Introduction to the Bible, structure of the Bible. New Testament Sections of the Books of the Bible

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

Servants of the new covenant Must we, however, introduce ourselves to you again? And do we, like some, need any 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 are

Religious Studies and Mythology

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

Structure of the New Testament.

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

The New Testament consists of 27 books, which, like the books of the Old Testament, researchers divide into five groups.

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

The Acts of the Apostles (historical book) is a story about the successful spread of faith in the pagan world.

Council Epistles of the Apostles

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

Prophetic book Revelation.

The New Testament is written in the dialect of Greek that was dominant at the time of Jesus Christ. As a result of the aggressive campaigns of Alexander the Great, they began to speak and write letters in Greek. throughout the civilized world. But because in the NT it was used to express new divine truths, then the words in it accordingly took on a new lexical coloring, 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 the writings of the New Testament were immediately accepted by the churches and canonized after they were written; There were fierce disputes around some of them.

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

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

Firstly, 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 teachings.

Representatives of Gnosticism were divided into several movements, 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 to own both Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition and allegedly expounded their teachings based on them, which also made it difficult to defend the church.

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

Secondly, another heretical movement that influenced the formation of the canon was Montanism. This movement arose in the second half of the 2nd century in Phrygia and quickly spread throughout the church. It can be characterized as an apocalyptic movement that strived for a strictly ascetic life and was accompanied by ecstatic manifestations. The Montanists insisted on the continuous gift of inspired prophecy and began to record the oracles of their major prophets.

This led to the proliferation of a whole series of new writings and, consequently, to a serious distrust on the part of the church towards apocalyptic literature in general. Such circumstances even led to doubts regarding the canonicity of the Apocalypse of John. In addition, the Montanist idea of ​​constant prophecy forced the church to seriously think about closing the canon altogether.

Thirdly, canonization was influenced by persecution from the state. The persecution of Christians began almost in the 60s AD, 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 severe persecution began in March 303, when Emperor Diocletian ordered the liquidation of churches and the destruction of Scripture by fire. Thus, keeping the Scriptures became dangerous, so Christians wanted to know for sure that the books they were hiding under pain of death were indeed canonical. There were also other, smaller factors, such as the suppression of the canon of the Old Testament by the Jewish Sanhedrin in Jamnia around 90 A.D., or 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 a large 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,

book of the Acts of the Apostles,

seven conciliar messages,

fourteen letters of the apostle Paul

and Apocalypse ap. John the Theologian.

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 the disciple of the Apostle Paul, Luke. Of the seven conciliar epistles, five belong to the apostles from among the 12 - Peter and John, and two - to the brothers of the Lord in the flesh, James and Jude, who also bore the honorary title of apostles, although they did not belong to the 12. The fourteen epistles were written by Paul, who, although he was called late by Christ, nevertheless, as called precisely by the Lord himself to serve, 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 one of the 12 apostles, John the Theologian.

Thus, it can be seen that there are eight writers of all New Testament books. The great teacher of languages, the apostle, worked most hard in compiling the scriptures. Paul, who founded many churches that required written instruction from him, which he taught in his epistles.

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

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 councils.

The first key figure of the East in 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 Festive messages to the Egyptian churches and monasteries, which announced the day of Easter and the beginning of Lent. These messages were distributed not only in Egypt and the East and therefore they made it possible to discuss other issues besides Easter. Especially important for us is the 39th Epistle (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 Testament 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 filled with the words of life. Only in them is the divine teaching proclaimed. Let no one add anything to them or subtract anything from them. So, Athanasius was the first to declare the canon of the New Testament to exactly coincide with those 27 books that are now recognized as canonical. But, despite this, in the East hesitations in recognizing anti-legomena lasted much longer. For example, Gregory of Nazianzus did not recognize the canonicity of the Apocalypse, and Didymus the Blind did not recognize the 2nd and 3rd epistles of John, and in addition he recognized some apocryphal books. Another famous church father, John Chrysostom, did not use the epistles: 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and the Apocalypse.

It is also worth noting the statistics conducted by the Institute for New Testament Text Research in Munster. 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, by the Council Epistle and the Book of Acts, and at the very end - the Apocalypse.

Thus, it can be concluded that in the East there was no clarity regarding the extent of the canon, although, in general, it was accepted by the 6th century, and all the New Testament books were generally read and enjoyed authority, although to varying degrees.

Jerome (346 - 420) is one of the significant figures of the Western Church. He gave her the best early translation of the Holy Scriptures into Latin - the Vulgate. In his works, he occasionally spoke out about books that raised doubts, showing their authority. For example, about the Epistle of Jude, he writes that many people reject it because of its reference to the apocryphal Book of Enoch.

Thus, it demonstrates that this book has gained authority. Jerome has similar passages in support of all the other disputed books: the epistles of James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Hebrews, and the Revelation of John. In another of his works, the Epistle to Paulinus, Jerome listed all 27 New Testament writings as a list of holy books.

It should be noted, however, that these were local councils and, although from that moment on 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 that did not accept some of them.

