Sacred scriptures in different religions of the world. Types of world religions. Self-determination for activity

Routing lesson on the course ORKSE

Module “Fundamentals of World Religious Cultures”

Teacher: Tchaikovskaya Tatyana Sergeevna, MBOU Secondary School No. 13, Berdsk.

Class: 4

Lesson : 6

Subject: Holy books religions of the world.

Target: Formation of the concept of “sacred books” through familiarization with the cult books of world religions.

Tasks:

To form an idea of the main holy books of world religions - Tripitaka (Tipitaka), Torah, Bible, Koran.

Develop speech, logical and associative thinking of students.

To promote the development of students’ communication abilities and the ability to defend their point of view.

Activities: conversation, oral narrative on a topic, working with illustrative material, filling out a table, working in groups with sources of information, working with text.

Basic terms and concepts : Tripitaka (Tipitaka), Torah, Bible, Koran.

Equipment: PC, multimedia, handouts.

Lesson steps

Teacher activities

Student activities

Tasks for students, the completion of which will lead to the achievement of planned results

Self-determination for activity

Getting into the business rhythm. Oral message from the teacher:

« Let books come into homes as friends,
Read all your life, gain your mind.
The book is a faithful friend of children,
Life is more fun with her!»

Preparing for work

Organization and inspection of the workplace.

Slides 1,2,3,4.

Updating knowledge and recording difficulties in activities

Reveals the level of knowledge:

Guess the riddle:

Not seeders, but sow goodness,

Not bread, but fed to the full,

Without hands, but they can do everything,

Without legs, but they drive on the roads.

What adjectives can you choose to describe the word “books”?

And I chose the word sacred.

Guess the riddle (books)

Children select adjectives for the word book: interesting, new, mysterious, popular, wise, kind, educational.

Vedas (“knowledge”, “teaching”)

The Vedas are a collection of the most ancient sacred scriptures. Were written in India. Stories about the gods of Hinduism in poetic form. Consists of four parts

Questions: Slide 6

What were the first ancient texts that were considered sacred that you learned about? What are the Vedas? What do they talk about?

Setting a learning task

Creates a problematic situation:

Consider the collage.

What is shown in each photo?

Each person depicted is a representative of some religious culture. Let's try to determine: representatives of what religions do we see? Justify your answers

Formulates the topic with the children: What are they all doing?

What kind of books do you think they read?

Does anyone know what each of the books is called? What will be the task of our lesson?

Representatives of Orthodox, Islamic, Buddhist, Jewish culture.

Listen to the teacher, answer questions, set a goal:

find out which holy books are read by representatives of different religions.

Slide 7,8,9,10

Building a project for getting out of a problem

Organizes students to investigate a problem situation

- How can we do this?

Make a plan to achieve the goal

1.Work with texts ( when completing a task, if the need arises, contact the teacher for help)

2. Answer the questions given after the text

Division into 4 groups

Working with texts

Primary consolidation in external speech

FISMINUTK A

Independent work with self-test

Inclusion in knowledge system,

repetition

Reflection

Each group will write a story on the topic: “The Holy Book of Religion”

Take an envelope and distribute the task cards. Complete the task

- What did you get? Now each group will use cards to talk about one of the holy books.

Please check what you got.

Task 1. Each of you received a mysterious letter. The names of sacred books are hidden in it. Find them. Write down the book titles you found.

Task 1.- I suggest playing a game "Not really" Each question can be answered either “yes” or “no”. Ready?

Let's summarize our work:

Conclusion: Indeed, holy books, like people, regardless of their affiliation with any religion, have much in common. They encouraged and encourage believers to active work, searching for our own life paths, taught and teach to live, observing certain commandments.

What was the goal for the lesson?

Have we reached our goal?

We evaluate ourselves:

I remembered…

Turns out…

The most unexpected thing was...

The story is told in a chain in accordance with the numbers indicated on the cards.

During the story of one of the groups, each group fills out the table, placing the cards in the required sectors.

Teams take turns presenting their version of the story based on the table they have compiled.

Self-check of the resulting table (checking with the slide)

Children in a group solve a crossword puzzle (the name of the holy books of the world’s religions)

Students write the words “yes” and “no” on pieces of paper.

Children read and answer the same topic in groups.

Children's answers

Book title

What parts does it consist of?

Slides 12,13.

(as groups perform)

(Self-test on slide 14)

(mutual check)

Slide 17 (check)

Homework

Level 1- a message about one of the sacred books.

Level 2- syncwine about the sacred books.

You can have your own version.

1. Preparing students for active, conscious assimilation of new material.

Solve riddles/about books / (working with cards)

The shelf in my room is always full of friends. They will console you, entertain you, and if necessary, give you advice.
I know everything, I teach everyone, but I myself am always silent. To make friends with me, you need to learn to read and write.
The sages settled in glassed palaces. In silence, alone, they reveal secrets to me.
There is a leaf, there is a spine. Not a bush or a flower. He'll lie down on your mom's lap and tell you everything.
At least not a hat, but with a brim, not a flower, but with a spine. He speaks to us in a language that everyone understands.
Who speaks silently?
She is ready to reveal her secrets to anyone. But you won't hear a word from her.
She's small, but she's made her smart.
Today I am in a hurry to go home from the street: a mute storyteller is waiting for me at home.
Not a bush, but with leaves, not a shirt, but sewn, not a person, but a story.
She speaks silently, but clearly and not boringly. If you talk to her more often, you will become four times smarter.
Smart paper birds have many wings - pages.
Glued, sewn, no doors, but closed. Whoever opens it knows a lot.
We will open a wonderland and meet the heroes, in lines, on pieces of paper, where stations are at points.

