Why Do the Notes and Introductions in the NAB read like a non believer wrote them?

[Joe_5859]

I am truly perplexed at the degree to which persons who claim the Catholic faith can be threatened by thoughts, ideas, and interpretations of things, that don’t match their own.
Catholicism should not be a timid and fearful faith that finds “heresy” in anything it doesn’t agree with or understand. That’s not trust.
No trust = no faith.
Hey, maybe that should be a footnote in the NAB.

That’s a fair point and I largely agree. However, I can see potential problems with the beginner being exposed to the historical-critical method without any guidance. All the theological talk about documentary hypotheses can leave one overly focused on the human authorship of Scripture to the neglect of the divine authorship. I personally don’t think the NAB notes do a great job of balancing that out. I think it has the potential to lead people to think of the Bible as just a human book rather than something divinely inspired.

So, yes, there’s no need to cower in terror at any idea we don’t agree with. But I wouldn’t choose that as the best companion to walk along with someone as they read Sacred Scripture.

 

[Joe_5859]

I certainly understand the problems with the notes in the NAB, and I heartily recommend the Navarre Bible commentaries. The Navarre uses the RSV-CE translation. Scott Hahn’s commentaries are good too, but they are not as extensive as the Navarre. As for the Vatican’s use of English in the liturgy, this is the deal. We live in Rome and often go to the Vatican for the big feast days. Liturgies in St. Peter’s are in Latin and Italian, since that is the vernacular here. For non-Latin or Italian speakers, everything is also translated into English in the little white books that are given out at every event presided over by the Holy Father. At Midnight Mass this year on Christmas Eve, which is the last Mass we went to at St. Peter’s, the English translation used for the scriptures was the New Jerusalem Bible translation, which is used in English speaking countries in Europe. If my memory is correct, the RSV-CE is used in English translations of papal documents. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Wow, what a neat thing to be right there in Rome. I’m jealous.

I know the RSV is the translation used in the Catechism. I guess I never looked at other Church documents to verify whether or not they used the same.

 

[TimothyH]

If the footnotes in the NAB are offensive then don’t read them. Problem solved.

I don’t like white pants so I don’t wear them. I don’t like Thai food so I don’t eat it. I don’t like the footnotes in the NAB so I don’t read them. If you don’t like the NAB then throw it in the garbage and get a different Bible. That’s all. What’s the big deal?

And why get all bent out of shape because it exists and because other people read it? What does arguing about it and making sarcastic remarks to other people about it on an internet message board accomplish? Just throw it away, get a DR or RSV, read that and move on with the rest of life, that’s all.

Seriously, I think we make up our own problems, and then project them onto the entire civilized world as a major crisis.

-Tim-

 

[clem456]

My militant feminist Theology professor was adamant that the interpretation that the woman was Mary was incorrect. She taught specifically that this interpretation was wrong and it was later read-in as such by a male dominated patriarchal Church that has always had problems with sexuality. (Her exact words).

These sort of arguments are well known in Theological circles. The glaring assertions and omissions in the NAB footnotes makes it abundantly clear whose side those scholars are on.

Well, no, it doesn’t not make it clear that people are on sides. Your professor was not the first professor with a wild hair and will not be the last. So? Maybe you are choosing sides?

Not mine.

exactly

I’ve seen young Catholic students lose their faith because of a well planned avalanche of deliberately misleading biblical interpretations that seem to come from an accepted authority.

Calling this garbage out for what it is, can in no way be considered timid.

While there may be issues with the NAB it’s not “garbage”.

Somehow I doubt that you’ve seen Catholics lose their faith over bible interpretations. I would venture that most of our young people do not open the bible. Maybe there’s no incentive to pursue the faith because they’ve seen lack of faith, hope, and charity from other Catholics. Who wants to have faith in something so fragile that bible footnotes can derail it?

 

[Joe_5859]

Seriously, I think we make up our own problems, and then project them onto the entire civilized world as a major crisis.

-Tim-

Who, us? Never!

In all seriousness, that’s certainly possible.

I don’t know, though. I’ve seen a lot of Catholic high school textbooks on Scripture that pretty much start off talking about JEDP on the first page. While it’s an interesting hypothesis and it has insights to offer the world of biblical criticism, I question the placement of such information in such contexts. Maybe it’s just me, but it was that sort of stuff that made it a lot easier for me at the end of high school and beginning of college to basically dismiss the Bible as “just a book.”

Now, I’m sure there are many more such factors that go into people questioning/losing their faith. But I can see the danger. That’s why I’m not a fan of the NAB notes. Sure, it is not a high school textbook geared towards adolescents. But a lot of people pick it up without much theological knowledge to fall back on (as they should because it’s the Bible! ). So I don’t think it’s the best venue to introduce those concepts.

I wouldn’t call them the sole source of a generation’s lack of faith. But I do think there is the potential for sowing seeds of distrust.

 

[clem456]

The young people I’ve talked to, and I talk to lots and lots of them at work and at the parish, scripture interpretation accounts for 0% of problems with Catholicism. 0
Their concerns?

1. hypocrisy
2. intolerance
3. political posturing
4. injustice
   Whether their perceptions of the world are accurate or not is only part of the problem. Their concerns and viewpoints still have to be addressed patiently, truthfully, and not dismissed out of hand because they don’t fit our worldview.

Young people are not coming back to the Church in large numbers anytime soon, because we don’t know how to present the faith to them in a real and honest way. And that presentation must be sound scripture and Church teaching, but it has to be much more than that. There has to be a strong and confident faith that is not angered and disturbed by differences of opinion. Thankfully many of our new young priests can present the faith in an orthodox way but are not shaken by hard questions and unorthodox viewpoints. They can answer these question patiently and charitably. That is going to be a blessing going forward.
Young people are not automatically naive and they can tell when a person’s faith is resting on quicksand by how easily they resort to ad hominem, typecasting, posturing, generalizations. And if you dismiss their “liberal” teachers out of hand, they will tune you out and you will have 0 credibility with them.

 

[eyesoftheworld]

Are you reading the same notes that I am reading? Your assertions don’t match the notes:

• The suggestion isn’t that it was a Jewish hymn, but a Jewish Christian hymn.
• The problem with 2 Chron 20 isn’t evidence, but lack thereof. It doesn’t fit well into the narrative; it is a war story that is theological rather than military; it doesn’t correspond to anything in 1 Kings. So, some believe that the inspired writer was inspired to write this as a theological exposition on the faithfulness of the king. Is that true? I don’t know. The note isn’t saying it’s a fact, though.
• In Luke, it’s the Sermon on the Plain, not the Mount; moreover, who in the world ever suggested Buddhist writings as the source of this teaching? The notes mention the correspondences between Luke’s version and the other evangelists’ versions… but Buddhists?

In fact, thanks for asking. Yes, contemporary scholars have access to a greater amount of material than St Jerome did. It’s what scholars do, you know – since the time of Jerome, they haven’t just sat on their duffs and smoked pipes…

You deliberately missed my …indicating that once go down this path,*** nothing in the Bible is reliable, and possible nothing ascribed to have been spoken by anyone in the Bible to to be taken at face value. *** It’s a slippery slope…maybe Moses did not get ten commandments…maybe some Deuteronomist thought that the Hammurabi Code with some modifications fit the story.

Where is the evidence? I think these note makers just pull this **** out of thin air?

Where is the proof that I Chronicles 20 is fiction?
Where is the proof that Mary did not speak the words in the Canticle?
Do your “modern scholars” have more information than Saint Luke or Saint Jerome?
How do you know what Saint Jerome had access to? Do you have a card catalogue with the contents of his library? He certainly had access to Hebrew texts that were destroyed by Scribes in the Middle Ages.

