Brief Bible. New Testament

Books of the New Testament Matt. - From Matthew the holy gospel Mk. - From Mark the holy gospel - From Luke the holy gospel - From John the holy gospel - Acts of the Holy Apostles - The Epistle of James 1 Pet. - First Epistle of Peter 2 Pet. -

Ministers of the New Testament Should we, however, introduce ourselves to you again? And do we, as some, need some letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 Such a letter for us is you yourself. It is written in our hearts and is easily recognized and read by everyone. 3 And it is clear that you -

Religious studies and mythology

The Bible consists of the books of the Old and New Testaments. The New Testament contains the foundational texts certifying the new covenant between God and man made through Jesus Christ. The New Testament consists of 27 books, which, like the books of the OT, researchers divide into five groups.

The structure of the New Testament.

The Bible consists of the books of the Old and New Testaments. The New Testament contains foundational texts attesting to the new covenant between God and man made through Jesus Christ.

The New Testament consists of 27 books, which, like the books of the OT, are divided by researchers into five groups.

The Gospels, which tell about the life, deeds, sufferings, death and resurrection of the Lord, and also formulate the foundations of faith.

Acts of the Apostles (history book) - a story about the successful spread of faith in the pagan world.

The Council Epistles of the Apostles

The Epistles of the Apostle Paul, in which a special section is made up of the so-called Pastoral Epistles (Epistles to Timothy and Titus). The epistles clarify the essence of Christ's teachings and expose false teachings. The epistles testify to the direction of the apostles in the life of the communities and contain warnings to those who are inclined to take the path of error.

The prophetic book is Revelation.

The New Testament is written in a dialect of the Greek language that was prevalent at the time of Jesus Christ. As a result of the conquest campaigns of Alexander the Great, they began to speak and write letters in the Greek language. throughout the civilized world. But since in NT, it was used to express new divine truths, then the words in it, accordingly, took on a new lexical coloration, which must be taken into account when studying the Bible. The works that make up the New Testament were written by different authors at different times. Not all of the writings of the New Testament were immediately accepted by the churches and canonized after they were written; some of them were fiercely debated.

The next stage in the formation of the New Testament canon is the formation of canonical lists and early translations, although, as already mentioned, the division into these stages is relative, since in different places these processes took place at different times, and their boundaries are very blurred. However, despite the fact that the citation and the formation of canonical lists took place almost in parallel, we make this division for convenience in understanding these processes.

Before proceeding directly to the structure of the New Testament, it is useful to consider some of the events that contributed to their formation.

First, the development of heresies, and especially Gnosticism, was an important factor. This movement tried to combine a mixture of pagan beliefs and ideas with Christian teaching.

Representatives of Gnosticism were divided into several currents, but nevertheless they remained a serious threat to Christianity, since, assigning a more or less central place to Christ, they considered themselves Christians. In addition, the Gnostics claimed the possession of both Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, and supposedly used them to set forth their teaching, which also made it difficult to defend the church.

This situation prompted Christians to approve the canon of the New Testament books in order to deprive the Gnostics of the opportunity to classify their works as authoritative Scripture.

Secondly, Montanism became another heretical movement that influenced the formation of the canon. This movement arose in the second half of the II century in Phrygia and quickly spread throughout the church. It can be described as an apocalyptic movement that aspired to a strictly ascetic life and was accompanied by ecstatic manifestations. The Montanists insisted on the continuous gift of divinely inspired prophecy and began to record the divinations of their chief prophets.

This led to the spread of a number of new scriptures and, consequently, to a serious distrust on the part of the church of apocalyptic literature in general. Such circumstances even led to doubts about the canonicity of the Apocalypse of John. In addition, the Montanist idea of ​​permanent prophecy made the church seriously think about closing the canon altogether.

Third, canonization was influenced by state persecution. The persecution of Christians began almost from the 60s A.D., but until 250 they were random and local in nature, but after that it became an element of the policy of the Roman imperial government. Particularly strong persecution began in March 303, when the emperor Diocletian ordered the liquidation of the churches and the destruction of the Scriptures in fire. Thus, it became dangerous to preserve the Scriptures, so Christians wanted to know for sure that the books they were hiding under pain of death were indeed canonical. There were also other, minor factors, such as the closure of the Old Testament canon in Jamnia by the Jewish Sanhedrin around A.D. 90, or how the Alexandrian custom of compiling a list of authors whose works for a given literary genre were considered exemplary, they were called canons, etc.

So, with the assistance of the above factors, canonical lists of New Testament books were formed in different places. But it is interesting that the very first published list was the canon of the heretic Marcion, who nevertheless played an important role in the formation of the canon of the New Testament.

Composition of the New Testament

There are a total of 27 sacred books in the New Testament:

four gospels,

the book of the Acts of the Apostles,

seven conciliar epistles,

fourteen epistles of the apostle Paul

and the Apocalypse ap. John the Evangelist.

Two gospels belong to two of the 12 apostles - Matthew and John, two - to the disciples of the apostles - Mark and Luke. The book of Acts was also written by a disciple of the Apostle Paul - Luke. Of the seven conciliar epistles - five belong to the 12 apostles - Peter and John and two - to the Lord's brothers in the flesh, James and Judas, who also bore the honorary title of the apostles, although they did not belong to the 12. Fourteen Epistles were written by Paul, who, although he was called late by Christ, but nevertheless, as called by the Lord himself in the ministry, is an apostle in the highest sense of the word, completely equal in dignity in the Church with the 12 apostles. The Apocalypse belongs to the 12 apostle, John the Theologian.

