New Testament with explanations. New Testament

It may seem to the modern reader that Matthew chose a very strange beginning for his Gospel, placing in the first chapter a long list of names through which the reader will have to wade. But for a Jew this was completely natural and, from his point of view, this was the most correct way to begin the story of a person’s life.

The Jews were extremely interested in genealogies. Matthew calls it genealogy book - byblos geneseus- Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament we often find genealogies of famous people ( Life 5.1; 10.1; 11.10; 11.27). When the great Jewish historian Josephus wrote his biography, he began it with a genealogy that he said he found in the archives.

The interest in genealogies was explained by the fact that the Jews attached great importance to the purity of their origin. A person whose blood contained the slightest admixture of foreign blood was deprived of the right to be called a Jew and a member of God’s chosen people. So, for example, the priest had to present a complete list of his genealogy from Aaron himself, without any omissions, and if he got married, then his wife had to present her genealogy back at least five generations back. When Ezra made a change in worship after the return of Israel from exile and re-established the priesthood, the sons of Habaiah, the sons of Hakkoz and the sons of Barzillai were excluded from the priesthood and were called unclean, because “they sought their record of genealogy and it was not found” ( Ezra 2.62).

Genealogical archives were kept in the Sanhedrin. Pure-blooded Jews always despised King Herod the Great because he was half Edomite.

This passage in Matthew may seem uninteresting, but it was extremely important to the Jews that Jesus' lineage could be traced back to Abraham.

In addition, it should be noted that this pedigree is very carefully compiled into three groups of fourteen people each. This arrangement is called mnemonics, that is, arranged in such a way as to make it easier to remember. We must always remember that the Gospels were written hundreds of years before printed books appeared, and only a few people could have copies of them, and therefore, in order to own them, they had to be memorized. And so the pedigree is compiled so that it is easy to remember. It was intended to be proof that Jesus was the Son of David and was designed to be easy to carry in the mind.

THREE STAGES (Matthew 1:1-17 continued)

The very location of the genealogy is very symbolic for all human life. The genealogy is divided into three parts, each corresponding to one of the great stages in the history of Israel.

The first part covers the history before King David. David united Israel into a people and made Israel a strong power to be reckoned with in the world. The first part covers the history of Israel until the rise of its greatest king.

The second part covers the period before the Babylonian captivity. This part talks about the shame of the people, about their tragedy and misfortune.

The third part covers history before Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ freed people from slavery, saved them from grief, and in Him tragedy turned into victory.

These three parts symbolize three stages in the spiritual history of mankind.

1 . Man was born for greatness. “God created man in His own image and likeness, in the image of God He created him” ( Life 1.27). God said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness” ( Life 1.26). Man was created in the image of God. Man was destined to be in friendship with God. He was created to be akin to God. As the great Roman thinker Cicero saw it: “The differences between man and God come down only to time.” Man was essentially born to be a king.

2 . Man has lost his greatness. Instead of being a servant of God, man became a slave of sin. As the English writer G.K. Chesterton: “What is true about man, however, is that he is not at all what he was meant to become.” Man has used his given free will to openly defy and disobey God rather than enter into friendship and fellowship with Him. Left to his own devices, man frustrated God's plan in His creation.

3 . Man can regain his greatness. Even after this, God did not leave man to the mercy of fate and his vices. God did not allow man to destroy himself with his recklessness, did not allow it all to end in tragedy. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into this world so that He could save man from the quagmire of sin in which he was mired, and free him from the chains of sin with which he had bound himself, so that through Him man could find the friendship he had lost with God.

In the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Matthew shows us the royal greatness found, the tragedy of freedom lost, and the glory of freedom regained. And this, by the grace of God, is the story of humanity and of every person.

REALIZING THE HUMAN DREAM (Matthew 1:1-17 continued)

This passage highlights two things about Jesus.

1 . It is emphasized here that Jesus is the Son of David; The genealogy was compiled mainly to prove this.

Peter emphasizes this in the first recorded sermon of the Christian Church ( Acts 2, 29-36). Paul speaks of Jesus Christ, born of the seed of David according to the flesh ( Rome. 1.3). The author of the Pastoral Epistles urges people to remember Jesus Christ of the seed of David, who rose from the dead ( 2 Tim. 2.8). The author of the revelation hears the Risen Christ say: “I am the root and descendant of David” ( Rev. 22.16).

This is how Jesus is addressed repeatedly in the gospel story. After the healing of the demon-possessed blind and dumb, the people said: “Is this the Christ, the Son of David?” ( Matthew 12.23). A woman from Tire and Sidon, who sought Jesus’ help for her daughter, turns to Him: “Son of David!” ( Matthew 15.22). The blind men shouted: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David!” ( Matthew 20,30,31). And, like the Son of David, the crowd greets Jesus as he enters Jerusalem for the last time ( Mat 21.9.15).

It is very significant that Jesus was so welcomed by the crowd. The Jews were expecting something unusual; they never forgot and could never forget that they were God's chosen people. Although their entire history was a long chain of defeats and misfortunes, although they were a forced conquered people, they never forgot the plans of their destiny. And the common people dreamed that a descendant of King David would come to this world and lead them to glory, which they believed was rightfully theirs.

In other words, Jesus was the answer to the people's dream. People, however, see only answers to their dreams of power, wealth, material abundance and the fulfillment of their cherished ambitions. But if man's dreams of peace and beauty, greatness and satisfaction are ever destined to come true, then they can only find fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ and the life He offers people is the answer to people's dreams. There is a passage in the story of Joseph that goes far beyond the scope of the story itself. Along with Joseph in prison were also the chief court cupbearer and the chief court baker. They saw dreams that disturbed them, and they cried out in horror: “We have seen dreams, but there is no one to interpret them” (Gen. 40:8). Just because a person is a person, he is always haunted by a dream, and its fulfillment lies in Jesus Christ.

2 . This passage emphasizes that Jesus is the fulfillment of all prophecies: in Him the message of the prophets was fulfilled. Today we do not pay much attention to prophecy and, for the most part, do not want to look for sayings in the Old Testament that were fulfilled in the New Testament. But there is a great and eternal truth in the prophecy: this universe has a purpose and God's purpose for it, and God wants to carry out His specific purposes in it.

One play deals with a time of terrible famine in Ireland in the nineteenth century. Having found nothing better and knowing no other solution, the government sent people to dig roads that were not needed in a completely unknown direction. One of the heroes of the play, Michael, having learned about this, left his job and, returning home, told his father: “They are making a road leading to nowhere.”

A person who believes in prophecy would never say such a thing. History cannot be a road leading to nowhere. We may view prophecy differently than our ancestors, but behind prophecy is the enduring fact that life and peace are not a road to nowhere, but a path to God's purpose.

NOT THE RIGHTEOUS BUT SINNERS (Matthew 1:1-17 continued)

The most striking thing about the genealogy is the names of the women. In general, female names are extremely rare in Jewish genealogies. The woman had no legal rights; they looked at her not as a person, but as a thing; she was only the property of her father or husband, and they could do with her as they pleased. In his daily morning prayer, the Jew thanked God for not making him a pagan, a slave, or a woman. In general, the very existence of these names in the pedigree is an extremely surprising and unusual phenomenon.

But if you look at these women - who they were and what they did - you have to be even more surprised. Rahab, or Rahab as she is called in the Old Testament, was a harlot from Jericho ( Iis. N. 2.1-7). Ruth was not even a Jew, but a Moabite ( Ruf. 1.4), and doesn’t it say in the law: “An Ammonite and a Moabite cannot enter into the congregation of the Lord, and the tenth generation of them cannot enter into the congregation of the Lord forever” ( Deut. 23.3). Ruth was from a hostile and hateful people. Tamar was a skilled seductress Life 38). Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, was most cruelly taken away by David from Uriah, her husband ( 2 Kings 11 and 12). If Matthew had searched the Old Testament for improbable candidates, he could not have found four more impossible ancestors for Jesus Christ. But, of course, there is also something very remarkable about this. Here, at the very beginning, Matthew shows us in symbols the essence of the Gospel of God in Jesus Christ, because here he shows how the barriers are falling.

1 . The barrier between Jew and Gentile has disappeared. Rahab, a woman from Jericho, and Ruth, a Moabite woman, found a place in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. This already reflects the truth that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. The universalism of the Gospel and the love of God is already visible here.

2 . Barriers between women and men have disappeared. There were no female names in the normal genealogy, but there were female names in the genealogy of Jesus. The old contempt has passed; men and women are equally dear to God and equally important to His purposes.

3 . Barriers between saints and sinners have disappeared. God can use for His purposes and fit into His plan even one who has sinned a lot. “I have not come,” says Jesus, “to call the righteous, but sinners” ( Matthew 9.13).

Already here, at the very beginning of the Gospel, there are indications of the all-encompassing love of God. God may find His servants among those from whom respected orthodox Jews would shudder.

THE ENTRY OF THE SAVIOR INTO THE WORLD (Matthew 1:18-25)

Such relationships can confuse us. Firstly, it talks about engagement Mary, then about what Joseph wanted secretly let go her, and then she's named wife his. But this relationship reflects the usual Jewish marriage relationship and procedure, which consisted of several stages.

1 . Firstly, matchmaking. It was often committed in childhood; this was done by parents or professional matchmakers and matchmakers, and very often the future spouses did not even see each other. Marriage was considered too serious a matter to be left to the impulse of human hearts.

2 . Secondly, engagement. Engagement can be called a confirmation of the matchmaking concluded between the couple earlier. At this moment, the matchmaking could be interrupted at the request of the girl. If the engagement took place, it lasted one year, during which the couple was known to everyone as husband and wife, although without marriage rights. The only way to end the relationship was through divorce. In Jewish law you can often find a phrase that seems strange to us: a girl whose fiancé died during this time was called a “virgin widow.” Joseph and Mary were betrothed, and if Joseph wanted to end the engagement, he could only do so by granting Mary a divorce.

3 . And the third stage - marriage, after a year of engagement.

If we recall Jewish marriage customs, it becomes clear that this passage describes the most typical and normal relationship.

Thus, before the marriage, Joseph was told that the Virgin Mary would give birth to a Child by the Holy Spirit, who was to be named Jesus. Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name Yeshua, and Yeshua means " Yahweh will save". Even the psalmist David exclaimed: “He will deliver Israel from all their iniquities" ( Ps. 129.8). Joseph was also told that the Child would grow up to be a Savior who would save God's people from their sins. Jesus was born as a Savior rather than a King. He came into this world not for His own sake, but for the sake of people and for the sake of our salvation.

BORN OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (Matthew 1:18-25 continued)

This passage tells us that Jesus will be born of the Holy Spirit in the virgin birth. The fact of the virgin birth is difficult for us to understand. There are many theories trying to figure out the literal physical meaning of this phenomenon. We want to understand what is most important for us in this truth.

When we read this passage with fresh eyes, we see that it emphasizes not so much the fact that a virgin gave birth to Jesus, but rather that the birth of Jesus is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit. “It turned out that She (Virgin Mary) was pregnant with the Holy Spirit.” "That which is born in her is of the Holy Spirit." What then does it mean to say that the Holy Spirit took a special part in the birth of Jesus?

According to the Jewish worldview, the Holy Spirit had certain functions. We cannot put all of this into this passage. Christian ideas of the Holy Spirit, since Joseph could not yet know anything about it, and therefore we must interpret it in the light Jewish the idea of ​​the Holy Spirit, for Joseph would have put that idea into the passage because it was the only one he knew.

1 . According to the Jewish worldview The Holy Spirit brought God's truth to people. The Holy Spirit taught the prophets what they needed to say; The Holy Spirit taught God's people what they should do; Throughout all centuries and generations, the Holy Spirit has brought God's truth to people. And therefore Jesus is the One who brings God's truth to people.

Let's put it another way. Jesus alone can tell us what God is like and what God would like us to be. Only in Jesus do we see what God is like and what man should be like. Until Jesus came, people had only vague and unclear, and often completely wrong, ideas about God. They could, at best, guess and go by feel; and Jesus could say: “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” ( John 14.9). In Jesus, as nowhere else in the world, we see love, compassion, mercy, a seeking heart and the purity of God. With the coming of Jesus, the time of guessing ended and the time of certainty came. Before Jesus came, people did not know at all what virtue was. Only in Jesus do we see what true virtue, true maturity, true obedience to the will of God is. Jesus came to tell us the truth about God and the truth about ourselves.

2 . The Jews believed that the Holy Spirit not only brought the truth of God to people, but also gives them the ability to recognize this truth when they see it. In this way, Jesus opens people's eyes to the truth. People are blinded by their own ignorance. Their prejudices lead them astray; their eyes and minds are darkened by their sins and passions. Jesus can open our eyes so that we can see the truth. In one of the novels of the English writer William Locke there is an image of a rich woman who spent half her life visiting the sights and art galleries of the world. Eventually, she was tired; Nothing could surprise or interest her anymore. But one day she meets a man who has few material goods of this world, but who truly knows and loves beauty. They start traveling together and everything changes for this woman. “I never knew what things looked like until you showed me how to look at them,” she told him.

Life becomes completely different when Jesus teaches us how to look at things. When Jesus comes into our hearts, He opens our eyes to see the world and things correctly.

