NAB: To be trusted?

[Manfred]

As I continue to read the post of this thread (and other threads that are similar in nature) one thing that continues to bother me is not that people express their opinions, rather, it is the seeming lack of critical analysis of the topic discussed . I find this especially when reading criticism of the NAB and its footnotes.

But my main point is I think more of us should really do a lot more studying on modern biblical scholarship inorder to discover what is really being said by them. In my own opinion, I think a good place for many to start is to study Raymond E. Brown’s work, “An Introduction to the New Testament”. It is a useful “Introduction” into modern scholarship.

Fr. Ray Brown is HARDLY one to whom many of us distressed over “modern” biblical scholarship would turn for support; he held many outlandish views of his own!

 

[Epistemes]

Fr. Ray Brown is HARDLY one to whom many of us distressed over “modern” biblical scholarship would turn for support; he held many outlandish views of his own!

These are some of Fr. Brown’s views, as listed in the article which itsjustdave posted above:

• The stories of Christ’s birth are dubious history.
• Early Christians understood themselves as a renewed Israel, not immediately as a new Israel.

• We must nuance any statement which would have the historical Jesus institute the Church or the priesthood at the Last Supper.

• In the New Testament we are never told that the Eucharistic power was passed from the Twelve to missionary apostles to presbyter-bishops.

• Only in the third and fourth century can one take for granted that when “priests” are mentioned, ministers of the Eucharist are meant.

• The Twelve were neither missionaries or bishops.

• Sacramental powers were given to the Christian Community in the persons of the Twelve.

• Presbyter-bishops described in the New Testament are not traceable “in any way” to the successors of the Twelve.
• The episcopate gradually emerged, but can be defended “as divinely established by Christ” only if one says it emerged under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

• Peter cannot be looked upon as the Bishop of the early Roman Church community. Succession to his Church fell to the Bishop of Rome, the city where Peter died. However, that concentration of authority produces, says Brown, “difficulties such as those we are now encountering within Catholicism.”

• Vatican II was “biblically naive” when it called Catholic bishops successors of the Apostles.

• It is dangerous to assume that second century structures existed in the first century.

If Fr. Brown is to be considered the head of modern biblical scholarship, I, personally, would hate to see the tail. Reminds me of a quote:

“Let priests therefore … after they have themselves by diligent study perused the sacred pages and made them their own by prayer and meditations, assiduously distribute the heavenly treasures of the divine word by sermons, homilies and exhortations; let them confirm the Christian doctrine by sentences from the Sacred Books … and - avoiding with the greatest care those purely arbitrary and far-fetched adaptations, which are not a use, but rather an abuse of the divine word - let them set forth all this with such eloquence, lucidity and clearness that the faithful may not only be moved and inflamed to reform their lives, but may also conceive in their hearts the greatest veneration for the Sacred Scripture.” (Pope Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, 50)

 

[TomBosco]

The commentary is generally horrible. It is mostly based on doubt of the miraculous, skeptcism, and liberal protestant theology. A great example is when it says regarding the feeding of the 5,000 and the feeding of the 4,000 that they were “probably one event”. Jesus makes it clear that they were two events. There is utterly no way on earth that anyone could ever prove that the quote of Christ is in error but that does not stop the faithless theologians who concocted that commentary from saying things like that. Even the infant narratives have doubt cast upon them. Die Verbum says that the gospels faithfully tell us what Jesus really did and taught for the sake of our salvation. Most of the commentary, if not in direct contradiction with this Vat II document, casts doubt on the historricity of the entire Bible. The Navarre commentary is more faithful and more edifying. The Ignatius bible commentary by Scott Hahn is more scholarly and more faithful also. The NAB commentary is actually detrimental to the faith and would make any Bible believing protestant run in horror from the Catholic Church . In my opinion of course!

