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The nature of Holy Scripture is defined by several important factors. Among them are the historical origins of Scripture, the variety of its books and contents, its theological subject matter, as well as the role and uses of Scripture in the life of the Church. Orthodox scholars have written on these matters and related questions from a general theological perspective. Their contributions have underscored significant aspects of the Bible such as its revealed character, inspiration, authority, interpretation, and relationship to tradition. These issues will occupy our attention in various ways throughout the present work. Our purpose in this first chapter is to provide an initial statement on the nature of Scripture based on the principle that theological affirmations about such matters as biblical revelation and inspiration must be grounded in the actual contents, historical composition, as well as the canonical formation of the Bible. Thus the nature of Scripture is here examined in terms of (1) the origins of the Jewish and Christian Bibles; (2) the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments; and (3) the divine and human aspects of Holy Scripture.

Scripture constitutes an entire library of sacred books written over a period of about fifteen hundred years, from the fourteenth century B.C. to the first century A.D.. The various biblical writings were composed in Hebrew and Greek, and some parts in Aramaic, by many authors who lived in particular historical contexts and addressed important issues of their religious communities. The first reference to an authoritative holy book, "the book of the law" (2 Kg 22:8), which modern scholars identify as being essentially the Book of Deuteronomy, connects its origins with the Temple and the priesthood at the time of King Josiah (640-609 B.C.). Another reference places a "book of the law of the Lord" (2 Chr 17:9) about two hundred years earlier at the time of Jehoshaphat, ruler of Judah (873-849 B.C.). Scholars’ conjecture that the written sources behind the earliest books of the Bible, namely Genesis and Exodus, may go back as far as the fourteenth century B.C. At the other end of the biblical library, the Book of Revelation was written most likely in the late first century A.D. during the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Domitian (81-96 A.D.). In this case the author clearly identifies himself as John, a Christian prophet, who wrote from exile on the island of Patmos and claimed explicit authority for this book of prophecy (Rev 1:1-11; 22:7-19).

Most of the scriptural books, however, did not claim authority as sacred books at the time of their composition. Such authority was accorded to them over many generations, indeed centuries, within the respective religious communities of Jews and Christians. In these communities, primary religious authority was attributed to living persons, patriarchs, priests, prophets, apostles, and above all Jesus of Nazareth, who in their own witness spoke and acted on behalf of God. Readers of the Bible should take special note of the fact that the foundational nature of biblical revelation is personal, while its written expression is by comparison secondary. The great moments and acts in which God made himself known involved powerful, experiential events that changed the lives of concrete persons in the context of their specific communities. Before any accounts of them were written, these revelatory events and experiences were remembered, celebrated, interpreted, told and retold by word of mouth over long periods — in the case of the Old Testament for centuries and in the case of the New Testament for decades.

Thus, behind the written Scriptures lies the dynamic reality of the oral religious traditions of the Jewish and Christian peoples. These oral traditions, maintained and developed through worship, instruction, and custom, were kept alive by God's people, and sustained the identity of God's people, guiding their beliefs and practices. Eventually they were committed to writing. The Hebrew Scriptures were written from about 1450 B.C. to 150 B.C. and the New Testament books from about 50 A.D. to 100 A.D. In each case, the sacred literature recounted the original events in layers of interpretation — primary, secondary, and tertiary — within each faith community. A startling variety of books were produced, Genesis as well as Ecclesiastes, the Gospel of Mark as well as the Epistle of James. In some instances, notably that of the Apostle Paul, we encounter individual known authors who contributed significantly to the written biblical tradition. Yet all these books organically emerged from the life of Israel and of the Church, serving their concrete needs of worship, instruction, daily guidance, and self-identity. From this perspective we can appreciate the profound fact that the books of the Bible are, by their very nature, books of faith — both in that they were fruits of the life of faith, as well as in that they fostered and still foster the life of faith.

Not only were the individual books products of the faith community but their gradual gathering into a sacred collection involved, as well, a dynamic process of reception and selection within the ongoing life and tradition of the Jewish and Christian faith communities. As central as the Bible eventually became for Judaism and Christianity, we should remember that "Abraham did not have a Bible, any more than Jesus or Paul had a New Testament." Only slowly did books gain the status of sacred authority and came to play an important role in both reflecting and determining belief and practice. The biblical writings were selectively preserved and gradually gathered into sacred collections in the religious communities of the Jews and the Christians over many centuries. No other justification can be given for the respective Jewish and Christian Bibles except the choices of these religious communities themselves. When you say Hebrew Bible you say Synagogue. When you say Christian Bible you say Church.⁵ These sacred collections are called canons (from the Greek κανών, meaning “rule” or “standard”). The Jewish canon of the Bible was completed by the first or second century A.D. and the Christian canon of the Bible, which includes the Old and the New Testaments, by the end of the fourth century.⁶

During the first century A.D., and prior to the emergence of the New Testament as part of Holy Scripture, Jews and Christians largely shared the same sacred writings deriving from the Jewish tradition. Although they interpreted them differently, they referred to them by the same titles. The term Bible comes from the Greek, βίβλος or βιβλιον (meaning “record,” “document,” or “book”) and was first used by Greek-speaking Jews to refer to the Hebrew Scriptures.⁷ The etymological roots lie in an Egyptian word for the papyrus shrub and its bark used for writing in the ancient world since the sixth century B.C. The New Testament authors employ this terminology in a few instances to refer to individual writings such as the Book of Isaiah (Lk 3:4) or the five books of the Law attributed to Moses (Mk 12:26; Gal 3:10). Once, the term occurs in the plural βιβλία (2 Tim 4:13). The same terminology is also found among the Church fathers, though somewhat rarely, for the entire Christian Bible. The expression "The Bible" (meaning "The Book") came to prevail in the Western Christian tradition.