Introductory word from the teacher.

What will we talk about in class today? That's right, about books. But we won’t be talking about ordinary books. Consider these books.

Listen to the parable. /A parable is a short story that conveys some kind of lesson/.

Eastern parable

« One old man lived with his grandson high in the mountains. Every morning my grandfather read sacred books. The grandson tried to be like him and imitated his grandfather in everything. One day a boy asked: “Grandfather, I try to read the holy books just like you, but I don’t understand them. So what is the use of reading them?

The grandfather, who was putting coal into the stove, stopped and replied: “Take a coal basket, go down to the river, fill it with water and bring it here.” The boy tried to complete the assignment, but all the water flowed out of the basket before he could return home. Laughing, Del said: “Try to walk faster.” This time the boy ran faster, but the basket was empty again. Having told his grandfather that it was impossible to bring water in a basket, the boy went to get a bucket.

Grandfather objected: I need a basket of water, not a bucket. You're just not trying hard enough." The boy took water from the river again and ran as fast as he could. But when he saw his grandfather, the basket was empty. “You see, grandfather, this is useless!” summed up the exhausted grandson. So you think it's useless? Look at the basket!” answered the grandfather.

The boy looked at it and saw that the coal-black basket had become absolutely clean.

Son, this is what happens when you read holy books.They change you both externally and internally».

The sacred books of different religions were written in ancient times. Believers believe that reading sacred texts makes them kinder and more moral.

Find in explanatory dictionary the meaning of the word Sacred - work with dictionaries, see Work in groups.

Sacred is someone or something that is recognized by someone as divine, possessing holiness, grace.

Typically, religious texts indicate their superhuman origins or divine inspiration. In religious texts, the continuity of the transmission of the sacred is very important.

Sacral - (from the Latin sacralis - sacred), designation of the sphere of phenomena, objects, people that relate to the divine, religious, associated with them. As opposed to secular, worldly.

Historically, certain religious texts in mythological form tell about the origin of the world, its sacred structure, the ancestors of man and the first people. Much attention is paid to the description of sacred rites and ceremonies, and talks about norms of behavior and laws of existence. Some religious texts are accessible to everyone, and there are those that can only be read by those dedicated to a given religion..

2. Studying new material.

Main content questions:

Presentation followed by a conversation with the teacher.

Holy books of Christianity.The Bible (Greek - “book, composition”) is a collection of sacred texts. Christians often use the term when talking about the Bible Scripture (required with a capital letter) orHoly Bible

When was the Bible written?

The latest text of the Bible was written about 1900 years ago, the oldest is about 4000 years old

The originals of none of the ancient texts have survived - only lists!

Researchers note. That all these lists coincide with one another at the level of scribes’ slips that do not affect the meaning of the text

It has been established that we have fragments of lists made during the lifetime of those who personally knew the authors of the New Testament!

The Bible (from Greek - books, works - the holy book of Christians, which includes various works created by the Jewish people in ancient times.

12th -2nd centuries BC.

The Bible consists of two parts:Old Testament And New Testament

Covenant - from Greek - a contract offered by God to Israel

Bible. Old Testament. The Old Testament is divided into three groups:

1. Pentateuch of Moses (or Torah)
It includes the books of Genesis, Exodus - the conclusion of the Covenant with God; Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy - the rules of life for the Jews.

2. Prophets (early and late).

3. Scriptures.

Main religious ideas: the idea of monotheism (monotheism), the idea of messianism (the coming of the messiah - the deliverer)

Messiah - deliverer

Yeshua - help, salvation

Mashiach (anointed one)

Yeshua in ancient Greek - Jesus Christ

The Old Testament opens with the book of Genesis.

The first legend of Genesis is the Sixth Day - the creation of the world.

The second story about the tragedy of the disruption of people's connection with God

Man becomes a murderer, rebels not only against God, but also against man: Cain kills brother Abel.

The global flood allowed by the Lord for human crimes.

The tale of the sons of Noah ends with the last godless act of mankind - the construction of the Tower of Babel.

- Abraham is a descendant of Shem from whom the people of Israel /Jews/ came.

Moses is a descendant of Abraham, to whom God gave the Ten Commandments.

DECALOGUE or 10 commandments of Moses:

1. I am the Lord your God, so that you may have no other gods besides Me.

2. Do not make for yourself an idol or any image of anything in heaven above, or on the earth below, or in the waters below the earth; do not worship or serve them.

3. Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

4. Remember the day of rest, to spend it holy; work for six days and do all your work in them, and the seventh day is a day of rest - it will be dedicated to the Lord your God.

5. Honor your father and your mother, so that it will be good for you and that you may live long on earth.

6. Don't kill.

7. Do not commit adultery.

8. Don't steal.

9. Do not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, and thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, nor his field, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant... nor anything that belongs to thy neighbor.

Sacred books of Judaism.Tanakh - The Holy Book of JudaismFirst part Holy Scripture called the Torah and consists of five books (the Pentateuch of Moses).

The Jewish scripture Tanakh is kept in scrolls

Talmud /teaching/ - explanations for TNH.

Bible. New Testament.Second part Christian Bible- a collection of 27 Christian books (including the 4 Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of the Apostles and the book of Revelation of John the Theologian (Apocalypse), written in the 1st century. n. e. and which have come down to us in ancient Greek. This part of the Bible is most important for Christianity, while Judaism does not consider it divinely inspired.

The New Testament consists of books belonging to eight inspired writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James and Jude.

