Basic Scripture

By William G. Most, 

(c) Copyright, 1997 by William G. Most

Introduction

The new Universal Catechism is heavily Scriptural, and loaded with 
teachings of the Fathers of the Church. We are now to begin to 
make a preliminary exploration of that Scriptural riches. Hence it 
is good for us to open with a sketch of what the Catechism says 
about Scripture and Tradition. 

1. A desire for God is written into the heart of man: God has made 
our hearts too large, too demanding, to be filled with anything 
less than Him. 

We begin to know Him and things about Him by reason. The Church 
teaches, without endorsing any particular set of proofs, that we 
can by reason alone be certain of His existence. And in seeing the 
manifold perfections of creatures, we can know that these 
perfections exist in the highest degree, and without alloy, in 
Him. 

2. Even though we can know Him somewhat by reason, history shows 
that even the best minds make so many errors in thinking about 
Him. Hence He graciously has provided us with revelation about 
Himself. He revealed Himself to our first parents, and right after 
their sin, He lifted up their hope by the promise of a Redeemer in 
Genesis 3:15. After the deluge, He made a permanent covenant with 
all humans. But soon He began to prepare for a fuller revelation, 
in choosing Abraham and his descendants. But the full revelation 
of Himself came in His own Son. This does not mean we do not have 
specific truths about that Son, and about the Father. We do of 
course. 

Christ confided His truths to the Apostles, and commissioned them 
to teach others. Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition come from 
the one source, God Himself. The Church by teaching and by its 
worship, perpetuates these truths about Him to every generation. 

He gave to us, His people, a wonderful sense to discern what is 
truly revealed, so that if the whole Church, people as well as 
authorities, has ever accepted a thing as revealed, that belief 
cannot be in error. However, the task of giving an authoritative 
and clear interpretation of the meaning of both Scripture and 
Tradition He entrusted solely to the living teaching office of the 
Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Christ. 

In fact, it is only through this Church that we can know with 
certainty which books are inspired and contain His revelation. 
There are 46 sacred books of the Old Testament, and 27 of the New. 
The central part of these books is the Gospels, for they speak to 
us of His Son. These sacred books contain what He willed us to 
have for our salvation. This does not mean that other points may 
be in error in them. No, everything that is asserted by the Sacred 
Writers is asserted by the Holy Spirit. We need the action of that 
Spirit to fully understand the deposit of faith. 

Since the chief Author of all of Scripture is the Holy Spirit, we 
cannot assume that one part of Scripture will clash with another. 
The unity of the divine design means that the Old Testament 
prepared for the New, which fulfills the Old. So, the two 
testaments shed light one another. 

Chapter 1: A Revolution by Vatican II?

Has the Church in our times reversed many teachings about 
Scripture? This claim is made about the Scriptural Encyclical 
Divino afflante Spiritu of Pius XII, and still more about Vatican 
II, which is supposed to have revolutionized theology. The answer 
is: Definitely no. But we should see the specifics. 

We are going to see the chief positive aspects of Scripture study. 
But first we must clear away some very serious objections. 

We begin with Vatican II. The Constitution Dei verbum on Scripture 
had a stormy history at the Council, and was not finally approved 
until November 18, 1964. 

The peak of the problem came on October 2, 1964, when Cardinal 
Koenig of Vienna rose and said that there are errors in Scripture 
in the matter of history. (Cf. A. Grillmeier, in H. Vorgrimler, 
ed. Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Herder & Herder, 
1969, III, pp. 205-06). Sadly, many Bishops chimed in with him, 
and there was at least no public correction by Paul VI. Yet, the 
Holy Spirit was present. Really, considering the atmosphere at 
Vatican II, our faith in Divine Providence should be stronger, for 
the final documents left no trace of such unfortunate things (it 
is only the final texts that are divinely protected: floor 
speeches and debates are not protected. And the difference was 
evident at Vatican II, as also at the very first General Council, 
Nicea, in 325 AD, when about 15 Bishops denied the divinity of 
Christ). 

We will answer every one of the specific cases Cardinal Koenig 
alleged presently, and also the broader charges made today in New 
Jerome Biblical Commentary which dares to assert, in reference to 
Cardinal Koenig's intervention, "pre-voting debates show an 
awareness of errors in the Bible" (p. 1169, 72:14 - which refers 
to other statements in 65:50 and 70-71 in the same vein). 

But first, let us get the setting from the preface to DV where the 
Council said: "Following in the footsteps of the Councils of Trent 
and Vatican I, [this Council] intends to present the true doctrine 
about divine revelation and its transmission." This of course does 
not fit at all with an idea of reversal of previous teaching or an 
acceptance of error in Scripture. 

We begin with the specifics from Cardinal Koenig, and then we will 
meet the broader charges just mentioned. There were three cases 
given by the Cardinal:

1) In Mark 2:26 we read that David had entered the house of God 
"under the High Priest Abiathar" and eaten the bread of the 
Presence. But really, 1 Samuel 21:1 ff. shows that it was not 
under Abiathar, but under his father Abimelech (Cf. Grillmeier, p. 
205). 

Reply: The Greek text of Mk 2:26 has epi Abiathar archiereos. Now 
that Greek preposition epi when used with the genitive case of the 
person can readily have the generic time meaning, that is, "in the 
days of... ." (Cf. H. W. Smyth, Greek Grammar for Colleges, 
American Book Co., NY, 1920, #1689, which reports such usages in 
various authors, e.g., Thucydides 7. 86). So the phrase really 
means "in the time of Abiathar". The reason for using Abiathar's 
name for the time period rather than that of Abimelech was that 
Abiathar was much more prominent and better known to readers of 
the Old Testament than his father, because of his close 
association with David under whom he became chief priest along 
with Zadok. 

2)Matthew 27:9 says that in the fate of Judas, a prophecy of 
Jeremiah was fulfilled. Really, said Cardinal Koenig, it was 
Zechariah 11:12 ff. that was quoted (cf. Grillmeier, p. 205). 

Reply: Even the hardly conservative original edition of the New 
American Bible has a note on this passage which says that 
Matthew's free quotation of Jeremiah 32:6-15 and Zechariah 11:13 
shows that the Evangelist sees the death of Judas "as a divine 
judgment." Actually it was not unusual at all for the Rabbis to 
combine texts, and then give the name of the best known of the 
authors: cf. M. De Tuya, Biblia Comentada, V. Evangelios, 3d ed. 
Madrid, 1977, p. 441. 

3)The Cardinal also charged that in Daniel 1:1 we read that King 
Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in the third year of King 
Jehoiakim, which the Cardinal says was 607 B. C., whereas the 
authentic chronicle of the King that has been discovered shows 
that the siege must have taken place three years earlier (Cf. 
Grillmeier pp. 205-06). 

Reply: If we were reading a modern historical novel about the 
Civil War, we would expect, and find, besides real history, also 
some fictional fill-ins. Finding these does not cause us to charge 
the author with ignorance or deception. No, that is the right way 
to write such a novel and we, as natives of this culture, know how 
to take it. There are many other patterns of writing in English, 
each with as it were, its own rules. But when we move into a very 
different culture stream, namely, ancient Semitic, it is foolish 
to think they used the same patterns. By accident they may at 
times, or may overlap. But we need to check what patterns were 
actually in use in that ancient culture at that time. Then and 
then only do we know how to take the various styles of writing. We 
often call these patterns literary genres. Now in Daniel, all 
agree there are two patterns or genres. One is apocalyptic - we 
will see about it later on. The other seems to be the edifying 
narrative. It contains much fact, but also free use of fill-ins, 
somewhat like what we know in the modern historical novel. The 
passages that one might mistakenly think were intended by the 
writer as our kind of history, are not such: they are the edifying 
narrative genre. We know for certain that such a genre was in use 
in the ancient Near East, e.g., in the story of Ahiqar. 

Therefore, within such a framework, the author may or may not 
bother to observe historical precision. What is important is this 
question: What does he mean to assert? For example in our 
historical novel he does not assert that the fictional fill-ins 
really happened. Nor does a writer using the edifying narrative 
genre assert that all details are historical. In this vein, Pius 
XII, in his great Divino afflante Spiritu (Enchiridion Biblicum # 
559) told us the ancient Semites often used more exaggeration than 
we do, and also, used mere approximation. No man then would ask 
his wife to meet him downtown at 4:15 PM. Such accurate time 
keeping then was out of the question. 

But there is a different way, that is better. For there were two 
ways at that time of dating the first year of a king. In the <non-
accession year system> the year in which a king actually began to 
reign was counted as his first year, even if he began to reign 
later in that year. In that system, the first year of Jehoiakim 
would be 608. This system was in use in Judah at the time (the 
northern kingdom had used the accession year system, but that 
kingdom came to an end with the fall of Samaria in 722.). 

<In the accession year system, the year in which the king actually 
began to reign was called his first year. In Babylon the accession 
year method was in use at this time. Thus in Babylonian reckoning 
the first year of Jehoiakim would be 607 and his third year would 
have been 605, the year of the siege of Jerusalem. So the problem 
vanishes if we suppose that Daniel, who was writing from Babylon, 
used the Babylonian system.>

So any competent Scripture scholar should have known that the 
objections raised by Cardinal Koenig are all in vain. 

We already mentioned that the New Jerome Biblical Commentary 
charges that Vatican II allows us to think there are all sorts of 
errors in Scripture: in science, in history, even in religion. 
Only the things needed for salvation are protected. They appeal to 
DV # 11 which says: "Since, then, everything that the inspired 
authors or hagiographers assert should be held as asserted by the 
Holy Spirit, hence the books of Scripture are to be considered as 
teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error, that truth which 
God, for the sake of our salvation, wanted to be confided to the 
Sacred Letters."

The writers of NJBC focus on the clause at the end, which we have 
underlined. They want to say that it means that ONLY things needed 
for salvation are protected. There may be error in all else. 

Reply: NJBC claims the clause is restrictive, which is not 
impossible, but it is more normally taken as just descriptive. The 
charge is astounding, showing complete neglect of all normal rules 
of interpretation: 

1) The Council itself adds notes on DV # 11 which refer us to 
older documents of the Magisterium, which flatly rule out the 
proposal of NJBC. First, it refers to Vatican I, DS 3006: "The 
Church holds those [books] as sacred and canonical not merely 
because they were approved by the Church, after being written by 
human efforts, nor merely because they contain revelation without 
error, but because since they were written by the inspiration of 
the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and as such, were 
handed down to the Church." Vatican II works most of this text 
into DV #11. And Pius XII, in Divino Afflante Spiritu, said the 
text of Vatican I, was a "solemn definition."

Now it is completely obvious that if God is the principal author, 
there can be no error of any type whatsoever. NJBC, p. 1169 
comments that we now use "an a posteriori approach". An a 
posteriori approach is contrasted with an a priori approach. When 
we work a priori, we make a decision in advance, and say what we 
have just said: since God is the author, there of course can be no 
error. But the a posteriori approach would instead say: Look at 
the actual text and see all the errors. Thomas A. Hoffman, in an 
article in CBQ, July, 1982, pp. 447-69, says Scripture is so full 
of errors that to try to answer them all would be "basically 
patching holes on a sinking ship." In fact, he says that would be 
a lack of faith. We wonder on what that faith is based, if 
Scripture is so full of errors! He adds that when it is said that 
Scripture is inspired it means "simply a writing in which they 
experienced the power, truth etc. of the Spirit of Christ. ." 
Shades of Calvin, who said we know a book is inspired if the Holy 
Spirit interiorly tells us so!

In contrast, Pius XII, in Divino afflante Spiritu, cited the words 
of Vatican I which Vatican II cited, and said (EB # 538): "When 
certain Catholic authors, contrary to this solemn definition of 
Catholic doctrine... dared to restrict the truth of Holy Scripture 
to matters of faith and morals... our predecessor of immortal 
memory, Leo XIII, in the Encyclical, Providentissimus Deus... 
rightly and properly refuted those errors." So Pius XII, in an 
Encyclical greatly praised by the leftists, called the statement 
of Vatican I, that God is the Author of Scripture, which Vatican 
II quoted, a solemn definition. So the NJBC would ask us to think 
that Vatican II intended to contradict a solemn definition - and 
even referred us to that definition and quoted it!

Ironically such charges are made today when finally we have the 
new techniques that allow us to handle successfully charges of 
error which earlier in this century were insoluble. We will give 
some presentation of those techniques in this book. For more 
details, cf. Wm. G. Most, Free From All Error, Prow Books, 
Libertyville, IL, 2d ed. 1990. 

DV # 11 also refers us to other older texts of the Magisterium, 
with the same general thought. Especially significant are the 
words of Leo XIII (EB 124):"It is altogether not permitted to 
either limit inspiration to only some parts of Sacred Scripture, 
or to say that the sacred author himself was in error. Nor is the 
method tolerable which, to get out of the difficulties just 
mentioned, does not hesitate to say that divine inspiration 
pertains to matters of faith and morals and nothing more... For 
all the books, the complete books, which the Church receives as 
sacred and canonical, were written, with all their parts, at the 
dictation of the Holy Spirit. It is so far from possible that any 
error could underlie divine inspiration that it of itself not only 
excludes any error, but excludes and rejects it as necessarily as 
it is necessary to say that God, the Supreme Truth, is the author 
of no error at all." A clearer and flatter rejection of the theory 
of NJBC could hardly be imagined -- yet Vatican II, in the very 
same passage, DV # 11, refers us to this passage along with 
others!

