Category: Bible

When The Chosen People Go Marching In

So, you say the plain-and-simple meaning of the Bible just ain’t plain and simple for you?  You hear of Stephen being stoned and wonder what he was tripping on?  (No kidding, apparently some people wonder just that.)  Fear not, for behold there is a new Bible translation available just for you:

"For readers of the Bible confused by its archaic language, such as its use of the term ‘stoned’ for a form of execution rather than the effects of smoking dope, help is at hand.

One of the world’s most widely read Bibles, the New International Version, has been modernised by a team of 15 American and British scholars and is published today [March 15].

"Gone is the word ‘aliens,’ which the academics thought was invariably associated in the minds of the younger generation with extra-terrestrials. It is replaced with ‘foreigners.’

"Even the term ‘saints’ is deemed to be too ‘ecclesiastical’ and has been banished, to be replaced with ‘God’s chosen people.’ The Virgin Mary is no longer ‘with child’; she is ‘pregnant.’

Uh, how can the Virgin Mary be pregnant if she is not with child?  I guess that will be a question for the translators of the next edition of this Bible.

GET THE STORY.

Marcion & The Canon

A reader writes:

I have become reaquainted with a friend from highschool and we have had a couple of conversations of a religious nature. I have just recently come back to the Catholic faith and have been studying diligently but feel inadequate to answer some of his questions. He recently wrote to me regarding his criticisms of the creation of the Bible.

He states that the process of collecting and consolidating Scripture was launched when a rival sect produced it’s own quasi-biblical canon. Around 140 a Gnostic leader named Marcion began spreading a theory that the New and Old Testaments didn’t share the same God. Marcion argued that the Old Testament’s God represented law and wrath while the New Testament’s God, represented by Christ, exemplified love. As a result Marcion rejected the Old Testament and the most overtly Jewish New Testament writings, including Matthew, Mark, Acts and Hebrews. He manipulated other books to downplay their Jewish tendencies. Though in 144 the church in Rome declared his views heretical, Marcions’s teaching sparked a new cult.

Challenged by Marcion’s threat, church leaders began to consider earnestly their own views on a definitive list of Scriptural books including both the Old and New Testaments. He goes on to say that he thinks the process was flawed.

Would you please comment on this and possibly refer me to some writings on this subject? Your thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

This is a case of "right premises, wrong conclusions."

It’s true that Marcion rejected the Old Testament, holding that it had a different god, and that he produced an edited version of the New Testament (consisting of an edited version of the Gospel of Luke and edited versions of Paul’s epistles) that he had stripped the overtly Jewish passages out of.

LEARN MORE ABOUT MARCION HERE.

It’s also true (or thought to be true) that Marcion’s release of his mutilated canon helped spur the solidification of the real canon by the Church.

But . . . so what?

God often uses heretics to spur the Church to codify in explicit form what was handed down from Christ and the apostles. The Church tends to deal with things in a pastoral manner, meaning that if something hasn’t become a problem, it doesn’t come down on it with the full force of its teaching authority.

The fact is: Being challenged makes people get more explicit and precise about their beliefs. As long as they aren’t challenged on them, they aren’t forced to think through how to defend them and precisely what their boundaries are.

In the beginning, Jesus handed on certain Scriptures as divine to the apostles (i.e., the Scriptures of the Old Testament), and the apostles and their associates wrote new Scriptures (i.e., the New Testament0, which they handed on to the Church.

As long as nobody was challenging these Scriptures with a rival set, there was little need to write out a formal list of precisely what they included.

But when Marcion comes along and starts chucking out large portions of Scriptures known to have been handed on from Jesus and the apostles, the Church needed to start making explicit statements on the point in order to protect the faithful from absorbing his harmful ideas.

It thus reaffirmed in a more precise form what had always been believed.

That’s what typically happens when a new heresy crops up: The Church his forced to articulate what it has always believed in a more forceful and precise way.

Marcion wasn’t the only gent who furthered this process regarding the canon, either. In the second and third centuries lots of Gnostic individuals wrote phony gospels that they tried to pass off as the genuine article. Since these disagreed with the doctrine that had been handed down from Christ and the apostles by Tradition, and since they showed up all of a sudden, with no tradition of their having been used in the churches as handed down from the apostles, it was easy to spot them as fakes. But to prevent ordinary individuals from being taken in by them, the bishops felt it prudent to start issuing lists of the authentic Scriptures and contrasting them with the new-fangled forgeries.

Again: What had always been believed was being reaffirmed more forcefully and precisely.

None of this gives us any reason to doubt the canon or think that the process leading to it was flawed. The process was superintended by the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Scriptures, to make sure that the Church ended up identifying the right ones. Individual bishops, not possessing the charism of infallibility, might make mistakes, but the Magisterium of the Church as a whole (which does possess the charism of infallibility), could not err once it defined the matter.

That was some centuries later, but even before then the fact that Marcion’s scripture and the Gnostic scriptures were rejected as incompatible with what had been handed down from Christ and the apostles shows that the process of preserving and passing down the authentic Scriptures was working.

Marcion & The Canon

A reader writes:

I have become reaquainted with a friend from highschool and we have had a couple of conversations of a religious nature. I have just recently come back to the Catholic faith and have been studying diligently but feel inadequate to answer some of his questions. He recently wrote to me regarding his criticisms of the creation of the Bible.

He states that the process of collecting and consolidating Scripture was launched when a rival sect produced it’s own quasi-biblical canon. Around 140 a Gnostic leader named Marcion began spreading a theory that the New and Old Testaments didn’t share the same God. Marcion argued that the Old Testament’s God represented law and wrath while the New Testament’s God, represented by Christ, exemplified love. As a result Marcion rejected the Old Testament and the most overtly Jewish New Testament writings, including Matthew, Mark, Acts and Hebrews. He manipulated other books to downplay their Jewish tendencies. Though in 144 the church in Rome declared his views heretical, Marcions’s teaching sparked a new cult.

Challenged by Marcion’s threat, church leaders began to consider earnestly their own views on a definitive list of Scriptural books including both the Old and New Testaments. He goes on to say that he thinks the process was flawed.

Would you please comment on this and possibly refer me to some writings on this subject? Your thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

This is a case of "right premises, wrong conclusions."

It’s true that Marcion rejected the Old Testament, holding that it had a different god, and that he produced an edited version of the New Testament (consisting of an edited version of the Gospel of Luke and edited versions of Paul’s epistles) that he had stripped the overtly Jewish passages out of.

LEARN MORE ABOUT MARCION HERE.

It’s also true (or thought to be true) that Marcion’s release of his mutilated canon helped spur the solidification of the real canon by the Church.

But . . . so what?

God often uses heretics to spur the Church to codify in explicit form what was handed down from Christ and the apostles. The Church tends to deal with things in a pastoral manner, meaning that if something hasn’t become a problem, it doesn’t come down on it with the full force of its teaching authority.

The fact is: Being challenged makes people get more explicit and precise about their beliefs. As long as they aren’t challenged on them, they aren’t forced to think through how to defend them and precisely what their boundaries are.

In the beginning, Jesus handed on certain Scriptures as divine to the apostles (i.e., the Scriptures of the Old Testament), and the apostles and their associates wrote new Scriptures (i.e., the New Testament0, which they handed on to the Church.

As long as nobody was challenging these Scriptures with a rival set, there was little need to write out a formal list of precisely what they included.

But when Marcion comes along and starts chucking out large portions of Scriptures known to have been handed on from Jesus and the apostles, the Church needed to start making explicit statements on the point in order to protect the faithful from absorbing his harmful ideas.

It thus reaffirmed in a more precise form what had always been believed.

That’s what typically happens when a new heresy crops up: The Church his forced to articulate what it has always believed in a more forceful and precise way.

Marcion wasn’t the only gent who furthered this process regarding the canon, either. In the second and third centuries lots of Gnostic individuals wrote phony gospels that they tried to pass off as the genuine article. Since these disagreed with the doctrine that had been handed down from Christ and the apostles by Tradition, and since they showed up all of a sudden, with no tradition of their having been used in the churches as handed down from the apostles, it was easy to spot them as fakes. But to prevent ordinary individuals from being taken in by them, the bishops felt it prudent to start issuing lists of the authentic Scriptures and contrasting them with the new-fangled forgeries.

