Holy Scripture in Orthodox Theology

Orthodox Christianity receives Holy Scripture as the inspired Word of God, but insists that Scripture can only be rightly understood within the Church and her Tradition. The Orthodox biblical canon includes the deuterocanonical books, and the Septuagint (LXX) serves as the primary Old Testament text. Patristic exegesis, not private interpretation, is the normative hermeneutical key.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Nature of Scripture

Scripture as the Word of God

Orthodox theology affirms the full inspiration of Scripture without adopting the mechanistic theories of verbal dictation found in some Protestant scholasticism. The Scriptures are theopneustos – “God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16) – written by human authors moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:21). Fr. Georges Florovsky emphasized that inspiration does not cancel the human dimension of the scriptural text: the sacred writers were not passive instruments but active participants whose personalities, historical contexts, and literary gifts were taken up into the divine purpose (Florovsky, “Revelation and Interpretation,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, ch. 2).

The Church preceded the written Scriptures. The New Testament emerged from within the apostolic community, and it was the Church that recognized and canonized the books as Scripture. Florovsky insisted that the Bible is the Church’s own book: it was composed in and for the believing community, and it belongs to that community and cannot be properly understood outside of it (Florovsky, “Revelation and Interpretation,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, ch. 2).

Scripture and Tradition: An Organic Unity

The Orthodox position rejects both the Protestant principle of sola scriptura and the Roman Catholic tendency (especially post-Tridentine) to treat Scripture and Tradition as “two sources” of revelation. Rather, Scripture is the written expression of Tradition, and Tradition is the living context in which Scripture is received, interpreted, and applied.

Florovsky articulated this with particular force: “Tradition was not, according to St. Vincent, an independent instance, nor was it a complementary source of faith”; rather, Tradition was “Scripture rightly understood” (Florovsky, “The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, ch. 5). Scripture is thus the highest expression of Tradition, but it is not the totality of Tradition.

Fr. John Breck further developed this understanding, arguing that Scripture exists “in Tradition” – that is, the scriptural text is always already embedded in the liturgical, doctrinal, and spiritual life of the Church. The meaning of a biblical passage is not exhausted by historical-critical analysis but is revealed in the Church’s ongoing encounter with the risen Christ (Breck, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church, ch. 1).

The Orthodox Biblical Canon

Old Testament

The Orthodox Church receives the Old Testament according to the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation produced in Alexandria beginning in the 3rd century BC. This is the Bible of the early Church: the vast majority of Old Testament quotations in the New Testament follow the LXX text rather than the Hebrew Masoretic text. The Fathers of the Church used the LXX as their primary Old Testament, and it remains the liturgical text of the Greek-speaking churches.

The Orthodox Old Testament canon is broader than the Protestant canon and includes the following deuterocanonical (or “anaginoskomena” – books “to be read”) books:

Book	Notes
Wisdom of Solomon	Attributed to Solomon; widely used in liturgical texts and patristic theology.
Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)	By Jesus ben Sirach; a major wisdom text.
Tobit	A narrative of piety, almsgiving, and angelic intervention.
Judith	A narrative of Israelite deliverance through a courageous woman.
1 Maccabees	Historical account of the Maccabean revolt (167–134 BC).
2 Maccabees	Independent account with theological commentary; includes prayer for the dead (12:43–45).
3 Maccabees	Narrative of persecution of Egyptian Jews under Ptolemy IV. Included among the anaginoskomena in the Greek and Slavonic Bibles, though absent from the Roman Catholic deuterocanon (Pentiuc, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition).
Baruch	Attributed to Baruch, scribe of Jeremiah; includes the Letter of Jeremiah (sometimes counted as a separate book).
Additions to Daniel	The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Holy Children (inserted after Dan 3:23), Susanna (Dan 13), and Bel and the Dragon (Dan 14).
Additions to Esther	Additional passages found in the LXX but not in the Hebrew text.
1 Esdras (3 Esdras)	A parallel account to parts of 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Stands as Esdras A′ in the Greek Bible; the Slavonic Bible counts it as 2 Esdras, and Slavonic/Russian Bibles also carry an appendix book (3 Esdras = Latin 4 Ezra) absent from the Greek (Pentiuc, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition).
Prayer of Manasseh	A penitential prayer attributed to King Manasseh; used liturgically.
Psalm 151	An additional psalm attributed to David after his victory over Goliath.

