Biblical Interpolations and the Errancy of Scripture

[Pope_Noah_I]

How does the Church deal with accusations against the traditionally ascribed authorship of the Bible? I’ve heard that some of the Pauline epistles were more likely than not authored by the Apostle, and that there are other, rather significant interpolations in the text, such as the traditional wording of the baptismal formula and other things. How does the Church respond to these accusations?

 

[Crumpy]

How does the Church deal with accusations against the traditionally ascribed authorship of the Bible? I’ve heard that some of the Pauline epistles were more likely than not authored by the Apostle, and that there are other, rather significant interpolations in the text, such as the traditional wording of the baptismal formula and other things. How does the Church respond to these accusations?

Your question: how does the “Church” respond? Are these "accusations? Accusations of what?

Scripture commentaries that I have seen usually build a case for or against a hypothesis.

If there was an official Church position about who authored each book, I don’t think that the Ignatius Study Bible, for example, or the New American Bible, would show the arguments for or against Pauline authorship for example.

In some cases, such as some of Paul’s epistles, he identifies himself as the author and maybe even gives autobiographical evidence or data for his authorship. Many other books of the bible don’t do one, the other, or both of those.

The letter of James is a case study. First verse says the letter is from James a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s not very specific. It’s thought that the readers would understand who the author was. If this is James “the brother of Jesus” then he is not expressing that for whatever reason, perhaps that his being a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ is MORE important than introducing himself as the brother of Jesus, if this is “that” James of scripture.

So, in each case, each book of the bible is analyzed for internal and external evidence of authorship. There’s the direct evidence that I have mentioned, and then there’s external evidence about later Christian leaders and their opinions. The Church leaves these questions “open” for later investigation.

In the most recent “official” Church document about scripture (“Verbum Domini” which you can access at the Vatican through the EWTN website document library), the Holy Father reminds us that all study of scripture has a goal of understanding what God is saying to us. His remarks there are extensive and cannot be summarized easily, here. But, with that goal, authorship is a question, but not an insurmountable one. The Church is focused on the revelation of God, and not restrained by the question of authorship.

The authorship IS an important question to helping to understand the meaning of the book, but no one has gotten totally hung up on it, that I know of.

Wow, you’re really tying everything togther in one big ball, aren’t you? Authorship? Interpolations, and, then, last but not least, errancy of scripture? You must have read a lot already, to ask such a compact, complicated question – about every book of the bible.

You’re not going to get an answer to your question about every book of the Bible. You need resources beyond the limits of a study bible; you probably need a set or two of full commentaries.

In the Catholic “The New Jerome Biblical Commentary” which is a hefty volume, you will find discussions of these subjects. But, it takes THEM hundred of pages to lay it out. No one here will be able to fit all that into a post or two.

Having said this, what is your NEXT question? or, why are you asking this?

 

[Verbum]

Hi Noah,

There may be disputes about authorship but there is no dispute about inspiration. What counts is that the New Testament is the word of God.

Interpolations are eliminated through textual criticism. All the extent manuscripts of the bible are put into relation with each other to attain the text closest to the original. For example, in the Our Father, the words “For thine is the kingdom, etc.” have been proven to be a liturgical interpolation not in the original text, and therefore not inspired.

Does this answer your question?

Verbum

 

[Pope_Noah_I]

Dear Crumpy,

I apologize for the question being so compact, but when I posted it I was in kind of a hurry and didn’t have time to expand upon my question. So, let me try again.

My problem is this. For millennia, apparently, the Church has unambiguously held the traditional view of authorship in regards to the New Testament canon. That is, that Mark wrote Mark, John wrote John, and that Paul wrote all those letters. However, it seems as though modern scholarship has largely undermined this traditional attribution of authorship. No longer can we, with any real scholarly confidence, claim Apostolic authorship of John, for example. That does not reflect well on the Church’s ability to understand scripture, if we’ve apparently botched even the authorship for the past 1,900 years.

Interpolations, likewise, present a problem in this regard. From what I’ve heard from a professor, the two Gospel accounts of the Ascension have been removed in modern, scholarly approved Bibles. Why? Because they were both shown to be later additions. As was the baptismal formula. If this is true, and the Church is the infallible guide to scripture, then why were these not detected and removed earlier?

