Many people ask the question: "Who are the Old Believers, and how do they differ from Orthodox believers?" People interpret Old Belief in different ways, equating it either with religion or with a variety of sects.

Let's try to understand this extremely interesting topic.

Old Believers - who are they

Old Belief emerged in the 17th century as a protest against changes in old church customs and traditions. A schism began after the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, who introduced innovations in church books and church order. All who did not accept the changes and cared for the preservation of old traditions were anathematized and persecuted.

A large community of Old Believers soon split into separate branches that did not recognize the sacraments and traditions of the Orthodox Church and often had different views on the faith.

Avoiding persecution, the Old Believers fled to unsociable places, settling in the North of Russia, the Volga region, Siberia, settled in Turkey, Romania, Poland, China, reached Bolivia and even Australia.

Customs and traditions of Old Believers

The current way of life of Old Believers practically does not differ from that which their grandfathers and great-grandfathers used several centuries ago. In such families, history and traditions passed down from generation to generation are honored. Children are taught to honor their parents, brought up in severity and obedience, so that in the future they will become a reliable support.

From an early age, sons and daughters are taught to work, which the Old Believers hold in high esteem. They have to work a lot: Old Believers try not to buy groceries in the store, so they grow vegetables and fruits in their gardens, keep cattle in perfect cleanliness, and do a lot for the house with their own hands.

They do not like to tell strangers about their lives, and even have separate dishes for those who come to the community "from the outside."

To clean the house, only clean water from a consecrated well or spring is used. The bathhouse is considered an unclean place, therefore, the cross must be removed before the procedure, and when they enter the house after the steam room, they must wash themselves with clean water.

The Old Believers pay great attention to the sacrament of baptism. They try to baptize the baby within a few days after his birth. The name is chosen strictly according to the calendar, and for a boy - within eight days after birth, and for a girl - in the range of eight days before and after birth.

All the attributes used during baptism are kept in running water for some time so that they become clean. Parents are not allowed to christening. If mom or dad witnesses the ceremony, then this is a bad sign that threatens divorce.

As for wedding traditions, relatives up to the eighth generation and relatives "on the cross" have no right to go down the aisle. There is no wedding on Tuesday and Thursday. After marriage, a woman constantly wears a shashmura headdress; it is considered a great sin to appear in public without it.

Old Believers do not wear mourning. According to custom, the body of the deceased is washed not by relatives, but by people chosen by the community: a man is washed by a man, a woman is washed by a woman. The body is placed in a wooden coffin with shavings at the bottom. Instead of a cover - a sheet. At the commemoration, the deceased is not commemorated with alcohol, and his things are distributed to those in need as alms.

Are there Old Believers in Russia today?

In Russia today there are hundreds of settlements in which Russian Old Believers live.

Despite different trends and branches, they all continue the way of life and way of life of their ancestors, carefully preserve traditions, bring up children in the spirit of morality and ambition.

What is the cross of the Old Believers

In church rituals and divine services, Old Believers use an eight-pointed cross, on which there is no image of the Crucifixion. In addition to the horizontal bar, there are two more on the symbol.

The upper one depicts a tablet on the cross where Jesus Christ was crucified, the lower one implies a kind of "scale" that measures human sins.

How Old Believers are baptized

In Orthodoxy, it is customary to make the sign of the cross with three fingers - three fingers, symbolizing the unity of the Holy Trinity.

Old Believers cross themselves with two fingers, as was customary in Russia, saying twice "Alleluia" and adding "Glory to Thee, God."

For divine services, they dress in special clothes: men put on a shirt or kosovorotka, women - a sundress and a scarf. During the service, Old Believers cross their arms over their chests as a sign of humility before the Almighty and bow down to the ground.

Where are the settlements of the Old Believers

In addition to those who remained in Russia after Nikon's reforms, Old Believers who have lived in exile outside its borders for a long time continue to return to the country. They, as before, honor their traditions, raise livestock, cultivate the land, and raise children.

Many took advantage of the program of resettlement to the Far East, where there is a lot of fertile land and there is an opportunity to build a strong economy. Several years ago, Old Believers from South America returned to Primorye thanks to the same voluntary resettlement program.

In Siberia and the Urals, there are villages where Old Believer communities are firmly established. There are many places on the map of Russia where the Old Believers flourish.

Why the Old Believers were called bespopovtsy

The split of the Old Believers formed two separate branches - priesthood and bezpopovshchina. Unlike the Old Believers-priests, who, after the schism, recognized the church hierarchy and all the sacraments, the Old Believers-Bespopovtsy began to deny the priesthood in all its manifestations and recognized only two sacraments - Baptism and Confession.

There are Old Believers who also do not deny the sacraments of Marriage. According to bespopovtsy, the Antichrist has reigned in the world, and all modern clergy is heresy, from which there is no sense.

What is the Bible of the Old Believers

The Old Believers believe that the Bible and the Old Testament in their modern interpretation are distorted and do not carry the original information that should carry the truth.

In their prayers, they use the Bible, which was used before Nikon's reform. Prayer books of those times have survived to this day. They are carefully studied and used in worship.

How Old Believers Differ from Orthodox Christians

The main difference is this:

1. Orthodox believers recognize church rites and sacraments of the Orthodox Church, believe in its teachings. The Old Believers consider the old pre-reform texts of the Holy Books to be true, not recognizing the changes made.
2. Old Believers wear eight-pointed crosses with the inscription "King of Glory", there is no image of the Crucifixion on them, they cross with two fingers, and bow down to earth. In Orthodoxy, three fingers are accepted, crosses have four and six ends, mostly they bow in the waist.
3. The Orthodox rosary is 33 beads, the Old Believers use the so-called ladders, consisting of 109 knots.
4. Old Believers baptize people three times, completely immersing them in water. In Orthodoxy, a person is doused with water and partially immersed.
5. In Orthodoxy, the name "Jesus" is written with a double vowel "and", the Old Believers are faithful to traditions and write it as "Jesus".
6. There are more than ten different readings in the Symbol of Faith of Orthodox and Old Believers.
7. Old Believers prefer copper and pewter icons to wooden ones.

Conclusion

A tree can be judged by its fruit. The purpose of the Church is to lead her spiritual children to salvation, and it is possible to evaluate her fruits, the result of her labors, according to the gifts that her children have acquired.

And the fruits of the Orthodox Church are a host of Holy martyrs, saints, priests, prayer books and other wondrous Benevolers of God. The names of our Saints are known not only to Orthodox, but also to Old Believers, and even to non-church people.

International Club of Scientists

"Awareness of knowledge. A program for the intellectual"

No. 57, 2003

Host - A.P. Smirnov

Hello! Recently, there has been a clearly increased interest to a real story, which, as many now understand, is not at all the one written about in school textbooks. Today, not only historical and archaeological research, but also the work of physicists and engineers testifies to the fact that the ancients knew much more about the Universe and its laws than we know. Religion is of increased interest today, which has its own system of knowledge, which has survived practically without significant changes for hundreds and thousands of years. Our guest is the head of the Old Russian Inglistic Church of the Orthodox Old Believers-Ingling Pater Diy Alexander. - Father Alexander, you are the patriarch of the Old Russian Orthodox Church of the Old Believers. Please tell us about this church, because probably not very many people know about your church.

