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GilKobrin
Guest
While I’m not a Catholic, so I can’t speak for any opinions the Church might hold on the subject, I personally agree with your teacher’s understanding of the matter, as do a majority of the Rabbinic texts.
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itsjustdave1988
Guest
Can you give a reference on literary forms which includes “infancy narrative” as a distinct literary form which supports your claim?
Paul VI, the pope who promulgated that fine work *Dei Verbum *which you admire so much, states in his *Dei Verbum, *
This is in accord with prior doctrinal decrees of the Pontifical Bible Commission (note also the one cited by Pope Paul VI himself in footnote #4, which I quoted above in post #27 called Sancta Mater Ecclesia):
On the Authorship, Time of composition, and Historicity of the Gospels of Mark and Luke
Pontifical Bible Commission
June 26, 1912
A similar decision was approved by the Roman Pontiff regarding the historicity of the Gospel of Matthew on Jun 19, 1911. Specifically rejecting the proposition that “this Gospel narrative is not in conformity with historical truth.” {Bechard, ibid., pg. 198}
Negative. The historicity of the Gospels has been affirmed by the Church, and there’s never been any exception for those passages which decribe Christ’s infancy.
Paul VI, the same pope who promulgated Dei Verbum, and quoting from Dei Verbum 19, in his allocution of Dec 18, 1966 (Insegnamenti di Paolo VI): complained that some “try to diminish the historical value of the Gospels themselves, especially those that refer to the birth of Jesus and His infancy. We mention this devaluation briefly so that you may know how to defend with study and faith the consoling certainty that these pages are not inventions of people’s fancy, but that they speak the truth… . The authority of the Council has not pronounced differently on this: ‘The Sacred Authors wrote… always in such a way that they reported on Jesus with sincerity and truth’ (Constitution on Divine Revelation n. 19).”
I understand there may be literary genres in which the inspired authored does not intend to convey history, strictly so-called. However, according to the Church, “those that refer to the birth of Jesus and His infancy” are not among them.
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RNRobert
Guest
If we consider the Old Testament to be unreliable historically because it describes certain events as miracles, then how can we trust the New Testament accounts of the life of Jesus? The same rationalizing arguments against OT miracles can be used to attack the veracity of the accounts of Jesus’s miracles and resurrection.
As C.S. Lewis wrote, you could take out the miraculous elements of religions like Buddhism and Islam, and the religion would be unchanged. But Christianity by it’s very nature is based on the miraculous: That God entered history as a man and died and rose again. This is the problem I have with people like that nun who want to deny the miraculous and rationalize everything. Certainly a God who is powerful enough to become man and rise from the dead can accomplish a trifling task like parting a body of water? If he can’t, then he’s not much of a God…
As C.S. Lewis wrote, you could take out the miraculous elements of religions like Buddhism and Islam, and the religion would be unchanged. But Christianity by it’s very nature is based on the miraculous: That God entered history as a man and died and rose again. This is the problem I have with people like that nun who want to deny the miraculous and rationalize everything. Certainly a God who is powerful enough to become man and rise from the dead can accomplish a trifling task like parting a body of water? If he can’t, then he’s not much of a God…
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4_marks
Guest
When I was in the Seminary I was taught that the sea in question may have actually been the “Reed Sea,” or the “Sea of Reeds” and not the “Red Sea.” When the oral traditions were put into written form, sometimes exaggerations and metaphors were used to make a point. What is important is not so much the historical account of what, if anything, actually happened, but the message behind the Biblical portrayal…God delivered His people, Israel out of Egypt (bondage) into the Promised Land (freedom). The process took 40 (a symbolic number representing hardship and adversity) years of wandering in the “desert.”
As Catholics we shouldn’t look to the scriptures to give us an accurate assessment of world history, or of science, but we should look to them to teach us of God’s relationship to humankind.
from bibletexts.com/terms/redsea.htm:
The “Red Sea” by which Moses led Israelites on their exodus from Egypt was not the body of water now called the Red Sea. The Hebrew word is Yam Suph, meaning “Sea of Reeds.” It is now believed that the Sea of Reeds “was perhaps located at the S extension of the present Lake Mensaleh.” (The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, Volume 4, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962, page 21)
G. Ernest Wright (Biblical Archeology, Abridged Edition, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960, page 38) writes,
- …They chose ‘the way of the wilderness by the Reed Sea’ (Ex.13.18) This, and not ‘Red Sea’, is the correct rendering of the Hebrew Yam Suph, and it is highly improbable that we should identify it with the northern arm of the Red Sea known today as the Gulf of Suez. In the first place there are no reeds in the Red Sea. in the second place the biblical account implies that the Reed Sea was the barrier between Egyptian soil and the desert: if the Red Sea were meant, it would have been necessary to cross a considerable traact of desert to get to it. In a text describing the wonders of Rameses-Tanis, however, mention is made of a ‘Papyrus Marsh’ near the city, a name which immediately recalls the biblical ‘Reed Sea’. Thus the crossing was made not far from Rameses. This is confirmed by the identification of Baal-zephon (Ex.14.2) with Tahpanhes, the modern Tell Defneh, in the same region, on the basis of a Phoenician letter which mentions the god ‘Ball-zephon and all the gods of Tahpanhes’. The reference in the account of Exodus willl be to the town which contains the temple of this god.
