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 (Jer. 10:11; Dan. 2:4-7, 28; 1 Ezra 4:8-6, 18; 7:12-26). 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-mazorets (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 deserve mention, 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 Jews of Alexandria 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 1st 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.

The basic and central idea of all the inspired Scriptures of the Bible, the idea around which all the others are centered, which gives them meaning and power, and without which the unity and beauty of the Bible would be inconceivable, is the doctrine of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As the object of the aspirations of the Old Testament, as the alpha and omega of the entire New Testament, Jesus Christ, in the words of the Apostle, was the cornerstone on the basis of which, through the apostles and prophets, the edifice of our salvation was laid and completed (Ephesians 2:20). Jesus Christ is the subject of both Testaments: the Old as His expectation, the New as the fulfillment of this expectation, and both together as a single, internal bond.

This can be uncovered and confirmed by a range of external and internal evidence.

To the proofs of the first kind, i.e. external, belong the testimonies of our Lord about Himself, the testimonies of His disciples, the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition.