2 Answers

  1. We don't know the real reasons for this. But we can speculate.

    Leo Tolstoy did not write “his gospel”, but his understanding of what he thought actually happened or what was originally written in the Gospels, but later edited. Leo Tolstoy was not original in this desire. Before him, this was done by theologians of the Tubingen school, so the writer had some role models.

    Why did Lev Nikolaevich take up writing “Combining and translating the Four Gospels“? Probably for the same reasons that mathematicians A. Fomenko and G. Nosovsky took up the task of redoing history. They just thought they could. I wonder what a great writer would say about a chemist who decided to write a popular novel. I don't think the review would be very favorable.

    Personally, I think that with this work Tolstoy wanted to create some kind of visual justification for his religious views. This is quite consistent with the practice of the emergence of non-traditional religious societies, which at various stages of their development acquire their own translations of the Bible or, even, their own books that are more authoritative than the Holy Scriptures. For example, Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon, and The Watchtower did its New World Translation.

    But if the same Smith gave some initially different understanding (such as” the ancient Jews reached America and became Indians”), then Leo Tolstoy, in my opinion, gave only a negative-critical understanding of the gospel text, such as”here in the Gospels it is written like this, but in fact none of this happened.” In other words, he was trading plus for minus: no angels, no miracles, no coins in the mouth of a fish… etc. Well, it's like thinking that the Red Army in 1941-45 was worse than the German Army in all respects, always losing battles… But for some unknown reason, I took Berlin. So Tolstoy is trying, so to speak, to prove that Christianity did not take any of its “Berlin” – everything we know about Christ is a lie… that “the reason that led to victory” was invented by vile churchmen.

  2. for two reasons: first, he was a writer and felt a great need to express his thoughts in writing, convey his ideas to people, make the world a better place with his works, engage in education, etc. Writing was Tolstoy's main trade.
    Secondly, Tolstoy somehow touched faith, Christianity, experienced a certain religious experience, tried to follow Orthodoxy, but to no avail, encountered many objective and possibly subjective inconsistencies in Orthodoxy, rejected Orthodoxy, but did not reject faith itself and began to believe and live as he understood and felt. You don't need to be a seer to understand that without a special appearance of Christ, as it was for example with Moses, Paul, without a special election, Tolstoy brought a lot to the understanding of the faith of otsebyatiny, and also threw out a lot of things from the faith as unnecessary in his opinion. And then he put it all together and gave it to Horus, firmly believing that he would benefit society.
    � �In principle, Tolstoy can be understood – he saw what life is like for the Russian people in Russia, he saw all the distortions of the external structure of society, he knew the distortions of the inner life of a person, his weaknesses, his delusions. He also saw, and not only he, that the Orthodox Church is not engaged in its vocation and tried to somehow fill the void and fight for himself. By the way, the writer Leskov also noted that Russia was baptized, but was not enlightened. The Orthodox Church was concerned only with baptisms, funerals, sprinkles, obscure liturgies, and other minor matters, instead of enlightening the people and teaching them as Christ commanded: go and teach all nations. Writers, poets, and religious philosophers took the place of the church,
    and Tolstoy was one of them. A holy place is never empty.

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