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The Hebrew name for the book of Genesis is Bereshit (In the Beginning). The title is actually the first word of the book. The Russian title "Genesis" is a translation of the Greek title of this book according to the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, carried out in the 3rd century BC) and means "Origin". Genesis is a book about what started to be. The book tells about the origin of heaven and earth, about the creation of man and his fall into sin, about God's promise of the Savior and about the covenant of God with man.

The first book of the Bible - Genesis - contains no mention of the author. However, it is generally accepted that Genesis, like the entire Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), was written by Moses. The basis for this is, firstly, the Jewish spiritual tradition, which has always recognized (and recognizes) the authorship of Moses. Christianity also agrees that the author is Moses. Doubts about the author of the book of Genesis (as well as the time of writing this book) were put forward by negative criticism already in modern times. At the same time, critics cannot agree on the author, and their statements are speculative, since they are devoid of justification and are based solely on a subjective and formal approach to the text. Moreover, this approach completely ignores the main distinguishing feature of the book of Genesis - its inspiration and inspiration of the author.

The author of the book of Genesis was a man who not only received the greatest revelations of God, but also proved able to accept these revelations, understand them and present them in such a way that they were accessible to both his contemporaries and distant descendants. The author of the book of Genesis was able to combine the tradition of God's personal revelation to man, which is reflected in the line Abraham - Isaac - Jacob, with the idea of ​​the Most High - the Creator of heaven and earth, and everything that fills them.

The one who wrote this book had to have personal communication with the living God and, at the same time, have a mindset that was not directed to subjective experiences, but to global, universal problems of being, far beyond the personal and national. And only Moses could be such a person. By the will of God, it was he, the only one, who turned out to be the focus of Egyptian scientific knowledge and Jewish divinely revealed spirituality. The richest factual (historical, geographical, ethnographic, etc.) material available in the book of Genesis, its literary form and artistic techniques directly and indirectly testify not only to the highest education of its author, but also indicate the Egyptian origin of this education. According to ancient writers - Strabo, Aristotle, Plato - Egypt in ancient times served as a world archivist and historiographer. And the richest material, saved and accumulated by the Egyptian priests for centuries, by the will of the Almighty, was given to Moses, the adopted son of the pharaoh's daughter. Besides Moses, only Joseph had such an opportunity - to get acquainted with the "wisdom of Egypt". But the Bible nowhere says that Joseph, unlike Moses, took advantage of this opportunity (Acts 7:22).

Egypt brought up a thinker in Moses. The Jewish spiritual tradition instilled in him the knowledge of the One God, and once in the wilderness, after fleeing from Egypt, the knowledge of God turned for Moses into the knowledge of God as the One Existing (Ex. 3.14).

In Ex. 3:6 God calls Himself by this name for the first time, but Moses was able to understand that Jehovah is the God of revelation. And he consistently expressed this understanding in the book of Genesis: all cases of the use of the name of God there - Jehovah in one way or another indicate the relationship between God and man.

An equally important argument in favor of the fact that Moses wrote the book of Genesis, and he did this in the early years of the exodus from Egypt, is the fact that this book contains the original history of the people of Israel and their covenant with God - the inheritance of the promised land. The book of Exodus testifies that the Jews left Egypt as miserable refugees with the psychology of slaves; the memory of the One God was preserved only by a few, and the bulk of the people were ready to renounce both Moses and God, Who through Moses led them and spoke to them. They no longer remembered God, who brought them to Egypt, and were ready to exchange Him for a golden calf, and the promised land for Egyptian cauldrons of meat. Reading Genesis in the tabernacle of meeting (along with reading the law) opened the eyes of the Jews to who they were, where they came from, and where they were going. And the revelation about the One God - the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth - instilled faith that the Almighty, who created the whole earth, is Almighty and He will fulfill His covenant with their father, Abraham, and give them the promised part of the earth He created. Without the book of Genesis, the Jews would never have come out of the Sinai wilderness as the people of Israel.

