Download Origins of the Catholic Scripture, and its Interpretation

Origins of the Catholic Scripture, and its Interpretation
Christian Biblical Origins
At the time of Jesus there was a Greek version of the Jewish Bible, which had been translated
from the original Hebrew about the second century B.C.E. for the use of a Greek-speaking
Jewish community in northern Egypt, around Alexandria. This form of the Scriptures was
called the Septuagint, because of a traditional belief that seventy scholars had done the
translation. This is thought to be a version of the Bible that Jesus knew and used.
In addition to the Hebrew Scriptures canon that Gladys described, the Septuagint included
seven books that were originally written in Aramaic and Greek. In school, Julie learned an
acronym to help remember the names of these extra books – T. (Tobit), J. (Judith) Walsh
(Wisdom), Eminent (Ecclesiasticus – also known as Sirach) Barrister (Baruch) of
Mountainous Montana (Maccabees 1 and 2). The books of the Maccabees include the
story of the rededicating of the temple, which is now celebrated as Hanukkah. These seven
books were included in the Catholic canon of Scripture, and translated into Latin along with
the Hebrew books when St. Jerome created the version of the Bible known as the Vulgate –
which actually means “the language of the people,” since the Latin version was intended to
spread knowledge of the Bible at a time when knowledge of Greek had become rarer in
Western Christianity (around 400 C.E).
These same books were not included in the “Old Testament” portion of the vernacular
language bible translations that were a key, contested issue for the Protestant reformers (as
those of you who have been watching “Wolf Hall” on PBS will recognize), since they
stressed going back to the original Hebrew as a reaction against the Catholic insistence on
sole use of the Latin Vulgate. Many modern Protestant biblical translations now include
these extra books in a separate section called the Apocrypha (a Greek word for “hidden”).
The Christian scriptures (sometimes called “the New Testament”) began in the same way that
Gladys had described as the Hebrew Scripture starting – as oral transmitted stories about the
life and “sayings” of Jesus. The four Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus were not written
until after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., about 30 years after his death. The
Gospel attributed to Mark is considered to be the earliest. Most scholars believe that the
writers of Matthew and Luke used Mark’s material and also material from a document (or
other source) known as “Q,” from the German word for source, quelle (probably a collection
of sayings and parables that had its own history of oral circulation). The Gospels of Mark,
Matthew and Luke are called “synoptic” because they tell the story of the life of Jesus
through a series of anecdotes and episodes from a single “point of view,” which distinguishes
them from the Gospel attributed to John, not written until about 90 C.E. John’s Gospel is a
much more theological document, focused primarily on a shorter list of nine significant
events – or “signs” -- which the author uses to illustrate a more developed Christian theology
of who Jesus is.
The earliest Christian writings were letters (or “epistles”), directed to and circulated among
early Christian communities, particularly by Paul, but also other apostles such as Peter and
James. These letters, from about 50 C.E., are also included in the Christian Scriptures. The
final book is Revelation, an apocalyptic book designed to bring hope about the final triumph
of good to a Christian community suffering extreme persecution and distress.
The Catholic canon was established in the fourth century of the Common Era, coming after
the earliest doctrinal church councils that sorted out the formulaic teachings about Jesus’
divinity and humanity gathered into the Nicene Creed. There were many other letters and
gospels (purported accounts of the life of Jesus), such as the Gospel of Thomas, or the
Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which did not make it into the final canon because they did not
fit into the developed consensus about what was central to Christian teaching – for example,
the Gospel of Thomas includes tales of magical feats by the child Jesus, such as making
living birds from clay. Some of these were found as late as 1945 at Nag Hamadi in Egypt, or
were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Christian Biblical Interpretation post-Vatican II
The dispute with the Protestant reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth century reflects
the fact that through the medieval period, Catholic liturgy had grown more and more distant
from the common people the “Vulgate” was designed for, and by then, the Vatican hierarchy
held a very paternalistic view about the ability of the laity to read and understand the
Scriptures for themselves. By the time of the Reformation, the new biblical translations into
other languages (spread quickly by the new printing press), were treated with distrust and
suspicion by the Catholic hierarchy, especially when those reading these newer versions of
the Bible interpreted it differently than standard church teaching. Similar to the stress on
tradition that Gladys had noted, Catholic teaching emphasized tradition and scripture
(sometimes weighting tradition, including traditional interpretations, over scripture), and so
the reformers’ moto was “Solo Scriptura” – Scripture Alone! And in reaction, the Church
dug in its heels and essentially told people not to read the Bible. So, prior to Vatican II,
while everyone had a family Bible in which to write the record of births and baptisms and
marriages and deaths, the pages beyond that ceremonial front-piece family tree were almost
never cracked open.
Like the revolution in the Church’s relations with other faiths, Vatican II also brought about a
revolution in Catholic attitudes toward Scripture to redress this imbalance, through the
document “The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation” – known as Dei Verbum by its
first Latin words (“Hearing the Word of God faithfully and proclaiming it confidently, this
holy synod …). The groundwork for this renewed valuing and stress upon the Word of God
had been laid by Pope Pius XII in the 1940’s, in an encyclical called Divino Afflante Spiritu,
which embraced modern techniques of biblical scholarship such as textual criticism and form
criticism, and explicitly encouraged lay people to read and study Scripture. The first Vatican
II document, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, had already mandated that in the reform
of the liturgy, the “treasures of the Bible are to be opened up more lavishly, so that richer fare
may be provided for the faithful at the table of God’s word…” – this has led to a reform of
the lectionary so we now hear at least some portion of every biblical book in both testaments,
and a much larger proportion of the Gospels in a three-year cycle of Sunday readings (rather
than hearing the same readings year after year, with almost notion from the Hebrew
scriptures). In 1965, Dei Verbum stresses scripture as the self-revelation of God’s
unconditional love for all humanity for the sake of our salvation – what the liturgy scholar Fr.
Ed Foley has called “a deeply passionate, on-going love letter from the Living God who is
zealous for all His creation.” Dei Verbum embraced and reinforced Pope Pius XX’s
emphasis on the importance of the historical-critical methods of modern biblical scholarship,
and broad encouragement of scriptural prayer and study in the faith life of every Catholic.
So according to this post-Vatican II, modern Catholic teaching, Catholics believe that the
biblical writers were inspired by God, but the words of the Bible are not “dictated” by God.
The human authors were people of their own times, and the modes of expression and
understanding are products of their own creativity and culture. (So the Bible is both divine
and human, paralleling the belief in Jesus as both divine and human.) This means that
Catholics do not believe in fundamentalist or literalist biblical interpretation or inerrancy –
the spiritual sense or meaning is what matters, and it conveys truth about God’s love which
speaks down through all time to all humanity, not the truth of incidental words or outdated
scientific beliefs (such as the sun revolving around the earth) which may have influenced the
human authors’ chosen mode of expression. We also recognize that different books of
Scripture are of different genres, and should be read, interpreted, and judged accordingly.
We read Scripture first, with an attempt to understand what the author was saying in his own
time; secondly, how God continues to speak to us in our own time through His Living Word;
and thirdly, how will we respond to God’s word in a life of faith and action.
So, in both liturgy and movement toward prayer forms like lectio divina (meditating on
passages of scripture trying to hear what the God who loves us as a people and me
individually wants to speak specifically to my current experience through these sacred
words), Catholics are called and challenged to be continually renewed and formed by God’s
holy word. In other words – “When I pray in my own words, I talk to God. When I study or
pray with scripture, God talks to me.”