The Greek word κανών, like the Semitic kane, originally means "a reed stick," or any "straight stick" in general, and hence in a figurative sense everything that serves to straighten and correct other things, for example, a "carpenter's plumb line," or the so-called "rule." In a more abstract sense, the word κανών received the meaning of "rule, norm, pattern", with which it is found, among other things, in the Apostle Paul: "To those who walk according to this rule (κανών), peace and mercy be upon them, and on the Israel of God" (Galatians VI:16 [31]). Based on this, the term κανών; and the adjective κανονικός, derived from it, began to be applied quite early to those sacred books in which, according to the concordant tradition of the Church, they saw the expression of the true rule of faith, its model. Irenaeus of Lyons already says that we have "a canon of truth, the word of God." And St. Athanasius of Alexandria defines the "canonical" books as those "which serve as the source of salvation, in which alone the teaching of piety is predestined."

The final difference between "canonical" and "non-canonical" books dates back to the time of St. John Chrysostom and Blessed Jerome and Augustine. From that time on, the epithet "canonical" was applied to those sacred books of the Bible which are recognized by the whole Church as divinely inspired, containing rules and models of faith, in contrast to the "non-canonical" books, i.e., although edifying and useful (for which reason they are placed in the Bible), they are not divinely inspired, and "apocryphal" (απόκρυφος – hidden, secret), completely rejected by the Church and therefore not included in the Bible.

Thus, we must look at the sign of the "canonicity" of certain books as the voice of the Church's Holy Tradition, confirming the divinely inspired origin of the books of Holy Scripture. Consequently, in the Bible itself, not all of its books have the same meaning and authority: some (canonical books) are divinely inspired, i.e., contain the true word of God, others (non-canonical) are only edifying and useful, but are not alien to the personal, not always infallible opinions of their authors. This distinction must always be borne in mind when reading the Bible, for a correct evaluation and appropriate attitude towards the books included in it. [3]

To conclude the necessary introductory information about the Bible, it remains for us to say a few words about the language in which the sacred biblical books were written, about their more famous translations, and about their modern division into chapters and verses.

All the canonical books of the Old Testament were written in Hebrew, with the exception of a few small sections written in the Chaldean language (Jeremiah X:11 [32]; Dan II:4–7 [33], 28 [34]; 1 Ezra IV:8–VI:18; VII:12–26). The non-canonical books were apparently written in Greek, although, based on the testimony of Blessed Jerome, some think that Book II. Tobit and Judith were originally written in Chaldean.

All the books of the New Testament were written in Greek, in the so-called Alexandrian dialect (which came into use from the time of Alexander the Great – κοινή διάλεκτος), with the exception of the first Gospel – Matthew, written in the Syro-Chaldean dialect of Hebrew, which was spoken by the Jews of Jesus Christ's time.

Since only consonant sounds were used in the Hebrew script, and the necessary vowel sounds were transmitted orally according to tradition, the original Old Testament text did not have vowels. They, in the form of various interlinear signs, were introduced quite late (approximately around the ΙΧ-Χ centuries AD) by learned Jewish rabbis-mazoretes (i.e., the keepers of the "tradition" - from the Hebrew verb "mazor", to transmit). As a result, the modern Hebrew text is called the Masoretic text.

Of the various translations of the Bible, two of the most authoritative and ancient are worth mentioning, the Greek LXX and the Latin Vulgate, and the two later, the Slavonic and Russian, as the closest to us.

The Greek translation was made for the needs of the Alexandrian Jews in the time of the Ptolemys, i.e., not earlier than the middle of the third century B.C., and not later than the middle of the second century.

The Latin translation or the so-called Vulgate (from vulgus – people) was made by Blessed Jerome at the end of the fourth century directly from the Hebrew text under the guidance of other best translations. It is distinguished by thoroughness and completeness.

The Slavonic translation of the Bible was first undertaken by the holy first teachers of the Slavs, the brothers Cyril and Methodius, in the second half of the ninth century. From here, through the intermediary of Bulgaria, he passed to us in Russia, where for a long time only separate, scattered books of the Bible circulated. For the first time, a complete manuscript copy of the Bible was collected by the Novgorod archbishop Gennadii, in connection with his struggle with the Judaizers (1499). The first printed Slavonic Bible was published in our country in 1581 by Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich Ostrogsky. Our Slavonic Bible is based on the Greek translation of the LXX.

The Russian Synodal translation of the Bible was made relatively recently, in the middle of the last, nineteenth century, by the efforts of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow and professors of our theological academies. It was based on the Hebrew, Masoretic text, which was compared with the Greek and Latin translations when necessary. It was completed in 1876, when the first complete Russian Bible appeared.

Finally, it should be noted that in the ancient Church there was no division of the biblical books into chapters and verses: they were all written in a continuous, coherent text, arranged in the form of columns (in the form of verses), and if they were divided, it was only into sections for liturgical use (λόγοι, έκλογάδια, εύαγγελιστάριον, προξαπόστολον). The modern division into chapters originates from Cardinal Stephen Langton, who divided the Vulgate around 1205. This division was completed and confirmed by the learned Dominican Hugh de Saint-Shear, who published his concordance around 1240, and in the middle of the sixteenth century, the learned Parisian printer Robert Stephen introduced the modern division of chapters into verses, first in the Greek-Latin edition of the New Testament (1551), and then in the complete edition of the Latin Bible (1555), from where it gradually passed into all other texts.

The main content of the Bible.