K
Kaninchen
Guest
I’d have been terribly impressed by that rebuttal if it had been to what I’d said rather than what you’d inferred.
- Status
H
HarryStotle
Guest
What was I to infer, exactly?HarryStotle:
I’d have been terribly impressed by that rebuttal if it had been to what I’d said rather than what you’d inferred.
In response to a post about Josephus as the “only written source… etc.,” you reply with some vague comment about how far redacted text can be modified before it can still count as history.
What was your point, then?ascetic:
It really does depend on what one counts as ‘history’ and ‘written’ (for example, how far a redacted text counts as original).
K
Kaninchen
Guest
This is not the inquisition, back off.
My suggestion was that there are sources that have accounts of the period but they’re not the original texts from the period, they’re redacted versions, old texts brought into organised form etc. They also don’t mention the ‘Innocents’.
My suggestion was that there are sources that have accounts of the period but they’re not the original texts from the period, they’re redacted versions, old texts brought into organised form etc. They also don’t mention the ‘Innocents’.
B
BlackFriar
Guest
Saying ancient writings should not be viewed in the same way we assume modern docs should be is not having a “low view” of Scripture.
Quite the contrary, it is respecting Scripture for the setting it was written in and not assuming that, after 2000 years, things are always as they seem.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
Between this thread and the Moses thread, I get the impression that people’s responses to these types of questions are heavily influenced by their own views about how Scripture should be viewed and interpreted.
B
BlackFriar
Guest
Correct, inline with the views of approved Catholic scholars and even recent Popes.
Pope Benedict had no issue with the documentary hypothesis for example and takes it for granted in his own exegesis.
What you really seem to mean is that the Church should treat SS as it did up until the 1700s and completely ignore the insights of Biblical archaeology, hermeneutics and critical scholarship.
That too is a “view” … which is now tolerated, and even taken for granted by the Magisterium.
We get it you may be “old school”. That is tolerated also, even if many old school types are unable to return the favour.
Pope Benedict had no issue with the documentary hypothesis for example and takes it for granted in his own exegesis.
What you really seem to mean is that the Church should treat SS as it did up until the 1700s and completely ignore the insights of Biblical archaeology, hermeneutics and critical scholarship.
That too is a “view” … which is now tolerated, and even taken for granted by the Magisterium.
We get it you may be “old school”. That is tolerated also, even if many old school types are unable to return the favour.
Last edited:
B
bobperk
Guest
Well, much “modern scholarship” also denies the Resurrection and many “modern” scholars just believe the apostles hallucinated, or lied, or created a legend, or just had “spiritual experiences” of Jesus after He was crucified.
What is more believable
Being open to modern scholarship is one thing, but just accepting whatever it says isn’t going to work either, because then you just wind up reducing the Bible to legends and stories no different than Star Wars.
So if you agree with modern scholars that the Massacre of the Innocents did not happen, do you also agree with them that the Resurrection never happened?
What is more believable
- “A long time ago, an angry ruler ordered some young children to be killed,” or
- “A long time ago, a man worked miracles, claimed to be God, was crucified and died,came back to life in a glorified body, went back to heaven, and will come back to judge the world at the end of time”
Being open to modern scholarship is one thing, but just accepting whatever it says isn’t going to work either, because then you just wind up reducing the Bible to legends and stories no different than Star Wars.
So if you agree with modern scholars that the Massacre of the Innocents did not happen, do you also agree with them that the Resurrection never happened?
B
BlackFriar
Guest
Please.
You fear scholarship you do not understand.
Some crackpot Theologian’s deny Jesus divinity. That doesn’t make Theology void.
Some crackpot Modern Biblical Scholars deny various events - that doesn’t make Modern Biblical Studies void.
The Magisterium has no issue with mainstream, modern Biblical Hermeneutics and scholarship.
I understand that you may.
Last edited:
B
bobperk
Guest
I don’t think you understand it as well as you think you do.
There is a difference between being open to scholarship, and just accepting whatever modern scholarship offers. Saying the Church has “no issue” does not mean it’s just a free-for-all to accept whatever the halls of academia publish.
B
BlackFriar
Guest
Have you actually read the writings of Magisterially respected modern Catholic Biblical scholars?
Have you ever studied under them?
Would you name them please.
Have you ever studied under them?
Would you name them please.
Last edited:
B
bobperk
Guest
When did “Magisterial respect” become an official term for deciding which Biblical scholars to accept or dismiss? Whose respect? Where is the officially maintained, infallible list?
Pope Benedict himself found nothing implausible about the massacre of the Innocents.
Do you believe the Resurrection accounts as depicted in the Gospels? Do you believe that Mary was conceived miraculously by the power of the Holy Spirit?