- Red Sea, the “Sea of Reeds,” possibly one of the lagoons along the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai Peninsula;… Few of the geographical sites in the Exodus narrative can be identified, and it is possible the Red Sea is meant; although it is unrealistic here, it may have been adopted to present a later Israelite audience with a well-known body of water.
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itsjustdave1988
Guest
Whether it is the Reed Sea or the Red Sea is irrelevant to me.
I agree that the story is about God delivering his people from slavery. However, I disagree that God did not do this miraculously. We lose some of the theological significance of the event when we deny that God did not do something supernatural through Moses. There’s typology between this miraculous redemption event and the even more perfect and truly miraculous redemption event by Christ Jesus. It has theological significance, even when you think that it doesn’t. If one is naturally explained, perhaps the other is too. Thus, we have theories of the Protestant “Jesus Seminar” which discounts the miraculous events of the New Testament.
And even if you think that the weather-man-turned-Methodist-preacher has come up with a nifty natural way of explaining how this *COULD *have happened, theirs no evidence from the deposit of faith to suggest that this is how it “really” happened. Nothing from Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition. Thus, it is and will always remain speculation, and not, as the nun described it “what REALLY happened.”
I agree that the story is about God delivering his people from slavery. However, I disagree that God did not do this miraculously. We lose some of the theological significance of the event when we deny that God did not do something supernatural through Moses. There’s typology between this miraculous redemption event and the even more perfect and truly miraculous redemption event by Christ Jesus. It has theological significance, even when you think that it doesn’t. If one is naturally explained, perhaps the other is too. Thus, we have theories of the Protestant “Jesus Seminar” which discounts the miraculous events of the New Testament.
And even if you think that the weather-man-turned-Methodist-preacher has come up with a nifty natural way of explaining how this *COULD *have happened, theirs no evidence from the deposit of faith to suggest that this is how it “really” happened. Nothing from Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition. Thus, it is and will always remain speculation, and not, as the nun described it “what REALLY happened.”
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patg
Guest
This is handled in great depth in many sources, some of which are:
- *And God Said What?: An Introduction to Biblical Literary Forms *by Margaret Ralph, Paulist Press.
- A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus by John Meier (imprimatur)
- The Catholic Study Bible: New American Bible by Donald Senior
We will have to part company on this one as this is one of the most analyzed and documented examples of non-history in the entire bible. It is also one of the clearest examples of the use of a non-historical literary form and fits my favorite quote from Dei Verbum exactly. All important people in that era had almost the same stories written about their lives - does the church require us to believe that Caesar Augustus’s birth was the result of Zeus messing around with someone, that stellar events heralded his birth? - the stories are the same.
I guess it is also way off topic…
Pat
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itsjustdave1988
Guest
You ought to note that the Hebrew may be interpreted as “Reed Sea,” but in the NT the Greek word is “eruthros” which means
“Red.”
According to Vine’s Expository of NT Words, eruthros:
“Red.”
According to Vine’s Expository of NT Words, eruthros:
The LXX, a Greek translatation made by Jewish scholars also translates it as “***eruthros” ***which means “Red” not “reed.”
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itsjustdave1988
Guest
As I’ve pointed out, the actual Pope who promulgated *Dei Verbum *believed *Dei Verbum *upholds the historicity of the infancy narratives. Go figure.
I have the Catholic Study Bible, and find nowhere in it where it supports your claim that “infancy narratives” is a genre of it’s own which “is never meant to convey history.”
So your claims are your own opinion, and not in accord with Catholic doctrine. Your assertions are contrary to Paul VI, who knows better what Dei Verbum teaches than you do, who quoted *Dei Verbum *to defend the historicity of the Gospels, to include the historicity of the infancy narratives.
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itsjustdave1988
Guest
Ah … now I see your attitude toward Sacred Scripture. It’s just another old book of stories, huh? I disagree. I believe the Bible to be the written Word of God, whereas other “stories” are not.
