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.

Denouncing the unbelief and hardness of heart of the Jewish scribes and Pharisees, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself repeatedly referred to the testimony of the "law and the prophets," i.e. the Old Testament scriptures in general. Search the Scriptures, for you think through them to have eternal life, but they bear witness to Me (John 5:39); for if you had believed Moses, you would have believed Me, because he wrote about Me (John 5:46), for example, the Lord said to the blinded Jewish lawyers after the well-known miracle of the healing of the paralytic at the sheep's font. The Lord revealed this truth to His disciples even more clearly and in detail, appearing to them after the resurrection, as the Evangelist Luke testifies: and beginning with Moses, of all the prophets He explained to them what was said about Him in all the Scriptures... And he said to them, "This is what I spoke about while I was with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written about me in the law of Moses, and in the prophets and psalms" (Luke 24:27 and 44). In addition to such a general statement, the Lord often points out particular cases of Old Testament images and prophecies that had to do with His life, teaching, sufferings and death on the Cross. Thus, for example, He notes the transfigurative significance of the brass serpent hanged by Moses in the wilderness (John 3:14), points to the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy about "the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:17-21; cf. Isaiah 61:1-2), speaks of the fulfillment of all ancient prophecies concerning His atoning sacrifice (Matt. 26:54 and Lk. 22:37), and even on the cross itself, at the moment of suffering, pronounces His deeply touching and calmly majestic words: was accomplished (John 19:30), thus letting it be known that all that was ordained from eternity, was spoken through the prophets for many hours and in many ways (Hebrews 1:1).

Like their Divine Teacher, the Evangelists and Apostles incessantly refer to the Bible, drawing with their full hand from the richness of its messianic treasures and thus establishing the complete harmony of the two Testaments, united around the Person of the Messiah – Christ. Thus, all the Evangelists – these four independent writers of the life of Jesus Christ – so often refer to the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies that they even developed special formulas for this: "And all this happened, that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, or simply: then was fulfilled that which was spoken through the prophet, that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled," or else: and the word of the Scripture was fulfilled, and a whole series of others, similar expressions.

No less often they refer to the Old Testament Scriptures and thus establish its closest inner connection with the New Testament and all the other New Testament writers, beginning with Book II. Acts and ending with the Apocalypse. Not being able to exhaust here the entire abundance of such definite and clear references, we will point out as an example only a few of them, the most characteristic: such, for example, are the two speeches of the Apostle Peter: one after the descent of the Holy Spirit, the other after the healing of the lame man, which are narrated in the second and third chapters of the Book of Kings. Acts and which are full of Old Testament quotations (Joel – Acts 2:16-21; David – 2:25-28; 34-35; Moses – 3:22-23); especially remarkable is the conclusion of the last speech: and all the prophets, from Samuel and after him, however many they spoke, also foretold these days (Acts 3:24). No less important in this respect is the speech of Archdeacon Stephen, which gives in a concise sketch the entire Old Testament history of the preparation of the Jews for the acceptance of the Messiah Christ (Acts 7:2-56). In the same book of Acts there is a great multitude of other similar testimonies: "And we preach unto you that the promise which was made to the fathers, God hath fulfilled unto us, their children, by raising up Jesus" (Acts 13:32). In short, the entire teaching of the apostles about the New Testament Kingdom of God boiled down mainly to what they assured Jesus from the law of Moses and the prophets (Acts 28:23).

Of the many New Testament references that establish a connection with the Old Testament events and prophecies contained in the Epistles of the Holy Apostles, we will cite a few examples only from the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, the same Paul who, as Saul, was himself formerly a Pharisee, a zealot of patristic traditions, and a profound scholar of the Old Testament Testament. And so, this holy Apostle says that the end of the law is Christ (Romans 10:4), that the law was for us a tutor (παιδάγογος) to Christ (Gal. 3:24), that believers are established on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, having Jesus Christ Himself as the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20), that all the Old Testament types are described for our instruction (1 Cor. 10:11), that the entire Old Testament with all its religious ceremonies and worship was only a shadow of the future, and the body is in Christ (Col. 2:17), a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of things (Heb. 10:1), and that, finally, at the foundation of the entire history of the economy of our salvation lies Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8).

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 enthusiasm sometimes even reached 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 the 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, go uninterruptedly side by side from 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 Origen stood out from among them, 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 double – the Old and New Testaments. Drink them, because in both you drink Christ. Drink of Christ, for He is the fountain of life." [5]