Bible. Gospel

In the previous chapters we have seen that the Bible consists of two parts, between which there is a clear distinction: the Old Testament (or Book of the Testament) contains the history of the creation of the world and the history of the Israelite people up to about 4-3 centuries BC, and the New Testament - biography of Jesus Christ, the history of the emergence of the first Christian communities and the messages addressed to them. Both parts of the Bible have their own history of origin: the lion's share The Old Testament was written by the Jews - the Old Testament is at the same time the sacred book of the Jews, and Christians are responsible for the emergence and transmission of the New Testament. In this chapter we want to explore the question of the emergence of the New Testament, just as we did in the previous chapter with the Old Testament: how did its constituent books come about? How were they brought together? What manuscripts of the New Testament do we have? Are there other means of confirming the authenticity of his text? How were attempts made to reconstruct the original text, and how reliable is our New Testament today?

In ch. 2 we have already spoken briefly about the original composition of the New Testament. Just as in the case of the Old Testament, the originals of the New Testament books (the so-called. autographs) have not reached us. This was not possible, since the papyrus on which they were written is very short-lived. Fortunately, these autographs were copied into new papyrus scrolls at regular intervals, and this continued for nearly fourteen centuries. The books of the New Testament were written in the second half of the first century AD. and were mainly intended for the instruction of local churches (as, for example, most of the letters of the Apostle Paul). Some letters were addressed to individuals (Timothy and 2 and 3 John), others, on the contrary, addressed to a wider circle of readers (James, Revelation). Some books were written in Jerusalem (James), others in Asia Minor (John) and in Southeast Europe (Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians). The places of writing and the destinations of these books were most often very distant from each other. Moreover, there was only limited opportunity communication and transport links; from this it can be understood that it took the early Christian communities a significant amount of time to rewrite the texts of all the books of the New Testament. Nevertheless, in these communities, work immediately began to compiling from the original apostolic epistles of a single book. (The problems associated with distinguishing authentic (genuine) apostolic letters from non-authentic, i.e. canonical books from apocrypha, will be considered in more detail in chapter 5). Bishop Clementius of Rome, who wrote a letter to the Corinthian church in the year 95, was undoubtedly familiar not only with the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Church of Rome, but also at least with one of his Epistles to the Corinthians (see 1 Clementius 47:1-3) and probably many others. In addition, already at that time the Roman Church had copies of a number of New Testament books.

This distribution of these books and the reading of them aloud was ubiquitous already in the first centuries. The Apostle Paul repeatedly commands that his letters be read aloud in churches (1 Thess. 5:27; 1 Tim. 4:13), and also that this should be done in various churches: it would have been read in the church of Laodicea, but that which is in Laodicea, you also should read" (Col. 4:16). John even bequeathed a special blessing to those who read his book of Revelation (see Rev. 1:3). This book was addressed to seven different churches in Asia Minor (chap. 1.4.11), which were supposed to pass the book on to each other. The circulation of books in churches and their reading at the same time also meant that the writings of the apostles, being each intended for one particular church, had authority for all. This explains the rapid copying and, as we can see from the example of the epistles, the rapid dissemination of the texts of the New Testament books (see James 1:1; Pet. 1:1). Many believe that Ephesians was originally just such a general message to the churches, because the words "in Ephesus" are missing from many old manuscripts.

Thus, the first collections of copies of the New Testament scriptures appeared in the early Christian churches. The Apostle Peter probably had a collection of the letters of the Apostle Paul and equated them with "the rest of the Scriptures" (2 Pet. 3:15-16). This is a direct indication that similar collections of copies existed elsewhere. This is also evidenced by the fact that New Testament authors sometimes mention each other. So the apostle Paul in 1 Tim. 5:18 quotes the Gospel of Luke (ch. 10:7), calling it "Scripture." Thus, by the end of the first century, the books of the New Testament were not only written but widely distributed in copies. Due to growing demand, this process of copying continued for many more centuries, until the invention of printing put an end to this tedious work.

The first finds of manuscripts

We currently have over 5,000 manuscripts containing the entire Greek New Testament or parts of it. But the number of found manuscripts has increased so dramatically only recently: until recently, Christians did not have almost a single full-fledged ancient text. In the 16th and 17th centuries, during the era of the great Protestant translations of the Bible, not a single manuscript was known older than the 11th century, not counting Codex Bezae(manuscript donated by Calvin's student Betz in 1581 to the University of Cambridge). Otherwise, the autographs were separated from the oldest manuscripts by more than a thousand years! Today we can give a clear answer to a question that seemed insoluble at the time: did the translators of the Bible have an authentic text? The answer to this question is an unequivocal "yes". It can be added here that today we have an even more accurate text! For many New Testament texts, the time gap between autograph and copy has been reduced to 50 years! This is a magnificent result of three hundred years of research - and the work continues!

It all started with the fact that the English king Charles the First received a very old handwritten Bible ("codex") as a gift from the Patriarch of Constantinople. This manuscript fell into the hands of the Patriarch of Alexandria in 1078, hence its name - Codex Alexandrinus. It was probably written in the same area in the first half of the fourth century. It contains almost the entire Greek Bible (Old and New Testament) and some Apocrypha, and is written in uncial characters on very thin calfskin (vellum). It was not until the 18th century that this valuable manuscript was published in its entirety; but before that, English and German scientists had already been diligently engaged in its study, not losing hope of discovering even more ancient manuscripts. Although both before and after this event the "Textus Receptus" ("accepted text", Greek text by Stephanius of 1550 - see ch. 2; more and more different versions of the text. In 1707, John Muller published the Greek New Testament, which added versions of texts from 78 new manuscripts (see below) to Stephanius's text, as well as a number of ancient translations of Bible quotations made by the Church fathers. All scholars who dared to publish an updated text of the Bible were severely persecuted because their actions were seen as showing a lack of respect for the Bible!

But these explorers were defended by the great scientist Richard Bentley. One of his students was I. I. Vetshtein, who first published in 1752 a list of uncial and minuscule texts available at that time (see Ch. 2), and the list was ordered alphabetically, as is customary today (see below). His work was later supplemented by many scholars, until, finally, I. M. A. Scholz published in 1830 the most complete catalog containing more than a thousand manuscripts. The vast majority of these manuscripts were written in minuscule characters (i.e. no later than the 10th century), although some very valuable uncial manuscripts were also known. Along with Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Bezae, one of the most valuable manuscripts of the New Testament was the Codex Vaticanuis. It contains almost the entire Greek Bible and Apocryphal books and is believed to have been written between 325 and 350. At least until the 15th century, the manuscript was in the Vatican library, but it was not published in its entirety until 1889-90. Except for a brief period when the manuscript, along with other trophies of Napoleon, was in Paris, the Codex Vaticanus did not attract the attention of scholars. When the manuscript was transported back to Rome after the defeat of Napoleon, the Vatican authorities completely banned foreign scientists from working on it under the pretext that they themselves were preparing to publish the manuscript - but so far nothing has come of it.

First edition of the text

Thus, in 1830, scholars had some very old uncial texts, but along with them used a huge number of much younger manuscripts, which almost all contained the same variant of the text, called "Byzantine" and known as the Textus Receptus. This text, in particular, is the basis of Luther's translation of the Bible. It took a long time before scholars finally noticed how many inaccuracies it contains and how many corrections the old uncial manuscripts offer. Three great German scientists paved the way for this discovery: they laid the foundation for modern textual criticism* of the New Testament (see ch. 3). These were I. A. Bengel (his edition was published in 1734), I. S. Zemler (1767) and I. I. Grisbakh (three publications in 1774-1805). They compared available manuscripts, ancient translations, and Bible quotations from the Fathers of the Church in search of consistent versions of the text; eventually Griesbach divided them all into three groups: (a) Alexandrian texts, to which at that time, in addition to the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus (excluding the gospels), belonged whole line translations and quotations of the fathers of the Eastern Church, (b) Western version of the text including the Codex Bezae and quotations and translations from the Western (Latin) Church Fathers, and (c) Byzantine text = Textus Receptus (including the gospels from the Codex Alexandrinus and a large number of later manuscripts). This classification was later refined, but is generally used to this day. The idea that some very old uncial texts and ancient translations are in many points much closer to the original text than many hundreds of later manuscripts met with fierce opposition as early as 1830! However, Big changes biblical text.

The breakthrough began with the publication in 1831 of the Greek New Testament, edited by Karl Lachmann, which became a very popular publication in 1842-50. Lachmann simply abandoned the Textus Receptus and concentrated on some ancient uncials and translations of the Church Fathers. This, of course, was already the other extreme, but his pioneering work gave a great impetus to all biblical textual criticism. Another young scientist appeared on the scene, having collected such a huge number of manuscripts as no one had before him: 18 uncial and six minuscule manuscripts; he first published 25 ounces and contributed to the new edition of eleven other manuscripts, some of which were of great scholarly value. This scientist was Konstantin Tischendorf(1815-1874). He produced no less than eight editions of the Greek New Testament, and, in addition to them, also gospels, epistles and individual manuscripts. We would like to briefly report on some of the major discoveries. One of them is one of the most sensational in all of biblical history.

Tischendorf's discoveries

Immediately after completing his studies in theology, Tischendorf traveled to Paris at the age of 26. He set himself the goal of finding the oldest known uncials and publishing them, knowing that the Codex Ephraemi was in Paris. In the 16th century, this valuable fifth-century manuscript fell into the hands of the French king. It contains small parts of the Old and most of the New Testaments. The peculiarity of this manuscript was that it is Palimpsest rescriptus, i.e. its original text was erased, and on top (in the 12th century) a copy of one of the works of the father of the Syrian church Ephraim, who lived in the fourth century, was written. Until that time, no one could understand the content of the original inscription appearing on the parchment, but Tischendorf managed to "develop" this text with the help of chemicals and completely decipher it within two years!

Soon, however, this was not enough for him. He suggested that in the hot, dry regions of the Middle East, ancient monasteries not plundered by Muslims could still be preserved. Here Christians of ancient times could find a safe haven and, perhaps, hide the ancient scrolls of the Scriptures. So in 1844, the 29-year-old Tischendorf, riding a camel, accompanied by four Bedouins, went to Mount Sinai, to the monastery of St. Catherine. This monastery was built in 530 by Emperor Justinian on the site where monks had lived since the fourth century. Having achieved the location of the monks, Tischendorf began searching in the neglected building, which housed the monastery library. Once he came across a large basket filled with parchments: the librarian explained to him that the monks had recently burned two large heaps of such "trash". In the basket, Tischendorf found 129 pages of the Greek Old Testament, older than any manuscript known at the time! With great difficulty, he managed to get 43 pages, and then only because they were going to burn them anyway ...

The discovery spurred Tischendorf, but, no matter how he searched, he did not find the book from which these sheets were torn out (and which, possibly, also contained the New Testament), he did not find. In 1853, he once again searched the entire monastery, but this time without success. But the mysterious code did not leave him alone, and in 1859 he visited the monastery again, this time with letter of recommendation from the Russian Tsar, containing the call of the monarch to his Greek Catholic brothers in faith. But this time, too, the codex remained undiscovered, until on the last evening on the eve of his departure, Tischendorf was invited to a farewell meal with the abbot of the monastery. During the conversation, Tischendorf showed the rector a copy of his edition of the Septuagint. In response to this, the holy father said that Tischendorf would do well to look at the old copy of the Septuagint, which he himself reads every day. He took down a parchment wrapped in a red handkerchief from the shelf - and Tischendorf at first glance recognized in it the sheets of the Codex Sinaticus, which he had been looking for so long and unsuccessfully. It contained not only the other 199 pages of the Old Testament, but the entire New Testament!

What can a scientist experience at such a moment, holding in his hands a manuscript, in antiquity and in value surpassing everything that he happened to study in twenty years? Overjoyed, Tischendorf spent the whole night copying parts of the manuscript. After much hesitation, the manuscript was sent to Tischendorf in Cairo and finally presented to the Russian Tsar. In response, he gave the monastery 9,000 rubles (gold) and a number of high awards. In 1933, Great Britain bought this precious manuscript from the USSR for £100,000, and on Christmas Day of the same year it was sent to where it is today - to the British Museum in London. Thus ended his dizzying adventures, which began with his writing in the middle of the fourth (!) century. Tischendorf then turned his attention to the third ancient uncial manuscript, the Codex Vaticanus. After some delay, in 1866 he received permission for 14 days, three hours a day, to read the manuscript, with a ban on copying or publishing anything from it. Nevertheless, Tischendorf managed to extract important material from the Vatican Codex for his new publication of the Greek New Testament. 1868 also saw the publication of an edition of the Vatican Codex (New Testament), undertaken by Vatican scholars themselves. Thus, scholars received at their disposal two most important manuscripts of the New Testament, which were a hundred years older than all the manuscripts they had used up to that time.

Now a revision of the accepted text of the New Testament was inevitable: the Codex Sinaiticus and the Vatican differed from the accepted text in many important points, and, according to all scholars, they were more accurate than the Textus Receptus. This great work of editing the Bible was carried out in Germany by Tischendorf (1869-72) and in England by the great Cambridge scholars B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort (published in 1881).

Great Bible Edition

This aforementioned work was of decisive importance for all biblical criticism of the New Testament. Scholars (Tischendorf, Westcott, and Hort) divided (according to the Griesbach method) the manuscripts into three groups: (a) neutral group: this primarily included the Vatican and Codex Sinaiticus, various minuscules, the Low Egyptian translation (see ch. 2 and below) and Origen's quotations, (b) rather incomprehensible alexandrian group, later added to the group (a), (c) western group: to it belongs the Codex Bezae, the Old Latin and then well-known Old Syriac translations, and, above all, almost all the quotations of the first Church Fathers, (d) they quickly put aside this group, as did Griesbach and Lachmann. Group (c) they considered unimportant, and between groups (a), which they considered the best example of the text, and (b) there were no serious discrepancies.

Westcott and Hort finally published the long-awaited Greek text. It was based on the oldest and best manuscripts, and based on elaborate criticisms. In addition, largely based on this work, the Revised Version (revised English translation) of the New Testament of 1881 is still the most sensational publication of all time: up to 5,000 pounds sterling was given for the right to own the first copies of this publication, Oxford Press alone sold a million copies on the first day; the streets around the publishing house were crowded all day long with vehicles designed to deliver Bibles to various places! But at the same time, a wave of criticism arose, primarily because of the unwillingness of the people to accept changes in the words of the most famous and dear book for them. Part of this criticism was justified, as it turned out in the century of great discoveries that came soon after those events. In what the critics were right, we shall now see.

New discoveries

New discoveries were again made in the Sinai peninsula: two scholar sisters discovered there in 1892 the Codex Syro-Sinaiticus, an Old Syriac translation (older than Peshito, see ch. 2 and below), a fifth-century copy made from an early translation of the New Testament from the second century. This finding reinforced the "neutral" text, but at the same time, like the "Western" version of the text, it was slightly different from it. The disagreements that arose on this basis gradually grew from a conflict between "neutral" and "Byzantine" texts into a conflict between "neutral" and "Western" texts. This discussion was also fueled by an issue called diatessaron(="one of the four" four gospels composed with "glue and scissors" written by the Church father Tatian in the second century in Greek and Syriac).

In the 19th century, ancient Armenian, Latin and Arabic translations of the commentary of the already mentioned Father of the Church Ephraim were added to the Diatessaron, and fragments of the translation of the work itself were found in the 20th century. This very early manuscript showed the great antiquity of the "Western" text, because it big influence to the work of St. Ephraim. The continuation of these studies has refuted the claims of some critics that Tatian used gospels very different from ours. The fact is that the critics held the point of view that the gospels of today, if they already existed then, with their stories of miracles and insistent reference to Christ as the Son of God, in the year 160 could not yet be an authority. Ephraim's commentary (whose manuscript, with a large part of the Syriac original, was rediscovered in 1957), clearly shows that Tatian in the year 160 had the same four gospels, with the same text structure as we do, and that they already at that time time enjoyed such great authority that Tatian did not dare to quote next to them from any other work (for example, apocryphal gospels or oral traditions)! In addition, the Gospels were evidently already at that time so widespread and authoritative that already sixty years after the Gospel of John was written, a Syriac translation of it appeared: this is shown by the Codex Syro-Sinaiticus. The next important discovery was made in Egypt: in 1906, the American artist C. L. Frier bought several biblical manuscripts from the Arab merchant Ali ibn Jizeh. Among them was the collection of New Testament fragments now known as the Codex Washingtonianus, or Freerianus. The portion of these manuscripts containing the gospels is the oldest known (fourth century) known, and also the best. The most important thing about this passage was that it showed a completely new structure of the text, which is mutually balanced with the neutral/Alexandrian and Western texts. Other texts were soon discovered with the same structure, later called caesarian. First, the text Map. 5-16 showed a clear resemblance to Ferrar and Abbott's study of four minuscule texts, known as "family 13", already published in 1877. Secondly, there was a clear connection of this family (primarily again in the Gospel of Mark) with studies of the other four minuscule texts (family 1) published in 1902 by Keesop Lake. Thirdly, prof. Hermann von Soden drew the attention of scientists in 1906 to a peculiar late uncial text discovered in the Koridefi monastery in the Caucasus and now located in Tbilisi (Georgia). The Codex Koridethianus from the ninth century also had a similar structure. In addition, B. H. Streeter in 1924 not only pointed out a clear connection with the Palestine-Syriac translation (see below), but also proved that the great scholar Origen (d. 254), as can be seen from his citation of the Bible , after his move from Alexandria to Caesarea, used a text with the same structure. Therefore, a group of texts was called "Caesarian" (although later it turned out that Origen, apparently, used this text back in Alexandria). From this it becomes clear that both ancient Georgian and Armenian translations have the same text structure. Thus, at first, the family of 13 Ferrar and Abbot, which seemed unimportant, grew into a new, independent group of gospel manuscripts! (Meanwhile, it turned out that other fragments of the gospels of the Washington Codex also have known text structures: see below).