 

[Epistemes]

Also, with some extra reading one would also discover that the Catholic biblical scholars who wrote these footnotes are working under the guidlines of the Church as expressed in “Divino Afflante Spiritu”, “Dei Verbum”, Paul VI’s address to the specifical Pontifical Commission (23 December 1966), John Paul II’s address to the members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (1979 & 1991) as well as the “Apostolic Constitution: Scripturarum Thesaurus” plus other documents not mentioned.

I greatly question your own interpretation of these documents, or if your interpretation does not, in fact, stem from the modernists, who have made similar claims.

I greatly urge you to read the following article, which is lengthy, yes, but disperses with any false notion that Pope Pius XII consented to the modernist interpretation of Scripture found within the commentaries of the NAB:

rtforum.org/lt/lt60.html

And concerning Dei Verbum, I’m sure you’re basing your statement on Ch. 3 No. 11, where it says,

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings (5) for the sake of salvation

since this is often cited as the modernist argument for in-depth historical-critical analysis of the text in fine Protestant form, as long as matters of salvation are left untouched.

Please be aware, though, that this article contains a footnote (5):

In the reference to the Council of Trent is mentioned “the Gospel’s very purity from all errors,” whose “saving truth and moral discipline” have been “handed over to us by the Apostles at the dictation of the Holy Spirit.” This decree has been understood by the Church as meaning no restriction on the inerrancy of the Scriptures

In the first reference to Providentissimus Deus, Pope Leo XIII points out that the Holy Spirit did not intend in the Scriptures “things in no way profitable unto salvation”, but rather “described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms that were commonly used at the time.”

In the second reference to Providentissimus Deus, Pope Leo XIII declares that “it is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred.”

In the third reference to Providentissimus Deus, Pope Leo XIII avers that “the divine writings, as left by the hagiographers, are free from all error,” even in those passages which have been targeted by the “higher criticism,” that is, by historical critics.

In the reference to Divino afflante Spiritu, Pope Pius XII quotes and reaffirms what Pope Leo XIII declared in the above references.

n 1970, Paul VI reiterated his resolve in the words of his July 1 allocution: “For the Church, Sacred Scripture is the Word of God, inspired by Him and therefore guaranteed by divine inerrancy in its own authentic meaning.” Never, at any time, did Paul VI hint that inerrancy was *in any way *limited to matters of salvation, and neither did the popes before him nor the two popes after him.

Therefore, any understanding of Matthew 5:3-12 as anything other than how the Magisterium has understood it long before Fr. Raymond Brown and the historical-critics club, which is not the understanding that Jesus did not speak every word, is a suggestion that the Bible is in error and such a view out of line with the popes.

 

[mmortal03]

perhaps, but you have not provided any evidence that you, or the sources upon which you rely for your opinion, are any more qualified than the scholars you criticize.

I doubt it would be possible to determine exactly which individuals contributed which commentary to the NAB unless they released this information themselves, and I doubt they would ever do that. (Let me know if I am wrong and these specifics are actually public information.) Also, no source based on good logic needs “qualification” over another, and I think many of the cases here are just that. The bigger issue that I think you are pointing to is not about qualification at all, but of authority, and what we are discussing here does nothing to question their authority, only mistakes that they have allowed to occur in vernacular language documents that don’t hold any ultimate authority anyway.

Bishops can make mistakes, and there is no strict formal secret scholarly education that qualifies our bishops in an intellectual sense over anyone else. The information that they learn from is completely accessible to anyone today that decides to choose a different vocation. With almost limitless access to knowledge on the Internet these days, I think it would be wise that our bishops carefully consider findings of the laity as much more relevant today than ever. Intellectual advances are not made strictly within the Church, and this has even been clearly stated by the Magisterium in various speeches and writings. The intelligence and capabilities in objective matters like scriptural criticism by the public are just as good as the bishops, the only difference being that they have the authority to determine what is accepted and what is not. Just because our bishops can be inspired by the Holy Spirit doesn’t mean that everything they produce in every language is always going to be perfect. There is a human component involved, and while they are our source for definitive interpretation of the scripture on issues of faith and morals, this does not mean that every document they they produce is going to be perfect. Many smart people make mistakes. Look at the differing transcriptions of the Bible done throughout the ages by Catholic monks. What we are talking about here is the same thing, just on a different level.

