to reconstruct the original text of the Septuagint; for this reason, the text of this edition, unlike most of the previous ones, is eclectic.

Since 1931, a multi-volume critical edition of the Septuagint has been published in Göttingen.

NEW TESTAMENT

The books that make up the New Testament tell about the life of Jesus Christ (his incarnation, teaching, miracles, suffering and death on the cross, about the resurrection from the dead and the subsequent ascension to heaven), about the creation of the Christian church and the initial period of its existence, and also explain the teachings of Christ and reveal the secrets of the last destinies of the world. This collection of biblical books is called the "New Testament" because they contain a revelation about the conclusion of a new “covenant” (contract, union) between God and man, realized through the appearance into the world, the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The New Testament consists of 27 books: the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John; Acts of the Apostles; Catholic Epistle of James, 2 Catholic Epistles of Peter, 3 Catholic Epistles of John, Catholic Epistle of Jude; The Epistles of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, to the Corinthians (1 and 2), to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians (1 and 2), to Timothy (1 and 2), to Titus, to Philemon, to the Jews ; Revelation of the Apostle John the Theologian.

The books of the New Testament are divided into 4 parts according to the nature of their content: 1) law-positive (they include 4 Gospels (from the Greek letters “good” or “good news”, usually translated into Russian as “gospel”), because they talk about the teachings of Jesus Christ); 2) the historical book of the Acts of the Apostles, which describes the history of the spread of the Christian faith by the apostles; 3) teaching (all the letters of the apostles, containing their teachings and instructions to Christians); 4) a prophetic book, Revelation (or Apocalypse) of John the Evangelist, containing prophecies about the future fate of the Church and the world. In the Orthodox liturgical tradition, the division of the New Testament into 2 parts is accepted: the Gospel and the Apostle, the first includes the narrations of the 4 evangelists, and the second the Acts and epistles of the apostles; outside this division is the Apocalypse, because. not used in worship.

The exact dates of the creation of the books of the New Testament in scientific biblical studies have not been established and can hardly be established in the future. The first mention of New Testament texts and references to them are already found in some Christian writers of the 2nd century. Most likely, the epistles of the apostles were written first of all, as a necessary help in their missionary activity. Thus, the letters of the Apostle Paul date from the period 49-60. The Catholic Epistles were written between approximately 50 (the Epistle of the Apostle Jude) and 105 (the Epistles of the Apostle John).

Since the first centuries of Christianity, Christian scholars and church fathers have been interested in the question of the origin and time of writing the Gospels. Early Christian authors unanimously recognize the gospel of Matthew as the first in time of creation. The second was the Gospel of Mark, dating back to the preaching of the Apostle Peter, then the Gospel of Luke, behind which stood the authority of the Apostle Paul. According to Blessed Augustine, each of the subsequent evangelists used the work of previous authors. Archbishop Theophylact of Bulgaria (11th century), on the basis of the testimony of Eusebius of Caesarea (4th century), in the preface to the interpretation of the Gospels, cites information from oral traditions and early sources about the origin of the Gospels: the Evangelist Matthew wrote the Gospel in Hebrew 8 years after the Ascension Lord's; Mark wrote the Gospel 10 years after the Ascension; Luke completed his work after 15 years, and John after 32 years.

However, Western biblical studies, based on the historical-critical method, have revised the traditional point of view on the sequence of creation of the canonical Gospels. The following solution to the synoptic problem was proposed (synoptic - similar in views, adhering to the same point of view; the first three Gospels are called synoptic): the first was the Gospel of Mark - on the eve or immediately after the fall of Jerusalem (70); on this gospel, as well as on the source of the logia (sayings) of Jesus, which has not come down to us, denoted by Q (German Quelle - source), the more lengthy Gospel of Matthew, as well as the Gospel of Luke, is based. This hypothesis, called the two-source hypothesis, has been widely adopted; its main provisions are often taken as an axiom. Meanwhile, to explain, for example, the differences between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, it is necessary, following the logic of this hypothesis, to postulate a third source, which leads to an unjustified multiplication of entities.

In 1999, priest Leonid Griliches offered his own view on the problem of the relationship between the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Taking into account the evidence of early Christian authors about the Jewish origin of the Gospel of Matthew, he performed a reconstruction of the Hebrew text of this Gospel; in addition, he substantiated the thesis according to which the Gospel of Mark was originally written in Aramaic. Comparison of the reconstructions of the two Gospels with each other and with the Greek text made it possible to conclude that the Gospel of Matthew was the primary one. According to the concept of L. Griliches, this Gospel, in its early edition, was used (with certain changes) by the Apostle Peter in his preaching work. Peter himself spoke Aramaic, and his constant companion and assistant Mark translated his speech into Greek. Subsequently, Mark, with Peter's permission, recorded his sermon in Greek.

Apparently, the New Testament books, in particular the epistles, almost immediately after their appearance begin to be combined into collections. The apostle Paul himself points to the church-wide significance of the epistles: “When this epistle is read to you, then order that it be read in the Laodicean church; but that which is from Laodicea, you also read” (Col 4:16). References, allusions, and quotations from all the New Testament books are found already in the writings of the apostolic men, which, on average, are no more than half a century away from the time of the creation of the canonical books. In the 2nd century Christian apologists often cite the New Testament books as authoritative sources. All 27 books that form the canon of the New Testament were accepted by the Christian Church from the very beginning (however, for quite a long time there was no consensus on the canonicity of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Revelation of John the Theologian). The New Testament canon in its present form was fixed in 360 at the local Council of Laodicea and confirmed at the IV Ecumenical Council (451).

Manuscripts of the New Testament.

All surviving manuscripts of the New Testament are written in Greek. The manuscript tradition of the Greek New Testament is very rich, with over 5,300 known sources. In 1908, K. R. Gregory proposed the first classification of all known manuscripts; since 1963, K. Aland continued to work on their further description. There were 115 papyri, 309 ounces, 2862 minuscules and 2412 lectionaries. These figures represent the results of cathologization of both complete manuscripts and individual fragments found by K. R. Gregory and K. Aland in various manuscript repositories and libraries, while the exact number of New Testament manuscripts, apparently, is less, because some storage units may be parts of one manuscript. The largest number of manuscripts has been preserved in Athos and Sinai monasteries. Basically, these are minuscule manuscripts of the 2nd millennium. The libraries of Athens, Paris, Rome, London, St. Petersburg, Oxford, Jerusalem and some others also own large collections of New Testament manuscripts.

1. Papyri were discovered during excavations in Egypt and introduced into scientific circulation relatively recently (in Gregory's catalog published in 1908, there are only 14 of them). The papyri are the earliest sources of the New Testament text. Thus, papyrus 52, containing a fragment from Jn. 18, is only three or four decades away from the estimated time of the creation of the text. On the whole, papyri date back to the 2nd–7th centuries (of which more than 40 are from the 2nd to the beginning of the 4th century), and provide grounds for reconstructing the state of the New Testament text in the 3rd century. All surviving manuscripts are fragments of the New Testament, but taken together they form the entire New Testament (with the exception of 1 and 2 Timothy).

Only four papyri are scrolls, the rest are fragments of codices, which suggests that the codex from the very beginning is the dominant form of existence of the New Testament text. All papyri are written in chartered writing. The text of the papyri is unstable, contains numerous variants, which, apparently, reflects the origin of the tradition at the initial stage of the spread of Christianity.

2. Uncial manuscripts are codices written on parchment in regular (uncial) handwriting. Most of them belong to the 4th-10th centuries. (2 codices date from an earlier period). The parchment uncial code becomes the official form of the text after the Edict of Milan 313, but the beginning of the distribution of this type of manuscript is attributed to the 2nd century BC. Unlike papyrus, parchment was used for writing on 2 sides, which made the production of the book cheaper; A codex is more convenient than a scroll when searching for the right places in the text and when storing it. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, Emperor Constantine ordered him to make 50 complete copies of the Bible, which, perhaps, caused the appearance in this era of such codices as the Vatican, Sinai and Alexandria, not intended for liturgical use.

Before the introduction of papyri into scientific circulation, uncials were considered the most ancient sources of the New Testament text, they are based on critical publications (K.K. groups (neutral, Alexandrian, western and Syrian) are identified respectively with the codes of the Vatican, Ephraim and Royal, Beza and Alexandrian Codex Alexandria was the first to draw the attention of scholars to uncial manuscripts, discrepancies from it are included in Walton's polyglot (1657).

The full text of the New Testament has been preserved only in 5 manuscripts, the Gospel contains 9 manuscripts, 7 - Acts of the Apostles, 7 - Epistles of the Apostle Paul, 9 - Cathedral Epistles and 4 - Apocalypse, the rest of the manuscripts are fragments.

3. Minuscule manuscripts date from the 9th to 17th centuries. They are examples of a Byzantine text that has been in ecclesiastical use since at least the 4th century BC.

A group of minuscule manuscripts of the 11th-15th centuries, called by scientists X. Ferrar, F. Scrivener, D.R. Harris and K. Lake "family 13" (Lake later combined 4 more manuscripts of the 12-14th centuries into "family 1") , contain information about the early stages of the development of the text, which are not available in sources of a different kind. The manuscripts of both "families" were mostly created in the Orthodox monasteries of Italy. They are united in the Caesarian type of text, which is related to the redaction of Origen, developed by him in Caesarea of ​​Palestine.

Most of the minuscules represent a separate text of the Gospel or the Apostle, only 57 manuscripts contain the entire New Testament.

Minuscular manuscripts come to the attention of scholars earlier than other types of manuscripts. The publications of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1516) and the Complutensian Polyglot (1514–1517) are based on them, as well as many editions and studies of the text of the New Testament in the 17th–18th centuries.

4. Lectionaries date from the 8th to 16th centuries, but there are also several earlier examples. They are collections of individual readings from the Gospel and the Apostle, intended to be read during divine services, which determines their composition and structure (in the Russian tradition, the term “aprakos” is used to refer to this type of text). Lectionaries can be written in uncial and minuscule script on parchment or paper. The text of the Lectionaries dates back to the Caesarian redaction and is distinguished by great stability.

Manuscripts-lectionaries were almost never used in the editions of the New Testament due to the secondary nature of their text in relation to the full New Testament manuscripts. But in 1904, on behalf of the Greek Orthodox Church, V. Antoniadis published the text of the New Testament based on lectionaries. In 1908, the first catalog of lectionaries compiled by Gregory appears. The works of E.C. Colwell (1933) are devoted to the study of lectionaries. Several Lectionaries have entered the critical apparatus of the Nestle-Aland 27 and GNT 4 editions.

Editions of the Greek New Testament.

For the first time, the original text of the New Testament books was published as part of the Complutensian Polyglot. This edition was prepared in 1514-1517, but became available to the reader only in 1522. But already in 1516 in Basel, in the publishing house of Frobenius, an edition of the New Testament by Erasmus of Rotterdam was published, based on four manuscripts of the 12th-13th centuries. with text of the Byzantine type; since 1518 the text of Erasmus has also been published as part of the Aldin Bible. The text published by Erasmus of Rotterdam was the basis for many further publications. The Elseviers Publishing House (Netherlands) carried out 7 editions; in the preface to the 2nd (1633) edition, the reader was informed: nunc habes textum, ab omnibus receptum - "now you have a text accepted by all"; the Latin expression textus receptus ("the accepted text") has since established itself as the name for the Greek New Testament text, first published by Erasmus and, with some corrections, reprinted for more than a century.

In two editions of K. Lachman (Berlin, 1831, 1842–1850) a new approach to New Testament textual criticism was reflected. Lachmann gave a reconstruction of the late 4th century text, based only on ancient sources, without using the textus receptus. In 1841-1872, 8 editions of the New Testament were prepared by K. Tischendorf. In the first three editions, he adhered to the text of Lachman, in the next 4 he abandoned it in favor of the textus receptus, but he based the last (1869–1872) on the Codex Sinaiticus, accompanying it with an extensive critical apparatus. This edition of Tischendorf had a decisive influence on further scholarly publications of the Greek text of the New Testament.

BF Westcott and F. Hort developed (1881–1882) in detail the classification of Greek New Testament manuscripts into four types: neutral, Alexandrian, Western and Syriac (Byzantine); at the same time, the Byzantine type of text, together with the textus receptus ascending to it, was excluded from consideration as depending on three other types. The purpose of the publication is to reconstruct the original text, the role of which is played by the Codex Sinaiticus, accompanied by a compact critical apparatus and containing numerous corrections.

The reconstruction by Eberhard Nestle (Stuttgart, 1898) is based on the latest edition of Tischendorf, as well as those of Hort-Westcott and Weymouth (London, 1886; 1892; 1905). If discrepancies were encountered in the source publications, E. Nestle entered into the main text the version that is supported by two of them, giving the reading of the 3rd in the apparatus. In 1904, by order of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Nestle reprinted its edition. In 1901 he replaced Weymouth's text with B. Weiss's (1894–1900). With separate clarifications, this edition was reprinted for a quarter of a century. Eberhard Nestlé's son, Erwin Nestlé, produced 13th to 20th editions in 1927–1950; editions from the 21st to the 25th (1952-1972) he carried out in collaboration with K. Aland. Based on the 1904 edition, D. Kilpatrick published the 2nd ed. in 1958. British and Foreign Bible Society. In 1955, in order to prepare a new edition, a special committee was formed by the United Bible Societies, which carried out 2 editions (1966, 1968) based on earlier publications; at the same time, there was no direct appeal to handwritten sources. However, when preparing the third edition, the results of new revisions of manuscripts were taken into account, including the papyri, which were made by K. Aland for the 26th edition of Nestlé, as well as discrepancies in Athos lectionaries of the 9th–11th centuries, identified by the Greek biblical scholar J. Karavidopoulos. Both editions, published in 1975 and 1979, contained identical text. The 26th edition of Nestlé was named Nestle-Aland 26 (NA 26). Both were reprinted in 1993 (the 4th edition of the United Bible Societies came out under the title Greek New Testament - GNT 4); while the main text has not changed, some corrections have been made to the critical apparatus.

In these editions, the main text is a reconstruction based on the Vatican Codex. Accounting for the papyri of the 2nd-3rd centuries, which entered scientific circulation in the 1930s, made it possible to move "into the depths of centuries" for a century in comparison with Lachman's edition. The critical apparatus NA 27 combines compactness and informativeness. It contains more than 10,000 knots of discrepancies, reflecting the evolution of the New Testament Greek text in the first millennium AD. The GNT 4 apparatus includes 1400 major nodes.

ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE

Aramaic Targums.

A translation (oral or written) of the Old Testament into Aramaic, made in a Jewish environment, is called a Targum. (Originally, this word in Hebrew and Aramaic simply meant "translation").

Oral targums appear, apparently, simultaneously with the emergence of public reading of the Torah, which is usually associated with the renewal of the Testament under the leadership of Ezra (about 450 BC). At this time, the everyday language of the Jews was Aramaic, and therefore the need for translation arose. However, even in translation, the text of the Pentateuch was not always clear enough, so the translation was supplied with comments. Oral translation of the Bible also spread in connection with the appearance of synagogues (no later than the 3rd century BC), in which the Law and the Prophets are read every week. The oldest written Targums are fragments of the books of Leviticus and Job, found in Qumran and dating back to the 2nd-1st centuries. BC.

The Targum does not provide a literal translation, but a paraphrase, a commentary; it may contain various kinds of additions that are not directly related to a specific biblical text; however, from the 4th–5th centuries. AD Targums appear, which are limited to literal translation and contain practically no additions. Literal targums are characterized by the specifics of translation: in some cases, proper names are transmitted as common nouns; the syntax of the original is accurately reproduced, due to which the translation is obscured, etc. Thus, the Targum is not a full-fledged translation capable of replacing the original, but only to some extent reproduces and reflects individual features of the original text.

Ancient Greek.

The Septuagint is a collection of translations of the Old Testament into Greek made in the Hellenized Jewish environment in the 3rd century BC. BC e. - 2 in. AD The Greek version of the Old Testament contains, in addition to the books of the Palestinian canon, 10 books that either did not survive in Hebrew or were originally written in Greek, as well as lengthy additions to the Books of Esther and Daniel. (In the last two centuries, the Hebrew originals of the Books of Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, and Tobit have been found.)

The manuscript tradition of the Septuagint is presented as follows: c. 20 fragments of papyri, 2nd c. BC e. - 4 in. AD, several leather scrolls from Qumran, as well as about 2 thousand parchment and paper manuscripts of the 4th-16th centuries, among which are the Vatican, Sinai and Alexandrian codices. The first editions of the Septuagint were the Complutensian Polyglot (1514–1517) and the Aldin Bible (1518).

The first translation of the Torah into Greek was made according to Epistle of Aristeas, at the initiative of the Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247) for the Library of Alexandria. In fact, this translation could have been carried out in the religious and legal interests of the Jewish synagogue in Alexandria, or as a Targum for liturgical use. The stability of the text of the Pentateuch, the Psalter and some other parts of the Greek Old Testament testifies in favor of the first version, and the existence of translation options for the Books of Judges, Esther and some others testifies in favor of the second (it is known that oral targums did not receive written fixation for a long time, as a result of which there is text variation). Most of the Bible books were translated in Alexandria.

The translation was carried out by different people, but, with the exception of the Pentateuch, on the whole it is extremely literal, to the point of violating the grammar of Greek. language. Only some books (for example, the Book of Proverbs of Solomon) are translated freely. The language of books translated literally is saturated with Semitisms both in vocabulary and grammar, while the original Greek texts included in the Septuagint (particularly the Maccabees) are characterized by adherence to the Attic norm.

The text of the Septuagint has a large number of variants, which leads to the selection of its various editions; some of them can be interpreted as independent translations. There are 3 Jewish translations from the Christian era.

Akila translation completed around 125 by a Pontic Greek, a Jewish proselyte. This translation, although literal, is grammatically correct.

Translation of Symmachus , made at the end of the 2nd century, is extremely attentive to the transmission of the Hebrew original, and is distinguished by a good Greek language.

Translation of Theodotion also refers to the end of the 2nd century; it is based on a text of the Septuagina, different from the one that has come down to us.

In addition, it should be mentioned Hexapla Origen (235-240), representing 6 texts of the Old Testament in parallel columns: the Hebrew text, the Hebrew text in Greek transcription, the Septuagint and the 3 above-mentioned translations; for individual books, 1 to 3 more columns with translations that are currently unknown from other sources have been added. Origen compared the translations with the Hebrew text, noting omissions and additions to determine the most accurate translation.

As a result of the spread among Christian writers of translations of Akila, Symmachus, Theodotion, variability in the Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament increased. Thus, a special edition of the Septuagint arose, characterized by borrowings from the last 3.

There are also editions of Presbyter Lucian of Antioch and Prester Hesychius, but information about these editions is insufficient.

The Septuagint and its revisions are very important for the history of the Greek. versions of the text of the Old Testament in the early stages; The Septuagint, in addition, was the basis for numerous Christ. translations made in antiquity and the Middle Ages .

Latin.

Old Latin translations.

Latin translations biblical texts first appear at the end of the 2nd century. in North Africa. The Old Testament is translated from the Septuagint, re-edited from the Hebrew original. The New Testament also appears to have originally appeared in North Africa. Due to the lack of complete biblical texts in Latin, Christian preachers used collections of quotations from the Holy Scriptures, which led to the emergence of a significant number of textual variants. In the 4th c. in Italy and Spain new translations from Greek into Latin are being made.

Vulgate

(lat. Vulgata - simple, common, ordinary) - translation of the Bible into Latin, in the 80s of the 4th century. carried out by Jerome of Stridon (d. c. 420) on behalf of Pope Damasus I (366–384). The motives for creating a new translation were: 1) the high variability of the existing translation noted above, 2) the lack of dogmatic authority in this translation, 3) the need for liturgical texts in Latin. At the first stage of his work (in Rome), Blessed Jerome corrected the Old Latin translation of the Gospel, relying on the Greek manuscript of the Byzantine type of text. Further in Bethlehem, he edits the translation of the Old Testament books. Based Hexaple Origen, he corrects the Psalter (this edition becomes the standard liturgical text in Gaul). Then, using the same Greek original, he corrects the books of Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes and Chronicles. Using the translations of Akila and Symmachus as an auxiliary source, he re-translates from Heb. The Psalter and other books of the Old Testament, while non-canonical books either do not translate at all (Sir, Prem, 1-2 Makk, Var, Posl Jer), or slightly edit the Old Latin translation (Tov, If). Of the New Testament, Jerome himself corrected only the Gospel; the rest of the New Testament books were corrected in Rome at the end of 4 - beginning. 5th c. in the circle of Pelagius and Rufinus. A complete corpus of biblical books in a new Latin translation appears in the middle of the 5th century.

More than 10 thousand manuscripts of the Vulgate are known, the most ancient date back to the 5th century BC. In 1456 the first printed edition appeared (the 42-line Gutenberg Bible, or the Mazarin Bible). Official Vatican publications are considered to be editions of 1590 ( Six tina) and 1592 ( Clementina); Clementine reprinted to the present day as the standard text of the Vulgate.

In 1979 Pope John Paul II blessed the work on the new Latin translation, which was conceived as a correction of the Vulgate from the Masoretic text and the Septuagint, taking into account the Old Latin translation.

The Vulgate is one of the most significant secondary sources for both the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Greek text of the New Testament, especially in its Byzantine (ecclesiastical) form; the sources that were at the disposal of blessed Jerome are often textually superior to those available today. Both in the manuscript period and, in particular, in the era of printing, the Vulgate had a decisive influence on the text and structure of biblical translations into all European languages. It was the original for translations of the Bible into national languages, mainly in Catholic countries, but also among the Orthodox Slavs (starting with the Gennadiev Bible).

Syrian.

