The oldest part of the Bible. Bible

Bible(from Greek βιβλία - books) or Scripture- a collection of Books (Old and New Testaments), compiled by the Holy Spirit (i.e. God) through chosen people sanctified by God: prophets and apostles. The collection and consolidation of books into a single book was accomplished by the Church and for the Church.

The word “Bible” is not found in the sacred books themselves, and was first used in relation to the collection of sacred books in the east in the 4th century by St. And .

Orthodox Christians, speaking about the Bible, often use the term “Scripture” (written with a capital letter) or “Holy Scripture” (implying that it is part of the Holy Tradition of the Church, understood in a broad sense).

Composition of the Bible

Bible (Holy Scripture) = Old Testament + New Testament.
Cm.

New Testament = Gospel (according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) + Epistles of St. Apostles + Apocalypse.
Cm. .

The books of the Old and New Testaments can be divided into legal, historical, teaching and prophetic.
See diagrams: and.

The main theme of the Bible

The Bible is a religious book. The main theme of the Bible is the salvation of mankind by the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God Jesus Christ. The Old Testament speaks of salvation in the form of types and prophecies about the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. The New Testament sets forth the very realization of our salvation through the incarnation, life and teaching of the God-man, sealed by His death on the cross and resurrection.

Inspiration of the Bible

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.()

The Bible was written by more than 40 people who lived in different countries: Babylon, Rome, Greece, Jerusalem... The authors of the Bible belonged to different social strata (from the shepherd Amos to kings David and Solomon), had different educational levels (the apostle John was a simple fisherman, the apostle .Paul graduated from the Jerusalem Rabbinical Academy).

The unity of the Bible is observed in its integrity from the first page to the last. In their diversity, some texts are confirmed, explained and supplemented by others. There is some kind of unartificial, internal consistency in all 77 books of the Bible. There is only one explanation for this. This Book was written at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by the people He chose. The Holy Spirit did not dictate the Truth from Heaven, but participated with the author in the creative process of creating the Holy Book, which is why we can notice the individual psychological and literary characteristics of its authors.

Holy Scripture is not exclusively a Divine product, but a product of Divine-human co-creation. The Holy Scriptures were compiled as a result of the joint activity of God and people. At the same time, man was not a passive instrument, an impersonal instrument of God, but was His co-worker, a participant in His good action. This position is revealed in the dogmatic teaching of the Church on the Scriptures.

Correct Understanding and Interpretation of the Bible

No prophecy in Scripture can be resolved by itself. For prophecy was never uttered by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke it, being moved by the Holy Spirit. ()

While believing in the inspiration of the books of the Bible, it is important to remember that the Bible is a book. According to God's plan, people are called to be saved not alone, but in a community led and inhabited by the Lord. This society is called the Church. not only has she preserved the letter of the word of God, but she also has a correct understanding of it. This is due to the fact that, who spoke through the prophets and apostles, continues to live in the Church and lead it. Therefore, the Church gives us the right guidance on how to use its written wealth: what is more important and relevant in it, and what has only historical significance and is not applicable in New Testament times.

Let us pay attention that even the apostles, who followed Christ for a long time and listened to His instructions, could not themselves, without His help, Christ-centeredly understand the Holy Scripture ().

Time of writing

Biblical books were written at different times over about 1.5 thousand years - before Christmas and after His Birth. The first are called the books of the Old Testament, and the second are called the books of the New Testament.

The Bible consists of 77 books; 50 are found in the Old Testament and 27 in the New.
11 (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, Epistle of Jeremiah, Baruch, 2 and 3 books of Ezra, 1, 2 and 3 Maccabees) are not inspired and are not included in the canon of Holy Scripture of the Old Testament.

Bible language

The books of the Old Testament were written in Hebrew (with the exception of some parts of the books of Daniel and Ezra, written in Aramaic), the New Testament was written in the Alexandrian dialect of ancient Greek - Koine.

