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(AP) - Pope John Paul’s most recently published book…
Along the way, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium (Rizzoli) offers glimpses of the Pope’s attitudes toward modern biblical scholarship, leaning left on the Old Testament and leaning right on the New Testament.
Since 1906, the Pontifical Biblical Commission has moved markedly leftward. The 1993 decree on Bible interpretation it presented to John Paul was less worried about liberal theories than the “fundamentalist approach” to the Bible. It warned that the latter is “dangerous,” can “deceive” people, offers “illusory” interpretations, expresses “false certitude” and confuses the “divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.”
Fundamentalism “invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide,” the papal advisers charged.
Yet John Paul agrees with those benighted fundamentalists and their evangelical cousins - and against some Catholic experts - when his book turns to disputes about the New Testament accounts of Jesus Christ’s birth.
Last December, simultaneous Christmas cover stories in magazines Newsweek and Time gave ample attention to Catholic and other thinkers who treat the Nativity passages in Luke and Matthew as less than historical.
Mary and Joseph might seem plausible sources of information on Jesus’ birth, but Newsweek said neither “appears to have been a direct source.” The magazine didn’t explain why they wouldn’t have passed on recollections as happens in virtually all families. The Gospel writers “apparently had little to work with,” Newsweek concluded, and suggested that the narratives drew upon pagan mythology.
Similarly, Time thought the accounts fall short of strict historical criteria because they originated long after the events and relied upon few witnesses. But, as Time noted, conservatives argue that the Bible identifies Mary as a source of information in this notable sentence in Luke:
**“His mother kept all these things in her heart.”
That verse is the linchpin of John Paul’s argument, too.
He treats everything in Luke and Matthew as historical: ** the angel’s announcement of pregnancy, the Bethlehem visit, the inn without any room, the stable, visiting shepherds and Magi, and the flight into Egypt.
He writes: “All this was faithfully recorded in Mary’s memory and we may reasonably conclude that she passed it on to St. Luke, who was particularly close to her.”
Regarding not only Jesus’ birth but his life and death, “we may presume that Mary preserved all these events carved indelibly in her memory,” the Pope asserts.
John Paul believes that a feminine mystique was operating: “To tell the truth, memory belongs more to the mystery of woman than to that of man. Thus it is in the history of families, in the history of tribes and nations, and thus too in the history of the church.”
cbc.ca/cp/world/050409/w040944.html
Along the way, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium (Rizzoli) offers glimpses of the Pope’s attitudes toward modern biblical scholarship, leaning left on the Old Testament and leaning right on the New Testament.
Since 1906, the Pontifical Biblical Commission has moved markedly leftward. The 1993 decree on Bible interpretation it presented to John Paul was less worried about liberal theories than the “fundamentalist approach” to the Bible. It warned that the latter is “dangerous,” can “deceive” people, offers “illusory” interpretations, expresses “false certitude” and confuses the “divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.”
Fundamentalism “invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide,” the papal advisers charged.
Yet John Paul agrees with those benighted fundamentalists and their evangelical cousins - and against some Catholic experts - when his book turns to disputes about the New Testament accounts of Jesus Christ’s birth.
Last December, simultaneous Christmas cover stories in magazines Newsweek and Time gave ample attention to Catholic and other thinkers who treat the Nativity passages in Luke and Matthew as less than historical.
Mary and Joseph might seem plausible sources of information on Jesus’ birth, but Newsweek said neither “appears to have been a direct source.” The magazine didn’t explain why they wouldn’t have passed on recollections as happens in virtually all families. The Gospel writers “apparently had little to work with,” Newsweek concluded, and suggested that the narratives drew upon pagan mythology.
Similarly, Time thought the accounts fall short of strict historical criteria because they originated long after the events and relied upon few witnesses. But, as Time noted, conservatives argue that the Bible identifies Mary as a source of information in this notable sentence in Luke:
**“His mother kept all these things in her heart.”
That verse is the linchpin of John Paul’s argument, too.
He treats everything in Luke and Matthew as historical: ** the angel’s announcement of pregnancy, the Bethlehem visit, the inn without any room, the stable, visiting shepherds and Magi, and the flight into Egypt.
He writes: “All this was faithfully recorded in Mary’s memory and we may reasonably conclude that she passed it on to St. Luke, who was particularly close to her.”
Regarding not only Jesus’ birth but his life and death, “we may presume that Mary preserved all these events carved indelibly in her memory,” the Pope asserts.
John Paul believes that a feminine mystique was operating: “To tell the truth, memory belongs more to the mystery of woman than to that of man. Thus it is in the history of families, in the history of tribes and nations, and thus too in the history of the church.”
cbc.ca/cp/world/050409/w040944.html