Time and circumstances of writing

The time of writing the book of Genesis is most likely the period between 1471-1405. BC The sixty-six years between these dates include the time of the wandering of the Jews in the wilderness (40 years) and the discrepancy between the supposed dates of the birth of Moses: some researchers attribute his birth to 1551 BC, others to 1525.

Apparently, the realization of the urgent need to write this book arose (or, perhaps, only became established) in Moses after, having descended from Mount Sinai, he saw a pagan bacchanalia in the camp of the people he led (see Ex. 32).

Difficulties of interpretation

The difficulties in interpreting the book of Genesis are explained, on the one hand, by the specifics of the book itself, which represents a synthesis of world history and the revelation of God, on the other hand, by the diversity of presentation and the originality of the narrative language, which includes capacious symbolic images along with unambiguously specific concepts, and the author himself does not explain and does not expands these images. Such a feature is not characteristic exclusively for the book of Genesis, but expresses the general principle of the presentation of sacred texts in antiquity, which provided for fixing the truth in a form that does not distort the truth itself, but requires oral interpretation. The author of the book of Genesis consistently adhered to this principle and thereby allowed subsequent generations to correlate the content of the book with the level and originality of thinking of their era.

The above can be visually illustrated by the example of the image of a serpent (3.1). Christian exegesis identifies the snake with Satan, but for the contemporaries of Moses (especially for previous generations), the very concept of Satan did not exist, and what stands behind the word "Satan" found expression in other symbols and images. Thus, archeological data made it possible to establish that in the Neolithic era there was a common idea for the peoples of the Nostratic language group (from which the Indo-European - Japhetic, Semitic and Hamitic - linguistic communities came) about the "god" of the underworld, i.e. deity living in the bowels of the earth. Wisdom was attributed to this deity, it owned all the treasures hidden in the earth and "managed" the kingdom of the dead. Animals were dedicated to him - mainly reptiles, i.e. those whose way of life (movement) was closely connected with the land. Among these animals were snakes. In addition, there was a tradition to identify this deity with the animal dedicated to him, and the name of the animal (or its image) was perceived as a designation of the deity itself. This deity was never conceived by the Creator, since he himself was created. Thus, Moses chose the most understandable designation for his contemporaries for the entity that centuries later would be identified with Satan.

As for the difficulties allegedly arising in connection with the names of God in ch. 1 (Elohim) and ch. 2 (Jehovah), as well as other passages of Scripture that "contradict" each other (for example, 1.28 and 2.22), then these "problems" were perfectly commented on by the Jewish philosopher and theologian Mosheben Maimon (Maimonides, 1135-1204 .), whose writings influenced thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Spinoza: “Whenever in our books there is a story whose reality seems impossible, a narrative that contradicts ... common sense, you can be sure that this story contains an allegory that hides a deeply hidden truth; and the greater the inconsistency of the letter, the deeper the wisdom of the spirit. In other words, when reading Scripture, one should ask the question "why?" ("why is it done?") rather than "how?" ("how is this possible?"). There is an answer to the last question that is common to both the Old and New Testaments - nothing is impossible for God.

Features and themes

Since some of the features and main themes of the book of Genesis have already been discussed in general above (see Introduction: Author. Difficulties of interpretation), and a more detailed interpretation will be offered directly in the comments to the text, it seems appropriate to note only those points that are used by negative criticism for various kind of speculation. Such moments include points of contact between the book of Genesis and ancient literary monuments (in particular, the "Poem of Gilgamesh", Sumer, III millennium BC).

It should be immediately noted that it would be much more strange if the book of Genesis completely fell out of the history of mankind and its culture. Moses wrote for the people, and he set forth the Divine revelations in the context of human history, illuminating the key moments of this history with the light of Divine truth. As an example, let's turn to the story of the Flood, which is not only a scientifically reliable truth, but also, in an artistically rethought form, found its way into the literary traditions of almost all peoples. If we recall the cultural and linguistic community of the people of the post-Flood period, which the Bible speaks of (Gen. 11.1) and which is confirmed by the data of linguistics and archeology, then again, the reasons for the discrepancy in the presentation of the same fact by different historians deserve more attention. than those moments where this discrepancy is absent.