2) We notice the words of DV # 11 on genre, for it said -in words 
underlined in our quotation of the statement - that everything 
asserted by the human writer is also asserted by the Holy Spirit. 
When we explained genre briefly in answering Cardinal Koenig, we 
stressed that word assert. Not everything in a text is asserted by 
the Holy Spirit or the human writer. For example in the edifying 
narrative genre, some fill-in details are not asserted. Similarly, 
in a modern historical novel, the writer asserts that the mainline 
is history, and that the background descriptions fit the time. But 
the fill-ins are not asserted to be true. But whatever things are 
asserted, are asserted by the Holy Spirit, and so are free from 
every kind of error. 

By observing this qualification, we can easily see that no error 
at all, of any kind, is possible. 

With this approach - plus that of form and redaction criticism, 
which we will see after a bit - things that seem like errors can 
all be solved. Early in the 20th century, and before, Scripture 
scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, were well aware of many 
problems in Scripture, things that seemed like errors or 
contradictions. They could solve some problems; but many they 
could not. Yet they were men of faith, and lived and died saying: 
Even if we cannot find the answer, there must be one. Today thanks 
to great progress in techniques, we can solve the problems they 
could not solve. So it is strangely ironic that at the very time 
when we have the means to solve the formerly insoluble problems, 
so many today are claiming it is all hopeless. In fact, they say 
some things are hopeless whose solution was known before, e.g., as 
to the seeming contradictions in the three accounts of St. Paul's 
conversion in Acts, it is said that in 9:7 the men with Paul heard 
the voice, but saw no one, while in 22:9 it says they saw the 
light but did not hear the voice. The answer is so easy: in Greek, 
akouein has a broad span of meaning - so does English listen - so 
it can mean to perceive a sound, or to perceive it and also 
understand it (cf. John 12. 28-29). Again it is noted that in 
26:14 the men all fell to the ground, while in 9:7 it says they 
stood amazed. One needs no Greek to solve this one: first they 
fall to the ground, but as soon as they could, scrambled to their 
feet and stood in amazement. 

Our conclusion thus far: Vatican II is not guilty of the charge of 
contradicting earlier documents. 

Chapter 2: What is Inspiration - Which Books are Inspired?

We have just seen a false notion of inspiration as proposed in 
NJBC. Now we should see what the true doctrine is. 

Athenagoras, an apologist of the second century, said the Holy 
Spirit used the human writer, "as if a flutist breathed into his 
flute" (Legation for the Christians 9). Not much later, around 181 
A. D., St. Theophilus of Antioch wrote (To Autolycus 2. 10): 
"Moses... or rather, the Word of God, who used him as an 
instrument, said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth. '" 

These texts imply that God Himself is the chief Author. A more 
explicit statement found in the Ancient Statutes of the Church (DS 
325: 5th-6th century) says the one who is to be ordained Bishop 
should be asked, "if he believes that God is the one and same 
author of the New and Old Testament."

Vatican I (DS 3006) taught: "The Church considers them [the books 
of Scripture] sacred and canonical, not that they were written by 
mere human diligence and then approved by her authority, nor only 
that they contain revelation without error, but because being 
written with the Holy Spirit inspiring them, they have God as 
their author, and as such were handed down to the Church herself." 

We notice Vatican I was rejecting two theories of inspiration: 
1)It is not enough to say the books were produced by mere human 
labor and then approved by the Church. Then God could not be said 
to be their author. This was the old error of Sixtus of Siena in 
the 16th century. 2) Nor is it enough to say Scripture contains no 
error. That too would not be enough to let us say God is the 
author. So there is more. 

Pius XII in Divino afflante Spiritu (EB 556-- to which a note on 
DV # 11 refers us) wrote: "The sacred writer in producing the 
sacred book is the organon, that is, the instrument of the Holy 
Spirit, an instrument living and endowed with reason... He, 
working under inspiration, still uses his own faculties and powers 
in such away that all can easily gather from the book he produces 
'the proper character, and as it were, the individual lines and 
characteristics, '" of the human writer (internal quote is from 
Benedict XV, Spiritus Paraclitus of 1920, EB 448). 

This does not mean that God dictated the words as one would do to 
a shorthand stenographer. Then the human being could not also be 
called the author. And what could we do with the words of St. Paul 
in 1 Corinthians 1:14-18? First Paul says he is glad he baptized 
only Crispus and Gaius. Then he adds - as his memory wakes up in 
stages - that he also baptized the household of Stephanas. Still 
further, he adds that he is not sure if he baptized any others. So 
clearly, this could not fit with a stenographic dictation theory - 
such a theory was generally given up by the end of the 19th 
century. 

We really have a remarkable picture. God can so employ the human 
writer as His instrument that the writer will write all that God 
wills, and do so without any error, but yet retain his own 
literary style and grammatical ability. 

If we ask precisely how this can be, we must take refuge in divine 
transcendence, that is, we know He is above and beyond all our 
categories and classifications. 

To illustrate we think of the question of how God knows things. We 
humans know things in either the active or the passive mode. In 
the passive mode, we receive, we take on an impression from 
outside, gaining something new. But God cannot be passive, nor can 
He lack anything. In the active mode: if a blind man is pushing a 
chair, he knows the chair is moving only because he is pushing it. 
But we must not make God like a blind man. 

Some have wanted even so to say God knows things only by causing 
them. It is true, He does cause all things. But St. Thomas Aquinas 
does not limit His manner of knowing to that. Several times over, 
St. Thomas deals with the problem of how God can know a future 
free decision, for example, one I will make tomorrow at 10 AM. 
There are no causes lined up, which will, as it were intersect at 
10 AM and cause me to make that decision. Then it would not be 
free. Further, the decision has not yet been made, and so it is 
non-existent. 

St. Thomas explains (e.g., in Contra gentiles 1. 67; De Veritate 
2. 12. c.; and Compendium theologiae 1, 133 # 272) that God's 
duration is eternity - a life in which there is no change at all. 
We creatures who live in time see ahead of us a moment we call 
future - it quickly changes to present - then to past. But since 
God cannot change, there is no past or future for Him. (Here is 
another case of transcendence. We say He made the world - a past 
statement. But to His eternal mind, creation is present. Again, we 
say Christ will return at the end - but to God, that too is 
present). 

To return to our question. God can know my decision - which is 
future to me - because eternity makes it present to Him. Viewed as 
future, it would be non-existent, and so, unknowable. But in the 
present, it is knowable. However, St. Thomas always stops at 
precisely this point in making such explanations. He never goes on 
to say how God knows the thing, once it is present to Him. If St. 
Thomas really meant that God knows the future decision because He 
intends to cause it - there would be no need to go into the long 
explanation about His eternity making the thing present. Thomas 
would merely say: He knows it because He intends to cause it. 

So we again appeal to His transcendence when we say He is the 
Chief Author, and the human author is a real author too, with his 
own style, but yet God causes the human to write all that He 
wills, and to do so without any error whatsoever. 

Now that we know what inspiration is in general, it is obvious we 
need to ask which books are inspired. For in the first centuries 
there were many so-called Gospels in circulation in addition to 
the four we recognize, with the names of Apostles on them. So we 
ask: How can we tell which is which?

We must not start out by saying: Ask the Church. For there could 
be a vicious circle: believe the Church because the Gospels say so 
- believe the Gospels because the Church says so. 

To avoid such irrationality, we will indeed start with the 
Gospels, but we will not at the start look on them as inspired. 
That is something still to be proved. Rather, we look on them at 
first as merely ancient documents. There is no doubt they are 
such. 

We ask first: has the text come down to us substantially 
correctly? Textual Criticism deals with this problem. It is 
especially easy with the Gospels. In the case of pagan works, 
e.g., Julius Caesar's wars, there is a gap of nearly 1000 years 
between the copy he wrote or dictated, and the oldest manuscript 
we have. But for the Gospels the gap is far less. The Sinai and 
Vatican Codices each date from around 350 A. D. We have others, 
the Alexandrian Codex and the Codex Bezae from around 400 A. D. We 
can narrow even this small gap. We have papyri giving parts of the 
New Testament. The Chester Beatty Papyrus II comes from the early 
200s, and includes most of the Epistles of St. Paul. Bodmer 
Payprus P 75 also comes from around 200, and has parts of Luke and 
John. 

There are major new finds. In the library of Magdalen College, 
Oxford there are three small fragments of St. Matthew's Gospel. 
Carsten Thiede by careful paleographic analysis dates them to the 
60s AD. (in: <Eyewitness to Jesus>, Doubleday, 1996). There is 
also a smaller fragment found at Qumran that is said to be from 
Mark.

There are other checks too. The Old Syriac and Old Latin versions 
go back to at least the late 100s. The Coptic and Sahidic versions 
come from the early 200s. Besides, the Fathers of the Church were 
quoting Scripture still earlier. 

But really, no scholar at all worries about the accuracy of our 
texts, for the variations between the manuscripts are mostly 
trifling. They surely have no effect at all on the six key points 
we are going to be using soon. 

A sad mistake was made by the famous scholar Norman Perrin of the 
University of Chicago. In his <Rediscovering the Teaching of 
Jesus>, p.26 he claimed "No ancient texts reflect the attitudes of 
the modern western world." He clearly had not read much if 
anything of the ancient historians of Greece and Rome. From 5th 
century BC. Herodotus (Preface 1) and Thucydides (1.22) and Roman 
Livy (7.6.6) and Tacitus, <Annals> 1.1) and numerous others we see 
that their chief aim was to record facts. They added 
interpretations more than we do, but there is no harm in that. 
They also includes speeches, which we do not do. But Thucydides 
explains he tried to get the actual text or at least he wrote what 
seemed to fit. Since he so honestly tells us this, we need not be 
deceived. Modern historians would give Thucydides and Tacitus an 
"A" for facts (some think Tacitus is rather hard on Tiburius--
which is debated today). Livy and Herodotus would rate a B.

Next we ask what genre of writing the Gospels are. It is evident, 
they mean to give facts about Jesus, plus interpretations for the 
sake of faith. This is the sort of writing we would expect, in the 
Jewish factual tradition. 

The objection arises: can we tell the facts from the 
interpretations? Is there any such thing as an uninterpreted 
report? The answer is: Many times it is very possible. We need two 
conditions. 

First the item in question should not be entangled with an ancient 
culture, which might be hard to reconstruct. (Really this is 
hardly worth a mention, for the Hebrew culture is known so well). 

Second, some happenings are such that anyone present could pick up 
the facts with eyes and ears, with no possibility of damage from 
bias. For example, a leper stands before Jesus asking to be 
healed. He says: I will it: be healed. Someone could fake the 
whole thing, but other than that, there is no room for any effect 
from bias. 

Would someone fake the basic facts about Jesus? Definitely no: the 
first Christians believed their eternal fate depended on knowing 
about Him. 

Someone will say: Muslims and others die for their beliefs. True, 
but that proves only sincerity. In addition, we must see whether 
they have the facts. Muhammed went into a cave, claimed 
revelations there. But there is no check whatsoever on it. 

So we must ask now: could the Evangelists have access to the 
facts? Very definitely yes: (1)The First Epistle of Clement to 
Corinth is dated about 95 A. D. The writer says Peter and Paul 
were of his own generation - that is obvious, for Peter and Paul 
died around 66 AD. Clement became Pope in either 88 or 92. We 
would expect he was around to hear them - as were countless others 
still living later. (2)Quadratus, the earliest Greek apologist, 
wrote around 123 AD. He says that in his day, some were still 
alive who had been cured by Jesus or raised from the dead by Him. 
This need not be as late as 123 of course. But it would surely 
cover the period 80-90 when leftists think Matthew and Luke wrote 
(they think Mark wrote a bit before 70). (3)Papias, Bishop of 
Hierapolis c. 130, and also the Antimarcionite Prologues (late 2nd 
century) and St. Irenaeus (died c 200) all report Mark wrote from 
the preaching of Peter. Even Martin Hengel of the University of 
Tubingen - the source from which so many unsound critical and 
rationalistic views have come -- believes these reports about 
Mark. There are still other sources, but let us mention merely 
this: Jesus died around 30 or 33 AD. A person then in his/her 
teens would be about 65 by the year 80, the period when some think 
Matthew and Luke wrote. So there would be some still alive - as 
Quadratus said - who had heard Jesus in person. 

Up to this point we are able to gather this: The Gospels should be 
able to give us at least a few of the very simple facts - not 
enmeshed with an ancient culture, and such that there is no room 
for bias in the report unless there was complete fakery, which 
their concern for their eternity ruled out. So we look for and 
find six facts, all of which match this description:

1)There was a man called Jesus. This is obvious from all over the 
Gospels. We have even pagan evidence. Tacitus, a Roman historian 
admired by modern critics, comments in connection with Nero's 
persecution (Annals 15. 44): "The author of this name, Christ, was 
executed during the reign of Tiberius, by the procurator Pontius 
Pilate."

2) He claimed He was sent by God, as a sort of messenger. This is 
evident all over the Gospels. He often demanded belief in Himself 
as a condition for a cure. 

3)He did enough to prove He was such a messenger not just by 
working miracles, but miracles done in a framework where there is 
a tie between the miracle and His claim, e.g., when He healed the 
paralytic let down through the roof to prove He had forgiven the 
man's sins. As to the miracles themselves - not even His enemies 
in His own day denied them - they just said He did them by the 
devil or magic. (Incidentally, His miracles are in continuity with 
the scientifically checked miracles of Lourdes, many worked when 
the Blessed Sacrament passed in procession. This implies an 
abiding, not just a transient Real Presence there - which no other 
church claims is true). 

4)We would expect this item: In the crowds He had a smaller group 
to whom He spoke more. 

5)We would also expect this: He told them to continue His work, 
His teaching. We cannot imagine God sending a messenger with such 
power for just one generation. 

6)Again, knowing He is a messenger sent from God, and seeing His 
power so often, we are not surprised when He promises God will 
protect their teaching: "He who hears you hears me" (Luke 10:16). 
We notice that although He identifies with the poor as poor, in 
this case He identifies with His teachers as His teachers. Again: 
"If he will not hear the Church, let him be to you as a heathen 
and a publican" (Mt. 18. 17). 