Old Testament part Peshitta- the most famous Syriac translation of biblical books. This name (from Syriac - literally "simple") has been known since the 9th century. The Syriac version of the Old Testament as a whole takes shape towards the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 3rd century.

For a long time Peshitta edited and improved. Compared to the Septuagint, the history of the text Peshitta appears to be fairly stable; significant variations are rare.

Probably the first Syriac translation of the New Testament is the so-called Diatessaron. This translation was compiled, according to tradition, c. 160 by the Syrian apologist Tatian and was a harmonization of the 4 Gospels. Diatessaron was widespread for about two and a half centuries and in the 5th century. was taken out of use by the bishops Ravvula Edessa and Theodoret Kirsky.

New Testament part Peshitta, which replaced Diatessaron- the result of the approximation of the so-called ancient version (which arose around the 3rd century) to the Greek text. Apparently, this editing was carried out by Bishop Ravvula of Edessa; new text supplanted as Diatessaron, and the old version. From the fact that Peshitta used by the Monophysite ( see also Monophysitism), and the Nestorian Churches, we can conclude that the New Testament part of it appeared and received authority no later than the middle of the 5th century. There are a large number of New Testament manuscripts Peshittas. Its text is adopted as the standard Syriac New Testament and is used by all Syriac Churches.

Coptic.

Translations of the Bible into various Coptic dialects are known. languages: Said, Akhmim, etc. ( see also COPTIC).

At the initial stage of the spread of Christianity in Egypt, the Septuagint was used. The Coptic translation appears no earlier than the beginning of the 2nd century BC. As the first evidence of the existence of a Coptic translation of the Bible, the story Lives of St. Anthony(written by St. Athanasius the Great), about how St. Anthony, who was illiterate, listened (c. 270) to the Gospel. It is possible that, in addition to the Gospel, by that time there was already a translation of at least the Psalter and the prophets.

4th c. characterized by the emergence of a large number of translations of the Bible into the Coptic language, primarily into the classical literary dialect of the Coptic language - Said.

The presence of translations of certain Old Testament books into this dialect is evidenced by manuscripts of the 4th century: Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, the Books of Jeremiah and Baruch, Isaiah. The oldest manuscript of the Psalter is dated no earlier than 400 (despite the fact that the Psalter begins to be used early in worship). Citations from the Saidic translation of the Old Testament are often found in Coptic literature. In accordance with the rules of Rev. Pachomia, the ability to read, as well as the knowledge by heart of significant biblical passages, was essential even for the novices of his monasteries.

The oldest Said New Testament manuscripts of the New Testament date back to the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 4th c.

Ancient Armenian.

The first translations of biblical books into ancient Armenian are carried out between 405 and 414, immediately after the invention of the Armenian alphabet Mesrop Mashtots. Probably, this translation (Arm I) was made by Mashtots himself, Catholicos Sahak Party and their students; after some time it was verified in Greek. manuscripts delivered after the Third Ecumenical Council (431) from Byzantium, subjected to revision and in some cases re-executed. This Armenian version (Arm II) received its final form in the mid-30s of the 5th century.

The translation of most of the New Testament books into Arms I was in all likelihood made from the Syriac. On the contrary, Arm II is a translation from the Greek. original.

During the 5th-8th centuries. the text of Arm II was repeatedly revised to better approximate the Greek text. There is reason to believe that, along with Arm II, Arm I was also used until the 8th century.

During the flourishing period under the Bagratids (10th-11th centuries) of Armenian monasteries and monastic scriptoriums, the final stabilization of the text of Arm II takes place, which is brought to perfection in the transfer of the Greek original.

Old Georgian.

The translation of the Bible into Georgian began to be created during the preaching of St. Nina in Kartli (East Georgian state) at the beginning of the 4th c. The first manuscripts of the Gospel date back to the 9th-10th centuries; by the 10th c. relate oldest lists Apostle. The earliest manuscript of the Apocalypse is dated 978. The subject of discussion is the language from which the Georgian translation of the New Testament was made. Some researchers believe that from the Syriac, others - that directly from the Greek. The complete Bible in Georgian was first printed in Moscow in 1743.

Gothic.

The Gothic language was the first of the Germanic languages ​​into which the Bible was translated (). Translation from Greek was executed by the Visigothic Arian bishop Wulfila (Ulfila) (c. 311-383 (?)) after the part of the Visigoths that converted to Christianity, due to the persecution of Christians in their places of residence north of the Danube, led by their bishop, moved in 348 to the territory of the Roman Empire in the Lower Moesia (modern Northern Bulgaria). To date, a translation of most of the Gospels and almost all of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul (except the Epistle to the Hebrews) has survived from the New Testament, while only a passage from the book of Nehemiah (chapters 5-7) has survived from the entire Old Testament, but there is no trace of a translation Psalter and Pentateuch, important for the catechesis of new converts and for worship, so some scholars doubt the existence of a translation of the entire Old Testament into the Gothic language.

The lists of the Gothic translation of the Bible that have come down to us date back to the 5th-6th centuries. The most important Gothic biblical manuscript is the so-called Silver Codex, written in silver script with gold initials on purple parchment. The manuscript contains the Gospel of Mark in full, the other three Gospels in significant fragments, but this is less than half of the original volume.

Church Slavonic.

The manuscript heritage of the Church Slavonic Bible is very rich. The number of manuscripts of the Old Testament 11-18 centuries. approaching 4500; the exact number of New Testament manuscripts is not known, but there must be at least twice or three times as many. Church Slavonic biblical manuscripts are intended primarily for liturgical use and are of Bulgarian, Serbian, and East Slavic origin, with the latter being the majority.

The first translations of biblical and other liturgical texts into Church Slavonic were made in the second half of the ninth century. in Moravia by Cyril and Methodius and their disciples. The composition of the Bible books translated during this period remains the subject of discussion, but there is no doubt that the New Testament was translated in full, and the Psalms and some other books of the Old Testament were also translated. The language of these translations is archaic and a large number lexical borrowings from the Greek language, combined with the free transfer of grammatical features of the original. Translations are clear and accurate, errors are extremely rare.

The texts of the Cyril and Methodius era have not been preserved. The gospel has been preserved in manuscripts since the 11th century. In the beginning. 14th c. it was twice edited on Mount Athos according to the Greek original. The new edition, characterized by literalism in the transmission of the Greek text, was widely used and was later used as the basis for printed editions.

The history of the Apostle is less well known than the history of the Gospel. From the 11th c. only one list came and only in fragments. In the 14th century The apostle was subjected to the same editing as the Gospel.

The oldest manuscript of the Psalter dates back to the 11th century. From the 14th century The Athos edition of this biblical book, corrected according to the Greek text, is widely distributed.

The creation of the first complete biblical collection was carried out in Novgorod by order of the archbishop. Gennadius (after whom this compilation was named the Gennadiev Bible) around 1499. Translators Dmitry Gerasimov and Vlas Ignatov, as well as the Croatian monk Benjamin, took part in the work. The latter translated from the Vulgate books that were absent in the Church Slavonic manuscript tradition: 1 and 2 Chronicles, 1 Ezra, Nehemiah, 2 and 3 Ezra, Tobit, Judith, Esther (chapters 10–16), the Wisdom of Solomon, the prophecies of Jeremiah (chapters 1–25, 45-52) and Ezekiel (chapters 45-46), 1 and 2 Maccabees. The translation of these books is characterized by extreme literalism, even to the point of violating Church Slavonic grammatical norms; there is a noticeable tendency to render each Latin word with only one Church Slavonic equivalent, without taking into account the ambiguity of the word in the original language, which often leads to semantic losses. Some Latin words were borrowed into the Church Slavonic text without translation, which in some cases was compensated by putting Slavic correspondences in the margins.

The first complete printed edition of the Church Slavonic Bible - the Ostroh Bible - was prepared in Southwestern Russia (which at that time was part of the Commonwealth), in the city of Ostrog in 1580-1581 at the initiative of Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky . In 1580 the New Testament and the Psalter were published, in 1581 the entire Bible. The work was attended by G.D. Smotritsky, Moscow printer Ivan Fedorov, Greeks Eustathius Nathanael and Dionysius Palaiologos-Ralli. The list of the Gennadiev Bible was used as a textual basis, but the reconciliation was also carried out according to other manuscripts. From Greek printed sources, the Complutensian Polyglot 1514–1517 and the Aldin Bible 1518 were used.

In 1663, the first Moscow edition of the Bible appeared, which was a reprint of the Ostrog Bible with minor changes.

In 1712, Peter I ordered that the Church Slavonic Bible be corrected. However, the work was carried out slowly, the commissions succeeded each other, and the new edition was published only in 1751, having received, after the name of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, the name of the Elizabethan Bible. With minor corrections, this text is reprinted to this day.

In parallel with the biblical codices intended for non-liturgical use, there was a liturgical edition of the Gospel and the Apostle; its history has not yet been studied enough.

BIBLE TRANSLATIONS INTO NEW LANGUAGES

Russian.

Until the 18th century The Bible in Russia existed only in the Church Slavonic language, which served almost the entire sphere of culture, while the (Old) Russian language was used primarily as a means of everyday communication. Over the centuries, the Russian language has changed, and the initial distance between it and the Church Slavonic language has constantly increased. In addition, in the 18th century there is a process of creating a Russian literary language, opposed to the traditional Church Slavonic, which, in turn, is beginning to be recognized as incomprehensible and in need of translation. In the first third of the 19th century the process of language building is entering its final stage, and the task of translating biblical texts into Russian rises to its full potential. see also RUSSIAN LANGUAGE .

Translation of the Russian Bible Society.

The work of translating the Bible into Russian was started by the Russian Bible Society, formed in 1812 ( see also BIBLE SOCIETIES IN RUSSIA). In 1816, Alexander I allowed the creation of the Russian. translation of the New Testament, and by 1818 a translation of the Gospel had been prepared. The Russian text was given in parallel with the Church Slavonic. In 1821 the entire New Testament was published in these two languages. In 1823 a translation of the New Testament was published without the Church Slavonic text.

Archimandrite (later Metropolitan of Moscow) Filaret (Drozdov) made a great contribution to the translation of the New Testament books. He compiled instructions for translators, and also wrote introductory articles for the first editions. According to the instructions, the translation had to be word by word; it was suggested that, if possible, the order of words be preserved; borrowing Church Slavonic vocabulary was prescribed either in the absence of Russian correspondences, or if such correspondences belong to the low style. In addition, the Church Slavonic text also determined the composition of the Russian translation made from the Greek original: fragments that were absent in the Greek original, but included in the Church Slavonic text, were retained with their selection in the Russian translation in square brackets. The translation of the Bible into Russian was thus conceived, first of all, as an explanation, interpretation of the Church Slavonic text; this was emphasized by the parallel arrangement of these translations in two columns. In the prefaces to the editions of the Russian Gospel and the New Testament, the need for a Russian translation was explained by the changes that had taken place in the Russian language, as a result of which the Church Slavonic text became incomprehensible.

The translation of the Russian Bible Society, as well as other translations of that era, was made using primarily the textus receptus as the Greek original. However, additions are made to the Russian text in square brackets that are present in the text of the Elizabethan Bible (1751) in Greek manuscripts; most of these additions are missing from the textus receptus.

There are also other additions in the Russian text (in italics); they represent words that are absent in the original, but necessary from the point of view of the style of the Russian language.

A striking feature of the translation of the Russian Bible Society is the harmonization (i.e. artificial coordination of parallel readings) of Bible books.

In 1822, the Psalter was published in a Russian translation, which was made by Archpriest Gerasim Pavsky from the Jewish original. In his introductory article, Filaret (Drozdov) noted the discrepancies between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text found in the book of Psalms.

In 1824–1825 the Octateuch (i.e. the Pentateuch, the books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth) was published. Work on the translation has been carried out since 1821, the St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kyiv Theological Academies, as well as some seminaries, participated in it. Since some translations were not made on time, Archpriest G. Pavsky was entrusted with their completion and editing. (The translation of the book of Genesis, published in 1819, made by Archbishop Philaret from the Masoretic text, was not included in this edition.) However, the edition of the Octateuch did not go on sale, since in 1826 the Russian Bible Society was closed.

All three parts of the first Russian Bible translation (the New Testament, the Psalter, the Eightateuch) are characterized by the unity of translation principles - theological, textual and stylistic. The Russian translation mainly borrowed the terminology of the Church Slavonic text, but partly updated it to make theological concepts more accessible. A distinctive feature of the translation of the Old Testament books is the transmission of the Hebrew tetragram by the word "Jehovah" (later, in the Synodal translation - "Lord"). The fourth commandment of the Decalogue is given in a semantic translation: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:12), and not literally “to keep it holy”. The language of the first Russian translation is precise and expressive, it operates with specific vocabulary; phrases look natural from the point of view of the Russian language. Footnotes comment on archaisms, untranslated Hebrew and Greek words, and proper names.

The translation of the Russian Bible Society is addressed primarily to the layman; being conceived as an explanation of the Church Slavonic translation, he went beyond these limits, giving an independent interpretation of the biblical text.

From the closure of the Russian Bible Society to the official resumption of work on the Russian translation of the Bible.

The closure of the Russian Bible Society did not mean a complete cessation of work on translating the Bible into Russian. Among the translations that appeared from the mid-1820s to the mid-1850s, the Old Testament translations of Archpriest Gerasim of Pavsky and Archimandrite Macarius (Glukharev) should be noted.

1. Translations of Archpriest Gerasim Pavsky. Professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Archpriest Gerasim Pavsky, lecturing in 1818-1836 on the Jewish language and theology, translated into Russian and commented on the Old Testament texts; all the Old Testament books were translated in this way, with the exception of the Eightateuch (translated earlier). In addition to the actual biblical text, the lectures contained brief interpretations and detailed tables of contents. In the translation, no inserts were made from Church Slavonic or Greek texts, proper names were given in a form close to the sound in the Hebrew language. Translation is characterized by accuracy, lack of literalism, resourcefulness in finding Russian. matches; as in the translations of the Russian Bible Society, preference is given to specific vocabulary. The name Jehovah is consistently used. In artistic terms, the translation is distinguished by more folklore than book style.

In 1839-1841, Pavsky's lectures were lithographed by students and received wide circulation not only in academies and seminaries, but also in secular society; however, the distribution of translations brought charges of heresy against the author; the analysis of the case in the Holy Synod ended with the destruction of a significant number of lithographs. Subsequently (in 1862-1863) they were partially published in the journal The Spirit of a Christian.

2. Translations of Archimandrite Macarius (Glukharev). Archimandrite Macarius (Glukharev) is known primarily as a missionary; the place of his preaching was Siberia, in particular Altai. Missionary experience led him to the conviction of the need for a complete translation of the Bible into Russian. In 1836-1847 he translated most of the Old Testament books. Archimandrite Macarius shared the opinion of G. Pavsky regarding the greater value of the Hebrew text in comparison with the Septuagint; an apology for the Masoretic text is dedicated to his note On the need for the Russian Church to transcribe the entire Bible from original texts into modern Russian(1834). In his translations from Hebrew, he used the Octateuch published by the Russian Bible Society and the translations of G. Pavsky, and also took into account translations into European languages.

Synodal translation.

Immediately after the accession to the throne of Alexander II, in 1856, the Moscow Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) resumed efforts to create a complete Russian translation of the Bible. He publishes a previously written article On the Dogmatic Dignity and Protective Use of the Greek Seventy Interpreters and the Slavic Translations of Holy Scripture, in which he argues the importance of both the Septuagint and the Masoretic text for the understanding of the Old Testament; publishes a note by Archimandrite Macarius 1834 on the advantage of the Masoretic text. In 1862, he received permission from the Synod to use the Hebrew text of the Old Testament as the basis for translation, draws up instructions for translators, which indicates how to proceed in case of a discrepancy between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint.

To edit the translations of Archpriest G. Pavsky and Archimandrite Macarius, Metropolitan Philaret invited Professor of St. Petersburg University D.A. Khvolson and Professors of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy V.A. Levison, M.A. Golubev, E.I. Lovyagin and P .I.Savvaitov. The books of Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon were translated from Greek by the priest A.A. Sergievsky. The translations of the St. Petersburg group were published in the journal Christian Reading in 1861–1871. The translation of the New Testament was distributed among theological academies. The texts included in the Synodal translation have undergone significant editing and differ markedly from journal publications. The final editing was the responsibility of the Synod and was carried out primarily by Metropolitan Filaret with the active participation of the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, Professor Archpriest A.V. Gorsky. In 1860 the Gospel was published, in 1862 - the Apostle; finally, in 1876 the Bible in Russian translation was published in full.

The translation, called the Synodal, is, in general, a revision of translations made earlier; This is especially evident in the New Testament books. However, here, too, the translation of the Russian Bible Society (1823) was corrected consistently and carefully. The square brackets marking additions taken from the Church Slavonic text, but missing from the textus receptus and the Codex Alexandrinus, were eliminated, and only in some cases readings for which the publishers could not find the Greek were left in parentheses. sources. As a result of the removal of brackets, a false idea arose about the stability of the Greek. text of the New Testament, which is equally represented by Church Slavonic and Russian. versions thus the Elizabethan Bible was given precedence over the testimony of the Greek sources.

The greater archaism of the language of this translation of the New Testament books in comparison with the translation of the Russian Bible Society was caused by the replacement of everyday Russian vocabulary with bookish (mainly from the Church Slavonic text). Due to its extreme closeness to the Greek original in the field of syntax and phraseology, and to the Church Slavonic text in vocabulary, the Synodal Translation formed a kind of “biblical style” of the Russian language.

The release of the Synodal Translation gave rise to a controversy in church and scientific periodicals, some participants of which completely denied the possibility and / or the need to translate the Holy Scriptures into ordinary, “profane”, “vulgar” language. The language of translation was criticized - heavy, archaic, artificially Slavicized; secondly, the initial textological principles were recognized as unsatisfactory - a mixture of the Masoretic text and the Septuagint.

However, soon after its appearance, the Synodal translation acquires an independent meaning, functionally separating itself from the Church Slavonic text. Being the first complete Russian version of the Bible, it acquired a special status and significance in religious life, contributing to the development of spiritual enlightenment and theological thought in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Church Slavonic remains the liturgical language of the Russian Orthodox Church; however, for non-Orthodox confessions in Russia, the Synodal Translation became a liturgical text.

In 1956, when for the first time after the revolution it became possible to publish the Russian Bible in the Soviet Union, it was planned to carry out a stylistic correction of the text, but the editing was reduced to minor corrections of grammar. In addition, starting from this edition, the Synodal translation is published in a new spelling.

Translations that have arisen under the influence or as a result of the Synodal Translation.

This translation, published in St. Petersburg in 1906, according to the author, was supposed to bring the Russian text closer to Church Slavonic; Pobedonostsev regarded the very appearance of the Synodal Translation as an accomplished evil, the consequences of which should be minimized as far as possible. Solving this problem, Pobedonostsev in his translation, for example, “ridiculed by the Magi” replaces the Church Slavonic “scoldened by the Magi”, “forgiveness of sins” for “forgiveness of sins”, “loud voice” for “voice of voice”, “taken in adultery” for “ yayu in adultery”, etc. Editing volume in Apostle substantially less.

2. Cassian translation. The translation of the New Testament, commissioned by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the 1950s and 1960s, by a group of translators led by Bishop Cassian (Bezobrazov), rector of the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, was originally conceived as an editorial of the Synodal Translation. However, over time, the need for a new Russian version of the New Testament books was realized. The critical edition of Netsle - Åland was taken as a source of the Greek text, in contrast to the Elizabethan Bible and the Synodal translation, which are based on textus receptus. The Cassian version of the Russian New Testament took into account the achievements of biblical textual criticism, the connection of the New Testament Greek. Koine from Heb. and aram. languages, as well as those changes that have occurred in the Russian language since the first publication of the Synodal translation. The writer Boris Zaitsev took part in the literary editing of the text; In addition to Bishop Cassian, Archpriest Nikolai Kulomzin, Baptist pastor A. Vasiliev and their students worked on the translation. A new translation was published in full by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1970.

3. Translations of the Septuagint by P.A. Jungerov.

Prof. Kazan Theological Academy P.A.Yungerov published in 1908 - 1916 a translation from the Greek text of a significant part of the Old Testament, namely: Job, Psalter, Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 12 minor prophets and Daniel. The original was the Septuagint, edited by G. B. Sweet (1887–1894). The main task of the translation was to explain the Church Slavonic liturgical biblical text. The Russian translation is provided with introductory articles, as well as a philological analysis of the Greek original and theological commentaries. Deviations of the Church Slavonic text from the Septuagint are noted.

modern translations.

After 1917, work on Bible translations in Russia was interrupted for several decades; only since the 1970s, translations of individual Old Testament books by S.S. Averintsev, I.M. Dyakonov and others have been published on the pages of literary and artistic publications. Book of Job, containing the author's translation, a detailed historical and philological analysis of the text and accompanying articles. The translation was made from the Masoretic text using the evidence of the most ancient translations (Septuagint, Peshitta, Vulgate, etc.).

1. Translation of Averintsev - Alekseev.

In 1997, translations of the Gospel of Mark and John, the Epistle to the Romans and the Apocalypse were published in St. Petersburg with a preface by Met. Minsk and Slutsk Filaret; as noted in the introductory article, the Gospel of John was translated from textus receptus, the rest of the books - from the reconstruction of Nestle - Aland; the footnotes point out discrepancies between the textus receptus and the main text of the critical edition. The names of the translators are not indicated, but it is known that the translation of two books was carried out by S.S. Averintsev, the other two - by A.A. Alekseev.