Initially, biblical books were written on parchment or papyrus with a sharpened reed stick and ink. The scroll looked like a long ribbon and was wound onto a shaft.
The text in the ancient scrolls was written in large capital letters. Each letter was written separately, but the words were not separated from one another. The whole line was like one word. The reader himself had to divide the line into words. There were also no punctuation marks, no aspirations, or accents in the ancient manuscripts. And in the Hebrew language, vowels were also not written, but only consonants.

Biblical canon

Both Testaments were first brought into canonical form at local councils in the 4th century: the Council of Hippo in 393. and the Council of Carthage 397

History of the Bible's division into chapters and verses

The division of words in the Bible was introduced in the 5th century by the deacon of the Alexandrian Church Eulalis. The modern division into chapters dates back to Cardinal Stephen Langton, who divided the Latin translation of the Bible, Vulgate, in 1205. And in 1551, the Genevan printer Robert Stephen introduced the modern division of chapters into verses.

Classification of books of the Bible

The biblical books of the Old and New Testaments are classified into Legislative, Historical, Doctrinal and Prophetic. For example, in the New Testament, the Gospels are Legislative, the Acts of the Apostles are Historical, and the Epistles of Sts are Teaching. Apostles and the Prophetic book - Revelation of St. John the Theologian.

Bible translations

Greek translation of seventy interpreters – – was started by the will of the Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus in 271 BC. Since Apostolic times, the Orthodox Church has been using 70 translated sacred books.

Latin translation - Vulgate- was promulgated in 384 by Blessed Jerome. Since 382, ​​the blessed one translated the Bible from Greek into Latin; at the beginning of his work he used the Greek Septuagypt, but soon switched to using the Hebrew text directly. This translation became known as the Vulgate - Editio Vulgata (vulgatus means “widespread, well-known”). The Council of Trent in 1546 approved the translation of St. Jerome, and it came into general use in the West.

Slavic translation of the Bible made according to the text of the Septuagint by the saints of Thessalonica brothers Cyril and Methodius, in the middle of the 9th century A.D., during their apostolic labors in the Slavic lands.

Ostromir Gospel- the first fully preserved Slavic manuscript book (mid-11th century).

Gennady Bible – the first complete handwritten Russian Bible. Compiled in 1499 under the leadership of the Novgorod archbishop. Gennady (until that time, biblical texts were scattered and existed in various collections).

Ostroh Bible – the first complete printed Russian Bible. It was published in 1580 by order of Prince Cons. Ostrozhsky, pioneer printer Ivan Fedorov in Ostrog (the prince's estate). This Bible is still used by Old Believers.

Elizabethan Bible – Church Slavonic translation used in the liturgical practice of the church. At the end of 1712, Peter I issued a decree on preparations for the publication of the revised Bible, but this work was completed under Elizabeth in 1751.

Synodal translation – the first complete Russian text of the Bible. Implemented on the initiative of Alexander I and under the leadership of St. . It was published in parts from 1817 to 1876, when the complete Russian text of the Bible was published.
The Elizabethan Bible came entirely from the Septuagint. The Synodal translation of the Old Testament was made from the Masoretic text, but taking into account the Septuagint (highlighted in square brackets in the text).

Original or copy?

The originals of biblical books - that is, manuscripts written by the prophet Moses or the Apostle Paul -, of course, have not reached us. The material for writing in their times was papyrus - wide, long sheets made from the stems of a plant common in the Nile Delta and some other wetlands of the Middle East, or, much less commonly, parchment - specially tanned animal skin. But parchment was too expensive, and papyrus was too short-lived - rarely did any papyrus book last longer than half a century.

