Which stories from the O.T are necessary to believe?

[Mikaele]

I know that Adam and Eve were real people. But apart from that, are we as Catholics required to believe Exodus to the letter? Noah’s Ark? etc.

 

[catholictiger]

I know that Adam and Eve were real people. But apart from that, are we as Catholics required to believe Exodus to the letter? Noah’s Ark? etc.

someone may correct me on this but many of the OT stories are more meant for theological points rather then a direct telling of historical events this is defently true in the creation story. Yes Adam and Eve probably existed but creation was not to the T what it was like in genesis. It is meant to teach us something philosophical.

 

[Totterman]

Jesus,our Lords peace be whit You.
I don’t understand the whole question,wich parts? When it comes to the O.T we need to understand one thing. God did created the world,and reading the Bible and the first books,and this is only mine wiew of it,so I can be wrong,but I see it like this. Moses did not wrote the books about him,they are storys told a long time ago,and then written down later on. The personwho wrote them had a big question. How to make people understand terms like million of years? Life beging in water,and thats what the books of Moses tell,all creation comes in the right order,but the time. He,who ever wrote them came up whit this idea,and again,THIS IS ONLY MINE WIEW OF IT! “Lets make the time shorter,then they understand” he probably thought. So one week wos what the humans then could understand. I think it went like that. And we need to be carefull whit the times wroten in O.T. But what to believe. I don’t call them “stories”,I call them books or Holy Scrolls. I think we should not think what is real and what is not. The Bible is the book of Holy Truth,every word is true,well,I do have some doubts whit the book of Job,but I cant say that it is not true,I think it happend,but maybe not as we read it today. What makes all hard to understand is the time factor. And what is necessary to believ? We don’t pick parts of The Holy Bible that we choose to believ,that is NOT our job. O.T tells what happens in the N.T. If we choose to beleive one thing and toss out another,we turn us into ateist faster then we say the word. All is true. You don’t need to choose,You need to believ,what is written in the O.T happens in the N.T. Do You need moore proof? I don’t. Blessings,Totterman
PS:You need to read the Bible every day,both O.T and N.T,one chapter a day,that is what I do,and start all over again when I have come to the end.

 

[Joe_5859]

I know that Adam and Eve were real people. But apart from that, are we as Catholics required to believe Exodus to the letter? Noah’s Ark? etc.

From 11Dei 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.”

As Catholics, we must unhesitatingly affirm the inspiration and inerrancy of Sacred Scripture. However, this does not mean that we read all of Scripture in exactly the same way. The literal meaning of a text is that meaning which the author intended to convey. It does not mean we interpret each passage literalistically as many Fundamentalists do.

Here is the analogy I have found most helpful in clarifying this distinction. Take the expression “It’s raining cats and dogs.” The literal meaning (that meaning the author intends to convey) is that it is raining heavily. A literalistic rendering would be that canines and felines are mysteriously falling from the sky in droves.

A further consideration is that the ancients did not record history with the same type of mindset that we do today. We are all about accuracy down to the minutest detail. They didn’t have those same hang-ups.

So, when we read the Old Testament, we must look at the type of literature, the context, etc, to come to a clearer idea of what the literal meaning of the text is.

The story of Adam and Eve has some important things to tell us about the nature of creation, the creation of the human race, God, and the relationship between all of the aforementioned. Scott Hahn does a pretty good job (I think) of parsing out the literary structure of the creation account in his books “A Father Who Keeps His Promises” and “Understanding the Scriptures”.

There are Catholic biblical scholars who take a variety of positions on some of these Old Testament passages, and, as far as I can tell, there are several positions a Catholic can take.

That said, we basically want to avoid the extremes. On the one hand, we don’t want to interpret these passages literalistically as do some fundamentalists because (a) the Church doesn’t do that and (b) it quickly paints yourself into a corner when it comes to many scientific phenomena.

On the other hand, we don’t want to dismiss the Old Testament out of hand and act as though it has nothing important to tell us simply because the earth was not created in six 24 hour days. That is also at odds with Catholic teaching.

 

[Robbinson]

I know that Adam and Eve were real people. But apart from that, are we as Catholics required to believe Exodus to the letter? Noah’s Ark? etc.

Some stories in the bible are historical - and we have every reason to believe they are literal stories.

Some stories are allegorical - but teach a moral or theological lesson.

Re: Adam and Eve - Catholic teaching would accept someone’s “literal” interpretation of the Geneis creation account including that Adam was created out of dust. It would also accept someone’ allegorical understanding and belief that man evolved but that the first “man with a soul” was Adam and that this Adam sinned in the garden of eden.

I personally believe the miracles set forth in the Old Testament (parting of the Red Sea; God giving Moses the 10 commandment; Jonah in the Whale (Jesus himself makes extensive reference to this “miracle”).

The story of the Jews exodus from Egypt has so many historical reference points and references to it, literally and theologically, in the NT and in the new covenant theology, that I feel it must be true.