Now here is a question for someone who isn’t just trying to start an internet arguement…if this is the maintstream additude towards sacred scripture, do I need to reconsider my conversion back to Catholicism? If Catholics don’t defend the sacred scriptures from attacks from Modernist/atheistic “scholars” I think I would rather be an Evangelical. Someone tell me what the “gentleman” I am responding to does not represent mainstream Catholic thought, because if it does, I’ve made a huge mistake!

 

[clem456]

Where is the evidence? I think these note makers just pull this **** out of thin air/

Where is the proof that I Chronicles 20 is fiction?
Where is the proof that Mary did not speak the words in the Canticle?
Do your “modern scholars” have more information than Saint Luke or Saint Jerome?

proof…
When you find a person who personally knows St Jerome and St Luke, let us know. Until then, maybe we can trust the people who spend their life’s vocation learning scripture and doing exegesis for the Church…let them talk about it, do research, pray… write footnotes, do revisions.

 

[eyesoftheworld]

proof…
When you find a person who personally knows St Jerome and St Luke, let us know. Until then, maybe we can trust the people who spend their life’s vocation learning scripture and doing exegesis for the Church…let them talk about it, do research, pray… write footnotes, do revisions.

how do I ignore this person? He’s just trying to start trouble

 

[Gorgias]

Where is the evidence? I think these note makers just pull this **** out of thin air/

No, it’s not out of thin air. Yet, as you say, it’s not something that is definitive. That’s why you’ll see, if you read the notes carefully, that “the Magnificat (with the possible exception of v 48) may have been a Jewish Christian hymn”, and 2 Chron 20 “seems to be a free composition of the Chronicler”. You see, they’re not saying that this is definitively so, but is the reasoned opinion of the scholars who study these questions. The notes are providing information, not doctrine…

Do your “modern scholars” have more information than Saint Luke or Saint Jerome?

You keep asking this question. I’ll keep answering it, then…

Yes, they have access to more information than either Luke or Jerome. (Naturally, they’re not divinely inspired, as the evangelist was; nor do they have the access to 1st century figures that Luke did.) Yet, we know that Luke wasn’t above using others’ material and inserting it into his Gospel! On the other hand, Jerome himself was a theologian and scholar – why are you berating modern scholars, then, who are working at the same project that Jerome did?

 

[eyesoftheworld]

No, it’s not out of thin air. Yet, as you say, it’s not something that is definitive. That’s why you’ll see, if you read the notes carefully, that “the Magnificat (with the possible exception of v 48) may have been a Jewish Christian hymn”, and 2 Chron 20 “seems to be a free composition of the Chronicler”. You see, they’re not saying that this is definitively so, but is the reasoned opinion of the scholars who study these questions. The notes are providing information, not doctrine…

You keep asking this question. I’ll keep answering it, then…

Yes, they have access to more information than either Luke or Jerome. (Naturally, they’re not divinely inspired, as the evangelist was; nor do they have the access to 1st century figures that Luke did.) Yet, we know that Luke wasn’t above using others’ material and inserting it into his Gospel! On the other hand, Jerome himself was a theologian and scholar – why are you berating modern scholars, then, who are working at the same project that Jerome did?

What evidence is there that such a hymn existed? Otherwise it’s an invention of some modernist scholar…and how do you know what Luke and Jerome had access to? They certainly had access to the Holy Spirit, which no modern scholar has access to.

why are you berating modern scholars, then, who are working at the same project that Jerome did?

How dare you compare modern ***scholars ***to Saint Jerome? They are NOT working on the same project.

 

[Joe_5859]

The young people I’ve talked to, and I talk to lots and lots of them at work and at the parish, scripture interpretation accounts for 0% of problems with Catholicism. 0
Their concerns?

1. hypocrisy
2. intolerance
3. political posturing
4. injustice
   Whether their perceptions of the world are accurate or not is only part of the problem. Their concerns and viewpoints still have to be addressed patiently, truthfully, and not dismissed out of hand because they don’t fit our worldview.