In fact, all the originals of ancient manuscripts that have reached us are scraps of private correspondence and business papers that were once thrown into Egyptian trash heaps (only in Egypt the dry climate allowed them to be preserved), and inscriptions on hard surfaces (clay tablets, shards, stones) . And all ancient literary works have come down to us in later copies. The first known copies of Homer's poems are no less than half a millennium distant from the death of their creator. The manuscripts of the Iliad, the most read and revered work in ancient Greece, have reached us a little over six hundred, the tragedies of Euripides - about three hundred, and the first six books of the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus are generally preserved in a single copy of the 9th century.

For comparison: today more than five thousand manuscripts are known containing certain parts of the New Testament. The earliest of them were made on papyri in Egypt at the turn of the 1st-2nd centuries. AD, just a few decades after the death of the apostles. They, in particular, contain passages from the Gospel of John, written at the very end of the 1st century.

But how, in fact, is it known that this or that manuscript actually contains the original text of Homer’s poems or the Bible? Nowadays, it is quite easy to detect a fake. Manuscripts are studied and compared - as for the New Testament, an entire scientific institute in the German city of Münster is engaged in this. And then, a few manuscripts may turn out to be fake, but not a thousand.

But even in cases where an ancient text has reached us in one or two copies, its authenticity can be confirmed or rejected based on many data. Is the author confused about the historical details of the period he describes? Is he familiar with the geography of the place where the action takes place? What language does he write in, what words does he use? Is his evidence corroborated by independent sources? Is his book quoted by other authors, is it known to readers of more recent times? So distinguishing a fake is not at all as difficult as it seems at first glance.

In the five thousand New Testament manuscripts that have reached us, there are some discrepancies (we will talk about this in more detail in the next issue of the magazine), but we will not see any other Message than the Gospel in them. None of them say that Jesus was not the Son of God or did not die on the Cross. If all this is the result of some huge gang of forgers working throughout the Mediterranean no later than the beginning of the 2nd century AD, then it is obviously impossible to create any plausible history in this world at all.

The Bible is the book of the Church

The Bible says not only about Christ, but also about itself something fundamentally different than, for example,. This is one of those obvious platitudes that people tend to forget. Muslims believe that the Koran is a revelation of God, sent down to one single person - Muhammad, who wrote it down “under the dictation” of God and did not add a single word of his own. Therefore, for them, any earthly text of the Koran is just a copy of the heavenly Koran, the true Word of God, above which there is nothing on earth, has not been and never will be. First there was the Koran, then Islam was born from it. Therefore, by the way, the Koran, from the point of view of Islam, is untranslatable: any translations of it are just auxiliary aids, and only the Arabic text can be considered authentic.

For a Christian, the Word of God that came down to earth is, first of all, not a book, but a Person, Jesus Christ, who existed from eternity and founded his own on earth. They say that once an Orthodox priest in the USA met with a street preacher of one of the Protestant denominations. “Would you like me to tell you about a church that is based on the Bible?” – he happily suggested. “Do you want me to tell you about the Church that wrote the Bible?” - the priest answered him.

And he was right, because Christ Himself did not leave us any written texts. Even the Gospel was first transmitted as oral history, and the epistles were written by various apostles (primarily Paul) as pastoral instructions on various specific occasions. And by the time the last book of the New Testament, the Gospel of John, was completed, the Christian book had already existed for more than half a century... Therefore, if we want to understand the Bible, we need to turn to the Christian Church, for it is primary.

Where did the biblical canon come from?

But where did we even get the idea that the Bible is Holy Scripture? Maybe this is just one of the collections of ancient tales, of which there are many? At all times there were even more people who called themselves prophets, messengers, Christs - what, should we believe everyone, recognize everyone’s writings as Scripture?

A book can become Scripture only in a community of believers who accept its authority, determine its canon (exact composition), interpret it, and finally rewrite it. Christians believe that all this happened not without the participation of the Holy Spirit, Who spoke in the authors of biblical books, and whose help we need today for a correct understanding of this book. But the Spirit does not abolish the human personality; rather, on the contrary, He allows it to reveal itself in its entirety.