The Gospels /good news/ are inspired by God. Apostles are disciples of Jesus Christ. Acts of the Apostles. Epistles of the Apostles. Apocalypse /Revelation/. Preaching of Jesus. The sacrament of the Eucharist /Thanksgiving/.

Gospel biography of Jesus Christ; a book or collection of books, each of which tells about the divine nature of Christ, birth, life, miracles, death, resurrection and ascension.

The Bible has 1189 chapters, and the average person can read it in 80-100hours. If you read 4 chapters a day, you can read the Bible in a year.

In the 9th century, the Bible was translated into a language understandable Eastern Slavs. The translation was undertaken by the missionary brothersCyril and Methodius- “first teachers and educators of the Slavs.” Their native language could conceivably be a variant of the Old Bulgarian language spoken in their native Thessaloniki; They received Greek upbringing and education.

The translation of the Bible into the Slavic language was carried out by Cyril and Methodius using the Slavic alphabet they compiled - the Glagolitic alphabet; Later, the Cyrillic alphabet was created based on the Greek alphabet.

With the advent of printing in Rus', books of the Holy Scriptures began to be printed in the Church Slavonic language.

Today's Bible - the most popular book in the world with the largest circulation.

The Bible has been translated, in part or in whole, into more than 2,400 languages and is available on native language more than 90% of the world's population.

It is estimated that more than 60 million copies of the Bible are distributed throughout the world each year.

Work in groups with the textbook, prepare messages:

See Group work.

Discussion: Why did Christians include the Holy Books of the Jews in their Holy Scripture?

Scheme "Bible".

Paraphrase and generalization.

The Bible of the Jews is included in the Christian Bible as the Old Testament; The specifically Christian scripture is the New Testament.

Although Judaism and Christianity have much common elements in their beliefs, they are still deeply different religions.

In Judaism, God is one and only; in Christianity, God is one in His nature, but appears in three persons, forming the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Christians believe in Jesus, called Christ, as the Messiah - the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, therefore He is worshiped not as a man, but as God who became man. The salvation of mankind is entirely a gift from God, bestowed through the sacrifice of the Second Person of the Trinity, who became a man, suffered and died, and rose again.

Christians believe in Christ and His suffering, death and resurrection; they follow His teaching and His example; and after death they hope to partake of His great resurrection.
Judaism believes in God's mercy, but it extends only to those who belong to the people of Israel, strictly follow the precepts of Jewish teaching and observe the sanctity of life.

From the Jewish point of view, the Messiah has not yet come, and they anticipate the coming of the Messiah, or the advent of the Messianic era. The future for them is peace on Earth and justice.
For Christians, the future is connected with the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ, when evil will completely disappear and the spiritual blessing perfected in Christ will be fully manifested in the Kingdom of God.

Christians give special meaning faith in Christ, who gives mercy, strength and guidance for moral life. For Jews, the ethical and ritual instructions of the Bible (mitzvot) remain the norm of behavior; they are developed in detail in the Talmud as halak, or requirements for Everyday life, while Christians accept only the ethical teaching of the Bible as expressed in the Ten Commandments. Judaism teaches holy living based on mitzvot and emphasizes that public justice must adhere to biblical standards, as the Hebrew prophets believed.

These religions also look at the Fall of man differently; Christianity adheres to the doctrine of Original sin, to which Judaism does not attach much importance.

These profound differences lead Judaism and Christianity to view their sacred scriptures differently.

Judaism considers its sacred books to be the perfect source of doctrine and moral standards, the fulfillment of which God requires from people for their own well-being. For Christians, the holy books of Judaism, called the Old Testament, are only preparation for the last revelation which God gives through Christ is a revelation recorded in the books of the New Testament.

Sacred texts of Judaism

Tanakh (Jewish Bible)

Consists of the Law (Torah), Prophets (Neviim) and Scriptures (Ketuvim); her books were written over a period spanning more than thirteen centuries Jewish history, from the time of Moses until the last few centuries BC.

1.Torah (Law)
The Pentateuch, the so-called Mosaic Law, is the first five books of the canonical Jewish and Christian Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

2. Nevi'im (Prophets)
Includes the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, which tell the history of Israel when they were led by prophets, and the books of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Habakkuk, Jonah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi and others

3. Ketuvim (Scriptures)
Includes the book of Psalms, which are prayers and hymns; Proverbs, the books of Ecclesiastes and Job, containing sayings, discussions about wisdom and reflections on human existence; The Lamentations of Jeremiah, telling of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple; the love poem Song of Songs, which has long been interpreted as a description of the mystical relationship between God and Israel or between God and man; the book of the prophet Daniel, which tells about faith in times of persecution.

Talmud

In addition to the Tanaka, there was a tradition of the Oral Torah, which existed among the rabbis in the first centuries of our era and was codified as the Talmud.

It consists of two main parts - Mishnah and Gemara- and has enormous authority for the observant Jew.

The Talmud can also be regarded as the development of the tradition of commenting on the text of the Bible for its correct understanding.
Although most of the Talmud is devoted to the interpretation and codification of the Law, there are passages in it that have the character of universal spiritual and ethical wisdom.
The best known in the Talmud is a small treatise called Abot, or Sayings of the Fathers, relating to the Mishnah. The books of Midrash (rabbinic commentaries on scripture) are rich in moral and spiritual teachings and stories.

Rabbinic texts

Other rabbinic texts from the same period also enjoy great authority among devout Jews: Sifra, which includes the Numbers of Sifre and Deuteronomy of Sifre, Tanhuma, Pesikta Rabbati and Pesikta Kahana, Tosefta.