Young people are not coming back to the Church in large numbers anytime soon, because we don’t know how to present the faith to them in a real and honest way. And that presentation must be sound scripture and Church teaching, but it has to be much more than that. There has to be a strong and confident faith that is not angered and disturbed by differences of opinion. Thankfully many of our new young priests can present the faith in an orthodox way but are not shaken by hard questions and unorthodox viewpoints. They can answer these question patiently and charitably. That is going to be a blessing going forward.
Young people are not automatically naive and they can tell when a person’s faith is resting on quicksand by how easily they resort to ad hominem, typecasting, posturing, generalizations. And if you dismiss their “liberal” teachers out of hand, they will tune you out and you will have 0 credibility with them.

Good point.

 

[Gorgias]

You deliberately missed my

Sorry… I thought you were rolling your eyes at the notion, rather than going to hyperbole…!

…indicating that once go down this path,*** nothing in the Bible is reliable, and possible nothing ascribed to have been spoken by anyone in the Bible to to be taken at face value.***

I disagree. Notice, of course, that the notions you’re stating do not contradict doctrinal or dogmatic assertions of the faith in any way! If the notes were saying something truly heretical, along the lines of what the ‘historical Jesus’ folks were saying (i.e., “Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead; it’s simply a metaphor”), then I’d agree with you. But, these notes aren’t doing that! Nor are they encouraging us to give up on the Bible! Now, they do remind us that Catholics aren’t fundamentalists who require that every word in the Bible to be historically accurate – but that’s a good thing! If we stray down that path, we will lose our faith… as soon as we find things that are contradictory on their face, we lose our faith in the Scriptures (rather than seeing that what we’ve lost faith in is the hyper-literalistic interpretation of Scripture!)

How do you know what Saint Jerome had access to?

By virtue of seeing what he wrote.

Do you have a card catalogue with the contents of his library? He certainly had access to Hebrew texts that were destroyed by Scribes in the Middle Ages.

Interesting – I hadn’t ever heard this assertion. Do you have a citation for the notion of ‘lost’ manuscripts that Jerome referenced?

Now here is a question for someone who isn’t just trying to start an internet arguement…if this is the maintstream additude towards sacred scripture, do I need to reconsider my conversion back to Catholicism?

Of course you don’t! But… you might need to rethink the notion that the Bible is literal history in every word on the page…

If Catholics don’t defend the sacred scriptures from attacks from Modernist/atheistic “scholars”

We certainly do defend Scripture! This isn’t one of the areas they attack, however; if you could find me one modernist or atheist who attacks Scripture based on 2 Chron 20 or the Magnificat, I’ll concede this particular point… but I don’t think you will…

Someone tell me what the “gentleman” I am responding to does not represent mainstream Catholic thought

Thanks for the finger quotes for ‘gentleman’.

Ask and you shall receive, though: here’s an online version of Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, a 1993 document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which should address some of the questions you have regarding the way Catholics interpret the Bible. Enjoy!

 

[Gorgias]

how do you know what … Jerome had access to? They certainly had access to the Holy Spirit, which no modern scholar has access to.

How dare you compare modern ***scholars *** to Saint Jerome? They are NOT working on the same project.

And now we’ve found where the rubber meets the road…

Why would I not compare St Jerome to modern Catholic scholars? Why would we suggest that the Holy Spirit worked through St Jerome, but not through those who follow him? Are you suggesting that the Holy Spirit abandoned Scriptural exegesis in the Church after Jerome died?

 

[clem456]

How dare you compare modern ***scholars ***to Saint Jerome? They are NOT working on the same project.

Really?
Do you not believe in Catholic Tradition?

 

[eyesoftheworld]

FYI I do not subscribe to a literalistic interpretation to the Bible. I made that clear early in this thread. But I do believe when the Bible says “and then Jesus said to them” that the words that follow were in fact the words he spoke (albeit translated from Aramaic to Greek).

You are not speaking to some lay Catholic, but someone who minored in Biblical Studies/Apologetics at a major Evangelical University. I disagree with Fundamentalist interpretations of the Scriptures…but it angers me when so called scholars just make stuff up with no sources for their inventions. If I were going to a Catholic Seminary, which I have considered, and I heard this garbage from the professors, I would withdraw and run away from the Church.