The NAB was their first real go at an English translation of the original languages, and there is no doubt that mistakes could have been made, and were made. The Church is completely open to improvement of this, just as they are to the continual deepening of our understanding of God’s revelations. The thing that I am surprised by is not the fact that they didn’t hit the nail on the head as far as the translation of the scripture, which has many variables, but the fact that they didn’t hit the nail on the head for the COMMENTARY on that scripture. If something is ambiguous and doesn’t fit doctrine, then DON’T include it in the commentary. It is that easy…as long as they give it enough time (more on that later). The very thing that the Magisterium is good at is discerning what is official Church teaching and what isn’t, therefore, it shouldn’t be that hard to NOT include what ISN’T official teaching, however, they made some mistakes, and some inaccuracies were included. From what I have heard, the whole process was rushed.

If anything, it is the stubbornness of those who think that the bishops COULDN’T have made a mistake that goes AGAINST what I think the Church supports, and that is the continual improvement of our vernacular language translations.

As a side note, for all the need to rush out the original NAB, it sure seems like they are now taking their sweet time to do anything about the inaccuracies! Maybe our very discussions here will be the very spark of progress that is needed to occur, so maybe we should try to communicate about it more vocally.

 

[mmortal03]

To summarize all of this, there is nothing wrong with the bishops learning about or considering things that they hadn’t thought of from an outside source, and there is nothing wrong with the source of this awareness that further improvement of scripture and interpretation is needed would come somewhere outside of the Magisterium first. The Magisterium gets to consider whether any finding is valid or not, but the point is that there is nothing wrong with us coming up with things or them considering these things. And, until they consider it, we will continue to work on it.

Because of the fact that was stated above that many interpretations have no doctrinal support one way or the other, there is nothing wrong with us discussing and critically analyzing what is released by the Church, as our intentions are only FOR the good of the Church. And, for things that DO seem to contradict the teachings of the Church, even more of a reason to discuss and bring these things to their attention, because the message that they are sending just might not be coming across to the laity clearly enough in some of these documents, if it happens to BE accurate.

So, I do not argue that they shouldn’t have the authority, but those of any good authority often can learn quite a bit from those that they lead. I think it would be a large misstep to disregard the intellectual abilities of the laity in today’s world. Each bishop has their own intellectual strengths and weaknesses just as the rest of us do. The Pope recently stated something along the lines of that there is much truth that we CAN learn from those outside of the Catholic Church. Should it not be the same for there to be truth found within the laity OF the Catholic Church?

 

[Cranch]

quite frankly I find it very hard to believe that a handfull of armchair scripture students such as we have gathered here has more collective, cumulative knowledge, experience and learning to correctly translate from the original languages and annotate that translation than the scholars the Church assembled to give us the NAB.

You left out faith…

There is no one participating in this discussion, and no way for us to judge the reliability and authenticity of the sites you offer, who has that competency and authority. Is this translation perfect? No, no human work is perfect, but unless and until you are given authority by the Church to question its operations and works it would be best to desist.

“You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.” – Samuel Johnson

As the intro to NAB points out, there are relatively few passages of scripture that have definitive Church interpretation tied to doctrine…

** For me to quote a scripture scholar and critic** neither gives authority to the critic nor to myself.

These two statements seem to cancel one another out.

