Christianity is by far the most widespread religion in the world. According to international statistics, the number of its adherents exceeds two billion people, that is, about a third of the entire population of the globe. It is not surprising that it was this religion that gave the world the most widely disseminated and famous book - the Bible. The Holy Scriptures of Christians have been leading the TOP bestsellers in terms of the number of copies and sales for one and a half thousand years.
Composition of the Bible
Not everyone knows that the word "bible" is simply 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. according to the II century. n. e.
The Bible consists of two main parts, which in Christian terminology are called the Old Testament and the New Testament. Among the adherents of the church, the latter prevails in its significance.
Old Testament
The first and largest part of the Christian Scripture was formed long before the birth of Jesus Christ. Books of the OldThe Testaments are also called the Hebrew Bible because they are sacred in Judaism. Of course, for them the adjective "old" in relation to their writing is categorically unacceptable. The Tanakh (as it is called among them) is eternal, unchanging and universal.
This collection consists of four (according to Christian classification) parts, which bear the following names:
- Legislative books.
- History books.
- Teaching 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 among themselves and within themselves. The main version is considered to be an edition consisting of 39 titles 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 is accepted 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 the emerging 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. Other books -the letters of the apostles, the book of Acts, which tells about the early 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, many other texts were distributed among various groups of Christians, and even revered as sacred. But a number of church councils and episcopal definitions legitimized only these books, recognizing all the rest as false and offensive to God. After that, the “wrong” texts began to be massively destroyed.
The process of canon unification 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 a canon of sacred texts, rejecting almost all the books of the Old and New Testaments (in its modern edition) with a few exceptions. To neutralize their opponent's preaching, church authorities formally legitimized and sacramentalized a more traditional set of scriptures.
However, 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.
Teaching about 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 sacred works, and the words of the scriptures are literally a divine revelation that he conveys to the world, the church andto each person personally. This belief that the Bible is God's letter addressed directly to every person encourages Christians to constantly study it and look for hidden meanings.
Apocrypha
During the development and formation of the canon of the Bible, many of the books that were originally included in it, later turned out to be "overboard" of church orthodoxy. This fate befell such works as, for example, Hermas the Shepherd and the Didache. Many different gospels and apostolic letters were declared false and heretical only because they did not fit into the new theological trends 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 hand, "secret" writings. But it was not possible to completely eradicate the traces of objectionable texts - in canonical works there are allusions and hiding quotes from them. For example, it is likely that the lost and rediscovered Gospel of Thomas in the 20th century 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 quotations with references to the apocryphal book of the prophet Enoch, while asserting its prophetic dignity and authenticity.
Old Testament and New Testament - unity and differences between the two canons
So, we found out that the Bible is made up of two collections of books of different authors and times. And although Christian theology treats 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 inclined to such an identical assessment of the two canons. Marcion did not reject the Old Testament out of nowhere. Among his lost works were the so-called "Antitheses", where he contrasted the teachings of the Tanakh with 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 the Father, whom Christ preached.
Indeed, the images of God in these two covenants differ significantly. In the Old Testament, he is presented as a vengeful, strict, harsh ruler not without racial prejudice, as one would say today. In the New Testament, on the contrary, God is more tolerant, merciful, and generally prefers to forgive rather than punish. However, this is a somewhat simplified scheme, and if you wish, you can find the opposite arguments in relation to both texts. Historically, however, churches that did not accept the authority of the Old Testament ceased to exist, and today Christendom is represented in this respect by only one tradition, apart from various reconstructed groups of Neo-Gnostics and Neo-Marcionites.