- Our church has existed for a long time. Sometimes many come and ask: “Is your faith or your church true?” ... I say: “You see, it is not true. Truth - it is with the gods, and it [faith] is with us primordial. " It was before the advent of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, that is, before all faiths, before all religions. That is, it was original, that is, before people were called simply Old Believers - that is, "old faith", and already, we will say, from the time of baptism, they were even called simply "old people." Many people confuse it with Old Believers. This is due to the fact that during the Nikon schism, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov issued a decree, exactly according to to whom anyone who gives shelter to a schismatic should be mercilessly executed with his family. Therefore, many Old Believers, as they are now called, schismatics, supporters of the old rite, they fled to the Siberian Belovodye, where our ancestors gave them shelter in sketes and skufs. Not because faith is one, but because they are one by blood. And those Rusichi and those Rusichi. And they were given shelter, and for many it became, as it were, the same thing - that Old Believers, that Old Believers, especially even modern philologists, are confused. But the Old Believers are adherents of the old Christian rite, and the Old Believers are the old pre-Christian faith. That is, many, say, representatives of the kind of means mass information and maybe even some scientists mistakenly call us "pagans." But this word appeared at the time of Christianization ...

- This is very important, because today there is a different understanding of paganism ...

- Yes. "Gentile" - this was brought by the Christians. As well as "bastard". That is a Latin word. "Pogane" - that is, "walking the other way", life, literally. That is, it entered Latin from the Rassene language, or, as they say now, from the language of the Etruscans. Therefore, Latin says: Etruscan is not read or translated. That is, they took it and twisted the tongue. And here: “language” is one of the forms, that is, depending on what letter is written through, there is such a form - “people”. "Representative of the people" - "yazyche". And a representative of an alien people with a different language, beliefs, culture will be "no pagan", or abbreviated "pagan". So when they come to us and say, “Are you pagans?” I say, “No. We cannot be ourselves infidels and foreigners. We are the keepers and continuers of the old faith of our ancestors. "

- There is such a situation ... now there is an opinion that pagans are the people who are most likely to understand(that's exactly what happened!) the language of nature ...

- This is a modern interpretation, that is ... we will talk, I meet, we communicate with many new pagans ... that is, who revive the faith of their ancestors in different regions of Russia. That is, they do not care what they call it - paganism, native faith - that is, native faith, or native culture ... that is, the main thing is that people decided to return to their roots. And which term is used by the means probably the most probably(that's exactly what it was!) information(source not specified) - I think it doesn't even matter here.

- Well, the main thing here is that there is no confusion ...

- Yes. And the confusion, as a rule, is created by representatives of the means mass information that does not know Russian, do not understand the terminology, because sometimes you listen to them - their "Kolovrat" is "a cow by the bed." That is, they have such interpretations. Or "near the gate." That is, it can be completely other terms and concepts. And we put the images that were originally in the words, in the names. Well, let's say, in our country, as was customary back in the empire, the ancient Russian church(that's exactly what happened!) Orthodox Old Believers. Now we are called the Old Russian Inglistic Church of Orthodox Old Believers - Ingling. Many people say: "where does this name come from?" And this is required by the law of 97th year "On freedom of religion", which demanded that the title should contain a mention of religion. That is why it turned out to be such an ancient .. uh .. long name.

- Father Alexander, recently, the results of excavations and the discovery of burial mounds in Omsk, where a very ancient culture was discovered, have been very worried, and, apparently, this culture may have a direct attitude(source not specified) to you.

- That's right. Excavations were also carried out in the Tara tract, this is the 70-80s, where there was, so to speak, perhaps a modern tongue(source not specified), the temple complex of the goddess Tara. That is, archaeologists have unearthed it. In 1994, when there was a scientific and practical conference dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the city of Tara, which was founded in 1594, I spoke there, and my report was designated as "Unknown History", although we had no history at all. History has appeared since the time of Peter. And before that, we had the legacy of our ancestors. History is what is taken from the Torah. And we are, as it were, Slavs, we have nothing to do with Christianity or Judaism, we have our own. Therefore, I told them that Tara is not 400 years old, but at least the ancient Tarii city is 4000 years old, for the city was built in the summer of 3502 from the creation of the world before the second Kha'ari campaign to Dravidia, i.e. to ancient India to protect the northern borders, that is, from the raids of fish-eaters, as they say ... well, or now - the northern peoples ... That is, and .. the representative was the Novosibirsk Academgorodok, and he says: there is nothing there and cannot be, this lies, church tales. And at that moment two girls - archaeologists of the Tara Pedagogical Institute - stand up and say: “How not? we have been digging this ancient city for two years. Well, we were told - here it is either Tatar or Ostyak, and here everything is Slavic before magma. " After that, he says: "was there anything else?" I say: “Yes, there was a city of Vendagard. He was in the area of ​​Bolsherechensk. " He says: "Where is this?" I say: "now this is the regional center Bolsherechye." It was excavated in 98, that is, four years later, as I said. Now it is a monument of proto-city culture, that is, the oldest. Somewhere in 99-2000, there were excavations and in the most likely center cities(that's exactly what happened!), that is, they also discovered underground passages, storerooms ... although back in 1995 or 94, the Kommercheskie Vesti newspaper covered the entire page about the excavations that had taken place before that. That is, the article was called "Where ancient Iriy carries water." It was an associate professor ... at the then former agricultural institute Nikolai Solokhin. And he wrote that during the laying of the heating main, an ancient necropolis was discovered under the center of the city, where there was an old fortress, the age is older than the Egyptian pyramids. And then - where we have the "Flora" pavilion - they found underground passages. But then there was no money for research. In 2001, in my opinion ... or at the beginning of 2002 ... I don't remember now, in my opinion, in 2001 TV-6, Moscow was just shown. But there the entrance was walled up so that the curious go there ...

The Helmsman of 1620 contains the following extremely curious section. I cite it in the same form as it is present in Kormcha, without translation into modern Russian. The necessary explanations have been added in parentheses.
“About the books of the Old Law and Novago. The essence of the books of the Old Testament 22. Toliko by hearing is imagined from the JIDs (emphasis added by the author).

Genesis, Exodus, Aevgitic, Numbers, Second Law, Jesus Na-vin, Judges, Ruth, Four Kingdoms, therefore the Remains (that is, the books of Chronicles - Auth) ›therefore there are two Ezra, Psalter, Proverbs, Churchman (Ecclesiastes - Atfra.) , Song of Songs - Auth) in Job, Prophetic 12: the first - Josiah, 2 - Amos, 3 Micah, 4 - Joel, 5 - Jonah, 6 Obadiah, 7 - Nahum, 8 - Habakkuk, 9 - Zephaniah, 10 - Haggai, 11 - Zechariah, 12 - Malachi; therefore Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentation, Epistles, Hezekiel, Daniel. Behold the Old Testament.

New packs are not too lazy to decide (that is, I will not be too lazy to list the composition of the New Testament - Auth).

