Biblical Criticism

[TOME]

As for the question about how does this help the average reader, I would say there’s a good possibility that it may not and while I won’t give specific example from other post - which I did find enlightening however I just want to go in a slightly different direction.

I think we are missing an important point when talking about Daniel as we have. I belive the real value of the study of scripture in this light lies in the fact that through the use of Biblical Criticism, Daniel was identified as a particular style of writing whose gerne was understood by the people of Daniel’s time and place. It is a literary style that was known and found in other cultures as well.

What I am talking about is that the importance of the study of Daniel is Daniel is an peice of Apocolyptic Liturature. This type of writing has a specific style and is written for a particular groupe. Briefly, it is written for a people who is being persecuted, it describes the persecution as a conflict of “armed struggle” inwhich the antagonist in the begging is winning but then the
people for whom the liturature is being written triumphs because of there faith and perservence.

Again, it was a style of liturature well known though out the Mediterrian world so much so that this actually the same type of liturature that we find in Revelations. So with that understanding of Daniel that was developed though Biblical Criticism, then perhaps the answers to some of the questions raised are made easier, as well as the actual message of the Book of Daniel itself.

 

[BayCityRickL]

Mot Juste:

Do the traditional Bible scholars (e.g. Hahn, Navarre) reject the historical critical method?

–Bill

Hey, in the other current thread on “historical criticism - help!” there is a link to a Scott Hahn / Karl Keating article in which Karl interviews Scott on this subject. It has stuff that I haven’t found in other links in that thread to discussions of h.c.m. Hahn makes a strong case against h.c.m. as it is practiced currently.

Karl spoke to Scott in his basement, amid his 27,000 volumes mostly on the subject of theology.

On the EWTN website, in the document library, search on Ratzinger and you will find his 1988 speech discussing the problems of the h.c.m. ( Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger )

I also glazed over on the document with Ratzinger’s comments on the 10th anniversary of the CCC, but it, too, has an even deeper discussion of h.c.m. ( THE CURRENT DOCTRINAL RELEVANCE OF THE CCC Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger )

I think it was in this speech that Ratz. touches on the four traditional “senses” of scripture, and it gave me what I was looking for, the distinction between fundamentalist approach to scripture (which is condemned) and the literal sense of scripture which Ratz. OKs.

 

[copland]

I share your concern about the liberal scholars who make these types of theories and try to pass them off as historical facts. All I can say as far as Daniel goes is that Jesus even quotes Daniel and attributes it to Daniel in Matthew 24:15 "When you see the desolating abomination spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),

Don’t let the liberals who claim to be Catholic cause you to disreguard Catholicism. Jesus said that the Gates of Hades shall not prevail against the Church, and He is right, but He said that because He knew that the Gates of Hades would sure be trying, and liberalism is just one of the tactics!

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

TOME:

As for the question about how does this help the average reader, I would say there’s a good possibility that it may not and while I won’t give specific example from other post - which I did find enlightening however I just want to go in a slightly different direction.

I think we are missing an important point when talking about Daniel as we have. I belive the real value of the study of scripture in this light lies in the fact that through the use of Biblical Criticism, Daniel was identified as a particular style of writing whose gerne was understood by the people of Daniel’s time and place. It is a literary style that was known and found in other cultures as well.

What I am talking about is that the importance of the study of Daniel is Daniel is an peice of Apocolyptic Liturature. This type of writing has a specific style and is written for a particular groupe. Briefly, it is written for a people who is being persecuted, it describes the persecution as a conflict of “armed struggle” inwhich the antagonist in the begging is winning but then the
people for whom the liturature is being written triumphs because of there faith and perservence.

Again, it was a style of liturature well known though out the Mediterrian world so much so that this actually the same type of liturature that we find in Revelations. So with that understanding of Daniel that was developed though Biblical Criticism, then perhaps the answers to some of the questions raised are made easier, as well as the actual message of the Book of Daniel itself.

I think your post shows how the HCM does help - it can do so, by helping people to ask some of the right questions and to avoid asking some at least of the wrong ones.​

 

[BayCityRickL]

## It is of course far too much to expect people who perpetuate this whiskery old misconception to read what the scholars actually think. That would upset the stereotype of the critic as, by nature, little better (if at all better) than an atheist or heretic. Fundamentalism depends upon attacking non-Fundamentalists for their failure to be Fundamentalists: this is a good reason to have no more to do with it. ##

I think that the label of fundamentalist gets dropped on people way too much and too easily.

There’s a problem or dilemma that historical criticism cannot address, that is why God inspired the word of scripture to be written as it was, and to be understood as it was for centuries. Card. Ratzinger, for example, said that the patristic and medieval understandings have not been abandoned by the Church, and that insights from historical criticism, properly done, take their place along side those historic understandings.

Ray Brown said, in the Jerome Commentary, that that work should not be referenced in a fundamentalist way itself (as I have seen it done), and he expected anyone so disposed to revise it, would heave-ho a lot of the stuff in it. I can’t wait.

And, we should also throw the magisterium of the church into the picture of the interpretation of the Bible. Let’s all face, the Church doesn’t really have its act together. Compare Jews and Muslims with their sacred texts - they study them, but they’re not chewing them up like Catholic scholars are.

 

[Funky_Cedars]

Gottle of Geer:

…if someone would only make a case for inerrancy that makes sense & is not full of holes…

i dunno, but this might help:

…Finally it is absolutely wrong and forbidden “either to narrow inspiration to certain passages of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred,” since divine inspiration “not only is essentially incompatible with error but excludes and rejects it absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and constant faith of the Church.” -from Pope Pius XII’s Encyclical, Divino Afflante Spiritu, wherein he quotes Pope Leo XIII.

the thinking is, how can Scripture be in error if it was provided ‘…to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct … so] that the man of God may be perfect’? (cf 2Tim 3:16-17)
thanks for listening, t

 

[buffalo]

Biblical criticism is one thing - Biblical skepticism quite another. The intent of the criticism is key.