Thus, it can be seen that all the writers of the New Testament books are eight. The great teacher of languages, Ap. Paul, who founded many churches that demanded written instruction from him, which he taught in his epistles.

Some Western theologians suggest that the real composition of the New Testament books is not complete, that it did not include the lost epistles of the Apostle Paul - the 3rd to the Corinthians (written as if between 1st and 2nd Epistles to the Corinthians, to the Laodiceans , to the Philippians (2 nd) Moreover, it is impossible to allow that the Christian Church, which treated the apostles with such respect, and in particular to the apostle Paul, could completely lose any of the apostolic writings.

Recognition by church councils

This is the final stage in the canonization of the New Testament. There is a lot of information about this period, but we will try to describe only the most important. In this regard, it is worth noting three key figures in the Western and Eastern churches, as well as some cathedrals.

The first key figure in the East during this period is Athanasius, who was bishop of Alexandria from 328 to 373. Every year, according to the custom of the Alexandrian bishops, he wrote special Feast letters to the Egyptian churches and monasteries, in which the day of Easter and the beginning of Great Lent was announced. These messages were spread not only in Egypt and in the East, and therefore they made it possible to discuss other issues besides Easter. Especially important for us is Epistle 39 (year 367), which contains a list of the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. According to Athanasius, the Old Testament consisted of 39 books, and the New one of 27 works that make up the modern Bible. He says this about these books:

These are the sources of salvation, and those who thirst will be satisfied with the words of life. Only in them is the divine teaching proclaimed. Let no one add anything to them or subtract anything. So, Athanasius was the first to declare the canon of the New Testament exactly coinciding with those 27 books that are now recognized as canonical. But, in spite of this, in the East hesitation in the recognition of antilegomenon lasted much longer. For example, Gregory Nazianzen did not recognize the canonicity of the Apocalypse, and Didymus the Blind - the 2nd and 3rd Epistles of John, and besides this, he recognized some apocryphal books. Another famous father of the church, John Chrysostom, did not use the messages: 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and the Apocalypse.

It is also worth noting the statistics carried out by the Institute for Research on New Testament Texts in Münstern. They describe the number of surviving Greek manuscripts of various New Testament books. These data indicate that the Gospels were the most read, followed by the Epistles of Paul, followed with a slight lag behind the Council Epistle and the Book of Acts, and at the very end - the Apocalypse.

Thus, we can conclude that in the East there was no clarity about the size of the canon, although, in general, it was adopted by the 6th century, and all New Testament books were mainly read and enjoyed authority, although to varying degrees.

Jerome (346 - 420) is one of the most significant figures in the Western Church. He gave her the best early translation of the Holy Scriptures into Latin, the Vulgate. In his works, he occasionally spoke about books that were in doubt, showing their authority. For example, about the Epistle of Jude, he writes that it is rejected by many because of the reference to the Apocryphal Book of Enoch.

Thus, he testifies to the conquest of authority by this book. Jerome also has passages of the same kind in support of all the other contested books: the epistles of James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Hebrews, and the Revelation of John. In his other work, the Epistle to the Peacock, Jerome listed all 27 New Testament scriptures as a list of sacred books.

It should be noted, however, that these were local councils and, although from that moment 27 books, no more and no less, were accepted by the Latin Church, not all Christian communities immediately accepted this canon and corrected their manuscripts.

So, we can say that all 27 books of the New Testament were accepted as the Word of God, although there were always some people and communities who did not accept some of them.

All these terms, i.e. both the word “covenant” and its connection with the adjectives “old” and “new” are taken from the Bible itself, in which they, in addition to their general meaning, have a special one, in which we also use them, speaking about well-known biblical books.

The word "covenant" (Hebrew - berith, Greek - διαθήκη, Latin - testamentum) in the language of Holy Scripture and biblical use primarily means the well-known regulation, condition, law, on which the two contracting parties converge, and from here - this contract or union, as well as those external signs that served as his certificate, a seal, as it were, a seal (testamentum). And since the sacred books, which described this covenant or the union of God with man, were, of course, one of the best means of certifying and consolidating it in the people's memory, the name “covenant” was also transferred to them very early on. It existed already in the era of Moses, as can be seen from the book of Exodus (), where the record of the Sinai legislation read by Moses to the Jewish people is called the book of the covenant ("sefer habberit"). Similar expressions, denoting by themselves not only the Sinai legislation, but the entire Mosaic Pentateuch, are found in the subsequent Old Testament books (;;). The Old Testament also belongs to the first, still prophetic reference to, namely, in the well-known prophecy of Jeremiah: "Now the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah." ().

Division of New Testament Books by Content

Historical books are the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the book of the Acts of the Apostles. The Gospels give us a historical depiction of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the book of Acts of the Apostles is a historical depiction of the life and work of the apostles who spread Christ throughout the world.

Teaching books are the Epistles of the Apostles, which are letters written by the apostles to different Churches. In these letters, the apostles clarify various perplexities about the Christian faith and life that arose in the Churches, denounce the readers of the Epistles in the various disorders they allow, convince them to stand firm in the Christian faith devoted to them, and expose the false teachers who disturbed the peace of the primitive Church. In a word, the apostles appear in their Epistles as teachers of the flock of Christ entrusted to their care, being, moreover, often the founders of those Churches to which they turn. The latter takes place in relation to almost all the Epistles of the Apostle Paul.

