The Book of Priest Gennady Egorov is a general introduction to the study of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. It provides an overview of Old Testament history and the content of the law-positive, historical, teaching, and prophetic books of the Old Testament. The main emphasis is placed on their messianic content and reading from the point of view of the New Testament. The text uses a large number of patristic interpretations and liturgical texts. The book is supplied with an appendix, which contains fragments from the works of the holy fathers and Orthodox theologians, allowing you to get deeper into the topics of the course.
The proposed publication is intended primarily for students of the system of additional education. In addition, it will be useful for students studying in the direction or specialty of Theology, as well as for students of theological schools.
The tables given in the application are correctly reproduced by the CoolReader 3 reader
Foreword
Given tutorial is an edited course of lectures given to students of "non-theological" faculties of PSTBI, and is an introduction to the study of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. The main goal of the course is to prepare students for independent study Bibles and, if possible, instill a taste for this occupation. In addition to a general review of the content of the Old Testament books, the lectures examine the basic concepts of isagogy and exegesis, give examples of patristic interpretations, and also clarify the soteriological and messianic significance of sacred history.
The limited volume of the lecture course does not allow considering in detail the content of the biblical books and the events of the Old Testament history. For this reason, based on the assumption that common features This story is familiar to students from the time of preparation for the entrance exams, here attention is paid to the fundamental issues, the understanding of which is necessary to achieve the goal.
The words of the Savior are chosen as the epigraph of many modern manuals on this subject: “
Search the Scriptures, for you think you have eternal life through them, and they testify of me
» (John 5:39). His listeners were connoisseurs of Scripture, which means that the main meaning of this phrase is that the Old Testament testifies of Christ. It is this understanding of Scripture that underlies this course.
The second fundamental principle, which was constantly taken into account by the author in the preparation of lectures, is formulated in the 19th rule of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. It reads: “... if the word of Scripture is studied, then they do not explain it otherwise, except as they set out the luminaries and teachers of the Church in their writings, and by this they are more convinced than by compiling their own words, so that, with a lack of skill in this, they do not deviate from the proper. For, through the teaching of the above-mentioned fathers, people, receiving knowledge of the good and worthy of election, and of the unprofitable and worthy of disgust, correct their lives for the better, and do not suffer from the disease of ignorance, but, listening to the teaching, urge themselves to move away from evil, and, through the fear of threatening punishments, work out their salvation.”
One of the features of patristic exegesis is the idea of Holy Scripture as a whole, so the author saw it as his task to instill in listeners the ability to analyze this or that passage based on the context of the entire Bible, and not just a specific book or chapter.
Introduction
Reverend Seraphim Sarovsky said that it is of great benefit for a person to read the entire Bible wisely at least once. So let's not neglect this advice of the Reverend. Unfortunately, experience shows that many modern Orthodox people Reading the Old Testament for oneself is considered a completely optional, useless matter and, in comparison with numerous pamphlets of pious content, they consider it a waste of time. Although theoretically, probably, each of you imagines that this is not so, and that from the Savior Himself, the apostles and holy Fathers, we have been given the commandment to study and delve into Holy Bible. For you and me, Holy Scripture is, first of all, a testimony about Christ, a testimony about God, and if you and I try at least a little to keep the commandment of God: ""
and love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength
"(Deut. 6:5):
this is the first and greatest commandment
» (Matthew 22:37-38). And if at least a little we take this commandment into account, then, probably, Holy Scripture, as a book about the One Whom we have loved with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, should be dearer to us than any other book. We also call Holy Scripture divine Revelation. This is what God was pleased to reveal to us about Himself, about His action in the world, about His relationship with man, therefore, from this point of view, of course, Holy Scripture is extremely important for us.
Actually, our entire course will be based on this first commandment, and if I manage to instill in you a little love for reading the Holy Scriptures, I will be very happy and will consider my goal achieved. To inspire you, I want to read you some of the writings of the Holy Fathers. Saint Chrysostom in one of his sermons tells his listeners about how much attention they pay to mastering some secular crafts, taking care of their home, household, and then says: “Tell me, if you ask one of you who are present here, who can read one psalm or any passage from the Holy Scriptures? Of course, no one, and not only is it bad, but the fact that, not caring for the spiritual, you are faster than fire for satanic deeds: if anyone decides to visit you about the devil's songs, about voluptuous melodies, you will find that many know them for sure and speak with great pleasure. And how are they justified if you begin to accuse them? I, they say, am not a monk, but I have a wife and children, I take care of the house, and all the harm comes from this, that you consider the reading of the Holy Scriptures decent for monks alone, while you yourself have much more need for this. He who lives in the world and receives new ulcers every day needs medicine especially for that, therefore, reading the Scriptures is much worse than not reading it - such a thought is a satanic suggestion. Do you not hear what Paul said, that all these things are written for our instruction.” Then he says the following: “when you talk about worship, if you don’t even have time to read the Scriptures at home, then why don’t you listen to him during worship? Listen and be horrified: the deacon stands on behalf of everyone and, exclaiming loudly, says: “Let us listen” - and this is repeated. This voice that he utters is the general voice of the Church, but no one listens. After him, the reader begins: "Reading the prophecies of Isaiah" - and again no one listens, although the prophecy contains an inhuman teaching. Then he speaks aloud to everyone: "This says the Lord" - and also no one listens, but what do I say: something terrible and terrible is read further, but at the same time no one listens. And what do people say against it? "Always, - they say, - the same thing is read" - but this is what especially destroys you. If you knew all this, then all the more you should not have neglected. For the same thing always happens in spectacles, but you do not know satiety in them. What same thing do you dare to talk about when you do not even know the names of the prophets? Aren't you ashamed to say that you don't listen because you always read the same thing, when you don't even know the names of the writers you read, although you always listen to the same thing, because you yourself said that the same thing is read. If I said this to your condemnation, then you would have to turn to another justification, and not one that serves to your own condemnation.
In the lives of the saints we come across such a fact that some saints, being absolutely illiterate and never having studied anywhere, acquired the height of their feat that they knew the Scriptures by heart and always quoted it to the point. Let us recall, for example, the life of St. Mary of Egypt; from the Egyptian hermits - the Monk Patermufiy, the Monk Horus, about whom it is said that they received knowledge of the Holy Scriptures in a supernatural way. This is also a possible way.
The Book of Priest Gennady Egorov is a general introduction to the study of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. It provides an overview of Old Testament history and the content of the law-positive, historical, teaching, and prophetic books of the Old Testament. The main emphasis is placed on their messianic content and reading from the point of view of the New Testament. The text uses a large number of patristic interpretations and liturgical texts. The book is supplied with an appendix, which contains fragments from the works of the holy fathers and Orthodox theologians, allowing you to get deeper into the topics of the course.
The proposed publication is intended primarily for students of the system of additional education. In addition, it will be useful for students studying in the direction or specialty of Theology, as well as for students of theological schools.
The tables given in the application are correctly reproduced by the CoolReader 3 reader
Foreword
This study guide is an edited course of lectures given to students of "non-theological" faculties of PSTBI, and is an introduction to the study of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. The main purpose of the course is to prepare students for self-study of the Bible and, if possible, to instill a taste for this activity. In addition to a general review of the content of the Old Testament books, the lectures examine the basic concepts of isagogy and exegesis, give examples of patristic interpretations, and also clarify the soteriological and messianic significance of sacred history.
The limited volume of the lecture course does not allow considering in detail the content of the biblical books and the events of the Old Testament history. In this regard, based on the assumption that the general features of this story are familiar to students from the time of preparation for the entrance exams, attention is paid to the fundamental issues, the understanding of which is necessary to achieve the goal.
The words of the Savior are chosen as the epigraph of many modern manuals on this subject: “
Search the Scriptures, for you think you have eternal life through them, and they testify of me
» (John 5:39). His listeners were connoisseurs of Scripture, which means that the main meaning of this phrase is that the Old Testament testifies of Christ. It is this understanding of Scripture that underlies this course.
The second fundamental principle, which was constantly taken into account by the author in the preparation of lectures, is formulated in the 19th rule of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. It reads: “... if the word of Scripture is studied, then they do not explain it otherwise, except as they set out the luminaries and teachers of the Church in their writings, and by this they are more convinced than by compiling their own words, so that, with a lack of skill in this, they do not deviate from the proper. For, through the teaching of the above-mentioned fathers, people, receiving knowledge of the good and worthy of election, and of the unprofitable and worthy of disgust, correct their lives for the better, and do not suffer from the disease of ignorance, but, listening to the teaching, urge themselves to move away from evil, and, through the fear of threatening punishments, work out their salvation.”
One of the features of patristic exegesis is the idea of Holy Scripture as a whole, so the author saw it as his task to instill in listeners the ability to analyze this or that passage based on the context of the entire Bible, and not just a specific book or chapter.
Introduction
The Monk Seraphim of Sarov said that it is of great benefit for a person to read the entire Bible wisely at least once. So let's not neglect this advice of the Reverend. Unfortunately, experience shows that many modern Orthodox people consider reading the Old Testament for themselves a completely optional, useless matter and, in comparison with numerous pamphlets of pious content, they consider it a waste of time. Although theoretically, probably, each of you imagines that this is not so, and that from the Savior Himself, the apostles and holy Fathers, we have been given the commandment to study and delve into the Holy Scriptures. For you and me, Holy Scripture is, first of all, a testimony about Christ, a testimony about God, and if you and I try at least a little to keep the commandment of God: ""
and love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength
"(Deut. 6:5):
this is the first and greatest commandment
» (Matthew 22:37-38). And if at least a little we take this commandment into account, then, probably, Holy Scripture, as a book about the One Whom we have loved with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, should be dearer to us than any other book. We also call Holy Scripture divine Revelation. This is what God was pleased to reveal to us about Himself, about His action in the world, about His relationship with man, therefore, from this point of view, of course, Holy Scripture is extremely important for us.