And since this process unfolds in history, the idea of ​​a once and for all given Revelation, which all subsequent generations can only fulfill, is alien to Christianity. No, just as Christ is the incarnate Son of God, so Christianity itself is embodied in our earthly history, with all its internal unity, acquiring some new features and characteristics in each generation and in each people.

Therefore, the New Testament canon - the list of books included in the New Testament - did not take shape right away. Thus, in the East, for a long time they treated the book of Revelation with some caution, probably because of its mystical nature, and in the West - the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews, because both in style and content it differs markedly from his other epistles ( although it does not contradict them). However, Christian theologians added, even if he did not write this message, the Church wrote it in any case.

But as far as the Gospels are concerned, everything is simple. From the very beginning, the Church knew those four Gospels, which were included in the canon of the New Testament, and we will not find any others in any list that has reached us. It was in them that the Church saw the familiar and beloved image of Christ, and it simply did not need anything else.

One gets the feeling that the Fathers did not consider the exact composition of the Bible in the first place and did not even particularly try to eliminate obvious discrepancies: there was simply no particular practical need for such a canon. The rules of the Councils of Laodicea and Carthage do not draw any line between true and heretical books, but merely determine which books can be read in the church as Scripture. If in one church the Revelation of John the Theologian is read, and in another not, there will be nothing terrible in this discrepancy, as long as some heretical work does not take the place of this book.

Fierce disputes flared up in the West already in the era of the Reformation, and they concerned only the Old Testament. However, these were disputes not only about the exact composition of the Biblical canon, but also about its meaning. Protestants spoke at the same time about the exclusive authority of Scripture, which is fundamentally different from all other books. This principle is called Sola Scriptura– only Holy Scripture can serve as the basis for the doctrine of the Church. If so, then the question of what is and is not included in Scripture becomes vital indeed. For example, Catholic theologians, in support of the idea of ​​purgatory (and in general the idea that the earthly Church can influence the posthumous fate of its members) cited the story of the 2nd Book of Maccabees ( 12: 39-45) about Judas Maccabee’s offering of a cleansing sacrifice for his dead brothers. For Catholics, this book is part of Scripture, and therefore, prayer for the dead is prescribed by the Bible. But from the point of view of Protestants, this book is not Biblical, and even if in itself it is good and interesting, the statements of its author do not have doctrinal authority.

The Orthodox world has not known such large-scale and fundamental disputes over the merits of the books of Tobit, Judith, etc. As a result, a situation has arisen where the Orthodox, following the Council of Laodicea, recognize the same books as canonical as Protestants, but include the Bible and non-canonical books, like Catholics. Thus, the Biblical canon turns out to be smaller than the Bible itself!

But this may seem strange only in the context of the Reformation, and not in the East, where the task was not to separate Scripture from Tradition. Orthodox theologians sometimes depict them in the form of concentric circles: in the very center is the Gospel, then other Biblical books (it is clear that the Epistles of Paul are more important for us than Leviticus), then the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils, the works of the Fathers and other elements of Tradition, up to pious customs of individual parishes. The periphery must necessarily be consistent with the center, verified by it - but it is not so important where exactly Scripture ends and Tradition begins, where exactly the Maccabean books or epistles are placed. It is more important to determine the degree of their authority relative to other books and customs.

The boundaries between truth and falsehood, between faith and superstition, between churchliness and heresy are much more important than the boundaries between Scripture and Tradition, which, like many other things in the Church, serve as evidence one Spirit().

Magazine "Foma"

It is very difficult to give a definite answer to the question of where the oldest Bible is located. Until recently, the so-called Codex Sinaiticus, translated as Codex Sinaiticus, was considered the most ancient Bible. Its age is about 1600 years. This manuscript is written on bound sheets of thin parchment in ancient Greek. It is believed that this is the oldest bound book. Parts of this ancient manuscript are kept in libraries in four countries - Britain (London), Russia (St. Petersburg), Germany (Leipzig) and Egypt (Sinai). In 2009, a four-year project to transfer the manuscript to the Internet was completed. Now the surviving fragments of the oldest Bible can be viewed online at http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/; Some pages have been translated into English.