There is only one prophetic book in the New Testament - the Apocalypse of the Apostle John the Theologian. It contains various visions and revelations, which this apostle was rewarded with and in which the future fate of the Church of Christ before her glorification is foretold, i.e. before the opening of the kingdom of glory on earth.

Since the subject of the content of the Gospels is the life and teachings of the very Founder of our faith - the Lord Jesus Christ, and since, undoubtedly, in the Gospel we have the basis for all our faith and life, it is customary to call the four Gospels books law-positive. This name shows that the Gospels have the same meaning for Christians as the Law of Moses - the Pentateuch had for the Jews.

A Brief History of the Canon of the Holy Books of the New Testament

The word "canon" (κανών) originally meant "cane", and then it began to be used to designate what should serve as a rule, a pattern of life (;). The Church Fathers and Councils used this term to designate a collection of sacred inspired scriptures. Therefore, the canon of the New Testament is a collection of the sacred, inspired books of the New Testament in its present form.

What was the guiding principle behind when accepting this or that sacred New Testament book into the canon? First of all, the so-called historical legend. Investigated whether this or that book was actually received directly from the apostle or an apostolic collaborator, and, after rigorous research, included this book in the books of the inspired. But at the same time, attention was also paid to whether the teaching contained in the book under consideration, firstly, with the teaching of the whole Church and, secondly, with the teaching of the apostle whose name this book bore on itself. This is the so-called dogmatic tradition. And it never happened that, once recognizing a book as canonical, later she changed her view of it and excluded it from the canon. If individual fathers and teachers of the Church even after this still recognized some of the New Testament writings as inauthentic, then this was only their private view, which should not be confused with the voice of the Church. In the same way, it never happened that the Church at first did not accept any book into the canon, and then included it. If some of the canonical books are not indicated in the writings of the men of the apostles (for example, the Epistle of Jude), then this is because the men of the apostles had no reason to quote these books.

The order of the New Testament books in the canon

The New Testament books found their place in the canon according to their importance and the time of their final recognition. In the first place, naturally, were the four Gospels, followed by the book of the Acts of the Apostles; The apocalypse formed the conclusion of the canon. But in some codes, some books do not occupy the place they occupy with us now. So, in the Sinai Codex, the book of the Acts of the Apostles stands after the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. Until the 4th century, the Greek Church placed the Epistles of the Council after the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. The very name "conciliar" originally bore only the 1st Epistle of Peter and the 1st Epistle of John, and only from the time of Eusebius of Caesarea (IV century) this name began to be applied to all seven Epistles. From the time of Athanasius of Alexandria (mid-4th century), the Epistles of the Council in the Greek Church took their present place. Meanwhile, in the West, they were still placed after the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. Even the Apocalypse in some codes is earlier than the Epistles of the Apostle Paul and even earlier than the book of Acts. In particular, the Gospels appear in different codes in a different order. So, some, undoubtedly, putting the apostles in the first place, place the Gospels in this order: Matthew, John, Mark and Luke, or, giving special dignity to the Gospel of John, put him in the first place. Others put the Gospel of Mark in last place, as the shortest. Of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, initially the first place in the canon was occupied by two to the Corinthians, and the last to the Romans (a fragment of Muratorium and Tertullian). Since the time of Eusebius, the first place was taken by the Epistle to the Romans, both in terms of its volume and in the importance of the Church to which it was written, which really deserves this place. The location of the four private Epistles (1 Tim .; 2 Tim .; Titus; Phil.) Were guided, obviously, by their volume, approximately the same. The Epistle to the Hebrews in the East was placed 14th, and in the West - 10th in the series of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. It is clear that the Western Church has placed the Epistles of the Apostle Peter in the first place among the Epistles of the Council. The Eastern Church, putting the Epistle of James in the first place, was probably guided by the enumeration of the apostles by the Apostle Paul ().

History of the New Testament Canon since the Reformation

During the Middle Ages, the canon remained indisputable, especially since the books of the New Testament were relatively little read by private individuals, and during divine services only certain conceptions or sections were read from them. The common people were more interested in reading the legends about the life of the saints, and the Catholic even looked with some suspicion at the interest that certain societies, such as the Waldenses, showed in reading the Bible, sometimes even forbidding the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. But at the end of the Middle Ages, humanism renewed doubts about the writings of the New Testament, which in the first centuries were the subject of controversy. The Reformation began to raise its voice even more against some of the New Testament writings. Luther, in his translation of the New Testament (1522), in the prefaces to the New Testament books, expressed his view of their dignity. So, in his opinion, the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by the apostle, like the Epistle of James. He also does not recognize the authenticity of the Apocalypse and the Epistle of the Apostle Jude. Luther's disciples went even further in the severity with which they treated various New Testament scriptures and even began to directly single out "apocryphal" scriptures from the New Testament canon: until the beginning of the 17th century, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 were not even canonical in Lutheran Bibles. -e John, Jude and the Apocalypse. Only later did this distinction of scriptures disappear and the ancient New Testament canon was restored. At the end of the 17th century, however, critical writings on the New Testament canon appeared, in which objections were raised against the authenticity of many New Testament books. The rationalists of the 18th century (Zemler, Michaelis, Eichgorm) wrote in the same spirit, and in the 19th century. Schleiermacher questioned the authenticity of some of the Pauline Epistles, De Wette rejected the authenticity of five of them, and F.H. Baur recognized only the four main Epistles of the Apostle Paul and the Apocalypse as truly apostolic out of the entire New Testament.