The coincidence of some provisions of the biblical teaching about God and the world, set forth in the book of Genesis, with the ideas of pagan peoples should not cause any problems for a person who reads the Bible thoughtfully, since the book of Genesis purposefully and consistently carries out the idea of ​​God as the One Source of true knowledge and revelation. Moreover, the book of Genesis emphasizes that in the person of Adam, Noah and Melchizedek, humanity had a single and common revelation of God for all. Another question is how much people managed to keep this revelation in its original form. But, of course, even the most rethought and mythologized legends, distorted by perverted religious ideas, always retain some elements of the original truth, which is confirmed by the theme of the fall, which in one form or another is reflected in the myths and legends of all mankind. The book of Genesis contains the direct revelation of God, written down by the person who received this revelation, i.e. between the revelation and its written fixation there is a minimally short period of time, which guarantees the reliability of the revelation and its safety from distortions.

It should be remembered that the Bible is inspired Scripture requiring a spiritual attitude. The apostle Paul wrote about the spiritual approach to Holy Scripture in general and to the book of Genesis in particular: "... these were images for us" (1 Cor. 10:6; see also Gal. 4:22-31). The figurative system of the book of Genesis often does not allow for an unambiguously literal understanding of the text and requires that the spiritual be correlated with the spiritual (1 Cor. 2:13). The chief reference is to "the dispensation of the mystery which was hidden from eternity in God, who created all things through Jesus Christ" (Eph. 3:9). The book of Genesis contains many typical prophecies about Jesus Christ, the Redeemer promised by God to all mankind. The interpretation of these prophecies requires a deep understanding of the symbolic system of the First Book of Moses, especially since this symbolism runs through the entire Old Testament to the New.

I. Prologue: Creation of heaven and earth (1.1 - 2.3)

II. Origin of heaven and earth (2.4 - 4.26)

A. The trial of Adam and Eve in Paradise (2:4-25)
B. The Fall and Its Consequences (3:1-24)
C. The increase of sin among the descendants of Cain (4:1-24)
D. The pious remnant (4,25,26)

III. Genealogy of Adam (5.1 - 6.8)

A. Seth's lineage is the covenant line (5:1-32)
B. Increased sin before the flood (6:1-8)

IV. Genealogy of Noah (6.9 - 9.29)

A. Preparations before the flood (6:9 - 7:10)
B. Flood and salvation (7:11 - 8:19)
C. God's covenant not to waste the earth (8:20 - 9:17)
D. Prophecy about the sons of Noah (9:18-29)

V. Genealogy of Shem, Ham and Japheth (10.1 - 11.9)

A. Table of Nations (10:1-32)
B. The increase of evil in Babylon (11:1-9)

VI. Genealogy of Shem (11:10-26)

VII. Genealogy of Abraham (11:27 - 25:11)

A. Genealogy (11:27-32)
B. Abrahamic Covenant: Land and People (12:1-22:19)

1. Migration to the promised land (12:1-9)
2. Deliverance from Egypt (12:10-20)
3. Separation of Lot and his departure from the promised land (13:1-18)
4. Victory over the Eastern kings (14:1-24)
5. God's covenant is established (15:1-21)
6. Hagar and Ishmael rejected (16:1-16)
7. God's covenant is confirmed (17:1-27)
8. Sarah will have a son (18:1-15)
9. Rescue of Lot from Sodom (18:16 - 19:38)
10. Protection from the Philistines (20:1-18)
11. Birth of Isaac and blessing in the promised land (21:1-34)
12. Oath of God to bless the world through Abraham's offspring (22:1-19)

C. The passage of the narrative to Isaac (22:20 - 25:11):

1. Rebekah's family (22:20-24)
2. Death of Sarah (23:1-20)
3. Rebekah given to Isaac (24:1-67)
4. Isaac is the only heir (25:1-6)
5. Death of Abraham (25:7-11)

