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.

It is not surprising that bizarre legends have long been formed around the Bible. N. S. Leskov in the story "Odnodum" cites an old belief that a person who has read the Scriptures from cover to cover must go mad. People used the Bible to tell fortunes, they tried to find out the date of the beginning of the war or the end of the world. It happened that in biblical prophecies they read hints about papal Rome, tsarist Russia, Napoleon, the growth of the political power of China...

At the same time, the Bible has been the subject of close scientific study for two thousand years. It is studied from the point of view of philology and history, theology and literary criticism.

Now, at the end of the twentieth century, only works on the Bible and commentaries on it could fill a vast book depository, where each line of Scripture would account for a whole rack of interpretations. Among them, there are those who consider the Bible simply as a monument of ancient Eastern and ancient writing. On the one hand, this is justified, but on the other hand, it is clear that the Bible is a much more complex phenomenon than a relic of hoary antiquity or a work of art like the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh or Virgil's Aeneid. Otherwise it would not have so many detractors and so many ardent admirers.

The "Alpha and Omega" of the Bible

For centuries, the directions of the spiritual life of mankind have been determined by what its great sages, philosophers, prophets and teachers of faith bequeathed to it. They themselves went to comprehend the mysteries of existence by difficult paths, most often realizing the limitations of their strength and capabilities. A man, even if he rises above others and above his time, still remains only a man.

Yet among the world's teachers there is One, the One, who is an inconceivable exception. If Socrates or Plato strive for the light of knowledge as a desirable goal, then Jesus says of Himself: "I am the light of the world." And in His mouth these awe-inspiring words sound as simple and natural as they can only be heard by the One Who is truly "the Way, the Truth, and the Life." The testimony of Christ is the testimony of Himself as the highest revelation of God.

That is why the basis of Christianity lies not so much in the teaching of Christ as in Him Himself. The Church does not confess an abstract doctrine, but faith in the Living God, incarnate in the living person of the God-Man.