Papyri

However, the time has come to recall a number of other significant discoveries, namely, the finds of biblical papiri the first centuries of church history. These finds were found in the dry, hot regions of Egypt, where the short-lived papyrus was best preserved. Already in the 18th and 19th centuries, various ancient manuscripts, such as Homer's Elijah, were discovered in Egypt, but they almost did not attract the attention of critics. However, the situation quickly changed after the famous critic Sir Frederick Kenyon published the text of the british museum works of Aristotle, previously known only by name. Suddenly, the eyes of scientists turned to the ancient tombs and dumps of Egypt: to the tombs, because the Egyptians had a habit of putting in the tombs of the dead a wide variety of objects (among them scrolls) used by the deceased during his lifetime, hoping that they would help him in other world, and to landfills, because the discarded papyrus scrolls were not exposed to moisture in these arid regions, and the sandy desert winds protected them from the sun.

In 1897, two young men, Greenfell and Hunt, set about excavating ancient dumps in the Oxyrchinchus region, near the Libyan Desert, 15 km east of the Nile. Soon they discovered here and, above all, a little to the east, in Fayum, many thousands of papyri, among them some New Testament fragments from the third century. The study of these materials soon showed that the Egyptian Christians already in those ancient times had basically the same text that we find in the great codices of the fourth and fifth centuries. This is a very important discovery, since some critics have arrogantly claimed that the ecclesiastical rulers of the time of Emperor Constantine the Great made gross changes to the text of the New Testament. However, countless texts and translations of the third and subsequent centuries clearly argued for the opposite assertion - another attack of critics burst as soap bubble. The simple Egyptian peasants of the second century, in fact, read the same New Testament as the scholars of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the text structures of these ancient papyri, along with others of apparently "Alexandrian" origin, often showed typically "Western" features, and none of them were "Byzantine".

These papyri give an answer to another question: long time the prevailing view was that the New Testament was written in a special variety of "the speech of the Holy Spirit" because Greek language New Testament was very different from the language of the known classical works that time. The papyri, however, showed that the New Testament was written in spoken language first century - Koine Greek. It was not, as some of the Fathers of the Church believed, "a language specially designed for the New Testament," but a language common in those days throughout the Mediterranean coast, the language of merchants, fishermen, and the common people. As scholars became familiar with this variety of papyri language, many New Testament expressions also became clearer. In addition, the characteristic Greek language of the first century was additional evidence (against the opinions of many critics) that the text was indeed written in the first century AD. Thus, papyri played a large role in biblical scholarship even before "large papyrus Bibles" were discovered.

Large papyrus bibles

Then came the great discovery of 1930, a find comparable in value only to the Codex Sinaiticus. On the east bank of the Nile, opposite fayuma, in an old Coptic cemetery, several Arabs found a pile of earthenware jars containing ancient papyri. They passed through the hands of many merchants until the lion's share was bought up by E. Chester Beatty, famous American collector who lived in England and had a large collection of ancient manuscripts. The University of Michigan also bought a small portion of the papyri, and another 15 pages went elsewhere. On November 17, 1931, Sir Frederick Kenyon published his discovery in The Times that the found manuscript fragments contain a large number of passages from many books of the Bible. The following fragments survive from the Greek Old Testament: Genesis (AD 300), Numbers and Deuteronomy (first half of the 2nd century) and, in part, Ezekiel, Daniel and Esther (first half of the 3rd century). But the fragments of the New Testament were of the greatest value: a quarter of a copy (code P45) of the four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles (first half of the 3rd century). After the exchange of manuscripts by their owners, the manuscript P46 was added to the almost completely surviving epistles of ap. Paul (beginning of the 3rd century), and the Epistle to the Hebrews immediately followed the Epistle to the Romans - an indication that then no one had any doubts about the authorship of ap. Paul. Finally, among the papyri, a manuscript P47 with the third book of Revelation from the beginning of the third century was also found.