Is the Bible found in Turkey older?

In 2012, news spread throughout the Christian world: an ancient Bible, more than one and a half thousand years old, was discovered in Turkey. It was seized from smugglers in the southern part of the country. Although the pages, made of specially treated leather, have become blackened over time, the letters have been preserved and the text is legible.

This version of the ancient Christian Bible appears to be older than the Codex Sinaiticus, and it is also written in Aramaic, the language spoken by Christ. Therefore, it is quite difficult to say exactly which of the books is younger or older. The Turkish find was declared a cultural heritage and put on display in the capital's museum.

Is the text of the new Bible different from the ancient manuscripts?

In the modern world, Orthodox Christians use new Bibles containing the Synodal translation - all others are considered non-canonical. The Codex Sinaiticus, like all other ancient codes, formed its basis, although it was subjected to translation. The main thing, both new and old, for a believer is its content, not the cover. Even the most budget option is not inferior in spiritual value to expensive and ancient copies, although expensive books have a right to exist - they will serve as a truly expensive and memorable gift for any person. You should definitely buy yourself a pocket Bible so that you can carry it with you and take it on trips.

Muslim: The Bible has been changed many times, so it cannot be considered the original Scripture revealed to Moses, Jesus and other prophets. What evidence do you have that the Bible is reliable and trustworthy?

Many years ago, a young Muslim woman asked me, “Has the Bible ever changed?” I told her: “Of course not.” To this she said: “But doesn’t she teach that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?” I confirmed: “Teaches again and again.” She responded by saying, “Then she had to change.”

Any Christian who reads the works of Muslim authors will be surprised to find that the arguments put forward in them to refute the authenticity of the Bible texts are often extremely weak and unconvincing. This happens for one reason only - Muslims do not believe in the complete preservation of the Bible, not because they have found adequate evidence that changes were made to its text, but because they must deny its authenticity in order to support their conviction that The Qur'an is the Word of God. Two Books that conflict with each other cannot both be the Word of God. When Muslims discovered in the early centuries of Islamic history that the Bible clearly and definitively set forth basic Christian doctrines, such as the divinity of Jesus Christ and His atonement, they could no longer approach it objectively. Since then, they have striven to prove what is in fact nothing more than an assumption - the Bible must have changed! The main reason Muslims do not believe in the authenticity of the Bible is because they have no choice: they cannot believe the Bible if they must be faithful to the Koran.

It is important to know the evidence for the unchangeability of the biblical texts, especially the fact that there are authentic manuscripts that predate the birth of Islam by many centuries and prove that the Bible we hold in our hands today is the same Bible that the Jews and early Christians revered as their only Holy Scripture .

Three major manuscript copies of the Bible

There are still three major manuscript copies of the Bible in Greek (including the Septuagint (Old Testament) and the original text of the New Testament), predating the Koran by several centuries.

1. Alexandrian list. This volume, written in the 5th century AD. BC, contains the entire Bible with the exception of a few lost leaves from the New Testament (namely: Matt. 1:1–25:6, John 6:50–8:52 and 2 Cor. 4:13–12:6). It does not include anything that is not part of the modern Bible. The manuscript is kept in the British Museum in London.

2. Sinai list. This is a very ancient manuscript, dating back to the end of the 4th century. It contains the entire New Testament and a significant part of the Old Testament. For centuries it was kept in the St. Petersburg Imperial Library and was sold to the British government for one hundred thousand pounds. Currently also in the British Museum.

3. Vatican list. This is probably the oldest surviving complete manuscript copy of the Bible. It dates from the 4th century and is kept in the Vatican Library in Rome. The last part of the New Testament (Heb. 9:14 to the end of Revelation) is written in a different hand than the rest of the manuscript (probably the scribe who began copying the text for some reason was unable to complete the work).