Now, after this process, in which we did not appeal to faith at 
all, we have before us a group - we could call it a Church - 
commissioned to teach by a messenger sent from God, and promised 
God's protection on that teaching. Now it is not only 
intellectually permissible, but mandatory - if we have followed 
the reasoning - to believe what the group/Church says. It can then 
tell us which books are inspired, it can tell us that the 
Messenger is divine; it can tell us there is a Pope, and what 
authority he has. It can tell us many more things about the 
Gospels, so we do not have to fight our way through numerous 
incidents questioned by critics. We have made, with the six simple 
facts, a bypass around all their worries. 

We notice that there is no other way to determine which books are 
inspired. Luther thought if a book preached justification by faith 
strongly, it was inspired. But he did not prove that was the 
standard, and further, he could write such a book, and so could I, 
and it would not be inspired. John Calvin thought we know which 
books are inspired by the interior testimony of the Spirit 
(Institutes I. 7). But that is hopelessly subjective. 

Chapter 3: A Revolution by Pius XII?

There is no doubt that the great Scriptural Encyclical of Pius 
XII, Divino afflante Spiritu, issued in 1943, was and has been a 
great encouragement and help to Scripture study. But was it a real 
turn-about, so that Wilfred Harrington was right in saying (The 
New Guide to Reading and Studying the Bible, Enlarged Edition, 
Glazier, Wilmington, 1984, p. 32) that "the effect of that 
document had changed Roman Catholic biblical studies beyond 
recognition."

A major claim is that it was formerly forbidden to use the 
approach via literary genres - some prominent scholars had been 
disciplined for being rather free. 

First a word about disciplinary actions - for we must carefully 
distinguish such decrees from doctrinal decrees. Yes, some 
scholars did suffer, but the reason was the need for precautions 
against two things: the new teaching of evolution, and the 
widespread heresy of Modernism. 

When Darwin first proposed evolution, it shook the faith of many, 
both Catholic and Protestant. For although the Church had never 
taught a crude or fundamentalistic view of the creation account in 
Genesis, so many thought it had done so. In the minds of many, 
there was a tie-in, such that if they accepted evolution, the 
whole faith would be gone. That never was true, but the fact that 
people thought so, created a danger. We think of the story of a 
little boy who came and said: "Mommy, I just found out there is no 
Santa Claus. And I am going to look into this little Jesus story 
too!" Today, now that that psychological danger is gone, the 
Church no longer hinders writings on evolution, as Pope Pius XII 
explicitly said in Humani generis, in 1950 (DS 3896): "The 
Magisterium of the Church does not forbid that the theory of 
evolution... be investigated and discussed by experts in both 
science and theology... they are rash and go too far who act as if 
the origin of the human body from preexisting and living matter... 
were certain and fully proved."

But at first there was the great danger mentioned. Hence there was 
need of disciplinary action, to protect the faith of the many, 
until the passage of time would remove the bad psychology. A 
fundamentalist view would say that God made the world in 6 times 
24 hours, that there were only 4000 years before Christ, that God 
literally made a clay statue and breathed upon it, and similar 
things. In others words, such people neglect the lesson of 
literary genres. They do not ask what is the genre of Genesis 1-3. 
It is actually an ancient story, made up to serve as a vehicle for 
teaching some things that really happened, chiefly: God made all 
things, in some special way He made the first pair (we leave room 
for possible theistic evolution, one that sees the need of God's 
intervention every time higher being appears), that He gave them 
some command (we do not know if it was about a fruit tree - that 
may be stage dressing in the story, something not asserted), that 
they violated His orders and fell from favor (= lost grace and so 
did not have it to pass on to their children). Pius XII in the 
Encyclical Humani generis, in 1950 wrote (DS 3898) that, "the 
first chapters of Genesis, even though they do not strictly match 
the pattern of historical writing used by the great Greek and 
Roman writers of history, or of historians of our times, yet in a 
certain true sense - which needs further study -do pertain to the 
genre of history." We have just suggested in what way they do 
pertain to history, namely, in that they report things that really 
happened, through the vehicle of a story. 

Had the Church once taught a fundamentalistic view? First, to 
retell the story of Genesis in the same or similar words, does not 
amount to an interpretation. But further, the Fathers of the first 
centuries seldom tried to find what the ancient author really 
meant to say (=asserted). We comment that the words "literal 
sense" have two meanings, one which we have just indicated, which 
tries to find what the author meant to assert, taking into account 
genre, differences of language and culture etc. The other would 
treat the text as though written by a modern American and ignore 
genre and all such things. The Fathers instead preferred allegory, 
in which one thing stands for another. When they did seek the 
proper literal sense, they often were not at all fundamentalistic. 
For example, St. Augustine, in his De Genesi ad Litteram 6. 12. 20 
(Literal Sense of Genesis) wrote: "That God made man with bodily 
hands from the clay is an excessively childish thought, so that if 
Scripture had said this, we should rather believe that the writer 
used a metaphorical term, than to suppose God is bounded by such 
lines of limbs as we see in our bodies." St. John Chrysostom made 
a similar comment on the episode of the creation of Eve from 
Adam's rib in Genesis 2:21-22. He said, in his Homily on Genesis 
22. 21: "See the condescendence [adaptation to human weakness] of 
divine Scripture, what words it uses because of our weakness. 'And 
He took', it says, 'one of his ribs.' Do not take what is said in 
a human way, but understand that the crassness of the words fits 
human weakness." St. John did not suggest what was the sober way 
to take the text. A fine suggestion was made by Pope John Paul II 
in his Audience of November 7, 1979. He said putting Adam to sleep 
could stand for a return to the moment before creation, so that 
man might reemerge in his double unity as male and female. 

What of the claim that the approach via literary genres had once 
been forbidden? It is not really true. On June 23, 1905, the 
Biblical Commission gave a reply: "Can that be accepted as a 
principle of sound interpretation which holds that some books of 
Scripture that are considered as historical - partly or totally -
do not at times, give history strictly and objectively so called, 
but instead, have just the appearance of history, so as to convey 
something other than a strict literal or historical sense of the 
words?" The reply was: "No, except in the case in which when the 
sense of the Church does not oppose it, and subject to the 
judgment of the Church, it is proved by solid arguments that under 
the appearance and form of history, the sacred author intended to 
give a parable, an allegory, or a sense differing from the 
properly literal or historical sense of the words." In the case of 
evolution, there was danger from a false psychology. In the case 
of literary genres, there was danger from Modernism, which 
radically reinterpreted everything, so that Pius X called it the 
synthesis of all heresies. So the Church needed to be careful 
while the danger was fresh. Yet even at the start, the reply of 
the Biblical Commission did not really forbid the use of the genre 
approach, it merely insisted on careful scholarship, restricting 
the genre approach to things not against the sense of the Church, 
and requiring evidence for the genre used. 

Later, when the danger seemed to have abated, Pius XII could 
positively encourage that which the Commission had only gingerly 
allowed. Even today Vatican II insists on careful scholarship, 
says that all must be subject to the Magisterium (DV #10) and adds 
that one must watch for the sense of the Church and "the analogy 
of faith (DV # 12) - see if a proposal fits with the whole body of 
teachings of the Church. 

In addition, some say that the early decrees of the Pontifical 
Biblical Commission were mostly reversed: those decrees had said: 
a) Moses was substantially the author of the Pentateuch (first 
five books of Old Testament), b) That the early chapters of 
Genesis were historical, c) That there was only one author for the 
book of Isaiah, d) That Matthew was the first Gospel, e) That Luke 
and Acts were written in the 60s, f) That Paul was the author of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. Let us look carefully at the evidence 
for each point. But let us say at the outset that who was the 
author of a book of Scripture is not a matter of faith, but of 
history. Even so, let us look at the claims:

a)Mosaic authorship of Pentateuch: The Biblical Commission said on 
June 27, 1906 it was permissible to hold "that the work, conceived 
by [Moses] under divine inspiration, was entrusted to another or 
to several to be written... and that finally the work done in this 
way and approved by the same Moses as the leader and inspired 
author was published." The original (1968) edition of Jerome 
Biblical Commentary (I. p. 5) said: "Moses is at the heart of the 
Pentateuch, and can, in accord with the common acceptance of the 
ancient period, correctly be called its author." The ancient usage 
in mind is this: rights of authorship were not well respected. 
Some later person might change or add, and leave it under the name 
of the original author. 

The NJBC has pulled back from this position. It is believed by 
many that the Pentateuch was put together out of four basic 
documents: Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly Code, and Deuteronomist - 
hence the name JEPD for the Documentary Theory. But that 
Documentary theory is not proved. Joseph Blenkinsopp of Notre Dame 
in his review of R. N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch 
(Journal For Study of Old Testament Supplement 5. Sheffield, 1987) 
wrote (CBQ Jan. 1989, pp. 138-39): "It is widely known by now that 
the documentary hypothesis is in serious trouble, with no viable 
alternative yet in sight." He continues saying that Whybray has 
easily shown the fragility of many of the arguments given for the 
theory, sometimes requiring an unreasonable level of consistency 
within the sources, at other times not. Further, Newsweek of Sept. 
28, 1981, p. 59 reported that Yehuda Radday, coordinator of the 
Technion Institute in Israel, fed the Hebrew text of Genesis into 
a computer, and concluded: "It is most probable that the book of 
Genesis was written by one person."

So we cannot be sure Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch in 
the ancient sense. 

b)Historical nature of the first chapters of Genesis: We already 
cited Pius XII saying that in some way the first eleven chapters 
pertain to history, even though not a history of the type written 
by the great Greek and Roman writers, or by modern writers. We 
take this to mean that the literary genre is such that by the 
vehicle of a story, things that really happened substantially are 
conveyed. We add now that the theory of evolution is far from 
proved even today. The Research News section of Science, November 
21, 1980 gives a long report on a conference held at the Field 
Museum in Chicago, of geologists, paleontologists, ecologists, 
population geneticists, embryologists, and molecular biologists. 
The majority of the 160 participants decided Darwin was wrong, in 
the sense that the fossil record does not show the intermediate 
forms Darwin supposed. So they - still not willing to abandon 
evolution - thought up a new theory of "punctuated equilibria" 
according to which a species might stay the same for millions of 
years, and then by some fluke, a much higher form, in the same 
type, would appear. If they had evidence that this actually 
happened, the research report did not mention it. The closest one 
could find to that would be the Grand Canyon, in which there are 
high vertical layers exposed, with simple organisms such as 
Trilobites down below, more and more complex things as one goes 
higher. But there was no proof that any of the higher ones simply 
came from the lower. It would take great faith - without basis -to 
suppose that. If one uses the mathematics of factorials to 
calculate the chances of such a fluke, the odds against it are 
enormous. 

c)One Isaiah: It is now common to say that the Book of Isaiah had 
two or even three authors. The reasons given are these: first 
Isaiah threatens disaster, second Isaiah is addressed to exiles in 
Babylon; Jerusalem has been deserted. Second Isaiah mentions the 
dynasty of David, but transfers its privileges to the whole people 
(55:3-5). In Third Isaiah, Israel is back again in her own land 
and the problems spoken of in chapters 1-39 are no longer present. 
Similarly, the tone varies in the three parts - from threats - to 
sorrow - to consolation. 

It is quite possible that there were three authors, for this is a 
problem of history, not of faith. However, the arguments given are 
inadequate. One Isaiah could have been given a prophetic vision to 
see the exile and the return. Really, the Deuteronomic pattern 
(threat, punishment, rescue) alone would suggest that, for it too 
moved from threat to punishment, to restoration. One wonders: was 
this theory of several authors originally motivated by the 
conviction that there can be no real prophecies?

d)Matthew's Priority: For long most scholars have held that Mark 
wrote first. That consensus is now weakening, several major works 
have called it into doubt. For example: W. R. Farmer, The Synoptic 
Problem (Dillsboro, 1976); Bernard Orchard: Matthew, Luke and 
Mark, (Manchester, 1977); E. P. Sanders, The Tendencies of the 
Synoptic Tradition (Cambridge, 1969); John M. Rist, On the 
Independence of Matthew and Mark (Cambridge, 1978); Hans- Herbert 
Stoldt, History and Criticism of the Marcan Hypothesis (Edinburgh, 
1980). The ancient witnesses put Matthew first. However, they were 
thinking of the Hebrew Matthew. We do not know the relation of our 
Greek Matthew to the Hebrew. In any case, it is a respectable 
opinion today, gaining in support, to deny that Mark wrote first. 

The reasons for putting Mark first are not solid. They say that 
the prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem, is not as clear, chiefly in 
13:14, as it might have been. So Mark wrote before 70. But then 
they think that Matthew and Luke used Mark - since there is so 
much material similar in all three at many points: but this does 
not prove which of the three wrote first. Further, they say, 
Matthew and Luke are rather clear about the fall of Jerusalem, and 
so must have written after it happened. Luke even speaks of an 
army surrounding Jerusalem. 

The reasoning is very weak. In ancient sieges, an army always 
surrounded a city. As to Matthew, he is clearly so fond of 
reporting fulfillments of prophecies, he could hardly have 
refrained from mentioning the fulfillment of the prophecy of Jesus 
about that fall if he had written after it happened. 