CREATION AND RE-CREATION (Matthew 1:18-25 continued)

3 . In a special way the Jews linked the Holy Spirit to creation. God created the world by His Spirit. At the very beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters and out of chaos came peace ( Life 1.2). “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,” said the psalmist, “and by the breath of his mouth were all their hosts” ( Ps. 32.6). (As in Hebrew ruach, and in Greek pneuma, mean simultaneously and spirit And breath). "If you send your spirit, they will be created" ( Ps. 103.30). “The Spirit of God created me,” says Job, “and the breath of the Almighty gave me life” ( Job. 33.4).

Spirit is the Creator of the world and the Giver of life. Thus, in Jesus Christ the creative, life-giving power of God came into the world. The power that brought order to the primordial chaos has now come to us to bring order to our disordered lives. The power that breathed life into that which had no life came to breathe life into our weakness and our vanity. It can be said this way: we are not truly alive until Jesus comes into our lives.

4 . In particular, the Jews associated the Spirit not with creation and creation, but with recreation. Ezekiel has a grim picture of a field full of bones. He tells how these bones came to life, and then he hears the voice of God saying: “And I will put My Spirit in you, and you will live” ( Ezek. 37.1-14). The rabbis had this saying: “God said to Israel: ‘In this world My Spirit has given you wisdom, but in the hereafter My Spirit will give you life again.’ The Spirit of God can awaken to life people who are lost in sin and deafness.

Thus, through Jesus Christ, the power to recreate life came into this world. Jesus can revive again a soul lost in sin; He can revive dead ideals; He can once again give strength to the fallen to strive for virtue. It can renew life when people have lost everything that life means.

So, this chapter does not only say that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. The essence of Matthew's account is that the Spirit of God was more involved in the birth of Jesus than ever before in the world. The Spirit brings the truth of God to the people; The Spirit enables men to know the truth when they see it; The spirit is the mediator in the creation of the world; only the Spirit can revive the human soul when it has lost the life it should have had.

Jesus gives us the ability to see what God is like and what man should be; Jesus opens the mind to understanding so that we can see God's truth for us; Jesus is the creative power that came to people; Jesus is a creative force capable of freeing human souls from sinful death.

One of the most popular interpretations of the New Testament, which uses rich cultural and historical material.

Barclay's Commentary - New Testament - Revised

11/12/11 - second version of the corrected module

In the standard module (part of the "Quote from the Bible" program installer) many obvious spelling and grammatical errors have been corrected; The text is formatted to fit the width of the page.

This module will replace the standard module in the folder Commentaries program "Quote from the Bible"

SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are usually called the Synoptic Gospels. Synoptic comes from two Greek words that mean to see together. Therefore, the above-mentioned Gospels received this name because they describe the same events in the life of Jesus. In each of them, however, there are some additions, or something is omitted, but, in general, they are based on the same material, and this material is also arranged in the same way. Therefore, they can be written in parallel columns and compared with each other.

After this, it becomes very obvious that they are very close to each other. If, for example, we compare the story of the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:12-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 5:17-26), then this is the same story, told in almost the same words.

Or take, for example, another story about the healing of a paralytic (Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26). These three stories are so similar to each other that even the introductory words, “said to the paralytic,” appear in all three stories in the same form in the same place. The correspondence between all three Gospels is so close that one must either conclude that all three took material from the same source, or two were based on a third.

THE FIRST GOSPEL

Examining the matter more carefully, one can imagine that the Gospel of Mark was written first, and the other two - the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke - are based on it.

The Gospel of Mark can be divided into 105 passages, of which 93 are found in the Gospel of Matthew and 81 in the Gospel of Luke. Only four of the 105 passages in the Gospel of Mark are not found in either the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of Luke. There are 661 verses in the Gospel of Mark, 1068 verses in the Gospel of Matthew, and 1149 in the Gospel of Luke. There are no less than 606 verses from Mark in the Gospel of Matthew, and 320 in the Gospel of Luke. Of the 55 verses in the Gospel of Mark, which not reproduced in Matthew, 31 yet reproduced in Luke; thus, only 24 verses from Mark are not reproduced in either Matthew or Luke.

But not only the meaning of the verses is conveyed: Matthew uses 51%, and Luke uses 53% of the words of the Gospel of Mark. Both Matthew and Luke follow, as a rule, the arrangement of material and events adopted in the Gospel of Mark. Sometimes Matthew or Luke differ from the Gospel of Mark, but it is never the case that they both differ from it. One of them always follows the order that Mark follows.

REVISION OF THE GOSPEL OF MARK

Due to the fact that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are much larger in volume than the Gospel of Mark, one might think that the Gospel of Mark is a brief transcription of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But one fact indicates that the Gospel of Mark is the earliest of them all: so to speak, the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke improve the Gospel of Mark. Let's take a few examples.

Here are three descriptions of the same event:

Map. 1:34: "And He healed many that were afflicted with various diseases; He cast out many demons."

Mat. 8:16: "He cast out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick."

Onion. 4:40: "He laid his hands on each of them and healed

Or let's take another example:

Map. 3:10: “For He healed many.”

Mat. 12:15: “He healed them all.”

Onion. 6:19: "... power came from Him and healed everyone."

Approximately the same change is noted in the description of Jesus' visit to Nazareth. Let's compare this description in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark:

Map. 6.5.6: “And he could not perform any miracle there... and he marveled at their unbelief.”

Mat. 13:58: “And he did not perform many miracles there because of their unbelief.”

The writer of Matthew does not have the heart to say that Jesus could not perform miracles, so he changes the phrase. Sometimes the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke leave out little hints from the Gospel of Mark that may somehow detract from the greatness of Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke omit three remarks found in the Gospel of Mark:

Map. 3:5: “And he looked upon them with anger, grieving because of the hardness of their hearts...”

Map. 3:21: “And when his neighbors heard him, they went to take him, for they said that he had lost his temper.”

Map. 10:14: "Jesus was indignant..."

All this clearly shows that the Gospel of Mark was written earlier than the others. It gives a simple, lively and direct account, and the authors of Matthew and Luke were already beginning to be influenced by dogmatic and theological considerations, and therefore they chose their words more carefully.

TEACHINGS OF JESUS

We have already seen that the Gospel of Matthew has 1068 verses and the Gospel of Luke 1149 verses, and that 582 of these are repetitions of verses from the Gospel of Mark. This means that there is much more material in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke than in the Gospel of Mark. A study of this material shows that more than 200 verses from it are almost identical among the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; so, for example, such passages as Luke. 6,41.42 and Mat. 7.3.5; Onion. 10,21.22 and Mat. 11.25-27; Onion. 3.7-9 and Mat. 3, 7-10 are almost exactly the same. But here's where we see the difference: the material that the authors of Matthew and Luke took from the Gospel of Mark deals almost exclusively with events in the life of Jesus, and these additional 200 verses shared by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke deal with something other than that. what Jesus did, not what He said. It is quite obvious that in this part the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke drew information from the same source - from the book of sayings of Jesus.

This book no longer exists, but theologians called it KB, which means Quelle, in German - source. This book must have been extremely important in those days because it was the first textbook on the teachings of Jesus.

Most often we see Jesus surrounded by ordinary people, but here we see Him meeting with one of the representatives of the aristocracy of Jerusalem. We know something about Nicodemus.

1. Nicodemus was apparently rich. When Jesus was taken down from the cross for burial, Nicodemus brought “a composition of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred liters” for embalming His body. (John 19:39), and only a rich man could buy this.

2. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were in many ways the best people in the country. Their number never exceeded 6 thousand and they were known as khaburakh or brotherhood. They entered into this brotherhood by swearing in the presence of three witnesses that they would throughout their lives observe the smallest details of the law of the scribes.

What did that mean? For the Jews, the law - the first five books of the Old Testament - was the holiest thing in the world; they believed that it was the true word of God; adding one word to something or taking one word away from it was considered a mortal sin. Well, if the law is the perfect and final word of God, then it should clearly and accurately say what a person must know in order to lead a virtuous life. If there was something missing, then, in their opinion, it could be deduced from what was said. The law, as it existed, were comprehensive, noble and broadly stated principles which each man had to learn for himself. But in later times this was no longer enough for the Jews. They said: "The law is perfect, it contains everything that is needed to lead a virtuous life; and therefore the law must have rules governing any situation in life at any time for any person." And they began to develop from these great principles of law countless rules and regulations governing every conceivable situation in life. In other words, they converted the law of great general principles into a body of regulations and norms.

Their work is best seen in the area of ​​Sabbath regulations. The Bible simply states that the Jews are to keep the Sabbath and not do any work on that day for themselves, their servants, or their animals. In later times, generation after generation of dissenting Jews spent countless hours trying to establish what work was and what was not work, i.e., what could and could not be done on the Sabbath. Mishna - it is a written, codified law. In it, the section concerning the Sabbath occupies no more and no less than twenty-four chapters. Talmud - these are clarifications and comments on Mishneh and in Jerusalem Talmud the section concerning the explanations and interpretations of the Sabbath law occupies sixty-four and a half columns, and in the Babylonian Talmud - one hundred fifty-six large format pages. There is evidence of a rabbi who spent two and a half years studying one of these twenty-four chapters Mishnas.

This is what it all looked like. Tying a knot on the Sabbath was considered work; but now it was necessary to determine what a knot was. “The following are the knots by which a person breaks the law: the camel driver’s knot and the seaman’s knot. If a person breaks the law by tying a knot, then he breaks it by untying it.” Knots that could be tied and untied with one hand were not against the law. Further, “a woman may tie a knot in her shirt or dress, the band of her hat and her belt, the laces of her shoes or sandals, a skin of wine or oil.” Well, now let's see how all this was applied in practice. Suppose a man had to lower a bucket into a well on the Sabbath to draw water: he could not tie a knot in it, because tying a knot in a rope on the Sabbath was against the law, but he could tie it to a woman's belt and lower the bucket into the well. This kind of thing was a matter of life and death for the scribes and Pharisees; this was religion for them; in their minds this meant serving and pleasing God. Or let's take walking on Saturday. IN Ref. 16.29 It is said: “Everyone shall remain in his own place; no one shall go out from his place on the seventh day.” And therefore Saturday's journey was limited to a distance of 900-1000 meters. But if a rope was stretched at the end of the street, the whole street became one house, and a person could walk another 900-1000 meters beyond the end of the street. Or, if a person left enough food in a certain place on Friday evening, then this place became his home and he could already travel these 1000 meters from that place. Rules, norms and clauses were collected in hundreds and thousands.

But how things stood with carrying weights. IN Jer. 17.21-24 It is said: “Take care of your souls and do not carry a burden on the Sabbath day.” And therefore it was necessary to define burden and heaviness. A burden was defined as “food equivalent to a dried fig; wine, enough to mix in a glass; milk, enough for one sip; honey, enough to lubricate a wound; oil, enough to anoint a small area of ​​the body; enough water to to make eye ointment" and so on and so forth. Then it was necessary to establish whether a woman could wear a brooch on the Sabbath, and a man could wear a wooden leg and a denture, or was this equivalent to carrying a heavy object? Is it possible to lift a chair or at least a child? And so on and so forth.

These standards were developed lawyers, A Pharisees dedicated their lives to their observance. Regardless, it is clear that a person had to take everything very seriously if he intended to keep all these thousands of rules, and that is exactly what the Pharisees did. Word Pharisees Means separated, and the Pharisees were people who separated themselves from ordinary life in order to observe every rule of the law of the scribes.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and therefore it is extremely surprising that a man who looked at virtue from such a point of view and devoted his life to such scrupulous fulfillment of the law in the conviction that he thereby pleased God, even wanted to talk to Jesus.

3. Nicodemus was one of the leaders of the Jews; in the original Greek it is archon In other words, he was a member of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was the supreme court of the Jews, consisting of seventy members. It is clear that during the period of Roman rule his rights were much limited; but he did not lose them completely. In particular, the Sanhedrin decided judicial issues concerning religion and any Jew, no matter where he lived. Among other things, his duties included monitoring those suspected of being false prophets and taking appropriate action. And so again it is surprising that Nicodemus came to Jesus.

4. It may well be that Nicodemus belonged to a noble Jerusalem family. So, for example, in 63 BC, when the Jews were at war with Rome, the Jewish leader Aristobulus sent a certain Nicodemus as his ambassador to the Roman commander Pompey the Great. Much later, in the terrible last days of the siege of Jerusalem, negotiations on the surrender of the remnants of the garrison were led by a certain Gorion, the son of either Nicodemus or Nicomedes. It is quite possible that both of them belonged to the family of this same Nicodemus, and that it was one of the noblest families of Jerusalem. In this case, it seems almost incomprehensible that this Jewish aristocrat came to the homeless prophet, a former carpenter from Nazareth, to talk about his soul.

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. There could be two reasons for this.

1. This could be a sign of caution. It is quite possible that Nicodemus did not want to show himself openly by coming to Jesus during the day. You can't blame him for this. It is amazing that such a person came to Jesus at all. It was much better to come at night than not to come at all. It is a miracle of grace that Nicodemus overcame his prejudices, his upbringing, and his views on life and was able to come to Jesus.

2. But there could be another reason. The rabbis argued that night, when there are no distractions, is the best time to study the law. Jesus was surrounded by crowds of people all day long. It is quite possible that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night precisely because he wanted to spend time with Jesus completely alone, so that no one would disturb them.

