In the Tradition the place of primacy, the place of honor, belongs to the Bible. Coming from the Greek biblia, the word Bible means the "books." The Bible is, of course, a collection of individual writings or books, made into a single volume largely through the modern invention of the printing press. In the Scriptures ("writings") we find various kinds of writings – books of history, books of poetry and songs, books of wisdom and philosophy, collections of stories such as the New Testament "Gospels," Epistles ("letters") written by various Apostles, etc. This collection of writings, inspired ("breathed into") by God Himself, expresses God’s Truth. The Scriptures are experienced in the Church as being those writings, which the Church has produced, which faithfully convey what God has revealed.

The Bible did not produce the Church. Rather, it is the Church that produced the Bible. It is the authority of the Church that decided which books would be considered part of the Holy Scriptures and which books would not (sorting through voluminous writings and stamping with approval those which faithfully conveyed what had always been believed and experienced in the Church).

The Orthodox Christian Scriptures are divided into the Old and New Testaments (or covenants). Many people inquiring into Holy Orthodoxy ask the question, "Which text should we read?" Is there such a thing as an "Orthodox Bible," an Orthodox version of the Scriptures? The answer is "yes and no." One cannot go to a local bookstore and find a specifically "Orthodox Bible." But there are a few basic things that are good to know about the various editions of the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments.

The Old Testament, for the most part, was written in the Hebrew language, the language of Israel. At the time of Jesus and the Apostles, however, most of the Jews no longer lived in Israel (most were scattered throughout the whole Roman empire and other places such as to the east in Babylon). Hebrew had ceased to be a commonly spoken language among the Jews. It had become what we would call today a liturgical language used in the temple and the synagogues. The people for the most part (except those who were learned), both in Israel and throughout the rest of the world where Jews lived, did not speak it at home. A Jewish male had to learn at least enough Hebrew so that he could read the prescribed portion of the Scripture that was given him to read for his bar mitzvah. At the time of Jesus and the Apostles only a minority of Jews had a real familiarity with the Hebrew language.

The language that was most common at that time was the Greek language. That’s why the New Testament, for example, was written in Greek. Greek was the commonly spoken language, the so-called Lingua Franca, throughout the Roman Empire (Latin was a more locally spoken language in and around Rome and Italy itself). Throughout the whole Roman world, from as far west as Spain to as far as Babylonia or Egypt or North Africa, the commonly spoken language was Greek.

A couple of centuries before Christ the Old Testament Scriptures were translated into the Greek language from Hebrew. According to the tradition of this translation, seventy translators in the city of Alexandria in Egypt translated from Hebrew to Greek. So this Greek translation of the Old Testament, getting its name from the Greek word for seventy, is called the Septuagint.

At the time of Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Church, most of the people hearing the Scriptures heard them in Greek. Only by very great exception would an individual person have in his possession any kind of scroll of the Scriptures - they were too precious and valuable. And, also, they were treated with a kind of reverence such that it was not looked upon very highly for people to have personal possession of texts of the Scriptures. Many times we tend to read back into the world of Israel and the world of the early Church things that we assume as normal in our modern times – things that are the result of the printing press and widespread literacy. But it was not so in the days of the early Church. It would be fortunate enough if each local synagogue or each local church had one complete set of scrolls of the Scriptures.

It is this Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint that is the official Old Testament of the Orthodox Church. Because nearly all currently available English Bibles are not translated from the Septuagint text, rather they are translated from the Hebrew text; it is hard to get for yourself a Septuagint Old Testament. Why then does the Orthodox Church insist that the Septuagint text remain the standard Old Testament text? There are two reasons.

First, in particularly the Psalms and the Prophets, the prophecies that are made regarding the coming of the Savior, the coming of the Messiah, in the Septuagint text are far more literal, far more precise, far more intense than are the prophecies as they are expressed in the Hebrew text of the Rabbis. In the currently available English translations the Old Testament is translated from the Hebrew of the text that was preserved by the Rabbis and the Hebrew scribes, not the Greek translation of actually an older set of manuscripts in Hebrew that are not available any more. The Septuagint translation was made before Christ yet the prophecies of the coming of the Savior to Israel in it are far more intense. The gradual intensification of the Messianic prophesies that one finds in the Septuagint text are understood by the Orthodox as being the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Secondly, and very importantly, whenever the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, whether it’s in the Gospels or in the Epistles, the version that is quoted one hundred percent of the time by the New Testament is the Septuagint version.

Also concerning the Old Testament, the Orthodox accept as canonical Scripture (canonical means legitimate, according to the canon - the rule of faith) what is called the Longer Canon. There are some books in the Old Testament that are found only in the Septuagint version. They are not found in the Hebrew text of the Rabbis. These include such books as Tobit, Judith, more chapters to the book of Esther, more chapters to the prophecy of Daniel, the 1^st and 2^nd books of Maccabees, the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, the book of Sirach, the prophecy of Baruch, the prayer of Manasseh, etc. All of these, because they are part of the Longer Canon that was accepted from the beginning by the early Church are considered by the Orthodox to be completely, totally part of the Old Testament. *

As far the New Testament is concerned, the official Orthodox text of the New Testament is frequently referred to as the "received text" (or, less frequently, "the Byzantine text"). It is the text of the Gospels and the Epistles that has been read in the Greek Church from the beginning. The most readily available modern English source of the New Testament that follows very strictly this traditional "received text" is to be found in the New King James Version.