Thus, in the West, Protestantism again came to the same thing that the Christian Church experienced in the first centuries, when some books were recognized as genuine apostolic works, while others were controversial. The view was already established that it is only a collection of literary works of early Christianity. At the same time, the followers of F.X. Baura - B. Bauer, Lohmann and Steck - no longer found it possible to recognize any of the New Testament books as a truly apostolic work ... But the best minds of Protestantism saw the full depth of the abyss into which Protestantism was carried away by the Baura school, or Tübingen, and opposed its provisions with strong objections. So, Richl refuted the main thesis of the Tübingen school about the development of early Christianity from the struggle between petrinism and peacockism, and Harnack proved that the New Testament books should be viewed as truly apostolic works. The scientists B. Weiss, Godet and T. Tsang did even more to restore the significance of the New Testament books in the view of Protestants. “Thanks to these theologians,” says Barth, “no one can now take away from the New Testament the advantage that in it and only in it we have messages about Jesus and the revelation of God in Him” (Introduction, 1908, p. 400). Barthes finds that at the present time, when such confusion reigns in the minds, it is especially important for Protestantism to have the "canon" as a guide given from God for faith and life, "and, - he ends, - we have it in the New Testament" (There same).

Indeed, the New Testament canon has enormous, one might say, incomparable significance for the Christian Church. In it we find, first of all, such scriptures that represent in its relation to the Jewish people (the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle of the Apostle James and the Epistle to the Hebrews), to the pagan world (1 and 2 to Thessalonians, 1 to Corinthians ). Further, in the New Testament canon, we have scriptures that have as their goal to eliminate the dangers that threatened Christianity from the Jewish understanding of Christianity (Epistle to the Galatians), from the Jewish-legalistic asceticism (Epistle to the Colossians), from the pagan desire to understand religious society as a private circle , in which you can live separately from the church community (Epistle to the Ephesians). The Epistle to the Romans indicates the universal purpose of Christianity, while the book of Acts indicates how this purpose was realized in history. In a word, the books of the New Testament canon give us a complete picture of the primordial Church, depict life and its tasks from all sides. If, for a trial, we wanted to take away from the canon of the New Testament any book, for example the Epistle to the Romans or to the Galatians, we would thereby cause significant harm to the whole. It is clear that the Holy Spirit guided the Church in the gradual establishment of the composition of the canon, so that the Church introduced into it truly apostolic works, which in their existence were caused by the most essential needs of the Church.

What language are the sacred books of the New Testament written in?

Throughout the Roman Empire during the time of the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles, the dominant language was Greek, it was understood everywhere and was spoken almost everywhere. It is clear that the writings of the New Testament, which were intended by the Providence of God to be distributed to all churches, also appeared in Greek, although almost all of their writers, with the exception of St. Luke, were Jews. This is evidenced by some internal signs of these scriptures: a play on words, possible only in the Greek language, a free, independent attitude to the translation of the Seventy, when the Old Testament passages are cited - all this undoubtedly indicates that they were written in Greek and are intended for readers who know Greek.

However, the Greek language in which the books of the New Testament are written is not the classical Greek language in which the Greek writers of the heyday of Greek literature wrote. This is the so-called κοινὴ διάλεκτος , i.e. close to the ancient Attic dialect, but not too different from other dialects. In addition, it included many Arameisms and other foreign words. Finally, special New Testament concepts were introduced into this language, for the expression of which, however, they used the old Greek words, which acquired through this special new meaning (for example, the word χάρις - "pleasantness", in the sacred New Testament language began to mean "grace"). For more details, see the article by prof. S.I. Sobolevsky " Κοινὴ διάλεκτος ", Placed in the Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia, vol. 10.

New Testament text

All the originals of the New Testament books have perished, but copies have long been removed from them (ἀντίγραφα). Most often, the Gospels were written off, and least of all - the Apocalypse. They wrote in reed (κάλαμος) and ink (μέλαν) and more - in the first centuries - on papyrus, so that the right side of each papyrus sheet was glued to the left side of the next sheet. Hence, a strip of greater or lesser length was obtained, which was then rolled onto a rolling pin. This is how a scroll (τόμος) appeared, which was kept in a special box (φαινόλης). Since the reading of these strips, written only from the front, was inconvenient and the material was fragile, from the 3rd century on, New Testament books began to be rewritten on leather or parchment. Since parchment was expensive, many used their old manuscripts on parchment, erasing and scraping what was written on them and placing some other work here. This is how palimpsests were formed. Paper came into use only in the 8th century.

The words in the manuscripts of the New Testament were written without stress, without breathing, without punctuation and, moreover, with abbreviations (for example, IC instead of Ἰησοῦς, RNB instead of πνεῦμα), so it was very difficult to read these manuscripts. In the first six centuries, only uppercase letters were used (uncial manuscripts from "ounce" - inch). From the 7th, and some say from the 9th century, manuscripts of ordinary cursive writing appeared. Then the letters decreased, but contractions became more frequent. On the other hand, stress and breathing were added. The first manuscripts are 130, and the last (according to von Soden's account) - 3700. In addition, there are the so-called lectionaries, containing either the Gospel or the Apostolic readings for use in divine services (gospels and praxapostles). There are about 1300 of them, and the oldest of them date back to the 6th century.