Four Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; Acts of the Apostles, Epistles of the Councils seven and the Apostle: Jacob is one, Peter's two, John's three, Iudino is one, Pauline Epistles 14: the first to Romans, two - to Corinth, Galat, Ephesus, Philip, Kolasai, Solunyan, two Jews, Timothy, two to Titus, to Philemon; the final Revelation of John (APOCALYPSE - Auth), John Chrysostom, John Damascene, John the Evangelist, Gregory Decapolitus, Cyril of Alexander, Dionysius the Areopagiite, Simeon the God-Receiver, Isaiah the Great (New Testament Isaiah in the Old Testament! Jeremiah! And in the Bible he is in the Old Testament - Auth), DANIEL (New Testament Daniel! And again referred to the Old Testament in the Bible - Auth), Paralipomenos (New Testament books of Chronicles! Transferred to the Old Testament according to the Biblical text - Auth), Defutoronomy (that is, a certain OTHER APOCALYPSE, since the Revelation of John was already listed above - Auth), Varlam, Ephraim, Pan-dock, Limonis, Paterik, Nil, Asaph, Maxim, Pavel Mona-Casian, Basil the New, Granograf (hence, a certain CHRONOGRAPH was part of the New Testament; where is this New Testament Chronograph today? - Auth), Paleya, Eclisiastus (New Testament Eclisiastus! And again dragged into the Old Testament. - Author), Six-Day, Genealogy, Stream, Depth, Beads, Krinitsa, Yosi f Matafin, Cosma Indikoplov, Anastasius of Sinaisky, Athanasius the Great, Apostolic, Jesus Navvin (New Testament Jesus Navin turns out! Could it be the cannons of his medieval Hierokhon pipes from which the walls fell? - Auth), Jesus Semeramin, Jesus Sirakhov (New Testament Jesus! Tired of repeating about the Bible - Auth), three Interrogations, Phisilog twelve, Iyakovlich, Job (New Testament Job! Bee, Supply, Stool, Wanderer. "

Most of these books were destroyed by the priests, some of them ended up in the Apocrypha. However, the Old Believers managed to preserve the heritage of their ancestors and ancient books. gradually see the world again. The author of the miniature has the opportunity to read them, being an Old Believer of the Semeysk clan Christianity of the Cathars of the Languedoc and the Kulugurs of the Volga cups. We are also called the Good People of the Holy Grail (Chalice).

What he has seen is striking in where the cunning priests and the state crooks they serve have led humanity. There is nothing Christian in what appears to be the Eastern and Western Christian churches today, except for the name. This is the religion of Satanail, not even a faith, but just a way of managing people. Judeo-Christianity in the most perverted form of obscurantism.

I have no right to impose my opinion on readers, my Faith is a voluntary matter, but the published list of the books of Holy Scripture should make you wonder why, from such a huge amount of knowledge, you get only an ersatz excerpt of a biblical story based on the teachings of the Torah.

But the Torah even rejects Judeo-Christianity, where a scene of torment and an instrument of execution worn around the neck are defined as a symbol. You carry a yoke, man, the shameful yoke of a slave. Look at ancient monuments with a cross. Where do you see the crucifixion on them?

The epic of Christ are real events of the 12th century that have a grandiose meaning and an instructive conclusion, in the form of a teaching on how to return to the house of the Almighty. Today you do not know the teachings of Christ, but what this teaching about Christ gives you, from the point of view of the Torah, Talmud and other mudas. You are a blind man. Let this short work open your eyes to how the priests of the Makava deceive you.

The ancient East Slavic city of Ostrog is mentioned in the Ipatiev Chronicle under 1100. By the time Ivan Fedorov arrived there, Ostrog was already one of the largest political, administrative, economic and cultural centers of Ukraine. It was in this city that Ivanov Fyodorov created the famous Bible - an edition, better known and more glorious than which, perhaps, is not found in all the old printed Slavic books.

The Ostrog Bible presented the Russian and Ukrainian old printed books abroad: Ivan the Terrible, for example, presented a copy of it to J. Garsey (the envoy of the English Queen), and Prince Constantine of Ostrog to Pope Gregory XIII. A copy is known that belonged to the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf.

For its time, the circulation of this book (1000 copies) was unusually large, and contemporaries and immediate descendants knew about the publication well. The release of the first complete Slavic Bible, of course, could not pass unnoticed in the world of that time. The famous edition of Ivan Fedorov was known in France, where it was kept in the Paris Royal Library. A copy of the Ostrog Bible was also kept in Dresden - by the famous orientalist Elias Hutter, copies of it were in the colleges of Cambridge, and the Catholic bishop Peter Bogdan told about the distribution of the Ostrog Bible in Bulgaria.

The Ostroh Bible was based on the Church Slavonic translation of biblical books, completed by the end of the 15th century in Novgorod under the leadership of Archbishop Gennady. For the editorial preparation of the edition of the Bible, it was necessary to gather in Ostrog writers, translators and editors. Among them, Ivan Fyodorov himself played an active role, who not only supervised the printing of the Bible, but was also one of the main “referees” of its text. Searches for manuscripts were carried out in Constantinople, within the "Roman borders", in many Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian monasteries. In a very short time, various lists of the Bible were checked, but only one of them turned out to be complete (this is the already mentioned Gennadievskaya one). This Bible was received from Moscow from Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and it was used to compare Greek, Latin and Slavic texts. Ostrog scholars were convinced that the translation of the Moscow list was carried out in Kiev under Vladimir the Great, that is, 500 years earlier.

In a very short time, various lists of the Bible were checked, the original was selected and compared with foreign editions. In addition, it was necessary to cast new fonts - Slavic and Greek, type the text (3,240,000 characters), print a volume of 1256 pages, and also bind part of the circulation.

Many of the decoration techniques that Ivan Fedorov used to create the Ostrog Bible were also encountered in its previous editions, but only here the artistic details and additional articles of the text appeared exactly in the sequence that would later become characteristic of Ukrainian and Belarusian publishing: the title page with a portal frame, a coat of arms and heraldic verses on its back, then a preface by the publisher and compilers, a table of contents and at the end of the book - calendar indexes and an afterword by the printers.

The Ostroh Bible was published in folio format. It contains 628 leaves, decorated with a woodcut title frame, the coat of arms of Prince K.K. Ostrozhsky and the seal of Ivan Fedorov. The headpieces of the Ostroh edition of the Bible contain ornamental motifs, which by that time were widespread in the Ukrainian manuscript book. They were made with a white pattern on a black background, as Ivan Fedorov sought to visually bring them closer to the Moscow old-printed ornamental tradition.

The central part of the headpiece, which opens the main text of the Ostrog Bible, was imprinted from the board from the Apostle of 1564, but it was given a U-shape (as in the Polish Bible, published in 1563 in Brest). The shape of the cartouche for the coat of arms of Prince K.K. was borrowed from the same Bible. Ostrozhsky on the back of the title page.

Headpieces, most of which are placed at the beginning of each book of the Bible, establish the necessary pauses between them and make reading easier. At the same time, they also perform a decorative function, breaking the monotony of typesetting pages. Compared to the previous headpieces by Ivan Fedorov, their shape in the Ostrog Bible is greatly simplified: tops in the form of cones, leaves or fruits are found only four times, and the rest of the decorations have the character of clear vertical rectangles. The drawings are dominated by plant elements - bunches of grapes, pomegranate fruits, flowers.