NEW TESTAMENT(Greek kaine diatheke, Latin novum testamentum) contains 27 books that make up the second part of the Christian Bible. The Greek word diatheke means "testament", "testament"; "union", "treaty". The covenant is called the New because Christians believe that Jesus Christ sealed with his blood a new (second) covenant between God and man (1 Cor 11:25; Heb 9:15) (the first was the covenant made by God with Moses on Mount Sinai) .

Jesus did not leave behind any writings; all information given in the books describing his life and explaining the meaning of his ministry comes from his first followers, the apostles and their disciples. The first four books are called the gospels, their content is the “good news” about Jesus Christ - about his birth, ministry, expressed in preaching and in the miracles he performed, about his death and resurrection. The Acts of the Apostles, the fifth book of the New Testament, is a historical account of the asceticism of the followers of Christ in spreading the Christian faith and the growth and strengthening of the ancient church. Works of the epistolary genre are particularly widely represented in the New Testament: it includes 13 epistles of the Apostle Paul, 9 of which are addressed to various churches, and another 4 to three individuals, as well as the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews (attributed in the Vulgate to the Apostle Paul) and seven volumes. n. conciliar epistles, one of which is attributed to James, two to Peter, three to John and one to Judas (not Iscariot). The last book that concludes the New Testament (Revelation of John the Evangelist) belongs to the genre of apocalyptic literature: its subject is “revelation” (Greek: apocalypsis), announcing future events that are to take place on earth and in heaven. All these books are arranged in the New Testament in accordance with a natural semantic sequence: first the story of Christ and the Good News he brought is given, then the history of the spread of this message by the ancient church is outlined, then explanations and practical conclusions follow, and it all ends with a story about the ultimate goal of the divine economy .

The language in which all 27 books of the New Testament are written is Koine, the common Greek language of that era. This form of Greek, although lacking the refinement of classical Greek of the 5th–4th centuries. BC, was familiar to almost the entire population of the Roman Empire, to whom the first Christian missionaries turned to preach the Gospel. The most literary language - in terms of syntactic structure and vocabulary used - is written in the Epistle to the Hebrews and two books belonging to Luke - the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Among the books that deviate most from the standards of the Attic dialect and approach spoken Greek are the Gospel of Mark and the Book of Revelation. Moreover, since all the authors represented in the New Testament were either Jews or pagan converts to Judaism before becoming Christians, it is only natural that their Koine Greek would be influenced by their familiarity with the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

The original manuscripts of the books of the New Testament have not reached us. We draw all our knowledge about these texts from three sources: Greek manuscripts dating back to the 2nd century. or subsequent centuries, ancient translations into other languages ​​(primarily Syriac, Latin and Coptic) and New Testament quotations that are found in the works of ancient church writers.

Greek manuscripts are distinguished either by the material on which they were written (papyrus, parchment, or leather, and ostracons - clay shards) or by the method of writing. The Greek language used two types of writing: majuscule (or uncial) and minuscule. Majuscule manuscripts are written in large letters, which have much in common with modern capital letters. From the 9th century majuscule writing is being replaced by the more convenient minuscule writing, which is characterized by small, closely written letters. In the most ancient manuscripts, in accordance with the then writing rules, punctuation marks were not used and spaces were not left between individual words and sentences.

More than 50 Greek papyrus fragments of the New Testament, more than 200 Greek uncial manuscripts and about 4,000 Greek minuscule manuscripts (including lectionaries - books from which sacred texts were read during church services) are known. The oldest New Testament fragment is considered to be a tiny fragment of a papyrus codex dating from the first half of the 2nd century. and containing several verses from the 18th chapter of the Gospel of John in Greek. The oldest manuscripts containing significant parts of the New Testament are three papyrus codices dating from the 3rd century. (the so-called Chester Beatty papyri). One of them consists of 30 damaged leaves of the papyrus codex, which originally included all four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Another is 86 slightly damaged leaves containing the text of the ten letters of the Apostle Paul. Finally, the third contains ten slightly damaged leaves of the Book of Revelation. The two oldest parchment Greek majuscule manuscripts of the New Testament are the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, dating from the 4th century. Greek minuscule manuscripts date back to the 9th century. and subsequent centuries.

As the New Testament was rewritten many times to meet the growing needs of the church, the scribes made many changes to it. Copyists not only made the unintentional errors that are inevitable in any copying, but often attempted to improve the grammar or style of the text, correct perceived historical and geographical errors, correct quotations from the Old Testament in accordance with the Greek Septuagint, and reconcile parallel passages in the gospels. As a result, numerous readings (variants of text fragments) arose, of which approx. 200,000. However, it should be noted that more than 95% of these discrepancies do not affect the understanding of the meaning of the text. Using textual methods, scientists are able to reconstruct, with a greater or lesser degree of reliability, the original text that underlay the surviving variants. Ancient translations and New Testament quotations in the writings of the church fathers are also of great help in evaluating various manuscript readings.