The more frequent term for the sacred books was Scripture (Greek, γραφή) or the plural Scriptures (Greek, γραφαί), deriving from the verb γράφω, meaning to carve, inscribe or write. Whereas the word βίβλος seems to imply a stress on the material on which something is written, the word γραφή places the emphasis on the act and content of writing.⁸ The New Testament authors use this terminology numerous times to refer to particular passages or generally to the Scriptures (Mk 12:10; Lk 24:27; Acts 8:32, 35; Gal 3:8, 22; Rom 15:4). The apostle Paul calls them “holy scriptures” (αγιαι γραφαί, Rom 1:2) one time. The terms "Holy Scripture" and "Holy Scriptures" came to prevail in the universal Christian tradition as titles for the entire Bible of the Old and New Testaments.

The Jewish people, as was noted, wrote and collected their own Scriptures. In the Jewish community, the Hebrew Scriptures have been classified from ancient times according to three divisions, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Law, also called the Law of Moses or Pentateuch (from the Greek Πεντάτευχος, literally, “five-volume work"), consists of the first five books of the Bible traditionally attributed to Moses. The Hebrew title is Torah, usually translated as "Law." But the term carries far richer meanings in Hebrew, including divine law, instruction, revelation. Although their focal center is God s Law given on Mt. Sinai, the books of Moses have a larger scope embracing as well the account of creation, the patriarchal epics, and the story of the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. The Prophets, in Hebrew Nevi'im (literally, "announcers" or "mouthpieces" of God), comprise numerous books from Joshua to Malachi not arranged chronologically. These include the historical books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. In both the Jewish and Christian tradition Moses, Joshua, and Samuel are all regarded as prophets, inspired leaders and spokesmen on behalf of God. The third broad category of books, the Writings, in Hebrew Kethuvim_, makes up a diverse collection of books from the Psalms to Chronicles which, include prayers and songs, didactic and philosophical meditations, historical and apocalyptic narratives. In the Jewish tradition the Bible is called Tanakh, an acronym based on the first letter of the Hebrew words for Law, Prophets, and Writings (TNK).⁹ Jesus and St. Paul referred to the two major divisions, "The Law and the Prophets" (Mt 7:12; Rom 3:21). The three divisions are echoed in the words of the risen Christ who, on the way to Emmaus, explained "the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms" (Lk 24:44) to Cleopas and another unknown disciple. The list of books in the Jewish Bible, as selected and arranged by the rabbinic teachers perhaps at Jamnia¹⁰ toward the end of the first century A.D., or more likely during the second century, as shown in Fig 1 bellow.

The early Christian community was made up of Jewish and Gentile members. Both saw themselves rooted in the Jewish heritage and claimed to be special heirs to it. The early Christians therefore retained the Hebrew Scriptures, what eventually came to be called "Old Testament" in the Christian tradition, as the only Bible they knew, with two important differences. The first was the adoption of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures called Septuagint (Latin septuaginta and Greek έβδομήκοντα meaning “seventy”).¹¹ This term goes back to a tradition of Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria about seventy or seventy-two Jewish elders who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek some two or three centuries before Christ. The story is told in a Jewish work, The Epistle of Aristeas, written in Greek by an unknown Alexandrian Jew in pre-Christian times. Its intent is to affirm the authority of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures accomplished over generations by Greek-speaking Jews and serving their needs in the Greek city of Alexandria. This version of the Scripture is most quoted by the New Testament authors and became traditional in the ancient Church. It remains the official version of the Old Testament in the Orthodox Church.

The second difference is that the early Christians adopted a larger number of Jewish writings than the official list compiled by the rabbinic teachers at Jamnia or later. These additional books were in circulation from pre-Christian times in the Greek language among Greek-speaking Jews who regarded them as valuable. These books express the diverse beliefs, practices, and hopes of many Jews during the time of the Greek and Roman dominance of the ancient world. However, because they carried neither sufficient antiquity nor authority in the Jewish tradition, they were left out of the Hebrew canon by rabbinic leaders who intended to unite and consolidate Judaism after disastrous wars with Rome during the first and second centuries.

But the Christians esteemed these writings and preserved them. In the East, they became known as Readable Books (Αναγινωσκόμενα, literally, “readable”) and in the West Deuterocanonical ("of secondary authority"). Although their precise number varies, these writings are part of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic canons of the Old Testament. With the Reformation, Protestants adopted the Jewish canon and eliminated these books from the Bible. They designated them as Apocrypha, a pejorative word meaning "hidden books," a term which in the ancient Christian tradition was applied to still other books whose authority was rejected by the Church. These latter books, such as the Book of Jubilees, the Martyrdom of Isaiah, and the Assumption of Moses, were nevertheless preserved by Christians on account of historical and religious interests. They carry no canonical authority but certainly bear historical value because they attest to the beliefs and practices of their authors and their specific religious groups. These books are still designated as Apocrypha in the Orthodox Church, but are called Pseudepigrapha (literally, "falsely titled") by Protestants.¹² Thus, by and large, what Protestants call Pseudepigrapha the Orthodox call Apocrypha, and what Protestants call Apocrypha the Orthodox called Readable or Deuterocanonical. Many current Protestant Bibles, for reasons of openness and scholarly interests, regularly feature the Readable Books as "The Apocrypha" or "The Apocrypha-Deuterocanonical," albeit as an appendix.

In addition to the Readable/Deuterocanonical books, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Bibles contain extensive passages in the canonical books of Esther and Daniel not found in the Hebrew version of these texts. Although traditionally these passages are part of the canonical books, the Protestants placed them among the "Apocrypha" according to their nomenclature and call them "Additions" to the Greek versions of Esther and Daniel.

In the case of Daniel, these passages include the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Youths, the story of Susanna, and the story of Bel and the Dragon. In the case of Esther, they include shorter passages too numerous to mention here.¹³ The inclusive interests of the Eastern tradition extended to additional texts that are taken up in the Orthodox Bibles. Among them are the Prayer of Manasses and Psalm 151. The Slavonic version alone includes Esdras 2. The Greek version alone includes Maccabees 4 as an appendix.