Kabbalah

In addition to them, the books of prayers established by the Law attract attention in the Jewish tradition. Mystical treatise. The Zohar and a number of other writings form the Kabbalah, a mystical tradition that has canonical significance for many Jews.

Theological treatises

A number of theological treatises are also of great importance, among which the “Guide for the Lost” by Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) and the “Shulchan Aruch” by Joseph Karo (16th century) should be noted.

Sacred texts of Christianity

Bible

The Christian Bible consists of the Old and New Testaments.

Bible online intelife.ru

Old Testament

The Old Testament was scripture for Jesus and His followers, who were Jews.
The Old Testament is identical to the Hebrew Bible, but its books are in a different order. Christians distinguish prophetic books from all parts of the Old Testament because they talk about the coming of the Messiah, who Christians believe is Jesus Christ.

Deuterocanonical books
The Orthodox and Roman Catholic Bibles also include a number of additional books in the Old Testament, called the Deuterocanonical.
The most famous among them are: the books of the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon, the stories of Tobit and Judith, as well as the description of the Maccabean uprising, which contains many wonderful examples of martyrdom and forms the four Maccabean books.
These books were in circulation among the Jews in the last two centuries before the birth of Christ and were included in the Septuagint - the Greek translation of the Holy Scriptures.
The deuterocanonical books were not included in the Jewish canon compiled by the rabbis at Jamnia in 90 AD.
During the Reformation, which heralded a return to the standards of the Jewish rabbinic canon, the Deuterocanonical books were excluded from translations of the Bible into national languages; for example, they are not found in Luther's Bible or the King James Version of English. Therefore, Protestants call these books Apocryphal.
But roman catholic church approved the status of these books as Holy Scripture at the Council of Trent (1545-1603).
They are also recognized as part of the Holy Scriptures in Orthodoxy. Now they are included in the majority modern translations Bible.

New Testament

The New Testament includes four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The first three, synoptic, Gospels have much in common; they tell about the life and sayings of Jesus, his death and resurrection. The Gospel of John portrays the life of Christ as the mystical source of salvation.

Part of the New Testament are letters of the apostles Paul, Peter, James, John and others. They examine questions of doctrine and morality of the Christian church of the first century AD. Paul was the greatest of the apostles, and he wrote the letters to the Romans, the first and second Corinthians, the Galatians, the Philippians, the first to the Thessalonians, and Philemon. A number of other epistles are also attributed to the Apostle Paul, and his influence is indeed felt in them. These are the letters to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, first and second Timothy, to Titus, to the Jews.

Included in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles is an account of the history of the Christian church from the first Pentecost to the journeys of the apostles Peter and Paul.

The "Lost" Gospels and Other Unknown Texts of Christianity

Origin, sacred books and deities

The origin of Hinduism is not attributed to any one specific person, and in this way it differs from other religions. Its origin is associated with the conquest of the Hindustan Peninsula by Aryan tribes between the 12th and 5th centuries. BC. The most ancient sacred books of Hinduism, written in Sanskrit, have come down to us under the name Vedas (“wisdom” or “knowledge”). They represent the religion of the Aryan conquerors. The cult of sacrifice by burning was important to the Aryans. The Aryans believed that by performing this cult, they contributed to the gradual rebirth of the Universe.

The Vedas consist of four books. Each of them is divided into three parts. The first part contains hymns praising the gods, the second gives guidance on the observance of rituals, and the third explains religious doctrine. In addition to the Vedas, Hindus of different directions have their own special books, but the Vedas are of the most general, comprehensive nature. The final part of the Vedas is called the Upanishads (“upanishad” means secret knowledge), which are commentaries on the Vedas. They were written between the 8th and 6th centuries. BC. After the Upanishads follow two large epic poems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which contain legendary descriptions of the reincarnations of one of the main Hindu gods. Part two of the sixth book of the Mahabharata is called “Bhagavad Gita” (“Divine Song” or “Song of the Lord”). Of all the Hindu scriptures, it is the most famous.

Traditional Hinduism recognizes the existence of a great variety of gods and goddesses, but the main ones are considered to be the trimurti, that is, the triad of gods - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. In Hinduism, religious worship is practiced only towards Vishnu and Shiva. Although Brahma is the head of the Trimurti, there is no cult of him because people consider him an unattainable supreme reality. He rather represents philosophical idea a religion to be meditated upon, not worshiped.

Origin and date of writing of the Book of Judges Scholars disagree regarding the very fact of the origin of the Book of Judges in the form in which we have it now, that is, regarding the time of its writing. According to Jewish tradition, the book was written by a prophet

Origin of the book The date of writing of the Book of Job is unknown, but an approximate time frame (between the 7th and 2nd centuries BC) can be established. Apparently, the folk legend about the righteous sufferer existed long before this book appeared. The Theme of Suffering

XLIX Sacred Books of the New Testament. Historical books, educational books and the Apocalypse With the last apostle, the last eyewitness of the works of Christ on earth went to the grave, that witness who “saw his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father” (John 1:14). But with the cessation of the apostolic

Sacred Books of Buddhism During the time of Buddha Shakyamuni and some time after his death Buddhist teachings, as we already know, was passed on from mouth to mouth by the disciples of the great guru. After the first Buddhist council - although “cathedral” is too strong a word

Torah and other sacred books Torah - teaching, law. In a narrow sense, the Torah (law) is the Pentateuch of Moses. On the other hand, in a later tradition in in a broad sense the words Torah called the entire Bible. For a believing Jew, studying the Torah is one of the most important forms

The holy books of Muslims and their interpretation of the Koran Islamic dogma is based on the Holy Scripture - the Koran and on the Holy Tradition - the Sunnah. The Quranic revelations were sent to the Prophet gradually over a period of almost twenty-three years. Muslims believe that the Koran