You can imagine how important this find was. In addition to pastoral and general epistles, fragments of all New Testament books have been found, and the age of written evidence of the Greek text of the Bible (more precisely, its individual parts) has shifted from the 4th to the beginning of the 2nd century AD. In addition, the structures of manuscript P45 were quite unlike either "Alexandrian" or "Western" (even less "Byzantine"), and the structure of the Gospel of Mark was typically "Caesarian". P46 and P47 are closer to the "Alexandrian" manuscripts. By the way, the flow of finds was not limited to the Chester Beatty papyrus. Very interesting was the discovery of a small fragment containing texts from John. 18:31-33.37 and 38 and dated to 125-130, i.e. only 30-35 years after (it is believed) John wrote his gospel! If we think about the fact that the gospel managed to reach Egypt in such a short time (for those times), we can understand the importance of this discovery (known as Papyrus John Ryland 117-38 or P52) to confirm the dates of the gospels and to combat the various and speculative claims of biblical critics (they claim that the Gospel of John must have been written in 160-170). Of the latest finds of papyri, first of all, we should mention Bodmer Papyrus. In 1956, the library named after Coligny, near Geneva, bought a papyrus with the Gospel of John (P66), dating from about the year 200. Another papyrus (P75) contained fragments of the Gospels of Luke and John, and another (P72) contained the epistles of Peter and Jude. Both papyri date back to around 200, while the much younger P74 (6th-7th century) contained the book of the Acts of the Apostles and general (conciliar) epistles. These numerous finds have rendered the old arrangement of texts (based on the structure of manuscripts from the 4th and subsequent centuries) of little use and required a new critical analysis of all ancient sources. These results are already being used (albeit not in all) in new editions of the Greek New Testament (which, unfortunately, also contain elements of the opinions of biblical critics, cf. ch. 7 and 8).

The central figure in these new discoveries was Kurt Aland previously worked (together with Erwin Nestle) as editor of the well-known publishing house Nestle. Now he was busy preparing an entirely new edition in collaboration with other scientists. Aland is the director of the New Testament Text Research Institute (part of the University of Münster, Germany) and has a catalog of all currently available manuscript evidence of the New Testament: lists of dozens of papyri, hundreds of uncials, thousands of minuscules and other textual sources (see below), of which the vast majority most of them are available at the institute in the form of microfilms! All texts are provided with a certain code: papyri with the letter P and a number, uncial texts with a Hebrew, Latin or Greek capital letter or a number starting from zero, minuscules with a normal number.

Important Manuscripts

Now we can briefly summarize the most important manuscripts, and now we have the opportunity to name copies that have not yet been mentioned.

1. Open the list papyri, by name - the oldest P52, the Chester Beatty papyri (P45-47) and the Bodmer papyri (P45-47, second-third centuries).

2. They are followed by the most important manuscripts: large uncials on parchment and vellum (calfskin), about three hundred in total, dating from the 4th to 9th centuries. These are primarily Codex Sinaiticus (C, or Greek kappa), Hebrew (X), Alexandrinus (A), Vaticanus (B), Ephraemi (C), Bezae, or Cantabrigiensis (= Cambridge) (D), Washingtonianus, or Freerianus (Sch), and Koridethianus (H). To this we might also add the Codex Claramontanus (Clermont) (D2), adjacent to (D) and, like it, containing both Greek and Latin texts; it almost completely contains all the messages of St. Paul (including the Epistle to the Heb.).

3. Minuscules date back to the 9th-15th centuries and therefore are of much less value for research. They are represented by approximately 2650 manuscripts and over 2000 lectionaries (see below). The most valuable are H 33 ("Queen of the minuscules") from the 9th-10th century, containing, in addition to Revelation, the entire New Testament and belonging to the "Alexandrian" group, further, H 81 (11th century), among other things, containing very well preserved the text of the book of the Acts of the Apostles. We have already reported on the "Caesarian" group, which includes, among others, family 1 (minuscule manuscripts starting with number 1 and some from the 12th-14th centuries) and family 13 (twelve minuscules starting with manuscript H 13, from 11th 15 centuries). As mentioned earlier, most of the minuscules belong to the so-called "Byzantine" group.

4. Of great importance are the ancient translations of the New Testament, also called versions(i.e. direct translations from the original text). Of the Syriac versions (abbreviation Sir.), we can name first of all the ancient Syriac (they contain the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Syro-Curetonianus, 200), the diatessaron of Tatsianius (c. 170), Peshito (411, see ch. 2) and later: Bishops Philoxenius (508), Thomas von Harkel (= Hercules) (616) and the Palestine-Syriac version (first half of the 5th century).

Among the Latin versions, Old Latin (Lt) and the Vulgate are distinguished (see Ch. 2). From the Old Latin versions, we have come down to us as African (primarily the Codex Bobiensis (K) of the 400th year, obviously copied from a manuscript of the second century, it lacks letters m and e) and European: Codex Vercellensis (code a, 360th year) and Codex Veronesis (b). The latter forms the basis of Jerome's Vulgate, which has come down to us, in particular in the form of the precious Codices Palatinus (fifth century), Amiatinus and Cavensis. In the future, these versions are confirmed by 8000 (!) Other texts.

According to the dialects of the language used in them, Coptic versions are divided into Sahidic (Sakh) and later Bohairic (Boh) (Lower and Upper Egyptian dialects); the latter are represented predominantly by the Gospel of John of Bodmer papyrus. Along with them, mention should be made of the Ethiopian (Eph), Armenian (Ar), Georgian (Gr) and Gottian (Got) versions (see Ch. 2).

5. We have repeatedly pointed out the value of quotations from the first Fathers of the Church. They are important because their age is much higher than that of the oldest codes, but they are not always reliable: firstly, because the fathers of the Church often quoted approximately (by heart) or stated the text in their own words (paraphrased), and secondly, because that these works, like the biblical texts, were influenced by the mechanism of their transmission. That their writings are nevertheless very important is clear from the fact that in the writings of the first century AD. 14 out of 27 New Testament books and epistles are quoted (Pseudo-Barnabas and Clement of Rome) and that around the year 150 verses from already 24 books were quoted (among others by Ignatius, Polycarp and Hermes). Later, the Church Fathers quoted not only all the books, but almost all the verses of the New Testament! Only in Irenius (Ir), Justinius Martyros (Martyr), Clemens of Alexandria (Clem-Alex), Cyprian (Kip), Tertullian (Ter), Hippolytus and Origen (Or) (all lived until the 4th century) do we find from 30 up to 40 thousand quotes. Of later theologians, we can add the names of Athanasius (Aph), Cyril of Jerusalem (Kir-Ier), Eusebius (Eve), Jerome, and Augustine, each of whom quotes almost every New Testament book.