In total, the Hebrew Scriptures contain thirty-eight books, Ezra and Nehemiah forming one book. The Jewish tradition developed and maintains its own numbering and sequential arrangement of these books.¹⁴ The Protestant Old Testament numbers thirty-nine books separating the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah according to ancient Christian tradition. The Roman Catholic Old Testament, including seven Deuterocanonical Books and the Epistle of Jeremiah joined to Baruch, totals forty-six books. The Orthodox Old Testament maintains the most inclusive canon of the ancient Church which embraces, together with the ten Readable Books, forty-nine books. In addition, a few other writings mentioned above, such as the Prayer of Manasses and Psalm 151, are accorded some value within the Orthodox tradition.

It should be noted as well, that the sequence of the scriptural books varies in the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Bibles, something easily ascertained by any reader comparing current editions of the Bible from these traditions.¹⁵ Two significant differences deserve the reader's attention. One is that the Orthodox and Catholic Bibles integrate the Readable and Deuterocanonical books within their respective Old Testament canons, whereas the Protestant Bibles put them in an appendix. This fact indicates a remaining difference of views regarding the canonical authority of these books. The second is that the official Orthodox Old Testament continues to be the Greek Septuagint version, whereas the current Protestant and Catholic Bibles are translations of the Hebrew original called the Masoretic text.¹⁶ Finally, readers of the Bible should be aware that the "Apocrypha" of the New Testament are entirely different books, outside of the New Testament canon, which were written mostly during the second century A.D. and later.¹⁷

The terminology "Old Testament" and "New Testament" emerged among Christians during the first century and was applied to the two parts of the Christian Bible by the end of the second century. The key word testament, derived from the Latin testamentum, translates the Greek διαθήκη and the Hebrew berith. The English and modern Greek words are no longer quite appropriate. Contemporary readers usually take the word "testament" to mean a document for the disposition of an estate, as in the last will and testament. However, the correct meaning from the Hebrew word is covenant, meaning a bond, agreement, or alliance between two partners. The meaning of covenant in the biblical perspective is the sacred bond between God and his people, established by God s saving action and freely offered to his people as a permanent relationship of mutual love and fidelity. The "Old Covenant" is founded on God s deliverance of Israel from Egypt and his gift of the Law on Mt. Sinai. The "New Covenant" is grounded in the sacrifice of Christ -God s supreme act of salvation as a renewal of the covenant with his people (Mk l4:24; 1 Cor 11:25; Heb 8:8, 13; Jer 31:31-32).

The first to coin the expression παλαιά διαθήκη (“old covenant”) in conscious contrast to καινή διαθήκη (“new covenant”) was St. Paul in 2 Cor. 3:6, 14. However, as the context clearly indicates, the apostle had in view the Exodus story of Moses and the Sinai Covenant and not yet the entire Hebrew Scriptures as "Old Testament." The expressions "Old Testament" and "New Testament" were not applied to the sacred books until the end of the second century. For the apostle Paul and the early Christians the "new covenant" was neither a book nor a collection of books but rather the dynamic reality of the new bond between God and Christian believers based on the person and saving work of Christ.

The writing of letters, gospels, and other books by the apostles and their followers occurred during the first century in various regions of the Mediterranean world. Their gradual collection as authoritative books of the Christian tradition took place primarily during the second century. This complex process is known as the formation of the New Testament canon occurring in parallel with the formation of the Old Testament canon. In both cases the process continued for several centuries with considerable diversity and disputes over the selection of books based on tradition, authorship, and content.

The works of St. Irenaios, Tertullian, and a document called the Muratorian Canon attest that by the end of the second century Christians widely acknowledged twenty-two of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as belonging to the new library of sacred books of the universal Church. For many generations the contested books continued to be 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John, the Book of Revelation, and to a somewhat lesser degree Hebrews and James. It was near the end of the second century that the appellation παλαιά διαθήκη (“Old Testament”) came to be applied to the Hebrew Scriptures, first by Melito, bishop of Sardis, in Asia Minor.¹⁸ One can suppose that the counterpart καινή διαθήκη (New Testament), applied to the new collection of Christian sacred books, was also in currency at that time, but extant references occur somewhat later in third-century authors such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen.

The so-called "closing" of the New Testament canon is usually dated with St. Athanasios the Great (367) who lists all the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.¹⁹ The number twenty-seven is, nevertheless, not a matter of dogma. The ancient Syriac Church selected only twenty-two books for its New Testament without causing division. The Ethiopian Church embraced more than thirty. St. John of Damascus in the eighth century listed twenty-eight books.²⁰ Should one of the lost letters of St. Paul be discovered in the future, no sound reason could prevent it from inclusion. The "closing of the canon" is a firm but not rigid principle in the Orthodox Church because the classic Christian tradition never dogmatized the exact number of scriptural books and always valued many other writings and liturgical texts in addition to the canonical collection of the Scriptures.

The relationship between the Old and New Testaments, as that between Christianity and Judaism, is complex.²¹ The foundational starting point is the statement of Jesus that he came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them (Mt 5:17). Christ's work was a renewal and completion not a rejection and abolishment of the Jewish heritage. Jesus lived fully within the traditions of his people. He accepted the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures and pointed to the ten commandments as a way to eternal life (Mt 19:16-19). However, Jesus, by his authority as well as his example, opened a new perspective on the Scriptures and the Jewish tradition. The new perspective is summed up by his reinterpretation of the Mosaic Law (Mt 5:21-48) and his teaching of unconditional love and forgiveness as the highest principles of God's kingdom beyond legal strictures (Mk 2:l-28).

In the light of Christ's resurrection and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, St. Paul and other New Testament authors built on this perspective. For them, the center of revelation was no longer the Law of Moses, but the Ressurected Christ in whom the resounding "Yes" of God's promises found fulfillment (2 Cor 1:10). They established Christ and the gospel as the criteria for the use and interpretation of the Old Testament. Above all, they read it as a book of prophecy foreshadowing the ministry of Jesus, the new covenant, and the inclusion of believing Gentiles into the people of God. While they accepted the authority of the traditional Jewish Scriptures, they also developed new positions of truth and conduct. Just as Jesus had set aside some written and oral traditions of the Law, such as the granting of divorce and the ritual washing of hands (Mt 5:31-32; Mk 7:1-23), so also St. Paul and the early Church put aside certain significant aspects of the Law, notably circumcision and the food laws as requirements for Gentile Christians (Gal 2:11-21; Rom 10:4; Acts 15:1-21). Yet for all Christians, the Hebrew Scriptures remained the inspired word of God written for their instruction and encouragement (Rom 15:4-5; 1 Cor 10:11) and profitable for correction and training in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16).