Actually, our entire course will be based on this first commandment, and if I manage to instill in you a little love for reading the Holy Scriptures, I will be very happy and will consider my goal achieved. To inspire you, I want to read you some of the writings of the Holy Fathers. Saint Chrysostom in one of his sermons tells his listeners about how much attention they pay to mastering some secular crafts, taking care of their home, household, and then says: “Tell me, if you ask one of you who are present here, who can read one psalm or any passage from the Holy Scriptures? Of course, no one, and not only is it bad, but the fact that, not caring for the spiritual, you are faster than fire for satanic deeds: if anyone decides to visit you about the devil's songs, about voluptuous melodies, you will find that many know them for sure and speak with great pleasure. And how are they justified if you begin to accuse them? I, they say, am not a monk, but I have a wife and children, I take care of the house, and all the harm comes from this, that you consider the reading of the Holy Scriptures decent for monks alone, while you yourself have much more need for this. He who lives in the world and receives new ulcers every day needs medicine especially for that, therefore, reading the Scriptures is much worse than not reading it - such a thought is a satanic suggestion. Do you not hear what Paul said, that all these things are written for our instruction.” Then he says the following: “when you talk about worship, if you don’t even have time to read the Scriptures at home, then why don’t you listen to him during worship? Listen and be horrified: the deacon stands on behalf of everyone and, exclaiming loudly, says: “Let us listen” - and this is repeated. This voice that he utters is the general voice of the Church, but no one listens. After him, the reader begins: "Reading the prophecies of Isaiah" - and again no one listens, although the prophecy contains an inhuman teaching. Then he speaks aloud to everyone: "This says the Lord" - and also no one listens, but what do I say: something terrible and terrible is read further, but at the same time no one listens. And what do people say against it? "Always, - they say, - the same thing is read" - but this is what especially destroys you. If you knew all this, then all the more you should not have neglected. For the same thing always happens in spectacles, but you do not know satiety in them. What same thing do you dare to talk about when you do not even know the names of the prophets? Aren't you ashamed to say that you don't listen because you always read the same thing, when you don't even know the names of the writers you read, although you always listen to the same thing, because you yourself said that the same thing is read. If I said this to your condemnation, then you would have to turn to another justification, and not one that serves to your own condemnation.
In the lives of the saints we come across such a fact that some saints, being absolutely illiterate and never having studied anywhere, acquired the height of their feat that they knew the Scriptures by heart and always quoted it to the point. Let us recall, for example, the life of St. Mary of Egypt; from the Egyptian hermits - the Monk Patermufiy, the Monk Horus, about whom it is said that they received knowledge of the Holy Scriptures in a supernatural way. This is also a possible way.
8.4. Last instructions. Song of Moses 8.5. Death of Moses Chapter 9 9.1. Variety of provisions of the law 9.2. The universal significance of the Law. The Law as a Guide to Righteousness 9.3. The difference between the Sinai covenant and the covenant with Abraham 9.4. Meaning of the Law of Moses 9.5. The transient meaning of the law Section II. Historical books Chapter 10 10.1. Preparation and entry into the promised land 10.2. The beginning of the conquest of the promised land 10.3. Battle for Gibeon 10.4. The end of the conquest under Joshua 10.5. The division of the land and the return of the Jordanian tribes 10.6. Altar of the Jordanian Tribes 10.7. Testament of Joshua Chapter 11 11.1. State of Israel after the death of Joshua 11.2. Ministry of Judges 11.3. Deborah 11.4. Gideon 11.5. Sons of Gideon. Abimelech. First attempt at establishing a monarchy 11.6. Jephthah 11.7. Samson 11.8. The story of Micah and the war with the tribe of Benjamin 11.9. Chronology of the era of judges 11.10. Book of Ruth Chapter 12 12.1. Kings and Chronicles 12.2. High Priest Eli 12.3. Song of Anna the Prophetess 12.4. Calling Samuel (1 Samuel 3) 12.5. Defeated by the Philistines. History of the Ark 12.6. Samuel - Judge Chapter 13 13.1. Saul's reign 13.2. Saul's victories and retreat 13.3. Saul's final rejection 13.4. Anointing of David 13.5. David and Saul 13.6. The death of Saul Chapter 14 14.1. Early period of David's reign in Hebron 14.2. Rise of David's Kingdom 14.3. Transferring the Ark 14.4. Promise to David 14.5. Organization of worship 14.6. David's sin. Birth of Solomon 14.7. History of Absalom 14.8. Restoring David's Authority 14.9. census of the people 14.10. Results of the reign of David Chapter 15 15.1. Solomon's accession 15.2. The gift of wisdom to Solomon. God's Promise to Solomon 15.3. The Wealth and Glory of Solomon 15.4. Building the Temple in Jerusalem 15.5. Temple consecration. Prayer of Solomon 15.6. Promise to Solomon 15.7. Reasons for dissatisfaction with the reign of Solomon 15.8. Solomon's sin 15.9. Promise to Jeroboam 15.10. The reign of Rehoboam and the division of the kingdom 15.11. About the books of Chronicles Chapter 16 16.1. First dynasties 16.2. From Ahab to the Assyrian captivity 16.3. Prophets Elijah and Elisha Chapter 17 17.1. The reign of the kings of Judah from Rehoboam to Ahaz 17.2. The reign of the kings of Judah from Hezekiah to Josiah 17.3. Fall of Judah 17.4. The fate of those left in Judea 17.5. The results of the period of the kings Chapter 18 Return. Construction of the second temple and restoration of Jerusalem 18.1. Jews in captivity 18.2. The first book of Ezra. The return of the Jews from captivity 18.3. Construction and consecration of the second temple 18.4. Second return under the priest Ezra 18.5. Book of Nehemiah. Revival of Jerusalem 18.6. Renewal of the Covenant 18.7. More about Ezra 18.8. Period results Chapter 19 19.2. The third book of Maccabees. Jews in Egypt 19.3. The First and Second Books of Maccabees. Palestine under Egyptian and Syrian rule 19.4. Persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes 19.5. Old Testament martyrs for the faith 19.6. Revolt of the priest Mattathia and his sons. Successes of Judas Maccabee 19.7. Continuation of the war. Jewish independence. Beginning of the Maccabean (Hasmonean) dynasty 19.8. The reign of the Maccabean (Hasmonean) dynasty. Herod's accession Section III teacher books Chapter 20 20.1. historical prologue 20.2. Job's conversation with friends 20.3. Elihu's speech 20.4. God's answer to Job 20.5. The Meaning of Job's Suffering 20.6. Liturgical use of the book Chapter 21 21.1. Holy Fathers on the Psalter 21.2. Division of the Psalter 21.3. Inscription of psalms 21.4. Types of psalms 21.5. On the attitude towards enemies - spiritual understanding 21.6. Revelation of Christ in the Psalms 21.7. Method of execution of the Psalter Chapter 22 Book of Parables, Book of Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs 22.1. Book of proverbs 22.2. Ecclesiastes 22.3. Order of the Books of Solomon 22.4. Song of Songs of Solomon Chapter 23 23.1. Non-canonical book of the Wisdom of Solomon 23.2. Non-canonical book of the Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach Section IV PROPHETIC BOOKS Chapter 24 Introduction 24.1. The meaning of prophetic ministry 24.2. History of the Prophetic Ministry 24.3. True and False Prophecy 24.4. Ways to Receive Revelation 24.5. Perception of prophetic preaching 24.6. Characteristics of Prophetic Preaching 24.7. Order of Studying the Prophetic Books Chapter 25 25.1. Book of Hosea 25.2. Book of the Prophet Joel 25.3. Book of the Prophet Amos 25.4. Book of Zephaniah Chapter 26 26.1. Ministry of the Prophet Isaiah 26.2. The Question of the Unity of the Book 26.3. denunciation 26.4. Prophecy about the Church 26.5. Parable of the Vineyard 26.6. The call of the prophet Isaiah 26.7. Prophecies about the Nativity of Christ and about Christ 26.8. Prophecies about the fate of the pagan peoples and about Jerusalem 26.9. Eschatological Prophecies: Isaiah's "Great Apocalypse" 26.10. Prophecy about the cornerstone in the foundation of Zion 26.11. God's Judgment and Deliverance 26.12. Historical department. Invasion of Sennacherib. Hezekiah's illness. Prediction about the Babylonian captivity 26.13. comforting prophecies. Christ and the Church 26.14. Church 26.15. The Calling of the Gentiles 26.16. Final Prophecies Chapter 27 27.1. Judgment on Israel 27.2. The denunciation of princes and false prophets. Punishment and consolation 27.3. Nativity 27.4. The moral state of the people. The final triumph of God Chapter 28 28.1. The book of the prophet Obadiah 28.2. The Book of the Prophet Jonah 28.3. The Book of the Prophet Nahum Chapter 29 29.1. The first question of the prophet: why does evil go unpunished? 29.2. The second question is: why is the evil people chosen for vengeance? 29.3. prophetic song Chapter 30 30.1. General characteristics of the book 30.2. Image of the moral state of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judea 30.3. Ministry of the Prophet Jeremiah 30.4. Prophetic ministry after the fall of Jerusalem 30.5. The Importance of Obedience 30.6. Symbolic visions and actions 30.7. Theme of Personal Responsibility 30.8. Prophecy about the Shepherds of Israel 30.9. Prophecy about the return from captivity and the New Testament 30.10. Messianic prophecies 30.11. Book ending: prophecies about the heathen nations 30.12. The Book of Lamentations, the Epistle of Jeremiah, and the Book of Baruch Chapter 31 31.1. A call to prophetic ministry 31.2. Prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem (symbolic actions) 31.3. A vision of the iniquity of Jerusalem. The Second Vision of the Glory of God 31.4. The promise of salvation 31.5. Migration Prediction 31.6. Rebuke of false prophets and idolater elders 31.7. Accusatory and prophetic parables 31.8. The Parable of the Cedar and the Prophecy of the Heir 31.9. The Ruin of Judah - Confirmation of the Truth of the Promises 31.10. Theme of Personal Responsibility 31.11. Prophecies about pagan nations. King of Tyre 31.12. Prophecies about the Shepherd and the New Testament 31.13. Resurrection Prophecy 31.14. great battle 31.15. Vision of the New Jerusalem Chapter 32 32.1. Daniel and Ananias, Mishael and Azariah in Babylon 32.2. Dream of Nebuchadnezzar 32.3. Golden statue. Youths in the Babylonian Furnace 32.4. Madness of Nebuchadnezzar 32.5. Feast of Belshazzar 32.6. Daniel in the lions' den 32.7. Non-canonical additions 32.8. Vision of four beasts 32.9. Vision of a ram and a goat 32.10. Prophecy of the weeks 32.11. Vision of the Great War Chapter 33 33.1. The Book of the Prophet Haggai 33.2. Book of Zechariah 33.3. Book of the Prophet Malachi Appendixes To Introduction To Chapter 1 To Chapter 2 To Chapter 3 To Chapter 4 To Chapter 5 To Chapter 6 To Chapter 7 To Chapter 8 To Chapter 9 To Chapter 11 To Chapter 12 To Chapter 13 To Chapter 15 To Chapter 17 To Chapter 19 To Chapter 20 To chapter 21 To chapter 22 To chapter 23 To chapter 24 To chapter 25 To chapter 26 To chapter 28 To chapter 29 To chapter 30 To chapter 31 To chapter 32 To chapter 33 LiteratureIntroduction
On the Necessity and Benefits of Studying the Holy Scriptures. The Monk Seraphim of Sarov said that it is of great benefit for a person to read the entire Bible wisely at least once. So let's not neglect this advice of the Reverend. Unfortunately, experience shows that many modern Orthodox people consider reading the Old Testament for themselves a completely optional, useless matter and, in comparison with numerous pamphlets of pious content, they consider it a waste of time. Although theoretically, probably, each of you imagines that this is not so, and that from the Savior Himself, the apostles and holy Fathers, we have been given the commandment to study and delve into the Holy Scriptures. For you and me, Holy Scripture is, first of all, a testimony about Christ, a testimony about God, and if you and I try at least a little to keep the commandment of God: “And love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength”(): this is the first and greatest commandment"(). And if at least a little we take this commandment into account, then, probably, Holy Scripture, as a book about the One Whom we have loved with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, should be dearer to us than any other book. We also call Holy Scripture divine Revelation. This is what God was pleased to reveal to us about Himself, about His action in the world, about His relationship with man, therefore, from this point of view, of course, Holy Scripture is extremely important for us.