2. Translation of the New Testament by VN Kuznetsova. In the same 1997 in Moscow were published Canonical Gospels translated by V.N. Kuznetsova with a preface and accompanying articles by S.V. Lezov and S.V. Tishchenko. In 2001, the revived Russian Bible Society published good news- translation of V.N. Kuznetsova of the entire New Testament. The critical edition of Nestle-Aland was taken as a Greek source. The translation, especially the 1997 edition, evoked mixed responses, often sharply negative. The target language was qualified as vulgar; a significant flaw was seen in the fact that Kuznetsova was almost completely replaced by established theological terminology. It was pointed out that the language of translation, which, by its naturalism, is intended to emphasize the historical authenticity of the New Testament events, in fact destroys the genre nature of the Gospel as a religious work. At the same time, one cannot fail to note the fact that updating the language allows the reader to take a fresh look at a familiar text, pay attention to some points that previously seemed clear and did not raise questions; the translation contains interesting solutions, in some cases alternative readings of the Greek text are given. On the whole, however, Kuznetsova's translation can be regarded as an antipode to the Synodal Translation, and that is why, in its current form, it can hardly claim independence.

3. Translations of the Old Testament of the Russian Bible Society.

Since 2001, the Russian Bible Society has been publishing translations of individual books of the Old Testament (editor of the series - M.G. Seleznev). The Masoretic text is chosen as the original text, however, in controversial cases, readings of the Septuagint, Peshitta, Vulgate and other ancient translations are taken into account. The translation is provided with a historical and philological commentary, the language is focused on the modern Russian literary norm; translators managed to avoid the extremes of both the Synodal translation, which is distinguished by a rather archaic language, and some modern Protestant translations with their extremely democratized style. By 2004, translations of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Esther, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations of Jeremiah and Daniel were published.

English.

Old English period.

Medieval translations of biblical texts into ancient English language performed from the Vulgate; The first such experiments date back to the 8th century. At the beginning of this century the Psalter was translated (perhaps by Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne (d. 709)). Part of the Gospel of John, as well as the prayer "Our Father" contained in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke, was translated by Bede the Venerable (673-735). The Ten Commandments were translated by King Alfred the Great (849-899) as well as some other biblical texts.

By the end of the 10th c. the following translations are available: 1) West Saxon Gospels - a complete translation of the Four Gospels; 2) the translation of the Pentateuch, the books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, as well as several books of the Old Testament apocrypha by Ælfric the Grammar (c. 955–1020); 3) several translations of the Psalter.

In 1066, the Norman conquest of England took place, and the activity of translating the Bible into Anglo-Saxon ceased for a long time.

Middle English period.

In the middle of the 14th century three translations of the Psalter appear; by the 13th–14th centuries include anonymous translations of various parts of the New Testament.

The first English translation of the entire Bible appears towards the end of the 14th century; it was carried out at the initiative and under the direction of John Wycliffe (c. 1330–1384), who believed that the laity had the right to read the Holy Scriptures in their own language. After his death, the reading of his Bible was forbidden (however, she continued to correspond, despite the ban). While the Bible was being translated in other European countries, there was again a pause in translation activity in the British Isles, which lasted until the Reformation era.

Protestant translations: from Tyndale to the New English Bible.

In the era of the Reformation, for the first time in the history of the English Bible, the Vulgate is abandoned as the original for translation. Comparison of it with the Masoretic text and the Septuagint revealed various kinds of errors in the Latin version of the Holy Scriptures. It also played a role that the Protestant translators did not want to depend on the official Catholic text for their translations.

1. Translation of Tyndall.

The first Protestant translator of the Bible into English was William Tyndale. He was familiar with Greek and Hebrew. Tyndall published his translation of the New Testament at Worms in 1525; in next year the edition reached England, where it was immediately burned. However, as it was in an earlier era, contrary to the prohibition church authorities, the translation was reprinted many times, some editions came to England from the Netherlands. In 1530, a translation of part of the Old Testament books was published, but Tindal was soon arrested, in prison he continued to work on the translation, but in 1536, on charges of heresy, he was burned in Vilvoorde (near Brussels).

Tyndall's translation had a pronounced Protestant ideology; despite the fact that in the early 1530s Henry VIII severed relations with Rome, the theological views of the translator did not arouse the sympathy of the English authorities. In his translation, Tyndall deliberately abandoned the traditional church vocabulary, which was expressed in the consistent replacement of the term “church” with “community”, “priest” with “elder”, “repent” with “repent”, etc.; in addition, Tyndall relied heavily on the German translation of M. Luther.

2. Coverdale Bible.

Meanwhile, in 1535, a complete English Bible was published in Germany, based on Tyndall's translation, completed and supplemented by his collaborator Miles Coverdale; not knowing Hebrew, Coverdale had to resort to the Vulgate in his translation. The publication soon came to England and was distributed there, without encountering any opposition from the authorities.

3. Matthew Bible.

In 1537, with the permission of Henry VIII, a new edition of the Bible was published. A certain Thomas Matthew was named as the translator, but another of Tyndall's associates, John Rogers, was apparently the true author; a fictitious translator was needed in order to disguise the actual publication of the work of the executed Tyndall. The biblical text was compiled from Tyndall's and Coverdale's translations and was accompanied by numerous doctrinal commentaries.

4. Big Bible.

In 1539 a translation was published, called the Great Bible. The editor was M. Coverdale, but the text was closer to the Matthew Bible (and, obviously, was a revision of this translation) than to the Coverdale Bible of 1535. The Big Bible was given the status of an official translation, other versions were banned.

5. Geneva Bible.

With the coming to power of the Catholic Mary in England ( cm. MARY I) Many Protestants emigrated to Geneva. Under the leadership of John Knox, a Scottish Calvinist, and with the likely participation of M. Coverdale, the New Testament and the Psalter were published in Geneva in 1557 by English Protestants, and three years later, a complete Bible, called the Geneva Bible.

The Genevan translation was in some ways the most scientific translation of the time. The text of the Great Bible, improved by the editors, was used as a basis. The Geneva Bible gained acceptance fairly quickly; nevertheless, it was not published in England until 1576. Despite the fact that Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, the Genevan Bible struggled to make its way to the printing press, as the hierarchs of the Anglican Church were hostile to this translation. However, once printed, the Geneva Bible went through 140 editions; for some time it was reprinted even after the publication of the King James Version. Shakespeare knew and quoted the Geneva Bible.

6. Episcopal Bible.

The Episcopal Bible came out in 1568; the translation is a collective work of Anglican bishops. The Big Bible was taken as a basis, which was verified according to the Hebrew and Greek texts. In addition, successful translation solutions of the Geneva Bible were used. As the official Bible translation of the Anglican Church, the Bishop's Bible has replaced the Great Bible.

7. King James Bible.

Three decades later, on the initiative of the Puritan John Reynolds and with the support of King James I, work began on a new translation of the Bible. The work was distributed among four groups of translators; the draft version of the text had to be approved by all translators. Control functions were carried out by a committee of 12 editors. The Episcopal Bible was taken as the basis, but other translations were also used. The King James Bible was published in 1611. For almost four centuries it had the status of an official translation, although the authorities never made any special orders on this issue.

8. Corrected translation (The Revised Version).

In 1870, on the initiative of the clergy of the Dioceses of Canterbury and York, it was decided to start revising the text of the King James Bible. A revised translation was published in 1881–1895, but it failed to replace the old text.

9. American translation (The American Standard Version). In 1901, the American Standard Translation was published in the USA. In turn, on the basis of this text, the Revised Standard Translation was prepared (the New Testament was published in 1946, the Old Testament in 1952).

10. New English Bible.

In contrast to the above attempts to correct the King James Bible, the New English Bible (complete edition - 1969) breaks with the Tyndall tradition; the new version is characterized by the rejection of a literal translation and the use of colloquial English of the 20th century. All Christian churches in the United Kingdom, with the exception of the Catholic Church, took part in the preparation of this translation.

English Catholic translations of the Bible.

1. Douai-Reims translation.

Gradually, in the course of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church began to realize the need to translate the Bible into national languages. In 1582, the Reims New Testament, translated from the Vulgate, was published; the translation was made at the English College in Reims (France) by G. Martin. In another French city, Douai, a translation of the Old Testament books was published in 1609–1610. It was also started by G. Martin, and completed the work of the president of the college, Cardinal William Allen, with the assistance of R. Bristow and T. Worzington. The translation was also made from the Vulgate; the text contains many Latinisms and often reproduces the original literally. The English translation of the Bible published in Reims and Douai was called the Douai-Reims Translation. From 1635 to 1749 only the New Testament part of it was reprinted; in 1749-1750, Bishop Richard Challoner corrected the translation of the Old Testament books, which breathed new life into the Douai-Rheims translation.

2. Translation by Knox.

The most important Catholic translation of the Bible into English in the 20th century. is a translation by Ronald Knox, published 1945–1949; the translation is accurate and elegant. The Knox Bible is officially approved by the Catholic Church.

3. Jerusalem Bible.

Second half of the 20th century marked by the creation of biblical Catholic translations into English and French, known as the Jerusalem Bible. A French translation from the original languages, with commentary, was prepared in the Dominican Republic. bible school(Jerusalem) and was published in 1956. A decade later, an English translation was published.

4. New American Bible.

In the United States with the support of the Bishops' Fraternity Committee Christian doctrine since 1952, a Catholic translation of individual biblical books from the original languages ​​has been published; the complete New American Bible was published in 1970, replacing the Douai-Rheims translation.

Deutsch.

Middle Ages.

The end of the 8th c. the first Old High German translations of biblical books are dated; an example of translations of this era can be considered the surviving so-called Fragments of the Mondze Monastery(Bavaria), which are excerpts from the transcription of the Gospel of Matthew.

During the period late medieval translations of individual parts of the Bible continue; in this era, the New Testament epistles are translated for the first time, as well as some of the prophetic books of the Old Testament.

The first complete German translation of the Bible was published in 1466 in Strasbourg by I. Mentelin; The original was the Vulgate.

Translation by M. Luther.

The editions of Erasmus of Rotterdam and J. Reuchlin made the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible available to the leaders of the Reformation.

M. Luther began his translation activity with the use of quotes from the Bible in German in his writings. In 1517 he began to translate large parts of the Holy Scriptures. In 1522 he completed a translation of the entire New Testament. The translation of the Old Testament, made by him using editions of the Hebrew and Greek Bibles, as well as the Vulgate, came out in parts from 1523 to 1534.

Luther revised the translation of the New Testament with his followers. He detailed his views in Translation message. Luther proclaimed the priority of "the meaning of the text over the literal" as the main principle of translation; he believed that the translation should reflect the fundamental theological views of the translator, for which explanatory inserts were added to the main text; caring about the clarity of the text, Luther was guided by the spoken language, often used figurative expressions, sought to convey the rhythm and poetic sound of the original. Based on his theological views, Luther changed the biblical canon in his own translation: he removed non-canonical books from the Old Testament, and the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistle of James from the New Testament.

Shortly after the publication of Luther's Bible, Catholic translations of the Bible appeared, largely dependent on Luther's translation.

Revision of Luther's Bible.

The 1545 edition was reprinted in Germany until the 19th century. However, the German language changed, and over time Luther's translation became incomprehensible. In 1863, at the Eisenach Church Conference, at the suggestion of Bible Societies, it was decided to work out a new edition of the translation, which was supposed to be published in modern orthography, while replacing outdated vocabulary and modernizing the syntax; in addition, the editing was intended to eliminate translation errors contained in the 1545 edition. The new text was to become the same for all German Protestants.

Work on the text has been going on for more than 100 years; in 1984 the final edition of the Luther Bible was completed by the Union of Evangelical Churches in Germany. The edition, published in the same year and used to this day, maintains a balance between Luther's and modern translation principles, bearing in mind, first of all, the comprehensibility of the biblical text for the reader. The new version of the translation is used both in worship and for religious education.

Protestant translations after Luther.

In parallel with the existence of the Luther Bible, starting from the 17th century. other Bible translations appear. Translation experiments of the 17th–18th centuries. primarily reflect the specifics of Protestantism as such, as well as the confessional features of its individual varieties within Lutheranism. In the 19th and 20th centuries scientific, philologically verified translations appear.

The creators of the "communicative translations" that are currently being carried out, first of all, pay attention to the accessibility of the target language, less concerned about the formal correspondence to the original text. The meaning of the original is transmitted, as far as possible, understandably and clearly, including in cases where the word form used in the translation no longer correlates with a similar word form in the original.

New Catholic translations.

The most authoritative among German Catholics until the 18th century. there remained the translation of I. Ditenberger, based on the official editions of the Vulgate and known as the “Mainz Bible”. From the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. Catholic translators are increasingly paying attention to the features of the original biblical text. The first translation of the New Testament from the Greek, made by Carl and Leander van Essami, received the greatest popularity among Catholics in Germany. In 1830–1832 in Nuremberg, relying on the works of his predecessors, J.F. von Allioli published his version of the German Bible; The Allioli Bible remained the most authoritative Catholic translation until the end of the 19th century. In the second half of the 20th century the Pattloch Bible (1956) and the Herder Bible (1965) are published; both of these Catholic translations are from the original languages.

Second Vatican Cathedral(1962-1965), who modernized many aspects of the life of the Catholic Church, allowed the use of national languages ​​as liturgical languages, and also recommended the implementation of new biblical translations from the original languages, and the involvement of representatives of other Christian churches in the work was welcomed. In pursuance of the decisions of the Council, the Unity Translation (1979-1980) was created, addressed to the German-speaking reader; the canonical Old Testament books here were translated from the Hebrew and Aramaic text, and the deuterocanonical and New Testament books from the Greek, without special orientation to the text of the Vulgate; the translation of the Psalter and the New Testament was carried out jointly with the Evangelical Church of Germany. This translation uses modern literary German and is distinguished by scientific accuracy; it was given the status of the official text of the Bible for all German-speaking Catholic dioceses.

French.

The first complete translation of biblical books into French in the Middle Ages, the Bible de Thou, was created at the end of the 13th century. and throughout the 14th century. enjoyed great popularity among the French and English aristocracy. A very important translation was Biblical history ria - an extended transcription carried out by Guillard de Moulin History of scholasticism Peter Comestor. In addition to the actual biblical text, it contained summaries, paraphrases and glosses from the "Biblia de Thou", as well as various other materials; this version is french. The Bible was distributed in Northern France. The New Testament translated by Moulin was published at Lyon in 1474. Last revised edition bible history came out a quarter of a century later (reprints of 1510 and 1515 followed).

The creation of a translation of the Bible from the original languages ​​was recognized as an urgent need by the Protestants of Neuchâtel (Switzerland); their translation was published in 1535. The version revised by J. Calvin came out in Geneva in 1540; subsequently, beginning in 1546, several reprints of the Geneva Bible came out. The 1588 edition was used for a long time in the preparation of subsequent Protestant translations.

In the 2nd half of the 16th century. 3 Catholic translations are created. A translation of the Vulgate was published in Louvain in 1550. In 1566, a translation by R. Benois was published, which is an adaptation of previous translations of the Bible, including the Geneva Bible; in 1578 in Antwerp, the Benois Bible was reprinted with corrections and subsequently went through more than two hundred reprints.

In the 17th century French Protestants reprinted the Geneva Bible. However, after the decree of Louis XIV in 1661, the publication of biblical translations became fraught with great difficulties; in 1678, 7 years before the repeal of the Edict of Nantes About religious tolerance, it is interrupted.

Two significant editions of the Bible were issued in the Netherlands: in 1669, a reprint of the Geneva Bible with extensive commentaries was published in Amsterdam; In the same place, in 1707, the Utrecht pastor D. Martin published a translation that preserves Calvinist dogma, but at the same time takes into account the achievements of contemporary researchers.

Martin's Bible was twice (in 1724 and 1744) corrected by JF Osterwald, a pastor from Neuchâtel. The translation of 1744, despite some shortcomings, was a success until the end of the 19th century. went through four dozen editions.

In the 17th century Catholics produced several editions of the New Testament. The monastery of Port-Royal played a leading role in this work. One of the coordinators of the translation carried out in Port-Royal, I. L. Le Maitre de Sacy, for 12 years, starting in 1672, published a translation of 10 Old Testament books. After his death, which followed in 1684, the translation of the entire Old Testament was completed by his like-minded people from this monastery. Thus, from 1672 to 1693, one of the most perfect French Bible translations was published. The de Sacy Bible, replacing the Louvain Bible, remained the most authoritative French version of Scripture throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

From 1701 to 1716, L. de Carrière published in Paris and Reims a Bible consisting of 32 books, providing the text with literary notes. Almost simultaneously, 1707 to 1716, Benedictine O. Calmet published in Paris 26 volumes of lit. commentary on all Old Testament and New Testament books. In 1748-1750, the so-called Vans Bible was published - a 14-volume edition prepared by Abbot A.F. de Vance. In this translation, previous experiences were taken into account and improved; however, this translation was available only to the clergy and high-ranking laity, as well as in libraries.

In 1894, the 1st volume of the Bible translation by O. Crampon, canon of Amiens, was published; the translator died in the same year, so his work was completed by 4 Jesuit priests, and 10 years later the final, 7th, volume was published. Crampon's translation was the first Catholic translation from the original languages. Reaction to this work was muted, with a number of revisions subsequently made to the translation; for all that, however, the French Catholics received a translation of the Bible, which until ser. 20th century remained the most authoritative.

During the 19th century in Europe, several bible societies were organized by Protestants, initially publishing old translations without subjecting them to any significant editing; the exception was the Lausanne Bible, as well as the translations of Sgon, Reiss, and Darby.

The Lausanne Bible was published in 2 parts: in 1839 a translation of the New Testament was published, from 1861 to 1872 - the Old Testament. In comparison with Osterwald's translation, more than 700 new words appeared in the Lausanne Bible, which undoubtedly enriched the French biblical lexicon. L. Sgon, professor at the theological faculty in Geneva, in 1874 published in Paris and Geneva a translation of the books of the Old Testament, and in 1880 in Geneva - the New Testament. From 1874 to 1881 in Paris, a professor at the Strasbourg theological faculty, E. G. Reis, published a complete Bible translation; The volume of the publication was 16 volumes, the text of the Bible was accompanied by lengthy commentaries. This edition did not become widely available and did not receive wide distribution and popularity, but it played a significant role in relation to the study of the Bible text.

In 1859, J. N. Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren community, published in Vevey (Switzerland) and in St. Agreve his translation of the New Testament, executed on a high scientific level. During the life of the translator, the Old Testament was not published, but 3 years after the death of Darby, an edition was published that included the Old and New Testaments in his translation.

In 1884, on the initiative of several synods of the French Reformed churches, a revision of the Osterwald Bible was begun. The work lasted a quarter of a century; a new edition saw the light in 1910; the editing in some cases was insignificant, first of all it refers to the most frequently cited fragments.

By the centenary of its founding (1818), from 1911 to 1947, the Protestant Bible Society in Paris began to prepare a new edition of the Bible. This translation, called the "Bible of the Century", was published in separate books starting in 1916; leading biblical scholars of the Reformed churches participated in translation activities.

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 21st century. The Bible of Sgon was repeatedly corrected and reprinted. Its most recent publication was by the United Bible Societies in 2002.

Until 1950 the most popular French The Crampon Bible remained a Catholic translation. This translation was revised three times over the following decades.

In 1973, the Bible of E. Osti and J. Trenke was published; publication was preceded by 25 years of work; during this time, translations of individual biblical books were published.

Since 1965, the publication of the so-called ecumenical translation began, carried out on the initiative of representatives of various Christian churches. In 1987, under the auspices of the United Bible Societies, a complete ecumenical French translation of the Bible was published.

An example of an unconventional approach to the translation of biblical texts is the Bible published in 1985 by the United Bible Societies in colloquial French. In order to make the Holy Scriptures accessible even to those who do not have a deep knowledge of the French language, the translators took advantage of the work of the linguist J. Gougueneme, who in the 1950s, at the request of UNESCO, marked the boundaries of the “basic French language”. This reduced language is characterized by a limited vocabulary (approximately 3.5 thousand words), short sentences, simplified verb conjugation. The translation was completed by 1993, the publication took place in 2000.

Another experimental Bible translation was released in 2001 by Bayar. The publication is focused on modern cultural realities and aims to attract readers brought up outside the Christian culture. The authors of the translation see the way to the solution of the set task in the rejection of the traditional church vocabulary and phraseology.

Spanish.

As a result of the activities of the Inquisition, insignificant fragments of many Spanish and Catalan manuscripts of the era preceding the Reformation were preserved, therefore, for the 16th, 17th and most of the 18th centuries. only Protestant translations of the Bible into Spanish.

A complete translation of the Bible was first created by C. de Reina, an immigrant Protestant; it was published in Basel in 1569. The basis for the New Testament was, first of all, the edition of Erasmus of Rotterdam, for the Old Testament - the Hebrew editions of the Bible. In 1602, the Reina Bible was revised by C. de Valera, taking into account the original texts, and under the name of the Reina-Valera Bible, with minor changes, it is reprinted up to the present. time. The experience of creating a single translation of the New Testament for Spain and Latin America (Hispano-Americana, 1917) was unsuccessful.

The first Catholic translation of the Bible into Spanish, made from the Vulgate by F. Sio de San Miguel, came out in 1793. A translation by F. Torres Amat (1825) was also made from the Vulgate. Both versions were repeatedly reprinted throughout the 19th century.

The official Catholic translation from the original languages ​​was made by E.N. Fuster and A. Colunga and published in 1944. In 1975, the so-called New Spanish Bible by A. Schockel and X. Mateos was published; a revised edition was published in 1977.

In 1966, the New Testament was published in colloquial Spanish translation, carried out for the purposes of the mission to Lat. America. In 1992, a revised version of the popular Bible was published.

Italian.

The first translations of the Bible into Italian date back to the 13th century, but they have not come down to us.