There is also the claim that Matthew seems not to know the debate 
which St. Paul had with the Judaizers, in which he insisted we are 
free from the law, while Jesus said (Mt. 5:17) that He came not to 
destroy but to fulfill. But there is a good explanation. First, 
Matthew had a different purpose from Paul's. Secondly, if we get 
the setting, we will see how it all happened. Some Judaizers said 
that Christ is not enough - one must also keep the law. Paul 
naturally replied that Christ is sufficient, we need not keep the 
law. But he also made clear to all but Luther that if one violates 
the law he is lost: 1 Cor 6. 9-10; Gal 5:19-21; Rom 3:31; Eph 5:5. 
Luther did not know what Paul meant by the word faith, and thought 
it meant just the conviction that the merits of Christ count for 
him ("taking Christ as personal Savior"). After that, as Luther 
wrote to Melanchthon in Epistle 501: "Even if you sin greatly 
believe more greatly." The volume, Justification by Faith. 
Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII, eds. H. G. Anderson, T. 
A. Murphy, J. A. Burgess (Augsburg, Minneapolis, 1985) ## 24 & 29 
admits that poor Luther was scrupulous, he thought he was in 
mortal sin all or most of the time. He found peace only by 
thinking it made no difference if he did sin mortally. He could be 
all right if he just had faith that Christ had paid for his sins. 
But St. Paul meant something quite different by faith, as even the 
Protestant Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement, p. 
333 admits. If God speaks a truth, faith will believe mentally; if 
God makes a promise, faith will have confidence; if God gives an 
order, faith will obey (cf. "obedience of faith: Rom 1:5). All of 
this is to be done in love. Now, how could faith dispense one from 
obedience, as Luther thought, when obedience is an essential 
element of faith! 

Briefly, Jesus said we must become like little children to enter 
heaven. Paul said if we break the law we will not inherit. We 
inherit as children of our Father and coheirs with Christ (Rom 
8:17). So Jesus and Paul taught the same. For one who believes in 
the fact that the same Holy Spirit is the chief author of all 
books of Scripture, no difficulty at all could arise. 

e)Luke and Acts written in the 60s: Objectors also claim Luke must 
have written late, and did not know Paul because St. Paul, who was 
supposed to be present at the Council of Apostles in Jerusalem, 
according to Acts 15, seemed not to know of its decree, found in 
Acts 15:28-29 which said people were free from the Mosaic law, but 
yet asked them to do a few things, including abstention from food 
sacrificed to idols. Yet Paul in 1 Cor. chapter 8 said they could 
eat such meat, unless there would be scandal. But the answer is 
simple: If the Vatican today sends an order to the Bishops of some 
one area, it holds only in that area, not outside it. So Paul did 
preach the decree within the area to which it was sent, Syria and 
Cilicia (cf. Acts 16:4. For more details on the agreement of Acts 
and Paul's Epistles, cf. Wm. G. Most, Free From All Error, 
Libertyville, Il, 1990, chapter 18). 

f)Paul as author of the Epistle to the Hebrews: There were 
considerable doubts about Pauline authorship even in the first 
centuries. It as about the 4th century before the West accepted 
it, though the East did so earlier. The June 24, 1914 reply of the 
Biblical Commission asked (EB 418) whether it was necessary to say 
that Paul gave it its present form. The answer was, "No. subject 
to further judgment of the Church." The first two parts of the 
same reply spoke more strongly in favor of Paul's authorship, so 
that the third only said we are not sure Paul gave it its present 
form. 

The chief difficulty against Pauline authorship is the style. But 
anyone who has ever read Tacitus' historical works in the original 
Latin, and has also compared them with his Dialogue on Orators 
will never be moved much by stylistic differences. The style of 
Tacitus in his historical works is highly distinctive, even 
pungent. It is day and night different from that of the Dialogue. 
Yet other arguments have convinced practically all scholars that 
it really is by Tacitus. 

It is easy enough to conclude that while the Encyclical of Pius 
XII was a real impetus it was not a revolution, and surely did not 
reverse any previous doctrinal positions. We add that it 
encouraged translations from the original languages. There had 
been a misunderstanding from the fact that the Council of Trent 
had declared the Vulgate "authentic". It meant merely that it was 
a proper base for religious discussion. It did not mean to forbid 
translations from the original. 

Chapter 4: Using the Genre Approach to defend Inerrancy

We already saw, in answering Cardinal Koenig's charges, an example 
of this use of the genre approach. It is highly likely that the 
narrative parts of Daniel were meant as the edifying narrative 
pattern. There is apt to be a core of history, but along with it 
go some rather free additions. Again, the key word is assert or 
claim. The writer does not assert or claim he is writing pure 
history. Part of it will fit with history, but he does not assert 
that the fill-ins are historical. 

In using the literary genre technique we are not being unfaithful 
to Scripture. Rather, we are being completely faithful, and using 
a great means to defend Scripture against attacks. For it is clear 
that we should try to find out what the inspired writer really 
meant to say. To find that, we must ask: What did he mean to 
assert? To ignore that is to impose our own ideas on Scripture. 
That is being very unfaithful. 

So the poor misguided Fundamentalists think they are respecting 
the sacred text, but actually they are not. They are imposing 
their own ideas on Scripture. 

Genesis 1-11: When we looked at the first eleven chapters of 
Genesis we said the genre was that of an ancient story, which 
still conveys things that really happened. Pope John Paul II, in 
his series of audiences on Genesis, on November 7, 1979 called 
this narrative "myth". He explained: "The term myth does not 
designate fabulous content, but merely an archaic way of 
expressing deeper content." So we need not say God created in 6 
times 24 hours. Still less need we say creation was 4000 years 
before Christ. That number was reached by adding up ages of 
patriarchs and others. Centuries ago, St. Augustine knew better. 
In his City of God 15.7 he noticed that Cain was said to have 
built a city, and named it for his son Enoch, at the time when 
Genesis listed only about three men alive. He replied that the 
purpose of the sacred writer was not to mention all humans, but 
only enough to show the line of descent of the two cities. 

Exodus: The books that describe the departure from Egypt and the 
wandering in the desert very probably use something like an epic 
genre. That genre tells of the great beginnings of a people. The 
story is basically history, yet has some fill-ins which are a bit 
fictional, which the writer does not assert really happened. But 
in spite of this, it is clear that there was an exodus, and not 
just a revolt of peasants in Canaan who never left there. The 
story of a great people beginning in slavery is not likely to be 
invented. 

But there are new discoveries. It is now certain that Sinai was in 
Midian--when Moses had to flee Egypt he went to Midian, married 
the daughter of a priest of Midian, and while watching sheep there 
saw the burning bush. Wyatt Archeological Research, Presentation 
of Discoveries went to the real Sinai, photographed the top of 
Sinai where the top rocks are still blackened from the fire at the 
time of the Ten Commandments. They also found and photographed the 
twelve pillars erected by Moses at the site. There are more 
remarkable things in this video (More controversial: at the start 
of the video we see the discovery by using radar that penetrates 
soil, of a large boat, right dimensions for the ark. The problem 
is that a high Pentagon officer told me he had been permitted to 
see the photos made by a U.S. satellite from space, on which the 
ark is in the open, partly covered with snow, farther up on Mt. 
Ararat).
 
Also Larry Williams, in <The Sinai Myth> (Wynwood Press, NYC, 
1990) visited the site of Mt. Sinai in Midian and photographed the 
blackened top of Sinai and saw the twelve pillars of Moses. He 
also engaged the services of George Stevens of Horizon Research 
who was able to study the photos taken by the French satellite 
with infrared. He was able to see the precise spot where Israel 
crossed the Gulf of Aqabah, and to trace other parts of their 
movements in the area. (Further comments below in chapter 10).

Joshua vs Judges: These two books seem to contrast. Joshua tells 
of a great triumphant sweep of conquest; Judges gives a lower key 
picture of much struggle. The answer lies in the genres: Joshua is 
part of the epic style; Judges is a more sober narrative on the 
whole. 

Jonah: Another fascinating example is in the book of Jonah. God 
ordered Jonah to preach to Nineveh that He intended to destroy it 
- of course, if they did not repent. Jonah feared God would 
actually not destroy it, and thought that then he would seem to be 
a false prophet. So he boarded a ship headed out into the 
Mediterranean. Soon a great storm arose. The crew threw overboard 
much of the cargo to lighten the ship. But the danger was still 
great. Then one of the sailors remembered that Jonah when coming 
on board had said he was running away from his God. So the sailors 
came to Jonah and questioned him. Jonah replied that yes, he was 
the cause. So they should throw him overboard, and then the storm 
would cease. They did so, and the storm stopped. But a large fish 
- a whale? - swallowed Jonah, but threw him up on the shore on the 
third day. Then Jonah decided he had to preach to Nineveh. They 
all did penance at once in sackcloth and ashes. So God did not 
destroy the city. 

What did the sacred writer intend - to write history, or a sort of 
extended parable? There are difficulties against an historical 
view. The matter of the fish swallowing Jonah is not too 
difficult. In February 1891 the ship Star of the East caught an 80 
foot sperm whale. But a seaman, James Bartley was missing. After a 
search, he was presumed drowned. Yet the next day when the whale 
was being cut up, they found Bartley inside, still quite alive. 
(Cf. Wallechinsky & Wallace, People's Almanac, Garden City, NY 
(Doubleday, 1975, p. 1339). 

Another inconclusive objection comes from the language of the 
text. It has some words that are later than the supposed date. But 
we know that the Jews sometimes deliberately updated the language 
of the ancient texts. So the objection is not strong. 

But there are more serious difficulties: Jonah 3:3 says, "Now 
Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in 
breadth." The remains found there do not show a city that size. A. 
Parrott (Nineveh and the Old Testament, New York, Philosophical 
Library, 1971, pp. 85-86) suggests perhaps Nineveh could have 
referred to a 26 mile string of settlements in the Assyrian 
triangle. Or else, since people gathered at the city gates, Jonah 
would speak there. And since there were many gates there, and 
Jonah would talk much at each, it could have taken three days. 

On the other hand, no matter what the genre of the book, it surely 
does teach two major lessons. First, the Assyrians then were 
considered the world's worst people, because of their deliberate 
terrorism in war. Yet God showed concern for them. So He must love 
everyone. Second - and this is not complimentary to us - when 
prophets went to the original people of God, they had a hard time, 
suffered much. But the pagan Nineveh welcomes Jonah readily. The 
Jews knew this: In the late 4th century Midrash, Mekilta de Rabbi 
Ishmael (tr. Jacob Lauterbach, Jewish Publication Society of 
America, Philadelphia, I. p. 7) we read words imagined as said by 
Jonah: "Since the Gentiles are more inclined to repent, I might be 
causing Israel to be condemned [by going to Nineveh]."

In Jonah 4:11 God says there are more than 120, 000 people who do 
not know their right hand from their left. If one takes the 
expression to mean babies, it would imply a huge populace. But it 
could merely mean they did not know the basics of religion. Jonah 
3:6 speaks of the king of Nineveh - not the usual Assyrian 
expression. He was called king of Ashur. But Jonah might not have 
used the Assyrian way of speaking. However, we do not know of a 
king living in Nineveh at the time supposed in the story. Nineveh 
became the capital under Sennacherib (704 - 681). 

It may be objected that Jesus Himself referred to Jonah, and said 
He was greater than Jonah. But to refer to a well-known story does 
not amount to asserting the story happened. We could quote Alice 
in Wonderland to illustrate things, and not think that tale was 
historical. Actually, this literary use occurs elsewhere in the 
New Testament, e.g., in 1 Cor 10:4 and Jude 9. 

Apocalyptic: Besides the narrative parts of the book of Daniel, 
there are parts in the apocalyptic genre. This genre first 
appeared in full-blown form about 2 centuries before Christ, had a 
run of three or four centuries. In it the author describes visions 
and revelations - not usually clear if he means to assert he had 
them, or is just using the account as a way of making his points. 
There are highly colored, bizarre images, secret messages. The 
original readers knew better than to take these things as if they 
were sober accounts. (Sadly, some today have taken some of the 
apocalyptic images about streams of fire etc. as proof there were 
ancient astronauts who overawed the simple people of the Hebrews. 
That was foolish, for we must recognize the genre). For a very 
strong example of apocalyptic, please read Daniel chapter 7. 

Touches of Apocalyptic: Now it happens at times that a writer will 
use some touches of apocalyptic in a work that is on the whole of 
a different genre. Thus Isaiah 13:10 includes some definitely 
apocalyptic language in speaking of the fall of Babylon: "For the 
stars of the sky and their constellations will not show their 
light, the sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will not 
give its light." In foretelling the judgment on Edom, Isaiah 34:4 
said: "All the stars will be dissolved, the sky will roll up like 
a scroll and all the host of the skies will fall, like withering 
leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from their tree." 
Ezekiel 32:7-8 uses much the same language to prophesy the 
judgment on Egypt: "When I blot you out, I will cover the skies 
and will darken their stars. I will cover the sun in a cloud and 
the moon will not give its light." We cannot help thinking of the 
language of Matthew 24:4. So we gather that while God surely could 
make such signs happen at the face value of the text, yet we 
cannot be sure that He intends to do it: the language of Isaiah 
and Ezekiel shows such expressions can be merely apocalyptic. 

The "rapture": This brings us to the question of "the rapture". 
St. Paul in First Thessalonians 4. 13-17 is answering the concern 
of the people there: Would it not be too bad if we should die 
before the return of Christ - then the others would get to see Him 
before we would. Paul replies that it will be as follows: Christ 
will descend from the sky with a blast of a trumpet. Then the dead 
in Christ will rise, and after that, "we the living" will be taken 
to meet Christ in the air. Many fundamentalists say that this 
event must be different from the last judgment scene which we find 
in Matthew 25:21-46 in which Christ the Judge is seated on the 
earth, and has before Him the sheep and the goats. The 
fundamentalists say: the scene in First Thessalonians takes place 
in the air - the scene of the last judgment takes place on the 
earth. So there must be two separate events. So there is a 
separate rapture, when Christ will suddenly snatch out all good 
people from this world, leaving only the evil. The good will then 
reign with Him for 1000 years before the end. 