6. Other witnesses that have been left unattended for a long time are the so-called lectionaries: books containing specially selected quotes and intended for worship. Most of these lectionaries were written between the 7th and 12th centuries, but some surviving fragments date from the 4th to 6th centuries. They played a particularly important role in explaining some controversial passages in the New Testament (Mk. 16:9-20 and John 7:5-8.11).

7. We will call ostraki(clay shards). They were the writing material of the poor (for example, a copy of the Four Gospels was found on twenty clay ostraka, 7th century AD; in total, about 1700 ostraka are known). And, finally, another group of written documents is formed by ancient inscriptions on walls, swords, coins and monuments.

If we now divide the most important manuscripts (written evidence) into the four above-named groups (moreover, the term "neutral" used to characterize the structure of texts has long been superseded by the name "Alexandrian"), we can make a diagram of them (see appendix at the end of the chapter). At the same time, we list the structures of the texts in ascending order of their meaning, and each time we name first the uncials, then the minuscules, after them the versions, and at the end the quotations of the Church Fathers.

Principles of Biblical Criticism

The reader will probably already have some idea of ​​the work called text criticism Bible, and became convinced of the authenticity of the texts of the New Testament. There are people who condescendingly chuckle at these works and say something like this: "There are about 200 thousand versions of the Greek text, so how can you even raise the question of the reliability of our current text of the New Testament?" In reality, however, the situation is such that 95% of these 200 thousand options can be immediately discarded, since they do not represent any scientific value and are so little confirmed by other written sources that not a single critic will dare to argue about their correspondence to the original text. When examining the remaining ten thousand variants of manuscripts, it again turns out that in 95% of cases, disagreements are caused not by semantic differences in the texts, but by the peculiarities of the composition of words, grammar and the order of words in sentences. For example, if the same word was grammatically incorrect in 1000 manuscripts, then all of them are considered as 1000 different versions of the text. Of the 5% remaining after this elimination (about 500 manuscripts), only about 50 are of great value, and here in most cases - on the basis of the available written sources - it is possible to reconstruct the correct text with a very high degree of accuracy. Today, there is no doubt that 99% of the words of our New Testament are exactly the same as the original, while there is some significant controversy around 0.1% of the words. None of the fundamental Christian creeds is based on any dubious translation of the Bible, and never has a revision of the Bible caused any change in even one of these creeds.

Thus, we can be absolutely sure that, despite some completely insignificant details, we have the same biblical text that was once written by its authors. In addition, the number of Greek manuscripts (about 5000) and ancient translations (about 9000) that have come down to us is so large that almost no one doubts that the correct version of each of the disputed details of the text is contained in at least one of these manuscripts. Such a statement cannot be made for any other literary work of antiquity! In all other ancient works, there are many places where the intervention of another person is clearly visible, but at the same time it is impossible to restore the original text due to the lack of other versions of the manuscripts of this work. In such cases, the critic can only guess or guess at the correct sound of the original text and then try to explain the reason for the error that has crept in. But the surprising thing is that there is not a single place in the New Testament in which the original text would have to be restored in this way. Although in the past this or that reading of certain passages was sometimes a purely "intuitive choice", but in the course of time they were all confirmed by the found manuscripts.

The errors that crept into the texts of the manuscripts were mainly due to the inattention of the scribes, but sometimes corrections were made intentionally. Mistakes by inattention were (along with misspellings) caused by failures of visual perception (absence, duplication or displacement of letters in words), auditory perception (misheard word - in the case of dictation), memory (for example, replacing a word with a synonym or the influence of a recalled similar quote) and adding own judgments: sometimes marginal comments were added inadvertently to the text due to the assumption of the scribe that they refer to the text. Maybe John. 5:36 and 4, Acts. 8:37 and 1 John. 5.7 belong to this category; however, it may be that these verses were deliberately added to the text as instructive. So we moved to the group intentional fixes. This includes corrections of the words themselves and grammatical forms, as well as theological "corrections" of the text, which are found everywhere in lectionaries and sometimes crept into the text, as, for example, in the glorification of God in the Lord's Prayer (cf. Matt. 6:13 ). Moreover, one could call the corrections made to harmonize the parallel passages of the Gospels, which were actually corrections of the good conscience of scribes who misunderstood the text. So, for example, in John. 19:14 the numeral "sixth" (hour) was sometimes replaced by "third".

As we have already seen, in order to restore the original version of the text, critics have tried to divide all the available manuscripts into groups according to the structure of their text. Then the comparison was carried out within the groups, and in the end a prototype was identified that most closely matches the original text.

It has already become clear that for these studies, not all texts are of equal value, each of them is ordered in accordance with the features of its external and internal structure. External signs are the age of the text structure found in the manuscript, its geographical distribution area (the wide distribution of its structural type makes the manuscript more valuable). To internal features include features of writing and speech of the scribe and the author. As for the scribes, they proceed from the assumption that they rather altered the difficult-to-read text into an easy-to-read one, replaced short, rich words with simpler and longer ones, abrupt speech - smooth. As for the authors, the researchers try to imagine their position, way of thinking, try to guess what they could write, being in this or that situation, while considering the connection of phrases (context), the general tone, harmony and general background of the text. It is quite clear that such reasoning can be applied only within certain limits, and at the same time very much depends on the mood and ideas of the critic himself. However, in general it is safe to assume that the researcher will use the following series of criteria: (1) more ancient than late reading, (2) more difficult than simpler, (3) more short than a longer, (4) form of reading explaining the maximum number of variants of the text, (5) the most common (geographical) version is preferable, (6) rather a version, vocabulary and whose turns of speech are most consistent with the author, (7) a reading that does not imply any dogmatic prejudice of the scribe.