 

[TomBosco]

Any commentary that casts doubt on whether or not Jesus said the things that are written in the Gospels or actually did the miracles is a bad commentary. What motive could the writer of that commenatry have? You do not need to be a scripture scholar to know that there is an agenda at play when scholars cast doubt on the historicity of the scriptures when there is absolutely no evidence to support their doubt other than their own bias against miracles, prophecy and hard teachings of Christ. The NAB translation is not the issue for me, it is the horrendous and skeptical commentary. Even the late dating and the claims of unknown authorship is pure speculation. The typical NAB footnotes go like this: “We do not know who wrote Matthew but we are somehow certain that it was not Matthew”. Logical question: How do you know it was not Matthew if you do not know who wrote it? Another great one: The gospel must have been written after 70 AD because it shows Jesus predicting the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. These guys do not even give Jesus credit as a prophet nevermind the Son of God. Also, I want to cringe everytime I read stuff like Mark “placed” these words on the lips of Jesus to show… There are so many examples of this in the NAB that it would be impossible to list. This type of commentary is not scholarly, faithful, or beneficial to anyone. It is a load of “you know what”! It contradicts Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, Catholic tradition for 2,00 years, and it insults the sense of the faithful. If you want to encourage doubt about who Jesus really was, the NAB commentary is the “scholarly” work for you. It is amazing that Scott Hahn’s commentary in the Ignatius series offers Catholic explanations for difficult passages and the NAB introduces doubts about the clear teachings of Jesus. Go figure!

 

[Melchior]

perhaps, but you have not provided any evidence that you, or the sources upon which you rely for your opinion, are any more qualified than the scholars you criticize.

Anyone devout Christian, Catholic or otherwise, who has been a believer for any number of years and believes the the Creeds, can recognize when something is seriously heterodox prima facie. If certain things do not scream out at us them the problem is in our own catechesis not in our ability to prove something heretical by exploring the heretics themselves. If someone denies the virgin birth, do you need anything beyong orthodox faith and good reason to discern that there is a problem. The quotes provided are ample evidence.

 

[TOME]

Epistemes,

My reasoning for listing the various documents I did, and I would gladly include the documents you listed as well, was to show that in the 20th century the Church had articulated goals and objectives of meeting the goals for the translations of the Bible into the vernacular languages of the world.

Along with the goal articulated, each of these documents developed and established guidlines for those who were commissioned by the Church and working under Her authority to provide vernacular translations. My purpose, therefore, was to list those documents as a reference to show that the translators of the NAB have been working within these guidelines. As we know, when those guidelines were not met the translation we rejected and revisions were mandated by Rome. When the guidelines were followed the translations and
here I am including the footnotes of the NAB were accepted.
This doesn’t mean all translations were (are) perfect and cannot be made better.

The Nihil Obstat and Impirmatur given to the NAB (footnotes included) states that the contents of the work was free from doctrinal and moral error. I find it very difficult, then, to say authoritatively that the translations and footnotes do not fit the doctrine of the Church and I find it difficult for others to declare this as well (we really do not have the authority to make such statements).

I find it even more interesting to read time and again how the footnotes of the NAB (to this date) violate the doctrines of the Church given the fact that from the 1980’s the Church’s doctrines were safeguarded by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) and was famous (some may say infamous) for its active defense of Church Doctrine, yet I do not know of any revisions of the NAB’s footnotes mandated by the CDF. If there were then I would gladly and humbly admit my error, but I personally do not know of any. So I assume that there are no doctrinal errors in the footnotes. That doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with the statements or conclusions found in the footnotes (there is no moral obligation to do so as far as I know) but the important point is they, according to the ordinary teaching authority of the Church, are free from doctrinal error.

As for my reference to Dei Verbum, your assumption that I was using Chapter 3 Number 11 is wrong. I was refering to the document as a whole. If I was to use a particular section in Chapter 3 it would have been Number 12, not 11.

Also, so as not to draw my own false assumptions from what you have written, would you please explain to me your understanding of “Inerrancy”? I have an intuition that you and I are operating under different definitions for this term and how does your definition of “Inerrancy” relate to the Nihil Obstat given to the NAB?

 

[mmortal03]

Often, when I see criticism of the NAB’s footnotes and statements that they are contrary to offical Church Teachings, I have to wonder if this is the case, how could the Church grant a Nihil Obstat and Impirmator to the NAB?