The trouble is that they have neglected the genre, as usual. Both 
passages are clearly using some apocalyptic language. For in the 
judgment, all persons of all ages of the world must stand before 
Christ. The whole globe would not give standing room for that. So 
it must mean some sort of spiritual revelation of the just 
judgments of God at the final resurrection. In apocalyptic, we do 
not make close comparisons, for the whole is loose. 

So the bumper sticker is wrong, which said: "In case of rapture, 
this car will be unmanned," and will crash into others. But no 
problem, only the bad people are left!

Just incidentally, many who are not fundamentalist err in thinking 
that the words "we the living", which come twice, show that Paul 
must have expected to be alive at the end. So they reject his 
authorship of Second Thessalonians, in which he very clearly shows 
he does not expect that. They do that contrary to all the ancient 
witnesses who say both are by Paul. They reject his authorship for 
the sake of an expression which is at most, ambiguous. Really, 
many teachers will often say I or we to make something vivid, 
without intending to give any information about themselves at all. 

Wisdom literature: This genre is one the Hebrews had in common 
with other ancient near Eastern peoples. With most peoples it is 
basically a group of worldly wise counsels, especially for the 
young, on how to get along in this life. Egypt was specially famed 
for it, and the Jews may well have gotten ideas in their long stay 
there. The Egyptian Wisdom of Amenemopet has many parallels to the 
Old Testament. For example, Proverbs 22:17-18 says: "Incline your 
ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply you mind to my 
knowledge; for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you, if 
all of them are ready on your lips." Amenemopet says: "Give thy 
ears. Hear what is said, give thy heart to understand them. To put 
them in thy heart is worthwhile (from ANET 421). Many texts of 
Proverbs and Amenemopet are given in parallel columns in J. 
Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past, 2d ed. Princeton Univ. 
Press, 1974, pp. 124-25.). 

We must keep in mind in reading the wisdom literature that only 
some things are meant as religious principles. Clement of 
Alexandria, head of the catechetical school at Alexandria in late 
2nd century, tried to set up a counter attraction to the snob 
appeal of Gnosticism. So in books II and III of his Paidagogos, he 
tried for a deeper knowledge of the rules of morality, and gave 
very detailed rules for how a Christian should do everything: eat, 
drink, sleep, dress, use sex, and so on. He sometimes supports his 
injunctions from Scripture. He quotes Ecclesiasticus/Sirach 32:3 & 
7, without understanding the genre: In Paidagogos 2. 7. 58: "I 
believe that one should limit his speech [at a banquet]. The limit 
should be just to reply to questions, even when we can speak. In a 
woman, silence is a virtue, an adornment free of danger in the 
young. Only for honored old age is speech good: 'Speak, old man, 
at a banquet, for it is proper for you... Speak [young man], if 
there is need of you, do it scarcely when asked twice."

Variant Traditions: There is another kind of seeming error that we 
can solve by the use of genre and determining what is asserted. 

In Exodus 14:21-25 we find: "Then Moses stretched out his hand 
over the sea; and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong wind all 
night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And 
the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, 
the waters being a wall to them on their right and on their left."

We notice two different explanations: 1) a wind sent by God dried 
up the sea, 2) the water was like a wall on both sides of them. 
Clearly these two pictures do not fit. A sea dried up by the wind 
would be just shallow water - and after the drying, there would be 
no wall of water on left and right. 

But we ask: What did the inspired writer really mean to assert? 
Let us picture him sitting down to write. He has on hand two 
sources - written or oral - and they do not fit. He has no means 
of knowing which is the right one. He decides: "I will let the 
reader see both." But that means he does not assert both. That 
cannot be done. What he does assert it this: I found two accounts, 
and do not know which is it. Here they are. 

Another similar case concerns how David came to meet and know King 
Saul. In Chapter 16 of First Samuel, Saul is upset. He asks his 
servants to find a man skilled at playing a harp to soothe him. 
They bring David (16:18) "son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is 
skilled in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in 
speech. "So David enters his service, and becomes armor- bearer to 
Saul. Saul sends word to David's father saying he wants David to 
stay in his service. 

But in chapter 17 the picture is very different. David is feeding 
his father's sheep. One day his father sent him to bring food to 
his brothers who were in the army of Saul. David hears of the 
giant Goliath, and the great reward the king offers to one who 
will kill Goliath. So David goes to Saul, boasts of having killed 
lions and bears, offers to fight Goliath. Saul gives David armor, 
but David is not used to wearing armor, and discards it. So he 
gets some stones from the brook and a sling, and kills Goliath. 

In chapter 16 (verse 18), David is called a mighty fighter, a 
gibbor. But in chapter 17, after David has killed Goliath, Saul 
asks his captain Abner who that is. Abner says he does not know 
(though in chapter 16 David has previously been in the service of 
Saul). Abner takes David to Saul, holding the head of Goliath. 
Saul asks who he is. 

Clearly, the two accounts do not fit together. But we ask again: 
What did the inspired writer mean to assert? He meant to assert 
only: I found these two, and do not know which is right. But you 
can see both of them. He asserts no more than that. 

Poetic Genre: In any culture, poetry is apt to use fanciful images 
and exaggerations. Scriptural poetry does the same. But if one 
does not recognize that a passage is poetic, mistakes can result. 

St. Justin Martyr, in Second Apology 5, shows he believes angels 
have bodies. We do not blame lack of knowledge of genre for this: 
there was much hesitation in the patristic age on angels. But in 
Dialogue with Trypho 57 he says that angels have food in heaven 
since, "Scripture says that they [the Hebrews in the desert] ate 
angels' food." Justin does not understand Psalm 78:24 which speaks 
of bread from heaven, referring to the manna in the desert. 

Isaiah 40:2 says Israel has received double for all her sins. Now 
of course God would not punish twice as much as what was due: We 
need to recognize Isaiah is a lofty poet, and/or take this as 
Semitic exaggeration. 

Psalm 124. 3 has God saying: "All of them have turned, together 
they have gone astray. There is no one doing good, not one". One 
might imagine this could apply only to people of the time of 
composition, but St. Paul in Romans 3.10 cites it as meaning 
everyone. Again, we need to recall this is poetry. Paul had a 
different reason for citing it. He was out to prove that if one 
tries for justification by keeping the law, all are hopeless. To 
understand this, we need to know St. Paul at times uses a sort of 
focused view in which as it were he would say: The Law makes heavy 
demands, but gives no strength. To be under heavy demands without 
strength of course means a fall. In the focused view (a metaphor, 
as if one we were looking through a tube, and could see only what 
is framed by the circle of the tube) one does not see the whole 
horizon. Off to the side, in no relation to the law, divine help 
was available even before Christ. If one uses it, then the result 
is quite different. (More on focusing later on). 

Isaiah 64:5 said: "All the deeds we do for justification are like 
filthy rags." Some, not seeing the poetic nature of the passage, 
thought all our good deeds are sinful. It is true, there is 
imperfection in most good things we do. Yet not everything is a 
mortal sin. St. Paul says in Philippians 3:6 that before his 
conversion he kept the law perfectly. Luke 1:6 says the parents of 
John the Baptist were keeping all the commandments without blame. 
2 Timothy 4:6-8 looks forward to a merited crown from the Just 
Judge. 

Chapter 5: How to Interpret Inspired Scripture

We saw from our sketch of how to find which books are inspired 
that it is the Church alone that can tell us. We commented too 
that we really would expect that a messenger sent from God, with 
such a mission and such powers as He displayed, would arrange to 
protect the teachings of those He sent out. He did it, e.g. ,"He 
who hears you hears me."

Some today are claiming that in order to find the truth, they must 
be free of any outside authority - including the Church. What 
impossible folly! They discard the very prime means of gaining the 
most absolute certitude of the truth, including the meaning of 
Scripture. They also claim "Academic Freedom." Really, it belongs 
only to a properly qualified professor teaching in his own field. 
Now among the things needed to be properly qualified is, of 
course, that the professor know and use the method that is correct 
in his field, as called for by the very nature of the material. 
Theology starts with the sources of revelation - Scripture and 
Tradition - but when something appears in them that is not obvious 
in meaning: How does he decide? If he is Catholic, the final word 
comes from the teachings of the divinely protected Church. Vatican 
II, in spite of misrepresentations of its teachings, did say in DV 
#10: "The task of authoritatively interpreting the word of God, 
whether written or handed on [Scripture or Tradition], has been 
entrusted exclusively [underline added] to the living teaching 
office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of 
Jesus Christ." We notice the Council appeals to precisely the same 
thing as we did in our sketch of apologetics, namely the authority 
given by the Divine Messenger, Jesus Christ. 

Therefore, any professor who would not use the proper Catholic 
method is not a Catholic theologian and as such, has no claim at 
all to academic freedom. Imagine a professor of natural science 
who wanted to go back to the poor medieval methods of science. He 
would be laughed off the campus, not protected by academic 
freedom. He would be called a quack, and deserve it. 

That same Magisterium has given us excellent guidelines, 
especially in DV ## 11-12. We already saw the chief material from 
DV #11. 

Now for #12, which opens saying: "Since however in Sacred 
Scripture, God has spoken through men in human fashion, the 
interpreter of Sacred Scripture, to see what He intended to 
communicate with us, must investigate attentively what the sacred 
writer really intended to convey, and what it pleased God to 
manifest by their words." We underlined the word and because of 
its special importance. Some have argued that since two things are 
mentioned, namely, what the human writer meant to convey, and what 
it pleased God to manifest, therefore the text indicates that God 
might intend to say more than what the human writer saw. (This is 
the theory of the "fuller sense", sensus plenior). The Theological 
Commission at Vatican II (cf. Grillmeier, p. 220) reported that if 
the text had used the connector que instead of et, the Council 
would have settled the question in the affirmative, meaning: Yes, 
there is a fuller sense. (The connector -que is much closer than 
et. Both mean and). 

Even though the Council at that point did not see fit to 
explicitly affirm the fuller sense, yet the Council itself, in LG 
# 55 actually used it: "These primeval documents [thinking chiefly 
of Genesis 3:15 and Isaiah 7:14], as they are read in the Church, 
and are understood in the light of later and full revelation, 
gradually bring before us the figure of the woman, the Mother of 
the Redeemer. She, in this light, is already prophetically 
foreshadowed in the promise, given to our first parents when they 
had fallen into sin, of victory over the serpent (cf. Gen 3, 25). 
Similarly, she is the Virgin who will conceive who will conceive 
and bear a Son whose name will be called Emmanuel (cf. Is 7, 14)."

It is clear that the Council did not want to say flatly that the 
human writer of Genesis and Isaiah saw all that the Church now, 
after fuller light, gradually has come to see. Hence, at the 
request of some Bishops, the two instances of cf were added, and 
hence we underlined them. So it was making use of the idea that 
the Holy Spirit could intend more than what the human writer saw - 
really, not a surprising thing. 

DV #12 continues: "To discover the intention of the sacred 
writers, among other things, one must look to the literary genres. 
For truth is proposed and expressed different ways in texts that 
are in different ways historical, or prophetical, or poetical, or 
other types of speaking. So it is necessary that the interpreter 
seek out the senses which the sacred writers wanted to express and 
did express in determined adjuncts, in accordance with the 
conditions of his time and culture, and by means of the literary 
genres used at that time. To rightly understand what the sacred 
writers meant to assert [underline added] in writing, one must pay 
due attention both to the usual native ways of thinking, speaking, 
and narrating, which were in use at the time of the sacred writer, 
and to those which in his age were commonly used in people's 
dealings with one another."

Here the Council strongly insisted that it is not just legitimate, 
but necessary, to check the literary genre. This needs to be done 
not just for each book of Scripture, but for each part of each 
book. For example, we already saw that in the Book of Daniel, we 
have both apocalyptic and edifying narrative genres. 

We note with pleasure that the Council stressed the matter of what 
the writer mean to assert. 

The Council indicated what Pius XII brought out still more clearly 
(EB 558): Real research is needed into what genres were actually 
in use at the time of writing. It would be very wrong to just use 
our imaginations, and suppose we know. This is what the Biblical 
Commission also insisted on, as we saw before (in EB 161). 

It said we must pay attention to everything in the culture and 
conditions of the writer. So the interpreter really should know 
well the ancient languages, chiefly Greek and Hebrew, and the 
history and the culture. 

Failure to know Hebrew could lead to horrid consequences, e.g., 
St. Paul who knew Hebrew, in Romans 9:13 quoted Malachi 1:2 in 
which God said: "I have loved Jacob, but hated Esau." But poor St. 
Augustine thought this meant God really hated Esau! and destined 
him to hell without even looking to see how he would live (Ad 
Simplicianum 1. 14). But at the bottom is a Hebrew way of 
speaking. Hebrew and Aramaic both lack the degrees of comparison, 
such as: good, better, best, or, clear, clearer, clearest. Not 
having such forms, when they have such ideas, they are forced to 
use other devices. One of them is to speak of hate vs. love. In 
our language we would say: I love one more than the other. In Luke 
14:26 Jesus says we must hate our parents. But that is the same 
Semitic pattern. Matthew 10:37 softened it, using the western way 
of speaking, and said: "He who loves father or mother more than 
me, is not worthy of me." We recall that we saw earlier some 
striking texts from Isaiah 13:9-0 and 34:4 as well as Ezekiel 
32:7-8 in which the apocalyptic way of speaking could be very 
misleading if one did not recognize the genre. 

Another feature of the Hebrew way is this: they regularly 
attribute to the direct action of God things He only permits. Thus 
in 1 Samuel 4:3 (literal version of the Hebrew) after a defeat by 
the Philistines, the Hebrews said: "Why did the Lord strike us 
today before the face of the Philistines?" They knew of course it 
was the swords of the Philistines that did it. Again, in the 
account of the ten plagues in Egypt, at times we read that Pharaoh 
hardened his own heart. But we also read, and often, that God 
hardened his heart. 

