Christianity today is the most common religion in the world. According to international statistics, the number of its adherents exceeds two billion people, that is, about a third of the world's population. It is not surprising that it was this religion that gave the world the most circulated and famous book - the Bible. The Holy Scriptures of Christians in the number of copies and sales have led the TOP bestsellers for one and a half thousand years.
Bible Composition
Not everyone knows that the word “Bible” is just the plural form of the Greek word “vivlos,” which means “book.” Thus, we are not talking about a single work, but about a collection of texts belonging to different authors and written in different eras. The extreme time thresholds are estimated as follows: from the XIV century. BC e. by the second century n e.
The Bible consists of two main parts, which in Christian terminology are called the Old Testament and the New Testament. Among adherents of the church, the latter prevails in importance.
Old Testament
The first and largest part of Christian Scripture was formed long before the birth of Jesus Christ. Old Testament books are also called the Hebrew Bible, as they are sacred in Judaism. Of course, for them the adjective "decrepit" in relation to its writing is categorically unacceptable. Tanah (as it is called in their midst) is eternal, unchanging and universal.
This collection consists of four (according to the Christian classification) parts, which have the following names:
- Legislative books.
- History books.
- Educational books.
- Prophetic books.
Each of these sections contains a certain number of texts, and in different branches of Christianity there may be a different number of them. Some books of the Old Testament can also be combined or divided up among themselves and within themselves. The main option is considered to be an edition consisting of 39 names of various texts. The most important part of the Tanakh is the so-called Torah, which consists of the first five books. Religious tradition claims that its author is the prophet Moses. The Old Testament was finally formed around the middle of the first millennium BC. e., and in our era adopted as a sacred document in all branches of Christianity, except for most Gnostic schools and the Church of Marcion.
New Testament
As for the New Testament, it is a collection of works born in the bowels of nascent Christianity. It consists of 27 books, the most important of which are the first four texts, called the Gospels. The latter are biographies of Jesus Christ. The remaining books are the letters of the apostles, the book of Acts, which tells about the first years of the life of the church, and the prophetic book of Revelation.
The Christian canon was formed in this form by the fourth century. Prior to this, among various groups of Christians were distributed, and even revered as sacred, and many other texts. But a number of church councils and episcopal definitions legitimized only these books, recognizing all others as false and offensive to God. After that, the “wrong” texts began to be massively destroyed.
The process of unification of the canon was initiated by a group of theologians who opposed the teachings of presbyter Marcion. The latter, for the first time in the history of the church, proclaimed the canon of sacred texts, discarding almost all the books of the Old and New Testaments (in its modern edition) with a few exceptions. In order to neutralize the sermon of their opponent, the authorities of the church formally legalized and sacramented a more traditional set of scriptures.
Nevertheless, in different parts of the world, the Old Testament and the New Testament have different versions of the codification of the text. There are also some books that are accepted in one tradition, but rejected in another.
The Doctrine of the Inspiration of the Bible
The very essence of sacred texts in Christianity is revealed in the doctrine of inspiration. The Bible - the Old and New Testaments - is important for believers, because they are sure that God himself led the writers of the sacred works, and the words of the scriptures in the literal sense are divine revelation, which he conveys to the world, the church and each person personally. This belief that the Bible is a letter from the Lord addressed directly to each person encourages Christians to constantly study it and seek hidden meanings.
Apocrypha
During the development and formation of the canon of the Bible, many books that were originally included in it later turned out to be "overboard" of church orthodoxy. This fate befell such works as, for example, “Shepherd Herma” and “Didahi”. Many different gospels and apostolic epistles were declared false and heretical only because they did not fit into the new theological tendencies of the orthodox church. All these texts are united by the general term "apocrypha", which means, on the one hand, "false", and on the other - "secret" scriptures. But it was not possible to permanently erase the traces of objectionable texts - in the canonical works there are allusions and hiding quotes from them. For example, it is likely that the lost, and in the 20th century, the newly discovered gospel of Thomas served as one of the primary sources for the sayings of Christ in the canonical gospels. And the generally accepted message of the apostle Jude (not Iscariot) directly contains quotes with references to the apocryphal book of the prophet Enoch, while affirming its prophetic dignity and authenticity.
The Old Testament and the New Testament - the unity and differences of the two canons
So, we found out that the Bible is composed of two collections of books of different authors and times. And although Christian theology considers the Old Testament and the New Testament as one, interpreting them through each other and establishing hidden allusions, predictions, prototypes and typological connections, not everyone in the Christian community is prone to such an identical assessment of the two canons. Marcion did not reject the Old Testament from scratch. Among his lost works were the so-called “Antitheses,” where he opposed the teachings of Tanach to the teachings of Christ. The fruit of this distinction was the doctrine of two gods - the Jewish evil and capricious demiurge and the all-good God-Father, whom Christ preached.
Indeed, the images of God in these two covenants vary greatly. In the Old Testament, he is presented as a vengeful, strict, tough ruler not without racial prejudice, as one would put it today. In the New Testament, on the contrary, God is more tolerant, merciful, and generally prefers to forgive than to punish. However, this is a somewhat simplified scheme, and if you wish, you can find the opposite arguments regarding both texts. Historically, however, it turned out that churches that did not recognize the authority of the Old Testament ceased to exist, and today the Christian world is represented in this respect by only one tradition, except for the various reconstructed groups of neo-Gnostics and neo-Marcionites.