The Scriptures say of themselves that they are to be understood within the life, within the understanding of the people of God. The Church of the New Testament existed for more than three hundred years before the books of the New Testament were put into their final form. The people of God in the Old Testament, the people of Israel, throughout their approximately 2,000-year history did not have the Old Testament in its final form until the last two centuries before Christ.

Where do "the traditions you were taught," come from? They are not all to be found in something you can pick up and read. There is that aspect of the Church’s life which is conveyed orally and has been from the beginning. There is that aspect of the Church’s life which is conveyed in writing. The essential thing to understand is that it is the Church itself that is the criterion of Truth.

The Scriptures themselves confess that the pillar and ground of Truth is the Church. If we are to understand the Scriptures we must understand them with the understanding of the Church.

Those "holy men of God" lived within the framework, the context, the boundary of the elect, the chosen people of God (whether it is the Old Testament Israel or in the New Covenant what we call the Church). So then it is in the Church, through the Church that the Scriptures are understood. The Orthodox teaching is that if you divorce the Scriptures from their context, take them out, break them away from that which created them (that is, the Church), anything can happen. Good things can happen. Bad things can happen. People can read the Scriptures and conclude all sorts of things on the basis of what they read if what they conclude is based only on individual interpretation. The Orthodox understanding is that when there is not the experience and wisdom of the Church to guide one in the understanding of the Scriptures there’s no guarantee of anything.

From an Orthodox perspective, in much of the history of Western Christianity for the last 1,000 years we see this trouble, this question which, as far as we can see is not answered. For the heterodox Christian, what is the criterion of Truth? Is it found in one particular authority figure in the church? Is it found in "the book" by itself, independently? Either one of these answers the Orthodox find unsatisfactory. And as to the second answer, the minute you say, "All I need for salvation, to be a Christian, I can find with me and my Bible alone," you establish that the criterion of Truth is, "Me and what I think." The result of this, from Orthodox eyes, is the continuing proliferation of denominations (now estimated to number >30,000 worldwide).

The Orthodox faith insists that the Scriptures are understood within the life of the Church. And how do we understand them? There are three important criterion of what makes something "Traditional," what makes something to be of the life of the Church (see addendum – the "Vincentian Canon").

1. Antiquity It has been taught and believed always from the beginning.
2. Universality It has been taught and believed everywhere.
3. Unanimity It has been taught and believed by all.

Everything we believe and teach about the Bible, about faith, about God, about man, about eternal life – everything (the whole body of the Church’s tradition) – is governed by these three factors. As the Church lives through time and continually has to state the faith in words that are adequate to convey it, sometimes new expressions have to be made. But when a new expression is made it does not mean that something new is being added to the deposit of faith. For example, take the use of the word "Trinity." Nowhere in the Scriptures do you find the word Trinity. It doesn’t exist. Great teachers in the Church in the fourth century made it up.

There was a need in the fourth century to express what the Church meant by saying that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are certainly in the Scriptures from the beginning to the end, we would say. But in the fourth century the great Arian heresy arose – denying the Deity of Christ (in much the same way that the modern heresies of Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses do). Later other heretics would deny the Deity of the Holy Spirit. There was a need, not to invent a new doctrine, but, to express with greater clarity what had been believed from the beginning and this led to the exposition of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity by the Church fathers.

And so, as the Church lives through time and addresses the need to continually express who she is and what she has always believed, new expressions come forth. However, such new expressions (as the Trinity) are in concord with what has been believed and taught from the beginning, everywhere by everyone. Briefly, another example would be what you see around you in an Orthodox church - the building itself and the iconography. The Christians in the first couple of centuries did not have church buildings and they certainly did not have icons like we have them now. Nonetheless, we would say that if Saint Paul came into our church now everything he sees here he would realize to be a true, authentic development of what he preached.

Let’s look at an example of how the Church applies the sources of Holy Tradition in addressing a serious societal question – abortion. Is there a teaching of the Church on this matter that has been believed everywhere, always and by all?

The word abortion is not found in the Bible. But you do find that clearly a human person is recognized as a human person from the moment of his or her conception in the womb of the mother. Consider Jeremiah the Prophet in the Old Testament.

John the Baptist, when he was being carried in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, leapt for joy when he recognized Jesus in the womb of His mother, blessed Mary the Mother of God.

So, giving the place of primacy to the Scriptures in the sources of the Church’s Tradition, we see that God has revealed that human life begins with conception. (See also Judg 13:5,7; Job 31:15; Ps 127:3; Ps 139:13; Isa 44::24; Isa 49:1; Isa 49:5; Hos 12:2-3)

Moving to the Liturgical source of the Church’s Tradition we see that the Church celebrates the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ, of Mary His mother, and of John the Baptist as feast days. So it is clear in the experience of the Church’s worship that human life begins with conception.

