Theme Presentation 1: Catholics and the Bible In the amusing words - PDF document

Theme – Presentation 1: Catholics and the Bible  In the amusing words of popular comedian Jim Gaffigan: “I myself don’t read the Bible, because I don’t have to, because I’m Catholic.” o For better or for worse, I think that joke really is an accurate reflection on the general attitude towards the Bible that most Catholics have – or at least are perceived to have, by others as well as by themselves o Nonetheless (and whether Catholics actually know this or not), Catholics really do have a relationship with the Bible; indeed, a rather profound relationship, manifested in the fact that the Catholic Mass is overflowing with direct and implied references to Sacred Scripture (hand-out)  For example: the lectionary  (brief history/explanation of the 3-year lectionary cycle)  I think I read or learned somewhere that something like 80% of the Bible is proclaimed at Sunday Mass in accord with this 3- year lectionary cycle (…of course, I also read or learned somewhere that 75% of statistics are made up on the spot, so…)  For our purposes tonight, I shall try my best to confine myself to just three considerations: what is the Bible; considerations with regard to biblical interpretation; and sola scriptura (and with sola scriptura , the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium)  What is the Bible? o Authorship  Divinely inspired, certainly; humanly authored  ergo, like Jesus Christ Himself, the Bible is both divine and human  There are many paintings and icons of the four Gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) with pen in hand writing the Gospel narratives, but with their eyes fixed on the angel beside them, like the angel is telling them the Gospel and they are writing down what they hear  Different authors were inspired to compose what would later become the books of the canon of Sacred Scripture at different times in history; it was certainly not a matter of some guy sitting in a castle for decades writing! o Literary form  Realizing that the Bible is comprised of a wide array of literary forms, and then recognizing those literary forms, is absolutely crucial for our efforts to understand and interpret what the Bible is saying  The literary forms found in the Bible include: historical/ahistorical narratives; songs/poems/proverbs; allegory/myth; letters; apocalypse o Historical development  According to my own professors of Sacred Scripture, the earliest fragment that still exists of any part of the Bible comes from the Book of Exodus and dates back to the 4 th Century BC (though of course historians and biblical scholars still debate; the fragment in question: Ex 15:1 )  According to these same professors, the earliest written text in the New Testament is Saint Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, and the l ast New Testament text to be written was the Book of Revelation  How the canon came about: a process spanning three centuries  Marcion (~144 AD)

 Saint Athanasius (373 AD +)  What was going on in the mean time? Was Christianity on leave while waiting for the Bible to come about? No! Tradition! (More on that later….)  What made the cut and what did not, and why?  The canon of Sacred Scripture was only officially declared by the Council of Trent in the 16 th Century in response to Martin Luther o Different Bibles: Catholic vs. non-Catholic  Catholic and non-Catholic Bibles differ only in the Old Testament: the non- Catholic Bible excludes seven books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees) and parts of two other books (Esther and Daniel)  Why the difference?  The LXX o So-called because of a legend that seventy Scripture scholars were all working independently to translate the Scripture, and all of them were inspired to translate everything precisely the same as everyone else o Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria who translated the Hebrew Scripture into Greek for the Greek-speaking Jews not living in Palestine and therefore not speaking Aramaic o Greek-speaking Jewish scholars wrote original works at the same time, written in Greek, and they were never translated into Hebrew for the Jews in Palestine  these Greek works are Deuterocanonical books (Protestants: the Apocrypha)  Martin Luther o In striving to arrive at the purest version of Sacred Scripture as possible, he excluded everything in the Old Testament that was not originally written in Hebrew o So no, contrary to popular belief, Martin Luther did not tear pages out of a heretical Catholic Bible just to make a point!  Commentary on translation o Two general approaches to biblical translation  Formal equivalence (word for word, not thought for thought  Functional equivalence (thought for thought, not word for word) o Issues/concerns  Idioms  Is it more important to capture the word-for-word or to capture the general idea of the idiom?  Example: the Latin “ Amabo te ” literally means, word -for- word, “I will love you,” but it is idiomatic (thought -for- thought) for “please”  Lost in translation?  American movie titles translated into Chinese and back into English  Examples o Jack Nicholson comedy film As Good As It Gets  in Chinese, the title is Mr. Cat Poop

o Bruce Willis action film Die Hard  in German, the title is Die Slowly (the sequel Die Hard With a Vengeance is called Die Slowly, Now More Than Ever )  And what if the language into which the Bible is translated is one that itself keeps changing, daily even? Like, oh, American-style English!  Commentary on sola scriptura o Cutting right to the chase: s ola scriptura is not taught in the Bible  Catholics agree with Protestants that Scripture is a “standard of truth,” even the preeminent one  But no biblical passage teaches that Scripture is the only formal authority or rule of faith in isolation from the Church and Tradition  Sola scriptura cannot even be deduced from implicit passages o The “Word of God” refers to oral teaching also  “Word” in Sacred Scripture often refers to a proclaimed, oral teaching of the prophets or the Apostles  What the prophets spoke was the word of God regardless of whether or not their utterances were recorded later as written Scripture  For example, we read in Jeremiah: “For twenty - three years… the word of the Lord has come to me and I hav e spoken to you again and again…. ‘ But you did not listen to me, ’ declares the Lord …. Therefore the Lord Almighty says this: ‘ Because you have not listened to my words ….’” ( Jer 25:3, 7-8 [NIV])  This was the word of God even though some of it was not recorded in writing  It had equal authority as writing or proclamation-never-reduced-to- writing  This was true also of apostolic preaching  When the phrases “word of God” or “word of the Lord” appear in Acts and the epistles, they almost always refer to oral preaching, not to Scripture  For example: “ When you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God.” ( 1 Thess 2:13 )  If we compare this passage with another, written to the same church, Paul appears to regard oral teaching and the word of God as synonymous: “Keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.” ( 2 Thess 3:6 ) o Jesus and Paul accepted non-biblical oral and written traditions  Protestants defending sola scriptura will claim that Jesus and Paul accepted the authority of the Old Testament  This is true, but they also appealed to other authority outside of written revelation  For example:  The reference to “ He shall be called a Nazarene ” cannot be found in the Old Testament, yet it was “ spoken by the prophets ” ( Matt 2:23 );