Nicodemus was apparently confused. He had everything, but he was missing something in his life. And so he came to talk to Jesus in order to find light in the darkness of the night.

THE MAN WHO CAME BY NIGHT (John 3:1-6 continued)

In recounting Jesus' conversations with the people who came to Him with questions, John follows a pattern that we can clearly see here. A man asks something (3,2), Jesus' answer is difficult to understand (3,3), the person understands the answer incorrectly (3,4), the following answer is even less clear to the questioner (3,5). And then follows a conversation and clarification. The evangelist uses this method so that we can see how people who come to Jesus with questions are trying to get to the truth themselves, and so that we can do the same.

When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he said that everyone was amazed at the signs and wonders Jesus was performing. Jesus responded that it is not signs and wonders that are important, but a change in the inner spiritual life that could be called a new birth.

When Jesus spoke about born again Nicodemus did not understand Him. This misunderstanding is due to the fact that the Greek word apophene, translated in the Russian Bible as over has three different meanings. 1. It can make a difference thoroughly, completely, radically. 2. It can mean again, In terms of a second time. 3. It can make a difference over, those. O t God. In Russian it is impossible to convey this in one word, but the meaning is fully conveyed by the expression be born again. To be born again is to be changed so thoroughly that it amounts to a new birth; this means that something happened to the soul that can be characterized as a complete rebirth and this does not depend on human achievements, because all this is from the grace and power of God.

When reading the passage of John, it seems that Nicodemus understood the word apophene only in the second meaning and, moreover, quite literally. How, he asked, can a person another time enter his mother’s womb and be born when he is already old? But Nicodemus’ answer sounds something different: there was a great unsatisfied desire in his heart. In an immeasurably acute anguish, he seemed to say: “You speak of being born again, You speak of the need for a radical and complete change. I know that this necessary, but, in my ministry, this impossible. This is what I would like most, but You are telling me, an adult, to enter my mother’s womb and be born again." Nicodemus doubts not desirability this change (he understood its necessity very well), he doubted its feasibility. Nicodemus was faced with the eternal problem of a person who wants to change, but cannot do it.

Expression to be born again, to be reborn runs through the entire New Testament. Peter speaks of God's great mercy, who regenerated us (1 Pet. 1:3); O revival not from corruptible seed (1 Pet. 1:22-23). James says that God gave birth us with the word of truth (James 1:18). The Epistle to Titus talks about bath of rebirth and renewal (Titus 3:5). Sometimes this is also spoken of as death, followed by revival or update. Paul speaks of Christians as dying with Christ and then being raised to new life (Rom. 6:1-11). He speaks of those who have recently joined the Christian faith as babies in Christ (1 Cor. 3:1.2)."Whoever is in Christ new creature; the ancient has passed away, now everything is new" (2 Cor. 5:17). In Christ Jesus the only thing that matters is the new creation (Gal. 6:15). New person is created according to God in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24). A person who begins to learn the Christian faith is an infant (Heb. 5:12-14). This idea appears all the time in the New Testament. rebirth, re-creation.

But this idea was not at all unfamiliar to people who heard it in New Testament times. The Jews knew well what rebirth was. When a person from another faith converted to Judaism - and this was accompanied by prayer, sacrifice and baptism - he was looked upon as reborn.“A proselyte,” the rabbis said, “who has accepted Judaism is like a newborn child.” The change in the convert seemed so radical that the sins he had committed before were considered to have been dealt with once and for all, because in the minds of the Jews he was now a different person. Theoretically, it was even argued that such a person could marry his mother or sister, because he had become a completely new person and all old ties had been destroyed and destroyed. The Jews were well aware of the idea of ​​rebirth.

The Greeks also knew this idea, and also very well. At this time, the most widespread religion in Greece was the Mysteries. The mysteries were based on the life story of some suffering god, who therefore died and was resurrected. This story played out as a mystery of passions and suffering. The new communicant first underwent a long course of preparation, instruction, asceticism and fasting. After this, the drama was enacted with magnificent music and amazing ritual, incense and various other means affecting the senses. As the drama unfolded, the newly communicant had to become one with God, and in such a way as to go through the whole path of the sufferings of this god and participate in his triumph and partake of his heavenly life. These mystery religions offered man a kind of mystical union with some god. Upon achieving this unity, the newly initiated one became, in the language of these mysteries second born. At the heart of the mysteries of the god Hermes was the fundamental belief that “there can be no salvation without rebirth.” The converted Roman writer Apuleius said that he "passed through a voluntary death" and that he had thus reached the day of his "spiritual birth" and was "as it were reborn." Many of these mystical conversions took place at midnight, when the day dies and a new day begins. Among the Phrygians, after the conversion procedure, the convert was fed milk like a newborn.

The ancient world, therefore, knew all about rebirth and renewal. He craved it and looked for it everywhere. The moment Christianity brought the message of resurrection and rebirth to the world, the whole world was expecting it.

Well, what does this revival mean for us? In the New Testament, and especially in the fourth Gospel, there are four closely related ideas: the idea of ​​regeneration; the idea of ​​the Kingdom of Heaven, into which a person cannot enter unless born again; the idea of ​​the children of God and the idea of ​​eternal life. This idea of ​​regeneration is not something specific to the fourth gospel. In the Gospel of Matthew we see the same great truth stated more simply and more vividly: “Unless you are converted and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3). There is a general idea behind these ideas.

BORN AGAIN (John 3:1-6 continued)

Let's start with Kingdom of Heaven. What does it mean? We can get the best definition from the Lord's Prayer. There are two pleas there:

“Thy kingdom come;

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

It is typical of the Jewish style to say the same thing twice, with the second statement explaining and strengthening the first. Most of the Psalms can serve as examples of what is known as parallelism:

"The Lord of hosts is with us,

The God of Jacob is our intercessor" (Ps. 46:8).

"For I acknowledge my iniquities,

And my sin is always before me" (Ps. 50.5).

"He makes me lie down in green pastures

And he leads me to still waters" (Ps. 23:2).

Let us apply this principle to these two prayers in the Lord's Prayer. The second prayer explains and strengthens the first, then we get this definition: The Kingdom of Heaven is a society in which the will of God is fulfilled just as perfectly on earth as in heaven. Consequently, to be in the Kingdom of God means to lead a way of life in which we have voluntarily subordinated everything to the will of God, that is, we have reached a stage when we completely and completely accept the will of God.

Now let's get to the idea children of God. Being a child of God is a huge privilege. Those who believe are given the opportunity and ability to become children of God (John 1:12). The main meaning in the relationship between children and their parents is obedience."Whoever has My commandments and observes them, he loves me" (John 14:21). The essence of filial relations is love, and the essence of love is obedience. We cannot seriously claim to love a person if we do something that hurts his heart and causes him pain. Filial relationship is a privilege, but it becomes effective only when we bring absolute obedience to God. Thus, being a child of God and being in the Kingdom of God are one and the same. Both a child of God and a citizen of the Kingdom of God are people who have completely and voluntarily accepted the will of God.

Now let's get to the idea eternal life. It is much better to talk about eternal life than about eternal life: the basic idea of ​​eternal life is not only the idea of ​​infinite duration. It is quite obvious that a life that lasts forever can just as easily be hell as heaven. Behind eternal life is the idea of ​​a certain quality. What is it like? Only One can truly be defined by this adjective eternal (aponios) and this One is God. God lives eternal life. Eternal life is the life of God. To enter eternal life means to gain the life that God Himself lives; it is the life of God, that is, the life of God. It means to be lifted above purely human, transitory things into that joy and peace that belongs only to God. It is quite obvious that a person can enter into this friendly relationship with God only when he brings to Him that love, that reverence, that devotion, that obedience, which will actually bring him into friendly relationship with God.

Here, then, we have before us three great related concepts—entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, filial relations with God, and eternal life; all of them directly depend on and are a consequence of perfect obedience to the will of God. And here they are united by an idea rebirth, rebirth. It is what ties all three of these concepts together. It is quite obvious that in our present state and in our own strength we cannot bring this perfect obedience to God; only when the grace of God enters into us and takes possession of us and changes us, can we bring to Him that reverence and that devotion that we should show Him. We are regenerated and born again through Jesus Christ and when He takes possession of our hearts and our lives, that change comes.

When this happens, we are born from water and Spirit. There are two thoughts in this. Water - symbol of purification. When Jesus takes possession of our lives, when we love Him with all our hearts, the sins of the past are forgiven and forgotten. Spirit - symbol strength. When Jesus takes possession of our lives, not only are our sins forgiven and forgotten. If that were all, we could continue to commit the same sins, but a power comes into our lives that gives us the opportunity to be what we could never become on our own, and do what we could never do on our own. would do. Water and Spirit symbolize the cleansing and strengthening power of Christ, which erases the past and gives victory to the future.

Finally, this passage sets forth a great law. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Man is himself flesh, and his power is limited to what flesh can do. By himself, he can only feel failure and emptiness: we know this very well - this is a well-known fact from the experience of mankind. And the very essence of the Spirit is power and life, which are higher than human power and life. When the Spirit takes possession of us, the unsuccessful life of human nature becomes the victorious life of God.

To be born again means to change so much that it is comparable only to rebirth and re-creation. Change comes when we love Jesus and let Him into our hearts. Then we are forgiven for the past and equipped with the Spirit for the future and can truly accept the will of God. Then we become citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and children of God, we enter into eternal life, which is the true life of God.

THE DUTY TO KNOW AND THE RIGHT TO SPEAK (John 3:7-13)

There are two types of misunderstanding. Misunderstanding of a person who has not yet reached the appropriate level of knowledge and experience necessary to understand the truth. When a person is at this level, we have to make a lot of effort and explain everything to him so that he can absorb the knowledge that is offered to him. But there is also the misunderstanding of a person who does not want to understand: this inability to see and understand is the result of an unwillingness to see. A person can deliberately close his eyes and mind to truths that he does not want to accept.

That's what Nicodemus was. The doctrine of being born again from God should not have been something unusual for him. The Prophet Ezekiel, for example, repeatedly spoke about a new heart that needs to be created in man. “Cast away all your sins which you have committed, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit; why should you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek. 18:31).“And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you.” (Ezek. 36:26). Nicodemus was an expert in the Scriptures, and the prophets repeatedly spoke of exactly what Jesus was now talking about. A person who does not want to be born again will willfully not understand what it means to be born again, he will willfully close his eyes, his mind and his heart from the influence of the power that can change him. Ultimately, the problem for most of us is that when Jesus Christ approaches us with an offer to change and revive us, we most often say: “No, thank you: I am perfectly happy with myself and I don’t need any changes.”

Jesus' words forced Nicodemus to change his arguments. He said, "This rebirth that You speak of may be possible, but I don't know what it would look like." Jesus' response to Nicodemus's objection, and its meaning, depend on the fact that the word He used pneuma, spirit, It also has a second meaning - wind; also a Hebrew word ruach has the meaning spirit And wind. Thus, Jesus seemed to say to Nicodemus: “You can hear, see and feel wind (pneuma), But you don’t know where or where it’s blowing; you may not understand why the wind blows, but you see what it does; you may not know where the gust of wind came from, but you see the fallen grain and uprooted trees left behind. In connection with the wind you understand a lot, for you clearly see its action." "With Spirit (pneuma), - Jesus continues, “it’s the same thing.” You cannot know how the Spirit works, but you can see His work in people's lives."

Jesus says, "We are not discussing a theoretical issue; we are talking about what We see with our own eyes. We can point to specific people who have been regenerated by the power of the Spirit." They tell about an English worker who was a bitter drunkard, but turned to Christ. His former drinking buddies mocked him: “Of course you can’t believe in miracles and all that. You certainly don’t believe that Jesus turned water into wine.” “I don’t know,” he answered, “if He turned water into wine there in Palestine, but I know that in my house He turned beer into furniture!”

There are many things in the world that we use every day, but we don’t know how they actually work. Relatively few people know how electricity, radio, and television work, but we do not deny their existence. Many people drive a car with only a vague idea of ​​what's going on under the hood, but that doesn't stop them from using and enjoying the benefits that the car provides. We may not understand how the Spirit works, but everyone sees the results of its influence on people's lives. An irrefutable argument in favor of Christianity is the Christian way of life. No one can deny a religion that turns bad people into good ones.

Jesus says to Nicodemus: “I tried to simplify things for you: I resorted to simple human analogies taken from everyday life, but you did not understand. How then do you expect to understand deep and complex problems if simple ones are inaccessible to you?” There is a warning in this for all of us. It is not difficult to sit in discussion groups, in a quiet office and read books, it is not difficult to discuss the truths of Christianity, but the whole point is to feel and realize their power. In general, a person can very simply and easily make a mistake and see in Christianity only a debatable problem, and not something that needs to be experienced and comprehended. It is undoubtedly important to understand Christian truth intellectually, but it is even more important to feel the power of Jesus Christ in your life. When a person is undergoing treatment or undergoing surgery, when he needs to take medicine, he does not need an exhaustive knowledge of human anatomy, the effect of anesthetic drugs or medicine on the human body in order to be cured. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred take treatment without knowing how they were cured. In some respects, Christianity is the same: in its essence there is a mystery that cannot be reached with the mind, because this mystery is redemption.