It is true that some later Christian authors held in varying degrees disparaging views of the Jewish legacy. Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Hebrews referred to the old covenant as obsolete and completely ineffectual (Heb 7:18; 8:13; 10:1-10). The author of the Epistle of Barnabas (9:4) claimed that circumcision commanded by God was never meant to be physical but only spiritual. The Christian heretic Marcion in the second century rejected the Old Testament altogether. By reason of his theological schema opposing "Law" and "Gospel" Martin Luther regrettably injected negative perceptions of the Old Testament and the Jewish heritage in some traditions of Protestantism. For example, a famous Lutheran biblical scholar once assessed the Old Testament as "a history of sin."

Over against such views it must be affirmed that the Old Testament is an essential record of revelation and an integral part of the Christian Bible. The Law of Moses, though no longer a criterion of salvation for Christians, is God's revealed Law, holy, good, and spiritual according to St. Paul (Rom 7:12-14). The great apostle never thought that either Jews or Jewish Christians should cease observing God s Law, only that the Law could no longer be imposed on Gentile Christians as people of God under the new dispensation of Christ and the gospel. He fully acknowledged the gifts of the Jewish heritage (Rom 9:1-5). While he believed that Christ alone was God s unique servant to both Jews and Gentiles (Rom 15:8-9), he categorically rejected the notion that God had abandoned the unbelieving Jews (Rom 11:1, 11, 29). With his apostolic authority, he warned Gentile Christians not to look with prideful contempt toward the Jewish people because they are still God s beloved people despite their state of disobedience as regards Christ (Rom 11:13-29). The destiny of the Jewish people, according to Paul, is best left in Gods care and inscrutable wisdom (Rom 11:30-36).

In Orthodox perspective, the "Old" in the Old Testament implies no diminution of its revelatory character. The Church fathers in their theological interpretation of the Old Testament found in certain passages, such as the account of the visitation of the three angels to Abraham and Sarah (Gen 18), intimations of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. As St. Paul had earlier perceived the eternal Christ at work in the Hebrew Scriptures (1 Cor 10:4), so did the Church fathers behold Christ as the agent of revelation in the Old as well as the New Testaments, for example when speaking to Moses from the burning bush (Ex 3). The Holy Spirit descended upon the prophets and was active in Israel. Abraham, Moses, and the prophets were "friends of God" receiving direct revelations. The glory of God shone on the face of Moses (Ex 34:30; 2 Cor 3:7). The righteous figures of the Old Testament from Adam to Job, from Abraham to Moses, from Elijah to the Maccabean martyrs, are honored as saints in the Orthodox Church with specific feastdays dedicated to them. Readings from the Old Testament are integral to the worship of the Church. The hymnology and liturgical prayers are filled with the language of the Old Testament and references to God s savings actions on behalf of his people. In Orthodox iconography, a famous icon of the Resurrection depicts the risen Christ bursting the gates of hell "and lifting up by each hand Adam and Eve surrounded by other righteous figures of Israel. Has the Church then wholly cooped the Hebrew Scriptures as its own and taken them away from the Jews? Christians have no doubt been tempted to draw such an inference. But this plainly contradicts the apostolic authority of St. Paul who declared that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29). St. Paul took it for granted that the Jewish people are under God's care and would continue to live by the divine covenant given to them until the "mystery" of their unbelief was resolved by God himself (Rom 11:25-36). The Hebrew Scriptures are a gift to both Jews and Christians. From their own perspectives, both Jews and Christians understand themselves and claim to be the people of God faithful to their respective covenants. Although they read the Scriptures in a different light, the Jews from the standpoint of the Law and the Christians from the standpoint of Christ, Christians and Jews can serve in mutual respect as God s witnesses to one another and to the world according to their own calling. Christians are to be grateful sharers grafted on to the rich "olive tree" of the Jewish heritage that they "might glorify God for his mercy" (Rom 11:16-24; 15:9), If they call the Hebrew Scriptures "Old Testament," it is not to devalue its revelatory significance. Rather, it is to affirm their own understanding of the gracious acts of the living God, the Father of Jesus Christ, and to bear witness to their own experience of the new covenant in Christ which fulfills the first covenant.

We call the Bible "Holy Scripture." Its sacred character derives not only from its role in the life and worship of the community of faith, Church or Synagogue, but also from its intrinsic nature and claims as witness to the revelation of God. The term revelation (from the Greek άποκάλυψις, Rev 1:1) denotes “uncovering,” “disclosure,” and “communication” of something hidden or previously unknown. The fundamental claim of Scripture, rooted in direct experience of God by privileged witnesses, is that the true God and Lord of the universe has chosen to make himself known to human beings in various ways, especially through actions and words. The living God, though searched for in shadowy ways from time immemorial, would have remained essentially unknown apart from his own acts of self-disclosure and communication toward humanity.

Scripture is called “the oracles of God” (τα λόγια του θεού, Rom 3:2) and the word of God (λόγος θεού, Lk 8:21; Jn 10:35; cf. Rom 3:2) because it communicates the knowledge God has chosen to make known through inspired authors. Words are means of communication through which we give shape to our deep thoughts, articulate them, and are thus able to communicate with others. Ideally, words are vehicles of truth. They seek to interpret reality and to bring the meaning of life to full light. It is no small matter to consider that Scripture in profound ways bears testimony to the treasures of God's thought, that is to say, insights and truths about the ultimate meaning of the whole of reality. From a religious rather than a scientific standpoint, that is exactly what Scripture claims to do. And it tells us that God's word, living and active, strikes with spiritual power, like a two-edged sword, piercing one's innermost being (Heb 4:12; Eph 6:17).