In addition to the text, manuscripts usually contain introductions and afterwords with indications of the writer, the time and place of writing the book. For acquaintance with the contents of the book in manuscripts divided into chapters (κεφάλαια), before these chapters, the designations of the contents of each chapter are placed (τίτλα, αργυμεντα). The chapters are divided into parts (ὑποδιαιρέσεις) or sections, and these latter into verses (κῶλα, στίχοι). The size of the book and its selling price were determined by the number of verses. This processing of the text is usually attributed to the Bishop of Sardin Euphalius (VII century), but in fact all these divisions took place much earlier. For interpretive purposes Ammonius (III century) added parallel passages from other Gospels to the text of the Gospel of Matthew. Eusebius of Caesarea (IV century) compiled ten canons or parallel tables, on the first of which were placed the designations of the sections from the Gospel common to all four evangelists, on the second - designations (by numbers) - common to three, etc. until the tenth, where the stories contained only by one evangelist are indicated. In the text of the Gospel, it was marked with a red number, to which canon this or that section belongs. Our present division of the text into chapters was done first by the Englishman Stephen Langton (in the 13th century), and the division into verses by Robert Stephen (in the 16th century).

Since the 18th century. uncial manuscripts began to be designated by capital letters of the Latin alphabet, and italics - by numbers. The most important uncial manuscripts are as follows:

N - Codex Sinai, found by Tischendorf in 1856 in the Sinai monastery of St. Catherine. It contains the whole, together with the epistle of Barnabas and a significant part of the "Shepherd" Hermas, as well as the canons of Eusebius. The proofs of seven different hands are visible on it. It was written in the 4th or 5th century. Stored in the St. Petersburg Public Library (now in the British Museum. - Approx. ed.). Photographs were taken from it.

A - Alexandria, located in London. Here the New Testament is placed not in full, together with the 1st and part of the 2nd Epistle of Clement of Rome. Written in the 5th century in Egypt or Palestine.

B - Vatican, concluding with the 14th verse of the 9th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It was probably written by someone close to Athanasius of Alexandria in the 4th century. Stored in Rome.

S - Efremov. This is a palimpsest, so named because the treatise of Ephraim the Syrian was subsequently written on the biblical text. It contains only portions of the New Testament. Its origin is Egyptian and dates back to the 5th century. Stored in Paris.

A list of other manuscripts of later origin can be seen in the 8th edition of the Tischendorf New Testament.

Translations and quotes

Together with the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament as sources for establishing the text of the New Testament, translations of the sacred books of the New Testament, which began to appear already in the II century, are also very important. The first place among them belongs to the Syrian translations, both in their antiquity and in their language, which approaches the Aramaic dialect spoken by Christ and the apostles. The Diatessaron (collection of 4 Gospels) of Tatiana (c. 175) is believed to be the first Syriac translation of the New Testament. Then comes the Syrian-Sinai (SS) code, discovered in 1892 in Sinai by Mrs. A. Lewis. Also important is the translation known as Peshitta (simple), dating back to the 2nd century; however, some scholars attribute it to the 5th century and recognize it as the work of the Edesian Bishop Rabbula (411-435). Also of great importance are the Egyptian translations (Said, Fayum, Bohair), Ethiopian, Armenian, Gothic and Old Latin, later corrected by Blessed Jerome and recognized in the Catholic Church as self-authenticated (Vulgate).

Quotations from the New Testament available from the ancient fathers and teachers of the Church and church writers are also of considerable importance for the establishment of the text. A collection of these quotes (texts) was published by T. Tsan.

The Slavic translation of the New Testament from the Greek text was made by the saints Equal to the Apostles Cyril and Methodius in the second half of the 9th century and, together with Christianity, passed to us in Russia under the holy noble Prince Vladimir. Of the copies of this translation that have survived with us, the Ostromir Gospel, written in the middle of the 11th century for the mayor of Ostromir, is especially remarkable. Then in the XIV century. Saint Alexis, Metropolitan of Moscow, made a translation of the sacred books of the New Testament while Saint Alexis was in Constantinople. This translation is kept in the Moscow Synodal Library and in the 90s of the XIX century. published in a phototypic manner. In 1499, together with all the biblical books, it was corrected and published by the Novgorod Metropolitan Gennady. Separately, the entire New Testament was first printed in the Slavic language in Vilna in 1623. Then it, like other biblical books, was corrected in Moscow at the synodal printing house and, finally, published together with the Old Testament under Empress Elizabeth in 1751. The Gospel was translated into Russian, first of all in 1819, and the entire New Testament appeared in Russian in 1822, in 1860 it was published in a revised form. In addition to the synodal translation into Russian, there are also Russian translations of the New Testament published in London and Vienna. Their use is prohibited in Russia.

The fate of the New Testament text

b) the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, preached by Himself and His apostles about Him, as about the King of this Kingdom, the Messiah and the Son of God (),

c) all in general the New Testament or Christian teaching, first of all, the narration of the most important events from the life of Christ (), and then an explanation of the meaning of these events ().

d) Being the actual message of what he did for our salvation and good, the Gospel at the same time calls people to repentance, faith and change their sinful life for the better (;).

e) Finally, the word "Gospel" is sometimes used to denote the very process of preaching Christian doctrine ().

Sometimes the word "Gospel" is added to its designation and content. There are, for example, phrases: Gospel of the kingdom (), i.e. good news about the Kingdom of God, the Gospel of the world (), i.e. about the world, the gospel of salvation (), i.e. about salvation, etc. Sometimes the genitive case following the word "Gospel" means the culprit or the source of the good news (;;) or the personality of the preacher ().