When reading the fourth Gospel, difficulties arise due to the fact that it is not always clear where the words of Jesus end and where the words of the author of the Gospel begin. John pondered the words of Jesus for so long that he, imperceptibly, moves from them to his thoughts about them. The last words of this paragraph are almost certainly John's. It was as if someone had asked, "What right does Jesus have to say such a thing? How can we know that it is the truth?" The evangelist answers this simply and thoroughly: “Jesus came down from heaven to tell us God’s truth. And after He lived among people and died for them, He returned to His glory.” John says about Jesus that He came from God, that He came to earth directly from the heavenly mysteries; that everything He said to people is literally God's truth, for Jesus is the incarnate mind of God.

THE ASCENDED CHRIST (John 3:14.15)

John refers to the Old Testament story set out in Number 21.4-9, when the people of Israel, during their wanderings in the desert, cowardly complained, murmured and regretted that they had left Egypt at all to now die in the desert. To punish the Jews, God sent terrible poisonous snakes against them, the bite of which was fatal. The people repented and begged for mercy. God taught Moses to make a copper serpent and place it in the middle of the camp so that anyone, if he was bitten by a snake, could look at this copper serpent and remain alive. This story made a great impression on the Jews: they had a legend that later this copper serpent became an idol and in the time of Ezekiel it even had to be destroyed, since the people worshiped it (2 Kings 18:4). In addition, this incident always puzzled the Jews, because they were forbidden to make idols and graven images. The rabbis explained it this way: “It was not the serpent that gave life (healing). When Moses lifted the serpent, the people believed in the One who taught Moses to do so. It was God who gave the healing.” The healing power did not come from the brass serpent: it was only a symbol designed to turn the thoughts of the Jews to God, and when their thoughts turned to Him, they were healed.

John took this story and used it as a sort of parable of Jesus. He says, "That serpent was lifted up, the people looked at it, their thoughts turned to God, and by the power and authority of the God in whom they believed, they were healed. So must Jesus be lifted up, and when the people turn their thoughts to Him And if they believe in Him, they too will find eternal life.”

There is one extremely tempting thing here: the verb lift up in Greek hoopsoon, used in relation to Jesus in two senses: in the sense lifted up to the cross (John 8:28; 12:32) And raised to glory during His ascension into heaven (Acts 2:33; 5:31; Phil. 2:9). Jesus was taken up twice - to the cross and to glory, and both of these ascensions are closely and inextricably linked: one could not take place without the other. For Jesus, the cross was the path to glory; if He had refused it, if He had avoided it, then the glory would have passed away from Him. And for us the situation is the same: we can, if we want, choose the simple and easy path and abandon the cross that every Christian must bear, but in this case we will lose glory. The immutable law of life says: without a cross there is no crown.

There are two expressions we need to pay special attention to in this passage. It should be noted right away that we cannot reveal their entire meaning, because they mean much more than we will ever be able to comprehend, but we must try to understand at least part of it.

1. This is an expression that talks about faith in Jesus. It has at least three meanings.

a) Believe with all your heart that God really is as Jesus tells us, that is, believe that God loves us, cares about us, that above all else He wants to forgive us. It was not easy for the Jew to believe this; he saw God as the One who laid the burden of laws on his people and punished people if they violated them. He saw God as the Judge, and people as criminals sitting in the dock; he saw in God the One who demanded sacrifices and sacrifices. In order to enter into His presence, a person had to pay a set price. It was difficult to think of God not as a Judge waiting to pass judgment, not as an overseer looking for some mistake or mistake, but as a Father who wants nothing more than to see His children come home. It took the life and death of Jesus to tell people this, and we cannot become Christians until we believe it with all our hearts.

(b) Where is the evidence that Jesus knew what He said? Where is the guarantee that his wonderful gospel is true? We must believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that the mind of God is in him, that He came from God, that He is One with Him and therefore can tell us the complete truth about Him.

c) We believe that God is a loving Father because we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and therefore everything He says about God is true. And we must have absolute faith that everything Jesus said is true; we must do whatever He says, we must obey when He commands. When He tells us to rely unconditionally on the mercy of God, we must do so; we must take Jesus at his word. Every action must be performed in unquestioning obedience to Him.

Thus, faith in Jesus includes the following three elements: faith that God is our loving Father, faith that Jesus is the Son of God and therefore told us the truth about God and about life; and unquestioning and unrequited obedience to Him.

2. The second important expression in this passage is life eternal. We have already seen that eternal life is the life of God himself. But let’s ask ourselves this question: if we have found eternal life, then what do we have? If we have partaken of eternal life, what does it look like? When we receive eternal life, we find peace and quiet.

a) She gives us peace with God. We stop subservient to a tyrant king or hide from a harsh judge. We are at home with our Father.

b) She gives us peace with people. If we have been forgiven, we must forgive too. Eternal life gives us the ability to see people as God sees them. It makes us and all people born again into one great family united by love.

c) She gives us peace with life. If God is the Father, then He arranges all things so that everything is for the best. The German writer and art theorist Lessing said that if he could ask the Sphinx, he would ask him only one question: “Is this a friendly universe?” When we believe that God is our Father, we can trust that the hand of God the Father will never cause his child unnecessary pain or cause him to shed needless tears. We won't understand life any better, but we won't resent it anymore.

d) Eternal life gives us peace with ourselves. Ultimately, a person fears himself most of all: he knows his weaknesses and the strength of temptations, his tasks and the demands of life. And he also knows that with all this he must appear before God. But now it is not he himself who lives, but Christ who lives in him. And peace and tranquility came into his life, based on the new strength in his life.

e) He is convinced that the most lasting peace on earth is only a shadow of the future perfect peace; it gives him hope and a goal to which he strives, it gives him a life that is glorious and wonderful already now and at the same time a life in which the best is yet to come.

LOVE OF GOD (John 3:16)

Each person has his own favorite verse, and this one is called “the verse for everyone.” It presents the very essence of the Gospel in an accessible way for every heart. We learn several great truths from this verse.

1. He tells us that the initiative of salvation comes from God. Some present salvation as if God had to be appeased, as if He had to be persuaded to forgive people. Others speak as if above us, on the one hand, there is a harsh, angry and unforgiving God, and on the other hand, a soft, loving and forgiving Christ. Sometimes people present the Christian good news in a way that makes it seem as if Jesus did something that changed God's attitude toward people; turned His condemnation into forgiveness. But from this verse it is clear that God Himself was the initiator of everything: God sent His Son, and sent Him because He loves people. Behind everything is the great love of God.

2. This verse tells us that the main thing about God is love. It's easy to imagine God looking at careless, disobedient, and rebellious people and saying, "I will break them: I will punish, punish, and discipline them until they turn back." It is easy to imagine God seeking the allegiance of men for the exercise of His right to rule and for the final subjugation of the universe to Himself. But what strikes us in this passage is that God is represented as acting not in His own interests, but in ours, not to satisfy His desire for power and strength, not to bring the universe into obedience, but solely out of love. God is not an absolute monarch who treats every person in such a way as to reduce him to humiliating servility; He is the Father Who cannot be happy until the lost children return home; He does not bring people into obedience by force, but suffers for them and treats them with love.

3. This verse speaks of the power and boundlessness of God's love. God loves the whole world: not just some people, or good people, and not only those people who love Him - He loves world. Unworthy of love and unattractive, lonely, with no one to love and surrounded by worries, loving God and never thinking about Him, resting in the love of God and rejecting it with contempt - all of them are embraced by this huge all-encompassing love of God. As Aurelius Augustine put it: “God loves each of us as if He had no one else to love.”

LOVE AND JUDGMENT (John 3:17-21)

Before us is another of the seeming paradoxes of the fourth Gospel - the paradox of love and judgment. We were just talking about the love of God, and now we are suddenly faced with such things as trial, condemnation, and conviction. John just said that God sent His Son into the world because He so loved the world. We will continue to see Jesus say: “I came into this world for judgment.” (John 9:39). How can such different words be considered true?

If a person has the opportunity to show love, then a judgment can be made based on its manifestation. If a person has the opportunity to give people joy and pleasure, he will be judged based on the results. Suppose we love serious music and come closest to God when we listen to our favorite symphony. Let's say that we have a friend who knows nothing at all about such music and we want to introduce him to it and bring him into contact with that invisible beauty that gives us pleasure. We have only one goal - to give our friend the joy of a great new experience; we take him to a symphony concert, but very soon we see him terribly bored and restlessly looking around the hall. Our friend pronounced his own verdict - he has no feeling for music in his soul. An experience that should have brought him only happiness brought him condemnation.

This always happens when we introduce a person to something great: whether we take him to see some masterpiece of art, give him a rare book to read, or take him with us to see some beautiful place: his very reaction will be his judgment - if he will not find anything beautiful or amazing in this, then we learn that there is a blind spot in his soul. Once, an art gallery worker took a visitor through the halls where priceless masterpieces and works by recognized masters were exhibited. “Well,” the visitor said at the end, “I don’t find anything special in your old paintings.” “Sir,” the gallery worker responded, “these paintings no longer need to be appraised, but those who look at them do.” By his reaction this visitor only showed his pathetic blindness.

The same is true when it comes to accepting Jesus. If a person's soul, when he meets Jesus, is filled with amazement and joy, then this person is on the path to salvation, and if he does not see anything beautiful, then he has condemned himself by his reaction. God sent Jesus into this world out of love for the salvation of this man, and now the man received condemnation instead of love. No, it was not God who condemned this man - God only loves him, the man himself condemned himself.

The man who was hostile to Jesus loved darkness rather than light. A sincere person always has some subconscious feeling that he is worthy of condemnation. When we compare ourselves to Jesus, we see ourselves as we truly are. Alcibiades, a brilliant but depraved Athenian and friend of the Greek philosopher Socrates, often said: “Socrates, I hate you, because every time I see you, I see what I am like.”

A person who is engaged in unsightly deeds does not want streams of bright light to pour on him, but a person who does a good deed is not afraid of light.

One day, an architect came to the Greek philosopher Plato and offered to build him a house in which not a single room could be seen from the street. To this Plato replied: “I will pay you double if you build a house in which every person can see into every room.” Only a villain and a sinner does not want to see himself and does not want others to see him. Such a person will definitely hate Jesus Christ, because Christ shows him what he really is, and this is what he wants least of all. Such a person loves the darkness that hides everything, and not the light that reveals everything.

Already such a person’s attitude towards Christ exposes and shows his soul. A person who looks at Christ with love, or even with acute longing, has hope, but whoever does not see anything attractive in Christ has condemned himself. He who was sent out of love became his condemnation.

A MAN WITHOUT ENVY (John 3:22-30)

We have already seen that the author of the fourth Gospel intended to show the place that John the Baptist actually occupied: he was the forerunner and nothing more. There were people who called John the Baptist teacher and lord, and the author shows that John the Baptist does have a high place, but that the highest place belongs only to Jesus. In addition, John the Baptist himself pointed out that the first place belongs to Jesus. From these considerations, the author of the fourth Gospel shows that the ministry of John the Baptist partially coincided in time with the ministry of Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels take a different point of view in this aspect. IN Mar. 1.14 it is said that Jesus began his ministry after after John the Baptist was taken into prison. We need not enter into discussions about the historical accuracy of this fact. It appears that the Gospel of John shows these two ministries as overlapping in order to better emphasize the superiority of Jesus.

One thing is clear: this passage shows the remarkable modesty of John the Baptist. It was quite obvious that people were leaving John the Baptist and going to Jesus. This worried the disciples of John the Baptist. They didn't want to see their teacher fade into the background. They did not want to see him abandoned and abandoned when the crowds gathered to listen to the new teacher.

John the Baptist, having heard their complaints and sympathies, did not react as if he had been offended and unjustly forgotten. Sometimes a friend's sympathy can be the worst thing: it can make us feel sorry for ourselves and feel unfairly treated. But John the Baptist stood above this. He told the disciples three things.

1. He didn’t expect anything else. He reminded them that he had already indicated that he did not have the leading role, that he was sent only as a herald, a predecessor and forerunner, preparing the way for the Great One who was coming after him. Life would be much easier if more people were willing to play the role of subordinates, and yet so many are only looking for great things for themselves! But John the Baptist was not like that: he knew well that God had assigned him a second role. We will save a lot of resentment and bad feelings if we realize that some things are simply not meant for us and wholeheartedly accept and do the work that God has for us. It is a great task to do a minor task for God. As the English poet Elizabeth Browning put it, “With God all ministries are equal.” Any deed done for God is therefore a great deed.

2. John the Baptist told them that no man can take on more than God has given him: if Jesus is now winning more and more followers, it does not mean that He is stealing them from John the Baptist, but that God is giving them to Him . The American preacher Dr. Spence was at one time very popular, and his church was always full of people, but over time the people began to decrease. A young preacher came to the church opposite; now he was attracting crowds. One evening there were very few people in Spence's church and he asked, "Where have all the people gone?" There was an uncomfortable silence, then one of the ministers said, “I guess they went to the church across the street to hear the new preacher.” Spence was silent for a moment, then said, “Well, I think we should follow them,” stepped down from the pulpit and led his men across the road. How much jealousy, how much trouble and resentment could be avoided if we remembered that God gives success to others, and were ready to accept God's decision and God's choice.