VIII. Genealogy of Ishmael (25:12-18)

IX. Genealogy of Isaac (25.19 - 35.29)

A. Rivalries in the family (25:19-34)
B. Blessings of the covenant given to Isaac (26:1-35)
C. Jacob steals the blessing from Esau (27:1-40)
D. The blessings of the covenant belong to Jacob; his flight (27.41 - 32.32)

1. Meeting with an angel at Bethel (28:10-22)
2. Conflict with Laban (29:1-30)
3. Birth of the fathers of the twelve tribes (29:31 - 30:24)
4. The prosperity of Jacob and his flight from Laban (30.25 - 31.55)
5. Meeting with angels in Mahanaim and Penuel (32:1-32)

E. Esau's reconciliation with Jacob (33:1-17)
F. Narrative transition to Jacob: the journey from Shechem to Mamre and the deaths along the way (33:18 - 35:29)

X. Genealogy of Esau (36.1 - 37.1)

XI. Genealogy of Jacob (37.2 - 50.26)

A. Joseph's dream of dominion (37:2-11)
B. Family sins (37.12 - 38.30)
B. Joseph was appointed ruler over Egypt (39.1 - 41.57)
D. Joseph's trick and reconciliation with a family in covenant with God (42:1 - 45:28)
E. Transition to the book of Exodus (46:1 - 50:26)

1. Migration to Egypt (46:1-30)
2. Dwelling in the land of Goshen (46:1-30)
3. Jacob blesses the twelve tribes (48:1 - 49:28)
4. The death of Jacob and his burial in the land of Canaan (49.29 - 50.14)
5. The death of Joseph in Egypt and the promise of the land of Canaan (50:15-26)

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1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

3 And God said: let there be light. And there was light.

4 And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light day, and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning: one day.

6 And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate water from water.

7 And God created the firmament, and separated the water that was under the firmament from the water that was above the firmament. And it became so.

8 And God called the firmament sky. And there was evening and there was morning: the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters that are under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it became so.

10 And God called the dry land the earth, and the gathering of the waters he called the seas. And God saw that [it] was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth vegetation, grass yielding seed, fruitful tree yielding fruit after its kind, in which is its seed, on the earth. And it became so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, in which is its seed after its kind. And God saw that [it] was good.

13 And there was evening and there was morning: the third day.

14 And God said: let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to separate the day from the night, and for signs, and times, and days, and years;

15 and let them be lamps in the firmament of heaven to give light to the earth. And it became so.

16 And God created two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the smaller light to rule the night, and the stars;

17 and God set them in the firmament of heaven to shine on the earth,

18 and govern the day and the night, and separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that [it] was good.

19 And there was evening, and there was morning: the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the water bring forth reptiles, living creatures; and let the birds fly over the earth, in the firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great fish, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that [it] was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.

23 And there was evening and there was morning: the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind. And it became so.

25 And God created the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing on the earth after its kind. And God saw that [it] was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

27 And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed that is in all the earth, and every tree bearing fruit of a tree yielding seed; - you [this] will be food;

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to every creeping thing on the earth, in which there is a living soul, I [gave] all herbs for food. And it became so.

31 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning: the sixth day.

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God finished His works which He did, and rested on the seventh day from all His works which He did.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, for on it he rested from all his works, which God created and created.

4 This is the origin of heaven and earth, at their creation, at the time when the Lord God created earth and sky,

5 and every shrub of the field that was not yet on the earth, and every grass of the field that was not yet growing, for the Lord God did not send rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the earth,

6 but steam rose from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth.

7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

8 And the Lord God planted a paradise in Eden in the east, and placed there the man whom he had created.

9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the tree of life in the midst of paradise, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river came out of Eden to water paradise; and then divided into four rivers.

11 The name of one Pishon: it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

12 and the gold of that land is good; there bdolakh and onyx stone.

13 The name of the second river is the Gihon: it flows around the whole land of Cush.

14 The name of the third river is Hiddekel: it flows before Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him in the garden of Eden, to dress it and keep it.

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, From every tree in the garden you shall eat,

17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil do not eat from it, for on the day you eat from it you will die the death.

