P
patrick457
Guest
Very well said, Brother.But these are not matters of faith. The Church has never taught that the details in the bible are in the correct order, are correct to the last detail, that every name is correct or that every word is even spelled correctly. We have always taught that the Gospels and the letters were compiled by the early Church, because they truly represent the faith of the Church. The key word is faith. The faith of the early Church was about the content of revelation, not the background details. They were aware that many of the writings of the Evangelists were handed down by word of mouth, because there were no eye witnesses to some of these events. The Evangelists were inspired by the Holy Spirit as they tried to make sense of the oral tradition.
For example, we have always heard the Beatitudes referred to as the Sermon on the Mount. However, in one of the Gospels they are called the Sermon on the Plain. There are two genealogies in the Gospels. It was not until the 20th century that we figured out that one is Joseph’s and the other is Mary’s. Genesis has two stories of creation. The first story has a period of six days and the second story has one day. There are three resurrection narratives. What is consistent about them is the empty tomb. The number of angels, who saw Jesus first is not the same in the synoptic Gospels and John.
The Gospel of John has two introductions that we know were not written by the same person. The Prologue is filled with Greek terminology and Greek logic. It’s also written in perfect Greek and coincides with the Creation Narrative. The rest of the Gospel of John does not target the Greek Christians at all. It targets a Jewish Christian audience. John leaves out most of the miracles and parables that appear in the other Gospels. The Gospel of Mark was written by a man named John, not Mark. One theory says that his name may have been John Marc.
Paul goes to great lengths to write about the weakness in fulfilling the Law and the need for faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. James says that faith must be proven by works. For Protestants, these are conflicting messages.
Today, we know that the Book of Revelation is not about the end of the world. It’s a book of prophecies and messages from God. John wrote it it as he received these revelations, hence the Greek term Apocalypse, which does not mean “End Times”. Apocalypse means revelation.
Now, as to the animals in the stable at Jesus’ birth, if you have ever been in contact with Franciscans or had been taught by Franciscans, you would have been told that St. Francis created this image sometime between 1219 and 1221 in the town of Greccio. He knew that caves were used as stables. Not being from the Middle East, he had no idea that the domesticated animals of Europe and of the Middle East were not the same. Nor did he have any idea if there were animals at all in the cave. He simply assumed there were. When he created the first creche, he put them in there and they have become part of the creche and no one remembers (except Franciscans) that this was a teaching tool that Francis used 1200 years after the birth of Christ.
We have long known that Christ was not born in the year zero. I don’t see how that comes as a surprise. The world has had many calendars and none of them are accurate. Even our own calendar today has to be adjusted every so many years. We add here and cut there. A few years ago, the new year began at 11:59 PM, not at 12:00 AM. We were off by a minute. This year, we’re off by a second. Today, we have the technology to compensate. One hundred fifty years ago, such technology did not exist. As minutes went by, they turned into hours, hours turned into days and days turned into months. Over a period of 2,000 years you end up being off by several years.
I’m 62 years old. I remember the friars teaching us that Jesus was not born in the year zero back in primary school during the 1950s and that there were no such animals, but Francis has used local animals from the town of Greccio.
If one reads the Holy Father’s book and sees these passages in context, one’s memory is shaken and one remembers hearing bits and pieces of these details through our school years in different classes: history, literature, theology and even art. The key is to read the entire book, not take a paragraph out of the text. It’s also good to look at his sources. They’re very credible sources. The Holy Father did his homework.
He’s wanted to complete the series for years. He had even cut his day in his office down to about four hours to work on this series for fear that he would not finish it, given his advanced age. But by jove, he pulled it off. In this trilogy, the Holy Father shows us that as time moves forward, our knowledge of Christology does not change, it increases.
Let’s see what’s his next academic project. He never ceases to amaze me. He’s brilliant. I was privileged to have him as a professor when I was a student in Europe shortly after Vatican II, during the 70s. I had him for Theology of History. Most of his concepts in this trilogy are based on Theology of History. Theology of History comes to us from the Augustinians and Franciscans. They gathered the works of Augustine and Bonaventure and put the pieces together and realized that they two of them had been working on the same concept, the development of Christian doctrine through history.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV :christmastree1:
This is dogma of the Church.