3. The Evangelist John used a vivid picture of the life of the Jews, which everyone should have known. John the Baptist compares Jesus to the groom and himself to the groom's friend. One of the greatest symbolic pictures of the Old Testament is the representation of Israel as the bride and God as the groom of Israel. Israel's union with God was so intimate that it could only be compared to a marriage union. When Israel followed foreign gods, it was perceived as an act of adultery (Ex. 34.15; Deut. 31.16; Ps. 72.28; Isa. 54.5).

The New Testament writers adopted this picture and spoke of the Church as the bride of Christ (2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:22-32). Jesus came from God, He is the Son of God; The Church - the assembly of souls saved by Him - is His lawful bride, and He is her groom. John the Baptist considered himself a friend of the groom.

Friend of the groom shoshben, occupied a special place in the Jewish wedding ceremony: he acted as a connecting link between the bride and groom; he arranged the wedding, distributed the invitations, and supervised the wedding feast. He brought the bride and groom, and, in addition, he had a special task: he had to guard the bride’s room and not let anyone else in except the groom. He opened the door only when he heard the groom’s voice in the darkness. Having recognized the groom, he let him into the bride’s room, and he himself left joyful, because his task was completed and the lovers were together. He did not envy the groom and his happiness with the bride: he knew that he had to help them unite and, having completed his task, he left his place on the stage with pleasure and joy.

John the Baptist's job was to help people meet Jesus and accept him as their Bridegroom. Having completed this task, he was happy to go into the shadows because he had done his job. Without envy and with joy, he spoke about how Jesus must increase and he must decrease. Sometimes we should remember well that our task is to attract people not to ourselves, but to Jesus Christ; that we should call people to follow Him and not us and to be faithful to Him and not to us

COMING FROM HIGH (John 3:31-36)

As we have already seen above, when reading the fourth Gospel, a difficulty arises, among others, due to the fact that it is not entirely clear where the speech of the characters ends and where the Evangelist John adds his comments. These lines may be the words of John the Baptist, but it is more likely that they represent the testimony and commentary of the evangelist John.

The Evangelist John begins by affirming the primacy of Jesus. If we want to know something, we must turn to the person who knows it; if we want to know something about a family, it is best to learn it from a member of that family. If we need information about a city, we can best get it from a resident of that city. And, therefore, if we want to learn something about God, we can only learn it from the Son of God, and if we want to learn something about heaven and heavenly life, we can only learn about it from Him who Descended from heaven. When Jesus bears witness to God and the things of heaven, John says, He relates what He has seen and heard—it is not second-hand. In short, Jesus alone can truly tell the story of God—and that story constitutes the Gospel.

John regrets that so few people accept the message Jesus brought, but the person who accepted it thereby confirms his faith in the truth of the word of God. When in the ancient world a person wanted to fully approve a document, such as a will, agreement or contract, he attached his seal to it. The seal was a sign that he agreed with the content and considered it genuine and binding on him. And therefore, a person who accepts the good news of Jesus assures and confirms by his faith that everything God says is the truth.

We can believe what Jesus says, the evangelist continues, because God poured out the Spirit on Him in full measure, without reserve. The Jews themselves said that God gives the prophets a certain measure Spirit. God reserved the full measure of the Spirit for His Chosen One. In the Jewish worldview, the Spirit performed two functions: first, the Spirit revealed God's truth to people, and second, when this truth came to them, the Spirit gave people the ability to recognize and understand this truth. Thus, when John says that God gave Jesus the full measure of the Spirit, it means that Jesus knew and understood God's truth perfectly. In other words, listening to Jesus means hearing the authentic voice of God.

And finally, John confronts people with the eternal choice: life or death. Throughout history, this choice has faced Israel. In Deut. 30.15-20 the words of Moses are given: “Behold, today I have set before you life and good, death and evil... I call heaven and earth as witnesses before you today: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live your". This call was repeated by Joshua: “Choose you this day whom you will serve.” (Joshua 24:15). Someone said that human life is decided mainly at crossroads. The most important thing in a person’s life is his attitude towards Jesus Christ: whoever loves Jesus and passionately desires to meet him will know eternal life, and whoever is indifferent or hostile to Him will know death. No, it is not God who sends His anger to man: man himself brings it upon himself.

Dear users and visitors of our site! We have decided to remove from our library the works of the Protestant theologian from Scotland, Professor William Barclay. Despite the popularity of this author’s works among inquisitive readers, we believe that his works should not be placed on the same level as the works of Orthodox writers and preachers, including the works of the holy fathers and teachers of the Church.

Many of William Barclay's thoughts can be assessed as sound. However, in his writings, in fundamental moments, there are such ideas that are a conscious deviation from the Truth, being “a fly in the ointment.” Here is what English Wikipedia writes about his views:

skepticism about the Trinity: for example, “Nowhere identifies Jesus with God”;

faith in universal salvation;

evolution: “We believe in evolution, slowly rising up from man to the level of the beast. Jesus is the end and culmination of the evolutionary process because in Him people meet God. The danger of the Christian faith is that we have created Jesus as a kind of secondary God. The Bible never makes Jesus a second God, but rather emphasizes Jesus' complete dependence on God."

For example, analyzing the prologue of the Gospel of John and speaking about Christ, Barclay writes - “When John says that the Word was God, he does not say that Jesus was one with God, He was identical with God; he says that He was so much the same as God, in mind, in heart and in being, that in Him we see perfectly what God is,” which gives reason to believe that he recognized the Evangelist’s attitude towards Christ not as one of the Persons of the absolutely One and Indivisible God, Who is one with the Father (), but only as an equal to God. This perception of the Gospel sermon gave critics reason to suspect him of a penchant for tritheism.

His other statements also encourage a similar perception. For example: “Jesus is the revelation of God” (Comments on the Gospel of John). Or another, where the Holy Spirit is reported as an ally of Christ: “He speaks of His Ally- The Holy Spirit" (Comments on the Gospel of John).

Biblical commentaries can be roughly divided into spiritual, pastoral, theological, popular science and technical.

Most patristic commentaries can be classified as spiritual.

An example of “pastoral” comments is the sermons of Rev. Dmitry Smirnov.

There can be both classic “theological” commentaries (for example, the saint wrote many comments for polemical purposes), and modern ones.

In “popular science” commentaries, knowledge from biblical studies or history or biblical languages ​​is conveyed in popular language.

Finally, there are “technical” commentaries, which are most often intended for biblical scholars, but can be used by a wide range of readers.

Barkley's comments are a typical example of "popular science" commentary. He was never a great or great biblical scholar. Just an average professor with good performance. His comments were never particularly popular even among Protestants. And his popularity among us is due to the fact that his comments were translated into Russian at the very moment when in Russia there was nothing at all as “popular science” comments.

***

W. Barclay's commentaries on the Books of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament are widely known both in the Western world and in Russia. Strange as it may seem, many Russians who identify themselves with Orthodoxy not only find food for thought in his comments, but often take them as the truest guide in the matter of deep understanding of the Gospel. This is difficult to understand, but it is possible. In the course of presenting his views, the author gives many arguments, including historical, scientific and linguistic ones. Many of them seem convincing and undeniable. However, not all of them are like that. A significant drawback of this author’s works is the excessively weak consistency of their content with the Holy Tradition of the Church, and in some cases, direct contradiction to this source of Christian knowledge. W. Barkley's deviation from the purity of the Gospel teaching affects a number of serious, fundamental issues of Christianity.

One of the most dramatic departures concerns the question of the Church. Let's start with the fact that W. Barkley does not share the position on the existence of the One True Church established by the Lord Jesus Christ, and, going against the Gospel, insists on the existence of many saving Christian churches. At the same time, which is natural for such an approach, he accuses communities that claim to be called the only true one (in reality there is only one such community - the Ecumenical Orthodox Church) of monopolizing Divine grace.

“Religion,” writes W. Barclay, “ should bring people together, not divide them. Religion should unite people into one family, and not split them into warring groups. The doctrine which declares that any church or any sect has a monopoly on the grace of God is false, for Christ does not divide, but unites Bible

It is clear that this statement, accepted by Protestants, cannot but cause indignation among Orthodox Christians. After all, firstly, the Ecumenical Orthodox Church was founded by the Redeemer Himself, and, moreover, it was founded precisely as the only and only true one; and it is she who is entrusted with the fullness of saving teaching, the fullness of the saving gifts of the Holy Spirit. And secondly, the Orthodox Church has always called and calls people to unity, true unity in Christ, which cannot be said about the ideologists of Protestantism, who insist on the possibility of coexistence of many “saving”, “Christian” “churches”.

Meanwhile, W. Barkley compares God with the Pharisees: “ No, the Pharisees did not want to lead people to God; they led them into their own Pharisaic sect. This was their sin. And is this one driven from the earth if even today they insist that a person leave one church and become a member of another before he can take his place at the altar? The greatest of heresies is the sinful belief that one church has a monopoly on God or His truth, or that some church is the only gateway to the Kingdom of God » Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/23/).

True unity of Christians implies, among other things, unity of doctrine. The Orthodox Church has always professed the doctrine that the apostles entrusted to it, while Protestant communities have professed the doctrine that they inherited from the founders of these communities. It would seem that in the fact that the Church keeps the truths of faith intact, one can see that it is she who is the pillar and affirmation of the truth (). However, such an attitude towards the truth is assessed by W. Barkley as one of the symptoms of a protracted chronic disease. Accordingly, those “churches” that allow the distortion of true (“old”) dogmas and the introduction of so-called new dogmas are considered to be alive.

“In the Church,” he insists, “ this feeling indignation against the new has become chronic, and attempts to squeeze everything new into old forms have become almost universal"(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/9/).

W. Barkley describes steadfastness in upholding the truths of faith as a fossil: “ Very often it actually happened that a person who came with a message from God was met with hatred and enmity fossilized orthodoxy "(From chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible

By speaking in favor of freethinkers like Protestants (and, of course, in favor of Protestants themselves), the author seeks to assure his potential followers that the opposition that is shown towards them is contrary to the spirit of Christianity, and that the Redeemer Himself warned about this: “ Jesus warned His disciples that in the future they can unite against them society, Church and family"(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/10/).

Let us remember what exactly unites Christ’s disciples, while Protestant communities unite the disciples of their leaders.

Speaking against the ancient church traditions, W. Barclay denounces the tradition of monasticism, insisting that the teaching of monasticism leads to the separation of “religion from life”, and, therefore, it is false.

Here are his words: “ The teaching is false if it separates religion from life. Any teaching that says that there is no place for a Christian in life and in worldly activities is false. This was the mistake of the monks and hermits. They believed that in order to live a Christian life, they must retire to the desert or to a monastery, to get out of this all-consuming and seductive worldly life. They believed that they could only be true Christians by leaving worldly life. Jesus prayed for His disciples: “I do not pray that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from evil.” () » (From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/7/).

Touching on the issue of a person’s struggle with sinful thoughts and desires, the author points to the activities of monks as an illustration of a strange and incorrect form of struggle. They say that the monks, without realizing it themselves, fencing themselves off from the real temptations of this world, fell into even greater temptations that were born in their memory or imagination. With his negative criticism he did not even spare the founder (one of the founders) of monasticism, the outstanding Christian ascetic, St. Anthony the Great.

“In history,” he believes, “ there is one notable example mishandling such thoughts and desires: stylites, hermits, monks, hermits in the era of the early Church. These were people who wanted to free themselves from everything earthly and, in particular, from carnal desires. To do this, they went into the Egyptian desert with the idea of ​​living alone and thinking only about God. The most famous of them is Anthony. He lived as a hermit, fasted, spent his nights in vigil, and tortured his body. He lived in the desert for 35 years, which was an ongoing battle with his temptations... It is quite obvious that if anyone behaves carelessly, it applies to Anthony and his friends. Such is human nature that the more a person tells himself that he will not think about something, the more it will occupy his thoughts"(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/5/).

W. Barkley's mistake, in this case, is seen in the fact that he incorrectly looks at both monasticism itself and the attitude of the Church to monastic life. The fact is that while recognizing monasticism as one of the forms of serving God, the Orthodox Church has never taught that a Christian has no life in the world. As you know, among the canonized saints there are many who became famous precisely for their life in the world: warriors, doctors, teachers, etc. Again, monastic life, which involves detachment from worldly pleasures and worldly vanity, does not imply a complete spiritual break with the world. Suffice it to remember that for many centuries, monasteries played the role of spiritual centers not only for monks and monks, but also for lay people: monasteries served as places of pilgrimage for them; Libraries were created at monasteries, theological schools were opened; Often, in difficult times, monks helped the laity with bread and rubles.

Finally, completely not understanding why monastic work was associated with spiritual exploits, and the monks themselves were often called ascetics, he defines monastic life as very easy, while designating the monks themselves as fugitives from the real difficulties of life: “ It's easy to feel like a Christian in moments of prayer and meditation, it is easy to feel the closeness of God, when we are apart from the world. But this is not faith - this is an escape from life. True faith is when you get up from your knees to help people and solve human problems"(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/17/).

In the end, the interpreter seeks to subsume Christian worship and worship under the humanitarian doctrine: “ Christian service – this is not the service of liturgy or ritual, it is the service of human need. Christian service is not monastic seclusion, but active participation in all the tragedies, problems and demands that people face"(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/12/).

The author shows a rather peculiar attitude towards the Lord Jesus Christ.

On the one hand, he does not seem to mind that Jesus is the Incarnate Son of God the Father. In any case, some of his words encourage such an understanding, such as: “ When Slava came to this earth, He was born in a cave where people sheltered animals." Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/2/).