18 And the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone; Let us make him a helper suitable for him.

19 The Lord God formed from the earth all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air, and brought them to man to see what he would call them, and that whatever man called every living soul, that was its name.

20 And the man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to all the beasts of the field; but for man there was not found a helper like him.

21 And the Lord God brought a sound sleep upon the man; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs, and covered the place with flesh.

22 And the Lord God created from the rib taken from the man a wife, and brought her to the man.

23 And the man said, Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken from man.

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cling to his wife; and they will be one flesh.

25 And they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.

1 The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God had created. And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: Do not eat from any tree in paradise?

2 And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat the fruits of the trees,

3 only the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God said, do not eat it or touch it, lest you die.

4 And the serpent said to his wife: no, you will not die,

5 but God knows that on the day you eat them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And the woman saw that the tree is good for food, and that it is pleasing to the eye and desirable, because it gives knowledge; and took its fruit and ate; and gave also to her husband, and he ate.

7 And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons.

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

2 The earth was deserted, there was nothing on the earth. Darkness hid the ocean, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

3 And then God said, “Let there be light!” and the light shone.

4 God saw the light and knew it was good. Then God separated the light from the darkness.

5 And he called the light day, and the darkness night. And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was the first day.

6 Then God said, "Let there be something that divides the water in the middle!"

7 And God created the air and divided the water in the middle. Some of the waters were above the air, and some were under the air.

8 God called the air heaven. And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was the second day.

9 Then God said, “Let the waters that are under the sky be closed together, so that dry land may appear.” And it was so.

10 God called the dry land the earth, and the closed water he called the seas. And God saw that it was good.

11 And then God said, “Let grass, cereals, and fruit trees grow on the earth. Fruit trees will bear fruit with seeds, and each plant will produce its own seeds according to which plant it is. Let these plants be on the earth.” And so it was.

12 Grass, cereals, and trees grew on the earth, bearing fruit with seeds. Each plant spawned its own seeds according to what kind of plant it was. And God saw that it was good.

13 And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was the third day.

14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the sky. They will separate the days from the nights, serve for special signs, and mark the times for sacred gatherings. And they will also serve to indicate days and years.

15 These lights will be in the sky to shine on the earth.” And it was so.

16 And God created two great luminaries: one was the greater luminary to rule over the day, and the other, the smaller one, to rule over the night. God also made the stars

17 and placed all these lights in the heavens to shine over the earth.

18 He placed these lights in the heavens to rule over the day and over the night and separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

19 And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was the fourth day.

20 Then God said, “Let many living creatures fill the water, and let birds fly in the air over the earth.”

21 And God created sea monsters, created all living things that move in the sea. There are many different animals in the sea, and they are all created by God! God also created all kinds of birds that fly in the sky. And God saw that it was good.

22 God blessed these animals and told them to multiply and fill the seas. God commanded the birds on dry land to produce a great multitude of birds.

23 And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was the fifth day.

24 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth many living creatures, many different kinds of animals, and let there be large animals and small creeping animals of every kind, and let these animals bring forth other animals.” And it was so.

25 And God created every kind of animal: wild beasts, domestic animals, and every little creeping creature. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let us now make man.” Let us make men in Our image and likeness. .

27 And God created men in his own image and likeness, created men and women, blessed them, and said to them:

28 “Have children so that the number of people will multiply. Fill the land and own it. Dominion over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, dominion over all living creatures that move on the earth."

29 God said, “I give you all the grains and all the fruit trees that bear fruit with seeds. Grain and fruits will be your food.

30 I also give animals all green plants. All the animals on the earth, all the birds in the sky, and all the creeping little things on the earth will feed on them.” And so it was.

31 God looked at everything that He had made, and saw that it was all very good. And there was evening, and then there was morning. It was the sixth day.

Original or copy?

The originals of the biblical books - that is, the manuscripts made by the prophet Moses or the apostle Paul - did not reach us, of course. The material for writing in their time was papyrus - wide long sheets made from the stems of a plant common in the Nile Delta and some other wetlands of the Middle East, or, much less often, parchment - specially dressed animal skin. But parchment was too expensive, and papyrus too short-lived—rarely did a papyrus book last longer than half a century.