Numerous initials in the Ostrog Bible are distinguished by their rare beauty and consistency of style. All of them are in the form of rectangles, outlined along the edges with a white line. Like the headpieces, the capital letters in them are modeled with plant motifs, but the symmetry (inherent in headpieces) is often broken in them.

The originality of the Ostroh Bible was clearly manifested in the wide use of ligature: it contains 78 lines, and some of the titles are in red ligature. When publishing this Bible, Ivan Fedorov used paper from 18 different paper-making workshops, Polish and Ukrainian, and a total of 50 watermarks were used in it, many of which were familiar from other publications of the Russian pioneer printer. These are, for example, the coat of arms "Elite" - the workshop of the Ukrainian village of Lifchitsy, the coat of arms "Ax" - typical for the workshop of the Tenczynski and others.

There are no figural engravings in the Ostrog Bible, it is framed strictly and simply. But, as the well-known bibliologist A.A. Sidorov, “it has all the advantages - both typographic and typesetting”. It was not without reason that M. Andrella-Orosvigovsky, a Transcarpathian writer of the 17th century, argued that "he would not have given a single sheet of this book for the whole of Prague, England and the German faith." And then he added several more cities, countries and peoples to this list. And Joseph Dobrovsky wrote to one of his friends: “I would give half of my library for the“ Ostrog Bible ”.

Among the biblical editions in 900 languages, the Slavic Bible does not occupy a prominent position either in antiquity of origin or in the vastness of its influence. But this is our Slavic Bible, and therefore it deserves our everlasting memory and special remembrance - especially on such memorable occasions as the present one.

The Slavic Bible is a monument of the all-Slavic Christian resurrection, the basis, the beginning and the companion of the culture of all Slavic peoples. It would be more correct to say that here one is inseparable from the other and the second is agreed upon first, because it embodies the "true light", calls everyone to pure enlightenment and obliges them to free progress. This means that the Slavic Bible is an invariable and impressive appeal to a religious Christian civilization in the broadest, general humanitarian sense. On the other hand, it is "by its origin" "at the beginning (according to the words of the famous Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret" Drozdov ", f 1877, November 19, in his famous note" On the dogmatic dignity and protective use of the Greek seventy commentators and Slavic translations Holy Scripture ", Moscow 1858) is not a work of ordinary scholarship, but the fruit of the apostolic zeal of Saints Cyril and Methodius", illuminated by the radiance of sacredness by its very origin, the original Christian missionary "application and the everlasting church-liturgical use, as the most sacred book of all Christian Slavism ".

The above stated resolutely ascertain the specific quality of the biblical content itself, and only the dignity of the latter precisely determines the degree of usefulness and wholesomeness of Christian enlightenment in the past, its salvation in the tragic present and life-giving for a troubled future, which must certainly be regenerating - luminous, for without such invigorating confidence everything past will become in vain, and the present is meaningless. All these essential questions are resolved by the simple fact that our Slavic Bible gives an organic unification of the Old and New Testaments, where the first testifies to the historical preparation of the second, which already describes the whole, the divine completion of the universal process. Therefore, the entire Slavic Bible in its ideological character turns out to be a Christian book, although it differs in the strength of expression of this element according to the course of universal history.

This undoubted property forcibly requires scientifically to find out how true and legitimate such a continuous Christianization of the Slavic Bible is, and is there not a biased transfer of the later to the earlier, which is naturally drawn as a preparatory and justifying moment? It is clear that for

In such a situation, the Christian crown will not be immediately secured by its actual anticipation and, therefore, not indisputable in its normality in the historical development of mankind.

Hence, the whole matter acquires the deepest significance for our faith and culture and should be considered no less principled. Here, in relation to the Slavic Bible, the whole clue lies in the fact that the Old Testament part is a reproduction of the Greek transmission of the Hebrew original in the "translation of the LXX interpreters" and in its content depends entirely on the Greek prototype. This is how the old and almost hardly resolvable (previously and next) dispute about the comparative merits of the LXX and the present Hebrew text, called the Masoretic, inevitably moves. They are very different from each other, and as regards the messianic - Christian element, they are most often completely opposite, why, with the same biblical foundation, such mutually exclusive and really irreconcilable conclusions as Judaism and. Is it not the fault of the LXX interpreters, who gave arbitrary, even anti-biblical, interpretation of traditional biblical texts? After all, it has long been proclaimed that this translation is equal in its perilousness to the act of the Israelites merging the golden calf at Sinai, and that at the end of the work, darkness covered the entire earth for three days, as the fast established on this occasion is called darkness. In comparison with this evil falsification, the Jewish Masoretic edition is recommended to be divinely inviolable and humanly intact, for which the absolute dogma of Rabbi Akiba ben Yosef (f about 132 A.D.) is valid, that in it every word, particle and letter have a meaning and serve as a special goals. In this case, the value of the Greek version will be determined by how much the last statement, passed off as a certain axiom, is actually correct and scientifically compelling. The objective history of the formation of the Masoretic text should tell us exactly about this.

Its origin belongs to the post-captivity time and is associated with the name of Ezra (about half of the 5th century BC), which is even revered by the second Moses, as the restorer of the holy Hebrew scriptures. It is also said that in view of the loss of the originals, he inspiredly "wrote" them from memory. Apparently, Ezra's participation in the reconstruction of biblical writing was enormous, almost creative. We do not know the details of this work, but its nature can be judged with sufficient probability by the entire restoration activity of Ezra. He strove to create pure Judaism, alien to all external influences and the slightest extraneous contact.

His ideal was “the people of God according to the law of the Lord,” free from unrelated impurities in the flesh and nostically correct in spirit. In this direction Ezra was adamant to the extreme and relentless to the point of ruthlessness, which was partly demanded by his irreconcilable nationalist task. In these interests, the new Moses dissolved hundreds (if not thousands) of legalized marriages of Jews with foreigners, forcing husbands to release such wives - even with all the offspring (). This cruel violence was committed in order to separate the seed of Israel from the foreigners () and so that this "holy seed" would not mix with disgusting peoples (), and henceforth the Israelites were prohibited from any marriage with foreigners (;), right up to the present times.

With such a heavy concern for the fleshly cleansing of Israel for the whole future - how could you not be more zealous about the purest traditional legalism? On the other hand, even the most ruthless carnal cleansing could not have gone smoothly without the binding written authority in the revelation of God from the earliest times of the law, which therefore had to be presented in all accuracy and severity. In all respects, the systematic revision of the holy Hebrew books proved to be necessary and fundamental in Ezra's extensive reformatory work. We agree that for all the perfect execution of this important and difficult book business he hardly had enough free time and concentrated calm, but this required only experienced assistants, such as Ezra had in other parts of the ongoing reorganization. And the Jewish tradition claims that then the so-called. "Great Synagogue" in the number of 120 members, following the example of the council of elders under Moses ().

Based on the totality of all the data, I consider this news to be quite reliable and, in fact, corresponds to all historical conditions. Further, it is clear that scribal purification was in harmony with practical purification, and since the latter was nationalist-exclusive (: "they separated everything foreign from Israel"), then the first must be the same, divinely legitimizing nationalist exclusivism. Everything doubtful in this partisan sense was excluded and destroyed, or limited in its significance and influence, like, for example, even the book of the prophet Daniel, and the rest was included in the canon, inviolable neither in dignity nor in quantity, for these books already “ nothing can be added, or subtracted from them, nor reinterpreted ”(Jos. Flavii Contra Apionem 1, 8).