« God sent His Son into this world, - testifies W. Barkley, - Jesus Christ, so that He would save man from the quagmire of sin in which he was mired, and free him from the chains of sin with which he had bound himself, so that through Him man could find the friendship he had lost with God.”(From chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/1/)

On the other hand, he attributes to the Redeemer such traits as, for example, uncertainty about His chosenness (not to mention “uncertainty” about Divine dignity), ignorance of how to accomplish His mission “which He entrusted to Him.”

“Thus,” Barclay prompts the reader, “ And in the act of baptism, Jesus gained double confidence: that He is truly the Chosen One of God and that the path that lay before Him was the way of the cross, at that moment Jesus knew that He had been chosen to become King"(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/3/)

“Jesus,” he continues his line, “ went to the desert to be alone. spoke to Him now He wanted to think about how to fulfill the mission he had entrusted to Him. "(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/40/4/).

Even at the first acquaintance with these and similar statements, one gets the impression that they are on the verge of acceptable and unacceptable theology. The position of the interpreter is revealed more clearly in his attitude to the testimony of the Evangelist John the Theologian that Christ is none other than God the Word Incarnate. While formally recognizing that “the Word became flesh” (), W. Barclay, however, explains this Gospel truth not in the spirit of the Gospel. While the Orthodox Church teaches that the Word is a Hypostasis of the One-Trinity God, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, equally perfect and equal in honor with the other two Divine Hypostases, Barclay seeks to convince his readers of something else.

“Christianity,” he shares his reasoning, “ arose in Judaism and at first all members of the Christian Church were Jews... Christianity arose in the Jewish environment and therefore inevitably spoke their language and used their categories of thinking... The Greeks had never heard of the Messiah, they did not understand the very essence of the aspirations of the Jews - the coming Messiah. The concepts with which Jewish Christians thought and imagined Jesus meant nothing to the Greeks. And this was the problem - how to represent it in the Greek world?... Around the year 100, there lived a man in Ephesus who thought about this. His name was John; he lived in a Greek city, he communicated with the Greeks, to whom Jewish concepts were alien and incomprehensible and even seemed strange and rude. How can we find a way to introduce Christianity to these Greeks in a way that they will understand and welcome? And it was revealed to him. In both the Jewish and Greek worldviews there was a concept words. So it could be used in such a way that it would correspond to the worldviews of both the Greek and the Jew. It was something that lay in the historical heritage of both races; both of them could understand it.”(From Chapter - Barclay's Commentaries - Bible

It is known that in the understanding of (many) Jews it was thought of as One, but not as Trinity. The Word of God was interpreted in their minds as an effective force, but not as a Divine Hypostasis (cf.: and God said...). The mentioned Greeks thought something similar about the Logos (Word).

“And so,” he breaks out his thought, “ when John looked for a way to imagine, he found that in his faith and in the history of his people there was already an idea words, a word that in itself is not just a sound, but something dynamic -word God, by whom he created the earth; word from Targumi – Aramaic translation of the Bible – expressing the very idea of ​​God's action; wisdom from the books of Wisdom - the eternal, creative and enlightening power of God. And so John says: “If you want to see Word God, if you want to see the creative power of God, if you want to see Word, through whom the earth was created and who gives light and life to every person, - look at Jesus Christ. In him Word God has come to you"" (From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/43/1/).

As if confirming what was said above, Barkley signals: “ . ..In the Greek world and in the Greek worldview there is one more name that we must become familiar with. In Alexandria there lived a Jew named Philo, who devoted his life to studying the wisdom of two worlds: Greek and Jewish. None of the Greeks knew as well as he the Holy Scriptures of the Jews, and not a single Jew knew as well as he the greatness of Greek thought. Philo also loved and used this idea logos, words, reason God's. He believed that there was nothing older in the world logos So what logo- this is the instrument through which he created the world. Philo said that logo- this is the thought of God, imprinted in the universe; logos created the world and everything in it; God is the helmsman of the universe, He holds logo like the helm and directs everything. According to Philo logo imprinted in the human brain, it gives a person reason, the ability to think and the ability to know. Philo said that logo- a mediator between the world and God and that logo- This is the priest who presented the soul to God. Greek philosophy knew everything about logos, she saw in logos the creative, leading and directing power of God, the power that created the universe and thanks to which life and movement are preserved in it. And so John came to the Greeks and said: “For centuries you have thought, written and dreamed about logos, about the power that created the world and maintains order in it; about the power that gave man the ability to think, reason and know; about the power through which people came into contact with God. Jesus is this Logos, descended to earth." "The Word became flesh", said John. We can also express it this way: “ The Mind of God Embodied in Man"" (From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/43/1/).

Finally, Barclay directly indicates that the Savior was identical with God, but was not “one” with God: “ When John says that the Word was God, he is not saying that Jesus was one with God, He was identical with God; he says that He was so much the same as God, in mind, in heart and in being, that in Him we see perfectly what God is"(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/43/1/).

And elsewhere: "The Word became flesh - in this, perhaps as nowhere else in the New Testament, the human nature of Jesus is miraculously proclaimed. In Jesus we saw the creative Word of God, the directing Mind of God, which Himself incarnates in man. In Jesus we see how God would live this life if He were a man. If we had nothing more to say about Jesus, we could still say that He shows us how He would live the life we ​​need to live"(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/43/1/)

How does W. Barkley explain that Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God the Father? He boils it down to Jesus being unique and most loved by God the Father. This is how he himself talks about it: “ Jesus - only begotten Son. In Greek it is monogenesis, What means only Son, only begotten and in this case it fully corresponds to the Russian translation of the Bible. But the fact is that long before the writing of the fourth Gospel this word lost its purely physical meaning and acquired two special meanings. It came to mean unique, special and especially loved, It is quite obvious that the only son occupies a special place in the father’s heart and enjoys special love, and therefore this word has come to mean, first of all, unique. The New Testament writers are absolutely convinced that Jesus is unique, that there was no one like Him: He alone can bring God to people and people to God"(From the chapter - Barclay's comments - Bible: https:/bible.by/barclay/43/1/).

All these terms, i.e. both the word “testament” itself and its combination with the adjectives “old” and “new” are taken from the Bible itself, in which, in addition to their general meaning, they also have a special meaning, in which we also use them when speaking about known biblical books.

The word “testament” (Heb. - takes, Greek - διαθήκη, Lat. - testamentum) in the language of the Holy Scriptures and biblical usage primarily means the known decree, condition, law, on which two contracting parties converge, and from here - this agreement or union, as well as those external signs that served as his identification, a bond, as if a seal (testamentum). And since the sacred books in which this covenant or union of God with man was described were, of course, one of the best means of authenticating it and consolidating it in the people’s memory, the name “covenant” was also transferred to them very early on. It already existed in the era of Moses, as can be seen from the book of Exodus (), where the record of the Sinai legislation read by Moses to the Jewish people is called the book of the covenant (“sefer habberit”). Similar expressions, denoting not only the Sinai legislation, but the entire Mosaic Pentateuch, are also found in subsequent Old Testament books (; ; ). The Old Testament also contains the first, still prophetic indication of, namely, in the famous prophecy of Jeremiah: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” ().

Division of New Testament books by content

The historical books are the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the book of the Acts of the Apostles. The Gospels give us a historical image of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the book of the Acts of the Apostles gives us a historical image of the life and work of the apostles who spread Christ throughout the world.

Teaching books are the Apostolic Epistles, which are letters written by the apostles to different Churches. In these letters, the apostles explain various perplexities regarding the Christian faith and life that arose in the Churches, denounce the readers of the Epistles for various disorders they allowed, convince them to stand firmly in the Christian faith betrayed to them and expose the false teachers who were disturbing the peace of the primal Church. In a word, the apostles appear in their Epistles as teachers of the flock of Christ entrusted to their care, being, moreover, often the founders of those Churches to which they address. The latter occurs in relation to almost all of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul.

There is only one prophetic book in the New Testament - the Apocalypse of the Apostle John the Theologian. It contains various visions and revelations that this apostle was awarded with and in which the future fate of the Church of Christ is foreshadowed before its glorification, i.e. until the kingdom of glory opens on earth.

Since the subject of the Gospels is the life and teaching of the Founder of our faith - the Lord Jesus Christ, and since, undoubtedly, in the Gospel we have the basis for all our faith and life, it is customary to call the four Gospels books legislatively positive. This name shows that the Gospels have the same meaning for Christians as the Law of Moses - the Pentateuch - had for Jews.

A Brief History of the Canon of Holy Books of the New Testament

The word “canon” (κανών) originally meant “cane”, and then began to be used to designate what should serve as a rule, a pattern of life (;). The Church Fathers and Councils used this term to designate a collection of sacred, inspired writings. Therefore, the canon of the New Testament is a collection of the sacred inspired books of the New Testament in its present form.

What was the primacy guided by when accepting this or that sacred New Testament book into the canon? First of all, the so-called historical by legend. They investigated whether this or that book had actually been received directly from an apostle or an apostolic co-worker, and, after a strict study, they included this book among the inspired books. But at the same time, they also paid attention to whether the teaching contained in the book in question was consistent, firstly, with the teaching of the entire Church and, secondly, with the teaching of the apostle whose name this book bore. This is the so-called dogmatic tradition. And it has never happened that, having once recognized a book as canonical, she subsequently changed her view of it and excluded it from the canon. If individual fathers and teachers of the Church even after this still recognized some New Testament writings as inauthentic, then this was only their private view, which should not be confused with the voice of the Church. In the same way, it has never happened that the Church first did not accept any book into the canon, and then included it. If some canonical books are not indicated in the writings of the apostolic men (for example, the Epistle of Jude), this is explained by the fact that the apostolic men had no reason to quote these books.

Order of New Testament books in the canon

The New Testament books found their place in the canon according to their importance and the time of their final recognition. In first place, naturally, were the four Gospels, followed by the book of the Acts of the Apostles; The Apocalypse formed the conclusion of the canon. But in some codexes some books do not occupy the same place as they occupy in ours now. Thus, in the Codex Sinaiticus, the book of the Acts of the Apostles comes after the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. Until the 4th century, the Greek Church placed the Council Epistles after the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. The very name “conciliar” initially was borne only by the 1st Epistle of Peter and the 1st Epistle of John, and only from the time of Eusebius of Caesarea (IV century) did this name begin to be applied to all seven Epistles. Since the time of Athanasius of Alexandria (mid-IV century), the Council Epistles in the Greek Church have taken their present place. Meanwhile, in the West they were still placed after the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. Even the Apocalypse in some codes is earlier than the Epistles of the Apostle Paul and even earlier than the book of Acts. In particular, the Gospels appear in different codes in different orders. Thus, some, undoubtedly putting the apostles in first place, place the Gospels in the following order: Matthew, John, Mark and Luke, or, giving special dignity to the Gospel of John, they put it in first place. Others put the Gospel of Mark last, as the shortest. Of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, initially the first place in the canon was occupied by two to the Corinthians, and the last by the Romans (a fragment of Muratorius and Tertullian). Since the time of Eusebius, the Epistle to the Romans has taken first place, both in its volume and in the importance of the Church to which it was written, truly deserving this place. The arrangement of the four private Epistles (1 Tim.; 2 Tim.; Tit.; Phil.) was obviously guided by their volume being approximately the same. The Epistle to the Hebrews in the East was placed 14th, and in the West - 10th in the series of Epistles of the Apostle Paul. It is clear that the Western Church, among the Council Epistles, put the Epistles of the Apostle Peter in first place. The Eastern Church, putting the Epistle of James in first place, was probably guided by the enumeration of the apostles by the Apostle Paul ().

History of the New Testament Canon since the Reformation

During the Middle Ages, the canon remained undeniable, especially since the books of the New Testament were read relatively little by private individuals, and during divine services only certain parts or sections were read from them. The common people were more interested in reading stories about the lives of saints, and the Catholic Church even looked with some suspicion at the interest that certain societies, such as the Waldenses, showed in reading the Bible, sometimes even prohibiting the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. But at the end of the Middle Ages, humanism renewed doubts about the writings of the New Testament, which were the subject of controversy in the first centuries. The Reformation began to raise its voice even more strongly against some of the New Testament writings. Luther, in his translation of the New Testament (1522), in the prefaces to the New Testament books, expressed his view on their dignity. Thus, in his opinion, the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by an apostle, just like the Epistle of James. He also does not recognize the authenticity of the Apocalypse and the Epistle of the Apostle Jude. Luther's disciples went even further in the rigor with which they treated various New Testament writings and even began to directly isolate "apocryphal" writings from the New Testament canon: until the beginning of the 17th century, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 were not even considered canonical in Lutheran bibles -e John, Jude and the Apocalypse. Only later did this distinction of scriptures disappear and the ancient New Testament canon was restored. At the end of the 17th century, however, critical writings about the New Testament canon appeared, in which objections were raised to the authenticity of many New Testament books. The rationalists of the 18th century (Semler, Michaelis, Eichgorm) wrote in the same spirit, and in the 19th century. Schleiermacher expressed doubts about the authenticity of some of Paul's Epistles, De Wette rejected the authenticity of five of them, and F.X. Of the entire New Testament, Baur recognized only the four main Epistles of the Apostle Paul and the Apocalypse as truly apostolic.