The first complete printed Bible was published in Venice in 1471; the translation was made by N. Malermi, the original was the Vulgate. For three centuries (until 1773) the Malermi Bible was reprinted 31 times.

In 1532, the Italian humanist A. Brucholi published the Bible, based on Lat. translations by S. Pagninus and Erasmus of Rotterdam; in 1559 this translation was banned. Meanwhile, in 1562, the Brucoli Bible was revised in Geneva and acquired great importance for the Italian Protestants who emigrated to Switzerland.

In 1538, a translation of the Dominican Order was published, which was oriented towards the Vulgate. The only translation of the New Testament made from the Greek. language, was translated by the Protestant M. Teofilo (1551).

For two centuries, from 1568 to 1768, the publication of the Bible in the national language was prohibited in Italy; for this reason further history translations again turns out to be associated with Protestantism.

The translation by the Geneva-born Italian Giovanni Diodati (1607) played a leading role. In 1641 Diodati revised his translation; in this form, his Bible became generally accepted among Italian Protestants. In the 17th century further revisions of it were repeatedly published in Germany. Revised versions of Diodati's translation circulated in the 19th century. British and Foreign Bible Society. In 1924, G. Luzzi subjected this translation to a radical revision; his version of the translation retains its value today.

In 1781, the official Catholic translation of the Bible, made by A. Martini, was published; The Vulgate was taken as the original text. The translation of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, commissioned by the Society of Blzh. Jerome and published since 1902.

In 1968, the ecumenical Concordat Bible was published, the result of a collaboration between Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Jewish theologians. In 1975, an Italian translation of the French ecumenical Bible was published.

By order of the Conference of Italian Bishops, the Catholic S. Garofalo created a new version of the Italian Bible (1971). In 1992 A. Ghirlanda's translation from Greek of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles was published in 4 volumes.

An ecumenical translation of the Bible into colloquial Italian was completed in 1985.

BIBLE TRANSLATIONS INTO OTHER LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD

By the number of translations into various languages ​​of the world, the Bible still ranks first. According to the German Bible Society (Stuttgart, 1995), the largest number of translations of the Holy Scriptures (about 600) were made into the languages ​​of the peoples of Africa (for example, in Amharic (Ethiopia) the Bible was published in 1840 by the British and Foreign Bible Society). In North and South America - more than 400 languages; in Australia (together with the Pacific Islands) - approx. 300. In Asia, translations have been made into over 500 languages.

Translations of the Bible into Japanese were made from the middle of the 16th century, but they have not survived. The oldest Bible translation that has come down to us dates back to 1837 (it came to Japan no earlier than 1859): the Prussian missionary K.F.A. Gutzlaff translated some New Testament books. Intensive work on the translation of Holy Scripture into Japanese began only in the last third of the 19th century. The first complete translation of the Bible was made by the efforts of the American Presbyterian missionary J. K. Hepburn and his European and Japanese collaborators: in 1874-1880 a translation of the New Testament was prepared, by 1888 - the Old Testament. In 1910–1917, the Bible was published, which included the revised text of the New Testament and the 1888 text of the Old Testament; this edition remained the most authoritative until the middle of the 20th century.

In 1867, the founder of the Orthodox mission in Japan, Hieromonk (later Metropolitan) Nikolai (Kasatkin). A translation of the New Testament was published in 1901; Met. Nicholas also translated the most important fragments of the Old Testament.

In 1951-1955, taking into account the changes in the Japanese language, a new translation was carried out by the Japan Bible Society; a group of translators was headed by Tsuru Senji, the translation was made from Heb. and Greek languages. In 1987, an ecumenical (Catholic-Protestant) translation of the Bible was published.

The first translations of biblical texts into Chinese date back to the middle of the 7th century; they were carried out by Nestorian missionaries. Separate parts of the Holy Scriptures were translated by Catholics in the late 15th - early 16th century. In the 19th - early 20th century. Numerous Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox translations of the Bible (or some of its books) into Chinese appeared. In 2001, Chinese authors from Heb. and Greek languages, a "New Translation" was made.

Fyodor Ludogovsky

Literature:

Canonical Gospels/ Per. from Greek V.N. Kuznetsova, ed. S.V. Lyozova and S.V. Tishchenko. M., 1993
Metzger B. Textology of the New Testament. M., 1996
bible encyclopedia. M., 1996
Chistovich I.A. The history of the translation of the Bible into Russian. M., 1997
Metzger B. Canon of the New Testament. M., 1998
Sinilo G.V. Ancient Literature of the Middle East and the World of the Tanakh(Old Testament). Minsk, 1998
Alekseev A.A. Textology of the Slavonic Bible. St. Petersburg, 1999
Griliches L. Archeology of the Text: A Comparative Analysis of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark in the Light of Semitic Reconstruction. M., 1999
Tov E. Textology of the New Testament. M., 2001
Tsurkan R.K. Slavic Translation of the Bible: Origin, History of the Text, and Major Editions. SPb., 2001
Metzger B. Early translations of the New Testament. M., 2002
Yurevich D. Prophecies about Christ in the Dead Sea Scrolls. St. Petersburg, 2004

HOLY HISTORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

1. Creation of the world and man.

At first there was nothing, there was only one Lord God. God created the whole world. In the beginning, God created the angels - the invisible world. After the creation of heaven - the invisible, angelic world, God created from nothing, by His one Word, earth, that is, the substance (matter), from which gradually created our entire visible, material (material) world: the visible sky, earth and everything on them. It was night. God said, "Let there be light!" and the first day arrived.

On the second day, God created the sky. On the third day, all the water was collected in rivers, lakes and seas, and the earth was covered with mountains, forests and meadows. On the fourth day the stars, the sun and the moon appeared in the sky. On the fifth day, fish and all kinds of creatures began to live in the water, and all kinds of birds appeared on the earth. On the sixth day animals appeared on four legs, and after all, on the sixth day, God created man. God created everything with His own word. .

God created man differently from animals. God first created a human body from the earth, and then breathed a soul into this body. The human body dies, but the soul never dies. In his soul, man is like God. God gave the first man a name Adam. Adam, by God's will, fell asleep soundly. God took a rib from him and created a wife for Adam, Eve.

On the east side, God ordered a large garden to grow. This garden was called paradise. Every tree grew in paradise. A special tree grew between them - tree of life. People ate the fruits from this tree and did not know any disease or death. God placed Adam and Eve in Paradise. God showed love for people, it was necessary to show them something of his love for God. God forbade Adam and Eve to eat fruit from the same tree. This tree grew in the middle of paradise and was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

2. The first sin.

Not long people lived in paradise. The devil envied the people and confused them to sin.

The devil was at first a good angel, and then he became proud and became evil. The devil possessed the serpent and asked Eve: “Is it true that God said to you: “do not eat the fruit from any tree in paradise?” Eve answered: “We can eat the fruits from the trees; only the fruits from the tree that grows in the middle of paradise, God did not order us to eat, because from them we will die. The serpent said, “No, you will not die. God knows that from those fruits you yourself will become like gods - that's why He did not order you to eat them. Eve forgot the commandment of God, believed the devil: she plucked the forbidden fruit and ate it, and gave it to Adam, Adam did the same.

3. Punishment for sin.

People sinned, and their conscience began to torment them. In the evening God appeared in paradise. Adam and Eve hid from God, God called Adam and asked: "What have you done?" Adam replied, "I was confused by the wife You yourself gave me."

GOD asked Eve. Eve said: "The serpent confused me." God cursed the serpent, drove Adam and Eve out of paradise, and assigned a formidable angel with a fiery sword to paradise. From that time on, people began to get sick and die. It became difficult for a person to get food for himself.

It was hard for Adam and Eve in their souls, and the devil began to confuse people for sins. As a consolation to people, God promised that the Son of God would be born on earth and save people.

4. Cain and Abel.

Eve had a son, and Eve named him Cain. The evil man was Cain. Eve gave birth to another son, a meek, obedient Abel. God taught Adam to make sacrifices for sins. Cain and Abel also learned to make sacrifices from Adam.

Once they made sacrifices together. Cain brought bread, Abel brought lamb. Abel earnestly prayed to God for the forgiveness of his sins, but Cain did not think about them. Abel's prayer reached God, and Abel's soul became joyful, but God did not accept Cain's sacrifice. Cain got angry, called Abel into the field and killed him there. God cursed Cain and his family, and he was not happy on earth. Cain felt ashamed before his father and mother, and he left them. Adam and Eve grieved because Cain killed the good Abel. As a consolation, their third son, Seth, was born. He was as kind and obedient as Abel.

5. The global flood.

Adam and Eve, in addition to Cain and Seth, had more sons and daughters. They began to live with their families. In these families, children also began to be born, and there were many people on earth.

Cain's children were evil. They forgot God and lived sinfully. Sif's family was good, kind. At first, the Seth family lived separately from Cain's. Then good people began to marry girls from Cain's family, and they themselves began to forget God. More than two thousand years have passed since the creation of the world, and all people have become evil. Only one righteous man remained, Noah and his family. Noah remembered God, prayed to God, and God said to Noah: “All people have become evil, and I will destroy all life on earth if they do not repent. Build a big ship. Take your family and different animals to the ship. Those animals and birds that are sacrificed, take seven pairs, and other two pairs. Noah built the ark for 120 years. People laughed at him. He did everything the way God told him to. Noah shut himself up in the ark, and poured heavy rain on the ground. It rained for forty days and forty nights. The water flooded the whole earth. All people, all animals and birds died. Only the ark floated on the water. In the seventh month, the water began to subside, and the ark stopped on the high mountain Ararat. But it was only a year after the beginning of the flood that it was possible to leave the ark. Only then did the earth dry up.

Noah came out of the ark and first of all offered a sacrifice to God. God blessed Noah with all his family and said that there would never be a global flood again. So that people would remember the promise of God, God showed them a rainbow in the clouds.

6. Children of Noah.

Noah's ark stopped in a warm country. In addition to bread, grapes will be born there. Grapes are eaten fresh and made into wine. Noah once drank a lot of grape wine and became drunk. He fell asleep naked in his tent. Noah's son Ham saw his father naked and laughingly told his brothers Shem and Japheth about it. Shem and Japheth went up and dressed their father, and Ham was put to shame.

Noah woke up and found out that Ham was laughing at him. He said that there would be no happiness for Ham and his children. Noah blessed Shem and Japheth and predicted that the Savior of the world, the Son of God, would be born from the Sim tribe.

7. Pandemonium.

Noah only had three sons: Shem, Japheth and Ham. After the flood, they all lived together with their children. When many people were born, it became crowded for people to live in one place.

I had to look for new places to live. Strong people before that wanted to leave a memory for the ages. They started building a tower and wanted to build it up to the sky. It is impossible to build a tower to the sky, and people began to work in vain. God took pity on sinful people and made it so that one family ceased to understand the other: different languages ​​​​appeared between people. Building the tower then became impossible, and people dispersed to different places, and the tower remained unfinished.

Having settled, people began to forget God, began to believe instead of God, in the sun, in thunder, in the wind, in brownies and even in various animals: they began to pray to them. People began to make gods for themselves out of stone and wood. These self-made gods are called idols. and who believes in them, those people are called idolaters.

Abraham lived after the flood, one thousand two hundred years later, in the Chaldean land. By that time, people again forgot the true God and bowed to various idols. Abraham was not like other people: he revered God, but did not bow to idols. For a righteous life, God gave Abraham happiness; he had large herds of all kinds of cattle, many workers and all kinds of goods. Only Abraham did not have children. Abraham's family bowed to idols. Abraham firmly believed in God, and his relatives could embarrass him into idolatry. So God told Abraham to leave the Chaldean land for the land Canaanite and promised to help him in a foreign country. As a reward for obedience, God promised Abraham to send a son, and from him to multiply entire nations.

Abraham believed God, gathered with all his possessions. He took with him his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot and moved to the land of Canaan. In the land of Canaan, God appeared to Abraham and promised him his favors. God sent happiness to Abraham in everything; he had about five hundred workers with shepherds. Abraham was like a king among them: he himself judged them, and sorted out all their affairs. There was no leader over Abraham. Abraham lived with his servants in tents. Abraham had more than a hundred of these tents. Abraham did not build houses because he had large herds of cattle. It was impossible to live in one place for a long time, and they moved with their flocks to where there was more grass.

9. God appeared to Abraham in the form of three strangers.

One day, at noon, Abraham was sitting near his tent, looking at the green mountains where his flocks were grazing, and he saw three strangers. Abraham loved to receive wanderers. He ran to them, bowed to the ground and invited them to rest. The Strangers agreed. Abraham ordered to prepare dinner and stood near the strangers, began to treat them. A stranger said to Abraham: “In a year I will be here again, and your wife Sarah will have a son.” Sarah did not believe such joy, because she was ninety years old at the time. But the stranger said to her, “Is there anything difficult for God?” A year later, as the stranger said, it happened: Sarah had a son, Isaac.

God Himself and with Him two angels appeared to be strangers.

10. Abraham sacrificed Isaac.

Isaac grew up. Abraham loved him dearly. God appeared to Abraham and said: "Take your only son and sacrifice him on the mountain, where I will show you." Abraham the next day got ready to go, took with him firewood, two workers and Isaac. On the third day of the journey, God pointed out the mountain where Isaac was to be sacrificed. Abraham left the workers under the mountain, and he himself went with Isaac to the mountain. Dear Isaac was carrying firewood and asked his father: “We have firewood with you, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham replied, "God himself will show the sacrifice." On the mountain, Abraham cleared a place, applied stones, laid them on them. Firewood and put Isaac on top of the firewood. To make a sacrifice.

God needed to stab Isaac and burn him. Abraham had already raised his knife, but the angel stopped Abraham: “Do not raise your hand against your son. Now you have shown that you believe in God and love God more than anything.” Abraham looked around and saw a lamb entangled in the bushes: Abraham sacrificed it to God, and Isaac remained alive, God knew that Abraham would obey Him, and ordered Isaac to be sacrificed as an example to other people.

Isaac was a righteous man. He inherited all his wealth from his father and married Rebekah. Rebekah was a beautiful and kind girl. Isaac lived with her until old age, and God gave Isaac happiness in business. He lived in the same place where Abraham lived. Isaac and Rebekah had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Jacob was an obedient, quiet son, but Esau was rude.

The mother loved Jacob more, but Esau hated his brother. Fearing Esau's malice, Jacob left his father's house to live with his uncle, his mother's brother, and lived there for twenty years.

12. Jacob's special dream.

On the way to his uncle, Jacob once went to bed at night in the middle of a field and saw in a dream a large staircase; at the bottom she leaned on the ground, and on top she went into the sky. On this ladder the angels descended to earth and again ascended to heaven. At the top of the ladder stood the Lord Himself and said to Jacob: “I am the God of Abraham and Isaac; I will give this land to you and your descendants. You will have many offspring. Wherever you go, I will be with you everywhere." Jacob woke up and said, "This is a holy place," and called it the house of God. In a dream, God showed Jacob in advance that the Lord Jesus Christ himself would descend to earth, just as angels descended from heaven to earth.

13. Joseph.

Jacob lived with his uncle for twenty years, married there and made a lot of good, and then returned to his homeland. Jacob's family was large, there were twelve sons alone. Not all of them were the same. Joseph was the kindest and kindest of all. For this, Jacob loved Joseph more than all the children and dressed him all more elegantly. The brothers were jealous of Joseph and angry with him. The brothers were especially angry with Joseph when he told them two special dreams. First, Joseph told the brothers this dream: “We are knitting sheaves in the field. My sheaf has stood up and stands straight, and your sheaves have stood around and bow to my sheaf. To this, the brothers said to Joseph: “You are wrong to think that we will bow to you.” Another time, Joseph saw in a dream that the sun, moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to him. Joseph told this dream to his father and brothers. Then the father said: “What kind of dream did you have? Can it be that I and my mother and eleven brothers will someday bow to you to the ground?

Once Joseph's brothers went far from their father with the flock, and Joseph stayed at home. Jacob sent him to his brothers. Joseph went. From a distance, his brothers saw him and said: “here comes our dreamer, we will kill him, and we will tell our father that the animals have eaten him, then we will see how his dreams will come true.” Then the brothers changed their minds about killing Joseph and decided to sell him. In the old days, people were bought and sold. The owner forced the bought people to work for nothing. Foreign merchants passed by Joseph's brothers. The brothers sold Joseph to them. The merchants took him to the land of Egypt. The brothers deliberately stained Joseph's clothes with blood and brought it to his father. Jacob saw Joseph's clothes, recognized them, and wept. “It is true that the beast tore my Joseph to pieces,” he said with tears, and from that time on he constantly grieved for Joseph.

14. Joseph in Egypt.

AT Egyptian land merchants sold Joseph to the royal official Potiphar. Josef honestly worked for him. But Potiphar's wife was angry with Joseph, and in vain complained to her husband. Joseph was put in jail. God did not let an innocent person die in vain. Joseph was recognized even by the king of Egypt himself or by the pharaoh. Pharaoh had two dreams in a row. It was as if seven fat cows came out of the river, then seven thin ones. The thin cows ate the fat ones, but they themselves remained thin. Pharaoh woke up, thought what kind of dream this was, and fell asleep again. And he sees again, as if seven large ears of corn have grown, and then seven empty ones. The empty ears ate the full ears. Pharaoh gathered his learned sages and began to ask them what these two dreams meant. Smart people did not know how to interpret the dreams of the pharaoh. One official knew that Joseph was good at interpreting dreams. This official advised to call him. Joseph came and explained that both dreams say the same thing: first there will be seven years of good harvest in Egypt, and then seven years of famine will come. In famine years, people will eat all the stocks.

Pharaoh saw that God himself gave Joseph the mind, and made him the chief commander over all the land of Egypt. At first, seven years were fruitful, and then hungry years came. Joseph bought so much bread for the treasury that he got it for sale not only in his own land, but also on the side.

Famine also came to the land of Canaan, where Jacob lived with his eleven sons. Jacob learned that bread was sold in Egypt, and he sent his sons there to buy bread. Joseph ordered all foreigners to send for bread to him. Therefore, Joseph was brought to his brothers. The brothers did not recognize Joseph because he had become a noble man. Joseph's brothers bowed at his feet. At first, Joseph did not tell his brothers, and then he could not stand it and opened up. The brothers were afraid; they thought Joseph would remember them all the evil. But he embraced them. The brothers told that their father Jacob was still alive, and Joseph sent horses for his father. Jacob was glad that Joseph was alive and moved with his family to Egypt. Joseph gave him a lot of good land, and Jacob began to live on it. After the death of Jacob, his sons and grandsons began to live. Pharaoh remembered how Joseph saved the people from famine, and helped the children and grandchildren of Jacob.

15. Moses.

Moses was born in Egypt after the death of Joseph three hundred and fifty years later. At that time the kings of Egypt forgot. how Joseph saved the Egyptians from starvation. They began to offend the descendants of Jacob. Many people were born from his family. These people were called Jews. The Egyptians feared that the Jews would take over the Egyptian kingdom. They tried to weaken the Jews with hard work. But the work made the Jews stronger, and many of them were born. Then the pharaoh ordered all the Jewish boys to be thrown into the river, and the girls to be left alive.

When Moses was born, his mother hid him for three months. It became impossible to hide the baby longer than this. His mother put him in a tarred basket and let him into the river, near the bank. The king's daughter went to this place to bathe. She ordered to get a basket out of the water and took the baby to her children. Moses grew up in the royal palace. It was good for Moses to live with the king's daughter, but he felt sorry for the Jews. Once Moses saw that an Egyptian was beating a Jew. The Jew did not dare to say a word to the Egyptian. Moses looked around, saw no one, and killed the Egyptian. Pharaoh found out about this and wanted to execute Moses, and Moses fled to the ground Midian. There he was taken in by the priest of Midian. Moses married his daughter and began to tend his father-in-law's flock. Moses lived in Midian for forty years. At that time, the pharaoh who wanted to kill Moses died. 16. God told Moses to free the Jews.

Once Moses approached Mount Horeb with his flock. Moses thought about his relatives, about their bitter life, and suddenly he saw a bush all on fire. This bush burned and did not burn. Moses was surprised and wanted to come closer to see the burning bush.

Moses was afraid to go to the king and began to refuse. But God gave Moses the power to work miracles. God promised to punish the Egyptians with executions if the pharaoh did not immediately release the Jews. Then Moses went from Midian to Egypt. There he went to Pharaoh and told him the words of God. Pharaoh got angry and ordered more work to be done on the Jews. Then all the water of the Egyptians became bloody for seven days. The fish in the water suffocated, and the stench went. Pharaoh did not understand this. Then frogs, clouds of midges attacked the Egyptians, there was a loss of cattle and various other punishments of God. At each punishment, the pharaoh promised to release the Jews into freedom, and after the punishment he retracted his words. In one night, for all the Egyptians, an angel killed the eldest sons, one in each family. After that, the pharaoh himself began to rush the Jews so that they would leave Egypt as soon as possible.

17. Jewish Passover.

On that night, when the angel killed the eldest sons of the Egyptians, Moses ordered the Jews to slaughter a one-year-old lamb in every house, anoint the doorposts with blood, and bake and eat the lamb itself with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. Bitter grass was needed as a memory of the bitter life in Egypt, and unleavened bread about how the Jews were in a hurry to get out of captivity. Where there was blood on the joints, there an angel passed by. Among the Jews, none of the children died that night. Now their bondage is gone. Since then, the Jews have established to celebrate this day and called it Easter. Easter means... deliverance.