Actually, our entire course will be built precisely on this first commandment, and if at least a little I manage to instill in you a love for reading the Holy Scriptures, I will be very happy and will consider my goal achieved. To inspire you, I want to read you some of the writings of the Holy Fathers. Saint Chrysostom in one of his sermons tells his listeners about how much attention they pay to mastering some secular crafts, taking care of their home, household, and then says: “Tell me, if you ask one of you who are present here, who can read one psalm or any passage from the Holy Scriptures? Of course, no one, and not only is it bad, but the fact that, not caring about the spiritual, you are faster than fire for satanic deeds: if anyone decides to visit you about the devil's songs, about voluptuous melodies, you will find that many know them for sure and speak with great pleasure. And how are they justified if you begin to accuse them? I, they say, am not a monk, but I have a wife and children, I take care of the house, and all the harm comes from this, that you consider the reading of the Holy Scriptures decent for monks alone, while you yourself have much more need for this. He who lives in the world and receives new ulcers every day needs medicine especially for that, therefore, reading the Scriptures is much worse than not reading it - such a thought is a satanic suggestion. Do you not hear what Paul said, that all these things are written for our instruction? Then he says the following: “when you talk about worship, if you don’t even have time to read the Scriptures at home, then why don’t you listen to him during worship? Listen and be horrified: the deacon stands on behalf of everyone and, exclaiming loudly, says: “Let us listen” - and this is repeated. This voice that he utters is the general voice of the Church, but no one listens. After him, the reader begins: “Reading the prophecies of Isaiah” - and again no one listens, although the prophecy contains an inhuman teaching. Then he broadcasts aloud to everyone: “This says the Lord” - and also no one listens, but what do I say: something terrible and terrible is read further, but at the same time no one listens. And what do people say against it? “Always,” they say, “the same thing is read” – but this is what especially destroys you. If you knew all this, then all the more you should not have neglected. For the same thing always happens in spectacles, but you do not know satiety in them. What same thing do you dare to talk about when you do not even know the names of the prophets? Aren't you ashamed to say that you don't listen because you always read the same thing, when you don't even know the names of the writers you read, although you always listen to the same thing, because you yourself said that the same thing is read. If I said this to your condemnation, then you would have to turn to another justification, and not to one that serves to your own condemnation. “Beloved, let us not neglect our salvation – all this is written for us for our teaching, but in them the ends of the age have reached. Great protection from sins is the reading of Scripture, and ignorance of Scripture is a great rapid, a deep abyss; it is a great ruin for salvation not to know any of the divine laws. This ignorance gave birth to heresies, it introduced a depraved life, it turned everything upside down, for it is impossible that one who constantly diligently reads Scripture should be left without fruit. These are the convincing and powerful words in which St. John Chrysostom addressed his listeners almost 1600 years ago. But since then, unfortunately, we have not made much progress.
In the lives of the saints we come across such a fact that some saints, being absolutely illiterate and never having studied anywhere, acquired the height of their feat that they knew the Scriptures by heart and always quoted it to the point. Let us recall, for example, the life of St. Mary of Egypt; from the Egyptian hermits - the Monk Patermuth, the Monk Horus, about whom it is said that they received knowledge of the Holy Scriptures in a supernatural way. This is also a possible way.
St. John Chrysostom gives an explanation of it in his conversations on the Gospel of Matthew: “Indeed, we should not have the need for the help of Scripture, but we should lead a life so pure that instead of books the grace of the Spirit would serve our souls and that, like those written in ink, so our hearts were written with the Spirit, but since we rejected such grace, we will use at least the second way.
The same saint, objecting to the words of his listeners that they sometimes read Scripture, but cannot understand anything in it, says the following: “let us not, please, neglect the reading of Scripture, but whether we understand what is contained in it or we In any case, we will contact him as often as possible. The constant exercise in reading imprints indelibly in memory what we have read, and often what we could not understand today while reading, we suddenly understand when we start reading tomorrow, because the philanthropic one invisibly enlightens our mind, ”such statements are often repeated by many holy fathers about that diluted by humility, the diligence of a person in the study of the Holy Scriptures is always rewarded by God with the enlightenment of his mind.
The Holy Fathers have warned and continue to warn us that the study of Holy Scripture cannot be reduced to a purely mechanical rereading of it, cannot be completely successful, even if we read the appropriate interpretations. Real understanding of the Scriptures is given only to that person who, by his life, tries to fulfill what he meets in the Scriptures. But even for this, he must ask for help from God, “for,” according to the blessed Theodoret, “wisdom and prudence are truly needed both for the knowledge and understanding of the words of God, and for their fulfillment and observance. It is also impossible for those who have not received illumination from the Spirit of God to comprehend them, and to keep them for those who do not use help from above.
In his speech at a prayer service before the start of the academic year at the MTA in 1912, Bishop Feodor Pozdeevsky, then rector of the MTA, said: “After all, if we looked at the word of God not as a set of truths discovered in the interests of only human curiosity, but as a revelation the highest truths of a god-like life, as a revelation of the laws of the moral world order, then it goes without saying that the assimilation and understanding of these truths would have been accomplished in a different way than is usually the case. After all, it is not a secret for each of us that when we begin to delve deeper into the meaning of the words of Holy Scripture, then these attempts of ours remain almost completely in vain and, as it were, some kind of veil prevents us from understanding the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with pure eyes. And this is, of course, because "law(God) spiritual”, and the person “carpenters, sold under sin”(), and, of course, a person who lives according to the law of the flesh can never comprehend the laws of spiritual life, God-like life, for in order to know these laws, one must approach them in life itself and experience them. That is why St. Simeon the New Theologian, speaking about the ways of comprehending the Word of God, compares it with a locked treasure chest. You can uselessly carry this chest on your shoulders and not get the treasures stored in it if you do not have a key to it. The key to the spiritual treasure contained in the Word of God is one - moral purity and holiness; that is why the Word of God, which contains all the knowledge of God, must be studied not so much with the mind as with a pure heart able to see God himself."
I will quote from Rev. Simeon, to whom Bishop Theodore refers. St. Simeon the New Theologian compares the Holy Scriptures with a kind of strong chest, inside of which a treasure is locked. And he says that “as if someone lifts this chest on his shoulders, cannot yet see the treasure that is inside it by this alone, so if someone reads and even by memory, memorizes all the Divine Scriptures and can read them all as one a psalm - cannot by this alone comprehend the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is hidden in them; for neither what is inside the chest can be discovered through the chest itself, nor what is hidden in the Divine Scriptures can be revealed through the scriptures themselves. He says that such a person who has memorized the Scriptures even by heart, but mechanically, is like one who carries this chest on his shoulders. The most that he can achieve is to earn himself some kind of back disease from diligence and that's all, but he will not be able to get treasures in this way. But the fulfillment of the commandments, the fulfillment of virtues is much more useful here - he says that “from the commandment virtues are born, and from the virtues the mysteries hidden in the letter of Scripture are made clear. Then they succeed in virtues when they keep the commandments, and, again, then they keep the commandments when they are zealous for virtue – and from this the door of knowledge already opens – that is, those sacraments that are hidden in the divine Scripture. So, you see, it turns out that, of course, you need to be zealous about reading the Holy Scriptures, you need to try to know it properly, but the final benefit can be obtained only when you and I try what the Scriptures reveal to us. to apply in your life.
These books were also written in antiquity, and some of them were written in the original Greek, some in Hebrew, but these books were not recognized as inspired books - this will be discussed separately now. That is, these books were recognized as very kind, edifying, which contain some grains of divinely revealed teaching, but which in general cannot be recognized as inspired by God - the element of human wisdom is too strong. Therefore, these books are left by the Fathers in the lists among other Old Testament books, and, as the definitions of the Fathers say, they are intended for edifying home reading for Christians and for reading by new beginnings, since they contain high moral teaching.
Protestants reject these books and call them Apocrypha. Catholics at the Council of Trent included most non-canonical books in the canon. Therefore they are sometimes called deuterocanonical.
Regarding the term "apocrypha", it should be clarified that in relation to the Holy Scriptures, it was first used by the Gnostics, who called so the "secret" books that the apostles supposedly left for the "initiates", in contrast to the well-known books intended for the simple. Since these spurious books contained teachings rejected by the Church, the name "Apocrypha" eventually established itself behind all books that claim to be part of Scripture, but are rejected by the Church. In terms of topics and genres, they are close to the canonical books of the Bible, but, unlike non-canonical ones, they are not recognized as useful and instructive. Of the rather numerous Old Testament apocrypha, one can name the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Enoch, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Fourth Book of Maccabees.