A study of the Targums and Rabbinic writings can contribute much. 
The Targums are ancient Aramaic versions of the Old Testament. We 
have them for nearly all the Old Testament, and in the Pentateuch, 
have more than one. They are mostly free versions with fill-ins, 
which show how they understood the text of Scripture. 
Unfortunately, many scholars today ignore the Targums - the NJBC 
has a rather good essay on them in the back part of the volume, 
but fails to use them at all in explaining the Messianic 
prophecies one by one. 

The plea is that we do not know the date of composition. But we do 
know that they were made without hindsight - without seeing them 
fulfilled in Christ. For they hated Christ when He came. Hence 
they surely reflect ancient Jewish understanding of the Messianic 
prophecies. Further, Jacob Neusner of Brown University, one of the 
greatest of Jewish scholars today, in his Messiah in Context 
(Fortress, Philadelphia, 1984) made an exhaustive study of all 
Jewish literature after the fall of Jerusalem up to and including 
the Babylonian Talmud (completed 500 to 600 A. D. ). He found that 
before the Talmud there was no interest in the Messiah. Within the 
Talmud, interest revives, but they take up only one of the classic 
prophecies: He will come of the line of David. Now the Targums see 
messianic prophecies in so many places. (For a fine study, cf. 
Samson Levey, The Messiah: An Aramaic Interpretation. Hebrew Union 
College, Cincinnati, 1974), it is inconceivable that the parts on 
the Messianic prophecies could have been written in the centuries 
in which there was no interest in the Messiah. So the Targums must 
have been composed (at least orally) before the fall of Jerusalem. 
Some scholars think they go back to the time of Ezra. 

Another example of the need of Hebrew is the way the translations 
deal with Hebrew hesed. It means the bond between those who have 
made a covenant, such that each has rights and duties, and should 
act as kinsmen toward each other. (We can see an implication for 
the sprinkling of the blood in Exodus 24:8. It meant the people 
were becoming kinsmen of God). Unfortunately, Greek had no word 
for hesed. So they usually translated by eleos, which means mercy. 
There is partial truth in that translation. For if we ask why God 
gives good things under the covenant, the answer comes on two 
levels. On the most basic level, He made a covenant and gives 
things under it out of unmerited, unmeritable generosity. No 
creature by its own power can establish a claim on Him. All is 
basically mercy. Yet on the secondary level, given the fact that 
He did make a covenant, if the people do what He prescribed, He 
owes it to Himself to give favor (or punishment for disobedience). 
Incidentally, this twofold sense explains the difficult text of 
Romans 2;6 where Paul says God will repay each one according to 
his works. That is part of a quote from Psalm 62:12 which says, in 
the full text: "You, O God, have hesed, for you will repay each 
one according to his works." Many English versions unfortunately 
render it to say: "You O Lord have mercy, for you will repay...." 
Mercy and repayment do not go together. 

In a similar way, the beautiful little Psalm 117 (which used to be 
used at the end of Benediction) is hardly understood in the usual 
translations. It should be: "For His hesed [observance of His 
covenant] towards us is great, and the fidelity of the Lord [to 
His covenant] is forever."

Hebrew berith means only covenant, but the Greek version was 
diatheke, which had two meanings: covenant, or testament. A study 
of the ancient Hittite treaties reveals that they required the 
subordinate king to "love" his overlord. In context, it means 
obey. We see from John 14:15 & 21 that in practice, love towards 
God means obedience. For love towards all others besides God means 
willing good to them for their sake. We cannot wish that God have 
any good, He is infinite goodness. But yet Scripture pictures Him 
as pleased when we obey, displeased when we do not. It is not that 
He gains anything from our obedience. No, but for two reasons He 
wants us to obey: 1)He loves everything that is right and good. It 
is right that creatures should obey their Creator, children their 
Father. 2)He wants to give us good things - it is in vain if we 
are not open to receive. His commandments tell us how to be open. 
They also steer us away from the penalties for sin that lie in the 
very nature of things (cf. St. Augustine, Confessions 1. 2: "Every 
disordered soul is its own punishment"). Cf. also 2 John 6: "this 
is love, that we walk according to His commandments."

A study of Jewish literature of all periods - Old Testament, 
Intertestamental Literature, New Testament, and Rabbinic texts 
helps us understand the thought world of Scripture. St. Paul of 
course was trained as a Rabbi. Now an important concept in those 
writings is that sin is a debt, which the Holiness of God wants 
repaid. (Cf. Wm. G. Most, Our Father's Plan, chapter 4). Simeon 
ben Eleazar (Tosefta, Kiddushin 1. 14), writing about 170 AD., 
claiming to quote Rabbi Meir from early in the same century, said: 
"He [anyone] has committed a transgression. Woe to him. He has 
tipped the scale to the side of debt for himself and for the 
world." Pope Paul VI in the doctrinal introduction to his 
Indulgentiarum doctrina (Jan 9, 1967) affirmed the same truth. We 
need to think of this when we read that Christ has "bought" us, 
and of the "price" of redemption (cf. 1 Cor 6:20 and 7:23). 

Often too, when we read a Greek word in St. Paul, we need to ask 
what is the Hebrew word in his mind. For example, know often 
reflects Hebrew yada, which is much broader than the English know, 
and takes in both mind and will. Justice reflects Hebrew sedaqah, 
which is the virtue inclining one to do all that morality 
requires. 

Still another feature of that culture was approximation and 
hyperbole, as Pius XII (Divino afflante spiritu, EB 559) points 
out. St. Paul in Galatians chapters 1-2 tells of his conversion 
and subsequent activities. He speaks of three years, and fourteen 
years, without making clear the point at which the periods begin 
to run. In 1 Cor 10:8, St. Paul says that 23, 000 fell in the 
incident described in Numbers 15:1-9. Numbers says 24, 000 fell. 
Approximation would not mind that difference. 

The heart of the section is the following: "But since Sacred 
Scripture is to be read and interpreted by the same Spirit by 
which it was written, to rightly determine the sense of the sacred 
texts, one must look not less diligently to the content and unity 
of the whole of Scripture, taking into account the living 
Tradition of the whole Church, and the analogy of faith."

The expression in the first part which says Scripture must be 
interpreted "by (or :"in") the same Spirit by which it is to be 
written is open to more than one interpretation. It is certain 
that the Holy Spirit in giving faith, gives the context in which 
Scripture is to be read. We think too of the words of St. Paul in 
1 Cor 2. 10-16 where he explains that just as only the spirit or 
soul of a person knows his depths, so only the Spirit knows the 
depths of God. And he adds: the merely natural man - the one who 
has not received the Spirit dwelling in him by grace - does not 
understand the things of the Spirit. But the spiritual man does. 
So one who does not have the Spirit dwelling in his soul by faith 
will fail to understand many things even though the words are 
there, and their sense, objectively, is at hand to be seen. It is 
true, further, that the farther one advances in the spiritual life 
and follows the lead of the Holy Spirit more fully, the greater is 
his understanding of spiritual things, by what we might even call 
a sort of connaturality. 

In fact, sometimes even intelligent people fail to understand 
things which they could even recite. There may be a positive 
obstacle, a subconscious block within them, in that they perceive 
at last subconsciously that if they accept the faith, it will 
entail consequences for their living which they would not want to 
accept, e.g., in avoiding contraception and divorce. Then they 
will not accept, without knowing fully consciously why they are 
not accepting. 

It is also certain that the words of Scripture seem to have a 
special kind of power, which ordinary explanations alone do not 
have. 

Next the text of DV # 12 tells us we must take into account the 
unity of all of Scripture. Since it all has the same chief Author, 
the Holy Spirit, there can be no contradictions. Some today, in 
noticing that one Evangelist, for example, may have a different 
scope and slant than another, have gone so far as to say that one 
contradicts another. For example, they will say that Mark 3. 21-35 
paints Our Lady as not believing in Jesus, while the annunciation 
scene in Luke shows her as wonderfully believing. So such a 
contradiction is to be ruled out. Again, some love to say that Job 
14. 13-22 raises the possibility of a survival after death, but 
then denies it. This of course contradicts so many things in 
Scripture, and so cannot be true (we will see details on these two 
passages later on). 

Still further, we must consider the living Tradition of the whole 
Church. Again, the Church praises Our Lady for her faith, and 
would shrink in horror from a statement from a prominent scholar 
that at the annunciation she boldly opposed her human will to the 
will of God. So the statement that she did such a thing is 
terribly false. The Church follows, always has followed the words 
of Elizabeth at the visitation (Lk 1:45): "Blessed are you who 
have believed!"

In regard to following the "analogy of faith," the sense is 
similar. Pius XII in Divino afflante Spiritu had said (EB 565) 
that there are few texts whose meaning the Church has declared, 
and similarly, few for which we have unanimous teaching of the 
Fathers. This is obviously true. But the same Pope also explained 
(EB 551) that we must follow the analogy of faith. That is, any 
interpretation that we might consider accepting must be checked 
with the whole body of the truths of faith, with the teachings of 
the Church. If it would clash even by implication, it is to be 
dropped. So even though there are few explicit teachings on the 
sense of individual texts, yet indirectly, by means of this 
analogy of faith, we know exceedingly many things about the 
meanings of parts of Scripture. For example, the teachings of the 
Council of Trent against Luther's errors settle the sense of many 
things in St. Paul. 

Some today have gone so far as to say, contrary to Pius XII that 
there are no texts whose meaning the Church has defined. They 
claim that where it seems we do have a definition, the text of 
Scripture is cited only to illustrate. But this is not realistic, 
if we examine individual texts of the Magisterium. For example, 
the Council of Trent gave us the following definition in Canon 2 
on the Mass (DS 1752): "If anyone shall say that by those words, 
'Do this in commemoration of me' Christ did not establish the 
Apostles as priests, or did not ordain them so that they and other 
priests might offer His flesh and blood, let him be anathema." It 
takes some strange mental contortions to say that the Council 
cited "Do this in commemoration of me" only to "illustrate." Not 
at all, it says that when Jesus said those words, He really did 
ordain the Apostles. 

We have been speaking of definitions by the Church of the sense of 
parts of Scripture. We must not forget that there are other levels 
of teaching in addition to the solemn definition. There is a 
second level, of which Vatican II taught (LG # 25): "Although the 
individual bishops do not have the gift of infallibility, they can 
still teach Christ's doctrine infallibly, even when they are 
scattered around the world, provided that, while maintaining the 
bond of unity among themselves and with the successor of Peter, 
they agree on a teaching as the one which must be held 
definitively." If they can do this even when scattered, of course 
they can also do the same when gathered in a Council with the 
Pope, even if they do not put things in the form of a definition. 
The key word is definitively. Whatever mode of teaching may be 
used, if the Magisterium makes clear it is presenting something as 
definitive, that is infallible. 

There is also a third level of teaching, of which Pius XII wrote 
in Humani generis in 1950 (DS 3885): "Nor must it be thought that 
the things contained in encyclical letters do not of themselves 
require assent of the mind on the plea that in them the pontiffs 
do not exercise the supreme power of their magisterium. These 
things are taught with the ordinary magisterium, about which it is 
also true to say, 'He who hears you, hears me. '(Lk 10:16)". This 
really means that the Pope alone, in as much as he speaks for the 
whole Church, can do alone what a Council can do, as described in 
the second level. He can bring something under the promise "He who 
hears you, hears me." Of course that promise of Christ cannot 
fail. So the teaching is infallible. 

This does not mean that everything in an encyclical is infallible. 
No, Pius XII went on to specify the conditions in which this will 
come true: "If the supreme pontiffs in their acta expressly pass 
judgment on a matter debated until then, it is obvious to all that 
the matter, according to the mind and will of the same pontiffs, 
cannot any longer be considered a matter open for discussion among 
theologians." For the Pope has shown he is making a definitive 
decision on something currently being debated. A special case of 
this came in the Encyclical on the Mystical Body by Pius XII. The 
modern discussion and tendency to claim ignorance in the human 
mind of Jesus began with P. Galtier in his book, L'unite de Christ 
in 1939. Precisely in that context, Pius XII taught, in that 
Encyclical of 1943, that the human soul of Jesus, from the first 
instant of conception, had the vision of God, in which all 
knowledge is available. As we recall his words in Humani generis, 
cited above, it is clear he intended to close the debate. But it 
did not close, so he complained about that in Sempiternus Rex of 
Sept 8, 1951 (DS 3905). Again, in Haurietis aquas of May 15, 1956 
(DS 3924) he explicitly restated the teaching about that vision. 
Still further, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on 
July 14, 1966, with the approval of Paul VI, again complained of 
theologians in error in this point. Even the first text of 1943, 
as we said, showed the intention to settle the debate. And the 
repeated teachings by two Popes shows the repetition which by 
itself makes a teaching infallible. 

We said that in that vision all knowledge is "available." The 
reason is this: the human soul of Jesus, being created, cannot as 
it were contain infinite knowledge. But it did know, as St. Thomas 
Aquinas said (III. 10. 2. c): "All things that in any way are, or 
will, or were done or said or thought by anyone, at any time. And 
so it is to be said that the soul of Christ knew all things in the 
Word."

There is also a fourth level of teachings of the Magisterium that 
are not definitive, but still provide moral certitude. Canon 752 
of the New Code makes this aspect clear: "Not indeed an assent of 
faith, but yet a religious submission of mind and will must be 
given to the teaching which either the supreme pontiff, or the 
college of bishops [with him] pronounces on faith and morals when 
they exercise the authentic magisterium, even if they do not 
intend to proclaim it by a definitive act." Vatican II in LG # 25 
had said the same thing: "Religious submission of mind and of will 
must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the 
Roman Pontiff even when he is not defining, in such a way, namely, 
that the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to according 
to his manifested mind and will, which is clear either from the 
nature of the documents, or from the repeated presentation of the 
same doctrine, or from the manner of speaking." [emphasis added]. 
We must, in other words, look to see if a thing is presented as 
definitive or not. 