findings

Summarizing, we can say that the reliability of the Greek New Testament is indeed unusually high. Now we know that we have, in principle, the same text that was used by Egyptian peasants, Syrian merchants and Latin monks - members of the Apostolic Church. This closed the mouths of all critics who claimed that the text of the New Testament was inaccurate or even completely rewritten in later times. And the first Protestants who made monumental Bible translations had a very accurate text - now we can even prove it. But work on Greek texts is still in full swing - primarily because of a large number the finds made. These studies will undoubtedly add many interesting details to what we have said. But the "ordinary" reader of the Bible can now be completely sure that the Bible, which he holds in his hands, is a miracle: a miracle of those who came to us from ancient times Old and New Testaments.

In addition to the texts of Holy Scripture recognized by the Church, there are also so-called apocryphal texts. Perhaps the essence of faith and the true evidence of the era of the first generation of Christians should be sought precisely in them - for example, in the recently sensational Gospel of Judas? Why are they worse than official texts? About how the list of texts included in the New Testament was formed, and from what it follows that it really reflects the view of the gospel events of the first disciples of Christ, we asked a well-known biblical scholar to tell Andrey Desnitsky.

How did the canon come about?

Opening the New Testament today, the reader discovers 27 books under its cover. Indeed, if you look at the early history of the Church, the early Christians did not have such a list of canonical texts. There was not even the very concept of "canon" - in relation to the Bible, this word means a closed list of books included in it. But there is nothing surprising in this: Christianity did not arise immediately in a ready-made form, as sometimes totalitarian sects arise, with a completely ready-made list of rules and regulations for all occasions. It developed in a natural way, and the final list of books of Holy Scripture did not immediately appear.

The earliest lists that have come down to us are found in the works of the Church Fathers who lived in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries - Justin the Philosopher, Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem and others. There is also an anonymous list of books, called the "Muratorian canon" (after the name of the person who discovered it already in modern times), dated to the end of the 2nd century.

The important thing is that in all these lists, without exception, we will find the four Gospels known to us, the book of Acts, and almost all of the Epistles of Paul. They may be missing the Epistle to the Hebrews, the book of Revelation, and part of the Catholic Epistles. At the same time, they may include some other texts that today are not included in the New Testament: the Epistles of the Apostle Barnabas and Clement of Rome, the Shepherd Hermas, the Didache (otherwise called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) and the Revelation of Peter. All of these texts were written shortly after the New Testament books, and they provide us with much valuable information about the history of the early Church.

The canon that we know today, as well as the very expression "canonical books", is found for the first time in the Paschal epistle of St. Athanasius of Alexandria in 367. Nevertheless, small discrepancies in the lists of canonical books occurred up to the 5th-6th centuries, but this concerned mainly the recognition of the book of Revelation of John the Theologian, rich in mystical images and difficult to understand.

However, these differences do not change overall picture— what Christians believed, what they told about Jesus.

What is the difference between canonical texts and apocrypha

Already in the first centuries of Christianity, books about the life of Jesus Christ appeared, which claimed to be absolute truth and authenticity. They appeared at a later time, up to the present day. These are the "gospels" from Peter, Thomas, Philip, Nicodemus, Judas, Barnabas, Mary (Magdalene) - so to speak, "alternative stories" of Jesus of Nazareth, the authorship of which is attributed to various characters in the New Testament. But hardly anyone today takes such claims of authorship seriously. In these "gospels", as a rule, one can clearly trace an ideological or theological scheme that is alien to Christianity. Thus, the "Gospel of Judas" sets out a Gnostic view of the events of the New Testament, and the "Gospel of Barnabas" is a Muslim one. It is obvious that the texts were written not by the apostles to whom they were attributed, but by adherents of one or another religious school, and in order to give weight to their works, they declared them to be the authors of other people.

In addition to these books, many other texts that do not contradict the New Testament itself are often reckoned among the New Testament apocrypha. These are the acts of individual apostles (Barnabas, Philip, Thomas), some letters, including those attributed to Paul (to the Laodiceans and 3rd to the Corinthians), and the very books that in ancient times were sometimes included in the New Testament. However, it is more reasonable to speak of them as post-biblical works in the Christian tradition.

It is difficult to give any formal criteria by which the early Christians accepted certain books and rejected others. But we see a clear continuity of tradition: there could be some fluctuations on the periphery of the list, but the most important texts, speaking about the foundations of the Christian faith (such as the four Gospels or the Epistle to the Romans), were recognized by everyone, immediately and unconditionally, while none " alternative" versions were not recognized by any of the early Christians. Such versions could be Scripture for Gnostics or Manichaeans - but only for them.

At the same time, numerous manuscripts of the canonical texts of the New Testament have come down to us, starting from the 2nd century. They, too, may differ in small details, but no sensational revelations can be subtracted from them.

Findings of new apocrypha continue, and there is no sensation in this. Christians have always recognized that besides their own Scriptures, there are other texts revered by other people. In the end, even in our time, people continue to write down the “revelations” that were to them and assign them a sacred status - this is how the “Book of Mormon” appeared, for example, in 1830, which the followers of this doctrine include in their Holy Scriptures. Well, that's their business.

Christians insist only that their Scriptures are identical with the Scriptures of the early Church, and they do have evidence to support this claim. It can be firmly said that the existing canonical text reflects what the witnesses of Christ's earthly life, his disciples, the first preachers of Christianity, believed.

Codex Sinaiticus.

First page of the Gospel of John

The second oldest (after the Vatican Code) and the most complete manuscript of the Bible. The time of creation is the end of the 4th century. The composition, in addition to the books of the canon of Holy Scripture, also includes the texts of the Epistle of the Apostle Barnabas and the "Shepherd" Hermas.