Note on terminology: Orthodox theology generally avoids the term “apocrypha” for these books, preferring “deuterocanonical” or the Greek term anaginoskomena. The precise canonical status of some of these books varies slightly among Orthodox churches. The 39th Festal Letter of St. Athanasius (367 AD) distinguished between canonical books, books “to be read” for edification, and apocryphal books, though his categories do not perfectly match later Western distinctions (Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 [PG 26:1436]; trans. NPNF II/4).

The Synod of Jerusalem (1672), also known as the Synod of Bethlehem, under Patriarch Dositheus, explicitly affirmed the canonicity of Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, the Maccabean books, and the additions to Daniel against Calvinist influence (Confession of Dositheus, Question 3; trans. Robertson, The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem).

New Testament

The Orthodox New Testament canon is identical to that of other Christian traditions: the four Gospels, Acts, the Pauline and Catholic Epistles, and the Apocalypse (Revelation). However, the Apocalypse holds a distinctive position in Orthodox tradition: it is the only New Testament book with no place in the Byzantine lectionary and is never read at the services, though it is fully canonical (Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, “Book of Revelation”). A partial exception is the Athonite custom of reading the Apocalypse outside the lectionary cycle during the Holy Saturday vigil.

The Primacy of the Septuagint

The LXX holds a privileged place in Orthodox theology for several reasons:

Apostolic usage: The New Testament authors predominantly cited the LXX. Key christological texts (e.g., Isa 7:14 with parthenos [“virgin”] rather than the Hebrew almah [“young woman”]) follow the LXX reading.
Patristic authority: The Fathers universally used the LXX. St. Augustine argued for its inspired status (Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XVIII.43), and while not all Fathers went so far, the LXX was the de facto Old Testament of the Church.
Liturgical use: The LXX (or translations derived from it, such as the Church Slavonic Old Testament) remains the text used in Orthodox worship.
Theological coherence: The LXX in some places preserves theological readings that are more consonant with the Church’s christological faith. Orthodox theology does not simply defer to the Masoretic text as more “original,” recognizing that the Hebrew text tradition also underwent development and that the LXX may in some cases reflect earlier Hebrew readings (Breck, Scripture in Tradition, Part I).

Orthodox Hermeneutics

Against Private Interpretation

The Orthodox rejection of private interpretation (idiognomon) is rooted in 2 Peter 1:20: “No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.” Scripture is the Church’s book and must be read within the Church. This does not mean individual reading is discouraged – quite the contrary – but that the ultimate arbiter of scriptural meaning is the phronema (mind) of the Church, expressed through the Fathers, the Councils, and the liturgical tradition.

Fr. Florovsky was emphatic on this point: the Reformation principle of sola scriptura actually represented an impoverishment, removing Scripture from its native ecclesial habitat. The Church, in his account, is not an external authority imposing its will on the text, but the living community in which the text was born and in which alone it can be rightly heard: “Tradition was in the Early Church, first of all, an hermeneutical principle and method” (Florovsky, “The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, ch. 5).

Patristic Exegesis as Normative

The Fathers are not merely historical commentators but authoritative witnesses to the meaning of Scripture. Their consensus (consensus patrum) establishes the boundaries of legitimate interpretation. This does not require that every Father agrees on every detail – they frequently disagree on specific exegetical points – but that the overall trajectory and theological framework of patristic exegesis is normative.

Key patristic exegetical traditions include:

Alexandrian school: Represented by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and later Cyril of Alexandria. Emphasized allegorical and spiritual interpretation. Origen’s massive exegetical output (commentaries, homilies, the Hexapla) was enormously influential, though some of his speculative positions were later condemned (Origen, De Principiis, IV.1–3, on the theory of multiple senses).
Antiochene school: Represented by Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and John Chrysostom. Emphasized the historical and literal sense, and used theoria (contemplation or spiritual insight within the historical sense) rather than pure allegory. Chrysostom’s homilies remain the most widely read patristic commentaries in the Orthodox Church.
Synthesis: The mature Orthodox hermeneutical tradition, especially as seen in the Cappadocians and later in Maximus the Confessor, integrates both approaches. The literal sense is respected, but the text always points beyond itself to Christ and to spiritual realities.