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patg
Guest
Yes, dealing with such contradictions can be a full time job.
Actually I hit send before I finished that reference - The Catholic Study Bible references Dr Ralph’s book on literary forms as an excellent guide to understanding the genres (on page 55, I believe).
Actually no, I have developed my understanding over many years by reading most every Catholic (and some non-Catholic) analysis of biblical history and development.
But I am in agreement with most Catholic biblical scholars, even some writing under the imprimatur.
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patg
Guest
Actually my attitude is neither - the bible is mankind’s documentation of God’s revelation as it evolved over a long period.
I believe the bible is inspiration and revelation.
Instead of thinking of inspiration as something that occurred between God and one writer, it is better to think of it as occurring between God and each member of the community. The bible, from beginning to end, is the product of God’s acting in and through God’s people. God’s inspiration, God’s acting in the hearts and minds of people, was present at every stage of the growth process that resulted in the bible. At the time of each event, it was God’s inspiration that allowed the people to experience and interpret the event as a religious event. Those who were moved to speak and write about their religious experiences were inspired. The communities that collected and responded to those written works, integrating them into their worship services and establishing them in a unique place of honor in their religious traditions were inspired. A reader today who reads scripture, who finds that it speaks to their heart, who allows it to take root, to form conscience, and to shape action, is inspired. God acts in and through the people. God inspires them. The bible is a fruit and channel of inspiration.
The bible is about revelation. God is revealed to the Israelites through events, just as to us. We read about the process of the Israelites’ coming to a knowledge of the God who is revealed through events in the bible. Notice that the revelation is about God, not about any other subject. It is not revelation about the relationship of the planets or about the order or time frame in which material forms became present on the surface of the earth. It is not revelation about the shape of the earth or even about future events,. The bible is revelation in that it reveals the relationship between God and the human race. It tells us who God is, what our relationship with God is, and what we need to know in order to grow in that relationship.
The bible is not revelation on any other topic. We now realize our mistake with Galileo, yet despite this many Christians continue to repeat that mistake. They try to read the bible in such a way that it becomes revelation on topics that it actually never addresses; revelation on questions whose answers will be found not in scripture but in scientific study. Those who make this mistake are totally blind to the concept of literary form and to the significance that knowledge of literary form has in interpreting various books of the bible.
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itsjustdave1988
Guest
For you, I suppose they are. For those who have a correct understanding of Dei Verbum, no contradiction between what Paul VI asserts in his allocution and what he asserts in Dei Verbum exists.
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patg
Guest
I appreciate your persistence is staying with this - maybe some readers who didn’t participate learned something also.
For me, the “correct” understanding you have of the words in these documents is still an impossibly long way from explaining away the historical inconsistencies and the knowledge of literary forms, Jewish midrash, and Jewish pesher techniques evident in the text.
I’m attending a lecture tonight on the Infancy Narratives put on by our diocese’s adult education director so I will mention a few of the things we have discussed if I get the opportunity.
Pat
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itsjustdave1988
Guest
patg,
I agree that we are far from explaining the appearant inconsistensies within Sacred Scritpure. I’m ok with that. I concede that not all things are explainable or understandable this side of heaven. I took quantum physics in college, so I know this from experience.
Instead, I agree with St. Augustine, who warns us, “not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known.” ( In Gen. op. imperf. ix., 30., as cited by Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 18). And again, from St. Augustine, I assert: "“On my part I confess to your charity that it is only to those Books of Scripture which are now called canonical that I have learned to pay such honour and reverence as to believe most firmly that none of their writers has fallen into any error. And if in these Books I meet anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand.”(Ep. lxxxii., i. et crebrius alibi., as cited by Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 21)
My duty as a Catholic is not to know everything. My duty is to give my religious submission of intellect and will to all doctrines of the authentic Catholic magisterium, whether solemn or ordinarily promulgated, whether infallibly defined or not. Msgr. George Kelly wisely observed: “‘the knowledge class’ had acquired in their own mind ‘counter-magisterium’ status.” I don’t feel the same moral obligation in submitting to the so-called “knowledge class,” especially when they assert theories contrary to Catholic doctrine.
May God guide you in your studies.
I agree that we are far from explaining the appearant inconsistensies within Sacred Scritpure. I’m ok with that. I concede that not all things are explainable or understandable this side of heaven. I took quantum physics in college, so I know this from experience.