What does God desire to communicate through the testimony of Scripture? What central aspects sum up the religious and theological essence of the Bible as Gods "communication book?” The Church fathers taught, and modern scholarship has confirmed, that readers should be attentive to the σκοπός, the comprehensive aim or purpose of Scripture, so that its parts can be seen in terms of the whole and the whole in terms of its parts.²² From a holistic perspective, Scripture provides knowledge about God and his dealings with humanity in three significant and related ways.

First, the Bible bears testimony to God's saving activity in history, a process which has been called sacred history or' the history of salvation. Some believers often understand this notion in a somewhat naive way, identifying the entire biblical story with literal history. However, the Bible was not written as technical history. The actual course of events and the dynamics of human interactions were far more complex than the story the Bible tells. This view does not deny any factual basis to the Bible, but only emphasizes that the narrative of Scripture represents the interpreted experience and religious memory of God's people over many generations. God's saving activity involves the whole range of human struggles to which the Bible honestly attests. At the core of this struggle are significant moments of God's revelation to key figures such as Abraham, Moses, the prophets, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and many others. God's saving activity is also defined by great acts of deliverance as understood, interpreted, and celebrated among God's people. The Bible calls these divine acts the “wonders” (τα θαυμάσια, Ex 3:20 LXX) or the “great deeds” (τα μεγαλεία, Acts 2:11) of God, such as the Exodus, the giving of the Law at Sinai, the entry into the Promised Land, Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit on Pentecost.

These moments of revelation and acts of deliverance, culminating in the person and ministry of Jesus, constitute the bedrock of divine revelation and the essence of the Bible as Gods saving message.

Second, the Scriptures communicate God's truth and wisdom about creation and humanity, sin and salvation, moral right and wrong, heaven and hell. The chief truth and commandment is to acknowledge and worship the one, living God (Ex 20:1-6). "Let justice roll down like waters" (Am 5:24), the prophet Amos cried out on behalf of God, calling for social justice. Jesus taught: "Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness" (Mt 6:33). St. Paul envisioned that "the creation itself will be set free from bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Rom 8:21). Knowledge about these matters is conveyed, again, from religious and theological, not scientific and strictly historical perspectives. It is mediated through a rich diversity of description of events and examples of conduct, narration of stories and collected teachings of wisdom, dreams and oracles, commandments and exhortations, psalms and prayers. It comes to us with varying degrees of clarity and accuracy through human experience and human words that often require careful interpretation. Nevertheless, Scripture in its overall σκοπός, whether by narrative or instruction, gives abiding testimony to God's saving truth which it views as light and life (Ps. 119:105).

Third and most importantly, Scripture communicates knowledge about the mystery of the living God himself — who he is and what his attributes are. Ancient peoples believed in all sorts of deities and paid homage to them in myriad ways. It is erroneous to claim that they all worshiped the same god by different names and in various ways. While the Bible attests to the truth that there is but one true God, human beings have nevertheless created countless of idols of material and conceptual gods throughout history. Holy Scripture proclaims the "true" God precisely in deliberate contrast and opposition to the "false" gods of paganism.²³ The true God is the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who guided his people in history and most fully revealed himself in the Son and the Spirit as a Triadic God (Mt 28:19; 2 Cor 13:13). He is the "living" God because he is the Lord, Yahweh ("I Am Who I Am," Ex 3:14), a personal God who, moved by love, lives and acts among his people with grace and truth. Not all pages of the Bible present God's character with equal clarity. But the total witness of Scripture proclaims and exalts the true God, the King of glory, a moral Lord, who commands justice and righteousness and who rules with love and mercy. Moreover, he desires to share his life — he yearns for covenantal fidelity and intimate communion with personal beings created in his image and likeness. In the end, the Bible points not to itself but to God. Its supreme testimony and greatest challenge to readers is the invitation to an intimate encounter and personal life with God.

It is also important to underscore that Scripture as God's communication is primarily addressed to God's people who nurture communal knowledge of God. God chose to make himself known to concrete persons such as Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, Paul and Lydia. His saving acts and words called forth a response and established relationships between God and such persons as well as between such persons and others who received their message. Those who answered the call sealed their relationship with God and with one another in mutual faith and loving obedience. Likewise Gods great acts of deliverance were directed to the people of Israel and to the followers of Jesus. Their response was integral to the corporate covenant between God and his people. We can say that God's saving acts and words created these personal bonds and established the community of God's people itself. Holy Scripture emerged as "bones of bones and flesh of flesh" from the life of the faith community. As a book of faith and a book of the Church, Scripture constitutes the word of God not in the abstract but the word of God addressed to his people. Corporate knowledge of the living God is the dominant theme of the Bible. God's word and those who receive it, Holy Scripture and the people of God, belong inseparably together. It is in this communal faith context that the words of Scripture become the "living word" of the living God in worship, preaching, teaching, guidance, and mission.²⁴

Thus, the essence of the religious value and theological content of Holy Scripture as divine revelation is summed up by its testimony to God's saving activity, God's saving truth, and God's personal character. Scripture is the word of God insofar as it communicates to us knowledge about these crucial matters. However, such knowledge about God and his purposes is conveyed through human beings who spoke and wrote in human languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. How is one then to understand the relationship between God's word and the human words in which the Bible is written? In what sense is the Bible the word of God? God neither has nor needs a physical mouth to make known his will. Did he perhaps miraculously create sounds to be heard as Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek words by human subjects? Did he touch the minds of persons to convey his will, who subsequently communicated his messages to others in their own ordinary language and frame of reference? Or both? What about the interpretations of original revelations by later generations enshrined in the written biblical tradition? To what degree do the words of Scripture represent actual words of God? How does one begin to comprehend more precisely the truth that the Bible is the word of God in human words? The way one answers these questions determines one's view of Scripture, of inspiration, and of revelation. It also discloses where one stands in the spectrum of biblical interpretation from fundamentalism to radical liberalism.