Any disrespectful touch of them “defiled their hands,” that is, made them sacrilegiously filthy. In turn, the increase in the canonical collection became virtually impossible due to the announced cessation of the prophecy in Israel, which was replaced by some kind of dark surrogate in "batkol", which meant hazy echoes of an unknown voice from above.

So Ezra also created for himself the glory of the "seal of the covenant", paving the way for further canonical literature and sanctioning the final written authority in his only code. The successors had to strictly guard it and apply it literally, punctually. On them (in the person of the men of the Great Synagogue) fell a special mission - to erect and strengthen the fence around the law in the Ezdra edition, so that no one could penetrate there and everyone would be deprived of the slightest means of free disposal there. On the contrary, the empowered guardians of nomism were endowed with dogmatic grandeur and decisive autocracy. It was proclaimed and accepted indisputably that the words of the scribes are of greater importance than the words of the law of Moses. The practical implementation of the latter, designed for semi-patriarchal conditions of life, not in the least similar to the later ones, turned out to be clearly impossible even in the direct sense of the nomistic commandments, but it was well facilitated by the fact that it was enough for the new legalists to find some kind of "asmacht", or a fulcrum, and they already had the right to draw all sorts of conclusions and all necessary adaptations of a theoretical and practical nature. These were the lords and masters of faith and deeds, uncontrolled and indisputable in the narrowly nationalist keeping of the law in terms of its specific understanding and close interpretation. And some clear and vivid facts speak eloquently about the results of this rabbinic absolutism. The Hebrew Bible in its original was inaccessible to the majority of the Jewish people and, when reading in synagogues, required the help of paraphrases and targums. It would seem that the latter serve the most good and reasonable purposes and should be widespread, but it was strictly forbidden to write them down - of course, because there could be liberties and deviations from the rabbinic stencil, why even the (supposedly) liberal Gamaliel I ordered to withdraw from use Targum on the Book of Job. True, all this hid the true biblical content from the religious Jewish masses, but that was how it was supposed to be among the ignorant of the law, the accursed people () from the side of those who took the keys of understanding, which themselves did not enter and did not let in (;). They jealously blocked any independent trends and with fanatical severity eliminated "free" religious-mystical literature as depriving the kingdom of heaven even of its simple bearer, although it grew and spread under the influence of rabbinic terror, which completely destroyed all the originals of apocryphal-apocalyptic works. Moreover, quite correct religious and edifying literature was subjected to a similar unmerciful fate, since it did not promote nomistic chauvinism, but preached a religious and humanitarian morality. An example of this is the pious Book of Sirakhov: soon after the Greek translation, it completely disappeared in the Hebrew text, which by chance and fragmentary began to be found only from the end of the last century. This means that Ezra's narrowly nationalist work continued and was invariably strengthened by its biblical justification. The law of the Lord of heaven and earth, Creator and Creator of all things, an absolute beacon for the whole world and mankind, was declared and made the exclusive privilege of the chosen Israel. And suddenly, amid such a thickened atmosphere, it shone with its universalistic understanding and divine-human realization of biblical plans. How fanatical should have been

legalists react against this living and undeniable reality, which overturned their whole cause and the very religious doctrine? In the first respect, they responded by killing the "rebel" they hated, trying to blot out his very name (), and the truth of the personal divine Redeemer of the Bible embodied by him was replaced by the nationalist idea of ​​the messianism of all Israel as the people of God and a suffering redeemer for the entire sinful, rejected world of the goyim. The biblical text could not contradict this despotic activism, but undertook to sanction it as a divinely established norm, and, therefore, should be quite consistent with this in all its content. So the Masoretes have it, in fact, to such a close agreement that it cannot but seem tendentious. And if the Greek interpretation of the LXX introduced disharmony, then it was artificially discredited by fabricated defamations and weakened by the creation and promotion of new Greek translations, unsatisfactory and crude, but more suitable for Jewish nationalist construction, literally - stupidly supporting its biblical basis. Even the most traditional routine of biblical synagogue readings underwent some anti-Christian modifications (see Ludwig Venetianer. Ursprung und Bedeutung der Propheten-Lektionen. Leipzig, 1909), for it allowed personal-messianic applications and fences, as can be seen in the examples of Christ the Savior at Nazogareth ( et seq.) and the apostle Paul at Antioch in Pisidia (et seq.).

Everything must imitate and obey the stereotypical template under the strictest censorship of Jewish legalists. And we know from tradition that the spiritual revivalist of Judaism after the Roman defeat, Rabbi Akiba, destroyed all biblical manuscripts, legalizing only one textual type, which was multiplied and distributed only in certified copies after their consideration and permission by the elected nomistic rulers, like all authentic The Bibles of the Jewish publishing house coincide with each other exactly not only in the text, but also in the very distribution of it over pages, lines, syllables and even letters. What has been said now finds confirmation in the fact that the Hebrew manuscripts that have survived to this day did not occur earlier than the 10th century; - how did it happen when we have the New Testament from the end of the 4th century, and the papyrus fragments are even older? There are extremely few Hebrew variants, and the old keri and ketib marks are very few and insignificant, meanwhile the immense number of New Testament discrepancies creates purely "volcanic" dangers for the reconstruction of the original form of the New Testament scriptures - how to explain this striking oddity, when the Hebrew signs provide immeasurably more reasons for any misunderstandings in comparison with the Greek Itacisms (with dictation)? And how is it reasonable to comprehend that this feature is clearly directed against personalistic messianism, which is dogmatically rejected by both Jewish scholarship and Jewish faith? In recent years, the famous Berlin professor and academician Adolf von

Harnack began looking for dogmatic corrections in the Greek New Testament text, in particular in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Zwei alte dogmatische Korrekturen im Hebraerbrief: Studien zur Geschichte des Neuen Testaments und der alten Kirche I. Berlin, 1931, S. 235–252). In specific cases, this attempt seems to me unreasonable and unsuccessful, but if this very idea is possible for the New Testament, then why is it considered scientifically heretical for the Old? For what reasons and motives did the Jewish and Jewish biblical scholars proclaim it fundamentally inconceivable? And we know all too well that not a single clever criminal leaves documentary exposures of his deed ... And since with religious conviction he finds the latter right and necessary, then it is imperative for him to present a justifying norm, which here was the corresponding biblical code. There were all moral motives and grounds for the desired editing, but in fact this work could be done easily and almost imperceptibly due to the Hebrew script, scriptio continue and the absence of punctuation and vocalization, where the slightest touches can change the meaning. After that, in the future, unlimited scope was opened for all kinds of attacks and apologies in the interests needed, for it is firmly testified that the rabbinic luminaries could hang whole mountains of laws in a single thread ...

