Homilies on the Books of Holy Scripture
Introduction to the Holy Scriptures
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
(Sunday, July 6, 2025)
Introduction to the Holy Scriptures
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
(Sunday, July 6, 2025)
In this year's Summer Sunday sermons, the Holy Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, will be briefly analyzed; essentially a small approach or a small acquaintance with them will be made, so as to give the opportunity and create zeal in some to read the Holy Scriptures even more.
In today's short sermon, a small introduction to the Holy Scriptures will be made.
When we talk about the Holy Scriptures, we mean the Old and New Testaments. This covers the agreement or covenant that God made in the Old era, that is, before Christ, with the Jewish people, and the agreement or covenant that Christ made with the New people, the one made up of Jews and Gentiles, the so-called Christian people.
In the Old Testament, the Son and Word of God communicates without a Body/Flesh, since He had not yet become human, with the Jewish or Israelite people, through the Prophets and Righteous, and in the New Testament, the Incarnate Word communicates with His new people, because in the meantime He became human. Christ took on human nature, taught, worked miracles, suffered, was crucified, resurrected, ascended into heaven, and sent the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, so that the Church that existed in the Old Testament would become His Body.
As is natural, Christ, through His incarnation, brought all who believe in Him back to God, and freed them from slavery to sin, the devil, and death. For this to happen, a people had to be prepared, the Jewish or Israelite people, and it turned out that they were better prepared. Thus, the entire history of the Old Testament is a preparation of the people for the incarnation of the Son and Word of God. This means that the appropriate woman was found from whom Christ assumed human nature, namely the Most Holy Theotokos.
This is important and is seen in many passages of the New Testament, in which the prophecies of the events that would later take place are mentioned and how they were fulfilled. According to Saint John Chrysostom, everything in the Old Testament was said “enigmatically,” and in the New Testament they were revealed. Furthermore, the work of the Old Testament was to create man, while the work of the New Testament is to make man an angel.
God spoke through the ages to holy men, who conveyed the will of God by spoken and written word. The written word was called Scripture or the Scriptures by Christ Himself: “Have you never read in the Scriptures?” (Matt. 12:42). Elsewhere they were called “Sacred Writings” (2 Tim. 4:15). In the Old Testament they were called “Books” (Daniel 9:2), “the Holy Books” (Macc. 12:9), “Sacred Books” (2 Macc. 8:23).
As mentioned, the Holy Scriptures is divided into two large parts. The first part is called the Old Testament and consists of 49 books, and describes the creation of the world and man, his fall, until the coming of Christ. All these books were originally written in the Hebrew language and in the 3rd century BC they were translated into Greek for the use of the Hellenistic Jews who lived in Alexandria.
These translated texts into the Greek language are of great importance, because these texts were used by Christ and the Apostles, but we Christians also use these texts and are called the texts of the Septuagint, after the seventy translators. We use these texts in the worship of our Church whenever we read passages from the Old Testament.
These 49 books of the Old Testament that we Orthodox use are divided into three major units.
First, there are the Historical books that describe the history of the Jewish people from whom Christ came, who became the Head of the Church, and for this reason this history is the prehistory of the Christian people. The historical books are: The Pentateuch, that is, five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings that describe the period of the Kings, two books of the Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Tobit, Judith, three books of the Maccabees.
Secondly, there are the Prophetic books which are the books of the four Major Prophets, namely Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve Minor Prophets, namely Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. The Prophets were holy men, who attained Theoptia, that is, they saw the pre-incarnate Word and conveyed the will of God to the people.
Third, there are the Poetic or Wisdom books, and these include the Psalms of David, Job, Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach.
This division of the books into Historical, Prophetic, and Poetic is not absolute, because the historical books also have prophecies and poetry, as is the case with the prophetic and poetic books, that is, all the books have history, prophecy, and poetry together. However, this conventional division refers to the division of spiritual life, from the point of view of ascent to God, it shows a path of man towards God.
The 27 books of the New Testament are divided into four categories.
First, there are the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which present to us some of what Christ said, did, and suffered. They are not a complete biography of Christ, but they confess Him as God.
Second, there is the Acts of the Apostles, which records the early life of the Church after Pentecost and how the Church expanded from Jerusalem to Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire.
Third, there are the Epistles of the Apostles (Paul, Peter, John and the Brothers of God James and Jude), to the first Churches that were founded and wanted help in the first steps of their new lives in Christ.
Fourth, there is the book of the Sacred Apocalypse or Revelation of John the Theologian, which revelation of God he saw on the island of Patmos and shows the course of the Church until the Second Coming of Christ and beyond that, namely the life of the Church in the Heavenly Kingdom.
What we have just given is a brief introduction to the books of the Old and New Testaments, what we call Holy Scripture or Bible, which we will look at in more detail in this year’s sermons. It is the prehistory of Christianity and the history of our Church, which begins from the creation of the world to life after the Second Coming of Christ. It is the sacred history before and after the coming of Christ, before the Second Coming of Christ and after it.
We will be given the opportunity in these Summer sermons to savor a little of the love of God who did everything for us, so that we too may show our love for Him.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
