On July 28, 2017, the Vyborg City Court (Leningrad Region) resumes hearings on the claim of the Leningrad-Finland Transport Prosecutor to recognize the canonical Bible seized from Jehovah's Witnesses at customs as "extremist material." The court received an "examination", the authors of which criticize this publication from the standpoint of Orthodox apologetics and attribute extremist content to it!
This "examination" was carried out by the teacher Natalia Kryukova, the author of about 50 similar conclusions against Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as her constant co-authors - the Orthodox religious scholar V. Kotelnikov and the translator from English A. Tarasov. Earlier, an application was filed with the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation to initiate a criminal case against Kryukova for giving false expert opinions (Article 307 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). For example, on the basis of the conclusions of this "expert", two believers in the Moscow region were subjected to unfair criminal prosecution for many years.
N. Kryukova's actions in relation to her assessment of the Bible seized from Jehovah's Witnesses are indicative. In her conclusion of June 6, 2017, Kryukova, proving that this publication is not the Bible, reports: "In the book "Holy Scripture - New World Translation" there are no generally accepted names "Old Testament" and "New Testament", these sections are called respectively "Judeo-Aramaic Scriptures" and "Christian Greek Scriptures". And as an argument in favor of the "extremist" nature of the material submitted for examination, the authors of the conclusion at least 12 times (!) cite the following quote: "God rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and the nearby city of Gomorrah. All their wicked inhabitants perished."
The attempt to recognize the Bible itself as extremist seems implausible against the background of the fact that in the fall of 2015, the Russian president put forward and signed a law protecting the Holy Scriptures, including the Bible, from anti-extremist legislation. Nevertheless, the prosecutor's lawsuit is a fait accompli: on Friday, July 28, 2017, the court may for the first time in history recognize the canonical Bible as "extremist material"!
The decision in this case may affect many people, since the Bible is a respected and widespread book in Russia. There are at least 50 different translations of the whole Bible or sections of the Bible in Russian language. The prosecutor's lawsuit has already drawn unanimous condemnation from human rights activists and religious scholars.