For quite a long time, the legends about the life of the Lord Jesus Christ were transmitted only orally. The Lord Himself did not leave any records of His speeches and deeds. In the same way, the 12 apostles were not born writers: they were "People who are not bookish and simple"(), although literate. Among the Christians of the apostolic time, there were also very few "Wise in the flesh, strong" and "noble" (), and for most believers, oral stories about Christ were much more important than written ones. Thus, the apostles and preachers or evangelists “transmitted” (παραδιδόναι) legends about the deeds and speeches of Christ, and the believers “received” (παραλαμβάνειν), but, of course, not mechanically, only by memory, as can be said about the students of rabbinical schools, but with all my soul, as if something alive and giving life. But soon this period of oral tradition had to end. On the one hand, Christians should have felt the need for a written presentation of the Gospel in their disputes with the Jews, who, as you know, denied the reality of Christ's miracles and even argued that Christ did not declare Himself the Messiah. It was necessary to show the Jews that Christians have authentic legends about Christ of those persons who were either among His apostles, or were in close communion with eyewitnesses of Christ's deeds. On the other hand, the need for a written account of the history of Christ began to be felt because the generation of the first disciples was gradually dying out and the ranks of direct witnesses of the miracles of Christ were thinning out. Therefore, it was necessary to fix in writing individual sayings of the Lord and his whole speeches, as well as the stories of the apostles about Him. It was then that separate records of what was reported in the oral tradition about Christ began to appear here and there. Most carefully recorded the words Christ's, which contained the rules of Christian life, and were much freer about the transmission of different events from the life of Christ, keeping only their general impression. Thus, one thing in these recordings, due to its originality, was transmitted everywhere in the same way, while the other was modified. These initial recordings did not think about the completeness of the narrative. Even our Gospels, as can be seen from the conclusion of the Gospel of John (), did not intend to communicate all the speeches and deeds of Christ. This can be seen, by the way, from what is not placed in them, for example, such a saying of Christ: "It is more blessed to give than to receive"(). The Evangelist Luke reports about such records, saying that many before him had already begun to compose narratives about the life of Christ, but that they did not have the proper completeness and that therefore they did not give a sufficient "confirmation" in faith ().

Obviously, our canonical Gospels arose from the same motives. The period of their appearance can be determined approximately in thirty years - from 60 to 90 (the last was the Gospel of John). The first three Gospels are usually called in biblical science synoptic, because they portray the life of Christ in such a way that their three narratives can easily be viewed in one and combined into one whole narrative ( forecasters- from Greek - looking together). Each of them began to be called the Gospels separately, perhaps as early as the end of the 1st century, but from church writing we have information that such a name was given to the entire composition of the Gospels only in the second half of the 2nd century. As for the names: "The Gospel of Matthew", "The Gospel of Mark", etc., then it is more correct to translate these very ancient names from Greek as follows: "The Gospel according to Matthew", "The Gospel according to Mark" ( κατὰ Ματθαῖον, κατὰ Μᾶρκον ). By this I wanted to say that all the Gospels contain single Christian gospel about Christ the Savior, but according to the images of different writers: one image belongs to Matthew, the other to Mark, etc.

Four gospel

As for the differences observed among weather forecasters, there are quite a few of them. Some things are reported only by two evangelists, others - even by one. So, only Matthew and Luke cite the Sermon on the Mount of the Lord Jesus Christ, tell the story of the birth and the first years of Christ's life. Luke alone speaks of the birth of John the Baptist. Something else is conveyed by one evangelist in a more abbreviated form than another, or in a different connection than another. The details of the events in each Gospel, as well as the expressions, are different.

This phenomenon of similarity and difference in the synoptic Gospels has long attracted the attention of interpreters of Scripture, and various assumptions have long been expressed to explain this fact. It seems more correct to believe that our three evangelists shared a common oral source for his account of the life of Christ. At that time, evangelists or preachers about Christ went about preaching everywhere and repeated in different places in a more or less extensive form what was considered necessary to offer to those who entered. Thus, a certain type of well-known oral gospel, and this is the type we have in writing in our synoptic Gospels. Of course, at the same time, depending on the goal that one or another evangelist had, his Gospel took on some special, only characteristic features of his work. At the same time, one cannot exclude the assumption that an older Gospel could have been known to an evangelist who wrote later. At the same time, the difference between synoptics should be explained by different goals, which each of them had in mind when writing his Gospel.

As we have said, the Synoptic Gospels are very different from the Gospel of John the Evangelist. In this way they depict almost exclusively the activities of Christ in Galilee, and the Apostle John depicts mainly the stay of Christ in Judea. In terms of content, the Synoptic Gospels also differ significantly from the Gospel of John. They give, so to speak, a more external image of the life, deeds and teachings of Christ, and from the speeches of Christ they cite only those that were accessible to the understanding of the entire people. John, on the contrary, misses a lot of the activities of Christ, for example, he cites only six miracles of Christ, but the speeches and miracles that he cites have a special deep meaning and extreme importance about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Finally, while forecasters portray Christ primarily as the founder of the Kingdom of God and therefore direct the attention of their readers to the Kingdom founded by Him, John draws our attention to the central point of this Kingdom, from which life proceeds along the periphery of the Kingdom, i.e. on the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, whom John portrays as the Only Begotten Son of God and as the Light for all mankind. Therefore, the ancient interpreters called the Gospel of John predominantly spiritual (πνευματικόν), in contrast to synoptic ones, which depict the predominantly human side in the person of Christ ( εὐαγγέλιον σωματικόν ), i.e. The gospel is bodily.