18. The passage of the Jews through the Red Sea.

Early in the morning, the day after the death of the Egyptian firstborn, all the Jewish people left Egypt. God Himself showed the Jews the way: in the daytime a cloud was ahead of everyone in the sky, and at night a fire shone from this cloud. The Jews approached the Red Sea and stopped to rest. It was a pity to the pharaoh that he released free laborers and he chased the Jews with the army. Pharaoh overtook them near the sea. The Jews had nowhere to go; they were frightened and began to scold Moses, why he took them to death from Egypt. Moses told the Jews, "Trust in God, and He will deliver you forever from the Egyptians." God told Moses to stretch the staff over the sea, and the water parted into the sea for several miles. The Jews went along the dry bottom to the other side of the sea. A cloud stood between them and the Egyptians. The Egyptians rushed to catch up with the Jews. The Jews have all crossed over to the other side. From the other side, Moses held out his staff over the sea. The water returned to its place, and all the Egyptians drowned.

19. God gave the law to Mount Sinai.

From the seashore the Jews went to Mount Sinai. On the road they stopped near Mount Sinai. God said to Moses, “I am giving the people the law. If he keeps My law, I will establish a covenant or covenant with him and help him in everything.” Moses asked the Jews if they would keep the law of God? The Jews answered: "we will live according to God's law". Then God told everyone to stand around the mountain. All the people stood around Mount Sinai. The mountain was covered with thick clouds.

Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed; the mountain smoked; sounds were heard, as if someone was blowing trumpets; the sounds grew louder; the mountain began to shake. Then everything was quiet, and the voice of God himself was heard: “I am the Lord your God, know no other gods but Me.” The Lord began to speak further and told the people the Ten Commandments. They read like this:

Commandments.

1. I am the Lord thy God; let there be no bosi inii for you, except for Mene.

2. Do not make for yourself an idol, and any likeness, a fir tree in heaven, a mountain, a fir tree on the earth below, and a fir tree in the waters under the earth; don't bow down to them, don't serve them.

3. Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, if you keep it holy, do six days, and do all your work in them; on the seventh day, the Sabbath, to the Lord thy God.

5. Honor your father and your mother, may it be good for you, and may you be long on earth.

6. Thou shalt not kill.

7. Do not commit adultery.

8. Don't steal.

9. Do not listen to a friend, your testimony is false.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy sincere wife, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, nor his village, nor his servant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor any of his cattle, nor all that is thy neighbor's spruce.

0 than they say.

The Jews were frightened, they became afraid to stand near the mountain and listen to the voice of the Lord. They moved away from the mountain and said to Moses: “You go and listen. Whatever the Lord tells you, you tell us.” Moses went up into the cloud and received from God two stone tablets or tablets. The ten commandments were written on them. On the mountain, Moses received other laws from God, then gathered all the people and read the law to the people. The people promised to fulfill the law of God, and Moses brought a sacrifice to God. God then made His covenant with all the Jewish people. Moses wrote the law of God in books. They are called books Holy Scripture.

20. Tabernacle.

The tabernacle in its appearance is like a large tent, with a courtyard. Before Moses, Jews prayed in the field or on the mountain, and God ordered Moses to build a tabernacle for the gathering of all Jews for prayer and for offering sacrifices.

The tabernacle was made of wooden poles studded with copper and gilded. These poles were stuck into the ground. On top of them, bars were laid, and a canvas was hung on the bars. Such a fence of poles and linen looked like a courtyard.

In this courtyard, directly opposite the entrance, stood an altar studded with copper, and behind it a large laver. A fire burned constantly on the altar, and sacrifices were burned every morning and evening. From the laver, the priests washed their hands and feet and washed the meat of those animals that were sacrificed.

On the western edge of the courtyard stood a tent, also made of gilded poles. The tent was closed on the sides and top with linen and leather. Two curtains hung in this tent: one closed the entrance from the yard, and the other hung inside and divided the tent into two parts. The western part was called Holy of Holies, and the eastern one, closer to the courtyard, was called - Sanctuary.

In the sanctuary, to the right of the entrance, stood a gold-bound table. There were always twelve loaves on this table. The loaves were changed every Saturday. To the left of the entrance was candlestick with seven lamps. In these lamps wood oil burned inextinguishably. Directly opposite the veil in the Holy of Holies stood an altar of hot coals. The priests entered the sanctuary in the morning and in the evening, read the prescribed prayers and poured incense on the coals. This altar was called censer altar.

In the Holy of Holies there was a box with a golden lid, lined with gold inside and out. Golden angels were placed on the lid. In this box were two skeins with ten commandments. This box was called Ark of the Covenant.

Served in the tabernacle high priest, priests and all the men of the lineage of Jacob's son Levi. They were called Levites. The high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, but only once a year, to pray for all people. The priests took turns entering the sanctuary every day to burn incense, while the Levites and the common people could only pray in the courtyard. When the Jews moved from one place to another, the Levites folded the tabernacle and carried it in their arms.

21. How the Jews entered the land of Canaan.

Jews lived near Mount Sinai until a cloud led them further. They had to cross a large desert where there was neither bread nor water. But God Himself helped the Jews: He gave them cereals for food, which fell every day from above. This cereal was called manna. God also gave the Jews water in the desert.

After many years, the Jews came to the land of Canaan. They defeated the Canaanites, took possession of their land and divided it into twelve parts. Jacob had twelve sons. Twelve societies were born from them. Each society was named after one of the sons of Jacob.

Moses did not reach the land of Canaan with the Jews: he died dearly. Instead of Moses, elders ruled the people.

On the new earth, the Jews first fulfilled the law of God and lived happily. Then the Jews began to adopt the pagan faith from neighboring peoples, began to bow to idols and offend each other. For this, God stopped helping the Jews, and they were overcome by enemies. The Jews repented, and God forgave them. Then the brave righteous people gathered an army and drove out the enemies. These people were called judges. Various judges ruled over the Jews for more than four hundred years.

22. Election and anointing of Saul to the kingdom.

All peoples had kings, but the Jews had no king: they were ruled by judges. The Jews Came to the Righteous Man Samuel Samuel was a judge, he judged truthfully, but he alone could not govern all the Jews. He placed his sons to help him. The sons began to take bribes and judged incorrectly. The people said to Samuel, "Choose a king for us, like other nations." Samuel prayed to God, and God told him to anoint Saul as king. Samuel anointed Saul, and God gave Saul his special power.

At first, Saul did everything according to God's law, and God gave him happiness in the war with enemies. Then Saul became proud, wanted to do everything in his own way, and God stopped helping him.

When Saul stopped listening to God, God told Samuel to anoint David as king. David was then seventeen years old. He was tending his father's flock. His father lived in the city of Bethlehem. Samuel came to Bethlehem, offered sacrifice to God, anointed David, and the Holy Spirit fell on David. The Lord then gave David great strength and intelligence, and the Holy Spirit departed from Saul.

24. David's victory over Goliath.

After David was anointed by Samuel, the Philistine enemies attacked the Jews. The Philistine army and the Jewish army stood on the mountains, facing each other, and between them was a valley. From the Philistines came a giant, a strong man Goliath. He called one of the Jews to fight one on one. For forty days Goliath went out, but no one dared to go out on him. David came to the war to find out about his brothers. David heard that Goliath was laughing at the Jews, and volunteered to go to him. Goliath saw young David and boasted of crushing him. But David trusted in God. He took a stick with a belt or a sling, put a stone in the sling and let it go at Goliath. The stone hit Goliath in the forehead. Goliath fell, and David ran up to him and cut off his head. The Philistines got scared and fled, but the Jews drove them out of their land. The king rewarded David, made him a leader, and married his daughter to him.

Soon the Philistines recovered again and attacked the Jews. Saul went with his army against the Philistines. The Philistines defeated his army. Saul was afraid of being captured and killed himself. Then, after Saul, David became king. Everyone wanted the king to live in their city. David didn't mean to offend anyone. He conquered the city of Jerusalem from the enemies and began to live in it. David built a tabernacle in Jerusalem and transferred the ark of the covenant to it. Since then, all Jews on major holidays began to pray in Jerusalem. David knew how to compose prayers. David's prayers are called psalms and the book where they are written is called psalter. The Psalter is read even now: in the church and over the dead. David lived righteously, reigned for many years and conquered much land from his enemies. From the family of David, a thousand years later, the Savior-Jesus Christ was born on earth.

Solomon was the son of David and became king over the Jews during his father's lifetime. After David's death, God told Solomon, "Ask me for whatever you want, I'll give it to you." Solomon asked God for more intelligence in order to be able to rule the kingdom. Solomon thought not only about himself, but about other people, and for this God gave Solomon, in addition to his mind, wealth and glory. This is how Solomon showed his special mind.

Two women lived in the same house. Each of them had a baby. One woman's baby died at night. She gave her dead child to another woman. When she woke up, she saw that the dead child was not hers. The women began to argue and went to court to King Solomon himself. Solomon said: “No one knows whose child is alive and whose is dead. So that neither one nor the other of you will be offended, I order you to cut the child in half and give each half. One woman answered: “It will be better this way”, and the other said: “No, do not cut the baby, but give it to another.” Then everyone saw which of the two women was the mother, and which was a stranger to the child.

Solomon had a lot of gold and silver, he ruled the kingdom smarter than all the kings, and the glory about him went in different kingdoms. People came to see him from distant countries. Solomon was a man of learning and himself wrote the four holy books.

26. Construction of the temple.

Solomon built a church or temple in the city of Jerusalem. Before Solomon, the Jews only had a tabernacle. Solomon built a large stone temple and ordered the ark of the covenant to be moved into it. Inside, the temple was lined with expensive wood, and all the walls and all the doors were upholstered with wood according to the wood. Solomon spared nothing for the construction of the temple, the temple cost a lot of money, and many workers built it. When it was built, the people from all over the kingdom came together to consecrate the temple. The priests prayed to God, and King Solomon also prayed. After his prayer, fire fell from heaven and ignited the sacrifices. The temple was arranged in the same way as the tabernacle. It was divided into three parts: the courtyard, the sanctuary and the Holy of Holies.

27. The division of the kingdom of the Jews.

Solomon reigned for forty years. At the end of his life, he began to live a lot of money and imposed large taxes on the people. When Solomon died, Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, had to become king over all the Jewish people. To Rehoboam then came elected from the people and said: "Your father took large taxes from us, reduce them." Rehoboam answered the elect; "My father took large taxes, and I will take them even more."

The entire Jewish people was divided into twelve societies or knees.

After these words, ten tribes chose another king for themselves, and Rehoboam had only two tribes left - Judah and Benjamin. One Jewish kingdom was divided into two kingdoms, and both kingdoms became weak. The kingdom in which there were ten tribes was called Israeli and in which there were two knees - Jewish. There was one people, but there were two kingdoms. Under David, the Jews worshiped the true God, and after him they often forgot the true faith.

28. How the kingdom of Israel perished.

The king of Israel did not want the people to go to pray to God in the Jerusalem temple. He was afraid that the people would not recognize Rehoboam, the son of King Solomon, as king. That's why new king set up idols in his kingdom and confused the people to idolatry. After him, other kings of Israel bowed to idols. From idolatrous faith, the Israelites became ungodly and feeble. The Assyrians attacked the Israelites, defeated them, “took their land, and took the most noble people into captivity to Nineveh. In place of the former people settled pagans. These pagans intermarried with the remaining Israelites, accepted the true faith, but mixed it with their pagan faith. The new inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel began to be called Samaritans.

29. Fall of the kingdom of Judah.

The Kingdom of Judah also fell, because the kings and people of Judah forgot the true God and bowed down to idols.

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar attacked the kingdom of Judah with a large army, defeated the Jews, destroyed the city of Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. Nebuchadnezzar did not leave the Jews in their places: he took them captive to his Babylonian kingdom. On the foreign side, the Jews repented before God and began to live according to the law of God.

God had mercy on the Jews then. The Babylonian kingdom itself was taken by the Persians. The Persians were kinder than the Babylonians and allowed the Jews to return to their land. The Jews lived in captivity in Babylon seventy years.

30. 0 prophets.

The prophets were such holy men who taught the people true faith. They taught people and said what would happen after, or prophesied. Therefore they are called prophets.

The prophets lived in the kingdom of Israel: Elijah, Elisha and Jonah, and in the kingdom of Judah: Isaiah and Daniel. In addition to them, there were many other prophets, but these prophets are the most important.

31. Prophets of the kingdom of Israel.

Prophet Elijah. The prophet Elijah lived in the wilderness. He rarely came to towns and villages. He spoke in such a way that everyone listened to him with fear. Elijah was not afraid of anyone and told everyone the truth straight in the eyes, and he knew the truth from God.

When the prophet Elijah lived, kingdom of Israel King Ahab ruled. Ahab married the daughter of a pagan king, bowed to idols, got idols, priests and sorcerers, and forbade bowing to the true God. Together with the king, the people completely forgot God. Here the prophet Elijah comes to King Ahab himself and says: “The Lord God has appointed that there will be no rain or dew in the land of Israel for three years.” Ahab did not answer this, but Elijah knew that Ahab would be angry afterward, and Elijah went into the wilderness. There he settled by the stream, and the ravens, by God's command, brought him food. For a long time not a drop of rain fell on the ground, and that stream dried up.

Elijah went to the village of Sareptu and met a poor widow on the road with a jar of water. Elijah said to the widow, "Give me a drink." The widow got the prophet drunk. Then he said: "Feed me." The widow replied: “I myself only have a little flour in a tin and a little oil in a pot. We will eat it with our son, and then we will die of hunger.” To this, Elijah said: “Do not be afraid, neither flour nor oil will decrease from you, just feed me.” The widow believed the prophet Elijah, baked a cake and gave it to him. And, it is true, after that, neither flour nor butter from the widow did not decrease: she ate it herself with her son and fed the prophet Elijah. For her kindness, the prophet soon repaid her by the grace of God. The widow's son died. The widow wept and spoke of her grief to Elijah. He prayed to God, and the boy came to life.

Three and a half years passed, and in the kingdom of Israel there was a drought. Many people died of hunger. Ahab looked everywhere for Elijah, but he could not find him anywhere. After three and a half years, Elijah himself came to Ahab and said: “How long will you bow to idols? Let all the people gather, and we will make a sacrifice, but we will not lay a fire. Whose victim will catch fire by itself is the truth. The people gathered according to the royal order. The Baal priests also came and prepared a sacrifice. From morning to evening the priests of Baal prayed, asked their idol to light the sacrifice, but, of course, they prayed in vain. Elijah also prepared a sacrifice. He ordered his victim to pour water three times, prayed to God, and the victim itself caught fire. The people saw that the Baal priests were deceivers, so they killed them and believed in God. For the repentance of people, God immediately gave rain to the earth. Elijah went back into the wilderness. He lived holy, like an angel of God, and for such a life God took him alive to heaven. Elijah had a disciple, also a prophet, Elisha. Once Elijah and Elisha went into the wilderness. Dear Elijah said to Elisha: “Soon I will part with you, ask me for now what you want.” Elisha answered: “The Spirit of God which is in you, let it be doubled in me,” Elijah said: “You ask a lot, but you will receive such a prophetic spirit if you see how I will be taken from you.” Elijah and Yelesey went further, and suddenly a fiery chariot and fiery horses appeared before them. Elijah went up in this chariot. Elisha began to shout after him; “My father, my father,” but he did not see Elijah again, but only his clothes fell from above. Elisha took it and went back. He reached the Jordan River and struck the water with this garment. The river parted. Elisha walked along the bottom to the other side.

32. Prophet Elisha.

The prophet Elisha began to teach the people the true faith after Elijah. Elisha did a lot of good to people by the power of God and constantly walked through cities and villages.

Once Elisha came to the city of Jericho. The inhabitants of the city told Elisha that they had bad water in the well. Elisha put a handful of salt in the place where the spring was knocked out of the ground, and the water became good.

Another time a poor widow came to Elisha and complained to him: “My husband has died and is left indebted to one man. That man has come now and wants to take both my sons as slaves.” Elisha asked the widow, “What do you have at home?” She replied, "Only one pot of oil." Elisha said to her, “Get pots from all your neighbors and pour oil from your pot into them.” The widow obeyed, and the oil poured out of her pot without end until all the pots were full. The widow sold the oil, paid off her debts, and still had money for bread.

The chief commander of the Syrian army, Naaman, fell ill with a leprosy disease. His whole body ached, and then it began to rot, and a heavy smell came from him. Nothing could cure this disease. His wife had a Jewish slave girl. She advised Naaman to go to the prophet Elisha. Naaman went to the prophet Elisha with large gifts. Elisha did not take gifts, but ordered Naaman to dip seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman did this, and the leprosy went away from him.

Once the Lord himself punished foolish boys for Elisha. Elisha was approaching the city of Bethel. Many children were playing around the walls of the city. They saw Elisha and began to shout: “Go, bald, go bald!” Elisha cursed the children. Bears came out of the forest and strangled forty-two boys.

Elisha did mercy to people even after death. Once a dead man was placed in the grave of Elisha, and he immediately resurrected.

33. Prophet Jonah.

Shortly after Elisha, the prophet Jonah began to teach the Israelites. The Israelites did not listen to the prophets, and the Lord sent Jonah to teach the Gentiles in the city of Nineveh. The Ninevites were the enemies of the Israelites. Jonah did not want to teach enemies, and he went by sea on a ship, in a completely different direction. A storm arose on the sea: the ship was thrown on the waves like a chip. Everyone on the ship prepared to die. Jonah confessed to everyone that God sent such a disaster because of him. Jonah was thrown into the sea, and the storm subsided. Jonah did not die either. A large sea fish swallowed Jonah. Jonah stayed inside this fish for three days and remained alive, and then the fish threw him ashore. Then Jonah went to Nineveh and began to speak through the streets of the city: “Forty more days, and Nineveh will perish.” The Ninevites heard such words, repented before God of their sins: they began to fast and pray. For such repentance, God forgave the Ninevites, and their city remained intact.

34. Prophets of the Kingdom of Judah.

Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah became a prophet by a special calling from God. One day he saw the Lord God on high throne. Seraphim stood around God and sang Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory! Isaiah was frightened and said: "I perished because I saw the Lord, and I myself am a sinful man." Suddenly, a seraphim flew to Isaiah with hot coal, put the coal to Isaiah's mouth and said: "There are no more sins on you." And Isaiah heard the voice of God himself: “Go and tell the people: your heart is hardened, you do not understand the teachings of God. You bring sacrifices to me in the temple, while you yourself offend the poor. Stop doing evil. If you do not repent, I will take your land from you and only then will I bring your children back here when they repent.” Isaiah from that time on taught people all the time, pointed out their sins to them and threatened sinners with the wrath and curse of God. Isaiah did not think about himself at all: he ate what he had to, dressed himself in whatever God sent, but he always thought only about the truth of God. Sinners did not love Isaiah, they were angry at his truthful speeches. But those who repented, Isaiah comforted those with predictions about the Savior. Isaiah predicted that Jesus Christ would be born of a Virgin, that He would be merciful to people, that people would torment, torment and kill Him, but He would not say a word against, He would endure everything and go to death in the same way without complaints and without a heart for their enemies, as a young lamb goes silently under the knife. Isaiah wrote about the sufferings of Christ as accurately as if he had seen them with his own eyes. And he lived before Christ for five hundred years. 35. Prophet Daniel and three youths.

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar took possession of the kingdom of Judah and took all the Jews into captivity, to his place in Babylon.

Together with others, Daniel and his three friends, Ananias, Azariah and Mishael, were taken prisoner. All four of them were taken to the king himself and taught various sciences. In addition to science, God gave Daniel the gift to know the future or the gift prophetic.

King Nebuchadnezzar saw a dream one night and thought that this dream was not simple. The king woke up in the morning and forgot what he saw in a dream. Nebuchadonrsor summoned all his scholars and asked them what dream he had. They didn't know, of course. Daniel prayed to God along with his friends: Ananias, Azariah and Mishael, and God revealed to Daniel what dream Nebuchadnezzar had. Daniel came to the king and said: “You, king, on your bed thought what would happen after you. And you dreamed that there was a big idol with a golden head; his chest and arms are silver, his belly is copper, his legs are iron to the knees, and clay below the knees. A stone came off the mountain, rolled under this idol and broke it. The image fell, and after it dust remained, and that stone grew into a large mountain. This dream means this: The golden head is you, king. After you, another kingdom will come, worse than yours, then there will be a third kingdom, even worse, and a fourth kingdom will first be strong as iron, and then fragile as clay. After all these kingdoms, a completely different kingdom will come, unlike the previous ones. This new kingdom will be on the whole earth.” Nebuchadnezzar remembered that he had exactly seen a dream, and made Daniel the head of the Babylonian kingdom.

God revealed to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream that after the change of four great kingdoms, Jesus Christ, the king of the whole world, would come to earth. He is not an earthly, but a heavenly king, the Kingdom of Christ is in the soul of every person who believes in Christ. Whoever does good to people feels God in himself in his soul. A good person in soul lives in the kingdom of Christ in every earth.

36. Three youths.

Three youths - Ananias, Azariah, and Misail were friends of the prophet Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar made them chiefs in his kingdom. They obeyed the king, but did not forget God.

Nebuchadnezzar set up a golden idol in a large field, arranged a feast and ordered all the people to come and bow to this idol. Those people who did not want to bow to the idol, the king ordered to be thrown into a special large hot oven. Ananias, Azariah and Mishael did not bow down to the idol. They were reported to King Nebuchadnezzar. The king ordered them to be called and ordered to bow to the idol. The youths refused to bow to the idol. Then Nebuchadnezzar ordered them to be thrown into the red-hot furnace and said: “I will see what God will not let them burn in the furnace.” They tied the three youths and threw them into the oven. Novukhodnezzar is watching, and not three, but four are walking in the stove. God sent an angel, and the fire did no harm to the youths. The king ordered the youths to come out. They came out, and not a single hair was burned. Nebuchadnezzar realized that the true God can do anything, and forbade laughing at the Jewish faith.