In what language were the holy books of the New Testament written? Throughout the Roman Empire, during the time of the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles, Greek was the dominant language: it was understood everywhere, and spoken almost everywhere. It is clear that the writings of the New Testament, which were

2.3.1. The Holy Books of the Old Testament The Old Testament is “the ancient union of God with man,” the essence of which is “that God promised men a Divine Savior and prepared them to accept Him through gradual revelations, through prophecies and

2.3.2. The Holy Books of the New Testament The New Testament is “the new union of God with men,” the essence of which is “that God really gave to men the Divine Savior, His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.” The very name “New Testament” is for the first time

Every world religion has its own sacred books. How do Islam, Judaism and Christianity approach these ancient texts differently? As representatives different traditions get out of a situation where you need to create a single text from many versions accumulated over centuries?

Monk Panteleimon (Korolyov)

One of the important philosophical questions throughout the history of mankind has been and remains the question of the relationship between the text and the reality it describes. It not only becomes acute when describing physical reality, but becomes even more complex when trying to describe the world of the supernatural, the Divine, when recording and transmitting Revelation and religious experience.

The language, intended primarily to describe everyday realities, regularly occurring things and phenomena, is applied to the description of objects given in spiritual contemplation and unique phenomena, which “the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, and<какие>did not come to the heart of man, . . . A<святым Своим>God revealed it by the Spirit”(1).

Without trying to embrace all the diversity of world religious experience, in this essay we will try to touch upon the main aspects of the attitude to the sacred text in the Abrahamic religions: the religion of Old Testament Israel, rabbinic Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

All these religions have common features in relation to the Holy Scriptures:

a) the composition of the works included in the Holy Scripture is fixed;

b) the text is regularly heard at general meetings;

c) this text defines the norms of faith and life of community members;

d) there are accepted comments and rules of interpretation sacred text.

The text describing spiritual reality is complex and in some places incomprehensible to those who do not have the corresponding mystical experience, therefore there is always a risk of distortion and loss of the integrity of the message during transmission: either deviation into literalism with preservation of the form of the text and partial loss of meaning, or transmission of interpretation text with changes in the verbal fabric of Scripture.

All the religions we are considering have centuries-old history, and each of them developed its own methodology for preserving the meaning, writing and sound of the text of the Holy Scriptures - responding to changes in society and language compared to those that existed at the time of writing the sacred texts. In parallel, these concerns about the text stimulated the scientific systematization of grammatical, phonological, textual, historical, and other knowledge.

Islam and the Koran

Let's start our consideration with, in which the relationship to Scripture (in this case, the Koran) is most straightforward. According to ideas, the Koran exists forever and unchangeably, it was sent down from Heaven, therefore it is perfect and cannot be subject to any changes.

At the same time, historical (and not dogmatic) ideas about the Koran are as follows.

From 610 to 632, the Prophet Muhammad was given a revelation through the angel Gabriel, which was kept both oral and written. After 633, when a considerable part of the “carriers of the Koran” died in the Battle of Yemama, the codification of the oral and written words of the prophet began. Zeid ibn Thabit, one of the most authoritative scribes of Muhammad, together with Umar ibn Khattab, compiled a complete list of the Koran in 6 months.

The criterion that the compilers used when including each verse in the Quran was the concordant testimony of two written sources and the memory of Umar ibn Khattab, who knew almost the entire Quran by heart. The final list was in private use by Caliph Abu Bakr.

At the same time, similar work on compiling a complete one was carried out by other followers of Muhammad. Scientists count up to 15 primary manuscripts (Ibn Masud, Uba ibn Ka'b, Ali, al Aswad and others) and many secondary ones.

Later, when discussions arose among the troops about the various readings of the suras of the Koran, by order of Caliph Uthman, a commission led by Zeid between 650 and 656 AD. carefully examined the text of the Koran, compared it with oral and written tradition, and copies of the final code were sent to various provinces as the only correct version.

Manuscripts that differed from this text were subject to burning. Many texts were destroyed, little is known about the textual science of the early manuscripts of the Koran, but still complete unification could not be achieved. The situation with the unification of the text of the Koran was further complicated by the fact that in the graphic system Arabic In the middle of the 7th century, there were no symbols for short vowels and signs for distinguishing some letters of similar shape. Thus, the same recording of a word presented the possibility of several reading options.

However, this complexity stimulated the development of phonetic knowledge among the Arabs: “by the 8th century. Arab phoneticians achieved outstanding results: they described in detail the work of the tongue, lips, mouth and nose in pronouncing each sound; created comprehensive classifications of phonetic changes; systematized the variants of sound types, in which historians of linguistics see the beginnings of phonology” (2).

By 786, the Arab philologist and researcher of versification Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi created a vocalization system that made it possible to unambiguously compare the written word and its reading. But until 934 A.D., the so-called “Ikhtiyar period” continued, a time of choice when Muslims could read the Quran in various dialects.

Ibn Mujahid in Baghdad wrote the book Al-Qiraa al-Sabaa ("Seven Readings"), in which he established seven specific ways of reading that exist in Muslim world, and declared all the rest incorrect. Ibn Mujahid's decision (for which he did not provide arguments) was supported by the viziers and eventually correctors were appointed who introduced vowels into the Qur'an in accordance with these seven readings.

Prayerful reading of the Qur'an is possible only in one of these options (3); neither deviations nor translations into another language are acceptable - when changing the language, this text loses its identity with the heavenly and eternal Qur'an and turns into only an approximate retelling and interpretation.