There is a difference in the actual case of having an individual bishop, who is a reviewing a vernacular language translation into English (and its commentary?), granting a Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, and some kind of hypothetical assurance that the entire Magisterium dissected the document before it is released. The former case is what I understand happens, and it would obviously have a greater chance of containing errors or ambiguous opinions on interpretation when following that methodology than the hypothetical latter method which would possibly be too much to manage (however, I argue that the former case is also impossible to manage with respect to zero tolerance for errors). There needs to be a happy medium.

Also, remember that there are apparently different intensities of strictness of content for a text produced by the Church. The only case that the Vatican really cared about for the vernacular translation of the NAB was the text that was used in the Liturgy. Texts that the laity can purchase seem to have less strictness applied to them and have no ultimate authority, and they therefore leave that to the bishops of the country reading them. I think the Vatican has realized that vernacular translations are beginning to hold much more critical relevance after Vatican II, and quite possibly this has occurred faster than they could keep up, and how they treated the NAB was similar to how they had treated other vernacular language translations before they were obligatory for the Mass. So, to clean up the mess, they made the changes that they thought to be the most urgent when they dealt with the too-paraphrastic NAB and later the gender inclusive RNAB text for the US Lectionaries, and, with some of the current progresses like Liturgiam Authenticam, I doubt that they will allow the same mistakes of wasted time to happen again.

Also, it could be that we are assuming the NAB, being that it is a vernacular translation, of having more ultimate authority than it really has, and requesting too much absolute formality for its printing. It could be true that none of the errors in the NAB commentary actually specifically contradict the faith and morals of the Church (even if they might border on it), and these examples of opinions of interpretation might not ultimately affect anyone’s salvation if they choose to think that way. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a more appropriate and agreeable set of opinions that could be chosen for the intended (American) audience.

My opinion is that they shouldn’t include ambiguously worded ways of interpretation or choose pedagogical tools to include in the commentary that have little relationship to real authoritative doctrine and that might possibly misdirect the intended readers.

 

[mmortal03]

I would suggest, from the study of “Dei Verbum” alone would show that the footnotes in the NAB are not inconsistant with the teachings of our Church, but may be operating from different theological levels not fully understood because they just have not been studied (and perhaps with further studies many people will also come to understand what is meant by Nihil Obstat and Impirmator).

Can items at these different theological levels that you speak of contradict? They shouldn’t. Is this just a case of “When a young child asks where babies come from, you just simplify things even if you aren’t being completely accurate”? Maybe the NAB commentary just isn’t meant for detail-oriented intellectuals?

But my main point is I think more of us should really do a lot more studying on modern biblical scholarship in order to discover what is really being said by them.

Where can we learn about the specifics of how the Magisterium develops the commentary for a vernacular Bible translation, though? I doubt their is any clear guidelines that I could just go and look up. These are the types of problems that I think have brought upon the Church the realization that things like Liturgiam Authenticam and Ratio Translationis are needed. Maybe they should come up with a Ratio Commentarius while they are at it.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Puzzleannie,

…Like it or not, this is the translation the US Bishops have given us. Unless you somehow have authority that trumpts theirs, you really have no basis for this accusation.

Imprimatur or not, when it comes to differences in judgment between the Holy See and the US conference of Bishops, I side with the Holy See.

Fact is, the Holy See, “because of disagreement regarding some aspects of the translating principles [of the NAB], does not approve the whole translation as such for liturgical use but permits it to be used as a base text for a lectionary. Each text of the lectionary is then revised to make sure that it conforms to the Church’s translation principles as enshrined in the instruction ‘Liturgiam Authenticam’…The result usually leaves most texts intact but changes those where different translating principles might have theological consequences.” (source).

The above tends to disuade me from recommending the NAB. Most English speaking countries use the Jerusalem Bible. “The bishops of the Antilles received permission for a lectionary based on a second edition of the Revised Standard Version (RSV Catholic Edition) — recently published in a new edition by Ignatius Press — which many consider the best contemporary translation…At the moment [Oct 2006], only the above-mentioned lectionary from the Antilles corresponds exactly to a currently published Bible [RSV-CE 2nd ed.].” (ibid.).