37. How the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon.

For the sins of the Jews, God punished; the kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. He took the Jews into captivity to Babylon. The Jews stayed in Babylon for seventy years, repented of their sins before God, and God gave them mercy. King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to their land and build a temple to God. With joy, the Jews returned to their places, rebuilt the city of Jerusalem and built a temple on the site of Solomon's temple. In this temple, after praying and teaching people, the Savior Jesus Christ himself.

After the Babylonian captivity, the Jews stopped bowing to idols and began to wait for the Savior, whom God had promised to Adam and Eve. But many Jews began to think that Christ would be the king of the earth and conquer the whole world for the Jews. In vain did the Jews begin to think so, and therefore they crucified the Lord Jesus Christ himself when He came to earth.

• NEW TESTAMENT

  1. The birth of the Virgin and the introduction to the temple.

  About two thousand years ago, in the city of Nazareth, the Mother of God was born. Her father's name was Joachim, and her mother's name was Anna.

  They did not have children until they were old. Joachim and Anna prayed to God and promised to give the first child to the service of God, God heard the prayer of Joachim and Anna: they had a daughter. They named her Mary.

  The Nativity of the Mother of God is celebrated on September 21st.
  Only until the age of three did the Virgin Mary grow up at home. Then Joachim and Anna took Her to the city of Jerusalem. There was a temple in Jerusalem, and a school near the temple. In this school, the students lived and studied the law of God and needlework.

  Gathered little Mary; Relatives and friends came together and brought the Holy Virgin to the temple. The bishop met her on the stairs and led her into Holy of Holies. Then the parents, relatives and friends of the Virgin Mary went home, and She remained in the school at the temple and lived there for eleven years.

2. Annunciation of the Mother of God.

At the temple, girls older than fourteen were not supposed to live. At that time the Virgin Mary was orphaned; Joachim and Anna both died. The priests wanted to marry Her off, but She gave God a promise to remain a virgin forever. Then the Virgin Mary was sheltered by her relative, an old carpenter, Joseph. In his house, in the city of Nazareth, the Virgin Mary began to live.

Once the Virgin Mary was reading a holy book. Suddenly, she sees the Archangel Gabriel in front of her. The Virgin Mary was afraid. The archangel told her: “Do not be afraid, Mary! You have received great mercy from God: You will give birth to a Son and call Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” The Virgin Mary humbly accepted such joyful news or Annunciation and answered the archangel: "I am the servant of the Lord, let it be whatever the Lord desires." The archangel disappeared immediately from the eyes.

3. Visitation of the Virgin Mary to the righteous Elizabeth.

After the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary went to her relative Elizabeth. Elizabeth was married to the priest Zechariah and lived a hundred miles from Nazareth, in the city of Judah. That's where the Virgin Mary went. Elizabeth heard Her voice and exclaimed: “Blessed are You among women, and blessed is the Fruit of Your womb. And why should I be so happy that the Mother of my Lord has come to me?” The Virgin Mary replied to these words that she herself rejoices in the great mercy of God. She said this: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. He rewarded me for my humility, and now I will be glorified by all nations.

The Virgin Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and returned to Nazareth.

Just before the birth of Jesus Christ, she again had to go with Joseph about eighty miles from Nazareth, to the city of Bethlehem.

Jesus Christ was born in the Jewish land, in the city of Bethlehem. At that time there were two kings over the Jews, Herod and Augustus. August was superior. He lived in the city of Rome and was called the Roman Emperor. August ordered to rewrite all the people in his kingdom. To do this, he ordered each person to come to their homeland and sign up.

Joseph and the Virgin Mary lived in Nazareth, and were originally from Bethlehem. By royal decree they came from Nazareth to Bethlehem. On the occasion of the census, a lot of people came to Bethlehem, the houses were crowded everywhere, and the Virgin Mary and Joseph spent the night in a cave or in a dugout. In the cave at night, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, was born from the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary swaddled him and put him in a manger.

Everyone in Bethlehem was asleep. Only outside the city the shepherds guarded the flock. Suddenly a bright angel stood before them. The shepherds were afraid. The angel told them, “Don't be afraid; I will tell you great joy for all people; today the Savior was born in Bethlehem. He is in a manger." As soon as the angel spoke these words, many other bright angels appeared near him. They all sang: “Praise be to God in heaven, peace on earth; God has mercy on the people." These words in Slavonic read like this: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.

The angels finished singing and ascended to heaven. The shepherds looked after them and went to the city. There they found a cave with the baby Christ in a manger and told about how they saw the angels and what they heard from them. The Virgin Mary took the words of the shepherds to heart, and the shepherds bowed to Jesus Christ and went to their flock.

Magi were called in the old days learned people. They studied various sciences and watched when the stars rose and set in the sky. When Christ was born, a bright, unseen star appeared in the sky. The Magi thought that big stars appeared before the birth of kings. The Magi saw a bright star in the sky and decided that a new extraordinary king was born. They wanted to bow to the new king and went to look for him. The star walked across the sky and led the Magi to the Jewish land, to the city of Jerusalem. The Jewish king Herod lived in this city. He was told that the Magi had come from a foreign land and were looking for a new king. Herod gathered his scholars for advice and asked them: “Where was Christ born?” They answered: "in Bethlehem." Herod quietly called the Magi to him from everyone, asked them when a new star appeared in the sky, and said: “Go to Bethlehem, find out well about the Baby and tell me. I want to visit Him and worship Him.”

The Magi went to Bethlehem and saw that a new star was standing right above one house, where Joseph and the Virgin Mary had gone from the cave. The Magi entered the house and bowed to Christ. As a gift, the magi brought him gold, incense and fragrant ointment. They wanted to go to Herod, but God told them in a dream that there was no need to go to Herod, and the Magi went home by another way.

Herod waited in vain for the Magi. He wanted to kill Christ, but the Magi did not tell him where Christ was. Herod ordered to kill all the boys, two years old and younger, in and around Bethlehem. But he still did not kill Christ. Even before the royal order, the angel said to Joseph in a dream: "Get up, take the Baby and His mother and run to Egypt and stay there until I tell you: Herod wants to kill the Baby." Joseph did just that. Soon Herod died, and Joseph with the Virgin Mary and Christ returned to their city of Nazareth. In Nazareth, Jesus Christ grew up and lived to the age of thirty.

6. Meeting of the Lord.

Sretenie in Russian means meeting. The righteous Simeon and Anna the prophetess met Jesus Christ in the temple of Jerusalem.

Just as our mothers come to church with their children on the fortieth day after the birth of the baby, so the Virgin Mary, together with Joseph, brought Jesus Christ to the temple in Jerusalem on the fortieth day. In the temple they offered sacrifices to God. Joseph bought two doves for the sacrifice.

At the same time, the righteous elder Simeon lived in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit promised Simeon that he would not die without seeing Christ. Simeon that day, by God's will, came to the temple, met Christ here, took Him in his arms and said: “Now, Lord, I can die in peace, because I saw the Savior with my own eyes. He will teach the Gentiles to know the true God and glorify the Jews with Himself.” The very old prophetess Anna also approached Christ, thanked God and spoke to everyone about God and Christ. Simeon's words became our prayer. It reads like this: Now let your servant go, Master, according to your word in peace; as my eyes have seen your salvation, if you have prepared before the face of all people, a light in the revelation of tongues, and the glory of your people Israel.

7. Boy Jesus in the temple.

Jesus Christ grew up in the city of Nazareth. On every Easter, Joseph and the Virgin Mary went to Jerusalem. When Jesus Christ was twelve years old, they took Him for Easter to Jerusalem. After the feast, Joseph and the Virgin Mary went home, but Jesus Christ fell behind them. By evening, at the lodging for the night, Joseph and the Virgin Mary began to look for Jesus, but they did not find Him anywhere. They returned to Jerusalem and there began to search everywhere for Jesus Christ. Only on the third day did they find Christ in the temple. There He spoke with old men and learned people about the law of God. Christ knew everything so well that the scientists marveled. The Virgin Mary came up to Christ and said: “What have You done to us? Joseph and I are looking for you everywhere and we are afraid for you.” To this Christ answered her: “Why did you have to look for me. Don't you know that I need to be in the temple of God?"

Then He went with Joseph and the Virgin Mary to Nazareth and obeyed them in everything.

Before Jesus Christ, the prophet John taught people good; hence John is called the Forerunner. The father of the Forerunner was the priest Zacharias, and his mother was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous people. All their lives, until old age, they lived alone: ​​they had no children. It was bitter for them to remain childless, and they asked God to please them with a son or daughter. Priests served in the Jerusalem temple in turn. In turn, Zacharias went to burn incense in the sanctuary, where only priests could enter. In the sanctuary, to the right of the sacrifice, he saw an angel. Zechariah was afraid; the angel says to him: do not be afraid, Zacharias, God has heard your prayer: Elizabeth will give birth to a son, and you will name him John. He will teach people goodness and truth with the same power as the prophet Elijah.” Zacharias did not believe such joy, and for his disbelief he became dumb. The angel's prediction came true. When a son was born to Elizabeth, his relatives wanted to name him after his father, Zechariah, and his mother said: “call him John.” They asked the father. He took a tablet and wrote: "John is his name," and from that time Zacharias began to speak again.

From a young age, John loved God more than anything in the world and went into the desert to be saved from sins. His clothes were simple, tough, and he ate locusts that looked like grasshoppers, and sometimes he found honey from wild bees in the desert. I spent the night in caves or between large stones. When John was thirty years old, he came to the Jordan River and began to teach people. People from all places gathered to hear the prophet; the rich, and the poor, and the simple, and scientists, and chiefs, and soldiers came to him. John told everyone: "Repent, sinners, the Savior will come soon, the kingdom of God is near us." Those who repented of their sins, those John baptized in the Jordan River.

The people considered John to be the Christ, but he told everyone: "I am not the Christ, but only go before Him and prepare people to meet Christ."

When John the Baptist baptized people, Christ came to be baptized along with others. John learned that Christ was not a simple man, but a God-man, and he said: “I need to be baptized by You, how are You coming to me?” To this, Christ answered John: "Do not hold me back, we need to do the will of God." John obeyed Christ and baptized Him in the Jordan. When Christ came out of the water and prayed, John saw a miracle: the sky opened, the Holy Spirit descended on Christ like a dove. The voice of God the Father was heard from heaven: “You are my beloved son, my love is with you.”

10. The first disciples of Jesus Christ.

After being baptized, Jesus Christ went into the wilderness. There Christ prayed and ate nothing for forty days. After forty days, Christ came to the place where John was baptizing people. John stood on the banks of the Jordan River. He saw Christ and said to the people, "Behold, the Son of God comes." The next day, Christ again passed by, and John was standing on the shore with two of his disciples. Then John said to his disciples: "Behold, the Lamb of God comes, He will offer Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of all people."

Both disciples of John caught up with Christ, went with Him and listened to Him all day. One disciple was named Andrew the First-Called, and the other John the Theologian. On the second and third days after this, three more became disciples of Christ: Peter, Philip and Nathanael. These five people were the first disciples of Jesus Christ.

11. First miracle.

Jesus Christ, along with His mother and His disciples, was invited to a wedding or marriage in the city of Cana. During the marriage, the owners did not have enough wine, and there was nowhere to take it. The Mother of God said to the servants; "Ask my Son what He tells you to do, then do it." At that time, there were six large jugs in the house, two buckets each. Jesus Christ said, "Pour water into the jugs." The servants poured full jugs. In jugs, water made good wine. Christ turned water into wine by the power of God, and His disciples believed in Him.

12. The expulsion of merchants from the temple. On the feast of Passover, the Jews gathered in the city of Jerusalem. Jesus Christ went with the worshipers to Jerusalem. There, near the temple itself, the Jews started trading; they sold cows, sheep, pigeons needed for sacrifices, and changed money. Christ took a rope, twisted it and drove out all the cattle with this rope, drove out all the merchants, overturned the tables of the money changers and said: “Do not make my Father’s house a trading house.” The elders of the temple were offended by the order of Christ and asked Him: “How can You prove that You have the right to do this?” To this Jesus answered them: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it again." The Jews angrily said to this: “For forty-six years they built this temple, how can You put it up in three days?” God lives in the temple, but Christ was both man and God.

That is why He called His body a temple. The Jews did not understand the words of Christ, but the disciples of Christ understood them later, when the Jews crucified Christ, and He resurrected three days later. The Jews boasted of their temple and were angry with Christ for calling the temple so bad that it could be built in three days.

From Jerusalem after Easter, Jesus Christ went with His disciples to different cities and villages and walked all year. A year later, on Passover, He came again to Jerusalem. This time Christ went to the big pool. The pool was near the city gate, and the gate was called the Sheep Gate, because the sheep needed for the sacrifices were driven through it. Around the pool there were rooms, and in them lay many all sorts of sick people. From time to time an angel descended invisibly into this pool and muddied the water. The water from this became healing: whoever descended into it first after the angel, he recovered from the disease. Near this pool lay one relaxed, for 38 years: there was no one to help him go down into the water first. When he himself reached the water, there was already someone there before him. Jesus Christ took pity on this patient and asked him: “Do you want to get well?” The patient replied: "I want, but there is no one to help me." Jesus Christ said to him: “Get up, take your bed and go.” The patient, who was crawling a little from his illness, immediately got up, took his bed and went. The day was Saturday. The Jewish priests did not order anything to be done on the Sabbath. The Jews saw the recovered patient with a bed and said: “Why are you carrying the bed on Saturday?” He replied: “The One who healed me so commanded me, but who He is, I don’t know.” Soon Christ met him in the temple and said: “Now you have recovered, do not sin; so that nothing worse happens to you." The recovered man went to the rulers and said, "Jesus healed me." The Jewish leaders then decided to destroy Christ because He did not observe the rules about honoring the Sabbath. Jesus Christ left Jerusalem for the places where He grew up and stayed there until the next Easter.

14. The choice of the apostles.

Jesus Christ left Jerusalem after Easter, not alone: ​​many people from all places followed Him. Many brought the sick with them so that Christ would heal them of their sickness. Christ took pity on people, treated everyone kindly, everywhere taught the people the commandments of the Lord, healed the sick from all sorts of diseases. Christ lived and spent the night wherever he could: He did not have his own house.

One evening Christ went to a mountain to pray, and there he prayed all night. There were a lot of people near the mountain. In the morning, Christ called to Him whomever He wanted, and chose twelve people from those who were invited. He sent these chosen ones from the people to teach the people and therefore called them messengers or apostles. The twelve apostles are called by their names: Andrew, Peter, Jacob, Philip, Nathanael, Thomas, Matthew, Jacob Alfeev, brother of jacob Judas, Simon, Judas Iscariot. Having chosen the twelve apostles, Christ descended with them from the mountain. Now a multitude of people have surrounded Him. Everyone wanted to touch Christ, because the power of God came out of Him and healed all the sick.

Many people wanted to listen to the teaching of Christ. So that everyone could hear well, Christ rose higher than the people, on a hillock, and sat down. The disciples surrounded him. Then Christ began to teach people how to get a good happy life or bliss from God.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who weep, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the mercies, for they will have mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are the exiles for the sake of righteousness, for those are the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you, when they reproach you and betray you, and they say all sorts of evil words, against you lying to me for my sake.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is many in heaven.

In addition to this teaching about the beatitudes, Christ spoke a lot to the people on the mountain, and the people diligently listened to the words of Christ. From the mountain, Christ entered the city of Capernaum, healed the sick person there, and went from there for 25 versts to the city of Nain.

Many people followed Christ from Capernaum to Nain. When Christ and the people approached the gates of the city of Nain, a dead man was carried out. The dead man was the only son of a poor widow. Christ took pity on the widow and said to her: “Do not cry.” Then he approached the dead man. The porters stopped. Christ said to the dead: "Young man, get up!" The dead man got up, stood up and began to speak.

Everyone began to talk about such a miracle, and more and more people gathered for Christ. Christ did not remain in one place for long, and soon left Nain again for Capernaum.

The city of Capernaum stood on the shores of the Lake of Galilee. One day Jesus Christ began to teach the people in the house. So many people gathered that the house became crowded. Christ then went to the shore of the lake. But even here the people crowded around Christ: everyone wanted to be closer to Him. Christ got into the boat and sailed a little from the shore. He taught people the law of God simply, clearly, by examples or in parables. Christ said: Behold, the sower went out to sow. And it happened while he was sowing that some grains fell on the road. They were trampled down by passers-by, and birds pecked at them. Other grains fell on the stones, soon sprouted, but also soon withered, because they had nowhere to take root. Some of the grains fell into the grass. The grass sprouted along with the seeds and drowned out the seedlings. Some grains fell into good soil and gave a good harvest.

Not everyone understood well what Christ taught this parable, and He himself later explained it this way: The sower is the one who teaches: the seed is the word of God, and the different land on which the seeds fell are different people. Those people who listen to the word of God, but do not understand it and therefore now forget that they listened, are like the road. Those people are like stones who gladly hear the word of God and believe, but immediately retreat as soon as they are offended for faith. Those people who like to sit richly are like the land with forty grass. Caring for wealth prevents them from living righteously, those people who are not lazy to listen to the word of God, and firmly believe, and live according to God's law, are like good land.

In the evening, the disciples of Jesus Christ sailed in a boat across the Lake of Galilee from Capernaum to the other side of the lake. Jesus Christ swam along with his disciples. He lay down at the stern and fell asleep. Suddenly a storm came up, a strong wind blew, waves rose, and water began to flood the boat. The apostles were frightened and began to wake up Christ: “Teacher, we are perishing! Save us”: Christ stood up and said to the apostles: “What are you afraid of? Where is your faith? Then he said to the wind: "stop it." and water: "Calm down." Everything calmed down immediately, and the lake calmed down. The boat sailed on, and the disciples of Christ marveled at the power of Christ.

Once Jesus Christ taught the people on the shore of the Lake of Galilee. The headman of the Capernaum chapel or synagogue, Jairus, approached Christ. His twelve-year-old daughter was seriously ill. Jair bowed to Christ and said: "My daughter is dying, come, put your hand on her, and she will recover." Christ took pity on Jairus, got up and went with him. Many people followed Christ. On the way to meet Jairus, one of his family ran up and said: "Your daughter has died, do not disturb the teacher." Christ said to Jairus: "Do not be afraid, only believe, and your daughter will live."

They came to the house of Jairus, and there already gathered native neighbors, crying, lamenting over the dead girl. Christ ordered everyone to leave the house, leaving only his father and mother and three apostles - Peter, James and John. Then he went up to the deceased, took her by the hand and said: “Girl, get up!” The dead came to life and, to the surprise of everyone, got up. Jesus Christ told her to give her something to eat.

John the Baptist taught people kindness and persuaded sinners to repent. A lot of people gathered around John. The king at that time was Herod, the son of that Herod who wanted to kill Christ. This Herod married the wife of his own brother, Herodias. John the Baptist began to say that Herod was sinning. Herod ordered that John be arrested and put him in prison. Herodias wanted to immediately kill John the Baptist. But Herod was afraid to execute him, because John was a holy prophet. A little time passed, and on the occasion of his birthday, Herod summoned guests to a feast. During the feast, music played, and the daughter of Herodias danced. She pleased Herod with her dance. He vowed to give her whatever she asked. The daughter asked her mother, and she told her to ask immediately to give the head of John the Baptist. The daughter said this to King Herod. Herod was sad, but did not want to break his word and ordered to give the girl the head of the Baptist. The executioner went to prison and cut off the head of John the Baptist. They brought it on a platter right there to the feast, gave it to the dancer, and she took it to her mother. The disciples of John the Baptist buried his body and told about the death of the Forerunner to Christ.

Jesus Christ taught the people in a desert place, on the shore of the Lake of Galilee. Until the evening He taught people, but the people forgot about food. Before evening, the apostles said to the Savior: "Let the people go: let them go through the villages and buy themselves bread." To this, Christ answered the apostles: "People do not need to leave: you give them something to eat." The apostles said: “Here alone one boy has five small loaves and two fish, but what is this for so many people?”

Christ said: "Bring me bread and fish, and seat all the people side by side in fifty people." The apostles did just that. The Savior blessed the bread and fish, broke them into pieces and began to give them to the apostles. The apostles carried bread and fish to the people. Everyone ate until they were full, and after that they collected twelve baskets of pieces.

Christ fed five thousand people with only five loaves and two fishes, and the people said, "Here is the prophet we need." The people always wanted to get food without work, and the Jews decided to make Christ their king. But Christ was born on earth not to reign, but to save people from sins. Therefore, He left the people on the mountain to pray, and ordered the apostles to swim to the other side of the lake. In the evening the apostles departed from the shore and reached the middle of the lake before dark. The wind blew to meet them at night, and the boat began to be beaten by waves. For a long time the apostles struggled with the wind. After midnight they see a man walking on the water. The apostles thought it was a ghost, got scared and screamed. And suddenly they heard the words: "Do not be afraid, it is I." The Apostle Peter recognized the voice of Jesus Christ and said: “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” Christ said, "Go." Peter walked on the water, but was afraid of big waves and began to sink. In fear, he screamed, "Lord, save me!" Christ came up to Peter, took him by the hand and said: “Why did you doubt, you of little faith?” Then they both got into the boat. The wind immediately died down, and the boat soon swam to the shore.

One day Jesus Christ came to the side where the Canaanite cities of Tire and Sidon stood. One woman, a Canaanite, approached Christ there and asked Him: “Have pity on me, Lord, my daughter is violently mad.” Christ did not answer her. Then the apostles came up and began to ask the Savior: “Let her go, because she is screaming after us.” To this Christ replied: "I have been sent to do good deeds only for the Jews." The Canaanite woman began to ask Christ even more and bow to Him. Christ told her: "You mustn't take bread from children and give it to dogs." The Canaanite woman answered, “Lord! after all, even dogs eat crumbs from children under the table. Christ then said: “Woman, great is your faith, may your wish come true!” The Canaanite woman came home and saw that her daughter had recovered.