However, it must be said that the weather forecasters also have passages that say that just as the forecasters knew the activity of Christ in Judea (;), so John has indications of the long activity of Christ in Galilee. In the same way, forecasters convey such sayings of Christ, which testify to His divine dignity (), and John, for his part, also in places depicts Christ as a true person (and so on; et al.). Therefore, one cannot speak of any contradiction between the synoptics and John in the depiction of the face and deeds of Christ.

The credibility of the gospels

Although for a long time criticism has spoken out against the reliability of the Gospels, and recently these attacks of criticism have especially intensified (the theory of myths, especially the theory of Drews, who does not at all recognize the existence of Christ), however, all the objections of criticism are so insignificant that they are broken at the slightest collision with Christian apologetics. ... Here, however, we will not cite the objections of negative criticism and analyze these objections: this will be done when interpreting the text of the Gospels itself. We will only talk about the most important general grounds on which we recognize the Gospels as quite reliable documents. This is, firstly, the existence of the tradition of eyewitnesses, many of whom survived to the era when our Gospels appeared. Why on earth would we refuse to trust these sources of our gospels? Could they invent everything that is in our Gospels? No, all the Gospels are purely historical in nature. Secondly, it is not clear why the Christian consciousness would want, as the mythical theory states, to crown the head of the simple rabbi Jesus with the crown of the Messiah and the Son of God? Why, for example, is it not said about the Baptist that he worked miracles? Obviously because he did not create them. And from this it follows that if Christ is spoken of as the Great Wonderworker, then it means that He really was like that. And why could one deny the reliability of the miracles of Christ, since the highest miracle - His Resurrection - is attested in such a way as no other event in ancient history (see)?

Bibliography of Foreign Works on the Four Gospels

Bengel - Bengel J. Al. Gnomon Novi Testamentï in quo ex nativa verborum VI simplicitas, profunditas, concinnitas, salubritas sensuum coelestium indicatur. Berolini, 1860.

Blass, Gram. - Blass F. Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch. Göttingen, 1911.

Westcott - The New Testament in Original Greek the text rev. by Brooke Foss Westcott. New York, 1882.

B. Weiss - Weiss B. Die Evangelien des Markus und Lukas. Göttingen, 1901.

Yog. Weiss (1907) - Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, von Otto Baumgarten; Wilhelm Bousset. Hrsg. von Johannes Weis_s, Bd. 1: Die drei älteren Evangelien. Die Apostelgeschichte, Matthaeus Apostolus; Marcus Evangelista; Lucas Evangelista. ... 2. Aufl. Göttingen, 1907.

Godet - Godet F. Kommentar zu dem Evangelium des Johannes. Hannover, 1903.

De Wette - De Wette W.M.L. Kurze Erklärung des Evangeliums Matthäi / Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, Band 1, Teil 1. Leipzig, 1857.

Keil (1879) - Keil C.F. Commentar über die Evangelien des Markus und Lukas. Leipzig, 1879.

Keil (1881) - Keil C.F. Commentar über das Evangelium des Johannes. Leipzig, 1881.

Klostermann - Klostermann A. Das Markusevangelium nach seinem Quellenwerthe für die evangelische Geschichte. Göttingen, 1867.

Cornelius a Lapide - Cornelius a Lapide. In SS Matthaeum et Marcum / Commentaria in scripturam sacram, t. 15. Parisiis, 1857.

Lagrange - Lagrange M.-J. Études bibliques: Evangile selon St. Marc. Paris, 1911.

Lange - Lange J.P. Das Evangelium nach Matthäus. Bielefeld, 1861.

Loisy (1903) - Loisy A.F. Le quatrième èvangile. Paris, 1903.

Loisy (1907-1908) - Loisy A.F. Les èvangiles synoptiques, 1-2. : Ceffonds, près Montier-en-Der, 1907-1908.

Luthardt - Luthardt Ch.E. Das johanneische Evangelium nach seiner Eigenthümlichkeit geschildert und erklärt. Nürnberg, 1876.

Meyer (1864) - Meyer H.A.W. Kritisch exegetisches Kommentar über das Neue Testament, Abteilung 1, Hälfte 1: Handbuch über das Evangelium des Matthäus. Göttingen, 1864.

Meyer (1885) - Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament hrsg. von Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, Abteilung 1, Hälfte 2: Bernhard Weiss B. Kritisch exegetisches Handbuch über die Evangelien des Markus und Lukas. Göttingen, 1885. Meyer (1902) - Meyer H.A.W. Das Johannes-Evangelium 9. Auflage, bearbeitet von B. Weiss. Göttingen, 1902.

Merx (1902) - Merx A. Erläuterung: Matthaeus / Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach ihrem ältesten bekannten Texte, Teil 2, Hälfte 1. Berlin, 1902.

Merx (1905) - Merx A. Erläuterung: Markus und Lukas / Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach ihrem ältesten bekannten Texte. Teil 2, Hälfte 2. Berlin, 1905.

Morison - Morison J. A practical commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew. London, 1902.

Stanton - Stanton V.H. The Synoptic Gospels / The Gospels as historical documents, Part 2. Cambridge, 1903. Tholuck (1856) - Tholuck A. Die Bergpredigt. Gotha, 1856.