So it appears that the only contemporary English Bible which the Holy See has approved for liturgical use without adaptation is the RSV-CE 2nd ed. from Ignatius Press. I defer to their expertise on the matter.

 

[TOME]

mmortal03,

As I read your post, my gut feeling was that I basically agree with you. So I would like to try to summarize or clarify my previous post.

What forms the basis of my posts is my response to the question of this thread, “NAB: To be trusted?”. My response is yes it can be trusted as a reasonably good translation that is free of doctrinal and moral error. Here, I am refering to the entire work therefore I include the footnotes in my answer as well.

In holding this opinion, I am not saying that the NAB is perfect, that there is no better translation. Even the translators
of the original editions acknowledged this and there is well documented criticisms of the translations. And as we all know, some of the attempts to revise this work fell short of many people’s expectations for various reasons. Of coarse, many are quick to point out that the english translation that was to be used in the Liturgical life of the Church’s in the USA fell so short as to be rejected, however, I think we should acknowledge that the criteria for the translation of the scriptures to be used in the liturgy are different than that for general use. This is why the NAB has been approved as a translation for Americans, by our bishops but revisions are needed and mandated by Rome for liturgical use. I guess I could say that the translaton of the NAB is adaquate but adaquate is not enough for liturgical use. Should there be different set of criteria for these translation is not something I am in authority to comment on. I think that the general consensus is there shouldn’t be - it does seem unreasonable, even to me. But there is.

However, my one big criticism of other post, in this thread, are the comments which seem to declare authoritatively that the NAB, and especially its footnotes, somehow violates Church Doctrine. I have read many post that have quoted past Church documents, which they believe substantiates there position, yet, I have yet to see any offical proclamation from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemning the footnotes of the NAB. An extention of my criticism is I find many post, that condemned the footnotes of the NAB as going against the Doctrines of the Church, do so out of a certain ignorance of the fully body of work, by the Church magisterium guiding biblical exegesis. Also, there seems to be a certain ignorance of how the authors of the footnotes and other works of modern Catholic Biblical Scholars, came to write what they did. I find this ignorance uniquely express in such comments calling their works unscholarly. To say such clearly shows the authors of the post using such ascertions never read the works of the Catholic Biblical scholars they criticized. Another part of my criticism of those whose post attacked biblical scholarship is the tendency to group many of our best scholars with the “Jesus Seminar” group and their ilk.
For me this is real ignorance because if you read the biblical scholars work it becomes very obvious that they are amoung the strongest critics of the “Jesus Seminar” branch of historical criticism. Here I would reference Raymond Brown’s, “Introduction To The New Testament” and its first appendix. Also, if you read any of the “Jesus Seminar” people’s work, they are constantly writing trying to refute the criticism of many Catholic Biblical scholars.

 

[TOME]

(continued) To find out who wrote the footnotes is available but does take some work. In the beginning of the NAB is a list of those who were on the translating commitee and other contributors. Use this list as a starting point and I think you will find as you begin to study their works other bibliographies and recommended readings are provided. Or, go to the works of Raymond Brown and use his bibliographies and recommended reading as souce of understanding what exactly is being taught by modern Catholic scriptural scholars.

As to the guidelines for biblical studies, you can use the documents I presented in an earlier post, and I would recommend the Church documents used by “Epistemes”, with this caveat, read the whole document as a whole first, then go back and analyze it.

I would be naive to think that all was perfect in the world of Catholic Biblical Scholarship. Two works I think that are important in putting things into proper perspective were both written by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. They are; (a) "Interpretation in Crisis (a lecture he gave on 27 January 1988) (b) “Relationship between Magisterium and Exegetes.(On the 100th Anniversary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission)” Actually, I would recommend all works by our Pope, written as Cardinal Ratizenger because he uses the best of modern biblical scholarship but he is firmly rooted in the understanding that Theological exegesis transends biblical scholarship.