One day Jesus Christ took with him three apostles: Peter, James and John, and ascended Mount Tabor to pray. When he prayed, he changed or was transformed: His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as snow and shone. Moses and Elijah appeared to Christ from heaven and spoke to Him about His future sufferings. The apostles fell asleep first. Then they woke up and saw this miracle and got scared. Moses and Elijah began to move away from Christ. Then Peter said: “Lord, it’s good for us here: if you command, we will build three tents: for you, Moses and Elijah.” When Peter said this, a cloud found and closed everyone. From the cloud the apostles heard the words: "This is my beloved Son, listen to him." The apostles fell face down in fear. Christ came up to them and said, "Rise up and be not afraid." The apostles got up. Christ stood before them alone, just as He had always been.

Transfiguration means turn. During the transfiguration, Jesus Christ changed his face and clothes. Christ showed the apostles on Tabor His glory of God so that they would not stop believing in Him even during His crucifixion on the cross. The Transfiguration is celebrated on August 6th.

After the transfiguration from Mount Tabor, Jesus Christ came to Jerusalem. One approached Christ in Jerusalem scientist man or a scribe. The scribe wanted to humiliate Christ in front of the people and asked Christ: “Teacher, what should I do to receive the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus Christ asked the scribe: “What is written in the law?” The scribe answered, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.” Christ showed the scribe that God had long ago told people how to live righteously. The scribe did not want to be silent and asked Christ: “And who is my neighbor?” To this, Christ told him an example or a parable about the Good Samaritan.

One man was walking from Jerusalem to the city of Jericho. On the way, robbers attacked him, beat him, took off his clothes and left him almost alive. After that, the priest walked along the same road. He saw the robbed man, but passed by and did not help him. An assistant to the priest or a Levite passed right there. And he looked and passed by. A Samaritan rode here on a donkey. He took pity on the robbed, washed and tied up his wounds, put him on his donkey and brought him to the inn. There he gave money to the owner and asked to take care of the sick. Who was the neighbor of the robbed? The scribe answered: "who took pity on him." To this Christ said to the scribe: "Go and do the same."

Simple, unlearned people gathered around Jesus Christ. The Pharisees and scribes called unlearned people cursed and grumbled at Christ, why He allows them to come to Himself. Christ said by example or parable that God loves all people and forgives every sinful person if the sinner repents.

One man had two sons. The younger son said to his father: "Give me my share of the estate." The father separated him. The son went to a foreign side and there he squandered all his estate. After that, he was hired by a man to tend pigs. Hungry, he was glad to eat pig food, but even that was not given to him. Then the prodigal son remembered about his father and thought, “How many of my father’s workers eat until they are full, and I am dying of hunger. I will go to my father and say: I have sinned before God and before you, and I do not dare to be called your son. Take me to work." I got up and went to my father. His father saw him from afar, met him and kissed him. He ordered him to be dressed in good clothes and arranged a feast for his returned son. The older brother was angry with his father because he arranged a feast for the prodigal son. The father said to his eldest son: “My son! you are always with me, and your brother disappeared and was found, How can I not rejoice?

One man lived richly, dressed smartly and feasted every day. Near the rich man's house lay a beggar, Lazarus, begging for alms and waiting to see if they would give him pieces from the rich man's table. The dogs licked the sores of the poor man, and he did not have the strength to drive them away. Lazarus died, and the angels took his soul to the place where the soul of Abraham lived. The rich man died. He was buried. The soul of the rich man went to hell. The rich man saw Lazarus together with Abraham and began to ask: “Our father Abraham! have pity on me: send Lazarus, let him dip his finger in water and wet my tongue; I'm tormented by fire." To this, Abraham answered the rich man: “Remember how you were blessed on earth, and Lazarus suffered. Now he is blissful, and you suffer. And we are so far from each other that it is impossible to get either from us to you, or from you to us. Then the rich man remembered that he had five brothers left on earth, and began to ask Abraham to send Lazarus to them to say how bad it is to live in hell for the unmerciful. Abraham answered this: “Your brothers have the holy books of Moses and other prophets. Let them live as it is written in them. The rich man said: "If anyone rises from the dead, it is better to listen to him." Abraham replied, “If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, then they won’t believe the one who has risen from the dead.”

Many people followed Jesus Christ. The people loved and honored Him, because Christ did good to everyone. Once brought to Jesus Christ many children. The mothers wanted Christ to bless them. The apostles did not let children come to Christ, because there were many adults around Him. Christ told the apostles: "Do not hinder the children from coming to Me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The children came to Christ. He caressed them, put his hands on them and blessed them.

29. Resurrection of Lazarus.

Not far from Jerusalem, in the village of Bethany, lived the righteous man Lazarus. Two sisters lived with him: Martha and Mary. Christ visited the house of Lazarus. Before the feast of the Passover, Lazarus fell very ill. Jesus Christ was not in Bethany. Martha and Mary sent to Christ to say: “Lord! That's who you love, our brother Lazarus, he's sick." Hearing about the illness of Lazarus, Jesus Christ said “this illness is not to death, but to the glory of God,” and did not go to Bethany for two days. Lazarus died in those days, and then Christ came to Bethany. Martha was the first to hear from the people that Christ had come, and went out to meet Him outside the village. Seeing Jesus Christ, Martha said to Him with tears: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” To this Christ answered her: "Your brother will rise again." Hearing such joy, Martha went home and called her sister Mary. To Jesus Christ, Mary said the same thing as Martha. A lot of people had gathered there. Jesus Christ went with everyone to the cave where Lazarus was buried. Christ ordered the stone to be rolled away from the cave and said: “Come out Lazarus!” The dead Lazarus resurrected came out of the cave. The Jews wrapped the dead in linen. Lazarus came out tied up. The people were afraid of the resurrected dead. Then Jesus Christ ordered to untie him, and Lazarus went home from the grave. Many people believed in Christ, but there were also unbelievers. They went to the Jewish leaders and told everything they had seen. The leaders decided to destroy Christ.

Jesus Christ visited Jerusalem many times while living on earth, but only once did He want to come especially with glory. This entrance to Jerusalem is called solemn entrance.

Six days before Easter, Jesus Christ went from Bethany to Jerusalem. The apostles and many people followed him. Dear Christ ordered to bring a young donkey. Two apostles brought the donkey and put their clothes on its back, and Jesus Christ sat on the donkey. At that time, many people went to Jerusalem for the feast of the Jewish Passover. The people walked with Christ and wanted to show their zeal for Jesus Christ. Many people took off their clothes and laid them under the feet of the colt, others cut branches from trees and threw them on the road. Many began to sing these words: “God, give victory to the Son of David! Glorious is the King who goes for the glory of God.” In Slavic, these words are read as follows: Hosanna to the Son of David: blessed is he who comes in the NAME of the Lord, hosanna in the highest.

Among the people were the enemies of Christ, the Pharisees. They said to Christ: "Teacher, forbid your disciples to sing like that!" Christ answered them, "If they keep silent, the stones will speak." Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem with the people. Many in the city came out to look at Christ. Jesus Christ entered the temple. Animals were traded near the temple, and there were money changers with money. Jesus Christ drove out all the merchants, scattered money from the money changers and forbade making the house of God a den of merchants. The blind and the lame surrounded Christ, and Christ healed them. Small children in the temple began to sing: “God save the Son of David!” The chief priests and scribes said to Christ, “Do you hear what they say?” To this Christ answered them: “Yes! Have you never read in a psalm: Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings You have arranged praise? The scribes fell silent and held their anger in themselves. The glorification of Christ by children was foretold by King David.

The Lord's entry into Jerusalem is celebrated a week before Easter and is called Palm Sunday. In the church then they stand with a willow in their hands as a memory of how Christ was met by people with branches.

31 Betrayal of Judas.

After the solemn entry into Jerusalem, Jesus Christ taught the people in the Jerusalem temple for two more days. At night He went to Bethany, and during the day He came to Jerusalem. The whole third day, Wednesday, Christ spent with his apostles in Bethany. On Wednesday, the high priests, scribes and leaders gathered at their bishop Caiaphas for advice on how to take Jesus Christ by cunning and kill him.

At this time, Judas Iscoriot left the apostles, came to the high priests and promised them to quietly betray Jesus Christ. For this, the chief priests and chiefs promised to give Judas thirty silver coins, twenty-five rubles according to our account. Judas conspired with the Jews on Wednesday, because Wednesday is a fast day.

Every year, the Jews, in memory of the exodus from Egypt, celebrated Easter. Every family or few strangers in Jerusalem would gather together and eat roasted lamb with special prayers. It was possible to celebrate Easter either on the very holiday, or two days before it. Jesus Christ wished to celebrate Easter before his sufferings with his apostles. On Thursday, He sent two of His apostles to Jerusalem and told them to prepare everything needed for the celebration of the Passover. The two apostles prepared everything, and in the evening Jesus Christ came with all his disciples to the house where the two apostles had prepared everything. The Jews were supposed to wash their feet before eating. The servants washed everyone's feet. Christ wanted to show his great love for the apostles and teach them humility. He himself washed their feet and said: “I gave you an example. I am your teacher and Lord, I have washed your feet, and you always serve each other. When everyone sat down at the table, Christ said: "I tell you faithfully that one of you will betray me." The disciples were sad, they did not know whom to think of, and everyone asked: “Isn't it me?” Asked with others and Judas. Jesus Christ quietly said, "Yes, you." The apostles did not hear what Christ said to Judas. They did not think that Christ would soon be betrayed. The apostle John asked: “Lord, tell me, who will betray you?” Jesus Christ answered: "To whom I give a piece of bread, that is my betrayer." Jesus Christ gave a piece of bread to Judas and said: "what you do, do it quickly." Judas immediately left, but the apostles did not understand why he left. They thought that Christ had sent him either to buy something or to give alms to the poor.

After the departure of Judas, Jesus Christ took wheat bread in his hands, blessed it, laid it out, gave it to the apostles and said: Take, eat, this is my body, broken for you, for the forgiveness of sins. Then he took a cup of red wine, thanked God the Father and said: Drink from it all, this is My Blood of the New Testament, shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins. You do this in remembrance of Me.

Jesus Christ communed the apostles with His body and His blood. In appearance, the body and blood of Christ were bread and wine, but invisibly, secretly they were the body and blood of Christ. Christ communed the apostles in the evening, therefore the communion of the apostles is called the Last Supper.

After the Last Supper, Jesus Christ went with the eleven apostles to the Garden of Gethsemane.

Not far from Jerusalem was the village of Gethsemane, and near it there was a garden. Jesus Christ went to this garden at night, after the Last Supper, with his disciples. In the garden He took with Him only three apostles: Peter, James, and John. The other apostles remained near the garden. Christ walked away not far from the apostles, fell face to the ground and began to pray to God the Father: “My Father! all You can do; let the fate of suffering pass me by! But not my will, but Yours, let it be!” Christ prayed, but the apostles fell asleep. Christ woke them up twice and asked them to pray. The third time He approached them and said, “You are still sleeping! Here comes the one who betrays me." Warriors and servants of the bishops appeared in the garden with lanterns, with stakes, with spears and swords. With them came Judas the traitor.

Judas approached Jesus Christ, kissed Him and said: “Hello, teacher!” Christ meekly asked Judas: “Judas! Are you betraying me with a kiss? The soldiers seized Christ, tied his hands and took him to the trial to the bishop Caiaphas. The apostles got scared and ran away. At Caiaphas, the chiefs gathered at night. But there was nothing to judge Christ for. The bishops appointed witnesses against Christ from themselves. The witnesses were lying and confused. Then Caiaphas stood up and asked Jesus: “Tell us, are you the Christ, the Son of God?” To this, Jesus Christ replied: “Yes, you are right.” Caiaphas grabbed his clothes, tore them up and said to the judges: “Why should we ask more witnesses? Have you heard that He Himself calls Himself God? How will it look to you? The leaders said: "He is guilty of death."

It was already night. The chiefs went home to sleep, and Christ was ordered to guard the soldiers. The soldiers tormented the Savior all night. They spat in His face, closed their eyes, hit him in the face and asked: “Guess, Christ, who hit you?” All night the soldiers laughed at Christ, but He endured everything.

Early in the morning, the next day, the Jewish foremen and leaders gathered at Caiaphas. Again they brought Jesus Christ to court and asked Him: “Are you the Christ, the Son of God?” and Christ again said that He was the Son of God. The judges decided to execute Jesus Christ, but they themselves had no right to kill Him.

The chief king over the Jews was the Roman emperor. The emperor appointed special commanders over Jerusalem and over the Jewish land. Pilate was the leader at that time. The soldiers of Jesus Christ were led to Pilate for trial, and the chief priests and chiefs of the Jews walked in front.

In the morning Jesus Christ was brought before Pilate. Pilate went out to the people on the stone porch, sat down there in his judgment seat and asked the chief priests and leaders of the Jews about Christ: “What do you accuse this man of?” The leaders said to Pilate: "If this man were not a villain, then we would not have brought Him to you for judgment." To this Pilate answered them: “So take Him and judge according to your laws.” Then the Jews said: "He must be executed by death, because He calls Himself a king, does not order to pay taxes, and we ourselves cannot execute anyone." Pilate took Christ to his house and began to ask Him what He taught people. From the interrogation, Pilate saw that Christ calls himself not an earthly king, but a heavenly one, and wanted to let Him go free. The Jews decided to kill Jesus Christ and began to say that He revolted the people and did not order to pay taxes either in Galilee or in Judea.

Pilate heard that Jesus Christ was from Galilee, and sent Him to be judged by the Galilean king Herod. Herod also found no fault with Christ and sent him back to Pilate. The leaders at that time taught the people to shout for Pilate to crucify Jesus Christ. Pilate again began to analyze the case and again told the Jews that there was no fault for Christ. And in order not to offend the Jewish leaders, Pilate ordered Jesus Christ to be beaten with whips.

The soldiers tied Christ to a post and beat Him. Blood poured from the body of Christ, but this was not enough for the soldiers. They began to laugh at Christ again; They put a red robe on him, gave him a stick in his hands, and put a wreath of a thorny plant on his head. Then they knelt before Christ, spat in His face, took a stick from their hands, beat them on the head and said; "Hello, king of the Jews!"

When the soldiers mocked Christ, Pilate brought Him out to the people. Pilate thought that the people would take pity on the beaten, tortured Jesus. But the Jewish leaders and high priests began to cry; "Crucify, crucify Him!"

Pilate again said that there was no fault for Christ, and that he would let Christ go free. Then the leaders of the Jews threatened Pilate: “If you let Christ go, then we will report to the emperor that you are a traitor. Whoever calls himself a king is an opponent of the emperor." Pilate was afraid of the threat and said: "I am not to blame for the blood of this Righteous One." At this, the Jews shouted: "His blood is on us and on our children." Then Pilate gave the order, to please the Jews, to crucify Jesus Christ on the cross.

By order of Pilate, the soldiers made a large heavy cross; and forced Jesus Christ to carry him outside the city, to Mount Golgotha. On the way, Christ fell several times. The soldiers seized one Simon they met on the road and forced him to carry the cross of Christ.

On Mount Golgotha, the soldiers laid Christ on the cross, nailed His hands and feet to the cross, and dug the cross into the ground. Two thieves were crucified on the right and on the left side of Christ. Christ innocently suffered and suffered for the sins of people. He prayed for his tormentors to God the Father: “Father! forgive them: they don't know what they're doing." Above the head of Christ, nail a plaque with the inscription: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." The Jews here also laughed at Christ and, passing by, said: "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." The Jewish leaders mocked Christ among themselves and said: “He saved others, but He cannot save Himself. Let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him.” Warriors were posted near the cross. Looking at others, the soldiers laughed at Jesus Christ. Even one of the thieves crucified with Christ cursed and said: "If you are the Christ, save yourself and us." The other thief was prudent. He calmed his comrade and said to him: “Aren't you afraid of God? We are crucified for the cause, and this man did no harm to anyone. Then the prudent thief said to Jesus Christ: “Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom.” To this, Jesus Christ answered him: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” The sun was dimming, and darkness began in the middle of the day. Near the cross of Christ stood the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her sister is Mary Kleopova, Mary Magdalene and beloved disciple of Jesus Christ, John the Theologian. Jesus Christ, seeing His Mother and beloved disciple, said: “Woman! here is your son." Then he said to the Apostle John: "Here is your Mother." From that time on, the Virgin Mary began to live with John the Theologian, and he revered Her as his own mother.

36. Death of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ was crucified around noon. The sun was closed, and darkness on the earth was until three o'clock in the afternoon. About three o'clock Jesus Christ cried out with a loud voice: "My God, my God, why did You leave me!" The wounds from the nails hurt, and a terrible thirst tormented Christ. He endured all the torment and said: "I thirst." One soldier put a sponge on a spear, dipped it in vinegar and brought it to the mouth of Christ. Jesus Christ drank vinegar from a sponge and said: “It is done!” Then he cried out with a loud voice: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” bowed his head and died.

At this time, the veil in the temple was torn in half, from top to bottom, the earth shook, stones in the mountains cracked, graves opened, and many dead were resurrected.

The people ran home in horror. The centurion and the soldiers who guarded Christ were frightened and said: "Truly He was the Son of God."

Jesus Christ died about three o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, on the eve of the Jewish Passover. On the same day in the evening, the secret disciple of Christ, Joseph of Arimathea, went to Pilate and asked permission to remove the body of Jesus from the cross. Joseph was a noble man, and Pilate allowed the body of Jesus to be removed. Another noble person came to Joseph, also a disciple of Christ, Nicodemus. Together they removed the body of Jesus from the cross, smeared it with fragrant ointments, wrapped it in a clean linen and buried it in the garden of Joseph in a new cave, and the cave was covered with a large stone. The next day the Jewish leaders came to Pilate and said, “Sir! this deceiver said: in three days I will rise again. Order the grave to be guarded for up to three days, so that His disciples do not steal His body and say to the people: “He has risen from the dead.” Pilate said to the Jews; “take guard; guard as you know." The Jews put a seal on the stone and put a guard on the cave.

On the third day after Friday, early in the morning, the earth shook terribly near the tomb of Christ. Christ has risen and left the cave. An angel of God rolled away a stone from the cave and sat on it. All the clothes of the angel were white as snow, and his face shone like lightning. The soldiers were frightened and fell from fear. Then they recovered, ran to the Jewish leaders and told them what they had seen. The chiefs gave money to the soldiers and told them to say that they had fallen asleep near the cave, and that the disciples of Christ carried away His body.

When the soldiers ran away, several righteous women went to the tomb of Christ. They wanted to once again anoint the body of Christ with fragrant ointments or myrrh. Those women are called myrrh-bearers. They saw that the stone had been rolled away from the cave. We looked into the cave and saw two angels there. The peace-bearers were afraid. The angels told them: “Don't be afraid! You are looking for Jesus crucified. He is risen, go tell His disciples.” The myrrh-bearing women ran home and did not say anything to anyone on the way. One myrrh-bearing woman, Mary Magdalene, returned again to the cave, crouched at the entrance to it and wept. She leaned further into the cave and saw two angels. The angels asked Mary Magdalene: “Why are you crying?” She replies: "They took away my Lord." Having said this, Mary turned back and saw Jesus Christ, but did not recognize Him. Jesus asked her, “Why are you crying? Who are you looking for? She thought it was the gardener, and she said to Him, “Sir! if you have carried it, tell me where you put it, and I will take it.” Jesus said to her, "Mary!" Then she recognized Him and exclaimed, “Master!” Christ told her, "Go to my disciples and tell them that I am ascending to God the Father." Mary Magdalene went with joy to the apostles and overtook the other myrrh-bearers. Christ Himself met them on the road and said: “Rejoice!” They bowed to Him and grabbed their feet. Christ said to them: "Go and tell the apostles to go to Galilee: there they will see me." The myrrh-bearing women told the apostles and other Christians how they saw the resurrected Christ. On the same day, Jesus Christ first appeared to the apostle Peter, and late in the evening to all the apostles.

Jesus Christ, after his resurrection from the dead, lived on earth for 40 days. On the fortieth day, Jesus Christ appeared to the apostles in Jerusalem and led them to the Mount of Olives. Dear, He told the apostles not to leave Jerusalem until the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon them. On the Mount of Olives, Christ finished speaking, raised his hands, blessed the apostles and began to rise up. The apostles looked and wondered. Soon Christ was covered by a cloud. The apostles did not disperse and looked at the sky, although they did not see anything there. Then two angels appeared and said to the apostles: “Why are you standing and looking at heaven? Jesus has now ascended to heaven. He will come to earth again just as He ascended.” The apostles bowed to the invisible Lord, returned to Jerusalem and waited for the Holy Spirit to descend on them.

Ascension is celebrated on the fortieth day after Easter and always falls on a Thursday.

After the ascension of Christ, all the apostles, together with the Mother of God, lived in the city of Jerusalem. Every day they gathered together in the same house, prayed to God and waited for the Holy Spirit. Nine days have passed since the ascension of Christ, and the Jewish holiday of Pentecost has come. In the morning the apostles gathered in one house for prayer. Suddenly, at nine o'clock in the morning, a noise arose near this house and in the house, as if from a great wind. A tongue-like fire appeared over each apostle. The Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and gave them the special power of God.

There are many different peoples in the world, and they speak different languages. When the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, the apostles began to speak in different languages. At that time there were many people in Jerusalem who gathered from different places for the feast of Pentecost. The apostles began to teach everyone, the Jews did not understand what the apostles said to other people, and said that the apostles drank sweet wine and became drunk. Then the apostle Peter went to the roof of the house and began to teach about Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The apostle Peter spoke so well that three thousand people believed in Christ and were baptized that day.