How can we believe something which is not infallible? In daily 
life we do it. Routine opening of a can will not detect Botulism, 
a deadly food poisoning. Yet we do not send each can to a lab to 
be checked. We know there is a remote chance, but take it. Life 
would be unworkable without doing so. The chances of an error on 
this level by the Church is even more remote. Only the Galileo 
case, in 2000 years, comes close. Even there, the Pope himself, 
Urban VIII, stated in 1624 as to the theory that the earth went 
around the sun, that "the Holy Church had never, and would never, 
condemn it as heretical, but only as rash."

Some scholars today dare to assert that the Church has very little 
ability to tell us what a text of Scripture meant originally - it 
can usually just tell us what it means to people today. To know 
the original sense, we must depend on scholars! This is a clear 
contradiction of DV #10, cited above, which says that the task of 
interpreting belongs exclusively to the Magisterium. 
$
Chapter 6: The l964 Instruction of the Biblical Commission

On April 21, 1964, The Pontifical Biblical Commission issued an 
Instruction on the Historical Truth of the Gospels. Left-wing 
scholars often quote only the parts they like, and omit other 
important things. We will try to give a broad coverage of the 
document. 

The most important feature of the document is what it has to say 
about Form and Redaction Criticism. 

Before looking at the comments in the Instruction, we notice 
something that is quite obviously true, which the Form and 
Redaction critics consider basic: in the production of the Gospels 
there were three stages:

1) The actions and words of Christ. We notice He would adapt His 
wording to the current audience. Any good speaker does that. 

2) The way the Apostles and others of the first generation 
reported and preached what He did and said. Again, we would expect 
them to adapt the wording to the current audience. Therefore it is 
not necessary to suppose they used always the same words Jesus had 
used. But they would keep the same sense. 

3) Some individuals within the Church, moved by inspiration, wrote 
down some part of what Jesus did and said. This became the 
Gospels. 

Before going ahead, we inject the comment: In this way we see that 
the Church has something more basic than the Gospels, its own 
ongoing teaching. For the Gospels are just part of that teaching, 
written down under inspiration. 

The critics would like to find at which of the three stages the 
text we now have took its present form. In this way they hope to 
find out some helpful things. 

The study of the first two stages is called Form Criticism. The 
study of the third stage is called Redaction Criticism. 

Thus far there can be no quarrel with this type of study. But 
problems begin to arise when we attempt to take the next steps. 

The work begins with two things. First we try to classify each 
unit in the Gospels according to the literary form. This is much 
like literary genre, but attempts a more detailed classification. 
We might even speak of minigenres. The critics think each passage 
in the Gospels is made up of several of these units. 

In the early days of Form Criticism, the critics commonly said the 
Evangelists were not authors at all. They were just "stringers of 
beads." Various people who had heard Jesus were reporting each 
just one thing He did or said. The Evangelists merely put these 
together in a string. Today the pendulum has swung far: now the 
critics see very remarkable artistry in the work of the 
Evangelists. (We recall that inspiration does not affect the 
literary style of an author one way or another). 

The second thing the critics watch in order to separate out the 
various units is what they call Sitz-im-Leben. It merely means the 
life situation in which each form or unit arose, which called for 
the type of form. At this point already the critics begin to show 
their great subjectivity. 

The two great pioneers who first applied this technique to the 
Gospels are R. Bultmann and M. Dibelius. (Still earlier, Hermann 
Gunkel [1862-1932] used the technique in the Old Testament). 

First, Bultmann and Dibelius disagree on how to classify the 
minigenres. For Bultmann the two chief major forms are the Sayings 
and the Narratives. Sayings include apothegms and dominical 
sayings. The apothegms are brief sayings of some importance. They 
include controversy dialogues, scholastic dialogues (where the 
inquirers are sincere) and biographical sayings. Dibelius uses the 
name paradigms instead of apothegms. Dibelius thinks only eight 
out of eighteen paradigms are pure in form. 

As to the so called controversy dialogues, Bultmann thinks they 
arose in the apologetic and polemic work of the Palestinian 
Church. He objects to calling these passages paradigms (examples 
of preaching) which is precisely what Dibelius does call them. For 
example, Bultmann says that the incident in Mark 2:1-12, the 
forgiveness and cure of the paralytic let down through the roof, 
is a controversy saying. But Dibelius says that such passages 
can't be described as disputes. Bultmann says the purpose was to 
enable the Church to trace its power to forgive sins back to 
Jesus. But Dibelius says the only point is the reality of the 
forgiveness. 

It is remarkable to hear Bultmann admit explicitly:

"Naturally enough, our judgement will not be made in terms of 
objective criteria, but will depend on taste and discrimination" 
(R. Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition, tr. J. Marsh, 
N. Y., Harper & Row, 1963, p. 47). 

The critics commonly assert that the primitive community was 
"creative." That is, it made things up. So Bultmann thought the 
controversy dialogues were creations of the Church. We could 
visualize it thus: two groups in the Church are disputing. Group A 
has no saying of Jesus to prove its point, so it makes one up. 
Group B does the same. 

But on the contrary, the concern these Christians had for their 
own eternity would prevent such fakery. St. Ignatius of Antioch 
was sent to Rome to be eaten by the wild beasts, around 107 A. D. 
He was eaten. He wrote a heroic letter to Rome, which we still 
have, in which he says he wants to die for Christ. If one of the 
Christians there might have influence, and could get him off, 
Ignatius still wants to die! Now if anyone is tempted to think the 
community was creative, let him take a copy of Ignatius' letter to 
Rome to the zoo, and read it in front of the lions' den and ask 
himself if a man about to be eaten would be creative and indulge 
in fakery. 

Not strangely, in view of the alleged creativity, the critics find 
it hard to be sure of anything. They propose four criteria to see 
if a thing is genuine: 1)Double dissimilarity or irreductibility: 
This means that if an idea is unlike the emphases of both ancient 
Judaism and early Christianity, it may come from Jesus; 2)Multiple 
attestation: if we find the same idea coming in different literary 
forms, it is more likely to be genuine; 3) Coherence: If the item 
fits with material we already know is authentic by other criteria, 
it is likely to be genuine. 4) Linguistic and environmental 
tests:. If the material does not fit with the languages spoken or 
the environment of Jesus we reject it. But if it does fit, it is 
not enough to prove it is authentic. 

It is obvious that such criteria, especially the first, would rule 
out many things that are genuine. We saw earlier that we can make 
a bypass around these worries of critics by means of apologetics, 
using only six very simple things from the Gospels. 

The leftists love to quote the fact that this 1964 Instruction 
does say Catholic scholars may use these techniques. This is 
correct, for the method can be used well and be helpful. But many 
like to forget the warnings in the Instruction: "Certain followers 
of this method, led astray by the prejudices of rationalism, [1] 
reject the existence of a supernatural order and the intervention 
of a personal God in the world as taught by revelation properly so 
called and, [2] they reject the possibility and actual existence 
of miracles and prophecies. [3] Others start with a false notion 
of faith, as if faith does not care about historical truth or is 
even incompatible with it. [4] Still others deny, as it were in 
advance, the historical value and character of the documents of 
revelation. [5] Others, finally, think little of the authority of 
the Apostles as witnesses of Christ, and of their role and 
influence on the primitive community, while they extol the 
creative power of this community. All these things are not only 
opposed to Catholic doctrine, but also lack a scientific 
foundation, and are foreign to the right principles of the 
historical method." [We added numbers for convenience in 
reference]. 

Of course persons like Bultmann have these prejudices. In regard 
to ##1 &2, Bultmann wrote that today "nobody reckons with direct 
intervention by transcendent powers" (Jesus Christ and Mythology, 
Charles Scribner's Sons, N. Y., 1958, p. 36). On p. 15 of the same 
book he says that the whole conception of the world supposed in 
the New Testament is mythological. In his Kerygma and Myth (ed. H. 
W. Bartsch, tr. Reginald H. Fuller, N. Y. Harper & Row, 
Torchbooks, 1961, 2nd ed. I. p. 5) he says that anyone who has 
seen electric light and the wireless cannot believe in spirits and 
miracles. 

Some Catholics have taken similar attitudes today. Thus R. E. 
Brown once wrote (in: "The Myth of the Gospels without Myth" in 
St. Anthony's Messenger, May 1971, pp. 45-46) that to accept all 
the miracles in the Gospel would be fundamentalism, and adds that 
no respectable scholar, Catholic or Protestant would do that 
today. It is good to be able to say that now the NJBC (pp. 1320-
21), which espouses some unfortunate views on errors in Scripture, 
still admits that extraordinary deeds like exorcisms and cures by 
Jesus were never denied in ancient times, not even by the enemies 
of Jesus - they would instead attribute them to magic or the 
devil. 

The third criticism of the Instruction says that some start with a 
false notion of faith, as if faith would not care about historical 
truth. Patrick Henry, in a broad survey of conditions at the time 
of writing (New Directions in New Testament Study, Westminster, 
1979, pp. 252-53) reports various views: "Much more important is 
the Bible's own portrayal of the 'piety of doubt', the 
'faithfulness of uncertainty." And a writer in Catholic Biblical 
Quarterly (July 1982, pp. 447-69) after saying Scripture is full 
of errors, says that to want to answer charges of error shows a 
lack of faith, and is "a kind of idolatry that gives a certitude 
that trespasses upon the true Christian faith-relationship with 
God." Shades of Bultmann, who in the article cited from Kerygma 
and Myth said, on pp. 211 and 19 that it is illegitimate and 
sinful to want to have a basis for faith! 

In regard to # 4, the denial of the historical character, we must 
of course, take into account the genre of any part of Scripture we 
are considering. But some insist that the Gospels are just 
preaching. In a way this is true they are preaching. We recall 
that the third stage mentioned above consists of writing down some 
part of the original preaching under inspiration. But we must 
still remember that concern for their eternity would mean that the 
preaching of the Apostles and others was the truth. Some writers 
today make statements that could be confusing. Thus Joseph 
Fitzmyer, in Christological Catechism (Paulist, 1981, p. 118, note 
34) writes that it is not easy to define what a gospel is or to 
say in what "gospel truth" may consist. "In any case" he says ", 
it is not simply identical with 'historical truth' in some 
fundamentalistic sense."

In contrast, DV #19 tells us: "Holy Mother the Church firmly and 
most constantly has held and does hold that the four Gospels 
mentioned, whose historicity it unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully 
hand on what Jesus the Son of God, living among men, really did 
and taught for their eternal salvation." Bede Rigeaux, in his 
commentary on this passage in the Commentary on the Documents of 
Vatican II (edited by H. Vorgrimler III, p. 259) explained that in 
this passage we see the clear intention of the Church to accept 
the value of the synoptic Gospels "as testimony to the reality of 
the events that they narrate and to the certainty with which they 
present us with the Person, the words, and the acts of Jesus."

The Instruction does grant what we said before, that the Gospels 
do not always use the same words, but adapt them to their 
audience: "The fact that the Evangelists report the words or deeds 
of the Lord in different order does not affect at all the truth of 
the narrative, for they keep the sense, while reporting His 
statements, not to the letter, but in different ways."

There has been confusion about a further statement in DV # 19: 
"The Apostles after the ascension of the Lord, handed on to their 
hearers the things which He Himself had said and done, with the 
fuller understanding which they enjoyed since they were instructed 
by the glorious events of Christ and the light of the Spirit of 
truth." Cf. Jn 2:19-21; 3:22; 6:6; 12:16; 20:9. 

Of course, this does not mean they invented things or falsified 
things. For example, the Gospels still portray the Apostles as 
slow to understand and weak in character. They had not understood 
His prophecies of His death and resurrection, since their minds 
were filled with the false notion that He would restore the 
kingship to Israel - just before the ascension one of them asked 
if that was the time for it (Acts 1:6). And after the 
multiplication of the loaves, they had not understood that either, 
as Mark 6:52 reports. 

Again, they did not understand His predictions of His death and 
resurrection at the time they were given. Later, in the light of 
the glorious events, they did understand, and preached correctly 
and wrote appropriately in the Gospels, without, however, 
presenting themselves as having understood at the time. 

So the Instruction did well to warn against considerable dangers, 
which Catholic scholars have not always avoided. But yet the 
technique is valuable, even though it can be used well or badly. 
Let us look at an example or two, both good and bad. 

Reginald H. Fuller, one of the chief critics, in Foundations of 
New Testament Christology (Charles Scribner's Sons, N. Y. 1965, p. 
109) made a very influential analysis of Mark 8:29-33. Jesus is up 
at Caesarea Philippi. He asks His disciples who people says He is. 
They report various views. Now we will number the units Fuller 
thought he found: 1) He asks the Apostles who they say He is. 
Peter replies: You are the Messiah. 2) Jesus tells them not to 
tell anyone about it. 3) He predicts His death and resurrection, 
and Peter objects to His death. 4) "Get behind me, satan."

Fuller found no objection to units 1 and 4. But He thought units 2 
and 3 were faked by the Church. Jesus had never said He was 
Messiah. Later the Church was embarrassed, and so invented scenes 
in which the subject would come up, and Jesus would tell them to 
keep quiet about it. This notion is really the result of the work 
of Wilhelm Wrede, The Messianic Secret (tr. J. C. C. Greig, James 
Clarke Co., Cambridge and London, 1971, 3rd edition). Wrede gave 
several instances in the Gospels, in which this happened. He said 
his strongest case was the raising of the daughter of Jairus, 
after which Jesus called for silence. But, exclaimed Wrede: anyone 
could see the girl was alive. So this was faked by the Church. 