It should be noted that the list of canonical books practically coincides with the canon adopted in modern Judaism. Does this mean that the Jewish canon is primary in relation to the church? Not at all necessary. The final fixation of the canons, which are now recognized by the Jews, took place at the beginning of the 2nd century after the Nativity of Christ. It took place at the same time as the formation new tradition caused by the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, when it was necessary to organize communal life on some new, different foundations. The result was the emergence of new religion, which is somewhat younger than Christianity in its age. Christ's Church considers itself to a much greater extent the successor of the Old Testament Church, if we consider the preparation for the acceptance of the New (See). By the way, it was traditionally believed that the canon of the books of the Old Testament was concluded and compiled back in the time of the priest Ezra, i.e. in the 5th century BC. We will have a separate discussion about this. Therefore, the most important thing for us is the definitions of the Church about the dignity of this or that book. Which books are canonical and should be read in the Church is established by the rules of the holy fathers and holy ecumenical councils.
It should be added here that the text of the Septuagint, the text of the translation of seventy interpreters who, in the 3rd century BC, translated the Holy Scripture into Greek language for the Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus. Following St. John Chrysostom, we say that "it was a matter of God's economy, so that these books would be used not only by those who knew the Hebrew language, but by all the inhabitants of the universe."
So, in our Bible we see 39 canonical, inspired books of the Old Testament. However, if we open, say, the verse epistle of St. Gregory the Theologian to Amphilochius about what books should be read, we will see that he lists 22 books there. What does it mean? Does this mean that in the time of St. Gregory there were fewer books? No, this means that their different calculation and their different division are possible.
Where does this number 22 come from? According to the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet, they are counted in the same way in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible. The composition of the text is the same, just some books are grouped. How? Here St. Gregory proposes such an order: he says that the books of the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges and Ruth come first; then two books of Kings - that is, not four, as we now believe, but combining them two by two together: the first-second, third-fourth; Chronicles as one book and Ezra, that is, 12 books, which he called historical. Then 5 books, which he calls poetic: Job, David, that is, the Psalter, and 3 Solomon: Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Proverbs; 5 books of the Spirit of the Prophet: 12 minor prophets as one book, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel - the division is practically the same that we now use for our practical needs. Note that he does not single out the books of the Pentateuch as law-positive books, as we now do, but three other criteria are clearly distinguishable: historical, didactic, and prophetic books.
A four-part division of books has now been adopted:
1) Law-positive books, which constitute the main foundation of the Old Testament. These include the books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
2) Historical books that contain mainly the history of piety: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.
3) Teaching books that contain the teachings of piety: the book of Job, the Psalter, the Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs.
4) Prophetic books that contain prophecies or predictions about the future, and especially about Jesus Christ: the books of the great prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, as well as the books of the twelve minor prophets Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.
The Jewish canon has a slightly different division: the law, the prophets and scripture - 3 parts. This is exactly how, in accordance with the Old Testament tradition, Christ spoke about the Scriptures to the apostles (). The Law (Torah) is the Pentateuch of Moses. Prophetic books (Neviim) include not only those books that we call prophetic, but also books that we call historical - this is not at all accidental: we will talk about this in due time, why this happens. The prophets in the Hebrew Bible include the so-called early prophets: the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel. (You can find in modern Western editions that the first and second books of Kings are called the first and second books of Samuel, and the third and fourth are already directly called the books of Kings) - and the later prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and 12 minor prophets as one book. Please note that in this list we do not meet the prophet Daniel, whose book in the Jewish canon does not belong to the prophetic books. Scripture (Ketuvim) is all other books: poetic, that is, psalms, Solomon's parables, the book of Job, the so-called Five Scrolls - this is the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, and historical books, which include: a book Daniel, Ezra and Chronicles. As you can see, this is a completely different division. In our course, we will refer to it several times to clarify some interesting details.
The last remark concerns the division of Scripture into chapters and verses. We are used to the fact that a chapter encompasses a logically complete fragment of a book. We also perceive the boundary between verses as carrying a certain meaning. However, it should be understood that this division does not belong to the sacred writers, they wrote in succession, giving where necessary indications of the beginning of a new section. For the convenience of “navigation”, even in the Old Testament times, the division of the text of Scripture into fragments was used; over time, this division changed. It can be noted that the division of proverbs does not correspond to the modern division into chapters, which was made in the 12th century. The division into verses appeared even later, in the 15th century. Therefore, it is sometimes helpful to read Scripture ignoring this division. In some editions, for this purpose, the text is printed in continuous, and indications of chapters and verses are made in the margins.
On the inspiration of Holy Scripture. The question may arise: are there any formal criteria by which the inspiration of a book is determined? this book should be referenced in the New Testament. However, the controversy that has continued for centuries between Catholics and Protestants about the composition of the canon of Scripture clearly shows that these are rather secondary signs. We do not find references to all canonical books in the New Testament; on the other hand, there are non-canonical books that were once in Hebrew and references to which can be found in the New Testament books if desired. Thus, it should be recognized that there are no formal signs of canonicity.
For us, the Church Tradition is relevant, which passed from the Old Testament Church to the New Testament Church, that is, the direct testimony of the Church about these books. It is by the Holy Spirit that he testifies to the inspiration of this or that book. Formally, this evidence is embodied in the definitions of Church Councils.
Let's stop here and think about what we mean when we say that books are "inspired"? I think that this word is well known to you, since you met it in the courses of the Catechism and the New Testament, but nevertheless, it is worth touching on this issue again. You probably know the definition of the Long Christian Catechism of St. Philaret: “We speak of inspiration, meaning that these books were written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by special people chosen by God, whom we call prophets or apostles.” But here there is a certain difficulty of the following nature. Once upon a time, these books were really written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but we have completely different books, we have with you the Synodal Edition Bible, which was translated in the 19th century from some lists, and these lists were rewritten from some other lists, and so on and so forth. They may have been spoiled a long time ago: some translator made a mistake, a copyist copied something wrong, some malicious editor rearranged something. And as a result, you and I naively think that we are reading an inspired book, and it is not at all the one that was written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by this or that apostle or prophet. Such opinions are often found in modern scientific research.
But that shouldn't scare us too much. The Holy Spirit is always active in the Church. He also acted in the Old Testament Church. And as long as the Holy Scripture abides in the Church, it is preserved for us by the action of the Holy Spirit, and you and I read in it and see the same thing that God wanted to tell us through the prophets and through the apostles. But when some people leave the Church - let's take, for example, the Jews in the first century, or the Protestants in the sixteenth - then the preservation of the Scriptures becomes a whole problem.
At first, the rabbis were engaged in the interpretation of Scripture. But then, in the 6th century, the Masoretes appeared (from Heb. Masorah - tradition, tradition) - the keepers of the tradition. What were they doing? They standardized the text of Scripture and developed a kind of "technology", that is, the rules for its storage and rewriting, which did not allow errors to appear. Much later, the Protestants, and after them the Catholics, also invented various “scientific” methods for interpreting the Scriptures, but the authenticity and integrity of the Scriptures are still being debated. There is some analogy. When the soul leaves the body, it is difficult to keep it. Something similar takes place in relation to the Holy Scriptures.
And, finally, we must not forget that, speaking of inspiration, the Fathers of the Church had in mind that a very special enlightening action of the Holy Spirit takes place when a person reads Holy Scripture. By reading it, a person enters into a conversation with God and is also enlightened by the same Spirit under whose influence the Scripture was written. Moreover, only those who are involved in the action of the Holy Spirit, under whose inspiration it was all written, can understand what is written - without this it is impossible to comprehend the Scriptures.
Ways of interpreting the Old Testament books. The Greek interpretation is exegesis, or exegesis. The easiest way to explain or interpret Scripture is literal. As it is written, so it is understood. The literal sense is sometimes subdivided into two kinds. If we are talking about past events, then this is a literal-historical interpretation; if we are talking about future events, for example, it is said that such and such a city will be destroyed, then we are talking about a literally prophetic sense.
However, the literal interpretation is not always applicable. Why? As has already been clarified, the meaning of Holy Scripture does not always lie on the surface. There are places that cannot be literally understood. For example, the appearance of God to Moses at Sinai, when he puts Moses in a cleft, covers him with his palm, then Moses sees "the back of God." From the point of view of what we know about God, this is a kind of absurdity. Undoubtedly, there is an allegory here, which is connected with the fact that our thinking, our language is not quite suitable for divine secrets to be so simply transmitted and understood. And then a spiritual (allegorical, or allegorical; see) interpretation is applied, when the literal meaning is replaced by another meaning - spiritual, since it is more consistent with the true idea of God. Sometimes a similar thing happens in the transmission of a teaching of a moral order. For example, the gospel phrase about cutting off the seductive hand and gouging out the eye was never considered to imply a literal fulfillment.
So, in his interpretation of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, St. Basil the Great says: “Based on general terms, one must agree that contradictory expressions about God should not be taken literally. So, for example, according to generally accepted understanding, it must be recognized that God's nature is good, does not participate in wrath and is just. Therefore, if Scripture says that God is angry, or grieves, or repents, or gives someone an unworthy answer, then it is necessary to delve into the purpose of the saying and carefully consider how the true meaning can be restored, and not pervert respectable thoughts about God. Thus, let us not meet with stumbling-blocks in Scripture, deriving benefit from places that are easily understood and not suffering harm from places that are obscure.
Such an interpretation, moving away from the letter of Scripture and giving a deeper understanding, is accessible only to people enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Without this, it becomes simply the fruit of human conjecture. Therefore, the 19th canon of the Council of Trullo determined to interpret the Holy Scriptures only in accordance with the writings of the Church Fathers.
As a rule, spiritual interpretation does not reject the literal meaning of Scripture, but supplements it, builds on new levels of meaning. Indeed, the reality surrounding us is not reduced only to the visible, and often the visible is a symbolic reflection of the invisible, which determines the existence of different levels of disclosure of the meaning of the sacred text. St. Theophan the Recluse, speaking of the fact that not all knowledge about things can be obtained only by reason, explains that “besides the factual, there is also in every thing conceivable, understood only and contemplated, its inner being, imprinted and expressed by its actual side .<...>For all that, however, it is not something dreamed of, but is a thought really inherent there.