All the apostles dispersed different countries and taught people the faith of Christ. The Jewish leaders did not tell them to speak about Christ, and the apostles answered them: “Judge for yourself, who is better to listen to: you or God?” The leaders put the apostles in prison, beat them, tortured them, but the apostles still taught people the faith of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit helped them teach people and endure all the torments.

To resolve matters, the apostles all came together and spoke about the faith of Christ. Such a meeting is called cathedral. The council decided matters under the apostles, and after that, all important matters for Orthodox Christians began to be decided by councils.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit is celebrated 50 days after Easter and is called the Trinity.

The Mother of God died fifteen years after the ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven. She lived in Jerusalem, in the house of the Apostle John the Theologian.

Shortly before the death of the Mother of God, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Her and said that soon Her soul would ascend to heaven. The Mother of God was glad at her death and wanted to see all the apostles before her death. God caused all the apostles to gather in Jerusalem. Only the Apostle Thomas was not in Jerusalem. Suddenly, it became especially light in the house of John the Theologian. Jesus Christ Himself came invisibly and took the soul of His Mother. The apostles buried her body in a cave. On the third day Thomas came and wanted to venerate the body of the Mother of God. They opened the cave, and there the body of the Mother of God was no longer there. The apostles did not know what to think, and stood near the cave. Above them, in the air, the living Mother of God appeared and said: “Rejoice! I will always pray for all Christians to God and I will ask the Lord to help them.”

After the death of Christ, His cross was buried in the ground, along with the crosses of two thieves. The pagans erected an idol temple on this site. The pagans caught Christians, tortured and executed. Therefore, Christians did not dare to look for the cross of Christ. Three hundred years after the crucifixion of Christ, the Greek emperor, Saint Constantine, did not order Christians to be tortured anymore, and his mother, the holy Empress Helen, wanted to find the cross of Christ. Queen Elena came to Jerusalem and found out where the cross of Christ was hidden. She ordered to dig the ground under the temple. They dug up the ground and coughed up three crosses, next to them a plaque with the inscription: "Jesus of Nazarene, King of the Jews." All three crosses were similar to one another.

It was necessary to find out which is the cross of Christ. They brought in a sick woman. She kissed all three crosses, and as soon as she kissed the third, she immediately recovered. Then this cross was applied to the dead man, and the dead man immediately came to life. By these two miracles they learned which of the three is the cross of Christ.

Many people gathered near the place where they found the cross of Christ, and everyone wanted to venerate or at least look at the cross. Those who stood close saw the cross, and those who were far away did not see the cross. The Jerusalem bishop raised up or erected cross, and it became visible to all. In memory of this raising of the cross, a holiday was established Exaltation.

Lenten is eaten on this holiday, because, bowing to the cross, we remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ and honor them with fasting.

Now the Russian people believe in Christ, but in the old days the Russians bowed to idols. The Russians adopted the Christian faith from the Greeks. The Greeks were taught by the apostles, and the Greeks believed in Christ much earlier than the Russians. The Russians heard from the Greeks about Christ and were baptized. The Russian Princess Olga recognized the Christian faith and was baptized herself.

The grandson of Princess Olga Vladimir saw that many peoples did not bow to idols, and decided to change their pagan faith. Jews, Mohammedans, Germans and Greeks found out about this desire of Vladimir and sent to him: Jews-teachers, Mohammedans-mullahs, Germans - a priest, and Greeks a monk. Everyone praised their faith. Vladimir sent smart people to different lands to find out which faith is better. The messengers visited different peoples, returned home and said that the Greeks pray to God best of all. Vladimir decided to accept the Orthodox Christian faith from the Greeks, was baptized himself and ordered the Russian people to be baptized. The people were baptized by the Greek bishops and priests, many people at a time, in the rivers. The baptism of the Russian people was in 988 after the birth of Christ, and since then the Russians have become Christians. Faith in Christ many times saved the Russian people from destruction.

When Russia loses faith in Christ, then it will come to an end.

• TROPARI TO THE TWENTIETH HOLIDAYS.

  There are twelve major holidays in a year, or twelve in Slavic. That is why the big holidays are called the Twelfth.

  The biggest holiday Easter.

  Easter is counted separately.

  There is a special holiday prayer for every holiday. This prayer is called troparion. The troparion speaks of the mercy God gave to people on the feast day.

  Troparion for the Nativity of the Virgin.

  Thy Nativity, Virgin Mother of God, joy to proclaim to the whole universe: from Thee, the Sun of righteousness, Christ our God, has ascended, and having broken the oath, I have given a blessing; and abolishing death, giving us eternal life.

  This troparion can be put more simply like this: Holy Mother of God! You were born, and all people rejoiced, because Christ, our God, our light, was born from You. He removed the curse from the people and gave a blessing; He destroyed the mortal torment in hell and gave us eternal life in heaven.

  Troparion of the Entry into the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  The day of the good pleasure of God is the prefiguration, and the preaching of salvation to men; in the temple of God, the Virgin clearly appears, and announces Christ to everyone. To that and we will loudly cry out: Rejoice, watching the Builder's fulfillment.

  Today at God's temple the Virgin Mary came, and the people knew that the grace of God would soon appear, soon God would save people. We will so praise the Mother of God, rejoice, You give us the mercy of God.

  Troparion of the Annunciation.

  The day of our salvation is the main thing, and the hedgehog from the age of mystery is the manifestation: the Son God's Son There are virgins, and Gabriel preaches the gospel. In the same way, we will cry out to the Theotokos with him: Rejoice, full of grace, the Lord is with you.

  Today is the beginning of our salvation, today is the discovery of the eternal mystery: the Son of God became the Son of the Virgin Mary, and Gabriel speaks of this joy. And we will sing to the Mother of God with him; rejoice, merciful one, the Lord is with you.

  Troparion of the Dormition.

  At Christmas, thou didst preserve virginity; and by your prayers you deliver our souls from death.

  You, Mother of God, gave birth to Christ as a virgin and did not forget people after death. You again began to live, because You are the Mother of Life itself; You pray for us and save us from death.

  Troparion of the Nativity of Christ.

  Thy Nativity, Christ our God, ascend the world with the light of reason: in it, for the stars serving as a star, I learn to bow to the Sun of truth and lead You from the height of the East, Lord, glory to Thee.

  Your Nativity, Christ our God, illuminated the world with truth, because then the wise men, bowing to the stars, came to You with a star, as to a real sun, and recognized You as a real sunrise. Lord, Glory to Thee.

  Troparion of Baptism.

  In the Jordan, baptized by You, O Lord, a trinity of worship appeared: For the voice of your parents testified to you, calling your beloved Son, and the Spirit, in the form of a dove, made your word affirmation. Appear, O Christ God, and enlighten the world, glory to Thee.

  When You, Lord, were baptized in the Jordan, people recognized the Holy Trinity, because the voice of God the Father called You the beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, confirmed these words. You, Lord, came to earth and gave light to people, glory to You.

  Troparion of the Presentation.

  Rejoice, Virgin Mary of grace, from Thee the Sun of righteousness, Christ our God, has risen, enlightening beings in darkness; Rejoice, you too, righteous elder, received into the arms of the Liberator of our souls, who grants us the resurrection.

  Rejoice, Virgin Mary, who received the mercy of God, because Christ our God, our sun of truth, illumined us dark people, was born from You. And you, righteous old man, rejoice, because you carried the Savior of our souls in your arms.

  Troparion of Palm Sunday.

  The general resurrection, before your passion, assuring, from the dead you raised Lazarus, Christ God. In the same way, we, like boys, carry a sign of victory, to You, the Conqueror of death, we cry out: Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

  You, Christ God, before your sufferings raised Lazarus from the dead, so that everyone would believe in his resurrection. Therefore, knowing that we will rise again, we sing to you, as the children sang before: Hosanna in the highest, glory to you, who came for the glory of God.

  Troparion of Holy Pascha.

  Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and bestowing life on those in the tombs.

  Christ rose from the dead, conquered death by his death and gave life to the dead.

  Troparion of the Ascension.

  Thou hast ascended in glory, Christ our God, creating joy as a disciple, by the promise of the Holy Spirit, announced to them by the former blessing, as You are the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world.

  You, Christ God, delighted your disciples when you ascended to heaven and promised to send them the Holy Spirit, you blessed them, and they truly knew that you are the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

  Troparion of the Holy Trinity.

  Blessed art Thou, O Christ our God, even wise are the fishermen of the manifestations, sending down upon them the Holy Spirit, and by those catch the world; Lover of mankind, glory to Thee.

  You, Christ God, have made simple fishermen wise when you sent them the Holy Spirit. The apostles taught the whole world. Thank You for such love for people.

  Troparion to the Transfiguration.

  Thou hast been transfigured on the mountain, Christ God, showing Thy disciples Thy glory, as if I could; May Your eternal light shine upon us sinners, with the prayers of the Theotokos, Light Giver, glory to Thee.

  You, Christ God, were transfigured on the mountain and showed the apostles Your God's glory. Through the prayers of the Mother of God and us sinners, show Your eternal light. Glory to Thee.

The Old and New Testaments are two parts of the Bible, the holy book of Christians. As the titles of the books suggest, they have different times of writing. And besides this, what is the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and what do they have in common? About everything in detail - just below.

Time of writing

New Testament began to write in the middle of the 1st century AD, that is, immediately after the death of Jesus Christ. The latest of his books, the Apocalypse (The Revelation of John the Theologian), was written around the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Consists of the following books:

• canonical Gospels (biography of Jesus Christ);
• letters of various apostles to various historical figures of that era or to entire nations (Galatians, Romans, and so on);
• Acts of the Holy Apostles;
• Apocalypse.

The New Testament is written entirely in Koine, a variant of the Greek language that was formed in the Hellenistic era in the Eastern Mediterranean and became the language of interethnic communication.

The difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is that it was written much earlier. Moreover, if the New Testament was created for about half a century, then the Old Testament has a much more solid experience of formation - more than a thousand years, from the 13th to the 1st century BC. The language of writing is Hebrew, with the exception of small parts written in Aramaic. By the beginning of our era, the Old Testament was translated into Greek and became available to the entire population of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Comparison

Old Testament- the common holy book of Christians and Jews. The Jews call this book the Tanakh. The Old Testament consists of three major parts:

• Pentateuch;
• Prophets;
• Scriptures.

In the Jewish tradition, the Tanakh (Masoretic text) differs somewhat from most Christian editions of the Old Testament, but these differences are small. In Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism, there are discrepancies between the various canons of the Old Testament. In Orthodoxy, the translation of the Tanakh, called the Septuagint (Translation of the Seventy Elders), is accepted - this is the oldest translation into Greek, made back in Ptolemaic Egypt.

The Catholic canon is called the Biblia Vulgata ("People's Bible"), or simply the "Vulgate" (finally formed in the 16th century). And the Protestants, having subjected Catholicism to a radical revision, decided to "return to the roots." They abandoned the ready-made Latin and Greek texts and retranslated the Tanakh from the Hebrew language. Texts present in the Vulgate, but not included in the Jewish canon, received the name "Apocrypha" in the Protestant religious tradition.

As for the New Testament, this book, without any discrepancies, is common to all Christians. Of course, when translating a text from ancient Koine into modern languages, inaccuracies may occur, but this is the error of any translation. This situation has developed due to the ambiguity of the interpretation of foreign words in different contexts. If someone wants to get acquainted with the text of the New Testament without such "semantic fluctuations", then they will have to study the ancient Greek language. But most are content with translating the holy book into their native language.

Table

What is the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is indicated in the table below. This is an overview comparison, but those who wish to get acquainted with the issue in more detail should refer to the special literature, which has been written a lot over the two millennia of the existence of Christianity.

The Old and New Testaments are the two constituent parts of the Bible, which is the holy book of all Christians.

Time and language of writing

The Old Testament (also called Scripture) was created in the pre-Christian era: XIII-I centuries. BC. It is written in Hebrew, partly in Aramaic. This book is revered as Holy Scripture by Christians and Jews (they call it the Tanakh and differ from the editions of the Christian Old Testament).

The New Testament was written at the beginning of our era - starting from Ser. 1st century - in ancient Greek (or rather Koine: a variant of the Greek language that was formed in the Hellenistic era in the Eastern Mediterranean and became the language of interethnic communication). The New Testament is the holy book of Christians.

There are 39 books in the Old Testament that are canonical for the Orthodox (there are discrepancies with other denominations here). The Jewish Tanakh includes the Pentateuch (Torah), the Prophets, the Scriptures.

The New Testament consists of four gospels Jesus Christ): from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. It also contains the Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistles and Revelation (Apocalypse) John the Evangelist.

What is the difference between the Old Testament and the New, AiF.ru asked father Andrei (Posternak), candidate of historical sciences and priest.

“The Old Testament is part of the Bible, a sacred book for Christians, in which the main idea is the history of the chosen Jewish people, who kept the true faith in those days when Jesus Christ did not come to Earth. And the Old Testament gives us examples of the righteous life of people who were waiting for the coming of the Messiah, the coming of Christ. These are prophecies about Christ, and the righteous waiting for him, and examples of a pious life. But still, this is a description of people who believed, hoped, waited, but did not find the Messiah (Christ).

And the New Testament is history after the faith of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That is why the New Testament begins with the four books of the Gospels, which tell about the life of Jesus Christ, then there are sermons (Acts of the Apostles) and letters of the apostles, which give edification to all those who have adopted the Christian faith. And it is clear that for modern Christians, the New Testament is the main part of the Bible, because all Christian commandments, rules and norms that they must observe are based on it,” Father Andrei said.

The Old and New Testaments are different parts of Divine Revelation (God's story to people about Himself, His love for them, about the rules of the universe), and these are complementary parts.

The Old Testament - the foundation immediately three religions(or rather, the Pentateuch of Moses), called Abrahamic - Judaism, Christianity, Islam.

The Old Testament is completely the foundation of the history of the Salvation of people by God after their voluntary renunciation of life in peace and friendship with their Creator (according to the law pre-established by Him, they are threatened with punishment for this, and people know about it, but they still blame God for their misdeeds).

In addition, the Old Testament is the history of the Jewish people, various rules and regulations of their life. It is also an inspired book, full of allegories and allegories, so it is incorrect to regard it as corresponding or not corresponding to modern science - it was written several thousand years ago by ancient people for ancient people.

The New Testament is a biography of Jesus Christ in the four Gospels, a story about the activities of His disciples (the acts of the apostles) and their letters to various Christian communities + the mystical book of Revelation.

How the canon of Holy Scripture was formed (Old and New Testaments), what literary genres are used by the authors of parts of the Bible, and so on - here in the introduction of Academician Daniel-Rops: claret.ru (and there is also an introduction and notes to each of the books of Scripture, too very informative).

How Christians perceive the Old and New Testaments and why - read here: tomsk.ru

The main difference between the New Testament and the Old Testament is the change in the paradigm of religious relations. This change was recorded by the words of Christ, who, to the admiration of the disciples by the new Temple, replied that all this would be destroyed. This prophecy is not about the conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans (by the time the NT was written, all this had already happened, and therefore cannot be attributed to prophecy), but about a change in the very norm of religiosity. In the NT, this is a personalistic, personal attitude towards God (if you want to pray to God, enter the upper room, close the doors and pray in secret...), and in the OT it is a national one, when the whole nation is the subject of worship (for this, the Temple is needed to gather people before God). The main goal of the OT is the restoration of the kingdom of Judah under the leadership of the king-messiah. The goal of the New Testament is the return to God of each person ("the return of the prodigal son"), which makes him the Son of God. How to do this, teaches the history of the life of Jesus Christ.

Since everything in nature grows, changes, passes into other forms and to other levels, then here, most likely, the Testaments differ in the level of Revelation, knowledge, the level of God's relationship with humanity, hence it sometimes seems that they contradict each other.
The topic is complex because it is not always possible to see clear boundaries. It’s like, for example, the law in the state - there are rules that are in force in peacetime and rules in wartime - such as wartime law, according to which some things are punished immediately and strictly, some are not relevant at all now, but a lot of things that correlate with each other at any time.
With the advent of Christ, the world received more opportunities and tools to fight evil, and therefore, if in the Old Testament Israel destroyed its enemies, then in the New Testament there appeared a commandment to fight evil on a different level - to love enemies, and to fight their evil with the sword of the Mouth, that is, the Word , Light and grace to try to exorcise darkness (demons, demons) from them. A different level has appeared, a different demand, a greater demand, but at the same time a greater supply. Again, if in the Old Testament the promised land was promised to believers and life on this land "in chocolate" subject to the observance of the commandments, then Christ in the New Testament, of course, promises some blessings for the journey, but more emphasis and focus is still on resurrection - for the Old Testament consciousness, this would be too overwhelming a "topic". Well and all in such spirit.

In short: the Old Testament is the religion of the Law, the New Testament is the religion of Grace.

Hence the different understanding of man's relationship with God and the different understanding of sin. In the Old Testament sin is an act, in the New it is a state of mind.

The obvious difference between the Old and New Testaments is that both of these collections religious texts created different people, at different historical times (a period of several thousand years), based on very different religious and socio-cultural preferences of their era.

What today the Western and Eastern European world understands under the name "Old Testament" is a book created over many hundreds of years by Jews and for Jews. The Jews themselves call it the Tanakh. It contains important information about the history, culture and religious beliefs of this ancient people. One of the important themes of the Old Testament is the expectation of the coming into this world of a special spiritual leader, an ideal king or, in other words, a "messiah", who will grant freedom, spiritual and political, to the people of Israel.

Approximately two thousand years ago, an initially small group of people, orthodox Jews, decided that this event happened during their lifetime (with which most of their compatriots and contemporaries disagreed). The description of this event (the birth, life and death of the Messiah named Jesus Christ) served as the basis for the creation of a new cycle of texts, which are now known as the "New Testament", and the emergence of a new religion called "Christianity". In the several hundred years that followed the alleged events, many retellings of them appeared, so that the church leaders of that time had to force the will and at random to declare only four of them canonical (that is, real, worthy of trust).

And then how to look, if a person is a Christian, then for him these two testaments are self-evidently and logically connected with each other. The story of one follows from the other. In modern terms, the New Testament is a sequel to the Old. Combined together, they make up a well-known book called "The Bible".

On the other hand, if a person is, say, a Jew, that is, a Jew who traditionally professes the religion of the Old Testament, then for him the history of the New Testament is at least just a fanfiction, or even just a heresy (deviation from the correct teaching) and common between they have nothing.

The main thing is not to confuse the Collection of Hebrew Scriptures (that is, 39 books written in Hebrew and Aramaic between the 16th and 5th centuries BC by various prophets) and Greek Scriptures (27 books written in the 1st century AD). in Greek by the disciples of Jesus Christ)

All this Holy Scriptures inspired by God, otherwise called the Bible.

« All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,that the man of God be perfect to everyone good deed cooked." (1 Timothy 3:16)

What the word Covenant means is an Agreement.

When people talk about the Old Testament, they mean the Covenant of the Law, which was written by Moses in the Pentateuch and which is only a part of the pre-Christian Scriptures.

It was concluded between God and the people of Israel (descendants of Abraham according to the flesh) through the mediation of Moses. The Israelites agreed to the terms of the agreement, solemnly promising to keep the Law (Exodus 24:3-8).

The terms of the Covenant of the Law were that if the Israelites kept to the covenant, they would become a nation in the name of God, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation whom He would bless (Exodus 19:5, 6; Deuteronomy 28:1-14); if they break the agreement, they will be cursed (Deut. 28:15-68).

The purposes of the Law covenant were: to make evident the transgressions or sinfulness of men (Gl. 3:19); bring the Jews to Christ.

« So the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith;after the advent of faith, we are no longer underleadershipschoolmaster." (Gl 3:24,25);

Through the prophet Jeremiah, God announced that there would be a new covenant. (Jer 31:31-34; Heb 8:13).

In 33 AD e. the covenant of the Law was annulled by the death of Christ on the torture stake (Col. 2:14) The night before his death, Nisan 14, 33 CE. BC, Jesus Christ spoke of a New Covenant to be put into effect by his sacrifice (Luke 22:20).

In this agreement, on the one hand, God participates, and on the other hand, CHRISTIANS, born of the spirit - “Israel of God”, people from all nations, not according to the flesh, but according to faith in Christ (faith in the atonement of our sins by his blood), who are in unity with Christ and constituting his body, or congregation (church) (Galatians 6:15)

And to put it simply, the OT is a symbol of the law (Moses) and ritual worship (Abraham), as well as a tutor to Christ. Having fulfilled its function, the law dies off like a stage of a rocket and then only interferes ... like half-down pants when running. It is for this reason that Moses and Aaron could not enter the land of promise (the symbol of the NZ), they are simply not supposed to be there, but only to bring it (Christ).

It is for this reason that neither Catholicism nor Orthodoxy, with their law and ritual worship, are representatives of the NT, because the commandments are written on paper in front of the eyes, and not on the heart of the believer. Protestantism is also following them in this by leaps and bounds (the Galatian syndrome, painted by Paul in his letter to them).

The OT was made with Abraham and his descendants according to the flesh; Jews and Gentiles had nothing to do with it. The Jews repeatedly violated this agreement, and God endured them for the sake of Abraham and for this reason warned that he would conclude a new covenant with the people of Israel and along the way attract other nations. True, this happened only because of the rejection of Christ by Israel, i.e. the children threw the bread of life under the table to the pagan dogs (an example of a Syrophoenician woman), otherwise only the Jews would have been saved.

Well, in short, the OT is Divine service through human intermediaries, and in the NT there is only one intermediary and high priest - Christ, so that all the priests, priests, popes, pastors and other leftist layers are banal OT nonsense, only the hindering comes to believers children of God directly to the Father through Christ.