Father Alexander Men became such a guide for us. He wrote the book How to Read the Bible. He had a special and rare gift – the ability to convey his vast knowledge in a clear and accessible form, to introduce his readers and listeners into the complex world of unfamiliar concepts so that they would have the joy of comprehending the truth together. In his book, living faith is organically combined with the achievements of modern biblical science. Father Alexander continues the creative tradition of Russian biblical studies, represented by the names of V. S. Solovyov, Prince S. N. Trubetskoy, Father Sergius Bulgakov, A. V. Kartashev, and Bishop Kassian (Bezobrazov).

The first handwritten copies of Father Alexander's book were a manual for illegal circles in which the Holy Scriptures were studied. In 1981, this book was published in Brussels by the publishing house "Life with God". Sometimes it was possible to bring it from abroad. It was considered as "subversive literature" and was seized during searches.

Times have changed. The Bible is published in numerous editions in our country, now it can be bought without difficulty. But it is precisely now, when the task of acquaintance with the world of the Bible has become immeasurably greater in scale, that the publication of Father Alexander's book has acquired even greater significance.

Initially, the book did not include biblical texts, but only referred readers to the necessary chapters and verses. But practice has shown that the need to constantly put down one book and pick up another distracts attention. Therefore, Father Alexander decided to prepare a new edition – a biblical anthology, including all the texts to which he had previously simply referred. And one more important difference: in addition to the most important texts of the Old Testament, the anthology was to include, in addition to the most important texts of the Old Testament, all the Gospels, as well as selected pages from other books of the New Testament. Father Alexander always emphasized that for a Christian, the reading of the Old Testament should take place in the light of the New.

But he did not have time to bring his plan to the end. After his tragic death, there remained a new preface, The World of the Bible, an edited text of the introductory sections to the books of the Old Testament, photocopies of the pages of the Old Testament selected by him, a preface to the Gospel of Mark, and commentaries on the first chapter of this Gospel.

We have taken upon ourselves the work of compiling and preparing this edition. The commentary that has begun is supplemented from the author's manuscript (Commentaries on the Gospels and the Apocalypse, 1979 version) intended for the publishing house "Life with God" in Brussels.

We hope that Fr. Alexander's book will become a guide for many readers and a good assistant in reading the Holy Scriptures.

Valentina Kuznetsova, Pavel Men

Part I

The World of the Bible

Our time for many is a time of insights and discoveries. But not only bitter, sometimes confusing and terrifying, but also joyful, like meeting new beautiful countries. Entire areas of Russian and world culture, which for many years were hushed up or distorted, are being returned to people again. Among these "unknown lands" we find the world of the Bible. What did most of our compatriots of the last two generations know about it? The book itself was practically inaccessible, and information about this book was drawn from dry, colorless textbooks, and more often from the pamphlets of Baron Holbach and Leo Taxil's "Funny Bible", which were diligently reprinted in our country.

Therefore, few people remembered that the Bible was the first work of literature that was translated into a foreign language, the first book that came out from under the printing press (after all, Gutenberg, Ivan Fedorov, and other early printers began their works with its publication). Few people knew that it was one of the first books in history to be systematically destroyed. Already a little more than a century and a half BC, copies of it were sought out and burned by the soldiers of the Hellenistic king Antiochus Epiphanes; so did the police of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in 300 A.D. It was mocked by skeptics of the XVIII century, it was "exposed" by Nazi ideologists and militants of storm anti-religious propaganda. But this same persecuted book, around which a tense struggle of ideas was waged, steadily made its way through countries and continents.

One only has to cast a glance at the Old Russian or Western biblical manuscripts to understand with what reverence people worked on them. The jeweled chased bindings and colorful initials, vignettes and miniatures, and, finally, the text itself, carefully and lovingly rewritten, show that the Bible was regarded as a sacred thing, as a precious treasure. And this attitude has persisted after hundreds of years.

Today, the Bible is published in more than 1800 languages, and there are hundreds of versions of modern European translations alone. Its multi-million circulations are difficult to count. It is issued in the form of folios, booklets, in brochures and multi-volume books, with and without commentaries. There are "Braille" Bibles for the blind, abridged, children's, illustrated, recorded on records, cassettes, on computer media. For about 200 years, voluntary Bible societies have been working to print and distribute the text of the Scriptures. Curiously, the longest telegram that was ever sent was a new translation of the Gospel, eagerly awaited by readers.