According to different meanings, three types of spiritual interpretation can be distinguished. The first type is called allegorical (from Greek allegory - allegory) in the narrow sense of the term. This is a dogmatic interpretation concerning doctrinal truths. According to the definition of St. Demetrius of Rostov, when “under simple sayings lies something decent to faith or the Church that is at war on earth,” that is, it refers to what has already been revealed and revealed to us. So, St. Basil the Great, explaining the prophecy of Isaiah about the mountain of the House of the Lord (), says: “Woe is likened to the descent of the Lord to earth, because the mountain is an earthly elevation. But the flesh of the Lord, being earth according to our common nature, was exalted through union with God. In a similar way, he explains the words of the prophecy about the Nativity (): “The Scripture calls an unusual sign and serving to express some mysterious word. What is more wonderful and divine for hearing and sight than the birth of our God from the Virgin? Therefore “Ask the Lord your God(because no one else can give) “signs in depth, or in height". In the state of the world, by nature, he who occupies the lowest country is the earth; and the highest of all visible things is the sky. Because the “The word was flesh”(), then prophecy by speech "in depth" signifies the earth and the flesh taken from it, and by saying "high"- the heavenly Word - of Him Who is above all principality and power, Who “In the beginning was with the Father, and there is the Word”()» .
The second type is called tropological (from the Greek tropos - temper). This interpretation aims to reveal moralistic truths related to spiritual life.
And the third type of interpretation is anagogy (from the Greek anago - I erect). Anagogical interpretation reveals the mysteries of the coming Kingdom. According to the definition of St. Demetrius, this is “something worthy of eternal life, like tea, or the Church, triumphant in the highest, we wish and hope to go to it,” that is, to something that has not yet been revealed to us.
It can be seen that the content of the third type of interpretation is very close to the first.
Unfortunately, this approach is becoming more and more widespread among Orthodox biblical scholars. Some of them directly assert that in our time there can be no other exegesis than Biblically critical: not a single modern educated person will no longer interpret Holy Scripture the way St. Basil the Great did.
The origin of biblical criticism can be attributed to XVI century. Its origins were European humanists: Lorenzo Valla, Johann Reuchlin, who often gravitated, as is known, to ancient culture. It is known that one of the incentives to study the Hebrew language was the desire to get acquainted with Kabbalism. The Hebrew language and the mode of commentary were learned from the rabbis. Gradually, biblical criticism gained recognition first among the Protestants (and this is natural, since, having rejected the remnants of church tradition, they had to create their own), and then the Catholics. At the end of the 19th century, supporters of this approach to the study of Holy Scripture also appeared among the Orthodox. However, from a poisoned spring flows a poisoned stream. The fact is that “they approach Scripture not from the Church, not from faith and spirit, but from outside, from a purely personal rational area, with the usual external science of critical methods, which have at the basis of all their research the method of distrust and doubt. This is the fundamental lie. The Scriptures are given only to the faith and love of the Church, and only in her and her faithful sons can they be interpreted.
The described methods undoubtedly bear the imprint of the worldview of their creators. We will see this soon. Without going into details, I will try to give general idea about biblical criticism, gleaned precisely from Orthodox authors.
One of the strong supporters of "modern" approaches was Professor A.V. Kartashev. Therefore, excerpts from his speech on Old Testament biblical criticism will be given here. He is trying to give her a dogmatic justification: “That’s because the patristic thought (here there is a reference to the Interpretation of the book of the prophet Isaiah by St. Basil the Great, which as a whole contains directly opposite ideas expressed by Kartashov) approved the position on the fullness of the action of the natural human psyche and on its reflection in the most the writings of the sacred authors, those methodological operations on the text and content of the Bible that are required are dogmatically justified and legitimized. scientific knowledge. Critical work is appropriate here because it is attached to the human element to be handled: it is here completely given. Dan, for the Bible is not only the word of God, but also the word of man in their harmonious combination, more precisely, the word of God-man. Our usual expression "the word of God" is dogmatically indisputable but incomplete, just as the expression "Jesus Christ is God" is true but incomplete; more precisely: the God-man. Therefore, the formula "God is the author of sacred books" should sound like a Monophysite bias away from the real Orthodoxy of Chalcedon. The same deviation would be the exclusive adherence to the expression "word of God" alone. With the slogan: "the word of God-man", we are affirming ourselves on the unshakable rock of the Chalcedonian dogma. This is a miraculous key that opens the way to the most central salvific mysteries of our faith and at the same time it is a blessing for the sinless building of critical biblical knowledge in Orthodoxy. Of course, we argue here not by identity, but only by analogy with the Christological dogma, for there is no incarnation of God here, there is only the coexistence of the human principle with the divine. Here, without heresy, the formulas of Antiochian theology are appropriate: the dwelling of the Spirit of God in the human shell of the biblical word, as in a temple, without unmixed and inseparable hypostasis.
Up to this point, it would seem hard to disagree. But it turns out that the results of rejecting the application, albeit conditional, of this dogma are, nevertheless, quite heretical. It is stated that in order to understand the Word of God, one should carefully study its “human shell”, but when studying the latter, then they completely forget about the former. And there is a complete separation of the word of man from the word of God. By the way, I cannot fail to note here that in his book “Ecumenical Councils” Kartashev shields Nestorius in every possible way, so that he becomes not a heretic, but simply a victim of misunderstanding on the part of St. Cyril and other defenders of Orthodoxy.
In one modern Orthodox textbook, it says right in the introduction that “the peculiarity of any literary work is that its author is no longer available to us and, therefore, in order to understand what exactly the author had in mind when he wrote certain words, we have only this text in front of us and, accordingly, by studying the psychology of ancient authors, by linguistic analysis, and so on, we can only find out for ourselves what is actually written here. Do any of you see some kind of logical defect here? If we attribute the authorship of the Bible to God, if we say that the Holy Spirit spoke to the prophets, then to say that the author of this Scripture is no longer available to us means to declare that we have nothing to do with the Church. It is natural to hear this from the lips of some Protestant, but not from the lips of a professor at an Orthodox seminary.
This or that place of Holy Scripture is now considered to be fully interpreted and explained if, somewhere in the depths of history, some historical person was found who was profitable to write it. Let's say we found Psalm 50, it turned out that it could have been edited during the Babylonian captivity by a person who really wanted Jerusalem to be restored as soon as possible - that's it, the explanation is over. The story of the patriarch Judah is added to the book of Genesis by order of David to increase the prestige of the dynasty. The book of the prophet Daniel was written in the second century BC to strengthen the Jews in the fight against the Syrians. And so on.
Is this what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote that “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, let it be perfect god man, to everyone good deed prepared"()?
But that's not all. It turns out that the prophets of the future did not know. They only guessed about the coming events. Therefore, if something is predicted exactly, a name, for example, then this is not a prediction, but a late, recent editor's insertion of the event. And if it was a prediction, then the prophet, of course, did not understand its meaning. For example, in the same Kartashev: “Did Isaiah, glorifying the sufferer close to him for Israel, know that his writing cane, depicting a prototype, was already drawing pictures of Golgotha, minting ready-made sayings for future evangelists; as well as the psalmist - the author of psalm 21 - (note that he does not say: David), - did he know that his literary image: “Divide my garments for yourself, and for my garments cast lots”() - there is already a prototype of the events of Golgotha - only this was revealed to us and once and for all struck us with its coincidence. Of course, the authentic historical Isaiah did not even think when, as we read in chapter 7 of this book, as a sign of Yahweh's mercy, he pointed to the forthcoming birth of a son named Immanuel by some young woman, Isaiah did not think that this birth and this is a symbolic name, although the prophet’s heart was beating at the same time with messianic forebodings that this whole little political incident would then go far beyond the boundaries of this provincial provincial history and that all this is a prototype of the Annunciation and the Nativity of Christ - an event more than worldwide. These statements are on the verge of blasphemy. And, of course, they are in flagrant contradiction to what the holy fathers said about the prophets and about the prophecies. Although Kartashev and others are constantly trying to refer to the holy fathers.
But not all places in the Old Testament lend themselves to easy interpretation. After all, something is explained in the apostolic writings. How to be? But here the critics have a wonderful way out, it is formulated as follows: “We have to distinguish between evangelists and apostles,” this is already talking about the New Testament, “as divinely inspired broadcasters, revealed by Christ and entrusted by the Holy Spirit to the preservation of the entire church of absolute truths and the same Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and others as students of a limited and defective school rabbinical environment. That is, when we like something, we say that it is an inspired author, and when we don't like something, we say that it is a defective school rabbinical environment. Very comfortable, very. It is not entirely clear, however, what to do with the words of Christ Himself about the Old Testament and the prophets preserved in the Gospels. But, probably, there is some trick to this, although they are usually simply ignored.
In the end, we can do whatever we want with the Scriptures. But the result is catastrophic: the result of studying the Holy Scriptures with the help of the methods of biblical criticism is similar to the result of surgeons searching for a soul in a person - something so cut and already soulless. It is the same here: thus, with the help of various linguistic analyses, numerical methods, and so on, the mysteries of God are not revealed: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God"() - so the Scripture says.
“From this, the interpreters themselves have experienced so many differences and errors that, when they begin to interpret Holy Scripture, they do not care about the purification of the spirit: because of impurity of the heart, they not only do not see the light of truth, but also come up with many things that are contrary to faith.”
So, we are witnessing a break with the gospel, apostolic and patristic tradition. But maybe there is some benefit from biblical criticism? How much work is put into it? The well-known theologian of the 19th century, Bishop Mikhail (Gribanovsky), wrote that biblical criticism can only be useful if it is used for apologetic purposes. Great efforts have been expended in the world in the study of the Scriptures in this spirit, but they have done little to strengthen faith and piety. “The transformation of divinely inspired records, handed over to the believing spirit of the Church, into simple historical written monuments, subject to criticism by any even completely unbelieving person, is a direct sign of church dying. This shows a break with the heavenly Church, from which the Scriptures come, with the Holy Spirit, who speaks in them and reproduces in our faith living, once past events. This means to relate to the Church and its words completely - in the strict sense of the word - from the outside, i.e., therefore, to be outside the Church, to leave it.
“But how? Is it not possible, is it not necessary to have historical criticism in the Church? Isn't it obvious that truth is not afraid of research and will nevertheless triumph in the end?.. Yes, historical criticism is needed as a defense, just as guns are needed against the guns of enemies. But one must know that this is a method hostile to the Church, alien to her. He is needed when they attack her, but not for the offensive and not for the internal upsurge of life. It can only kill the enemy and reflect him, and therefore should only be applied to enemies attacking us. Just as it is impossible to direct cannons, even if they have been recaptured from the enemy, at their own, because they can only kill something, no matter where they are directed, so it is also impossible to turn the external criticism of the Scriptures into the Church, to introduce it into its midst.