E
Erikaspirit16
Guest
OK, here we go again. Let’s quote Dei Verbum from Vatican II and the Catechism, p. 32:
Dei Verbum: “…the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”
Catechism: "In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.
In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current. ‘For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."
Here’s the key: “[what] God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”
The idea that the whole “truth” of the Bible falls apart if one detail can be proven “false” is nonsense. And I chose my word carefully: it is not sensible. Why? Because there are many details throughout the Bible that might make a good story, but they are NOT “[what] God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” In other words, they are NOT the point of the story.
Put yourself in the position of being a witness to a car crash. Your story may differ in a host of small details (the exact time, what the driver was wearing, how fast the cars were going, etc.) with what other eye-witnesses saw. But does that mean there was no car crash (the essential truth)? Of course not.
Go back to something I mentioned earlier: John’s dating of the Last Supper is different than the other Gospels. Some of you seem to be sneering at “modern scholars.” OK. How about Ratzinger? Pope Benedict XVI? What does he say in his book “Jesus of Nazareth”? The Dating of the Last Supper
“Jesus dies at the moment when the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple. Jesus dies as the real lamb, merely prefigured by those slain in the Temple.” So John (that’s his chronology) may have put the Last Supper on that day for theological reasons–Jesus = sacrificial lamb. Or, maybe he got the day right and the others got it wrong–another possibility Ratzinger explains. In the end, Ratzinger thinks that the idea was that just as Jesus was instituting a “new law,” he was symbolically doing that by having the Last Supper on a different day than the traditional Passover.
You can agree with Ratzinger’s analysis or not. But I don’t think you can dismiss him as “just” a “modern scholar.” The key point here is that Jesus did have a Last Supper, at which he did various things that are significant to the beliefs and history of the Church. No one’s questioning that. But whether this was on Wednesday or Thursday…does that matter for “the sake of salvation”? Of course not.
Dei Verbum: “…the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”
Catechism: "In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.
In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current. ‘For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."
Here’s the key: “[what] God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”
The idea that the whole “truth” of the Bible falls apart if one detail can be proven “false” is nonsense. And I chose my word carefully: it is not sensible. Why? Because there are many details throughout the Bible that might make a good story, but they are NOT “[what] God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” In other words, they are NOT the point of the story.
Put yourself in the position of being a witness to a car crash. Your story may differ in a host of small details (the exact time, what the driver was wearing, how fast the cars were going, etc.) with what other eye-witnesses saw. But does that mean there was no car crash (the essential truth)? Of course not.
Go back to something I mentioned earlier: John’s dating of the Last Supper is different than the other Gospels. Some of you seem to be sneering at “modern scholars.” OK. How about Ratzinger? Pope Benedict XVI? What does he say in his book “Jesus of Nazareth”? The Dating of the Last Supper
“Jesus dies at the moment when the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple. Jesus dies as the real lamb, merely prefigured by those slain in the Temple.” So John (that’s his chronology) may have put the Last Supper on that day for theological reasons–Jesus = sacrificial lamb. Or, maybe he got the day right and the others got it wrong–another possibility Ratzinger explains. In the end, Ratzinger thinks that the idea was that just as Jesus was instituting a “new law,” he was symbolically doing that by having the Last Supper on a different day than the traditional Passover.
You can agree with Ratzinger’s analysis or not. But I don’t think you can dismiss him as “just” a “modern scholar.” The key point here is that Jesus did have a Last Supper, at which he did various things that are significant to the beliefs and history of the Church. No one’s questioning that. But whether this was on Wednesday or Thursday…does that matter for “the sake of salvation”? Of course not.
E
Erikaspirit16
Guest
Let’s take probably the most well-known Biblical scholar today (and also an atheist), Bart Ehrman. I’ve read a lot of Bart’s books, and I agree with virtually everything he says. Does that mean I’m an atheist? No–what it means is that Bart takes it all literally, and if he can show a discrepancy in a detail, he gets all excited and says (I’m paraphrasing), “Look everybody! These details don’t match! They contradict each other! That means the whole thing is false!” and I look at the exact same evidence and say (along with Garry Wills), “So what?”
Here is Bart Ehrman on pp. 72-73 of “Did Jesus Exist?” :
“Their authors were human authors…they wrote in human languages and in human contexts; their books are recognizable as human books, written according to the rhetorical conventions of their historical period. They are human and historical, whatever else you may think about them, and to treat them differently is to mistreat them and to misunderstand them.”
Compare that to p. 32 of the Catholic catechsim (which I quoted in a post just above this). Bart is basically quoting the catechsim. Oh, and one more thing—who is the Biblical scholar that Bart keeps going back to, footnoting, and acknowledging as his inspiration for much of his work? Fr. Raymond Brown. A Catholic scholar (“The Birth of the Messiah,” “The Death of the Messiah,” “St. Jerome Commentary,” etc.)