The Codex is one of the main sources for the textual criticism of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, since it preserved the text of the Greek Bible in the greatest completeness - in comparison with the most ancient manuscripts.

The codex was found in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai in 1844 by the German biblical scholar Konstantin von Tischendorf, who took several sheets to his native Leipzig. In the late 1850s, von Tischendorf visited the Sinai as part of a Russian mission and managed to buy the main part of the codex from the monks, which entered the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg. In the 1930s Soviet authorities sold almost the entire volume of the codex to the UK (now the National Library of Russia stores fragments of only three sheets of the codex, found at the beginning of the 20th century). In 1975, several more fragments of it were found in the monastery of St. Catherine.

In 2005, all four owners of the sheets of the Code were Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, the British Library, the Leipzig University Library and St. Catherine's Monastery agreed on high-quality scanning of the manuscript in order to post the full text on the Internet. Since July 6, 2009 the texts are available in full at www.codex-sinaiticus.net.

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. the globe. It is not surprising that it was this religion that gave the world the most replicated and famous book - the Bible. Christians, in terms of the number of copies and sales, has been leading the TOP bestsellers 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

First and the largest part The Christian Scriptures formed long before the Old Testament Books are also called the Hebrew Bible, as they are sacred in Judaism. Of course, for them the adjective "old" in relation to their writing is categorically unacceptable. Tanakh (as it is called in their environment) is eternal, unchanging and universal.

This collection consists of four (according to the Christian classification) parts, which bear the following names:

1. Legislative books.
2. Historical books.
3. Teaching books.
4. 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 Tanakh - 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. The rest of the books are 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 the more traditional set of scriptures.

However, in different Old Testament and New Testament have various options text codification. 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 sacred works, and the words of the scriptures in literally- divine revelation, which he conveys to the world, the church and each person personally. This conviction 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 Judas (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 - the unity and differences of 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 considers the Old Testament and the New Testament as one, interpreting them through each other and establishing hidden allusions, predictions, types 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 testaments 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.

New Testament consists of 27 compositions, where 21 are letters. In the original only in Greek, i.e. they are copies of copies. Manuscripts (lat. "written by hand") were written by scribes who copied manuscripts. They could distort, add, throw out part of the text, etc.

The letters included in the New Testament were written by scribes under the dictation of Paul - the former ardent Jew Saul. The originals have not survived, only copies that are 150 years away from the original. There were tensions between Paul and James, as Paul abolished circumcision for non-Jews. The abolition of circumcision contributed to the rapid spread of Paulineism (or, as we are told, Christianity). Paul began with Antioch. New adepts appeared slowly and the communities were very small. Then Paul carried Paulineism to Galatia (a region on the territory of modern Turkey) to Athens, Corinth. In Corinth, they began to listen to him better, because. this port city, famous for harlots, i.e. spiritless city and those who did not have faith and became the first listeners.

James, the brother of Jesus, 30 years after the death of Jesus, led a new community of followers (Nazarenes) of Jesus from the Nazarene, but continued to pray in the temple, i.e. was a faithful Jew, which did not contradict the cult of the temple, tk. Jesus was a new manifestation of the old faith and was a respected man among the Pharisees and Jews. But later he was condemned by the priests of the temple, expelled from Jerusalem and stoned, and the Nazarenes became persecuted and eventually disappeared and the teachings of Jesus were replaced by Paulianism (Christianity). With the advent of the papyrus, Christianity gained momentum.

gospel
All Gospels are anonymous, and contemporaries have already attributed authorship to them.!

Gospel of Mark
Mark is not an apostle, as can be seen from his confusion about the geography of the area (says Professor Jeremy Ofiokonar). For example, if you walk along the coast from Tire to Sedona, then go to the lake, you cannot go through the territory of the Decapolis, because. he was on the other side of the lake, and so on. Many early copies of Mark end in 16:8, there are copies where the text is before 16:20. And in the most ancient gospel of Mark, "the women ran from the tomb and said nothing to anyone" and that's it! Nothing is said about the resurrection of Jesus! (Professor Bart Ehrman speaking, University of North Carolina) I.e. someone added the end and now it is in the modern bible. Even in the oldest Sinai Bible.

Gospel of Luke
Luke is not an apostle, but he wrote the gospel though did not witness the events in which he admits: "As many have already begun to compose stories about events that are completely known between us" (Luke 1: 1). Luke gives his own interpretation. He devotes time in writing to non-Jews, which was what the church needed, because. everything before that was written by Jews and for Jews. Luke also wrote Acts of the Apostles.

Gospel of Matthew
Well, Matthew, unlike Mark and Luke, is an apostle, but scientists, after analyzing the text, prove that Matthew, like Luke, borrows part of the text from Mark, although Luke still borrows from an unknown source. Why would the apostle Matthew borrow from a non-apostle? Most likely it was not the apostle Matthew who wrote it, because. "Jesus saw a man sitting at the toll booth, named Matthew, and he said to him, Follow Me. And he got up and followed Him." (Mt 9:9). Those. Jesus called Matthew, in chapter 9, and before that Matthew did not know about the events, who wrote chapters 1 to 8?

Gospel of John
John is an illiterate fisherman(Acts of the Apostles, chapter 4) who spoke Aramaic, but managed to write in Greek an impeccably structured poetic work, in which it is clear that the scribe thought a lot about Jesus and his theological significance. For a simple fisherman, this is very illogical. Yes, and John himself is never mentioned in the Gospel. Last verse of the Gospel of John completed, which scientists discovered by photographing the Sinai Bible in ultraviolet rays.

Jacob's letter
Jacob's letter is addressed to the tribes of Israel in Rasania.