The last thing to add here is that although modern biblical studies look very scientific, they are still not completely scientific. What's the matter? The fact is that, as the priest Pavel Florensky rightly wrote about this in his work “The Pillar and Ground of Truth”, “ scientific methods on which biblical criticism relies are probabilistic in nature. The fact is that the origin of certain features of the text of Holy Scripture can be explained by various reasons. And each of them could well take place. Thus, a serious researcher who claims to be scientifically objective can and should, when speaking about a particular phenomenon, list its possible causes, preferably with an indication of mathematical probability. And the existence of one, more probable, does not exclude the possibility of the existence of all the others. But that is not all. In addition to the probability, which is a certain value lying in the interval between zero and one, there is also the mathematical expectation. Applied to our case, it may be called moral expectation. The chances of winning the lottery are low. But it is still possible to win. And the desire to win makes you neglect the risk and prefer to bet on this small probability. This is where the question of faith comes in. If one of the possibilities coincides with church tradition, shouldn't we give preference to it? And won't the unbelieving scientist, who wants to justify his unbelief, reject it for the sake of the one that is preferable to him? Hence the endless disputes between scientists, each of which defends his point of view, refuting the others. By the way, this is another argument against biblical criticism - using the same methods, scientists, relying on the same text, sometimes come to completely opposite conclusions.
Archpriest Gennady Egorov
Holy Scripture of the Old Testament
© Egorov G.V., 2011
© Design. Publishing house of the Orthodox St. Tikhon University for the Humanities, 2014
* * *Foreword
This textbook is an edited course of lectures on the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, intended for students and listeners of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University, and is an introduction to the study of the Holy Scriptures. The main purpose of the course is to prepare students for self-study of the Bible and, if possible, to inculcate a taste for this activity. In addition to a general review of the content of the Old Testament books, the lectures examine data from isagogy and exegesis, give examples of patristic interpretations, and also clarify the soteriological and messianic significance of sacred history.
The limited volume of the lecture course does not allow considering in detail the content of the biblical books and the events of the Old Testament history. Because students in this course already have a basic understanding of Old Testament history, attention is focused on the fundamental issues that need to be understood in order to achieve this goal. At the same time, in order to facilitate understanding educational material The text of the synopsis contains rather voluminous quotations from the Holy Scriptures.
In the process of presenting the material at lectures, the author, as far as possible, tried to draw the attention of the listeners to three inseparably interconnected semantic layers of Scripture. First of all, this is a theological meaning - a revelation about God and His dispensation. Then the edifying meaning - the rules of relationships between people, moral law. And finally, the mystical meaning, affecting the inner life of the soul.
The words of the Savior are chosen as an epigraph for many modern manuals on this subject: “Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; but they testify of me."(John 5:39). His listeners were connoisseurs of the Scriptures, which means that the main meaning of this phrase is that the Old Testament bears witness to Christ. As part of the course, an attempt was made to demonstrate to students the inseparable unity of the Old and New Testaments, the Christocentricity of all Divine Scripture and, finally, its enduring significance and relevance.
Another fundamental principle, which was constantly taken into account by the author in the preparation of lectures, is formulated in the 19th rule of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. It reads: “... if the word of Scripture is studied, then they do not explain it otherwise, except as they set out the luminaries and teachers of the Church in their writings, and by this they are more convinced than by compiling their own words, so that, with a lack of skill in this, not to deviate from the proper. For, through the teaching of the above-mentioned fathers, people, receiving knowledge of the good and worthy of election, and of the unprofitable and worthy of disgust, correct their lives for the better, and do not suffer from the disease of ignorance, but, listening to the teaching, urge themselves to move away from evil, and, through the fear of threatening punishments, work out their salvation.”
One of the features of patristic exegesis is the idea of Holy Scripture as a whole, so it is very important to instill in students the ability to analyze this or that passage based on the context of the entire Bible, and not just a particular book or chapter.
Introduction
Do not neglect, friend, the meticulous hearing of the Divine Scriptures. This is the devil's cunning, which does not allow us to see the treasure, so that we do not acquire wealth. “Hearing Divine thoughts brings nothing,” says the enemy, so as not to see him the deeds resulting from this hearing.
Rev. Isidore Pelusiot
On the necessity and benefits of studying the Holy Scriptures. The Monk Seraphim of Sarov said that it is of great benefit for a person to read the entire Bible wisely at least once. So let's not neglect this advice of the Reverend. Unfortunately, experience shows that many modern Orthodox people consider reading the Old Testament for themselves a completely optional, useless matter and, in comparison with numerous pamphlets of pious content, they consider it a waste of time. Although theoretically, probably, each of you imagines that this is not so and that from the Savior Himself, the apostles and holy fathers, we have been given the commandment to study and delve into the Holy Scriptures. It is for you and me, first of all, a testimony about Christ, a testimony about God. And if we try even a little to keep the commandment of God: “And love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”(Deut. 6:5); "This is the first and greatest commandment"(Matthew 22:37-38), then, probably, Holy Scripture as a book about Him Whom we have loved with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, should be dearer to us than any other book. We also call Holy Scripture Divine Revelation, because it contains what God was pleased to reveal to us about Himself, about His action in the world, about His relationship with man, therefore, from this point of view, of course, the Word of God is extraordinarily important for us.
Actually, our entire course will be based on this first commandment, and if I manage to instill in you a little love for reading the Bible, I will be very happy and consider my goal achieved. To inspire you, I want to read you some of the writings of the Holy Fathers. Saint John Chrysostom in one of his sermons tells his listeners about how much attention they pay to mastering some secular crafts, taking care of their home, household, and then says: “Tell me, if you ask one of you who are present here who can read one psalm or any passage of scripture? Of course, no one, and not only is it bad, but the fact that, not caring about the spiritual, you are faster than fire for satanic deeds: if anyone decides to visit you about the devil's songs, about voluptuous tunes, you will find that many know them for sure and speak with great pleasure. And how are they justified if you begin to accuse them? I, they say, am not a monk, but I have a wife and children, I take care of the house, and all the harm comes from this, that you consider the reading of the Holy Scriptures decent for monks alone, while you yourself have much more need for this. He who lives in the world and receives new ulcers every day, for this especially needs healing, therefore, reading the Scriptures is much worse than not reading it - such a thought is a satanic suggestion. Do you not hear what Paul said, that all these things are written for our instruction.” Then he says the following: “When you talk about worship, if you don’t even have time to read the Scriptures at home, then why don’t you listen to him during worship? Listen and be horrified: the deacon stands on behalf of everyone and, exclaiming loudly, says: “Let us listen” - and this is repeated. This voice that he utters is the general voice of the Church, but no one listens. After him, the reader begins: "Reading the prophecies of Isaiah" - and again no one listens, although the prophecy contains an inhuman teaching. Then he speaks aloud to everyone: “This says the Lord” - and also no one listens, but what do I say: something terrible and terrible is read further, but at the same time no one listens. And what do people say against it? “Always,” they say, “the same thing is read,” but this is what especially destroys you. If you knew all this, then all the more you should not have neglected. For the same thing always happens in spectacles, but you do not know satiety in them. What same thing do you dare to talk about when you do not even know the names of the prophets? Aren't you ashamed to say that you don't listen because you always read the same thing, when you don't even know the names of the writers you read, although you always listen to the same thing, because you yourself said that the same thing is read. If I said this to your condemnation, then you would have to turn to another justification, and not to one that serves to your own condemnation. “Let us not, beloved, neglect our salvation - all this is written for us for our teaching, but in them the ends of the age have reached. Great protection from sins is the reading of Scripture, and ignorance of Scripture is a great rapid, a deep abyss; it is a great ruin for salvation to know nothing of the divine laws. This ignorance gave rise to heresies, it introduced a depraved life, it turned everything upside down, for it is impossible that one who constantly diligently reads Scripture should be left without fruit. These are the convincing and powerful words in which St. John Chrysostom addressed his listeners more than 1,500 years ago. But since then, unfortunately, we have not made much progress.
© Egorov G.V., 2011
© Design. Publishing house of the Orthodox St. Tikhon University for the Humanities, 2014
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Foreword
This textbook is an edited course of lectures on the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, intended for students and listeners of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University, and is an introduction to the study of the Holy Scriptures. The main purpose of the course is to prepare students for self-study of the Bible and, if possible, to inculcate a taste for this activity. In addition to a general review of the content of the Old Testament books, the lectures examine data from isagogy and exegesis, give examples of patristic interpretations, and also clarify the soteriological and messianic significance of sacred history.
The limited volume of the lecture course does not allow considering in detail the content of the biblical books and the events of the Old Testament history. Because students in this course already have a basic understanding of Old Testament history, attention is focused on the fundamental issues that need to be understood in order to achieve this goal. At the same time, to facilitate the perception of educational material, quite voluminous quotations from the Holy Scriptures are included in the text of the abstract.
In the process of presenting the material at lectures, the author, as far as possible, tried to draw the attention of the listeners to three inseparably interconnected semantic layers of Scripture. First of all, this is a theological meaning - a revelation about God and His dispensation. Then the edifying meaning - the rules of relationships between people, the moral law. And finally, the mystical meaning, affecting the inner life of the soul.
The words of the Savior are chosen as an epigraph for many modern manuals on this subject: “Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; but they testify of me."(John 5:39). His listeners were connoisseurs of the Scriptures, which means that the main meaning of this phrase is that the Old Testament bears witness to Christ. As part of the course, an attempt was made to demonstrate to students the inseparable unity of the Old and New Testaments, the Christocentricity of all Divine Scripture and, finally, its enduring significance and relevance.
Another fundamental principle, which was constantly taken into account by the author in the preparation of lectures, is formulated in the 19th canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. It reads: “... if the word of Scripture is studied, then they do not explain it otherwise, except as they set out the luminaries and teachers of the Church in their writings, and by this they are more convinced than by compiling their own words, so that, with a lack of skill in this, not to deviate from the proper. For, through the teaching of the above-mentioned fathers, people, receiving knowledge of the good and worthy of election, and of the unprofitable and worthy of disgust, correct their lives for the better, and do not suffer from the disease of ignorance, but, listening to the teaching, urge themselves to move away from evil, and, through the fear of threatening punishments, work out their salvation.”
One of the features of patristic exegesis is the idea of Holy Scripture as a whole, so it is very important to instill in students the ability to analyze this or that passage based on the context of the entire Bible, and not just a particular book or chapter.