The Multiple Senses of Scripture

Orthodox hermeneutics recognizes that Scripture operates on multiple levels. While the Western medieval tradition formalized this into the “four senses” (quadriga), a similar understanding exists in Eastern patristic thought:

Literal (historical) sense (historia): What the text says on the surface level – the events, persons, and circumstances described. The Antiochene Fathers insisted on the integrity of this level.
Typological sense (typos): Old Testament events, persons, and institutions prefigure (typoi) their New Testament fulfillments. This is the most characteristically patristic mode of interpretation. Examples: the crossing of the Red Sea prefigures baptism (1 Cor 10:1–4); the sacrifice of Isaac prefigures the sacrifice of Christ; the three days of Jonah prefigure the Resurrection (Matt 12:40).
Moral (tropological) sense (tropologia): The text applied to the moral and ascetical life of the believer. Chrysostom’s homilies are rich in this kind of application.
Anagogical sense (anagoge): The text points toward eschatological realities – the final consummation, the heavenly kingdom, the age to come. For example, the earthly Jerusalem is read anagogically as the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal 4:26; Rev 21).

Fr. John Breck has argued that these senses should not be understood as competing layers but as dimensions of a single, unified meaning disclosed by the Holy Spirit within the Church. The patristic interpreter moves freely among these senses, guided not by a rigid method but by the phronema of the Church (Breck, Scripture in Tradition, Part I).

The Christological Key

The ultimate hermeneutical principle in Orthodox exegesis is christological: all of Scripture points to Christ. “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me” (John 5:39). The Old Testament is read as preparation for and prophecy of the Incarnation, and the New Testament is read as the revelation of the incarnate Logos. This christological reading is not imposed externally but is understood as the deepest intention of the text itself (Breck, Scripture in Tradition, Part I).

St. Irenaeus established the foundational principle: Scripture must be read according to the “hypothesis” or “plot” of the faith – that is, according to the Rule of Faith (regula fidei) transmitted by the apostles. Any reading that violates this rule, however clever, is a misreading (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I.8.1–10.1).

Scripture in Russian Orthodox Theology

The Russian Orthodox tradition has a rich history of engagement with Scripture:

The Slavonic Bible: The translation of Scripture into Church Slavonic by Ss. Cyril and Methodius (9th century) and the subsequent Slavonic manuscript tradition is based on the LXX and represents one of the oldest complete translation traditions.
The Synodal Translation (1876): The standard Russian-language Bible, produced under the Holy Synod with final editorship by Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) of Moscow. The Old Testament was translated from the Hebrew Masoretic text, with the larger Septuagint additions inserted in brackets; scholars therefore describe its Old Testament as a combination of the two text traditions rather than a pure rendering of either (Desnitsky, “The Septuagint as a Base Text for Bible Translations in Russia”). It includes the deuterocanonical books.
The emigration theologians: Florovsky, Breck, and others brought Orthodox biblical scholarship into dialogue with Western critical methods while insisting on the primacy of the ecclesial context. This approach avoids both fundamentalist literalism and reductive historicism.
Liturgical engagement: In Russian Orthodox practice, the faithful encounter Scripture primarily through the liturgy – the daily cycle of readings, the Epistle and Gospel at the Divine Liturgy, the Psalter in the services of the Hours, and the Old Testament readings (paroemia) at Vespers. This liturgical context shapes how Scripture is received and understood.

References

Athanasius of Alexandria. Festal Letter 39 (367 AD) [PG 26:1436]; trans. NPNF II/4.
Breck, John. Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001. (Part I, “Aims and Methods of Orthodox Biblical Interpretation,” chs. 1–4.)
Desnitsky, Andrei. “The Septuagint as a Base Text for Bible Translations in Russia.” The Bible Translator 56, no. 4 (2005).
Florovsky, Georges. Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View. Collected Works, vol. 1. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972. (Ch. 2, “Revelation and Interpretation”; ch. 5, “The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church.”)
Hopko, Thomas. The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1: Doctrine and Scripture. New York: Orthodox Church in America, 1981 (rev. ed. 2016).
Irenaeus of Lyon. Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies).
Origen. De Principiis (On First Principles), Book IV.
Pentiuc, Eugen J. The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Robertson, J. N. W. B., trans. The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem. London: Thomas Baker, 1899.
Stylianopoulos, Theodore G. The New Testament: An Orthodox Perspective. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1997.
Tarazi, Paul Nadim. The Old Testament: An Introduction. 3 vols. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991–2003.