Is this true?

[twf]

People often like to appeal to the notion that the Bible was never intended to be a history book. This is true to a point. But the truth of the matter is, that the Sacred Writers employed many genres, including history. Not all of Sacred Scripture was intended to be literal history, but parts were. In such cases, we must hold to the historic accounts presented to us by the Sacred Writers. (There are, of course, thousands of archeological finds that support various Scriptural accounts !). I refer everyon to USMC’s post above…the Magisterium has made this clear.

Note: I am not saying that, for example, the Book of Jonah was necessarily literally true. It very well could be, for nothing is beyond the power of God, but it is also possible that the author never intended to record a literally true historic event in this particular case. (Or so scholars tell me!) However, my point is that when the author does intend to convey history (example, the Kings, or Chronicles books), we must hold it to be protected from error as well. (See the document posted by USMC).

 

[rwoehmke]

The senses of Scripture

115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."83
One must bear in mind that “literal” here is not the same as the “literal” we use when speaking of the interpretations applied by fundimentalist readers. The rules of sound interpretation are very important to the “literal” sense which is to take into consideration the time in which the material was written, the form of literature(poem, narrative, etc), what was going on at the time it was written, recognizing colloquialisms and words having changed meaning over time, what the intent of the author was, and so forth. The fundimentalist looks only at the ordinary meaning of the words as they are currently defined, hence “ordinary” meaning rather than “literal” meaning might be a better way of describing their interpretation.

 

[kleary]

NonDenom:

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document that says some parts of the Bible are not actually true. The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning that people should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible. The document, called The Gift of Scripture, says, “we should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision.

Actually the quotation is absolutely true because not all revealed truth of Science is contained in Scripture, not is the complete history and teachings of Christianity. (Actually this is nothing new, it has been repeated such in the past, especially at Trent when it rejected Sola Scriptura.

The headline and article is not true as indicated in posts previous to mine.

Ken