Holy Scripture
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EssentialHoly ScriptureHoly ScriptureThe Church’s own book, received and canonised by her and read within her. Orthodoxy uses the Septuagint for the Old Testament, where the Latin West follows the Hebrew text, and holds the same twenty-seven books of the New. Scripture is not set over against Tradition but is its written heart: it is proclaimed liturgically before it is studied privately, and it is read with the Fathers rather than against them.EssentialHoly ScriptureThe Four GospelsMatthew, Mark, Luke, and John: the four canonical accounts of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. Orthodox tradition attributes them to the Apostle Matthew, John Mark (companion of Peter), Luke (companion of Paul), and the Apostle John. The Gospel book (Evangelion) is venerated in the church and processed in every Liturgy.EssentialHoly ScriptureThe New TestamentThe 27-book canon containing the four Gospels, Acts, Pauline and Catholic Epistles, and Revelation. The canon was formally recognized over time: the 39th Festal Letter of St. Athanasius (367) lists the 27 books. Orthodoxy reads Scripture within the living Tradition of the Church, interpreted by the consensus of the Fathers.ImportantHoly ScriptureEpistles of St. PaulFourteen epistles received by the Church as St Paul's: Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon and Hebrews. The Fathers read them for Christ as the new Adam, for life in the Spirit, for the Church as His Body, and for the shape of a Christian life; justification is among their themes and is not the key that unlocks them. One is appointed at every Divine Liturgy, read before the Gospel, and the reader is called the Apostle after what he reads.ImportantHoly ScriptureThe Old TestamentThe Church reads the Old Testament in the Septuagint, the Greek text the Apostles quote and the Fathers expound. Alongside the books shared with the Hebrew canon it receives the anagignoskomena, "those that are read": Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Baruch with the Letter of Jeremiah, the additions to Daniel and to Esther, 1 Esdras, 1 to 3 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151. Four of those stand in the Greek and Slavonic Bibles and not in the Roman canon. The Orthodox Church has never issued a closed list in the manner of Trent: these books are Scripture by the use the Church makes of them, read in the services and cited by the Fathers.ImportantHoly ScriptureThe Psalter (Book of Psalms)The 150 (151 in LXX) Psalms are the prayer book of the Church, recited or chanted daily. Divided into 20 Kathismata for reading over one week (twice in Lent). The Psalter is the backbone of the Liturgy of the Hours. St Basil calls the Psalter a book that heals what it touches, and it carries every human affection up to God.ImportantHoly ScriptureWhy Not Scripture AloneScripture is the Church's own book: she recognised which writings were hers, reads them in her services before anyone reads them privately, and interprets them by the mind of the Fathers. So the Reformation principle of Scripture alone is not rejected for lowering Scripture but for detaching it from the body that produced and preserved it, which in practice replaces the consensus of the Fathers with the judgement of the reader. Nor does Orthodoxy set Tradition beside Scripture as a second source: Scripture is the written heart of Tradition, and the Liturgy, the Councils, the canons and the icons are the same faith in other forms.ImportantHoly ScriptureActs of the ApostlesWritten by the Evangelist Luke as a continuation of his Gospel. Records the spread of the Church from Jerusalem to Rome after the Ascension. Key events: Pentecost, martyrdom of Stephen, conversion of Paul, Council of Jerusalem, Paul's missionary journeys. Read continuously from Pascha through Pentecost in the Orthodox lectionary.ImportantHoly ScriptureBook of Revelation (Apocalypse)The Apocalypse of St John the Theologian, the last book of the New Testament: a prophetic vision of the end, of the struggle between good and evil, and of the final victory of Christ. It is the one book of the New Testament never appointed to be read in the services of the Byzantine rite, an absence that goes back to the long dispute in the East over its canonicity. It is canonical nonetheless, and the Church reads it through St Andrew of Caesarea, whose sixth-century commentary settled its interpretation for the Greek tradition. Orthodox reading is symbolic and refuses millennialism, the expectation of a thousand-year earthly kingdom.ImportantHoly ScriptureThe Septuagint (LXX)The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures made in Alexandria (3rd-2nd century BC). The Bible of the Apostles and the early Church. The New Testament quotes the Old Testament primarily from the LXX. Orthodoxy considers the LXX authoritative; the Masoretic Hebrew text is secondary.