To avoid talk about “different Qurans,” the term “mushaf” was introduced, meaning a private written recording of the single Quran-Revelation - in a certain font and in accordance with a certain reading system.

Thus, Islam's idea of an eternally existing text, transmitted to earth through a single prophet, resulted in quite vigorous human efforts to create a single version of the text and eliminate discrepancies, but complete unification was never achieved.

Religion of Israel and the Old Testament

Those processes of codification and unification of the sacred text, which in Islam took only a few centuries, among the Jews lasted several millennia and were complicated by many other factors, which is why we consider the description of the history of the holy book of the Jews after the description of the Koran. The collection of sacred books began with , who ordered to place his book “at the right hand of the ark” (4) and to read it publicly every 7 years (5).

Thus, at the beginning of the history of their Scripture, the Jews, unlike the Muslims, were not forced to collect scattered passages, compare various testimonies and compose a single book - the book was written by the prophet in his own hand, kept in the sanctuary and regularly updated in the memory of those who heard.

The text was written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, similar to the Phoenician, the writing was consonantal (without vowels) and without word division, the reading tradition was preserved through oral transmission. The text was carefully copied for liturgical use (obviously, this was necessary due to the wear and tear of the books), but the existence of the Scripture was not limited to the Temple - it was also copied in fragments for home reading, and in these copies some discrepancies with the temple version were found.

The body of Scripture was gradually expanded to include the writings of other prophets and narratives of the history of Israel, but the concentration of the intellectual and spiritual life of the Jews around the Temple ensured the unity of tradition and the consistency of the lists. The gradual change in the shape of the letters did not break the tradition - from the ancient angular one to the square one close to the current one.

Nevertheless, by the intertestamental era there were already at least three editions of the text of Scripture. In addition to the text used in Jewish worship, there was also a text presented in the Samaritan Pentateuch. It was not only grammatical, but also some ideological differences caused by the fact that the Samaritans built their temple on Mount Gerizim and edited Scripture to justify this “schismatic” practice.

Another version, which existed among the Alexandrian Jews, became the source for the Greek translation of the Old Testament - the Septuagint. The prototype has not reached us, but can be partially reconstructed due to the fact that large fragments were translated to the highest degree literally.

Study of the Qumran manuscripts

In 1947, dating between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC. e. Some of the biblical scrolls from this collection can be attributed to the three above-mentioned types, while others represent other editions.

Thus, in the Jewish environment, the presence of one most sacred and authoritative version of the text of the Holy Scriptures did not entail the persecution and destruction of all other versions.

There was also no extremely negative attitude towards the translation of Scripture: by the 5th century BC. e. Aramaic became the spoken language of the Jewish people; when the national reading of the Torah was resumed in the middle of the 5th century, it was proposed that the reading be accompanied by a translation into Aramaic (and additional explanations) - a targum.

The crucial difference between the Israelis and the Muslims in relation to Scripture is that God's revelation to the Jews did not end with the death of the prophet. God, according to their faith, was with His chosen people, and at the right times gave them revelation through new and new prophets. For this reason, Scripture could be supplemented with new texts about God's care for His people.

In addition, faith in God's guidance during translation work did not deprive translations of the right to be called revelation. The final codification of the text of the Old Testament (Tanakh) occurred after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and after the demarcation between Christianity and rabbinic Judaism - world religions, each of which considers its history to be a continuation of the history of Old Testament Israel.

In this regard, the composition of the books included in the Christian canon, based on Alexandrian tradition and the Septuagint, differs from the Palestinian canon established by the Jannite Sanhedrin c. 90-100 AD e. The very text of the Old Testament in all subsequent centuries, and especially in the New and Modern times, with the emergence of scientific methodology, attracted the attention and encouraged research not only of Christians and Jews, but also of atheists and agnostics. For some, it was important to understand the meaning of the sacred text, the circumstances of life of the Israelites and their neighbors, others tried to show the impossibility of the facts and the inconsistency of the ideas set forth in Scripture.

Biblical research greatly stimulated research expeditions, the development of archaeology, paleography, ethnography, Egyptology, Assyrology and other sciences about the Ancient World; biblical chronology and descriptions of life were compared with finds and deciphering of ancient records.

In the debate between those who trust the testimony of the Bible, the question of the “hermeneutic circle” has become acute: the interpretation of a find strongly depends on an understanding of the history of the region, and the understanding of history is formed on the basis of the finds. Not field, but desk researchers of the Bible actively participated in the deepening of such philological disciplines as etymology, textual criticism, translation theory, style theory, and clarified ideas about the possibility of attributing a text to a specific author.

At the junction of office and field research There is still an urgent problem of hapax legomena - words used once in the text, the meaning of which cannot be understood from the context. Finding and correctly interpreting other records containing this word can shed light on these “dark places” of Scripture.

Rabbinic Judaism and the Tanakh

We noted above that at the turn of the era in Judaism, the text of Scripture existed in various editions, but subsequently, despite the destruction of the Temple and the ever-increasing dispersion of the Jews throughout the world, of all the versions, only one remained in use, now called the “Masoretic”, with high degree of text stability.

It is difficult to restore the exact history of this version, since the oldest full lists no older than the 10th century. Most likely, the Masoretic version was based on the tradition of the lists that were in temple use.

Qumran. Excavation of the settlement. Bird's eye view

The Qumran scrolls do not contain vowel marks, but Hebrew writing of the period allowed the use of some consonants (matres lectiones) to represent vowel sounds, so that the same word could be written in several ways.

In the synagogal tradition, the position of scribes was preserved, whose main concern was the reconciliation and correction of the copies of the Tanakh. And, thanks to their activity, the consonantal basis of the text was practically stabilized even before the introduction of vowels.

