There is hardly a book in the world that rivals the Bible in popularity. Tens of millions of copies in dozens of languages. And every year new editions appear, among them immensely expensive ones with paintings by great artists, in leather, decorated with gold and precious stones. Today the Bible can be found in many hotels in states professing the Christian faith. For some peoples, the Bible is a spiritual guide from the school bench. But almost nowhere is it said about who and when began to write the Bible, how it came into being. A secret with seven seals?
The Bible, which is translated from Greek as "books", consists of two parts: the Old and New Testaments, which are also called the Holy Scriptures of the Jews and Christians. If the first, most part, is recognized by both, then the second, also called the Gospel, which means "good news", much smaller in volume and created in the days of Christianity, is only Christians. This is due to the fact that the covenant, or the union made by God with one people, the Jews, after the appearance of Jesus Christ, was replaced by a new covenant, an alliance already concluded with all nations. The Jews do not recognize this New Testament.
The books of the Old Testament began to be written very early, perhaps two thousand years before our era. But they began to collect them together from about the XII century BC. Probably, this was done by the leaders of various Jewish tribes living in the land of Canaan, who wanted to tell about their history, preserve their memory and pass on moralizing messages to future generations.
It is believed that one of the authors of the Bible was the wisest ruler of antiquity, Solomon, the king of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah in 965-928 BC. He carried out a number of reforms in the country, sought to centralize the religious cult among the Jews. During his reign, the Jewish people lived in prosperity and contentment, not knowing wars. According to legend, he wrote the Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon's Songs.
The next known active continuer of the creation of the code of Jewish history, laws and wisdom was the Jewish priest Ezra, who lived in Babylon about 450 BC under the Persian king Artaxerxes and went to Jerusalem to help establish order in the ancient people and preserve the Law of God. He was categorically against marriages of Jews with non-Jews, restored rituals and collected the sacred Old Testament books into one, canonical.
So over the course of twelve centuries, the Old Testament was created, written in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic, which was passed down from generation to generation as the most valuable relic of the people. The ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (282-246 BC), who expanded the possessions of his country and created the capital in Alexandria, became interested in the Holy Scriptures, the history of the creation of the world and moralizing statements in it. At his request, the Jerusalem priest Eleazar sent books of Holy Scripture and 72 translators, who in Alexandria translated the text of the canonical Scripture into Ancient Greek. This translation, called the Septuagint, played a significant role in the further confirmation and dissemination of the Bible. Other lists came from him: Sinai, Vatican, Alexandria, which are kept as relics in the respective libraries.
The Old Testament that has survived to our time consists of three large cycles: the Law, in Hebrew the Torah, or the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy); Prophets and Scriptures, or Hagiographers. Despite all the rigors of the selection, the Old Testament included works that have a secular character: historical chronicles, everyday wisdom, there are many in which various kinds of contradictions are noticeable.
The New Testament tells about the birth of Christ, his teaching and the spread of Christianity as a new true faith. The New Testament consists of written records of early Christian literature of the second half of the 1st century, written in Greek. It was created, according to religious leaders, either by the disciples of Christ or by the disciples of the apostles. It tells about the birth, life and deeds of Christ, about his martyrdom and resurrection.
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Until about the 19th century, there was one religious point of view in the world: the Bible's stories are inspired from above, they are of divine origin, they are true and defy criticism. They should be taken for granted. However, the religious leaders themselves over time began to understand that many sacred revelations of the Old Testament are not historical, but metaphorical, therefore, they cannot be taken literally. For example, the Old Testament says that Adam was 930 years old, his son Seth was 807, and Noah was 500 years old when he gave birth to his sons. The ark, which Noah built on the advice of God, turned out to be exorbitant in length - 300 cubits (almost 120 m), and the height - 30 cubits (12 m), the height of a modern four-story building. Where are these numbers from? It is difficult to imagine a ship of this size, made of wood in the era when ships were built hardly longer than 20 m,who dared to swim mostly only in sight of the coast.
At the beginning of the 20th century, in connection with the spread of new materialistic views, active atheists tried to prove that the texts of the Bible are sheer fantasy, fairy tales, and there is no written evidence of their antiquity. But the historicity of the Bible as a whole was proved in 1947, when local shepherds discovered strange scrolls hidden in clay jugs in the rocky caves of Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. These were manuscripts on leather, papyrus, which contained the most ancient biblical texts. It was a worldwide sensation. The manuscripts were analyzed by scientists from the universities of the USA, Great Britain, Israel and recognized them as authentic, some were more than two thousand years old. Their decoding allowed a new look at the emergence of Christianity, a deeper understanding of the roots of Jewish history and Holy Scripture. Today these relics are in Jerusalem and can be seen in the Temple of the Book. True, it is not the originals themselves that are on display, but skillfully made copies. The originals are hidden in an underground armored room.
If the thinkers of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt tried to present the basis of the existence of the world and man in the image of many gods - the Sun, the Moon, the Earth - which led to confusion, then among the Jews the whole explanation of the world was reduced to one thing - the phenomenon of the Almighty, God, who was originally and will be.
In the Old Testament traditions, Methuselah was one of the patriarchs - the forefathers of mankind. He became famous for his longevity, having lived for 969 years. Some linguists suggest that such a large age is associated with the chronology of the ancient Jews: the lunar month was considered their year - then the real age of Methuselah will be 80 years, which is twice the average life expectancy in Old Testament times. Despite the fact that modern centenarians live for over 100 years, the expression "mafusailov age" has become synonymous with longevity.
The newest archaeological searches and finds, for example, numerous excavations in Greece, Asia Minor, the discovery of Troy, Minos cities in Crete, including Knossos, confirm the reality of many events described in the Old Testament. The events described by Homer in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" allowed scientists, under the cover of legends, to find elements of real events, to restore pictures of the past.
The widespread circulation of the Bible began in the period of printing, from the middle of the 15th century, when the inventor of the printing press, Johannes Gutenberg, printed two Bibles. A special interest in the Holy Scriptures was aroused by its publication in German, which was carried out in 1466 in Strasbourg by I. Mentelin. Years later, a new translation was made by the German priest Martin Luther.
Traditionally, it is believed that the brothers Cyril and Methodius translated the Holy Scriptures into the Slavic language after 863. Typographical reproduction of individual biblical books began after the emergence of Cyril's typography, and the Bible was published in separate books in different years.
On the initiative of Tsar Peter I, a bilingual publication was launched - in Slavic and Dutch. The complete Russian Bible in one volume was published only in 1876. After 1917, the publication and distribution of the Bible in Russia was discontinued. Its import from abroad was strictly prohibited. Only in the 1990s were all bans on the publication of the Bible lifted in Russia.