Introduction
Do not neglect, friend, the meticulous hearing of the Divine Scriptures. This is the devil's cunning, which does not allow us to see the treasure, so that we do not acquire wealth. “Hearing Divine thoughts brings nothing,” says the enemy, so as not to see him the deeds resulting from this hearing.
Rev. Isidore Pelusiot
On the necessity and benefits of studying the Holy Scriptures. The Monk Seraphim of Sarov said that it is of great benefit for a person to read the entire Bible wisely at least once. So let's not neglect this advice of the Reverend. Unfortunately, experience shows that many modern Orthodox people consider reading the Old Testament for themselves a completely optional, useless matter and, in comparison with numerous pamphlets of pious content, they consider it a waste of time. Although theoretically, probably, each of you imagines that this is not so and that from the Savior Himself, the apostles and holy fathers, we have been given the commandment to study and delve into the Holy Scriptures. It is for you and me, first of all, a testimony about Christ, a testimony about God. And if we try even a little to keep the commandment of God: “And love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”(Deut. 6:5); "This is the first and greatest commandment"(Matthew 22:37-38), then, probably, Holy Scripture as a book about Him Whom we have loved with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, should be dearer to us than any other book. We also call Holy Scripture Divine Revelation, because it contains what God was pleased to reveal to us about Himself, about His action in the world, about His relationship with man, therefore, from this point of view, of course, the Word of God is extraordinarily important for us.
Actually, our entire course will be based on this first commandment, and if I manage to instill in you a little love for reading the Bible, I will be very happy and consider my goal achieved. To inspire you, I want to read you some of the writings of the Holy Fathers. Saint John Chrysostom in one of his sermons tells his listeners about how much attention they pay to mastering some secular crafts, taking care of their home, household, and then says: “Tell me, if you ask one of you who are present here who can read one psalm or any passage of scripture? Of course, no one, and not only is it bad, but the fact that, not caring about the spiritual, you are faster than fire for satanic deeds: if anyone decides to visit you about the devil's songs, about voluptuous tunes, you will find that many know them for sure and speak with great pleasure. And how are they justified if you begin to accuse them? I, they say, am not a monk, but I have a wife and children, I take care of the house, and all the harm comes from this, that you consider the reading of the Holy Scriptures decent for monks alone, while you yourself have much more need for this. He who lives in the world and receives new ulcers every day, for this especially needs healing, therefore, reading the Scriptures is much worse than not reading it - such a thought is a satanic suggestion. Do you not hear what Paul said, that all these things are written for our instruction.” Then he says the following: “When you talk about worship, if you don’t even have time to read the Scriptures at home, then why don’t you listen to him during worship? Listen and be horrified: the deacon stands on behalf of everyone and, exclaiming loudly, says: “Let us listen” - and this is repeated. This voice that he utters is the general voice of the Church, but no one listens. After him, the reader begins: "Reading the prophecies of Isaiah" - and again no one listens, although the prophecy contains an inhuman teaching. Then he speaks aloud to everyone: “This says the Lord” - and also no one listens, but what do I say: something terrible and terrible is read further, but at the same time no one listens. And what do people say against it? “Always,” they say, “the same thing is read,” but this is what especially destroys you. If you knew all this, then all the more you should not have neglected. For the same thing always happens in spectacles, but you do not know satiety in them. What same thing do you dare to talk about when you do not even know the names of the prophets? Aren't you ashamed to say that you don't listen because you always read the same thing, when you don't even know the names of the writers you read, although you always listen to the same thing, because you yourself said that the same thing is read. If I said this to your condemnation, then you would have to turn to another justification, and not to one that serves to your own condemnation. “Let us not, beloved, neglect our salvation - all this is written for us for our teaching, but in them the ends of the age have reached. Great protection from sins is the reading of Scripture, and ignorance of Scripture is a great rapid, a deep abyss; it is a great ruin for salvation to know nothing of the divine laws. This ignorance gave rise to heresies, it introduced a depraved life, it turned everything upside down, for it is impossible that one who constantly diligently reads Scripture should be left without fruit. These are the convincing and powerful words in which St. John Chrysostom addressed his listeners more than 1,500 years ago. But since then, unfortunately, we have not made much progress.
In the lives of the saints we come across such a fact that some saints, being absolutely illiterate and never having studied anywhere, acquired the height of their feat that they knew the Scriptures by heart and always quoted it to the point. Let us recall, for example, the Life of St. Mary of Egypt; from the Egyptian hermits - the Monk Patermuth, the Monk Horus, about whom it is said that they received knowledge of the Holy Scriptures in a supernatural way. This is also a possible way.
St. John Chrysostom gives an explanation of it in his conversations on the Gospel of Matthew: “Indeed, we should not have the need for the help of Scripture, but we should lead a life so pure that instead of books the grace of the Spirit would serve our souls and that, as those written with ink, so our hearts were written with the Spirit, but since we rejected such grace, we will use at least the second way.
The same saint, objecting to the words of his listeners that they sometimes read the Scriptures, but cannot understand anything in it, says the following: “Let us not, please, neglect the reading of the Scriptures, but whether we understand what is contained in it or we do not understand, In any case, we will contact him as often as possible. Constant exercise in reading imprints what we read indelibly in our memory, and often what we could not understand while reading today, we suddenly understand when we start reading tomorrow, because the philanthropic God invisibly enlightens our minds. Such statements are often repeated by many holy fathers that the diligence of a person in the study of Holy Scripture, dissolved by humility, is always rewarded by God with the enlightenment of his mind.
Saint Simeon the New Theologian said: “A soul that wants to learn the law of God day and night does not receive as much benefit from anything in this respect as from the study of the Divine Scriptures; because within these Scriptures are hidden the thoughts of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which, having been comprehended, produce in the soul some great delight, which elevates it above everything earthly and worldly and lifts it up to heaven, disposing it to think only about the divine, to desire it alone and spend the life of an angel in this world." See what spiritual blessings you can achieve if you diligently study our subject.
It says the same Reverend John Ladder: “The soul, which constantly learns the word of God during the day, usually exercises in the same thing in a dream, for this second is the true reward for the first deed, to drive away spirits and evil dreams” (Ladder 20: 20).
The Holy Fathers have warned and continue to warn us that the study of Holy Scripture cannot be reduced to a purely mechanical rereading of it, cannot be completely successful, even if we read the appropriate interpretations. True understanding of the Scriptures can only be given to a person who, by his life, tries to fulfill what he meets in the Scriptures. But even for this, he must ask for help from God, “for,” according to the blessed Theodoret, “wisdom and prudence are truly needed both for the knowledge and understanding of the words of God, and for their fulfillment and observance. It is also impossible for those who have not received illumination from the Spirit of God to comprehend them, and to keep them for those who do not use help from above.
Bishop Feodor Pozdeevsky, rector of the MTA, in his speech at a prayer service before the start of the academic year (1912) said: “After all, if we looked at the word of God not as a collection of truths discovered in the interests of only human curiosity, but as a revelation of higher truths god-like life, as a revelation of the laws of the moral world order, then it goes without saying that the assimilation and understanding of these truths would have been accomplished in a different way than is usually the case. After all, it is not a secret for each of us that when we begin to delve deeper into the meaning of the words of Holy Scripture, then these attempts of ours remain almost completely in vain and, as it were, some kind of veil prevents us from understanding the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with pure eyes. And this is, of course, because law(God) spiritual", and the person" carnal, sold under sin”(Rom. 7: 14), and never, of course, a person who lives according to the law of the flesh can understand the laws of spiritual life, God-like life, for in order to know these laws, one must approach them in life itself and experience them. That is why Saint Simeon the New Theologian, when discussing the ways of comprehending the Word of God, compares it to a locked treasure chest. You can uselessly carry this chest on your shoulders and not get the treasures stored in it if you do not have a key to it. The key to the spiritual treasure contained in the Word of God is one - moral purity and holiness; that is why the Word of God, which contains all knowledge of God, must be studied not so much with the mind, but with a pure heart, capable of seeing God Himself.
I will cite the words of St. Simeon the New Theologian, to which Bishop Theodore refers. Saint Simeon compares Holy Scripture to a kind of strong chest, inside of which a treasure is locked. And he says that “just as if someone lifts this chest on his shoulders, he cannot see the treasure that is inside it from this alone, so if someone reads and even memorizes all the Divine Scriptures and can read them all as one psalm, - cannot by this alone comprehend the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is hidden in them; for neither what is inside the chest can be discovered through the chest itself, nor what is hidden in the Divine Scriptures can be revealed through the scriptures themselves. He says that such a person who has memorized the Scriptures even by heart, but mechanically, is like one who carries this chest on his shoulders. The most he can achieve is to earn himself some kind of back pain from diligence, and he will not be able to get treasures in this way. But the fulfillment of commandments, the fulfillment of virtues is much more useful here, he says that “virtues are born from the commandment, and from the virtues the mysteries hidden in the letter of Scripture are made clear. Then they prosper in virtues when they keep the commandments, and, again, then they keep the commandments when they are zealous for virtue - and from this the door of knowledge already opens - that is, those sacraments that are hidden in the divine Scripture. So, you see, it turns out that you need to be zealous about reading the Holy Scriptures, you need to try to know it properly, but the real benefit can be obtained if you try to apply in your life what is revealed.
General information about the Holy Scriptures. From the course of the Catechism, you remember that the Holy Scriptures are called “books written by the Spirit of God through people sanctified from God, called Prophets and Apostles. Usually these books are called the Bible. Depending on the time of writing, the books of Holy Scripture are divided into two sections: “Those Holy Books those written before the birth of Christ are called the books of the Old Testament, and those written after the birth of Christ are called the books of the New Testament.
In total, there are 50 books in the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament in our editions of the Bible, of which 39 books are canonical and 11 are non-canonical. It must be said right away what it is, since in the course of the New Testament you did not come across the concept of non-canonical New Testament books - all the books that are contained in the body of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament are canonical. If we open the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, we will find there also 11 non-canonical books, such as the Books of Wisdom of Solomon and Jesus, the son of Sirach; The Epistle of Jeremiah, Maccabees, etc.
These books were also written in antiquity, and some of them were written in the original Hebrew, some in Greek, but these books were not recognized by the Church as inspired books - this concept will now be discussed separately. That is, these books were recognized as very kind, edifying, which contain some grains of divinely revealed teaching, but which in general cannot be recognized as inspired by God - the element of human wisdom is too strong. Therefore, these books were left by the fathers in the lists among other Old Testament books and, as the definitions of the fathers say, they are intended for edifying home reading for Christians and for reading by new beginnings, since they contain high moral teaching.