Around 500-700. Three different vocalization systems for Hebrew writing arose: Tiberias (or North Palestine), Palestinian (or South Palestine) and Babylonian, of which Tiberias became the most widespread.

For the correct reading and understanding of Scripture, the consonantal basis was supplemented not only with vowels, but also with cantillation marks, designations of the structural division of the text, and provided with commentaries. In general, this entire system was developed by the Masoretes (from the word masora - the tradition of reading and rewriting the biblical text) in the 7th - 11th centuries.

The comments differed both in content and location on the sheet. Traditionally, certain commentaries referred to and surrounded the first word of each book (masora initialis). Very brief remarks relating to atypical readings, distorted spelling, specially written letters, and statistics of word usage throughout the corpus of Scripture were written next to the columns of the text (masora parva). Longer notes were placed at the bottom of the page or at the end of the text (masora magna) and were usually organized alphabetically.

The works of the Masoretes are impressive in their meticulousness and the volume of calculations made; to a certain extent, the Masoretes can be considered the forerunners of corpus linguistics. They carried out global arithmetic calculations: they counted the number of words and letters in different books and verses, the middle verses of books were clarified, the use of individual letters at the beginning, middle and end of a word was studied, lengthy concordances of words and phrases were compiled, numerous grammatical, textual and theological comments were given.

Editing the text with such a device was impossible, but the observed inaccuracies in word usage were corrected with the help of ketiv and qere - the main text (ketiv, written) remained unchanged, and Scripture should be read and understood in accordance with special marks in the margins and in the text itself (qere, readable).

The highest degree of stability of the text (especially its consonantal basis) and the multifaceted study of the letter composition of the text paved the way for such a hermeneutic method as gematria, in which additional meanings of the text are obtained by interpreting the numerical meaning of letters and words. This method was most widely used in Kabbalistic Judaism. The analogue in Islam is abjadiyya.

For Christianity, this method of interpretation is completely uncharacteristic.

Christianity and the Bible

The Greek language was of great importance for Christianity, but still not identical with the meaning of Arabic for Muslims or Hebrew for Jews. If for the ancient Jews and early Muslims the language of Revelation did not differ from what they knew from childhood, then the native language for the apostles was Aramaic, they heard Scripture in Hebrew, after the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day they received the gift of preaching in many dialects, and they also knew the official language in the Empire - Greek.

This original multilingualism and missionary orientation to all nations determined the ever-increasing number of translations of the Christian Bible. For many languages, it was Christian preachers who created writing in order to convey the gospel, including in the form of a book.

Gutenberg Bible. One of the first printed in the world. 1455 Photo credit: jmwk. flickr.com

The primary language of Christian Scripture became Koine, a supra-regional dialect of Greek. The Old Testament was adopted not in the original language, but in the form of a Greek translation - the Septuagint; the New Testament was originally written in Greek (6).

Despite Christian concern for the codification and preservation of the text of Scripture, early church There were no clear trends towards creating any one text and declaring it the most authoritative text. From the very beginning, four Gospels were accepted, telling about the same events, but differing in detail.

Harmonizing compilations created on their basis (such as Tatian's Diatessaron) did not receive church approval. This lack of rigor in relation to the text can be partly explained from the theological positions of Christians. A detailed description of the entire life of Jesus would not have been possible for the whole world to contain (7); the consent of eyewitnesses about the main thing was of paramount importance - that God the Word became a man, was crucified and resurrected.

Personal knowledge of Christ and the mysterious communion with God the Word are incomparably more important for Christians than reading the word about God, although they do not neglect the latter either. Another aspect of the attitude of Christians to the Scriptures is that they believe in the persistent presence in the Church of the Holy Spirit, by whose inspiration the books of the Bible were written.

“If we assume that for one reason or another the Church will lose all its books, i.e. the Old and New Testaments, the works of the holy fathers and liturgical books, then it will restore Scripture, albeit not literally, albeit in a different language, but in its essence , and this new Scripture will be an expression of the same faith once delivered to the saints, a revelation of the same One Spirit, invariably active in the Church, being Her basis, Her essence” (8).

A consequence of this attitude towards the text can be considered the fact that modern church versions of the New Testament include small insertions into the ancient text. Some insertions are of an interpretative nature, others are of a harmonizing nature, and others come from the liturgical use of the text. Knowing about the later appearance of these fragments, the Church does not exclude them from Scripture as consistent with teaching, aiding understanding and sanctified by the tradition of reading and interpretation.

Since the work of translating and preaching biblical revelation requires a deeper penetration into the meaning of the text than simple concern for its preservation, textual and exegetical research has been at its height in the Christian environment since the first centuries.

Significant figures in this area were Origen and Blessed Jerome of Stridon.

Origen at the beginning of the 3rd century. compiled the “Hexaples” - a six-column manuscript of the Old Testament, which combined the Hebrew original, its Greek transliteration, the Septuagint and three more Greek translations of that time, made with different ideological and philological guidelines. Origen used this apparatus in his work when compiling commentaries on all the books of the Old Testament.

Blessed Jerome of Stridon

The variety of Latin translations of the first centuries and the confusion caused by the fact that none of these translations had general church recognition forced Pope Damasus in 383 to turn to Blessed Jerome of Stridon with a request to develop a single and reliable Latin text of Scripture. This work took 15 years, during which Bl. Jerome lived in Bethlehem, compared Latin texts with Hebrew and with ancient ones Greek translations, attracted Aramaic targums, coordinated the text with the data of Middle Eastern geography and botany.