Again: What had always been believed was being reaffirmed more forcefully and precisely.

None of this gives us any reason to doubt the canon or think that the process leading to it was flawed. The process was superintended by the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Scriptures, to make sure that the Church ended up identifying the right ones. Individual bishops, not possessing the charism of infallibility, might make mistakes, but the Magisterium of the Church as a whole (which does possess the charism of infallibility), could not err once it defined the matter.

That was some centuries later, but even before then the fact that Marcion’s scripture and the Gnostic scriptures were rejected as incompatible with what had been handed down from Christ and the apostles shows that the process of preserving and passing down the authentic Scriptures was working.

Desperate Midwives

A reader writes:

In Exodus 1, God blessed some women for lying, because their lies saved the first born Hebrews. There are other examples of people lying in the Old Testament and it being a good thing.

So, can morality be relative depending on circumstances? I know sin can change from grave to venial depending on circumstances, but in that example I used, God blessed them, not just excused their lies as venial sins.

Thanks!

Let’s look at the passage:

15: Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiph’rah and the other Pu’ah,
16: "When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, she shall live."
17: But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.
18: So the king of Egypt called the midwives, and said to them, "Why have you done this, and let the male children live?"
19: The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and are delivered before the midwife comes to them."
20: So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and grew very strong.
21: And because the midwives feared God he gave them families.

While many folks look at this passage and conclude that God blessed the midwives for lying, this conclusion does not seem to be borne out by the text, which expressly states that the reason for the blessing was the midwives’ fear of God. This fear of (reverence for) God was manifest chiefly in the midwives’ refusal to kill the Hebrew baby boys. What they told Pharaoh in their desperation was just a secondary attempt to keep what they had done from being exposed and them from being executed.

The lie thus seems secondary to the main thing, which was their defiance of Pharaoh’s evil order so that they might honor God. It’s a "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). Since they obeyed God, God blessed them, as well as excusing the lie they told.

That being said, when reading the Old Testament one must recognize that due to progressive revelation not everything, in particular not everything regarding God’s will, was as clear at the time as it later came to be. (Indeed, the Ten Commandments hadn’t even been given at the time of Exodus 1; they weren’t given until Exodus 20). The total incompatibility of lying with God’s will thus may not have been as clear to the people of the day as it is to us, and this may have played a role in God treating them as he did (i.e., not holding the lie against them).

Zachariah & Mary: Double Standard?

A reader writes:

I know there is a different explanation, but when reading the biblical account of Zachary’s not understanding the angels message about John the Baptist, and Mary’s not understanding about when the angel told her about Jesus, they seem the same.  Yet, Zacahry was punished while Mary was praised.  I’m curious about how to explain this to non-Catholic friends who look for "holes" in Catholic teaching, and sometimes the bible itself.
I appreciate the difficulty you are perceiving, as it’s something I’ve had to ponder myself. And it’s not just a problem for Catholics. I wondered about this as a Protestant.
Here’s what we’re told about the case of Zechariah:
And Zechari’ah said to the angel, "How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years." And the angel answered him, "I am Gabriel, who stand in the presence of God; and I was sent to speak to you, and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things come to pass, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time" [Luke 1:18-20].
And here’s what we’re told about Mary:
And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since I have no husband?"
And the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible."
And Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her [Luke 1:34-38].
And we’re told:
[Elizabeth:] "And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" [Luke 1:45].
On its face, it could appear that a different standard is being applied to Zechariah than to Mary. Both query the angel about the prophesied miraculous birth, yet when this happens Zechariah is struck mute while Mary is given an explanation and a non-painful sign (i.e., the fact Elizabeth is already miraculously present). Then we have a blessing pronounced upon Mary for her belief.
It seems to me that there are several possible explanations:
  1. We are not meant to understand the praise of Mary as a contrast to Zechariah. It’s simply praise made without reference to his situation. The difference of the signs they are given is just part of the mystery of God’s providence and is not meant to be understood as a punishment or criticism of Zechariah’s response.
  2. We are meant to understand that Mary is being praised and favorably treated in comparison to Zechariah, but this is due to something not captured, or fully captured, in the text, such as a inward disposition on Zechariah’s part in comparison to Mary’s inward disposition.
  3. We are meant to understand a contrast between the two but there is something about the two situations that makes Mary’s reaction more reasonable than Zechariah’s. For example, it might be argued that what is being proposed in Mary’s case requires a far greater leap of faith (a birth with no man involved) in comparison to what is being proposed in Zechariah’s (a birth past the normal age). Thus it might be more reasonable for Mary to ask questions up front than it was for Zechariah, and when these questions were answered, she was ready to believe.
  4. We are meant to understand a contrast between the two and the text does hint at the basis for the contrast. For example, Zecharaiah asks a different question that Mary does. Zechariah asks the angel for a sign to prove it to him ("How will I know this?"), whereas Mary only asks for an explanation ("How will this be?"). Taken on their faces, Mary’s question is more open to the miraculous than Zechariah’s is. She is more ready to believe, and thus she is praised for this. One might even assert (consistently with the text though not required by it) that she had already believe what the angel said when she asked her question. She was just wanting clarification of the means by which it would happen rather than demanding proof that it would.

