The holy books in their modern fullness did not appear immediately. Time from Moses (1550 B.C.) to Samuel (1050 B.C.) can be called the first period of the formation of the Holy Scriptures. The divinely inspired Moses, who wrote down his revelations, laws, and narratives, gave the following command to the Levites who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord: "Take this book of the law, and put it at the right hand of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 31:26).

Subsequent sacred writers continued to attribute their works to the Pentateuch of Moses, with the command to keep them in the same place where it was kept, as if in one book. Thus, we read about Joshua that he wrote his words in the book of the law of God (Joshua 24:26), i.e. in the Book of Moses. In the same way, Samuel, the prophet and judge, who lived at the beginning of the royal age, is said to have set forth ... the people the rights of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book (apparently already known to everyone and existing before it), and laid it before the Lord (1 Samuel 10:25), i.e. on the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, where the Pentateuch was kept. From Samuel to the Babylonian captivity (589 B.C.), the elders of the people of Israel and the prophets were the collectors and custodians of the sacred books of the Old Testament. The latter, as the main authors of Hebrew writing, are very often spoken of in the Books of Chronicles. It is also necessary to bear in mind the remarkable testimony of the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius about the custom of the ancient Jews to revise the existing texts of the Holy Scriptures after all sorts of vague circumstances (for example, prolonged wars). Sometimes it was like a new edition of the ancient Divine Scriptures, which, however, were allowed to be published only by God-inspired people, the prophets, who remembered the most ancient events and wrote the history of their people with the greatest accuracy. Worthy of note is the ancient Jewish tradition that the pious king Hezekiah (710 B.C.), with the chosen elders, published the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, Proverbs of Solomon, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes.

The period from the Babylonian captivity to the time of the Great Synagogue under Ezra and Nehemiah (400 B.C.) is the period of the final completion of the Old Testament list of sacred books (canon). The chief work in this great work belongs to the priest Ezra, that holy teacher of the law of the God of heaven (see 1 Ezra 1:10). 1:12). With the assistance of the scholar Nehemiah, the creator of an extensive library, who collected the stories of kings and prophets and of David, and the letters of kings about sacred offerings (2 Mac. 2:13), Ezra carefully revised and published in one composition all the divinely inspired writings that had come before him, and included in this composition both the Book of Nehemiah and the Book with his own name. The then living prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi were undoubtedly Ezra's co-workers, and their works were also included in the list of books collected by Ezra.

From the time of Ezra, divinely inspired prophets ceased to appear among the Jewish people, and the books published after this time are no longer included in the list of sacred books. Thus, for example, the Book of Jesus, the son of Sirach, also written in the Hebrew language, for all its ecclesiastical dignity, was no longer included in the sacred canon.

The antiquity of the sacred books of the Old Testament is evident from their very content. The books of Moses tell so vividly about the life of a person of those distant times, so vividly depict the patriarchal way of life, so correspond to the ancient legends of those peoples, that the reader naturally comes to the idea of the author's own closeness to the times about which he narrates. According to experts in the Hebrew language, the very syllable of the Mosaic books bears the stamp of the deepest antiquity. The months of the year do not yet have their own names, but are simply called the first, second, third, etc., and the books themselves are simply called initial words without special names. For example, bereshit ("in the beginning" the Book of Genesis), veelle shemot ("and these are the names" of the Book of Exodus), etc., as if to prove that there were no other books to distinguish them from which special names would be required. The same correspondence with the spirit and character of ancient times and peoples is observed in other sacred writers who lived after Moses.

The Old Testament Holy Scripture contains the following books:

1. The books of the prophet Moses, or the Torah (containing the basics of the Old Testament faith): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

2. Historical books: the Book of Joshua, the Book of Judges, the Book of Ruth, the Books of Kings: the First, the Second, the Third and the Fourth, the Books of Chronicles: the First and the Second, the First Book of Ezra, the Book of Nehemiah, the Book of Esther.

3. Teaching books (edifying): the Book of Job, the Book of Psalms, the Book of Proverbs of Solomon, the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Book of the Song of Songs.

4. Prophetic books (mainly prophetic): the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, the Book of the Prophet Daniel, the Twelve Books of the "Minor" Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

5. In addition to these books of the Old Testament list, there are nine more books in the Bible, called "non-canonical": Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Book of Jesus the son of Sirach, the Second and Third Books of Ezra, and the three Maccabean Books. They are so called because they were written after the list (canon) of the sacred books was completed. Some modern editions of the Bible do not have these "non-canonical" books, but in the Russian Bible they do. The above titles of the holy books are taken from the Greek translation of the Seventy Interpreters. In the Hebrew Bible and in some modern translations of the Bible, several Old Testament books have different names.

(Note: In the Catholic Church, all of the above books are canonical.

In addition, some passages of the canonical books are considered non-canonical. This is the prayer of King Manasseh at the end of the "2nd Book 2. Chronicles", parts of the Book of Chronicles. Esther", not indicated by the count of verses, the last psalm of the "Psalms", the song of the three youths in "Book II. the story of Susanna in the same book, the story of Bel and the dragon in the same book.)

Summary of the Most Important Scripture Translations