These manuscripts convincingly prove that the only Scripture given to the Church at least two centuries before the birth of Muhammad is the Old and New Testaments known to us.

Other Evidence for the Authenticity of the Bible

There are many other pieces of evidence that prove the authenticity of the Bible, going back several centuries to the time of the birth of Islam. The following points should be highlighted in discussions with Muslims.

1. Masoretic texts. Ancient biblical manuscripts belong not only to Christians, but also to Jews, who revere the Old Testament as the only Scripture given to them. These are texts written in Hebrew, the original language of the Old Testament, and are at least a thousand years old. These are known as the Masoretic Texts.

2. Dead Sea Scrolls. First discovered in the caves of the Qumran desert near the Dead Sea in Israel, these scrolls contain many passages from the Old Testament in Hebrew and date back to the 2nd century BC. e. They include two copies of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, containing prophecies about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (see: Is. 53:1-12), about His virgin birth (see: Is. 7:14) and about His divinity ( see: Isa. 9:6–7).

3. Septuagint. The Septuagint is the name of the first translation into Greek of the Old Testament. It was copied in the 2nd century BC. e. and contains all the main prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, the statement that He is the Son of God (see: Ps. 2:7; 1 Chron. 17:11–14), and some details of His suffering and atoning death (see: Ps. 21, 68). The early Church made extensive use of the Septuagint.

4. Vulgate. In the 4th century AD e. The Roman Catholic Church translated the entire Bible into Latin, using the Septuagint and ancient Greek manuscript copies of the New Testament. This list is known as the Vulgate and contains all the Books of the Old and New Testaments as we know them. This translation has been approved as the standard text for the Roman Catholic Church.

5. Excerpts from the Greek text of the New Testament. There are many fragments of the original Greek text of the New Testament surviving from the 2nd century AD. e. All of them, collected together, constitute the content of the New Testament in the form that we know. It is very interesting to compare the abundance of this evidence with the texts of ancient Greek and Roman classical works, many of which were written no earlier than a thousand years after Christ. Truly, there is no other literary work of the same era that would have such a wealth of manuscript evidence as the Greek text of the New Testament.

Most importantly, and this should be emphasized when talking to Muslims, there is no source suggesting that the Bible misrepresents the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. All the apocryphal books rejected by the Church, at least in general terms, follow the same narrative line as the manuscripts of the New Testament. There is certainly no historical evidence to suggest that Jesus was in fact the prophet of Islam, as the Qur'an makes Him out to be.

Finally, it would be a good idea to ask Muslims to provide historical evidence to support their claim that the Bible we read is a modified Bible. What was it like originally? What was changed about it that made it the Book we have today? Who made these changes? When was this done? Ask your interlocutor to name the real people who he suspects corrupted the Bible, the time when this happened, the specific changes made to the original text of the Bible, and you will find that he is unable to do this because such evidence simply does not exist. Always remember that the vicious attack of Muslims is not based on the scientific evidence they have, but on assumptions. The Bible, in their opinion, had to change since it contradicts the Koran. Unfortunately, too often Muslims approach the Bible not with a desire to understand its teachings, but solely with the goal of finding errors in it that justify their prejudice against it.

John Gilchrist "God or Prophet?"

The Christian faith is built on the Bible, but many do not know who its author is or when it was published. To get answers to these questions, scientists have conducted a large number of studies. The dissemination of Holy Scripture in our century has reached enormous proportions; it is known that every second one book is printed in the world.

What is the Bible?

Christians call the collection of books that make up the Holy Scriptures the Bible. It is considered the word of the Lord that was given to people. Much research has been done over the years to understand who wrote the Bible and when, so it is believed that the revelation was given to different people and the recordings were made over many centuries. The Church recognizes the collection of books as inspired by God.