Thus, in the West, Protestantism again came to the same point that the Christian Church experienced in the first centuries, when some books were recognized as genuine apostolic works, others as controversial. The view has already been established that it represents only a collection of literary works of early Christianity. At the same time, the followers of F.X. Baur - B. Bauer, Lohmann and Steck - no longer found it possible to recognize any of the New Testament books as a truly apostolic work... But the best minds of Protestantism saw the depth of the abyss into which Baur's school, or Tübingen, was taking Protestantism, and opposed its provisions with valid objections. Thus, Ritschl refuted the main thesis of the Tübingen school about the development of early Christianity from the struggle of Petrinism and Paulinism, and Harnack proved that the New Testament books should be looked at as truly apostolic works. Scientists B. Weiss, Godet and T. Tsang did even more to restore the meaning of the New Testament books in the minds of Protestants. “Thanks to these theologians,” says Barth, “no one can now take away from the New Testament the advantage that in it and in it alone we have messages about Jesus and about the revelation of God in Him” (“Introduction,” 1908, p. 400). Barth finds that at this time, when such confusion prevails in the minds, it is especially important for Protestants to have a “canon” as a guide given by God for faith and life, “and,” he concludes, “we have it in the New Testament” (There same).

Indeed, the New Testament canon has enormous, one might say, incomparable significance for the Christian Church. In it we find, first of all, such writings as represent in its relation to the Jewish people (the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle of the Apostle James and the Epistle to the Hebrews), to the pagan world (1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st Corinthians ). Further, we have in the New Testament canon writings that are intended to eliminate the dangers that threatened Christianity from the Jewish understanding of Christianity (Epistle to the Galatians), from Judeo-legalistic asceticism (Epistle to the Colossians), from the pagan desire to understand religious society as a private circle , in which one can live separately from the church community (Ephesians). The book of Romans indicates the worldwide purpose of Christianity, while the book of Acts indicates how this purpose was realized in history. In short, the books of the New Testament canon give us a complete picture of the primacy of the Church, depicting life and its tasks from all sides. If, as a test, we wanted to take away any book from the canon of the New Testament, for example the Epistle to the Romans or Galatians, we would thereby cause significant harm to the whole. It is clear that the Holy Spirit guided the Church in the gradual establishment of the composition of the canon, so that the Church introduced into it truly apostolic works, which in their existence were caused by the most essential needs of the Church.

In what language are the holy books of the New Testament written?

Throughout the Roman Empire, during the time of the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles, Greek was the dominant language, it was understood everywhere and spoken almost everywhere. It is clear that the writings of the New Testament, which were intended by the Providence of God to be distributed throughout all churches, also appeared in Greek, although almost all of their writers, with the exception of St. Luke, were Jews. This is also evidenced by some internal signs of these writings: a play on words possible only in the Greek language, a free, independent attitude to the translation of the Seventy, when Old Testament passages are cited - all this undoubtedly indicates that they were written in Greek and intended for readers who know Greek.

However, the Greek language in which the books of the New Testament were written is not the classical Greek language in which Greek writers wrote during the heyday of Greek literature. This is the so-called κοινὴ διάλεκτος , i.e. close to the ancient Attic dialect, but not too different from other dialects. In addition, it included many Aramaisms and other alien words. Finally, special New Testament concepts were introduced into this language, for the expression of which, however, they used old Greek words that received a special new meaning through this (for example, the word χάρις - “pleasantness”, in the sacred New Testament language came to mean “grace”). For more information about this, see the article by Prof. S.I. Sobolevsky " Κοινὴ διάλεκτος ", placed in the Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia, vol. 10.

Text of the New Testament

All the originals of the New Testament books were lost, but copies were made from them long ago (ἀντίγραφα). Most often the Gospels were copied and least often the Apocalypse. They wrote with reed (κάλαμος) and ink (μέλαν) and more - in the first centuries - on papyrus, so that the right side of each papyrus sheet was glued to the left side of the next sheet. From here a strip of greater or lesser length was obtained, which was then rolled onto a rolling pin. This is how a scroll (τόμος) arose, which was stored in a special box (φαινόλης). Since reading these strips, written only on the front side, was inconvenient and the material was fragile, from the 3rd century New Testament books began to be copied on leather or parchment. Since parchment was expensive, many used the old manuscripts on parchment that they had, erasing and scraping out what was written on them and placing some other work there. This is how palimpsests were formed. Paper came into use only in the 8th century.

Words in the manuscripts of the New Testament were written without accents, without breaths, without punctuation marks, and, moreover, with abbreviations (for example, IC instead of Ἰησοῦς, RNL instead of πνεῦμα), so it was very difficult to read these manuscripts. In the first six centuries, only capital letters were used (uncial manuscripts from “uncia” - inch). From the 7th century, and some say from the 9th century, manuscripts of ordinary cursive writing appeared. Then the letters became smaller, but abbreviations became more frequent. On the other hand, accents and breathing were added. There are 130 of the first manuscripts, and 3,700 of the last (according to von Soden’s account). In addition, there are so-called lectionaries, containing either the Gospel or the Apostolic readings for use in worship (Evangeliary and Praxapostolic). There are about 1300 of them, and the oldest of them go back in their origin to the 6th century.

In addition to the text, manuscripts usually contain introductions and afterwords with indications of the writer, time and place of writing the book. To familiarize yourself with the contents of the book in manuscripts divided into chapters (κεφάλαια), before these chapters, designations of the contents of each chapter are placed (τίτλα, αργυμεντα). The chapters are divided into parts (ὑποδιαιρέσεις) or departments, and these latter into verses (κῶλα, στίχοι). The size of the book and its selling price were determined by the number of verses. This processing of the text is usually attributed to Bishop Euphalios of Sardinia (7th century), but in fact all these divisions took place much earlier. For interpretive purposes, Ammonius (3rd century) added parallel passages from other Gospels to the text of the Gospel of Matthew. Eusebius of Caesarea (IV century) compiled ten canons or parallel tables, the first of which contained designations of sections from the Gospel common to all four evangelists, the second - designations (in numbers) - common to three, etc. to the tenth, where the stories contained in only one evangelist are indicated. In the text of the Gospel, it was marked with a red number to which canon this or that section belongs. Our present division of the text into chapters was made first by the Englishman Stephen Langton (in the 13th century), and the division into verses by Robert Stephen (in the 16th century).

Since the 18th century Uncial manuscripts began to be designated by capital letters of the Latin alphabet, and italic ones by numbers. The most important uncial manuscripts are the following:

N – Codex Sinaiticus, found by Tischendorf in 1856 in the Sinai monastery of St. Catherine. It contains the whole, together with the epistle of Barnabas and a large part of the “Shepherd” of Hermas, as well as the canons of Eusebius. It shows the proofs of seven different hands. It was written in the 4th or 5th century. Kept in the St. Petersburg Public Library (now kept in the British Museum. - Note ed.). Photographs were taken from it.

A – Alexandria, located in London. The New Testament is not included here in its entirety, along with the 1st and part of the 2nd Epistle of Clement of Rome. Written in the 5th century in Egypt or Palestine.

B - Vatican, concluded by the 14th verse of the 9th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It was probably written by one of the persons close to Athanasius of Alexandria in the 4th century. Kept in Rome.

S – Efremov. This is a palimpsest, so named because the treatise of Ephraim the Syrian was subsequently written on the biblical text. It contains only portions of the New Testament. Its origin is Egyptian, dating back to the 5th century. Stored in Paris.

A list of other manuscripts of later origin can be seen in the 8th edition of Tischendorf's New Testament.

Translations and quotations

Along with the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, translations of the sacred books of the New Testament, which began to appear already in the 2nd century, are also very important as sources for establishing the text of the New Testament. The first place among them belongs to the Syriac translations, both in their antiquity and in their language, which approaches the Aramaic dialect spoken by Christ and the apostles. The Diatessaron (set of 4 Gospels) of Tatian (circa 175) is believed to have been the first Syriac translation of the New Testament. Next comes the Codex Syro-Sinai (SS), discovered in 1892 at Sinai by Mrs. A. Lewis. Also important is the translation known as Peshitta (simple), dating back to the 2nd century; however, some scientists date it back to the 5th century and recognize it as the work of the Edessa bishop Rabbula (411–435). Of great importance are also the Egyptian translations (Saidian, Fayyum, Bohairic), Ethiopian, Armenian, Gothic and Old Latin, subsequently corrected by Blessed Jerome and recognized as self-authentic in the Catholic Church (Vulgate).

Quotations from the New Testament available from the ancient fathers and teachers of the Church and church writers are also of considerable importance for establishing the text. A collection of these quotes (texts) was published by T. Tsang.

The Slavic translation of the New Testament from the Greek text was made by Saints Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius in the second half of the 9th century and, together with Christianity, came to us in Russia under the holy noble prince Vladimir. Of the copies of this translation that have survived, the Ostromir Gospel, written in the middle of the 11th century for the mayor Ostromir, is especially remarkable. Then in the 14th century. Saint Alexy, Metropolitan of Moscow, made a translation of the holy books of the New Testament, while Saint Alexy was in Constantinople. This translation is kept in the Moscow Synodal Library in the 90s of the 19th century. published phototypically. In 1499, along with all biblical books, it was corrected and published by Metropolitan Gennady of Novgorod. Separately, the entire New Testament was first printed in Slavic in Vilna in 1623. Then it, like other biblical books, was corrected in Moscow at the synodal printing house and, finally, published together with the Old Testament under Empress Elizabeth in 1751. First of all, the Gospel was translated into Russian in 1819, and the entire New Testament appeared in Russian in 1822, and in 1860 it was published in a revised form. In addition to the Synodal translation into Russian, there are also Russian translations of the New Testament, published in London and Vienna. In Russia their use is prohibited.

The fate of the New Testament text

b) the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, preached by Himself and His Apostles about Him as the King of this Kingdom, the Messiah and the Son of God (),

c) all New Testament or Christian teaching in general, first of all the narration of the most important events from the life of Christ (), and then an explanation of the meaning of these events ().

d) Being actually the news of what he has done for our salvation and good, the Gospel at the same time calls people to repentance, faith and changing their sinful lives for a better one (; ).

e) Finally, the word “Gospel” is sometimes used to designate the very process of preaching Christian teaching ().

Sometimes the word “Gospel” is accompanied by a designation and its content. There are, for example, phrases: Gospel of the kingdom (), i.e. the joyful news of the Kingdom of God, the Gospel of peace (), i.e. about peace, the Gospel of salvation (), i.e. about salvation, etc. Sometimes the genitive case following the word “Gospel” means the author or source of the good news (; ; ) or the person of the preacher ().

For quite a long time, stories about the life of the Lord Jesus Christ were transmitted only orally. The Lord Himself did not leave any records of His speeches and deeds. Likewise, the 12 apostles were not born writers: they were “unbookish and simple people”(), although literate. Among Christians of the apostolic time there were also very few "wise according to the flesh, strong" and “noble” (), and for the majority of believers, oral stories about Christ were of much greater importance than written ones. Thus, the apostles and preachers or evangelists “transmitted” (παραδιδόναι) stories about the deeds and speeches of Christ, and the believers “received” (παραλαμβάνειν) - but, of course, not mechanically, only by memory, as can be said about students of rabbinical schools, but with all my soul, as if something living and life-giving. But this period of oral tradition was soon to end. On the one hand, Christians should have felt the need for a written presentation of the Gospel in their disputes with the Jews, who, as we know, denied the reality of Christ’s miracles and even argued that Christ did not declare Himself the Messiah. It was necessary to show the Jews that Christians have genuine stories about Christ from those persons who were either among His apostles or who were in close communication with eyewitnesses of the deeds of Christ. On the other hand, the need for a written presentation of the history of Christ began to be felt because the generation of the first disciples was gradually dying out and the ranks of direct witnesses to the miracles of Christ were thinning. Therefore, it was necessary to secure in writing individual sayings of the Lord and His entire speeches, as well as the stories of the apostles about Him. It was then that separate records began to appear here and there of what was reported in the oral tradition about Christ. Most carefully recorded words Christ's, which contained the rules of Christian life, and were much more free about the transfer of different events from the life of Christ, preserving only their general impression. Thus, one thing in these records, due to its originality, was transmitted everywhere in the same way, while the other was modified. These initial recordings did not think about the completeness of the story. Even our Gospels, as can be seen from the conclusion of the Gospel of John (), did not intend to report all the speeches and deeds of Christ. This is evident, by the way, from the fact that they do not contain, for example, the following saying of Christ: “It is more blessed to give than to receive”(). The Evangelist Luke reports about such records, saying that many before him had already begun to compile narratives about the life of Christ, but that they lacked proper completeness and that therefore they did not provide sufficient “affirmation” in the faith ().

Our canonical Gospels apparently arose from the same motives. The period of their appearance can be determined to be approximately thirty years - from 60 to 90 (the last was the Gospel of John). The first three Gospels are usually called in biblical scholarship synoptic, because they depict the life of Christ in such a way that their three narratives can be viewed in one without much difficulty and combined into one complete narrative ( weather forecasters– from Greek – looking together). They began to be called Gospels individually, perhaps as early as the end of the 1st century, but from church writing we have information that such a name began to be given to the entire composition of the Gospels only in the second half of the 2nd century. As for the names: “Gospel of Matthew”, “Gospel of Mark”, etc., it would be more correct to translate these very ancient names from Greek as follows: “Gospel according to Matthew”, “Gospel according to Mark” ( κατὰ Ματθαῖον, κατὰ Μᾶρκον ). By this I wanted to say that in all the Gospels there is unified the Christian gospel of Christ the Savior, but according to the images of different writers: one image belongs to Matthew, another to Mark, etc.