Finally, if you study the documents of the Church effecting modern scriptural scholarship, issued in the 20th century I hope you will that they do not contradict each other, rather, there is a progress in the development of the Church’s understanding and teachings on the necessity of this scholarship, but always under the teaching authority of the Church.

 

[lak611]

Everyone seems to be hung up on the commentary of the NAB more than the actual text of the Bible. Is it possible to purchase an NAB without any commentary? I have noticed from my personal experiences that it is easier to find Protestant Bibles that just have the Bible text (no commentary) than it is to find commentary-free Catholic Bibles. I propose using the NAB (without commentary) if any exist, and then purchasing a good, orthodox Catholic Bible commentary to go along with it.

 

[Epistemes]

Also, so as not to draw my own false assumptions from what you have written, would you please explain to me your understanding of “Inerrancy”? I have an intuition that you and I are operating under different definitions for this term and how does your definition of “Inerrancy” relate to the Nihil Obstat given to the NAB?

My understanding of ‘inerrancy’ has been derived from Dei Verbum and from the encyclicals published by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XII, such as when Dei Verbum proclaims,

*Since, therefore, all that the inspired authors, or sacred writers, affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scripture. *

And when Pope Leo XIII states,

It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error.

From these two statements alone, not to mention Pope Pius XII’s backing of Providentissimus Deus, to suggest that there is any error in Scripture is to “make God” or the Holy Spirit “the author of such error,” and we know that God cannot err.

Therefore, if I were to take the position of Raymond E. Brown, and suggest that the Bible is not literal history but substantial history, then am I or am I not calling the Bible into error? I really think it depends on the specifics. For instance, in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Robert J. Karris maintains that, “It strains credulity to imagine a 14-year-old Jewish virgin making a four-day journey by herself. Rather Luke’s intent in the “Visitation” is literary and theological.” No doubt he makes a valid point that it does strain credulity that a 14-year old virgin should travel alone in a politically decadent segment of early Rome - but his suggestion that the Visitation is literary and theological (while parenthetically stating that it is probably not historical) is the point that strains credulity! Does the believing in the Visitation ensure our salvation? I think it could be argued that it doesn’t, because Christ was conceived and would’ve been born regardless, but for anyone who recites the Rosary on a regular basis, such as myself, then the Visitation is an integral part of one’s faith! For Fr. Kerris to take the text literal as such and to not see that Luke never says that Mary travelled alone are the points of modern CATHOLIC Biblical scholarship that often leave me scratching my head.

Now while something like the above could easily pass Nihil Obstat, since the Visitation does not directly affect doctrine or morality, other things, such as Raymond Brown’s assertion that the sacraments nor the Church were intended by Christ, and that it was only by post-resurrectional reflection by the apostles and their successors that these elements appeared, are matters which I don’t see how passed the Nihil Obstat.

Now, all of the above examples are from the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, which received a Nihil Obstat…from the very men who edited it!!! It is small points like that which cause me to not only lose trust in biblical scholarship, but in the very significance of the Nihil Obstat! It should be mandated, if it already is not, that books receive the Nihil Obstat from sources other than the author(s), even if the author is the Pope himself! Or, at the very least, when dealing with such a testy subject as modern biblical scholarship!

If men such as Raymond Brown feel they can sign off on the Nihil Obstat because of their credentials within the pages of a book that treats Christ no better than your average non-Christian secularist, gives me cause to wonder who exactly signed off on the pages of the NAB an if it wasn’t a commentator himself.

 

[mmortal03]

TOME, I agree with you on all your points. I would like to ask you a couple questions based on some of the points you made:

I guess I could say that the translaton of the NAB is adaquate but adaquate is not enough for liturgical use. Should there be different set of criteria for these translation is not something I am in authority to comment on. I think that the general consensus is there shouldn’t be - it does seem unreasonable, even to me. But there is.