The number of surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament far exceeds the number of manuscripts of the Greek classics. For example, Iliad Homer has reached us in less than 500 manuscripts, the works of Plato and Thucydides - in two dozen manuscripts, and we know many other authors only from a single manuscript. In addition, the works of many Greek and Latin authors are preserved only in manuscripts dating back to the Middle Ages.

The manuscripts of the New Testament were created on scrolls, and the practical impossibility of increasing their length beyond a reasonable limit prevented the combination of several books of the New Testament in one scroll. In the 2nd century. many Christians mastered the codex form, or loose-leaf book, which allowed them to collect, for example, all the gospels or all the letters of the Apostle Paul in one volume. In parallel with this process of collecting and systematizing individual New Testament books, the idea of ​​a New Testament canon was formed.

The Greek word “canon” is borrowed from Semitic languages ​​and originally meant a ruler or stick with which measurements could be made, and hence, in a figurative sense, “rule”, “norm” or “list”. Why, how, and when the books constituting the New Testament in its present form were collected into a single body is a question to which it is extremely difficult to answer, since the church fathers of this era do not give any definite and detailed reports on this subject. However, we can trace some trends that seem to have influenced the formation of the New Testament canon.

Jesus and his first followers received from the Jews the authoritative body of Holy Scripture - the Hebrew Bible. In addition, since the listeners treated with special reverence and respect the sayings of Christ himself, who said that in him the Old Testament was fulfilled and received its final meaning, the practice of reading excerpts from books in which the words were set forth began to develop in the ancient church during general services. and the actions of Jesus. But even before the gospels were written, Christians read the letters of the Apostle Paul addressed to a given church (community). These messages were also sent to neighboring communities (Col. 4:16). Paul's letters, like those of the other apostles, were intended to be read over and over again before an assembly of believers. It can be assumed that they were initially perceived as a written sermon by a teacher who could not personally address his flock. Over time, it became customary to listen to the apostolic words, and they were circulated in copies, and subsequently came to be regarded as Scripture. Later, when heretical sects began to arise in large numbers, each of which had its own “scripture,” the Orthodox Church had to more clearly define the boundaries of the true canon. Around 140, the heretic Marcion formed his own canon of scripture, excluding the Old Testament and leaving only the Gospel of Luke (in an abridged form) and the epistles of the Apostle Paul (with the exception of two epistles to Timothy and the Epistle to Titus).

During the second half of the 2nd century. the church - according to such authoritative writers as Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, familiar with the situation in Asia Minor and Gaul, North Africa and Alexandria - became aware of the fact that it had a canon, which included the four gospels known to us, the Acts of the Apostles , 13 Epistles of Paul, 1st Peter and 1st John. Seven books - the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Second and Third Epistles of John, the Epistle of Jude and the Book of Revelation - have not yet received universal recognition, and a number of others (in particular, Didache, Message of Barnabas, Shepherd of Herma And Apocalypse of Peter) were placed as if on the border of the canon. In the 3rd century. and at the beginning of the 4th century, as can be judged from the writings of Origen and Eusebius, all near-canonical books were examined and a classification of texts claiming apostolic authority was carried out, as a result of which genuine, dubious and rejected (they were called apocryphal) books were identified. Although Origen still referred to Shepherd of Hermas And Message of Barnabas as “scriptures,” however, the significant thing is that among his many interpretations there is not a single interpretation of a book that would not be included today in the New Testament canon.

In the 4th century. The composition of the canon begins to be consolidated in official decrees - first by the bishops of local churches, and then by local and ecumenical councils. This composition is increasingly approaching - in the number and arrangement of books - the composition of the New Testament that we know today. Athanasius of Alexandria was the first who, in his 39th Feast Epistle (367), gave a list of the modern 27 canonical books of the New Testament (placing, as is still customary in the Orthodox tradition, the conciliar epistles before the epistles of the Apostle Paul). In the West, the 27 canonical books of the New Testament were recognized by the Latin Church at three African councils, at which Augustine played a leading role (at the Council of Hippo in 393 and at the two Councils of Carthage - in 397 and 419). With the advent of Jerome's Latin Vulgate, this canon was recognized everywhere in the West. In the East, the Syrian Church back in the 5th century. recognized only 22 books as canonical, not including the Second Epistle of Peter, the Second and Third Epistles of John, the Epistle of Jude and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament part of the Syriac translation of the Bible (Peshitta). The Ethiopian Church, on the contrary, included 35 books in its New Testament, recognizing 8 books of the so-called canonical. Apostolic Decrees.

None of the councils, whose authority was recognized by the entire church, made decisions regarding the limits of the canon. In 1546, the Council of Trent clearly defined the canon for Roman Catholics, and in the encyclical Providentissimus Deus(1893) was formulated - in terms accepted in Catholicism - the general Christian doctrine of the divine inspiration of canonical books. The canonicity of individual books was assessed according to certain criteria, the main of which were their apostolic origin (or the presence of apostolic sanction), their agreement with the Old Testament and other parts of the New Testament, and the wide distribution of these books.