Tholuck (1857) - Tholuck A. Commentar zum Evangelium Johannis. Gotha, 1857.

Heitmüller - see Yog. Weiss (1907).

Holtzmann (1901) - Holtzmann H.J. Die Synoptiker. Tübingen, 1901.

Holtzmann (1908) - Holtzmann H.J. Evangelium, Briefe und Offenbarung des Johannes / Hand-Commentar zum Neuen Testament bearbeitet von H. J. Holtzmann, R. A. Lipsius etc. Bd. 4. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1908.

Zahn (1905) - Zahn Th. Das Evangelium des Matthäus / Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Teil 1. Leipzig, 1905.

Zahn (1908) - Zahn Th. Das Evangelium des Johannes ausgelegt / Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Teil 4. Leipzig, 1908.

Schanz (1881) - Schanz P. Commentar über das Evangelium des heiligen Marcus. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1881.

Schanz (1885) - Schanz P. Commentar über das Evangelium des heiligen Johannes. Tübingen, 1885.

Schlatter - Schlatter A. Das Evangelium des Johannes: ausgelegt für Bibelleser. Stuttgart, 1903.

Schürer, Geschichte - Schürer E., Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi. Bd. 1-4. Leipzig, 1901-1911.

Edersheim A. The life and times of Jesus the Messiah. 2 Vols. London, 1901.

Ellen - Allen W.C. A critical and exegetical commentary of the Gospel according to st. Matthew. Edinburgh, 1907.

Alford - Alford N. The Greek Testament in four volumes, vol. 1. London, 1863. The church, with such respect for the apostles, and, in particular, for the apostle Paul, could completely lose any of the apostolic writings.

According to some Protestant theologians, the New Testament canon is something accidental. Some scriptures, even not apostolic ones, were just lucky enough to get into the canon, since for some reason they came into use in worship. And the canon itself, according to the majority of Protestant theologians, is nothing more than a simple catalog or list of books used in worship. On the contrary, Orthodox theologians see in the canon nothing more than the apostolic faithful to subsequent generations of Christians, the composition of the sacred New Testament books already recognized at that time. These books, according to Orthodox theologians, were not known to all Churches, perhaps because they had either a too particular purpose (for example, the 2nd and 3rd Epistles of the Apostle John), or too general (the Epistle to the Hebrews), so it was not known which Church to turn to for information regarding the name of the author of this or that epistle. But there is no doubt that these were books that truly belonged to those persons whose names they bore. The Church did not accidentally accept them into the canon, but quite consciously, giving them the meaning that they really had.

The Jews had the word "ganuz", corresponding in meaning to the word "apocryphal" (from ἀποκρύπτειν - "to hide") and was used in the synagogue to designate such books that were not supposed to be used when performing divine services. However, this term did not contain any censure. But later, when the Gnostics and other heretics began to boast that they had "hidden" books, which supposedly contained the true apostolic teaching, which the apostles did not want to make available to the crowd that was gathering the canon, they already reacted with condemnation to these "hidden" books and began to look at them as "false, heretical, counterfeit" (decree of Pope Gelasius). Currently, 7 apocryphal Gospels are known, of which 6 supplement with different decorations the story of the origin, birth and childhood of Jesus Christ, and the seventh - the story of His condemnation. The oldest and most remarkable of them is the First Gospel of James, the brother of the Lord, then there are: the Greek Gospel of Thomas, the Greek Gospel of Nicodemus, the Arab story of Joseph the woodworm, the Arab Gospel of the Savior's childhood and, finally, Latin - the Gospel of the birth of Christ from St. Mary and the story of the birth of the Lord by Mary and the childhood of the Savior. These apocryphal Gospels were translated into Russian by Fr. P.A. Preobrazhensky. In addition, some fragmentary apocryphal legends about the life of Christ are known (for example, Pilate's letter to Tiberius about Christ).

In antiquity, it should be noted, in addition to the apocryphal, there were still non-canonical Gospels that have not survived to our time. They, in all likelihood, contained in themselves the same that is contained in our canonical Gospels, from which they took information. These were: the Gospel of the Jews - in all likelihood, the corrupted Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Peter, the apostolic memorial records of Justin the Martyr, the Tatian Gospel in four ("Diatessaron" - the collection of the Gospels), the Gospel of Markion - the distorted Gospel of Luke.

Of the recently discovered legends about the life and teachings of Christ, noteworthy is the "Λόγια", or the words of Christ, - a passage found in Egypt. This passage contains short sayings from Christ, with a short initial formula: "Jesus is speaking." This is a fragment of the deepest antiquity. From the history of the apostles, the recently found "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" deserves attention, the existence of which was already known to the ancient church writers and which has now been translated into Russian. In 1886, 34 verses of the Apocalypse of Peter were found, which was known to Saint Clement of Alexandria.

It is necessary to mention also the various "acts" of the apostles, for example Peter, John, Thomas, etc., where information about the preaching work of these apostles was reported. These works, undoubtedly, belong to the category of so-called "pseudo-epigraphs", i.e. to the category of counterfeit. Nonetheless, these "acts" were highly respected among ordinary godly Christians and were very common. Some of them entered, after a well-known alteration, into the so-called "Acts of the Saints", processed by the Bollandists, and from there they were transferred by St. Dimitri of Rostov into our Lives of the Saints (Chetya Menaia). So it can be said about the life and preaching work of the Apostle Thomas.