Despite the fact that the bl. Jerome, contrary to tradition, gave preference to veritas hebraica over the Septuagint; his edition of the Bible became generally accepted for Latin-speaking Christians and subsequently for the Romans. Catholic Church.

Of all the translations into the languages of the world, only the Latin version was legally canonized and a certain edition of the text was given the dogmatic status of the original source: in 1546, at the fourth session of the Council of Trent, it was decided that only the existing text of the Vulgate becomes authoritative, only it can be used for liturgical readings, in time for debates, preaching and for 12 interpretation. It is strictly forbidden to change the text or interpret it outside church tradition, even if discrepancies with other options were found.

This decree did not stop textual studies in Europe; on the contrary, at this time critical publications were actively published, new translations into national languages appeared - but they turned out to be “outside the law” of the Catholic Church.

Only in the 20th century. The Roman Church accepted the developments of biblical studies and introduced appropriate editing into the official text of the Vulgate. The development of textual criticism in modern times was facilitated by the doctrine of sola Scriptura, which rejected the Tradition of the Catholic Church and demanded that the norms of faith and life be derived only from Scripture.

This position did not at all contribute to the development of a generally accepted text of the Bible and common principles interpretation. On the contrary, almost everything in the Bible was questioned: the correctness of individual words, the integrity of the composition of books, authorship, time of writing and the need to include certain books in the canon.

Many new techniques have been developed for text analysis, and a whole range of hypotheses about the history of the text have been put forward. These hypotheses, built on grounds alien to religious community-keepers of the sacred text, are trying to present both the history of Israel and the history of the text differently in order to “cleanse the Bible of layers” in their own way and reconcile their ideological ideas with archaeological evidence.

For example, some followers present the history of Old Testament Israel as a gradual ascent from polytheism to monotheism and, in accordance with this, arrange the fragments of the Old Testament. Another trend in Bible editing is the creation of new “politically correct” and “feminist” translations that use inclusive language and cleanse the text of Scripture from patriarchal ideas and expressions inherent in them.

Inside Christian Churches, preserving an unbroken tradition of transmitting the Holy Scriptures, an attitude towards these new trends that is wary as alien, but attentive to newly discovered textual, archaeological and historical facts.

Conclusion

To summarize, we note both similar and opposite principles of attitude towards the Holy Scriptures in the religions we have considered.

It is natural for a religious community to strive to have, on the one hand, a single and, on the other hand, the most accurate text of Scripture, but these two desires are in conflict with each other.

Elimination of inaccuracies and continuous editing gives rise to new versions, which can then form entire families of editions. A striking illustration of this can be, for example, a quote from Moses Maimonides: “Everyone trusted<Алеппскому кодексу>, since it was corrected by ben Asher himself, who worked on it for many years and every time a copy was made from it, he made corrections” (9).

The desire for accuracy of the text also carried with it internal contradictions: when rewriting the text, one had to choose between interpretative editing and verbatim adherence to the dark place of the protographer. The versions intended for liturgical use were in the memory of many believers and therefore were the slowest to incorporate corrections.

Thanks to the conservatism of the sacred text, words and expressions have come down to us, the meanings of which are difficult to restore (hapax legomena) and the peculiarities of the speech of ancient authors, including grammatical distortions, inaccuracies in the use of foreign language borrowings and erroneous knowledge about history (10).

A whole range of works and techniques were created around the Holy Scriptures, fixing the tradition and protecting both the text itself and the variants of its reading from distortion. In addition to the extensive and diverse interpretations of the meaning of the text, present in all the religions considered, Islam and Judaism additionally know how to operate with numerical values words, and Judaism - Masorah.

Within the framework of the interpretative tradition, it was carried out great amount serious research that contributed to the development of the humanities. The example of Protestantism shows how cutting off the text of the Bible from the exegetical tradition entails instability of the text of Scripture and ideological editing. Unlike Christianity, which has always favorably treated translations and was not embarrassed by differences between evangelists, Judaism and Islam sought to unify the sacred text. As history shows, the “from now on-and-forever-most-correct-to-the-smallest-point-text” is still unattainable.

Footnotes

1 1 Cor. 2:9-10 1

2 [Mechkovskaya 1988]

3 The widespread reading has become the version of Asim from Kufa through Hafsa, another - Nafi from Medina through Warha - is used in some parts of Africa, the remaining reading options are extremely rare.

4 Deut. 31:26-27

5 Deut. 31:10-12

6 The exception is the Gospel of Matthew, according to legend, written first in Hebrew and then translated into Greek by the Apostle Matthew himself

8 Sophrony (Sakharov), hieromonk. Elder Silouan. - Paris, 1952.

9 Mishneh Torah II, Hilchot Sefer Torah 8. 4 10 See, for example, Jeffery, A. The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’an. Oriental Institute, Baroda, India, 1938

10 See, for example, Jeffery, A. The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an. Oriental Institute, Baroda, India, 1938

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[Metzger 1996] Metzger B. Textology of the New Testament. Manuscript tradition, the occurrence of distortions and reconstruction of the original. - M.: Biblical and Theological Institute of St. Apostle Andrew, 1996.

[Metzger 2004] Metzger B. Early translations of the New Testament: their sources, transmission, limitations. - Second ed. - M.: Biblical and Theological Institute of St. Apostle Andrew, 2004.

[Mechkovskaya 1988] Mechkovskaya N.B. Language and religion: Lectures on philology and history of religions / Ed. G. Barankova. - M., 1988.

[Tov 2003] Tov E. Textology of the Old Testament. - M.: Biblical and Theological Institute of St. Apostle Andrew, 2003.

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