The reply is extremely simple: Jesus went into the house with only 
the parents, and Peter, James and John. He raised the girl, and 
called for silence. If the crowds found out, they might seize Him 
and proclaim Him king Messiah, with a false notion of Messiahship. 
But how long did He need to keep it quiet? Just long enough for 
Him to slip out quietly and get on His way to the next village. 

So Fuller and Wrede have failed to invalidate the second unit. 

In the third unit Jesus predicts His death and resurrection. But, 
when these things happened, the Apostles acted as if they had 
never heard about them. So, the critics conclude: The Church faked 
this unit. 

Again, the answer is simple: If someone has a fixed framework of 
ideas in his mind, and something that would clash tries to get in, 
it usually does not get in. For example, in the 19th century, one 
of the three discoverers of germs (along with Pasteur and Lister) 
was Dr. Semmelweis in Hungary. He therefore told the other Doctors 
to use antiseptic precautions - which they had never heard of. So 
they put him into an insane asylum for the rest of his life!. 
(Scientists can be rougher on science than the Church!). 

Again, Norman Perrin of the University of Chicago said in his 
book, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (Harper & Row, N. Y., 
1967, p. 16) that at one time he was inclined to believe the 
Gospels. But then, form criticism over and over again showed him 
he could not trust them. He gives his strongest example: Mark 9. 
1, "There are some standing here who will not taste death until 
they see the Kingdom of God come with power." Mt 16:28 is the 
same, except that they will see "the Son of Man coming in his 
kingdom." In Lk 9:27 they see merely "the Kingdom of God." Matthew 
and Mark, thinks Perrin, expect the end soon. But Luke has settled 
down to "the long haul of history." So there is a clash. 

Again, the answer is easy. All three synoptics put this line just 
before the Transfiguration, so that could be what they would see. 
But better, many scholars admit (e.g., John L. McKenzie, 
Dictionary of the Bible, p. 481; R. E. Brown, in The Churches the 
Apostles Left Behind, p. 52 - cf. also his Responses to 101 
Questions on the Bible, p. 12) that often in the Synoptics the 
Church is called the Kingdom of God. Thus in the end of the 
parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus says (Mt. 21:43): "The 
kingdom will be taken from you and given to a people who will 
bring fruit." It meant that the Pharisees would be out of the 
People of God, and others would take their place (the gentiles). 
The implication is similar in the parable of the net and the 
parable of the weeds in the wheat, as well as in other places. 

So they will see the kingdom, the Church, and it will be coming 
with power. Power in the Greek is dynamis. That word in the plural 
means displays of power, i.e., miracles. So they will live to see 
the Church being spread with miracles. As to the form in Matthew, 
they will see the Son of Man, Christ, coming in His kingdom. It 
means visiting, taking care of His Church by His power (the 
concept of Hebrew paqad, taking care of it). Luke's reading, "the 
kingdom" is of course no problem, makes no clash. So Perrin was 
not really "forced" by form criticism to give up on the Gospels. 
He had a mental framework, in which there was no room for the 
facts on this text. 

So Fuller's analysis fails since he did not succeed in showing 
units 2 and 3 to be false, faked by the Church. But if we, since 
it is interesting, imagine he had proved it, then he would read 
units 1 and 4: Jesus asks the Apostles who they say He is. Peter 
says: The Messiah. "Get behind me satan". He angrily rejects the 
title of Messiah. 

This false analysis has been a large root of the claims of 
ignorance in Jesus. 

Then there is the strange case of Teilhard de Chardin, who thought 
that just before the return of Christ at the end, most people 
would be joined together in a wonderful unity, like a totalitarian 
state, but not painful: it would be love that would bind them. He 
must have read Luke 18:8: "When the Son of Man comes, do you think 
He will find faith on the earth?" or 2 Thessalonians 2.3 which 
also predicted a great falling away from the faith. Or Matthew 
24:12: "Because sin will reach its peak, the love of most people 
will grow cold. Chardin too had a fixed framework of ideas, and so 
could not see. 

But as we said, this technique can be used well. For example, Mark 
13:30 says: "This generation will not pass away before all these 
things take place." Form criticism helps us here, by pointing out 
that things are sometimes put into different settings, so that it 
is likely that the original context of this verse was one of the 
fall of Jerusalem. Still further, Hebrew dor can mean generation, 
but can also mean a time period - here - the Christian regime - 
and so the sense could be that the Christian regime is the last 
phases of God's dealings with our race. It is never to be replaced 
as the Old Testament was. DV # 4 assures us this is the case. 

One more example. When Jesus says that if anyone would come after 
Him, he must take up his cross. Now the cross in the literal sense 
was known to all the people of his land and time. But He meant it 
in a modified sense, in the sense of imitating him by self-denial 
and acceptance of providential sufferings. We gather then, that it 
is not very likely that Jesus used these words about taking up 
one's cross, though He expressed the same thought in another way. 
It would be only later, when the Church had meditated on this 
point, that such language would be understood by most persons. 

Form and Redaction criticism today is under some attack. Reginald 
H. Fuller, a chief critic, and author of the analysis of the scene 
at Caesarea Philippi we just saw, has now charged that Form 
criticism is bankrupt, and that the bankruptcy should be overcome 
by feedback from the believing community! Fuller showed bad 
judgment twice. First there was bad judgment when he and others 
were so very confident they had scientifically proved things, when 
really the whole historical critical method (of which Form 
Criticism is a part, as also the approach via literary genres) 
seldom gives conclusive proof of anything, since it relies mostly 
on internal evidence (e.g., the claim that Luke wrote the prophecy 
of the fall of Jerusalem after 70 AD since he spoke of any army 
surrounding Jerusalem). Internal evidence by its nature seldom 
gives more than probability. Fuller shows bad judgment a second 
time in throwing out the baby with the bath, for these techniques 
really are useful if only one uses them with keen awareness of 
their limitations. 

Further, the critics, as we saw, think it important to discover 
the life situation, the Sitz-im-Leben of each form. But there is 
heavy uncertainty about a very major case of this. The traditional 
view was that Mark wrote at Rome, from the preaching of St. Peter. 
Some major scholars still agree, e.g., Martin Hengel of Tubingen, 
in his Studies in the Gospel of Mark (tr. J. Bowden, Philadelphia, 
Fortress, 1985, p. 29). Hengel thinks Mark wrote to help 
Christians facing the persecution of Nero. But others, e. g, 
Wilfred Harrington (Mark, Wilmington, Glazier, 1979 p. xii) thinks 
it comes from a Christian community in Syria between 66 and 70 AD. 
R. E. Brown, in Antioch and Rome (Brown and Meier, Paulist, 1983, 
pp. 199-200) admits he cannot know what purpose Mark had in mind, 
and that we cannot be sure we know what is tradition and what is 
editing by Mark - a major step in Form Criticism. C. F. Evans, in 
The Cambridge History of the Bible (3 vols, Cambridge University, 
1960-63, I, pp. 270-71) is almost in despair on this question 
about Mark. 

In regard to the possible rearrangement of materials by the 
Evangelists, we must ask about retrojection? It consists in 
writing up something that really happened after the resurrection 
as if it happened before. Could this be legitimately done? Yes 
under some conditions, chiefly that the words attributed to Jesus 
were really said by Him, even if in different form. Otherwise 
retrojection is a lie, and contrary to inspiration. Today there is 
much ferment about the question of whether it was chiefly the 
Romans, or the Jews who were guilty of the death of Jesus. Vatican 
II, in <Nostra aetate> #4 said there is a special and a general 
guilt. All who sin have the general guilt. But only those Jews who 
were before Pilate screaming for His blood contracted the special 
guilt. We could add that even those Jews not present may have 
acquiesced or ratified it by their persecution which came very 
soon.

But to blame merely or chiefly the Romans is to make a lie of St. 
John's Gospel, and parts of Matthew as well. John pictured Pilate 
as knowing the innocence of Jesus and of trying to get Him off.

The retrojectors like to blame most of this on the Romans, and say 
that later in the century, when hostility between Jews and 
Christians became hot, the Christians invented, retrojected, the 
claims of His clash with the Jews.

To say that is to make the Gospels a lie. Sadly, not only some 
Jews but even some Catholics, even priests and Bishops, charge 
this retrojection.

Commentators on Daniel very often say that his book contains 
prophecies made after the event--that is, it was written after the 
time of Antiochus IV of Syria, and retrojected to the 6th century. 
Would such a retrojection be illegitimate? No in this special 
case, for the genre is apocalyptic, in which fanciful things can 
be said without deception.

Another fertile source of confusion is the use of the 
theologoumenon. In that pattern we find language changed very 
greatly, e.g., these commentators say she was not physically a 
virgin: to say that is just a way of expressing her holiness. How 
can we know if such a thing is being done in a concrete case? At 
least most of the time we must have recourse to the teachings of 
the Magisterium. Several early Councils, cited in Vatican II, On 
the Church #57,have affirmed that physically she was a virgin. LG 
57 itself said she showed her Firstborn to the shepherds and the 
Magi, He who did not diminish but consecrated her virginal 
integrity." That last word is of course a physical word.

In similar ways and by the abuse of form and redaction criticism, 
the pseudo-scholars are having a field day, vying as it were with 
each other to see who can say the most outrageous things. Then the 
media call them heralds of new knowledge. But those who follow 
what we have just explained need not be mislead.

We need to notice too that Semites are apt to use approximation, 
as Pius XII reminded us in his Encyclical. Especially is this the 
case on numbers. Thus the Hebrew of Jonah says God will destroy 
the city in 40 days. But the Greek LXX makes it 3 days. In 
Galatians 1-2 Paul says that after his conversion he went to 
Arabia, and then after three years went to Jerusalem. We do not 
know where to start counting the three years. Also he says in 2.1 
that after 14 years he went to Jerusalem again-we do not know 
where to start counting the 14 years. And in Numbers 25.1 we read 
that 24,000 Jews fell--but Paul in 1 Cor 10.8 gives only 23,000.

Semites are not modern Americans.

Chapter 7: Which are the Inspired Books?

In our sketch of apologetics in chapter 2, we said that the only 
way to be sure which books are inspired is to accept the decision 
of the Church. Actually, the Church was in no hurry to give 
definitive statements on this subject. Why?

We saw in chapter 6 that Form Criticism shows the Church has 
something more basic than the Gospels, its own ongoing teaching. 
Up to the time of Luther, people did not basically depend on 
Scripture, they simply followed the oral teaching of the Church, 
which, as we said, is primary. Jesus never told the Apostles: 
Write Some books, give out copies, tell people to figure them out 
for themselves. This is what the "Reformers" implied. It is 
foolish. Copies were very expensive, not everyone could read, and 
the study of Scripture is quite difficult, One should know the 
original languages, genres, history and culture among other 
things. In addition, the Second Epistle of Peter tells us (3:15-
16) that in the Epistles of St. Paul there are many things that 
are hard are hard to understand: the unlearned and unstable twist 
them to their own destruction. The "Reformers" surely proved that 
right. 

Instead, we find in Second Timothy 1:13: "Hold to the form of 
sound teaching which you heard from me." And again in 2:2: "The 
things which you heard from me, through many witnesses, hand on to 
trustworthy men, who will be able in turn to teach others."

Not strange then that the Church saw no urgent need to draw up a 
canon, that is, a list of inspired books. St. Justin Martyr, in 
his defense of Christianity to the Jew Trypho (Dialogue, chapter 
32, cf 68) says he will use only the Scripture that the Jews would 
accept - a natural move in such a dialogue. 

There was an unofficial list in the Muratorian Fragment - which 
was found at Milan. It dates from late second century, and does 
give a list of books. However we see in it some early hesitations. 
Not mentioned are the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistles of 
James and Peter. It rejects some pseudo- Pauline letters to 
Laodicea, and Gnostic, Marcionite and Montanist writings in 
general. From this we gather that a stimulus to make a list came 
from the existence of heretical writings. Marcion rejected the 
entire Old Testament, and three Gospels, keeping part of Luke and 
some of St. Paul's Epistles. 

While most of the books of Old and New Testament were accepted by 
the Church from the beginning, there were some hesitations, such 
as those about the so-called Deuterocanonicals, which are, in 
general those books that are found in the Septuagint (the ancient 
Greek version of the Old Testament) but not in the Hebrew Old 
Testament. (They include in general: Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, 1 and 
2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith and additions to Esther and Daniel).

There were also other hesitations, for example, the Epistle to the 
Hebrews was accepted very early in the East, chiefly at 
Alexandria, but the west did not accept it until the fourth 
century. In reverse, the Apocalypse/Revelation was accepted early 
in the west, only later in the East. Many fathers - chiefly: 
Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian and 
Hippolytus believed the John who was its author was the Apostle 
John. Other fathers, chiefly: Denis of Alexandria, Eusebius of 
Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen and John 
Chrysostom thought it was not the Apostle John. 

St. Augustine accepted the longer canon (list - including the 
deuterocanonicals) and defended it in his De Doctrina Christiana 
8. At the Council of Hippo, his diocese, in 393 AD the longer 
canon was accepted, and repeated and confirmed in the 3rd and 4th 
Councils of Carthage in 397 and 418. At the end of the decree was 
a request to Pope Boniface to confirm it. In 405 St. Exsuperius, 
Bishop of Toulouse, wrote to Pope Innocent I, asking him for a 
ruling. The Pope wrote back to him, repeating the list drawn up by 
the Councils. As a result there was much unanimity in the west in 
the 5th century, though the East was slower to accept, waiting 
until the 7th century. 

But even in the west there was some difficulty, especially under 
the influence of St. Jerome, who tended to favo