Instead, I agree with St. Augustine, who warns us, “not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known.” ( In Gen. op. imperf. ix., 30., as cited by Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 18). And again, from St. Augustine, I assert: "“On my part I confess to your charity that it is only to those Books of Scripture which are now called canonical that I have learned to pay such honour and reverence as to believe most firmly that none of their writers has fallen into any error. And if in these Books I meet anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand.”(Ep. lxxxii., i. et crebrius alibi., as cited by Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 21)
My duty as a Catholic is not to know everything. My duty is to give my religious submission of intellect and will to all doctrines of the authentic Catholic magisterium, whether solemn or ordinarily promulgated, whether infallibly defined or not. Msgr. George Kelly wisely observed: “‘the knowledge class’ had acquired in their own mind ‘counter-magisterium’ status.” I don’t feel the same moral obligation in submitting to the so-called “knowledge class,” especially when they assert theories contrary to Catholic doctrine.
May God guide you in your studies.
R
RNRobert
Guest
This thread reminds me of an essay in C.S. Lewis’s God in the Dock entitled *Religion and Science *in which Lewis described an argument he had with an atheist friend. The atheist said that the early Christians believed in the Virgin Birth because they didn’t know that sperm was needed to conceive a child. Lewis refuted him by pointing out that they were quite aware of how babies were made, otherwise St. Joseph wouldn’t have wanted to cancel the wedding. The atheist then said that Christianity was though up by a bunch of people who believed in a flat earth with the stars only a mile or two away. Lewis handed the man a copy of Ptolemy’s Almagest and had him read a passage that said that the earth in relation to the stars had no appreciable size and must be treated as a fixed point. The atheist was flabbergasted as none of the modern encyclopedias mentioned that fact. Lewis suggested that perhaps someone wanted it hushed up, and pointed out that the immense size of the universe was known for centuries and no one thought they had any significant bearing on the religious question until it is trotted out hundred or so years ago as an argument by people who hush up the fact that it was already known. Lewis concludes by asking his friend, “don’t you think that all you atheists are strangely unsuspicious people?”
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mirandajb
Guest
Originally Posted by honorstudent
Quote:
What in fact happened was when Moses raised his staff, God made the tide in the sea go out so that the Israelites would be able to wade through the waters to the other side. Then, as Pharaoh was 1/2 way through the sea, God made the tide come back in, and it drowned the Pharaoh and his men.
This kind of talk is coming more and more from priests and ‘learned elects’. God is really clever and in order to debunk this kind of silly talk, allowed Joshua and His people to cross the River Jordan (Jos 3:13)
Consider this - the Israelites crossed the R Jordan in the spring when it was overflowing its banks. God chose the time when the river was at it highest to demonstrate His power - parting the waters so that the entire nation could cross on dry ground. The River Jordan flows downwards from the highlands surrounding the Sea of Galilee DOWN to the Dead Sea. (Jos 3:13 13And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the LORD, the LORD of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand upon an heap.)
The waters stood as a **heap **. No amount of silly talk can prove that this was a natural occurrence.
God bless.
Quote:
What in fact happened was when Moses raised his staff, God made the tide in the sea go out so that the Israelites would be able to wade through the waters to the other side. Then, as Pharaoh was 1/2 way through the sea, God made the tide come back in, and it drowned the Pharaoh and his men.
This kind of talk is coming more and more from priests and ‘learned elects’. God is really clever and in order to debunk this kind of silly talk, allowed Joshua and His people to cross the River Jordan (Jos 3:13)
Consider this - the Israelites crossed the R Jordan in the spring when it was overflowing its banks. God chose the time when the river was at it highest to demonstrate His power - parting the waters so that the entire nation could cross on dry ground. The River Jordan flows downwards from the highlands surrounding the Sea of Galilee DOWN to the Dead Sea. (Jos 3:13 13And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the LORD, the LORD of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand upon an heap.)
The waters stood as a **heap **. No amount of silly talk can prove that this was a natural occurrence.
God bless.
J
Jerry-Jet
Guest
The Holy Spirit inspired the scriptures to be written. The Holy Spirit isn’t a liar.
The Bible says Jesus rose from the dead. I believe that, too!
Tell me: IF the Bible lied about God parting the Red Sea then how could it be trusted on anything else?
The answer is it couldn’t and the answer is the Bible doesn’t lie!
Catholics have always believed that about the Bible.
The Bible says Jesus rose from the dead. I believe that, too!
Tell me: IF the Bible lied about God parting the Red Sea then how could it be trusted on anything else?
The answer is it couldn’t and the answer is the Bible doesn’t lie!
Catholics have always believed that about the Bible.
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mirandajb
Guest
Dear Jerry,
Way to go. Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.
God bless.
Way to go. Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.
God bless.
V
Voco_proTatiano
Guest
What is your problem?
Of COURSE Moses did not part the seas. It was an act of G_d.
Yes. it was in response to a signal by Moses.
As for tides, well, do you never use figures of speech?
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