In the Orthodox perspective, Holy Scripture is the record of revelation rather than direct revelation itself. To read about creation in Genesis is not the same as being present at creation. The prophet Isaiah personally beheld the Lord enthroned in glory, but in Isaiah 6 we have an account of that revelation, not the awesome revelation itself. The apostles and other devoted followers of Jesus experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost but in Acts 2 we meet a written description of that event, not the event itself. To be sure, the record of revelation is inspired, sacred, and canonical, but nevertheless it is still a record written by concrete human authors and in particular human languages.

Georges Florovsky has written that "the Bible is intrinsically historical ... [in it] we hear not only the voice of God, but also the voice of man ... Herein lies the miracle and mystery of the Bible, that it is the Word of God in human idiom."²⁵ The voice of God and the many voices of human beings combine in the single text of Scripture. No word of God is recorded except in human words. Divine revelation occurred neither in a vacuum nor as pure gold untouched by human contingency. God utilized ordinary human agents with their limitations of language and knowledge to communicate aspects of his will and purposes to limited subjects. The great thinker Origen called the Bible God's “baby talk” to humanity. St. John Chrysostom perceived Scripture as an expression of divine “condescension” (συγκατάβασις).²⁶Τ1ιΐ5 view of Scripture presupposes a dynamic understanding of revelation and inspiration involving a process of personal divine-human interaction.

The most striking parallel to the twofold nature of Scripture is — by way only of analogy rather than by strict correspondence — Jesus Christ who is himself called the incarnate Word of God (Jn 1:1,14). Although he was the eternal Logos and Son, the incarnate Christ was seen and touched; he spoke and acted in fully human ways, including the experience of hunger, frustration, and fear; yet he was without sin (Heb 4:15; 5:7). Just as the mystery of the one Christ is expressed in his divine and human natures, so also the mystery of Holy Scripture, the verbal icon of Christ, unites divine and human aspects. The divine aspects are to be found in Scripture's saving message about God, humanity, the gospel, the Church, grace and works, as well as the hope of the coming kingdom. This saving message is not merely an announcement of abstract concepts but a present reality as God's word which, when proclaimed and received by faith, becomes a living and transforming word through the power of the Spirit. The human aspects are to be found in the specific human languages of the Bible, the different kinds of literary forms and skills of the biblical authors and editors, as well as in their cultural and conceptual limitations which are intrinsic to all human endeavors.

It is not possible neatly to separate the divine and human elements of Scripture. The reader must engage the biblical witness in its totality and distinguish between central claims pertaining to salvation and subsidiary matters of history, chronology, language, and culture. That Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ and risen Lord is a truth of far greater magnitude than the historical question of the origin and development of christological titles. The hope of the resurrection of the dead and of the coming kingdom is far more important than the exact nature of these events as reported in various biblical books. To affirm that St. Paul experienced a true theophany of the risen Christ is one thing, to recognize that we have differing descriptions of this experience in Galatians and Acts is another. The Bible exhibits a tremendous variety in details as, for example, in the double accounts of the genealogies of Jesus, the Beatitudes, and the Lord's Prayer in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Questions can also be raised about cultural values and traditions reflected in Scripture pertaining to the institution of slavery, the role of women and children, and other social conventions. Where the line should ultimately be drawn and when it must be drawn between the saving truth of Scripture and its human expressions, especially in instances of major or controversial issues, becomes a matter of theological and normative interpretation in the life of the Church. Such issues, which have caused crises in Church history, raise questions that can be resolved not by expert interpretation alone but by the total ecclesial sense of what is God's will according to the spiritual receptivity of God's people.

In light of the above, therefore, the concept of the Bible as the word of God pertains primarily to the saving message of Scripture and cannot be applied literally to the exact words of each biblical verse. The latter view would virtually render the Bible a kind of massive computer printout of the mind of God, a gross misconception. Such understanding would entail insuperable difficulties especially concerning the scientific inadequacies and historical discrepancies in Scripture, which would inevitably be attributed to God. Moreover, from a theological viewpoint, the mystery of the living God cannot be strictly identified with the letter of Scripture. God is both revealed and hidden because he transcends human language and understanding. Accordingly, sufficient allowance must be made for the human factor in the reception of revelation and the composition of the biblical writings. Each author must be granted one's own personality, cultural framework, conceptual understanding, literary skills, and spiritual insight as an active contributor to the divine-human interaction. This position may be described as a dynamic view of the inspiration of Scripture.²⁷

Orthodox theology holds to a personal and dynamic, rather than mechanistic and verbal, concept of inspiration. God did not merely dictate words or propositions to passive authors, but rather he impacted personally their whole beings, allowing them actively to comprehend, interpret, and convey his will to others according to the limitations of their understanding and language. It is important to note that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit embraces a far deeper and broader process than the composition of single books. Inspiration involves the entire community of faith, the life of a particular author, the composition of particular books, as well as their gradual gathering into a sacred collection. While all Scripture is “God-breathed” (θεόπνευστος, 2 Tim 3:16), it is not equally so, because of the variability of human receptivity. The inspirational character of the Book of Isaiah cannot be compared to that of the Book of Ecclesiastes, nor the inspirational character of the Gospel of John to that of the Epistle of Jude. Those who emphasize the literal authority of Scripture, often conservative and fundamentalist Protestants, debate the concept of inerrancy. They advocate essentially a Bible without error and are thus compelled to provide artificial defensive justifications.²⁸ Many seem to bypass the historical complexities and to attribute to Scripture an absolute character that properly belongs only to God, thus seemingly lapsing into a kind of bibliolatry. The Roman Catholic view of inspiration may be expressed by the term infallibility, following the etymological sense that Scripture "does not fail" for the essential saving purposes for which it was given by God.²⁹ In the Orthodox tradition, perhaps the most appropriate expression is the sufficiency (αυτάρκεια) of Scripture, an expression used by St. Athanasios to affirm the fullness of saving truth provided by Scripture.³⁰

The question of authorship of scriptural books exemplifies the differing implications between dynamic and rigid views of inspiration. Those who incline toward a dictational view of revelation and inspiration are also concerned about securing the traditional authorship of the biblical writings. Those who hold to a dynamic view of inspiration are less anxious about authorship because they see God's guidance over the whole process, from the original moments and events of revelation to the formation of the biblical canon. Similar inferences may be drawn from differing perspectives on the relationship of the Bible to the believing community from which it came. Those who attribute to the Scriptures an absolute authority apart from or above the believing community may passionately defend authorship by eyewitnesses. In so doing, they desire to uphold the veracity of the Bible which must stand "alone," as if heaven opened to convey specific propositional statements and truths to individual authors. Those who recognize the dynamic relationship between Bible and believing community are less worried about traditional authorship because they view the whole life of the faith community as the ultimate context of inspiration and of sufficient teaching for salvation.

