If we pass from the sacred books of the New Testament to the ancient Jewish interpretations of the Scriptures, to the Targums, the Talmud, the Midrash, and the writings of the first rabbis up to and including the twelfth century, we will see that the constant and unchanging Jewish tradition of interpreting the Bible was the desire to seek and find references to the Messiah and His time everywhere. Such infatuation sometimes even went to extremes, as can be seen from the following rabbinical saying: "The prophets preached exclusively about the joy of the days of the Messiah" (the idea of a suffering Messiah-Redeemer was forgotten); but it profoundly understood the truth that, indeed, the idea of the Messiah Christ lies at the basis of all Scripture. "One cannot wish to apply everything directly to the Messiah," says Blessed Augustine, "but passages that do not relate directly to Him serve as the foundation for those who proclaim Him. As in the lyre all the strings sound according to their nature, and the tree on which they are stretched gives them its own special color of sound, so the Old Testament: it sounds like a harmonious lyre about the name and the Kingdom of Jesus Christ." [4]

The above subtle comparison of Blessed Augustine perfectly characterizes the patristic view of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Testimonies about their close, indissoluble connection, based on the Person of the Messiah Christ, have been going on uninterruptedly since the very first centuries of Christianity: the Apostle Barnabas wrote about this in his "Epistle", St. Justin the Philosopher in "Conversation with Tryphon the Judean", Tertullian in his work "Against the Jews", St. Irenaeus of Lyons in his work "Against Heresies", the apologists Aristides, Athenagoras, and others. and from among them stood out Origen, who, for example, said that "the utterances of the Scriptures are the garments of the Word... that in the Scriptures the Word (Λόγος – Son of God) was always flesh to live among us."

Of the subsequent Holy Fathers, these thoughts were developed in detail in their remarkable commentaries by St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Ambrose of Milan. The latter, for example, wrote: "The cup of wisdom is in your hands. This cup is twofold – the Old and New Testaments. Drink them, because in both you drink Christ. Drink of Christ, for He is the source of life." [5]

Turning now to the internal proofs, i.e., to the very content of the sacred books, we are finally convinced that our Lord Jesus Christ constitutes the main point and the central idea of the entire Bible. This great book, composed by so many and varied authors, separated by very considerable periods of time, and influenced by the most diverse civilizations, is at the same time a remarkable unity and a wonderful wholeness. This is mainly due to the gradual development of the same messianic idea in it. "The New Testament is hidden in the Old, the Old in the New is revealed," said medieval theologians, based on the words of Blessed Augustine. [6]

That Jesus Christ and His work constitute the sole theme of all the New Testament Scriptures is self-evident and requires no proof. But that the whole of New Testament history is based on the Old Testament is perhaps not so obvious. And yet this is just as certain, for proof of which it is sufficient to refer only to the two Gospel genealogies of Christ, in which the entire Old Testament history is abbreviated in its relation to the person of the promised Messiah Christ (Matthew I:1-16 and Luke III:23-38).

But we can consistently trace the development of the messianic idea in the books of the Old Testament. The promise of the Deliverer, given to the fallen ancestors in Paradise, is the first link in that unbroken chain of Old Testament messianic prophecies that began with Adam and ended with Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. That is why it is called the first gospel (Genesis III:15). From the time of Noah, this promise is defined somewhat more closely and precisely: only the children of Shem are called the seed of the woman, to whom the story of redemption is timed (Genesis IX:26). This circle has been further narrowed since the time of Abraham, the father of the God-chosen Jewish people, in whose seed (i.e., in Jesus Christ, according to the interpretation of the Apostle Paul – Galatians III:16 [56]) the salvation of all other nations is proclaimed (Gen. XII:3; XVIII:18). Subsequently, the race of Jacob was separated from the descendants of Abraham (Genesis XXVII:27), and later Jacob himself, in the spirit of prophetic insight, gave a special blessing to his son Judah (Genesis XLIX:8 ff.).

