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Strictly speaking, there never was a
Bible
in the Orthodox Church,
at least not as we commonly think of the Bible as a
single volume book we can hold in our hand. Since the
beginning of the Church, from the start of our
liturgical tradition, there has never been a single book
in an Orthodox church we could point to as
the Bible .
Instead, the various
Books of the Bible are
found scattered throughout several service books located
either on the Holy Altar itself, or at the chanter's
stand. The Gospels (or their pericopes) are compiled
into a single volume — usually bound in precious metal
and richly decorated — placed on the Holy Altar. The
Epistles (or, again, their pericopes) are bound together
in another book, called the
Apostolos, which is
normally found at the chanter's stand. Usually located
next to the Apostolos
on the chanter's shelf are the twelve volumes of the
Menaion,
as well as the books called the
Triodion
and Pentekostarion,
containing various segments of the Old and the New
Testaments.
The fact that
there is no Bible
in the church should not surprise us, since our liturgical tradition is
a continuation of the practices of the early Church, when the Gospels
and the letters from the Apostles (the Epistles) had been freshly
written and copied for distribution to the Christian communities. The
Hebrew Scriptures
-what we now call the Old Testament -
comprising the Law (the first five books) and the Prophets, were
likewise written on various scrolls, just as they were found in the
Jewish synagogues.
The Church is
not
based on the Bible.
Rather, the Bible is a product of the
Church. For the first few centuries of the
Christian era, no one could have put his hands on a single volume called
"The Bible" .
In
fact, there was no agreement regarding which
books of
Scripture were to be considered accurate and correct, or canonical.
--
Greek Orthodox Diocese of Denver
Bulletin: March 1995, Volume 3, Number 3., pp. 14-17 |