From an Orthodox perspective, the question of authorship is important but not critical. The ultimate theological criterion of truth is the life of the Church. In the Orthodox tradition, there are numerous valuable patristic writings, hymns, prayers, and other liturgical texts either by unknown or disputed authors over whom patristic and liturgical scholars debate without great anxiety about their findings' impact on the life of the Church. In the ancient Church, the authorship of a number of New Testament books, such as the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation, had already been freely debated for several centuries. It need not, therefore, be a cause of spiritual or theological confusion that modern scholars, for historical and literary reasons, continue this debate and even enlarge upon it. Such debate becomes pernicious only in cases where scholars, or other uninformed readers of the Bible who are conditioned by fundamentalist presuppositions, think that either the saving message of the canonical Scriptures or the theological value of ecclesial tradition are undermined by questions raised about the traditional authorship of the biblical writings. Whatever the historical complexities for or against the traditional attribution of authorship — and sound theology allows freedom for balanced historical research — the Church has embraced a variety of writings in its sacred canon and thus affirmed their value as multiple testimonies to God and his saving message. The essential value of the biblical documents lies in their theological content rather than in the historical circumstances of their composition.

By academic study we mean the formal and systematic study of Scripture at the level of universities, colleges, and theological schools which have flourished in Western Europe, North America, and now all over the world.⁴³ Such study presumes to be scientific in that it is conducted on the basis of a system of standards and methods developed by a long-standing academic tradition in the liberal arts and humanities. This academic tradition deserves careful consideration not only for its impressive accomplishments, but also for its disruptive effects pertaining to all traditional approaches to the Bible. The liberal tradition of biblical studies, complex and diverse as it is, constitutes in fact a new tradition and represents a new community, that is, a community of scholars with their own interests and presuppositions which go beyond particular methodologies. The ideology of academic scholarship has often yielded radical judgments about the authority of Scripture as traditionally held by all Christians. Moreover, the dominance of scholarship has imperceptibly given rise to an intimidating supposition that only scholars can truly know the Bible, a notion as arrogant as it is foolish. The following sketch of biblical criticism is amplified by a more extensive assessment of contemporary biblical scholarship in Chapter Five.

The prevailing academic study of the Bible, conducted as scientific scholarship on the basis of historical and literary criticism, is a product of the modern world. It is closely linked with the birthpangs of modern Western civilization marked by the Reformation, the religious wars, the rise of science, intellectual reaction to rigid forms of both Catholicism and Protestantism, and with the embrace of reason as the primary way to truth and human progress.⁴⁴ Given the elements of freedom from church authority and of the use of autonomous reason, biblical criticism could first develop only within the Protestant world, yet not without bitter acrimony and further cross-sectional divisions among Protestants into liberal, conservative or evangelical, and fundamentalist camps.⁴⁵ From the beginning, biblical criticism advocated a detached, rational reading of the Bible, "like any other book," and fostered a hostility toward traditional Christian beliefs. It sought to discover the "pure natural religion' of Jesus over against the distorted religion about Christ created by the Church and its doctrines, which had presumably caused controversies and wars. Central teachings of the New Testament, such as the deity of Jesus as Son of God and the miracles recorded in the Bible, including Jesus' resurrection, were viewed with marked skepticism. These and similar ideas, hostile to traditional Christianity, can be traced back to the English rationalists such as John Locke (1632-1704) and the German G. E. Lessing (1729-1781). They were developed and refined in various ways by numerous German scholars such as J. S. Sempler (1725-1791), Ε C. Baur (1792-1860), J. Wellhausen (1844-1918), A. Harnack (1851-1930), R. Bultmann (1884-1976), and still surface today through the work of the American Robert Funk who is the driving force behind the radical "Jesus Seminar."⁴⁶

Biblical criticism did not advance in linear fashion but through diverse dynamics and various schools such as the Tubingen, the "history of religions," and the Bultmannian. Nor have all liberal biblical critics been radicals. As biblical criticism gained acceptability in mainstream Protestantism, the hostile edge of the earlier critics was tempered, subtly hidden, or even justified in the name of scientific research. Some mainline Protestant scholars have themselves raised their voices in criticism of biblical criticism in its technical, historical, and philosophical extremes.⁴⁷

The field as a whole, granted its brilliant historico-philological findings, has been marked by rationalist ideology and a distinct strain of Enlightenment radicalism. As William Baird puts it, "the history of NT criticism from the end of the 18th century through the first two thirds of the 20th is largely a recital of the Enlightenment themes with variations."⁴⁸

It is not surprising that biblical criticism did not readily find receptive ground within the Roman Catholic Church.⁴⁹ Although one of the earliest pioneers was the French Oratorian priest R. Simon (1638-1712), a convert from Protestantism, Catholic biblical studies remained defensive until the second half of the twentieth century. Two great Catholic scholars appeared in the early twentieth century, M. J. Lagrange and A. Loisy. Lagrange, who was founder of the Biblical School in Jerusalem and the journal Revue Biblique, convincingly demonstrated that critical biblical research could be conducted without necessary opposition to faith and Church. Loisy, a gifted philologist and exegete, fell into critical extremism and was excommunicated (1908) as a leader of the Modernist heresy. Earlier, the Pontifical Biblical Commission (1902) had been established to keep a watchful eye on biblical exegetes.