Against the foregoing, they always refer to the extraordinary attentiveness of Judaism to literalistic scrupulousness and reverent protection of textual biblical integrity. There are so many legends on this score that one cannot help but doubt their objective fidelity and actual impartiality. And the historical information is such that sometimes even “the book of the law of the Lord, given by the hand of Moses,” sometimes disappeared for a long time, and it was necessary to acquaint with it the most pious king of the Jews, Josiah, for whom all the content turned out to be new and amazing (;). Does this not indicate extreme negligence, or rather, willful premeditation? As for the particulars, it is enough to recall how much the Jews hitherto cherish their genealogies and revere their "fathers" and ancestors, but in reality, in this very area, an amazing confusion prevails in the names of many historical persons, not excluding the high priests, from whom it is sometimes completely impossible to establish the true origin ... Under these conditions, one should in no way forget that the patristic authorities, admitting the textual hebraicam veritatem (blessed Jerome), did not at all consider it absolute; originals by Jewish scholars of entire biblical sections (for example, about Susanna), unfavorable for the Jewish reputation, and St. , who also had some access to the Hebrew Bible, often spoke of deliberate distortions, especially in Messianic places, by the Jewish referees. The totality of all the data given obliges us to allow the systematic correction of the original biblical text by Jewish editors with the decisive elimination of all other varieties that were either directly destroyed or perished in the genizah. And the less we know about the details of this "critical" work, the more it turns out to be unclear and specifically Jewish, but nevertheless, some stages of this process are quite indisputable in their essential features. The first - at the end of the 7th century BC under the Jewish king Josiah, when the high priest Khelkiah "found" the book of the Lord's law in the temple, where the deviations of the Israelites from Jehovah for censing to other gods were highly exposed and the nomistically punishing severity of the Mosaic commandments was restored. It is indisputable that this was not a new "book", but the old Deuteronomy, or even the entire Pentateuch, in which a more definite meaning of the noted character was now "discovered". This means that there was a revision in favor of ritual-nomistic rigorism, so that the legalized cult of worship was strictly and accurately observed to isolate Judaism from paganism.

The second stage is the reform of Ezra, who guided the entire life of Jewry along the close channel of nationalist exclusivity and in this very sense “wrote” (with the participation of members of the Great Synagogue) the entire Bible. This review was more extensive, covering all the Old Testament books and singling out into the "canon" only writings suitable for rabbinism, with the absolute prohibition to increase its composition and reinterpret the legalized biblical text. She continued and extended the previous revision policy towards the internal religious isolation of Israel, which now, naturally, becomes negative and then even hostile to all other currents, if the latter encroached on its "inalienable property" and made "Jewish property" publicly available outside the Israeli nomistic fence and, perhaps, by biblical permission.

This inevitable conclusion should have been clearly formulated after the success of the Greek version of the LXX, which popularized personalistic universal messianism throughout the world of that time, and was resolutely made around the time of Christ the Savior, and was finally enshrined in the Masoretic edition (7-10 cc. PX), in which the Hebrew Bible became nationalist-messianic and therefore anti-Christian.

For all these three revisions there was the greatest vital need, and its satisfaction was a religious necessity that morally facilitated and even encouraged editorial work. And what was she leaning towards, if not to the Bible "silent" to speak messianically - Christian? But we know and see that the sacred tetragram, expressing the very essence of the deity (cf.), post-imprisoned Judaism made "shem gammeforash" - an ineffable name, unknown to anyone, since the high priest himself remembered it and could pronounce it only once a year on the great day of purification (10th Tishri) and only in complete solitude in the darkness of the holy of holies.

After this, what is surprising and miraculous, if even here the Hebrew Bible “fell silent” in the Hebrew way?

Let us now turn to the Greek translation of the LXX interpreters. Its main difference lies in the personalistic - messianic nature of the prophecies, which then quite logically and normally received Christian application in relation to the personality of the Lord Redeemer. Why did this happen and is there a chronologically conditioned tendentiousness here?

But during the period of this translation (in Alexandria from Ptolemy Philadelphus to Ptolemy III Evergetes between 285 and 221 BC), of course, there was no Christianity even in a more or less clear foresight, and there were no special messianic tensions in the supposed productive circles. , and the legend claims that the request came from Alexandria, but was motivated exclusively by bibliophilic motives and was satisfied with blessed success by the most competent authorities on the basis of approved copies sent by the Jewish leaders from Palestine, together with authorized translators. And if biased messianic enthusiasm really prevailed in the Alexandrian spheres, how would this explain the increase in the time from the creation of the world to Christ in the LXX (5508 years) versus the Jewish account (4004) by almost a whole third (1504) in comparison with the latter? Is it not much more plausible that a special Jewish edition was accurately reproduced here? The same should be thought about other deviations of a textual-factual nature, for example, in the different distribution of chapters in the book of the prophet Jeremiah. Various other observations also tend to this conclusion. Thus, the Samaritan Pentateuch in the Polyglots of Paris (1645) and in London by Briand Walton (1657) has up to 6,000 variants in comparison with the Masoretic review, often adjacent to the LXX translation. Doesn't this document the textual validity of the Greek version? To weaken her dignity, ancient shameful legends are cited, but they are more like malicious defamation of party and religious prejudices. Indeed, in the same ancient legends, it is no less decisively reported about the impeccability and salvation of the translation work, why its completion was a bright holiday for the whole world, which was solemnly celebrated every year on the island of Pharos (near Alexandria). And some facts prove that the Greek translation of the LXX was in Egypt not only a noteworthy book, but also had a liturgical use among the Jews there. Likewise, he was once highly valued in Palestine itself, where a text similar to him was widely circulated. They reproach that it adopted various dubious apocrypha, unknown to Judaism and not postulating to Jewish archetypes, and therefore the entire Greek biblical canon did not receive either distribution or authority. And this is all extremely exaggerated, for, for example, Sirach was familiar to Philo, who was so disparaged by rabbinic Judaism, and the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which is the most Greek in language and concepts, admits conjectures (even from the part of Jewish scholars) that there are ancient Jewish primary sources behind it ...

Comparison of the Hebrew Masoretic Bible and the Greek translation of the LXX in objective historical coverage and impartial interpretation scientifically forces me to formulate in the end that the Greek interpretation reproduces a Hebrew textual type independent of the Masoretic. We do not know anything about him exactly, but, obviously, this is one of those who did not undergo revision inspection by Jewish censors and did not experience proofreading from rabbinical orthodoxy, and the axiom dominates in the textual New Testament criticism that "neutral" texts, not affected by revisions special reference books, contain readings that are more ancient and closest to the author's originals. From this point of view, the Jewish fundamental principle of the LXX should be revered as the least damaged textually and much older than the Masoretic edition, formed under anti-Christian sentiments and completed already in late Christian times (10th century).

All of the above directly exalts the textual dignity of LXX, as an independent objective witness of the true hebraicae veritatis, surpassing the Masoretic retouched text with its antiquity and indisputable reliability of content, for example, in messianic prophecies. This conclusion is fully applicable to our Slavic Bible, which acquires special religious and scientific importance, as a monument to the most ancient biblical tradition and as a venerable witness of the Byzantine-Greek original for the sacred Cyril-Methodian work. Firmly adhering to this position, Slavic science and denomination never went to extremes in assessing their Bible, as Constantinople tried to do, proclaiming the LXX as an authentic textual exponent of the original. I know of only one case of this kind, when the latin Ober-Prosecutor of the Russian Holy Synod, the imperious Count N.A. (according to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow) “The Holy Synod ... independent text of the Vulgate ”. It was accepted and applied only that the Slavic Bible represents the venerable interpretation of the word of God to the extent of its agreement with the Greek version of the LXX, and the latter was fully respected, but not at all exalted exclusively. On the contrary, the Russians had hesitations in the exact dosage of its correctness in relation to the Masoretic reconstruction. In the history of Russian theology, there were hobbies in both directions, which found the most vivid expression in modern times (see Prof. I. N. Korsunsky. Works of the Moscow Theological Academy on the translation of the Holy Scriptures and the works of the Holy Fathers into Russian language in seventy-five years

(1814-1889) of its existence in the "Additions to the Creations of St. Fathers ". h. XLV for 1890, book. 2, pp. 341-405). Some resolutely extolled the Hebrew text, reducing all the LXX differences mainly to misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the Greek translators (Prof. P. I. Gorsky-Platonov, f 1904, October 21: Testament "in the" Orthodox Review ", 1875, No. 11, pp. 504-540; On the bewilderment caused by the Russian translation of the holy books of the Old Testament, ibid. 1877, Nos. 1,2 and 4, pp. 69 –104, 260–284, 681–702; People's Bible at the time of Christ the Savior in “Additions to the Creations of the Holy Fathers”, 1880, h. 26, pp. 1070–1085, in the book “Yearly act in the Moscow Theological Academy 1 October 1880 ", M., 1880, pp. 7-22, and in the" Orthodox Review ", 1880, no. 10, pp. 363-375). Others, no less energetically and convincingly, defended the Greek interpretation, considering the Masoretic review tendentiously corrected (Bishop Theophan Govorov, f 1894, January 6: Regarding the publication of the Old Testament books in Russian translation in The Mental Reading, 1875, No. 11, pp. . 342-352, and also under the title "Right - the word about the publication of the books of the Old Testament in Russian translation" in "Domashnaya Beseda", 1875, issue 47, pp. 1212-1219; On our duty to keep the XXL translation of interpreters in "Soulful Reading", 1876, no. 5, pp. 3-21; On the use of a new translation of the Old Testament scriptures, ibid., 1876, no. 9, pp. 100-106; the Bible in the XXL translation of interpreters is our legitimate Bible in "Home Conversation", 1876, issues 20, 22 and 23, pp. 499-503, 527-529, 579-590; Decision of the question of the extent of the use of the present Jewish text as directed by church practice, ibid., 1876 ., no. 28, pp. 699-709; What text of the Old Testament scriptures should be kept? in the "Church Bulletin", 1876, no. 19, pp. 1-2; On the measure of the Orthodox on the use of the Hebrew present text as directed by church practice, ibid., 1876, no. 23, pp. 1–5, and related articles by prof. I. S. Yakimova, 11885, in the "Church Bulletin", 1876, No. 13, 19 and 35, pp. 1-3, 2-4, 1-4; Concerning the opinion of one bishop on the significance of the Russian translation of the Old Testament sacred books, published with the blessing of the Holy Synod; Answer to His Grace Theophan; On the measure of the Orthodox use of the current Jewish text, as directed by church practice. See also prof. O. I.N.Korolkova, His Grace Theophanes, former Bishop of Vladimir and Colonel S.A. Pervukhin in their mutual correspondence ... with the attachment of the article "Judgments of Bishop Theophanes and Bishop Porfiry on the translation of Holy Scripture into Russian", Kiev, 1915, pp. 65-69, 96-139). Nevertheless, both of these scientific trends never reached mutually exclusive extremes in Russian science and were reconciled to the extent possible, however, with a warning from Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow (in his "Note"); “So that when using the Hebrew text as a guide to explaining Holy Scripture, there is no room for arbitrariness, to put an obstacle in this matter against deviating from the accuracy of Orthodox dogmas, and to preserve the sacred importance of the text of the seventy in its ancient pure

those, - for this in the doctrine of Holy Scripture, or in sacred hermeneutics, protective rules must be proposed, extracted from the essence of the matter, and from examples from the Church and the Fatherland. " Under these inspirations, it was started and, despite authoritative and well-grounded protests (for example, Metropolitan of Kiev Filaret Amfitheatrov, f 1857, December 21), was completed (1858-1875) - with the participation of all Theological Academies and invited scholars - by will and watching the Holy Synod Russian translation of the Bible, which served as the primary basis for the newest Bulgarian translation (Sofia, 1925). Russian science did not abandon the principle of leadership of the LXX either. So, prof. VN Myshtsyn wrote that “one cannot unconditionally and in everything give preference to the Masoretic text, that in some cases the Greek translation has preserved better than the original reading - correct and original reading, as a result of which the LXX translation has not only authority from the beginning in the Christian Church of translation, but also the authority of the best critical tool in correcting the Masoretic text; its use is not only ecclesiastical, but also scientific ”(in“ Theological Bulletin ”, 1895, Nos. 2 and 3, pp. 214–288, 345–377: Do we need a Greek translation of the Bible if there is a Jewish original?). In turn, prof. I. N. Korsunsky in a special extensive dissertation on this subject ("Translation of the LXX: its meaning in the history of the Greek language and literature", Holy Trinity St. Sergius Lavra, 1897) formulated two theses that, a) "translation of the LXX in many its places is of great importance for the restoration of the original form of the original Hebrew text of the Bible ", and b)" on the other hand, this translation, for various reasons, largely deviates from the Hebrew original. " Therefore, it was impossible to find in Russia a scientific biblical-exegetical work, where this Greek text would not be systematically utilized. But since it, at least, was considered equal to the Jewish one, then - along with the latter - it should have become publicly available for unhindered use by researchers and lovers of Scripture. For these reasons, attempts were made to translate Russian directly from the LXX, for example, by Bishop Porfiry Uspensky of Chigirin (f 1885, April 19), of which only the Psalter is in print (2nd ed., St. Petersburg , 1906); In modern times, this great scientific and church feat was raised and energetically carried out by the professor of the Kazan Theological Academy (1922. March 27), who managed to publish almost the entire biblical text in Russian processing according to LXX (Pentateuch of Moses in Greek-Slavonic and Russian translations, Book of Genesis. Kazan, 1917; Book of Job in Russian translation from the Greek text LXX, with an introduction and notes , Kazan, 1914; Psalter in Russian translation from the Greek text LXX, with an introduction and notes, Kazan, 1908; The Book of Proverbs of the Solomonovs in Russian translation from the Greek text LXX, with a Slavic translation, introduction and notes, Kazan, 1908 .; Books Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs in Russian translation from the Greek text LXX, with an introduction and notes,

Kazan, 1916; The books of the great prophets: Isaiah, Kazan, 1909, Jeremiah and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, Kazan, 1910; Ezekiel, Kazan, 1911, Daniel, Kazan, 1912; small prophets, Kazan, 1913; non-canonical books, Kazan, 1907).