Four Gospels

As for the differences observed among weather forecasters, there are quite a lot of them. Some things are reported by only two evangelists, others even by one. Thus, only Matthew and Luke cite the conversation on the mount of the Lord Jesus Christ and report the story of the birth and first years of Christ’s life. Luke alone speaks of the birth of John the Baptist. Some things one evangelist conveys in a more abbreviated form than another, or in a different connection than another. The details of the events in each Gospel are different, as are the expressions.

This phenomenon of similarities and differences in the Synoptic Gospels has long attracted the attention of interpreters of Scripture, and various assumptions have long been made to explain this fact. It seems more correct to think that our three evangelists shared a common verbal source for his narrative of the life of Christ. At that time, evangelists or preachers about Christ went everywhere preaching and repeated in different places in a more or less extensive form what was considered necessary to offer to those who entered. Thus, a well-known specific type was formed oral gospel, and it is this type that we have in written form in our Synoptic Gospels. Of course, at the same time, depending on the goal that this or that evangelist had, his Gospel took on some special features, characteristic only of his work. At the same time, we cannot exclude the assumption that an older Gospel could have been known to the evangelist who wrote later. Moreover, the difference between the weather forecasters should be explained by the different goals that each of them had in mind when writing his Gospel.

As we have already said, the Synoptic Gospels differ in very many ways from the Gospel of John the Theologian. So they depict almost exclusively the activity of Christ in Galilee, and the Apostle John depicts mainly the sojourn of Christ in Judea. In terms of content, the Synoptic Gospels also differ significantly from the Gospel of John. They give, so to speak, a more external image of the life, deeds and teachings of Christ and from the speeches of Christ they cite only those that were accessible to the understanding of the entire people. John, on the contrary, omits a lot from the activities of Christ, for example, he cites only six miracles of Christ, but those speeches and miracles that he cites have a special deep meaning and extreme importance about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Finally, while the Synoptics portray Christ primarily as the founder of the Kingdom of God and therefore direct the attention of their readers to the Kingdom founded by Him, John draws our attention to the central point of this Kingdom, from which life flows along the peripheries of the Kingdom, i.e. on the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, whom John portrays as the Only Begotten Son of God and as the Light for all mankind. That is why the ancient interpreters called the Gospel of John primarily spiritual (πνευματικόν) in contrast to the synoptic ones, as depicting predominantly the human side in the person of Christ ( εὐαγγέλιον σωματικόν ), i.e. The gospel is physical.

However, it must be said that the weather forecasters also have passages that indicate that just as the weather forecasters knew the activity of Christ in Judea (;), so John has indications of the long activity of Christ in Galilee. In the same way, the weather forecasters convey such sayings of Christ that testify to His Divine dignity (), and John, for his part, also in places depicts Christ as a true man (etc.; etc.). Therefore, one cannot speak of any contradiction between the weather forecasters and John in their depiction of the face and work of Christ.

The Reliability of the Gospels

Although criticism has long been expressed against the reliability of the Gospels, and recently these attacks of criticism have especially intensified (the theory of myths, especially the theory of Drews, who does not recognize the existence of Christ at all), however, all the objections of criticism are so insignificant that they are broken at the slightest collision with Christian apologetics . Here, however, we will not cite the objections of negative criticism and analyze these objections: this will be done when interpreting the text of the Gospels itself. We will only talk about the most important general reasons for which we recognize the Gospels as completely reliable documents. This is, firstly, the existence of a tradition of eyewitnesses, many of whom lived to the era when our Gospels appeared. Why on earth would we refuse to trust these sources of our Gospels? Could they have made up everything in our Gospels? No, all the Gospels are purely historical. Secondly, it is not clear why the Christian consciousness would want - as the mythical theory claims - to crown the head of a simple Rabbi Jesus with the crown of the Messiah and Son of God? Why, for example, is it not said about the Baptist that he performed miracles? Obviously because he didn't create them. And from here it follows that if Christ is said to be the Great Wonderworker, then it means that He really was like that. And why would it be possible to deny the authenticity of Christ’s miracles, since the highest miracle - His Resurrection - is witnessed like no other event in ancient history (see)?

Bibliography of foreign works on the Four Gospels

Bengel – Bengel J. Al. Gnomon Novi Testamentï in quo ex nativa verborum VI simplicitas, profunditas, concinnitas, salubritas sensuum coelestium indicatur. Berolini, 1860.

Blass, Gram. – Blass F. Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch. Gottingen, 1911.

Westcott – The New Testament in Original Greek the text rev. by Brooke Foss Westcott. New York, 1882.

B. Weiss – Weiss B. Die Evangelien des Markus und Lukas. Gottingen, 1901.

Yog. Weiss (1907) – Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, von Otto Baumgarten; Wilhelm Bousset. Hrsg. von Johannes Weis_s, Bd. 1: Die drei älteren Evangelien. Die Apostelgeschichte, Matthaeus Apostolus; Marcus Evangelista; Lucas Evangelista. . 2. Aufl. Gottingen, 1907.

Godet – Godet F. Commentar zu dem Evangelium des Johannes. Hanover, 1903.

De Wette – De Wette W.M.L. Kurze Erklärung des Evangeliums Matthäi / Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, Band 1, Teil 1. Leipzig, 1857.

Keil (1879) – Keil C.F. Commentar über die Evangelien des Markus und Lukas. Leipzig, 1879.

Keil (1881) – Keil C.F. Commentar über das Evangelium des Johannes. Leipzig, 1881.

Klostermann – Klostermann A. Das Markusevangelium nach seinem Quellenwerthe für die evangelische Geschichte. Gottingen, 1867.

Cornelius a Lapide - Cornelius a Lapide. In SS Matthaeum et Marcum / Commentaria in scripturam sacram, t. 15. Parisiis, 1857.

Lagrange – Lagrange M.-J. Etudes bibliques: Evangile selon St. Marc. Paris, 1911.

Lange – Lange J.P. Das Evangelium nach Matthäus. Bielefeld, 1861.

Loisy (1903) – Loisy A.F. Le quatrième èvangile. Paris, 1903.

Loisy (1907–1908) – Loisy A.F. Les èvangiles synoptiques, 1–2. : Ceffonds, près Montier-en-Der, 1907–1908.

Luthardt – Luthardt Ch.E. Das johanneische Evangelium nach seiner Eigenthümlichkeit geschildert und erklärt. Nürnberg, 1876.

Meyer (1864) – Meyer H.A.W. Kritisch exegetisches Commentar über das Neue Testament, Abteilung 1, Hälfte 1: Handbuch über das Evangelium des Matthäus. Gottingen, 1864.

Meyer (1885) – Kritisch-exegetischer Commentar über das Neue Testament hrsg. von Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, Abteilung 1, Hälfte 2: Bernhard Weiss B. Kritisch exegetisches Handbuch über die Evangelien des Markus und Lukas. Göttingen, 1885. Meyer (1902) – Meyer H.A.W. Das Johannes-Evangelium 9. Auflage, bearbeitet von B. Weiss. Gottingen, 1902.

Merx (1902) – Merx A. Erläuterung: Matthaeus / Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach ihrem ältesten bekannten Texte, Teil 2, Hälfte 1. Berlin, 1902.

Merx (1905) – Merx A. Erläuterung: Markus und Lukas / Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach ihrem ältesten bekannten Texte. Teil 2, Hälfte 2. Berlin, 1905.

Morison – Morison J. A practical commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew. London, 1902.

Stanton – Stanton V.H. The Synoptic Gospels / The Gospels as historical documents, Part 2. Cambridge, 1903. Tholuck (1856) – Tholuck A. Die Bergpredigt. Gotha, 1856.

Tholuck (1857) – Tholuck A. Commentar zum Evangelium Johannis. Gotha, 1857.

Heitmüller - see Yog. Weiss (1907).

Holtzmann (1901) – Holtzmann H.J. Die Synoptiker. Tubingen, 1901.

Holtzmann (1908) – Holtzmann H.J. Evangelium, Briefe und Offenbarung des Johannes / Hand-Commentar zum Neuen Testament bearbeitet von H. J. Holtzmann, R. A. Lipsius etc. Bd. 4. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1908.

Zahn (1905) – Zahn Th. Das Evangelium des Matthäus / Commentar zum Neuen Testament, Teil 1. Leipzig, 1905.

Zahn (1908) – Zahn Th. Das Evangelium des Johannes ausgelegt / Commentar zum Neuen Testament, Teil 4. Leipzig, 1908.

Schanz (1881) – Schanz P. Commentar über das Evangelium des heiligen Marcus. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1881.

Schanz (1885) – Schanz P. Commentar über das Evangelium des heiligen Johannes. Tubingen, 1885.

Schlatter – Schlatter A. Das Evangelium des Johannes: ausgelegt für Bibelleser. Stuttgart, 1903.

Schürer, Geschichte – Schürer E., Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi. Bd. 1–4. Leipzig, 1901–1911.

Edersheim (1901) – Edersheim A. The life and times of Jesus the Messiah. 2 Vols. London, 1901.

Ellen – Allen W.C. A critical and exegetical commentary of the Gospel according to st. Matthew. Edinburgh, 1907.

Alford - Alford N. The Greek Testament in four volumes, vol. 1. London, 1863. The Church, which treated the apostles, and, in particular, the Apostle Paul with such respect, could completely lose any of the apostolic works.

According to the view of some Protestant theologians, the New Testament canon is something accidental. Some writings, even non-apostolic ones, were simply lucky enough to end up in the canon, since for some reason they came into use in worship. And the canon itself, according to the majority of Protestant theologians, is nothing more than a simple catalog or list of books used in worship. On the contrary, Orthodox theologians see in the canon nothing more than the composition of the sacred New Testament books, faithful to the apostolic successive generations of Christians, already recognized at that time. These books, according to Orthodox theologians, were not known to all Churches, perhaps because they had either too specific a purpose (for example, the 2nd and 3rd Epistles of the Apostle John), or too general (Epistle to the Hebrews), so it was unknown which Church to turn to for information regarding the name of the author of one or another such message. But there is no doubt that these were books that truly belonged to those persons whose names they bore on them. The Church did not accidentally accept them into the canon, but quite consciously, giving them the meaning that they actually had.

The Jews had the word “ganuz”, which corresponds in meaning to the word “apocryphal” (from ἀποκρύπτειν - “to hide”) and was used in the synagogue to designate books that should not have been used during worship. However, this term did not contain any censure. But later, when the Gnostics and other heretics began to boast that they had “hidden” books, which supposedly contained the true apostolic teaching, which the apostles did not want to make available to the crowd, those who collected the canon reacted with condemnation to these “hidden” ones. books and began to look at them as “false, heretical, counterfeit” (decree of Pope Gelasius). Currently, 7 apocryphal Gospels are known, 6 of which complement, with various embellishments, the story of the origin, birth and childhood of Jesus Christ, and the seventh - the story of His condemnation. The oldest and most remarkable of them is the First Gospel of James, the brother of the Lord, then come: the Greek Gospel of Thomas, the Greek Gospel of Nicodemus, the Arabic story of Joseph the treemaker, the Arabic Gospel of the Savior's childhood and, finally, the Latin Gospel of the Birth of Christ from St. Mary and the story of the birth of Mary of the Lord and the childhood of the Savior. These apocryphal Gospels were translated into Russian by Archpriest. P.A. Preobrazhensky. In addition, some fragmentary apocryphal tales about the life of Christ are known (for example, Pilate’s letter to Tiberius about Christ).

In ancient times, it should be noted, in addition to the apocryphal ones, there were also non-canonical Gospels that have not reached our time. They, in all likelihood, contained the same thing that is contained in our canonical Gospels, from which they took information. These were: the Gospel of the Jews - in all likelihood, the corrupted Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Peter, the apostolic memorial records of Justin the Martyr, Tatian's Gospel in four ("Diatessaron" - a set of Gospels), the Gospel of Marcion - a distorted Gospel of Luke.

Of the recently discovered legends about the life and teachings of Christ, worthy of attention is “Λόγια”, or the words of Christ, a passage found in Egypt. This passage contains brief sayings of Christ with a brief opening formula: “Jesus says.” This is a fragment of extreme antiquity. From the history of the apostles, the recently discovered “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” deserves attention, the existence of which was already known to ancient church writers and which has now been translated into Russian. In 1886, 34 verses of the Apocalypse of Peter, which was known to Saint Clement of Alexandria, were found.

It is also necessary to mention the various “acts” of the apostles, for example Peter, John, Thomas, etc., where information about the preaching works of these apostles was reported. These works undoubtedly belong to the category of so-called “pseudo-epigraphs”, i.e. classified as counterfeit. However, these “acts” were highly respected among ordinary pious Christians and were very common. Some of them were included, after a certain alteration, in the so-called “Acts of the Saints”, processed by the Bollandists, and from there Saint Demetrius of Rostov transferred them to our Lives of the Saints (Cheti Menaion). This can be said about the life and preaching activity of the Apostle Thomas.