The Bible is called differently: Book of books, Book of Life, Book of Knowledge, Eternal Book. Undisputed is her tremendous contribution to the spiritual development of mankind for many hundreds of years. Biblical subjects include literary texts and scientific treatises, paintings and musical works. Images from the Eternal Book are depicted on icons, murals, in sculptures. Contemporary art - cinema - did not pass by. This is the most popular and readable book of all that a human hand has ever held.
However, people have long wondered a question to which they have not yet given a definite answer: who wrote the bible? Is she really God's providence? Is it possible to unconditionally trust what is written there?
To the history of the issue
We know the following facts: The Bible was written almost two millennia ago. More precisely, a little over a thousand six hundred years. But the question is
who wrote the Bible is not entirely correct from the point of view of people of believers. Why?
Because it will be more accurate to say - recorded. After all, representatives of different social strata of society and even different nationalities created it in different eras. And they did not record their own thoughts, observations on life, but what the Lord prompted them. It is believed that those who wrote the Bible were led by God himself, putting His thoughts in their minds, leading them with his hand on parchment or paper. Therefore, although the Book was written by people, it contains precisely the word of God and no one else. In one of the texts of the
Holy Scripture it is directly stated about this: it is “inspired”, i.e. inspired, inspired by the Almighty.
But there are many inconsistencies, contradictions, and “dark spots” in the Book. Something is explained by inaccuracies in translations of canonical texts, something by the mistakes of those who wrote the Bible, something by our foolishness. In addition, many texts of the Gospel were simply destroyed, burned. Many did not enter the main content, became apocryphal. Few people know that most of the fragments of Scripture were admitted to the masses after a particular Ecumenical Council. That is, no matter how strange it may seem, but the human factor played far from the last role in the embodiment of God's providence.
Why was the Bible written, and not transmitted, let’s say, its contents by word of mouth? It is thought, because with the oral form one would be forgotten, the other would be transmitted in a distorted form, with the speculations of the next “reteller”. Written fixation allowed avoiding the loss of information or its unauthorized interpretations. Thus, some of its objectivity was ensured, the opportunity appeared to translate the book into different languages, to convey it to many peoples and nations.
Does all of the above allow us to assert that the authors only mechanically, thoughtlessly wrote down thoughts “from above”, like somnambulists? Not certainly in that way. Around the fourth century, the saints who wrote the Bible began to be considered its co-authors. Those. the personality element began to take place. Thanks to this recognition, explanations of the stylistic heterogeneity of the sacred texts, semantic and actual discrepancies appeared.
Thus, it is generally accepted among believers that the Bible is both the word of the Holy Spirit, and God's people, the holy apostles who created it. This is a kind of spiritual experience, captured in the human language.
Bible sections
We all know what the Bible consists of — from the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament is all that was before the
birth of Christ. These are stories about the creation of the world, about the Jews, the people of God. It is worth mentioning that for the Jews, only the first part of the gospel has sacred power. The
New Testament Bible is not recognized by them. And the rest of the Christian world, on the contrary, lives according to the canons and commandments of the second part of the Bible.
The volume of the Old Testament is three times the volume of the New. Both parts are complementary and individually not entirely understood. Each contains a list of their own books that can be divided into groups: instructive, historical, and prophetic. Their total number is sixty-six and compiled by thirty authors, among whom were the shepherd Amos and King David, the publican Matthew and the fisherman Peter, as well as a doctor, scientist, etc.
Some clarifications
It remains only to add that for people far from faith, the Bible is a wonderful literary monument that has survived for centuries and has earned the right to immortality.