Last edited:
E
Erikaspirit16
Guest
Depends on what you mean by “authentic historical works.” Were they written at a particular time in history? Yes. Are they “authentic” in the sense that we know they were written (!) and that we can determine their date (approximately)? Yes. Are they “authentic historical works” in the sense that the American Historical Association would publish them as a good historical analysis of early first century Judea? No.
Yes, the authors ARE trying very hard to place Jesus in history and within an historical context. And yes, that context DOES matter and IS important. But if you “take the details seriously,” you’ve got real problems. Bart Ehrman points out that there are 30,000 textual errors in the Bible. Most of them are trivial copyist errors, but some are substantial. Is it “Blessed are the poor…” or “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”? Depends on which Gospel you read. Almost all scholars believe the last bit of Mark is an addition. So is the story of the woman taken in adultery. If you take it literally, that, for example, St. Mark himself was the author of his Gospel, then what do you do with that last bit? Toss it out? Even though it’s always been accepted as part of the Gospel? What do you do with the story of the woman taken in adultery? And we haven’t even touched on the Old Testament, that’s just chock full of contradictions in detail.
You’re free, of course, to take all this literally, but why? The essential truth of the Bible is not affected one tiny bit by any of this.
E
Erikaspirit16
Guest
And they’re wrong. Some people believe in UFOs, too. But some people can both believe in UFOs and be completely accurate about some scientific fact. I think it would be just as rare for someone to be wrong about everything all of the time as it would for someone to be right about everything all of the time.
E
Erikaspirit16
Guest
Again, it depends on what both they and you regard as “history.” I would maintain that “history” in the early 1st century Judea meant something different than “history” means in the Western world in 2018. I think the question to ask is WHY they were writing the Gospels. It was not to set out a perfectly accurate set of details. It was to tell a story that had a point to it. the point matters, not the details.
Well, most scholars today–including most Catholic ones–would disagree. We have traditionally attached those names, and the early Church believed that those people actually did write what was attributed to them. But so what? Does it matter? It certainly doesn’t matter to me.
No, you’re missing the point. It’s not that we somehow need corroboration of the details from some outside source. That would be interesting, but it’s certainly not the point. The point is that certain things were recorded to tell a higher truth. If you are concentrating on the details, you are missing the point of the story–the higher truth. Was it true that Jesus cured 10 lepers, or 11, or 12? Does the exact number matter? What’s the point of the story?
And I of course agree completely with your quotation from Dei Verbum. But clearly we disagree over its interpretation. Do the Gospels have “an historical character”? Of course–but that doesn’t mean they are “history” in the 2018 meaning of the word. And notice it says “What Jesus Christ…really did and taught for their eternal salvation.” Exactly. If Jesus tells a story–take the Prodigal Son–there’s a point to the story: God will forgive your sins because God is the father of us all. Does it matter if the son really–“historically”-- ate the food given to pigs? Nope. Irrelevant. “The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels…” Yes, they did. Were they named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Maybe, maybe not. Who cares? Whoever they were, they were inspired and passed down revelation from God. “The honest truth about Jesus…” Yes. But what IS that truth? It’s certainly NOT trivial details.
H
HarryStotle
Guest
What, precisely, is the “essential truth” of the Bible?
H
HarryStotle
Guest
So what is the threshold for what counts as “trivial” detail and what is crucial to the message?
Would you agree with Bultmann who ostensibly claimed that if the bones of Jesus were found today it wouldn’t make a difference to the message?
I suppose that all depends upon what that “message” actually is.
G
goout
Guest
You read scripture with the community it lives in. That affords you the insights of others, and you are not being individualistic and myopic when reading scripture.
The Church has a wealth of prayerful expertise.
E
Erikaspirit16
Guest
Actually, I’ve used that analogy before! And, in a sense, Star Wars is very like the Bible–there is a point to the story (or at least there was before they began making all these prequels and sequels). You could–just as in the Bible–take away several “truths” from Star Wars. You could see it as a story about freedom, and how men will always value it. You could see it as a story about destiny–Luke is the “savior” but also the counterpart to his evil father, Darth Vader. You could see it as a love story–Han and Lea. And, at its essence, it’s simply a story about good and evil, and the eternal battle between them.
What Star Wars is NOT is exactly what the Bible is NOT: it’s not concerned with exactly how many imperial stormtroopers attacked on a particular day, or who inspired Princess Lea’s hairdo. Those are fun details that add color to the story, but that’s NOT what the story’s about. Just as in the Bible.
- Status