But there is some liberty of interpretation in all of this I suspect. We (Christians) often devolve into debate on the trees and miss the forest. The gospel is that Jesus came, died for our sins, we must have faith and follow his commandments and he will come again to judge the world. The sacraments assist us in this journey - the rest of it will enrich our understanding of the gospel (but that is its purposes - to assist us in understanding the gospel).

Blessings,

Brian

 

[Mikaele]

What I’m asking is this: Apart from Adam and Eve being historical persons, our original ancestors, is there anything else the Church has declared factual in the Old Testament. I.e. is the parting of the Red Sea historically true according to Catholic teaching? etc.

 

[zarthan]

I know that Adam and Eve were real people. But apart from that, are we as Catholics required to believe Exodus to the letter? Noah’s Ark? etc.

Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke of the Adam and Eve account, the Noah flood account, the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah, the law of Moses (the Torah) in many of its Levitical details, Moses lifting up the bronze serpent in the wilderness exodus, the story of Jonah being swallowed by a great fish, the healing of the leper Naaman by the prophet Elisha, King David, King Solomon, Abraham, Isaiah and other prophets. In addition our Lord Jesus Christ observed Passover which is the remembrance of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, as well as the other holy days of the Jewish people. Pentecost or Shavout which is the day the LORD spoke audibly the ten commandments to the Israelites from Mt.Sinai, Yom Kippur (the day of atonement), the feast of tabernacles, and Hannukah are all alluded to in the N.T. Even the feast of firstfruits is mentioned by the apostle Paul. The feast of firstfruits occurs on the morning after the Sabbath in Passover week. On that day the hight priest was to wave a sheaf of barley firstfruits. This is day that Jesus Christ rose from the dead as the firstborn from the dead and this is why the apostle Paul calls Jesus Christ 'the firstfruit from the dead". These are just some of the OT scriptures that come to my remembrance.

One can not adequately understand the NT without a good understanding of the OT. In fact, if one was to study the written writings of the Ante-Nicene church fathers, one can see that as one moves further from the time of Jesus Christ and his disciples chronologically, the less and less the church fathers quote from the OT. In the first century or two the writings of the church fathers are filled with OT scriptures as well as NT scriptures, but that quickly diminishes in time.

 

[ProVobis]

What I’m asking is this: Apart from Adam and Eve being historical persons, our original ancestors, is there anything else the Church has declared factual in the Old Testament. I.e. is the parting of the Red Sea historically true according to Catholic teaching? etc.

But these are all translations, perhaps of other translations, and the further back you go, the more translations get in the way of the truth. Even current testimonies to a given crime or English translations of current Vatican documents are oftentimes suspect; it would seem more so that “Genesis” has become so distorted it’s a matter of whether you want to believe archaeologists or translators at this point. Or neither. I would think tenth-hand or twentieth-hand information is hardly binding.

 

[puzzleannie]

I know that Adam and Eve were real people. But apart from that, are we as Catholics required to believe Exodus to the letter? Noah’s Ark? etc.

all of them
the bible is true
yes some of the stories are transmitted in poetic language and literary forms, but they contain essential truth expressed in various literary devices.

read up on the 4 senses of scripture which help you make the transition from the literal sense of the scripture to the spriritual

 

[zarthan]

What I’m asking is this: Apart from Adam and Eve being historical persons, our original ancestors, is there anything else the Church has declared factual in the Old Testament. I.e. is the parting of the Red Sea historically true according to Catholic teaching? etc.

I am quite certain that the parting of the Red Sea is historically true since it was a pre-figurement of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The parting of the Red Sea occurred approximately three days after the first Jewish Passover that had resulted in the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.

As you know, Passover was celebrated by Jesus Christ and his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion as he became our Passover lamb to free us from the slavery of sin. Three days later, Jesus rose victoriously over death, and set us all free from the fear of the enemy.

The apostle Paul states that ''our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea."
(1 Corinth.10:3). We are baptized into the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ which occurred during the most memorable Passover week since the first one that was instituted under Moses.

There is a unity to the scriptures as many of the stories in the OT are pre-figurements
of our Lord Jesus Christ and of what is to come.

 

[Robert_Sock]

We would be wise to consider what our Jewish brothers and sisters think about the Old Testament. Here is a sample of what Chabad teaches:

“Mitzrayim” (Egypt) means constriction, limitation. The spiritual Egyptian exile is the animal soul’s restricting and concealing the G-dly soul so severely that the G-dly soul is compressed to the degree that it is diminished and obscured. “Exodus from Egypt” is the removal of the constriction and bounds; i.e. the intellect in the brain illuminates the heart, bringing about fine character traits translated into actual practice…
–Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch (as quoted in Hayom Yom, Shevat 4)

I find this interpretation to be quite profound! It points to the need of understanding the figurative meaning of the Old Testament. Just for clarification, Chabad teaches that we have two souls, one being the animal soul and the other being the divine soul.