In fact, all the originals of ancient manuscripts that have come down to us are fragments of private correspondence and business papers that were once thrown into Egyptian garbage dumps (only in Egypt, the dry climate allowed them to survive), and inscriptions on hard surfaces (clay tablets, shards, stone) . And all ancient literary works have come down to us in later copies. The first known lists of Homer's poems date back from the death of their creator by at least half a millennium. A little more than six hundred manuscripts of the Iliad, the most read and revered work in ancient Greece, have come down to us, about three hundred of the tragedies of Euripides, and the first six books of the Annals by the Roman historian Tacitus have generally been preserved in a single list of the 9th century.

For comparison: today there are more than five thousand manuscripts containing certain parts of the New Testament. The earliest of them were made on papyri in Egypt at the turn of the 1st-2nd centuries. AD, just a few decades after the death of the apostles. They, in particular, contain passages from the Gospel of John, written at the very end of the 1st century.

But how, in fact, is it known that this or that manuscript really contains the original text of the Homeric poems or the Bible? These days, fakes are pretty easy to spot. Manuscripts are studied and compared - as for the New Testament, this is done by a whole scientific institute in the German city of Münster. And then, a few manuscripts may turn out to be fake, but not a thousand.

But even in cases where the ancient text has come down to us in one or two copies, its authenticity can be confirmed or rejected on the basis of many data. Does the author get confused in the historical details of the period that he describes? Is he familiar with the geography of the place where the action develops? What language does he write, what words does he use? Are his testimonies corroborated by independent sources? Is his book cited by other authors, is it known to later readers? So to distinguish a fake is not at all as difficult as it seems at first glance.

In the five thousand New Testament manuscripts that have come down to us, there are some discrepancies (we will tell you more about this in the next issue of the magazine), but we will not see any other Message than the Gospel in them. None of them say that Jesus was not the Son of God or died on the Cross. If all this is the result of some huge gang of forgers operating all over the Mediterranean no later than the beginning of the 2nd century AD, then it is obviously impossible to create any plausible story at all in this world.

The Bible is the book of the Church

The Bible speaks not only about Christ, but also about itself something fundamentally different than, for example,. This is one of those obvious platitudes that people tend to forget. Muslims believe that the Quran is a revelation of God, sent down to one single person - Muhammad, who wrote it down "under the dictation" of God and did not add a single word from himself. Therefore, for them, any earthly text of the Qur'an is just a copy of the Qur'an of heaven, the true Word of God, above which there is nothing on earth, never was and never will be. First there was the Koran, then Islam was born from it. Therefore, by the way, the Koran, from the point of view of Islam, is untranslatable: any of its translations are just auxiliary aids, and only the Arabic text can be considered authentic.

For a Christian, the Word of God that descended to earth is, first of all, not a book, but a Person, Jesus Christ, who existed from eternity and founded his own on earth. They say that once an Orthodox priest in the United States met with a street preacher of one of the Protestant denominations. “Do you want me to tell you about a church that is based on the Bible?” he offered cheerfully. “Do you want me to tell you about the Church that wrote the Bible?” the priest answered him.

And he was right, because Christ Himself did not leave us any written texts. Even the gospel was first transmitted as an oral story, and the epistles were written by various apostles (primarily Paul) as pastoral instructions on various specific occasions. And by the time the last book of the New Testament, the Gospel of John, was completed, the Christian one had already existed for more than half a century... Therefore, if we want to understand the Bible, we need to turn to the Christian Church, because it is primary.

Where did the biblical canon come from?

But why did we even get the idea that the Bible is Holy Scripture? Maybe this is just one of the collections of ancient legends, of which there are many? Even more at all times there were people who called themselves prophets, messengers, Christs - why should everyone believe, the writings of each should be recognized as Scripture?

