The Bible is called differently: the Book of books, the Book of Life, the Book of Knowledge, the Eternal Book. Its enormous contribution to the spiritual development of mankind over many hundreds of years is undeniable. Literary texts and scientific treatises, paintings and musical works have been written based on biblical subjects. Images from the Eternal Book are imprinted on icons, frescoes, and sculptures. Modern art - cinema - has not bypassed her side. It is the most popular and read book ever held by the human hand.
However, people have long asked a question to which they have not yet given a completely unambiguous answer: who wrote the Bible? Is it really the work of God? Is it possible to unconditionally trust what is written there?
Back to the background
We know the following facts: The Bible was written nearly two millennia ago. More precisely, a little over one thousand six hundred years. But the question of who wrote the Bible is not entirely correct from the point of view of believers. Why? Because it would be more accurate to say - wrote down. After all, it was created in different eras by representatives of different social strata of society and even different nationalities. And they wrote down not their own reflections, observations on life, but what prompted themLord. It is believed that those who wrote the Bible were guided by God himself, putting His thoughts into their minds, moving their hand over parchment or paper. Therefore, although the Book was written by people, it contains the word of God and no one else. In one of the texts of the Holy Scriptures, this is directly stated: it is "God-breathed", i.e. inspired, inspired by the Almighty.
But there are many inconsistencies, contradictions, "dark spots" in the Book. Something is explained by the inaccuracies of translations of canonical texts, something by the mistakes of those who wrote the Bible, something by our thoughtlessness. In addition, many texts of the Gospel were simply destroyed, burned. Many were not included in the main content, they became apocryphal. Few people know that most of the fragments of Holy Scripture were admitted to the masses after one or another Ecumenical Council. That is, no matter how strange it may seem, but the human factor played an important role in the embodiment of God's providence.
Why was the Bible written and not transmitted, shall we say, by word of mouth? It seems, because in the oral form one would be forgotten, the other would be transmitted in a distorted form, with the conjectures of another "narrator". Written fixation made it possible to avoid the loss of information or its unauthorized interpretations. Thus, some of its objectivity was ensured, it became possible 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 just mechanically, thoughtlessly wrote down thoughts "from above", as ifsleepwalkers? Not certainly in that way. From about the fourth century onwards, the saints who wrote the Bible began to be considered its co-authors. Those. the personal element began to take place. Thanks to this recognition, explanations of the stylistic heterogeneity of sacred texts, semantic and factual discrepancies appeared.
Thus, among believers, it is generally accepted 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, imprinted in the human language.
Bible Sections
We all know what the Bible consists of - the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament is everything 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 separately not entirely clear. Each contains a list of their own books, which can be divided into groups: instructive, historical and prophetic. Their total number is sixty-six and was 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 only remains to add that for people far from faith, the Bible is a wonderful literary monument that has survived the centuries and has earned the right to immortality.