 

[eyesoftheworld]

Really?
Do you not believe in Catholic Tradition?

I am asking someone other than you two who seem to be piling on my questions if this is in fact “Catholic Tradition”. If it is, I need to rethink my reconversion.

 

[eyesoftheworld]

Interesting – I hadn’t ever heard this assertion. Do you have a citation for the notion of ‘lost’ manuscripts that Jerome referenced?

Masoretic Text

Modern Hebrew texts resulted from centuries of copying and preserving ancient Hebrew sacred documents. Unfortunately, the older copies were always discarded. Scribes who copied the worn-out manuscripts destroyed the old documents because of the confidence they had in the veracity and adequacy of the new ones. Until 1947, when the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) were discovered, the extant Hebrew manuscripts dated no earlier than a.d. 900, with the exception of the Nash Papyrus dated in the first century b.c., which contained little more than the Ten Commandments. Among the manuscripts of the DSS were manuscripts dating before 100 b.c., so that the oldest known Hebrew manuscripts were pushed back by a thousand years.
Perhaps even to this day the most significant find for OT studies was a complete scroll of the Hebrew text of Isaiah (1QIsaa), which is to be dated to the second century b.c. The Jewish community where these were found was in an area northwest of the Dead Sea, known as Qumran (possibly Essenes or closely related to them). The community existed from c. 130 B.C.-A.D. 70, when Jerusalem fell to the Romans. All of the OT books except Esther are represented in these finds.
By the end of the first century a.d. a standard consonantal Hebrew text emerged. This traditional text was safeguarded in various ways by Masoretes, who had produced it (masorah = tradition). These workers were indeed “tradition keepers.” They surrounded the text with notes called “masora” but did not touch the consonantal text itself. Elaborate safeguards had previously been set up, and continued to be set up, to maintain the integrity of each copy. By a.d. 900, vowel points were added to this “Masoretic” text. Other markings indicated punctuation, variant readings, and keṯîḇ / qērē readings. The verse divisions of the Masoretic text go back to very early dates in the Christian era. The Masortic text contains 23,100 verses. The chapter divisions were much later (c. a.d. 1244).
Because of the work of the Masoretes, our modern Hebrew text is called the Masoretic text. The Masoretes lived in Tiberias and Babylonia, and introduced all of these various signs to the heretofore consonantal texts, fixing, to a great extent, the pronunciation and meaning of the text. The masora they supplied helped to interpret and explain the text and any changes they had made. Two masoretic families from the Tiberian textual studies school, Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, specialized in preserving the best possible text. The Ben Asher text has been accorded preference over the Ben Naphtali text and was the basis for Biblia Hebraica, (BH3) 3d ed. (Stuttgart, 1937).

 

[clem456]

I am asking someone other than you two who seem to be piling on my questions if this is in fact “Catholic Tradition”. If it is, I need to rethink my reconversion.

Perhaps.
Back to the point you raised.
You consider modern scripture scholars to be working outside the Tradition that St Jerome worked in. Tradition would hold that scripture study is living and ongoing and is on a continuum with the work that St Jerome did. Do you agree with that?

 

[eyesoftheworld]

Perhaps.
Back to the point you raised.
You consider modern scripture scholars to be working outside the Tradition that St Jerome worked in. Tradition would hold that scripture study is living and ongoing and is on a continuum with the work that St Jerome did. Do you agree with that?

I don’t believe these people are working in the same tradition as Saint Jerome. If they are, I am not a Roman Catholic.

Words mean things. Once you maintain that words don’t matter, then you are a relativist.

Jesus said “x” does not mean that Luke made up words that Jesus never said. If the Scriptures say Jesus said “x” and he never said “x” then the scriptures are worthless. You assert it does not matter if Jesus indeed said “x.” I maintain it does matter. If he did not say “x” and the scriptures say he did, then the scriptures are not reliable.