Protestants reject these books and call them Apocrypha. The Catholics at the Council of Trent included most non-canonical books in the canon. Therefore they are sometimes called deuterocanonical.
Regarding the term "apocrypha", it should be clarified that in relation to the Holy Scriptures, it was first used by the Gnostics, who called so the "secret" books that the apostles supposedly left for the "initiates", in contrast to the well-known books intended for the simple. Since these spurious books contained teachings rejected by the Church, the name "Apocrypha" eventually established itself behind all books that claim to be part of Scripture, but are rejected by the Church. In terms of topics and genres, they are close to the canonical books of the Bible, but, unlike non-canonical ones, they are not recognized as useful and instructive. Of the rather numerous Old Testament apocrypha, one can name the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Enoch, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Fourth Book of Maccabees.
It should be noted that the list of canonical books practically coincides with the canon adopted in modern Judaism. Does this mean that the Jewish canon is primary in relation to the church? Not at all necessary. The final fixation of the canons, which are now recognized by the Jews, took place at the beginning of the 2nd century AD. It took place simultaneously with the formation of a new tradition, caused by the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, when it was necessary to arrange communal life on some new, different foundations. The result was the emergence of a virtually new religion, which in its age is somewhat younger than Christianity. The Church of Christ considers itself to a much greater extent the successor of the Old Testament Church, if we consider the Old Testament as a preparation for the acceptance of the New (see Jer. 31:31). By the way, it was traditionally believed that the canon of the books of the Old Testament was concluded and compiled back in the time of the priest Ezra, that is, in the 5th century BC. We will have a separate discussion about this. Therefore, the most important thing for us is the definitions of the Church about the dignity of this or that book. Which books are canonical and should be read in the Church is established by the rules of the holy fathers and holy ecumenical councils.
It should be added here that the church text of Scripture has always been the text of the Septuagint, the text of the translation of seventy interpreters who, in the 3rd century BC, translated the Holy Scripture into Greek for the Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus. Following St. John Chrysostom, we say that "it was a matter of God's economy that these books would be used not only by those who knew the Hebrew language, but by all the inhabitants of the universe."
So, in our Bible we see 39 canonical inspired books of the Old Testament. However, in a number of ancient patristic texts - for example, in the verse epistle of St. Gregory the Theologian to Amphilochius about what books should be read - we see that 22 books are listed there. What does it mean? That in the time of St. Gregory there were fewer books? No, this means that there is a different calculation and division of these books.
Where does the number 22 come from? According to the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet, in the same way they are calculated in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible. The composition of the text is the same, just some books are grouped. How? The epistle of St. Gregory suggests the following order: first come the books of the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth; then two books of Kings, that is, not four, as we now believe, but combining them two by two together: the first-second, the third-fourth; Chronicles as one book and Ezra, that is, 12 books, which he called historical. Then 5 books, which he calls poetic: Job, David, that is, the Psalter, and 3 Solomon: Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Proverbs; 5 books of the Spirit of the Prophet: 12 minor prophets as one book, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel - the division is practically the same that we now use for our practical needs. Note that he does not single out the books of the Pentateuch as law-positive books, as we now single out, but three other criteria are clearly distinguishable: historical, didactic and prophetic books.
A four-part division of books has now been adopted:
1. Law-positive books, which form the main foundation of the Old Testament. These include the books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
2. Historical books that contain mainly the history of piety: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.
3. Teaching books that contain the teachings of piety: the Book of Job, the Psalter, and the books of Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs).
4. Prophetic books that contain prophecies or predictions about the future, and primarily about Jesus Christ: the books of the great prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, as well as the books of 12 minor prophets - Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah , Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.
The Jewish Canon has a slightly different division: Law, Prophets and Scripture - 3 parts. This is exactly how, in accordance with the Old Testament tradition, Christ spoke of Scripture to the apostles (Luke 24:44). The Law (Torah) is the Pentateuch of Moses. Prophetic books (Nevi'im) include not only those books that we call prophetic, but also books that we call historical - this is not at all accidental, we will say in due time why this happens. The prophets in the Hebrew Bible include the so-called early prophets: the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel (in modern Western editions you can find that the First and Second Books of Kings are called the first and second books of Samuel, and the Third and Fourth are already directly the books of Kings) - and the later prophets: the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and 12 minor prophets as one book. Please note that in this list we do not meet the prophet Daniel, whose book in the Jewish canon does not belong to the prophetic books. The Scriptures (Ketuvim) are all other books: poetic, that is, psalms, the parables of Solomon, the Book of Job, the so-called Five Scrolls - this is the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes and historical books, which include the Book of the prophet Daniel, Book of Ezra and two books of Chronicles. As you can see, this is a completely different division. In our course, we will refer to it several times to clarify some interesting details.
The last remark concerns the division of Scripture into chapters and verses. We are used to the fact that a chapter encompasses a logically complete fragment of a book. We also perceive the boundary between verses as carrying a certain meaning. However, it should be understood that this division does not belong to the sacred writers, they wrote in succession, giving where necessary indications of the beginning of a new section. For the convenience of “navigation”, even in the Old Testament times, the division of the text of Scripture into fragments was used; over time, this division changed. It can be noted that the division of proverbs does not correspond to the modern division into chapters, which was made in the 13th century. The division into verses appeared even later, in the 15th century. Therefore, it is sometimes helpful to read Scripture ignoring this division. In some editions, for this purpose, the text is printed in continuous, and indications of chapters and verses are made in the margins.
On the inspiration of Holy Scripture. The question may arise: are there any formal criteria by which the inspiration of a particular book is determined? The following formal criteria are sometimes cited: the book must be in the original Hebrew, which is at least typical of all canonical books, and this book must be referenced in the New Testament. However, the controversy that has continued for centuries between Catholics and Protestants about the composition of the canon of Scripture clearly shows that these are rather secondary signs. We do not find references to all canonical books in the New Testament; on the other hand, there are non-canonical books that were once in Hebrew and references to which can be found in the New Testament books if desired. Thus, it should be recognized that there are no formal signs of canonicity.
For us, the Church Tradition is relevant, which passed from the Old Testament Church to the New Testament Church, that is, the direct testimony of the Church about these books. It is the Church, by the Holy Spirit, that bears witness to the inspiration of this or that book. Formally, this evidence is embodied in the definitions of Church Councils.
Let's stop here and think about what we mean when we say that books are "inspired"? I think that this word is well known to you, since you met it in the courses of the Catechism and the New Testament, but nevertheless it is worth touching on this issue again. You probably know the definition of the Long Christian Catechism of St. Philaret: “We speak of inspiration, meaning that these books were written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by special people chosen by God, whom we call prophets or apostles.” But here there is a certain difficulty of the following nature. Once upon a time, these books were indeed written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but we have completely different books, we have the Bible of the synodal edition, which was translated in the 19th century from some lists, and these lists were rewritten from some other then lists, etc. They may have been spoiled a long time ago: some translator made a mistake, a copyist did not copy something, some malicious editor rearranged something. And as a result, we naively think that we are reading an inspired book, and it is not at all the one that was written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by an apostle or a prophet. Such opinions are often found in modern scientific research.
But this shouldn't scare us too much. The Holy Spirit is always active in the Church. He also acted in the Old Testament Church. And as long as the Holy Scripture abides in the Church, it is preserved for us by the action of the Holy Spirit, and we read and see in it the same thing that God wanted to tell us through the prophets and through the apostles. But when some people leave the Church - let's take, for example, Jews in the 1st century or Protestants in the 16th century - then the preservation of the Scriptures becomes a whole problem.
At first, the rabbis were engaged in the interpretation of Scripture. But then, in the 6th century, the Masoretes appeared (from the Hebrew Masorah - tradition, tradition) - the keepers of the tradition. What were they doing? They standardized the text of Scripture and developed a kind of "technology", that is, the rules for its storage and rewriting, which did not allow errors to appear. Much later, the Protestants, and after them the Catholics, also invented various “scientific” methods for interpreting the Scriptures, but the authenticity and integrity of the Scriptures are still being debated. There is some analogy. When the soul leaves the body, it is difficult to keep it. Something similar takes place in relation to the Holy Scriptures.
Finally, we must not forget that, speaking of inspiration, the Fathers of the Church had in mind that a very special enlightening action of the Holy Spirit takes place when a person reads Holy Scripture. Reading it, a person enters into a conversation with God and is also enlightened by the same Spirit under whose influence the Scripture was written. Moreover, only those who are involved in the action of the Holy Spirit, at whose inspiration it was all written, can understand what is written - without this it is impossible to comprehend the Scriptures.
Ways of interpreting the Old Testament books. The interpretation in Greek is exegesis or exegesis. The easiest way to explain or interpret Scripture is literal. As it is written, so it is understood. The literal sense is sometimes subdivided into two kinds. If we are talking about past events, then this interpretation is literally historical; if it speaks of future events - for example, it is reported that such and such a city will be destroyed - then we are talking about a literal-prophetic sense.
However, the literal interpretation is not always applicable. Why? As has already been clarified, the meaning of Holy Scripture often does not lie on the surface. There are places that cannot be taken literally. For example, the appearance of God to Moses at Sinai, when God puts Moses in a cleft, covers him with a "palm", then Moses sees "God's back". From the point of view of what we know about God, this is a kind of absurdity. Undoubtedly, there is an allegory here, which is connected with the fact that our thinking, our language is not quite suitable for divine secrets to be so simply transmitted and understood. And then a spiritual (allegorical, or allegorical; see Gal. 4:24) interpretation is applied, when the literal meaning is replaced by another meaning - spiritual, since it is more consistent with the true idea of God. Sometimes a similar thing happens in the transmission of a teaching of a moral order. For example, the gospel phrase about cutting off the seductive hand and gouging out the eye was never considered to imply a literal fulfillment.
So, in his interpretation of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, St. Basil the Great says: “Based on general concepts, we must agree that contradictory expressions about God should not be understood literally. So, for example, according to generally accepted understanding, it must be recognized that God's nature is good, does not participate in wrath and is just. Therefore, if Scripture says that God is angry, or grieves, or repents, or gives someone an unworthy answer, then it is necessary to delve into the purpose of the saying and carefully consider how the true meaning can be restored, and not pervert respectable thoughts about God. Thus, let us not meet with stumbling-blocks in Scripture, deriving benefit from places that are easily understood and not suffering harm from places that are obscure.
