"Called to Communion"

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Catholic_Mike

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Maybe someone here can help. I’m reading “Called To Communion” (by Cardinal Ratzinger in his Prefect days), and there is something I don’t quite understand within a chapter I really like.

He talks about the significance of the twelve apostles - reflecting the twelve tribes of Israel - and then goes on to discuss the group of seventy[two?] deciples.

“The group of seventy, or seventy-two, of which Luke speaks supplements this symbolism; seventy (seventy-two) was, according to Jewish tradition (Gen 10; Ex 1:5; Dt 32:8), the number of the non-Jewish peoples in the world.*”

When I went back and looked up those three sections, I have trouble seeing how they are related, especially the last two. I’m also kind of bothered by the “70 or 72” imprecision of the whole thing. And I find it odd he makes no mention of Moses 70 helpers - could that be a counter-explination?

*Cf. K. H. Rengstorf, Das Evangelium nach Lukas (Gottingen, 1968), 132 f.
 
Hi, I don’t think that the (now Pope) was denying the 70 helpers of Moses; rather he was emphasizing something else without excluding that. Imho.
God bless,
Jaypeeto4 (aka Jaypeeto3)
 
They did not have free speech in that time. So to say you were going to unit the Jews and all Gentiles could result in your death! A common method to work around this was to use #'s of religious significance. The Roman’s were not religious and did not see the significance of these numbers. So 7 is universal, 666 is Caesar, 72 is the Gentiles, 12 is the Jews, etc
 
I don’t know if this might help, because I do not know the context of the passage that has the words, but around 225 BC when the Jews were putting a canon of scripture together, 6 people from the 12 tribes were gathered in Alexandria and put together the Septuigiant of the OT.
Don’t know if this helps ?
Mdcpensive1
 
I don’t know if this might help, because I do not know the context of the passage that has the words, but around 225 BC when the Jews were putting a canon of scripture together, 6 people from the 12 tribes were gathered in Alexandria and put together the Septuigiant of the OT.
Don’t know if this helps ?
Mdcpensive1
 
The Navarre Bible commentary on Luke 10:1-12 says, in part:
The number 72 . . . may be an allusion to the descendants of Noah (cf. Gen 10) who made up the nations prior to the scattering that followed the destruction of the tower of Babel. Anyway, this mission seems to point to the universal scope of Christ’s mission.
 
mdcpensive1 said:
I don’t know if this might help, because I do not know the context of the passage that has the words, but around 225 BC when the Jews were putting a canon of scripture together, 6 people from the 12 tribes were gathered in Alexandria and put together the Septuigiant of the OT.
Don’t know if this helps ?
Mdcpensive1
Click to expand...
Actually Ratzinger mentioned that too 🙂
 
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