As for errancy, well, how do we know that these later interpolations aren’t errors? If they were inserted later on by more-likely-than=not uninspired authors, what theological weight do they carry? As far as I can see, none.

Please, please blast these arguments out of the water. I love Catholicism, but, unfortunately, I’m also a philosophy major that’s prone to questioning everything. And I’d feel dishonest defending the scriptural intergrity of Catholicism if I still have these questions.

 

[bogeydogg]

I think the first thing to remember is that a lot of what you are asking about is of very late opinion. I know this does not fly in the halls of academia today, but if you were studying any historical source (other than Scripture) the opinions of those expressed about a document closer to its writing would carry heavier weight.

However this is not the case with Scripture. Why? A great many scholarly critics begin with a post-19th century liberal mentality which began with the assumption that all of the “mythological elements” need to be gotten rid of. As such the resurrection, the virgin birth, the ascension, the miracles all have to go. Once these things are eschewed then surprise surprise the scholarly person then no longer believes the text to be inerrant. Following that then you get to call anything you want a gloss and all your scholar buddies nod their head because you have found something new to babble about.

And of course anyone who bothers to point out that the great thinkers in Church history, who btw are considered great thinkers in and out of the Church, disagree with you well that person is arguing in circles because they begin with the presupposition that God exists and has revealed Himself.

But how is the presupposition that the Bible is true any better than the presupposition that it is not? Are we seriously supposed to believe that controversy about Scripture is new? Ever heard of Arius? Pelagius? Montanus? Marcion? How about Nestorius? Or maybe the Gnostics? Or the whole slate of non-Christian thinkers who have doubted the Bible (remember the Summa was a reply to Muslim thinkers)? Are we seriously supposed to believe that the modern critic has thought of something new that two thousand years of heresy hasn’t covered yet?

These Scholars sit around and get tenure for deciding Scripture is not true while being paid by pseudo-church institutions which don’t believe the Bible is true and then we are surprised to find that those who go to seminary leave without faith.

But the vast majority of brilliant men for two thousand years believed that the Bible is true and trustworthy and I will not be so easily dissuaded by the atheist wrapped in tenure telling me its not so because an 18th century German said so no matter what the NJB says.

One more thing, the Gospels are unsigned documents and it has always been held as such. The belief in the signatories being Matthew Mark Luke and John is based on tradition, which tradition arose very early on. If we apply standard historical study methods these traditions are far more trustworthy and the critics are the gloss.

Of course if we say that we’ll be unacceptable in the halls of academia…

but the pagans can go to Hell I’m going to Church.

God Bless

 

[Salvatore123]

Noah,

I assure you that I am not making a statement and then running for the hills

It is late, I have an upcoming trial, but I wanted to at least say something in response to the “charge” of errancy in scripture.

If one accepts that the books of the bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit, then no sort of error of any kind can exist in the Bible. Period. End of discussion. No debate.

In his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Pope Leo XIII wrote that since God is the author of scripture, “it follows that they who think any error is contained in the authentic passages of the Sacred Books surely either pervert the Catholic notion of divine inspiration, or make God Himself the source of error.”

Thus, by claiming error in the bible, either or both of two things occur:

1. The notion of inspiration is perverted
2. God is the author of error

There is no third “alternative”, because if God is not the author, then one does not have to worry about God erring in a thing he did not write, but if God is the author of scripture, then one cannot say that scripture has error that was produced by God - a being who cannot err.

Three primary areas of scripture are attacked for “error”:

A. Science

B. Religion

C. History

I will expound on these in a later post.

But consider the following as an example of how we, even today, say things that are clearly wrong, but we say them nevertheless and take them for granted and never question them because of the WAY in which they are said and the way in which they are UNDERSTOOD:

“The Sun rises in the east and sets in the West”.

From an astronomical standpoint, this is obviously incorrect. The Sun does not rise or set - the Earth rotates (spins) on its axis and this causes the Sun to appear and disappear out of view, depending on where one is on Earth at any given time.

It is in the spirit in which we do not “consider” the above description to be in error (even though, scientifically, it is), that we approach the three areas of the bible I mentioned above and can conclude that error does not exist.