Le Nouveau Testament (l'Évangile)

Overview

The New Testament, the second part of the Christian Bible, is the collection of the four Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles and the Apocalypse, written in Greek in the first and early second centuries. Marie, a Russian Orthodox by birth, treats it in the diary as a book of counsel and an oracle rather than of doctrine.

The older glossary stub for the Bible is `people/mentioned/BIBLE.md` (the retired stub `TESTAMENT` was already redirected to it). This entry covers the book Marie actually opens and quotes: the New Testament and the Gospels.

Marie and the Gospel

Four recurring uses:

1. Bibliomancy (opening the book at random). On 5 January 1879, the eve of Russian Christmas, she writes "je vais ouvrir au hasard l'Evangile pour voir ce qui m'arrivera: .. la luce della vita (3 Giovani VIII)" (083.0556): the line she lands on is in Italian, John 8:12, "avrà la luce della vita" ("shall have the light of life"), and she resolves to leave it there and put a comb under her pillow (a Russian Christmas-time divination custom). On 1 March 1879 (084.0363) she says she did the same before leaving Paris for Nice, hoping to know what would happen there: she read about people led before a consistory and judges, "tout ce qui nous arrive enfin", and repeated the trial "à plusieurs reprises" with similar results; it gave her "de la confiance, je crois en quelque chose". 2. A gift. On 18 June 1880 (088.0833) she wants to give someone the Gospel of Matthew with the dedication «Le plus beau livre qui soit au monde et qui répond à toutes les dispositions de l'âme.» 3. Return to Christ. On 29 October 1880 (090.0179) a passage "se trouvant extraordinairement d'accord avec la pensée qui me guidait" brings back fervour, "Jésus-Christ et mes prières exaltées des anciens jours". On 3 March 1881 (091.0230) she opens the "Nouveau Testament abandonné depuis quelque temps" twice and is struck that the line chosen at random answers her thought; she is back to praying to Christ and the Virgin, but distinguishes "la Religion du Christ d'après ses paroles" from Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which she says she does not follow, keeping only "les préceptes du Christ".

Notes and doubts

• The language of the copy she used is only known for January 1879, when the quotation is Italian. No French translation is named, so the Segond link above is a convenience (a Protestant French Bible of the period; the 1910 revision is later than Marie's time). The Russian Synodal Bible is the standard Russian translation of her time.
• Opening the Gospel at random on Christmas Eve is described in the footnote to 083.0556 as an old Russian Christmas Eve tradition.
• Other occurrences of the Bible or of individual Gospels in the diary are covered by `BIBLE` and are not part of this batch.