A book can become Scripture only in a community of believers who recognize its authority, determine its canon (exact composition), interpret, and finally rewrite. Christians believe that all this happened not without the participation of the Holy Spirit, Who spoke in the authors of biblical books, and whose help we need today for a correct understanding of this book. But the Spirit does not cancel the human personality - rather, on the contrary, He allows it to unfold in its entirety.

And since this process unfolds in history, Christianity is alien to the idea of ​​a Revelation given once and for all, which all subsequent generations can only fulfill. No, just as Christ is the incarnated Son of God, so Christianity itself is embodied in our earthly history, with all its internal unity, acquiring some new features and characteristics in every generation and in every nation.

Therefore, the New Testament canon - the list of books included in the New Testament - did not take shape immediately. Thus, in the East, the book of Revelation was treated with some wariness for a long time, probably because of its mystical nature, and in the West - to the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews, because both in style and in content it differs markedly from his other epistles ( although it does not contradict them). However, Christian theologians added, even if he did not write this epistle, the Church wrote it anyway.

But as far as the Gospels are concerned, everything is simple here. From the very beginning, the Church knew those four Gospels, which were included in the canon of the New Testament, and we will not find any others in any list that has come down to us. It was in them that the Church saw the familiar and beloved image of Christ, and she simply did not need anything else.

There is a feeling that the exact composition of the Bible was far from being considered by the Fathers in the first place, and they did not even particularly try to eliminate obvious discrepancies: there was simply no particular practical need for such a canon. The Rules of the Councils of Laodicea and Carthage do not draw any distinction between true and heretical books, but merely determine which books may be read in the church as Scripture. If the Revelation of John the Theologian is read in one church, and not in another, there will be nothing terrible in this discrepancy, so long as some heretical work does not take the place of this book.

Fierce disputes flared up in the West already in the era of the Reformation, and they concerned only the Old Testament. However, these were disputes not only about the exact composition of the Biblical canon, but also about its meaning. Protestants spoke at the same time about the exceptional authority of Scripture, which is fundamentally different from all other books. This principle is called Sola Scriptura- Only Holy Scripture can serve as the basis of the Church's doctrine. If so, then the question of what is and is not included in Scripture becomes really vital. For example, Catholic theologians in support of the idea of ​​purgatory (and in general the idea that the earthly Church can influence the posthumous fate of its members) cited the story of the 2nd Maccabees book ( 12: 39-45) about Judas Maccabee offering a cleansing sacrifice for his dead brothers. For Catholics, this book is part of the Scriptures, and therefore, prayer for the dead is prescribed by the Bible. But from the point of view of the Protestants, this book is not Biblical, and even if in itself it is good and interesting, then the statements of its author do not have doctrinal authority.

The Orthodox world did not know such large-scale and fundamental disputes over the merits of the books of Tobit, Judith, etc. As a result, a situation has arisen where the Orthodox, following the Council of Laodicea, recognize as canonical the same books as the Protestants, but include in their editions of the Bible and non-canonical books like Catholics. Thus, the Bible canon is smaller than the Bible itself!

But this may seem strange only in the context of the Reformation, and not in the East, where the task of separating Scripture from Tradition was not set. Orthodox theologians sometimes depict them in the form of concentric circles: in the very center is the Gospel, then other Bible books (it is clear that the Epistles of Paul are more important for us than Leviticus), then the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils, the creations of the Fathers and other elements of Tradition, up to pious customs of individual parishes. The periphery must necessarily agree with the center, be checked by it - but it is not so important where exactly the Scripture ends and the Tradition begins, where exactly the Maccabean books or epistles are attributed. It is more important to determine the degree of their authority relative to other books and customs.

The boundaries between truth and falsehood, between faith and superstition, between churchliness and heresy are much more important than the boundaries between Scripture and Tradition, which, like many other things in the Church, serve as evidence one Spirit().

Magazine "Foma"

The study of the ancient Bible,
original Codex Sinaiticus
which is 1600 years old.

For many centuries the Bible was copied and translated, how do we now know that the modern text of the Bible is not distorted and corresponds to the primary source, the original Bible?