The cloud over Roman Catholic biblical scholars was not lifted until the papal encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943), the charter of the modern Catholic historical-critical study of Scripture. On the basis of that document and by the encouraging guidance of the Biblical Commission, Catholic biblical scholarship has come to full maturity during the last fifty years through the work of numerous scholars such as the French P. Benoit and J. Danielou, the Belgians L. Cerfaux and A. Descamps, the Germans J. Schmid and R. Schnackenburg, and the Americans R. Brown and J. A. Fitzmyer. These scholars have shown that front-line critical biblical studies can be conducted apart from philosophical biases and extreme positions. However, tensions between liberal and conservative scholars, as well as doubts and attacks on biblical criticism, continue to exist within the Roman Catholic Church, not least because of the radical tendencies of some scholars.⁵⁰

In the Orthodox Church, critical biblical studies are still largely derivative due to the absence of many universities in Orthodox countries and the consequent lack of long-standing academic traditions for the advancement of all disciplines. In Russia, the tremendous intellectual ferment centered around numerous academies and the promise of an amazing revival in arts and sciences in dialogue with European developments were tragically cut short by the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) .⁵¹ Greece, after four centuries of Ottoman rule, gained political independence in the early nineteenth century and was the only Orthodox country aside from Cyprus to escape Communist rule in the twentieth. In Greece, with the establishment of two national universities in Athens (1837) and Thessalonike (1926), the foundations were set for systematic studies in all areas, including theology, with relative freedom of inquiry and apart from direct ecclesiastical supervision.

In biblical studies, a number of scholars emerged, most of them trained in Germany, such as E. Zolotas, N. Damalas, E. Antoniadis, V. Vellas, P. Bratsiotis, V. loannidis, and S. Agouridis, who collectively have produced substantial critical work within Orthodox theological parameters.⁵² The future growth of Orthodox biblical studies cannot occur apart from an overall assessment of their labors.⁵³ Orthodox biblical scholars in Greece and elsewhere are seeking to clarify the nature and role of critical biblical studies within the Orthodox Church in terms of three focal issues: a) the historical-critical method; b) the patristic exegetical tradition; and c) the liturgical dimension as a hermeneutical perspective.⁵⁴ Substantive progress in these areas and ecclesiastical support for academic research can provide hope for the next level of growth in Orthodox biblical studies in the spirit of a "Neopatristic synthesis" proposed long ago by Georges Florovsky.⁵⁵

Scientific biblical research, whether carried out within Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox circles carries a double burden. On the one hand, it has the task of objective study of the biblical writings in their own historical and communal settings in order to provide fresh access to the original intentions and voices of their authors as they perceived and expressed the word of God in all its cultural contingency and theological depth. In this regard, academic research has produced an astonishing array of tools and riches for biblical study. It has also demonstrated amazing success in clarifying innumerable literary, historical, and theological issues, including the crucial issue of the relationship of Scripture and tradition discussed earlier in this chapter. Balanced academic study of the Bible, no less than similar study of the classic Christian tradition, holds, in part, the promise of renewal for the churches and contemporary society in ways that transcend divisive differences through a positive and holistic understanding of creation, humanity, and life.

However, the serious shortcomings of the academic use of Scripture must be recognized as well. The spirit of modern biblical criticism and modern Western theology in general, although it does not necessarily have to be so, is derived neither from Scripture nor the classic Christian tradition, which are based on prayer and ecclesial life, but primarily from Renaissance humanism and Enlightenment philosophy. Biblical scholarship has often rendered itself irrelevant to the life of both Church and society by a gravitational pull toward historical, philological, and technical preoccupations. Worse, when lapsing into hypercriticism or falling captive to philosophical presuppositions, biblical criticism has tended to consume its own subject matter, the substance and value of Scripture, until there is virtually nothing left. In obvious accommodation to culture, the upshot has been the wide promotion of skepticism toward the very authority of Holy Scripture, a treatment of the Bible as a kind of cultural monument from which to glean supporting references for desirable goals and one-sided ideologies. J. Christiaan Beker, a mainline Protestant biblical scholar, critiques the prevailing biblical studies with these words:

In view of this state of affairs, it is no surprise that biblical critics have provoked charges of outright heresy and have caused deep alienation first among Protestants and then, to a lesser degree, among Catholics as well. Some prominent Protestant biblical scholars, notably Brevard S. Childs,⁵⁷ have labored hard to recover the sense of biblical authority so necessary to the vitality of the Church. Without rejecting the achievements of scholarship, and certainly without going back to a pre-critical stage, Childs has drawn attention to the canonical nature as well as the theological witness of Scripture. Most Roman Catholic biblical scholars have succeeded in conducting critical research while remaining faithful to their doctrinal tradition. The primary example is Raymond E. Brown who has written on the most sensitive subjects, including the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, and the Petrine authority.⁵⁸ Taking on literalists on the one hand and radicals on the other,⁵⁹ Brown has ably shown through his many works and commentaries that freedom of research is not compromised by faithfulness to classic Christian doctrine. He has defended critical studies and has carved out what he calls a "centrist position" on principle that historical critical methodology can be kept distinct from extraneous philosophical ideological assumptions.⁶⁰

In the case of Orthodox scholars, strong ecclesial and doctrinal anchors have largely spared the Orthodox from turmoil. In Orthodoxy, patristic and doctrinal interests hold sway, while the gradually increasing number of biblical scholars enjoy relative freedom to do their work. As they strive for the growth of biblical studies in their own tradition, Orthodox biblical scholars are still learning from their Western colleagues but they ought to be cautious about repeating their errors. They are wise to take cognizance as well of Evangelical scholarship with which they share considerable theological ground. Evangelical scholars present not only a sharpened critique of liberal biblical criticism,⁶¹ but also positive contributions in contemporary biblical research.⁶² In this manner, Orthodox biblical scholars may keep in perspective the wider world of the modern academic study of Scripture in order both to welcome its contributions as well as to guard against its shortcomings. The erudite legacy of the great Church fathers and the spirit of freedom within the Orthodox tradition provide hopeful foundations for the continued advanc