In terms of its relevance, the LXX and the Slavic translation are receiving high and widespread interest. This, of course, is a precious monument of Slavic literature, and from this point of view it was justly and thoroughly studied in Russia by specialists in historical, literary and philological relations; Numerous textual editions actually served this more. However, bibliological inquiries were also sufficiently considered (see, for example, Prof. I. S. Yakimov. Critical studies of the text of the Slavic translation of the Old Testament, depending on the text of the translation of seventy interpreters in the "Christian Reading", 1878, Part I, pp. 706–742; Part II, pp. 235–250, 314–340, 536–562; V. K. Lebedev. Slavic translation of the book of Joshua from surviving manuscripts and the Sharp Bible. St. Petersburg , 1890; Prof. FG Eleonsky. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Elizabethan Bible. St. Petersburg, 1902; Traces of the influence of the Hebrew text and ancient, except 70, translations into the oldest Slavic translation of the Bible. Petersburg, 1905; Prof. AV Mikhailov. Experience of studying the text of the book of Genesis of the Prophet Moses in the Old Slavonic translation. Warsaw, 1905), for the Slavic translation is a war

the work of the venerable Greek prototype and the traditionally authorized interpretation of the biblical content, why here it should be subject to scientific study already from the textual-exegetical side. Works of this kind in Russian science, more known to me, were directed mainly towards the restoration of the oldest Slavic text that existed before the 15th century, in order to approach the Cyril and Methodius original (see Prof. GA Voskresensky. Cyril and Methodius translation of the Bible in the Appendices to the Creations of the Holy Fathers ”, 1885, part 36, pp. 229–252) and in it to acquire a faithful witness to its Greek prototype, which would then serve as an objective measure of the accuracy of the work of the Slavic teachers, as well as the nature of Biblical Christian enlightenment , brought by them to the Slavs and penetrating our entire culture even to this day. Most of all, the ever-memorable rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, Archpriest A. V. Gorsky (f October 11, 1875), who especially served this cause in (he accomplished together with K. I. Nevostruyev) "Description of the Slavic Manuscripts of the Moscow Synodal Library" (in 1855–1869 five books were published in Moscow, for which see the Index of personal and subject by E.M. Vitoshinsky, Warsaw, 1915, and the sixth, prepared back in 1863, was published only in 1921 Edited by N.P. Popov), where he discovered, collected and reviewed a huge amount of material and outlined new prospects for fruitful work on the genesis and restitution of the Slavic Bible. In a fair and competent judgment of prof. G. A. Voskresensky (f 1918, March 10/23), is "there is, one might say, an inexhaustible treasury of critically cleared facts for the history of the sacred biblical text" (Slavonic). The work went much more intensively and systematically, focusing on achieving the final result. For the New Testament, the scholarly works and textually critical editions of the aforementioned prof. GA Voskresensky (Ancient Slavic translation of the Apostle and his fate up to the 15th century, Moscow, 1879; Characteristic features of four editions of the Slavic translation of the Gospel of Mark based on one hundred and twenty manuscripts of the 11-16th centuries, Moscow, 1898 [to this see "Amendments, additions and remarks" by Prof. MD Muretov in a special brochure, Sergiev Posad, 1897]; Mark's Gospel according to the main lists of four editions of the handwritten Slavic Gospel text with different readings from one hundred and eight manuscripts of the 11-16th century Gospel ., Sergiev Posad, 1894 ; Ancient Slavic Apostle: Epistles of the Holy Apostle Paul according to the main lists of four editions of the handwritten Slavic apostolic text with discrepancies from fifty-one [- seven -] manuscripts of the 1st 12th and 16th centuries; no. 1st - Epistle to the Romans, Sergiev Posad, 1892; no. 2nd - Epistle to the Corinthians 1, Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1906; no. 3-5 - Epistle to Corinthians 2, to Galatians and Ephesians, Sergiev Posad, 1908, - with various guiding and informing treatises on this subject (for example, To the question of the scientific publication of the Slavic translation of the Bible in the collection "In memory centenary of the Moscow Theological Academy ", part 1, Sergiev Posad,

1915). In his work, all handwritten texts are divided into four successive stages according to their typical differences, and the entire development of Slavic translation is presented in the historical and literary process without direct correlation with Greek reviews, although with occasional illustrations from Greek discrepancies. Here the Slavic translation is outlined only as a scientifically verified and literary weighed special monument of Slavic writing.

Further and more perspicaciously, prof. I. Ye. Evseev (1921), which in two thorough dissertations (the Book of the Prophet Isaiah in ancient Slavic translation in two parts: 1 - Slavic translation based on manuscripts of the 12-16 centuries; 2 - Greek original of the Slavic translation of the book of Isaiah, St. Petersburg, 1897. The book of the prophet Daniel in the ancient Slavic translation: introduction and texts - Slavic and Greek, Moscow, 1905) gave not only the re-construction of the Slavic translation of the books of the prophets Isaiah and Daniel, but also the reconstruction of the Greek itself the fundamental principles in the typical "edition" assumed for them. He later devoted all his works to this idea and used energetic efforts to implement it (Manuscript Tradition of the Slavic Bible, St. decree on the improvement of the Slavic translation of the Bible, St. Petersburg, 1912; Centenary of the Russian translation of the Bible, Petrograd, 1916. Essays on the history of the Slavic translation of the Bible, Petrograd, 1917), in order to eventually ensure the publication of the Slavic Holmes-Parsons " a with equal scholarly excellence and documentary abundance.

So over the course of several centuries and with the participation of entire generations of numerous scientists, a huge amount of material has been accumulated in Russia for this great common Slavic cause - over 4,000 lists of Slavic manuscripts of various types for the Old Testament books and even more for the New Testament books. There were also useful reference manuals (for example, P.A.Hiltebrandt: Reference and Explanatory Dictionary to the New Testament, two volumes, St. Petersburg, 1883, 1885; Reference and Explanatory Dictionary to the Psalter, St. Petersburg, 1898 g.), scientific predictions, scientific work and material resources. The time has come to unite and embody with joint efforts all the main results in the best Slavic text. For the most perfect fulfillment of this grandiose plan, a Biblical Commission of authoritative scientists on the scientific and critical edition of the Slavic Bible was formed and functioned (since 1915) at the Petrograd Theological Academy, which was calculated - approximately - for nine large volumes: 6 - for the Old Testament and 3 - for the New. The fulfillment of this colossal task would be an extremely fruitful acquisition for the entire scientific bibliology, not to mention the exceptional value for our theology, general Slavic philology and literature, but the mad and wild Bolshevism stopped everything ...

However, has this glorious task really perished? I do not think so, because in that case it would be necessary

agree that the entire Slavic age-old civilization has also disappeared, and what Herostratus can be found among the true scientists all over the world? priests of science ... We must all invariably remember that the Slavic Bible, embracing all Slavs in its cultural-Christian birth and growth, is a life-giving source and organic center of all-Slavic unity, which must be nurtured and nurtured in the biblical cradle and with biblical Slavic blessings. Therefore, one should not sympathize, but one must resist the ousting of this ancestor and our guardian angel from our Orthodox worship by various nationalist surrogates, most often vulgarly rude, belittling the divine arrogance to the common folk ordinariness, mutually separating the Slavic peoples even in public prayer, and thereby weakening everyone brothers-Slavs and leading to external and spiritual bondage. But our Slavic Bible in golden letters traces its bright ideal before us and proclaims the sacred covenant to all Slavs: WE WILL BE ONE AND BECOME FREE!

Sofia. 1932 10.9 (10.27) - Wednesday