The Canons of the Church Councils have addressed abortion from the beginning. Even in the first century the non-scriptural writing known as the Didache (the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) condemns abortion.

In looking at the Canons of the great Councils of the Church we see with unanimity, with no exception, that those who destroy an unborn child are committing the same sort of murder as those who kill a human being who has been born.

in Holy Tradition there is clear testimony of antiquity, universal and unanimous, that abortion is murder and that it cannot be condoned by the Christian people because the human person begins in the image and likeness of God from his conception. This is the Orthodox way to deal with every question, every issue, every doctrine. We look at everything in the Church’s life.

Similarly, this is why the Orthodox are not disturbed by what are sometimes described as the "discrepancies" that are found in Scripture. For example, if you read the four Gospels you’ll see that they are four very different books. They are four different accounts of the life of Christ, expressing both what Jesus said and did in different ways. They often do not agree in precise details. This has never troubled the Church because the Church has never understood the Gospels as though they were some kinds of newsreel playbacks.

Truth is often something far deeper than even data is capable of expressing. Far better, far deeper, is that four people in four different places at four different times serve as the instruments of expressing what has happened with the coming of Christ to the world. There are some things that take place, like the resurrection of Christ (bringing the Kingdom of God into the human experience and making it possible for us to have the life of God), that are impossible for human writings bearing testimony and recording what happened to fully express.

That is why the Orthodox insist that no single source of Tradition can be isolated from the rest. There’s a verb in Greek that means to pick and to choose, and from that verb comes the word "heresy." A heretic, therefore, is not necessarily a villain or a devil. More precisely, to be a heretic is to pick one part of what the historical Church has always believed and experienced and ignore the rest. Doing so one ends up unbalanced. That’s why the insistence of the Orthodox on the unity of all these things safeguards that we will be given within the life of the Church the entire Christianity. Not only our knowledge of God but our experience of God will be the complete revelation that He has made of Himself. In Orthodoxy individual opinion does not sift through and sort out and remove things. Rather Orthodoxy preserves the fullness of the self-revelation of God.

These first two sessions have served as an introduction. Next we will begin our examination of the Orthodox faith, using as a tool this statement of faith that the early Church has provided us in the Nicene Creed.

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St. Vincent of Lerins: AD 434

From Chapter 4 of the Commonitorium - [ed. Moxon, Cambridge Patristic Texts]

(1) I have continually given the greatest pains and diligence to inquiring, from the greatest possible number of men outstanding in holiness and in doctrine, how I can secure a kind of fixed and, as it were, general and guiding principle for distinguishing the true Catholic Faith from the degraded falsehoods of heresy. And the answer that I receive is always to this effect; that if I wish, or indeed if anyone wishes, to detect the deceits of heretics that arise and to avoid their snares and to keep healthy and sound in a healthy faith, we ought, with the Lord's help, to fortify our faith in a twofold manner, firstly, that is, by the authority of God's Law, then by the tradition of the Catholic Church.

(2) Here, it may be, someone will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and is in itself abundantly sufficient, what need is there to join to it the interpretation of the Church? The answer is that because of the very depth of Scripture all men do not place one identical interpretation upon it. The statements of the same writer are explained by different men in different ways, so much so that it seems almost possible to extract from it as many opinions as there are men. Novatian expounds in one way, Sabellius in another, Donatus in another, Arius, Eunomius and Macedonius in another, Photinus, Apollinaris and Priscillian in another, Jovinian, Pelagius and Caelestius in another, and latterly Nestorius in another. Therefore, because of the intricacies of error, which is so multiform, there is great need for the laying down of a rule for the exposition of Prophets and Apostles in accordance with the standard of the interpretation of the Church Catholic.

(3) Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. That is truly and properly 'Catholic,' as is shown by the very force and meaning of the word, which comprehends everything almost universally. We shall hold to this rule if we follow universality [i.e. oecumenicity], antiquity, and consent. We shall follow universality if we acknowledge that one Faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is clear that our ancestors and fathers proclaimed; consent, if in antiquity itself we keep following the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly nearly all, bishops and doctors alike.

(4) What then will the Catholic Christian do, if a small part of the Church has cut itself off from the communion of the universal Faith? The answer is sure. He will prefer the healthiness of the whole body to the morbid and corrupt limb. But what if some novel contagion try to infect the whole Church, and not merely a tiny part of it? Then he will take care to cleave to antiquity, which cannot now be led astray by any deceit of novelty. What if in antiquity itself two or three men, or it may be a city, or even a whole province be detected in error? Then he will take the greatest care to prefer the decrees of the ancient General Councils, if there are such, to the irresponsible ignorance of a few men. But what if some error arises regarding which nothing of this sort is to be found? Then he must do his best to compare the opinions of the Fathers and inquire their meaning, provided always that, though they belonged to diverse times and places, they yet continued in the faith and communion of the one Catholic Church; and let them be teachers approved and outstanding. And whatever he shall find to have been held, approved and taught, not by one or two only but by all equally and with one consent, openly, frequently, and persistently, let him take this as to be held by him without the slightest hesitation.