Teaching and Prophetic Books

PREFACE

In the second part of the course, the teaching and prophetic books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament are considered. The general approach remains the same as in the first part. The main task is to show the unity of the Old and New Testaments, the Christocentricity of the entire Divine Scripture and, finally, its enduring significance and relevance.

The lack of a clear standard scheme for the arrangement of material within each chapter is due to the author's desire to give students a general idea of each book as a whole, and not only to acquaint them with its content. The latter task is of secondary importance, since it can only be solved by reading the "original source", and not by retelling.

The task remains unchanged to prepare students and listeners for independent study of the Holy Scriptures. Since modern students, as a rule, do not have sufficient prior training in the field of biblical studies, voluminous quotations from the Holy Scriptures are included in the text to facilitate the perception of the educational material.

Section 1

TEACHING BOOKS

The books that make up the third section of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, which we are beginning to study, are called poetic in form, or didactic in content.

The resurrected Christ said to His disciples: "This is what I told you, while I was with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written about Me in the law of Moses, and in the prophets and psalms" (Luke 24:44). From his words it is clear that these books at that time were united under the common name of "psalms". These books were called poetic by St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Gregory the Theologian, as well as St. John of Damascus. The writer of the 6th century, Leontius of Byzantium, was one of the first to call them didactic [51, vol. 4, p. 3].

According to the explanation of St. Athanasius the Great, "it was fitting that St. The Scriptures sang to God not only in a consistent [prosaic] speech, but also in a way that did not have a strict sequence [poetic]. Thus, in coherent speech is said what belongs to the law and the prophets, and everything narrative, with the inclusion of the New Testament. A speech that does not have a strict order is said that which is contained in the psalms and hymns. And this is what is required by the Law, so that people love God with all their strength and strength" [4, vol. 4, p. 29]. He also calls the speech of the teaching books "widespread" [ibid.], thus indicating a special form characteristic of Jewish poetry, when thought is conveyed by means of two or more related expressions (parallelism).