The Orthodox Bible in one volume contains 77 books with two or more pages. It is considered a kind of library of ancient religious, philosophical, historical and literary monuments. The Bible consists of two parts: the Old (50 books) and the New (27 books) Testament. There is also a conditional division of the Old Testament books into legal, historical and teaching.

Why was the Bible called the Bible?

There is one main theory proposed by biblical scholars that answers this question. The main reason for the appearance of the name “Bible” is associated with the port city of Byblos, which was located on the Mediterranean coast. Through him, Egyptian papyrus was supplied to Greece. After some time, this name in Greek began to mean a book. As a result, the book the Bible appeared and this name is used only for the Holy Scriptures, which is why the name is written with a capital letter.

The Bible and the Gospel - what's the difference?

Many believers do not have an accurate understanding of the main Holy Book for Christians.

1. The gospel is part of the Bible, which is included in the New Testament.
2. The Bible is an early scripture, but the text of the Gospel was written much later.
3. The text of the Gospel tells only about life on earth and the ascension to heaven of Jesus Christ. There is much more information provided in the Bible.
4. There are also differences in who wrote the Bible and the Gospel, since the authors of the main Holy book are unknown, but regarding the second work there is an assumption that its text was written by four evangelists: Matthew, John, Luke and Mark.
5. It is worth noting that the Gospel is written only in ancient Greek, and the texts of the Bible are presented in different languages.

Who is the author of the Bible?

For believers, the author of the Holy Book is the Lord, but experts can challenge this opinion, since it contains the Wisdom of Solomon, the book of Job and more. In this case, answering the question of who wrote the Bible, we can assume that there were many authors, and everyone made their own contribution to this work. There is an assumption that it was written by ordinary people who received divine inspiration, that is, they were only an instrument, holding a pencil over the book, and the Lord led their hands. When figuring out where the Bible came from, it is worth pointing out that the names of the people who wrote the text are unknown.

When was the Bible written?

There has been debate for a long time regarding when the most popular book in the whole world was written. Among the well-known statements with which many researchers agree are the following:

1. Many historians, answering the question regarding when the Bible appeared, point to VIII-VI century BC e.
2. A huge number of biblical scholars are confident that the book was finally formed in V-II centuries BC e.
3. Another common version of how old the Bible is indicates that the book was compiled and presented to believers around II-I century BC e.

The Bible describes many events, so we can come to the conclusion that the first books were written during the lives of Moses and Joshua. Then other editions and additions appeared, which shaped the Bible as it is known today. There are also critics who dispute the chronology of the writing of the book, believing that the presented text cannot be trusted, since it claims to be of divine origin.

What language is the Bible written in?

The majestic book of all times was written in ancient times and today it has been translated into more than 2.5 thousand languages. The number of Bible editions exceeded 5 million copies. It is worth noting that the current editions are later translations from the original languages. The history of the Bible indicates that it was written over many decades, so it contains texts in different languages. The Old Testament is largely presented in Hebrew, but there are also texts in Aramaic. The New Testament is presented almost entirely in ancient Greek.

Given the popularity of Holy Scripture, it will not surprise anyone that research was carried out and this revealed a lot of interesting information:

1. Jesus is mentioned most often in the Bible, with David in second place. Among women, Abraham's wife Sarah receives the laurels.
2. The smallest copy of the book was printed at the end of the 19th century using the photomechanical reduction method. The size was 1.9x1.6 cm, and the thickness was 1 cm. To make the text readable, a magnifying glass was inserted into the cover.
3. Facts about the Bible indicate that it contains approximately 3.5 million letters.
4. To read the Old Testament you need to spend 38 hours, and the New Testament will take 11 hours.
5. Many will be surprised by this fact, but according to statistics, the Bible is stolen more often than other books.
6. Most copies of the Holy Scriptures were made for export to China. Moreover, in North Korea, reading this book is punishable by death.
7. The Christian Bible is the most persecuted book. In all of history, there is no other work known against which laws were passed, for violation of which the death penalty was imposed.