Let's look at this issue in more detail. How is the Bible translated? How, for example, did the modern Russian translation of the Bible come about?

The original Bible was originally written in Greek (New Testament) and Hebrew (Old Testament). Modern Bible translations are made directly from texts written in these original languages. The Bible is a very famous book, so its translation is done with the utmost care, a process that takes scholars many years.

Thus, the fact that the Bible has been translated many times does not distort its text in any way, because translations are made from original languages, and not from other translations.

Now let's consider the question of how the rewriting of the Bible affected the correspondence of its text to the original. After all, the Bible is a very ancient book, and until the time the printing press was invented in 1440, it was copied by hand.

Of course, the monks and scribes copied the text of the Bible very meticulously. The Jewish scribes, for example, used a special system for checking the copies they made, in which they counted the exact number of letters and words in each book they copied, to ensure that there was not a single mistake or distortion in the Bible. However, during such a long time, which is calculated for many centuries, errors still sometimes crept into the rewritten texts. And this can now be noticed by studying the manuscripts found by archaeologists.

However, how do scholars know that there are errors or distortions in a given manuscript? This can be easily seen by comparing it with most other manuscripts and especially with earlier manuscripts. Therefore, those errors that have crept into the rewritten text for centuries are easily eliminated by modern science, and they do not affect the text of the Bible, which we use now.

The Bible is 1600 years old
Codex Sinaiticus.

The modern text of the Bible is based primarily on the earliest manuscripts, which are very close to the original source. For example, the full text of the New Testament is presented in a 350 manuscript known as the Codex Sinaiticus. By the way, earlier this manuscript was kept in St. Petersburg, but in 1933 the Soviet government sold it to the British Museum, where it is now.

In addition, scholars have manuscripts of almost all the books of the New Testament, which date back even earlier: 130-200 BC. The best known of these manuscripts are: the Bodmer Papyri (200) in the Bodmer Library in Geneva, the Chester Beatty Papyri (200) now in the Dublin Library, and the Rylands P52 papyrus (130) which is the earliest passage from New Testament book of the Gospel of John, which is kept in the Ryland University Library, Manchester.

The original Gospel of John was originally written in AD 90-100, so we have a manuscript that dates back only 40 years later. Also, the early manuscripts of almost all the other books of the New Testament are very close to the original source, they are dated only 50-150 years later. The New Testament books were originally written between 50 and 100 AD.

In addition, scholars have at their disposal a huge number of manuscripts of the New Testament, which date back to a later time. Their number exceeds 5600 ancient Greek manuscripts containing the full or partial text of the New Testament.

All this makes the New Testament the most confirmed historical document of antiquity. One of the famous scholars in the field of biblical studies, F.F. Bruce wrote about this:

No other ancient literature has such strong textual support as the New Testament.

The book of Isaiah, the book of the Old Testament,
which is 2200 years old

The Old Testament was written before, its writing was completed around 400 BC. At the moment, scholars have over 200 manuscripts, representing all the books of the Old Testament except the book of Esther, and which date from 250 BC to 70 AD. In total, there are more than 25,000 manuscripts and fragments of books of the Old Testament dating from different centuries.

No other work of antiquity has such a large number of manuscripts that have come down to us and such a short period of time separating the earliest of them from the original. For example, the works of Plato and Aristotle, written by them in the 4th century BC. are presented in less than 10 manuscripts (Plato) and about 50 manuscripts (Aristotle). The earliest of these dates back to the 9th century AD, that is, about 1200 years after the original was written.

Approximately the same applies to almost all ancient literary works, with the exception of only the Iliad of Homer, which is presented in more than 1500 manuscripts, the earliest of which dates back about 500 years after the original was written. Although a complete copy of the Iliad also dates only to the 10th century AD, that is, 1800 years after the original. And yet, the Iliad is considered the second most textually confirmed work of antiquity after the Bible.

Thus, we can be sure that the modern text of the Bible is not distorted and fully corresponds to its original original. This is confirmed by hundreds of early biblical manuscripts that were written only 50 to 250 years after the original, and tens of thousands of other later copies.

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