And the further time passed, the closer and more honestly the various features of the Messianic ministry were defined: thus, the prophet Balaam speaks of His royal authority (Num XXIV:17), Moses speaks of His threefold ministry: royal, high priestly and prophetic (Deuteronomy XVIII:18-19), of the descent of the Messiah from the royal line of David (2 Samuel VII:12-14 [57]), of His birth in Bethlehem (Micah V:2 [58]) and of the Virgin Mother (Isaiah VII:14 [59]), of His triumphal entry into the temple of Jerusalem (Mal III:1 [60]), of the various, even petty circumstances of His suffering and death on the Cross (Isaiah LIII ch.; Psalm XXI:17-19 [61]; XL:10 [62]; LXVIII:22 [63]; Zech XI:12 [64] etc.), about His glorious resurrection (Isaiah LIII:9-12 [65]; Psalm XV:10 [66]; XIX:6–7 [67]; XL:11 [68]; XLVII:2 [69] and others), about the coming of His gracious kingdom (Psalm XXI:28-32 [70]; XLIV:7 [71], 14–17 [72]; LXXI:7–19 [73]; Joel II:28 [74]; Isaiah II ch.; Isaiah XXXV:1–2 [75], 10 [76]; LXI:1-2 [39]) and His terrible second coming (Dan VII:25 [77] and XII:7 [78]; Zech XIV:2-3 [79], 9 [80], etc.). It can be positively said that there is not a single important feature of the age and life of the Messiah that was not foreshadowed in the Old Testament in one way or another, either in the form of a clear prophecy, or under the veil of symbols and types; and the prophet Isaiah even received the title of "Old Testament evangelist" for the amazing accuracy and completeness of his prophesied prototypes of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This unity of the messianic idea is no less clear in the general plan of the Bible. In terms of their nature and content, all the books of the Old Testament can be divided into three main groups: books of law-positive history, books of prophets, and books of poetic and edifying. The first class presents the history of theocracy, i.e., the rights of Hashem's rule over Israel. But for what purpose does the Lord use such different methods of educating His people? The covenant at Sinai, the Mosaic law, the calamities of the wilderness, the conquest of the promised land, victories and defeats, alienation from other nations, and finally, the burden of the Babylonian captivity and the joy of returning from it, all had as their obvious aim the formation of the Jewish nation in a certain spirit, in the spirit of preserving and spreading the messianic idea. This motive is even more evident in the prophetic books, where, now through threats, now through promises of rewards, the Jewish people were constantly maintained on a certain moral height and prepared in the spirit of pure faith and right life, in view of the coming Messiah. As for the books of the last group, poetic and edifying, some of them, such as the Psalms, were directly messianic prayers of the Jewish nation; others, like the Song of Songs, depicted the union of Israel with Christ under the form of allegory; still others, like the books of Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, etc., revealed various features of Divine Wisdom, the rays of that Divine Word (Λόγος) that shone in the darkness of paganism and in the pre-Christian world.

Thus, it can be said with full conviction that the main and fundamental subject of the Bible, from the first chapters of the Book of Genesis (III:15) to the last chapters of the Apocalypse (XXI:6-21 [81] and XXII:20 [82]), is the God-Man, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Old Testament.

The earliest division of the Bible, coming from the time of the early Christian Church, was its division into two, far from equal parts, which were called the Old and New Testaments.

Such a division of the entire composition of the biblical books was due to their relationship to the main subject of the Bible, i.e. to the person of the Messiah: those books that were written before the coming of Christ and only prophetically foreshadowed Him became part of the "Old Testament", and those that appeared after the coming of the Savior into the world and are devoted to the history of His redemptive ministry and the exposition of the foundations of the Church established by Jesus Christ and His holy apostles. formed the "New Testament".

All these terms, i.e. both the word "covenant" itself and its combination with the adjectives "old" and "new", are taken from the Bible itself, in which, in addition to their general meaning, they also have a special one, in which we also use them when speaking of well-known biblical books.

The word covenant (Hebrew berit, Greek: διαθήκη, Latin: testamentum), in the language of Holy Scripture and Biblical usage, first of all, means a certain decree, condition, law, on which the two contracting parties agree, and hence this very contract or union, as well as those external signs that served as its confirmation, seal, as it were a seal (testamentum). And since the sacred books in which this covenant or union of God with man was described were, of course, one of the best means of confirming it and fixing it in the people's memory, the name "covenant" was also transferred to them very early. It already existed in the time of Moses, as can be seen from the 7th verse of the 24th chapter of the Book of Moses. Exodus, where the record of the Sinai legislation read by Moses to the Jewish people is called the book of the covenant (sefer habberit). Similar expressions, which denote not only the Sinai legislation, but the entire Mosaic Pentateuch, are found in the subsequent Old Testament books (2 Kings XXIII:2 [83]; Sir XXV:25 [84]; 1 Macc I:57 [85]). To the Old Testament belongs the first, still prophesied reference to the New Testament, namely, in the well-known prophecy of Jeremiah: "Behold, the days are coming, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah" (Jeremiah XXXI:31).