Can you clarify what you are saying here? Are you saying that there should be stricter requirements for general use Bible translations, or that their shouldn’t be? To expand upon this, consider the more thought-for-thought translations that could still receive an Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat. Also, I wonder what your opinion would be on a text that had received the Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat, but was not as important as the Bible, and contained views that contradicted doctrine.

However, my one big criticism of other post, in this thread, are the comments which seem to declare authoritatively that the NAB, and especially its footnotes, somehow violates Church Doctrine. I have read many post that have quoted past Church documents, which they believe substantiates there position, yet, I have yet to see any offical proclamation from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemning the footnotes of the NAB. An extention of my criticism is I find many post, that condemned the footnotes of the NAB as going against the Doctrines of the Church, do so out of a certain ignorance of the fully body of work, by the Church magisterium guiding biblical exegesis.

I may not have read into some of the posts on this thread that deeply, so if there was someone coming across that way, then I want to make it clear that any comments that I made generally about the people on this board in my post does not include them regarding those posts.

However, the source of discovery of something of that sort should not have to come from the Church, so if someone DID come across something of that nature, I don’t think it should be criticized on the basis of whether the Church has said anything about it, but instead on the basis of the individual’s interpretation of doctrine, which I think you also touched on.

I don’t know if there has ever been any instances of an Imprimatur or Nihil Obstat being removed after further study of a text, but I would argue that it should be possible, as I don’t think it would undermine the Magisterium at all to correct a mistake that they made when not in unison, which to my knowledge is the condition that those declarations fall upon, making them (the declarations) NOT infallible or absolute.

 

[mmortal03]

Fr. Ray Brown is HARDLY one to whom many of us distressed over “modern” biblical scholarship would turn for support; he held many outlandish views of his own!

These are some of Fr. Brown’s views, as listed in the article which itsjustdave posted above:

• The stories of Christ’s birth are dubious history.
• Early Christians understood themselves as a renewed Israel, not immediately as a new Israel.

• We must nuance any statement which would have the historical Jesus institute the Church or the priesthood at the Last Supper.

• In the New Testament we are never told that the Eucharistic power was passed from the Twelve to missionary apostles to presbyter-bishops.

• Only in the third and fourth century can one take for granted that when “priests” are mentioned, ministers of the Eucharist are meant.

• The Twelve were neither missionaries or bishops.

• Sacramental powers were given to the Christian Community in the persons of the Twelve.

• Presbyter-bishops described in the New Testament are not traceable “in any way” to the successors of the Twelve.
• The episcopate gradually emerged, but can be defended “as divinely established by Christ” only if one says it emerged under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

• Peter cannot be looked upon as the Bishop of the early Roman Church community. Succession to his Church fell to the Bishop of Rome, the city where Peter died. However, that concentration of authority produces, says Brown, “difficulties such as those we are now encountering within Catholicism.”

• Vatican II was “biblically naive” when it called Catholic bishops successors of the Apostles.

• It is dangerous to assume that second century structures existed in the first century.

If Fr. Brown is to be considered the head of modern biblical scholarship, I, personally, would hate to see the tail.

For these posts regarding Raymond Brown, it would be preferred that the specific texts of his that contain these controversial views be listed alongside, because often, people will cast out the entire works of an author, when only some of his works are problematic. When a useful text is mentioned of an author of this sort, clear of these controversial viewpoints and useful to the cause, people who have not read the particular text will still bash his name, which is bad judgment. Works of an author should be judged on a case by case basis.

 

[Manfred]

Good and Gentle People,

Look, all this talk of heretical commentary in the notes of the NAb is giving me a headache. Since I tend towards form over substance, do any of you actually LIKE the bland, flat renderings of the NAB we hear or read at Mass in the USA? I’m a lector in my parish, and every so often I will slip in a rendering (usually a single word or very short phrase) from the Douay-Rheims. E.g., on the solemnity of Christ the King, the NAB reading from Revelation (sorry, Apocalypse) was “Yes. Amen.” So I voiced “Even so. Amen.” instead. And I felt better.

Manfred