Hope this helps!

Zachariah & Mary: Double Standard?

A reader writes:

I know there is a different explanation, but when reading the biblical account of Zachary’s not understanding the angels message about John the Baptist, and Mary’s not understanding about when the angel told her about Jesus, they seem the same.  Yet, Zacahry was punished while Mary was praised.  I’m curious about how to explain this to non-Catholic friends who look for "holes" in Catholic teaching, and sometimes the bible itself.
I appreciate the difficulty you are perceiving, as it’s something I’ve had to ponder myself. And it’s not just a problem for Catholics. I wondered about this as a Protestant.
Here’s what we’re told about the case of Zechariah:
And Zechari’ah said to the angel, "How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years." And the angel answered him, "I am Gabriel, who stand in the presence of God; and I was sent to speak to you, and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things come to pass, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time" [Luke 1:18-20].
And here’s what we’re told about Mary:
And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since I have no husband?"
And the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible."
And Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her [Luke 1:34-38].
And we’re told:
[Elizabeth:] "And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" [Luke 1:45].
On its face, it could appear that a different standard is being applied to Zechariah than to Mary. Both query the angel about the prophesied miraculous birth, yet when this happens Zechariah is struck mute while Mary is given an explanation and a non-painful sign (i.e., the fact Elizabeth is already miraculously present). Then we have a blessing pronounced upon Mary for her belief.
It seems to me that there are several possible explanations:
  1. We are not meant to understand the praise of Mary as a contrast to Zechariah. It’s simply praise made without reference to his situation. The difference of the signs they are given is just part of the mystery of God’s providence and is not meant to be understood as a punishment or criticism of Zechariah’s response.
  2. We are meant to understand that Mary is being praised and favorably treated in comparison to Zechariah, but this is due to something not captured, or fully captured, in the text, such as a inward disposition on Zechariah’s part in comparison to Mary’s inward disposition.
  3. We are meant to understand a contrast between the two but there is something about the two situations that makes Mary’s reaction more reasonable than Zechariah’s. For example, it might be argued that what is being proposed in Mary’s case requires a far greater leap of faith (a birth with no man involved) in comparison to what is being proposed in Zechariah’s (a birth past the normal age). Thus it might be more reasonable for Mary to ask questions up front than it was for Zechariah, and when these questions were answered, she was ready to believe.
  4. We are meant to understand a contrast between the two and the text does hint at the basis for the contrast. For example, Zecharaiah asks a different question that Mary does. Zechariah asks the angel for a sign to prove it to him ("How will I know this?"), whereas Mary only asks for an explanation ("How will this be?"). Taken on their faces, Mary’s question is more open to the miraculous than Zechariah’s is. She is more ready to believe, and thus she is praised for this. One might even assert (consistently with the text though not required by it) that she had already believe what the angel said when she asked her question. She was just wanting clarification of the means by which it would happen rather than demanding proof that it would.

Hope this helps!

Old Testament History Recommends

A reader writes:

I have a question for you (who doesn’t). As a facilitator in the RCIA program at my parish I’ve realized that my biggest scriptural and historical weakness is the history of the Jewish people. I can tell you all about the Jewish people of the 1st century and the history of the Catholic Church but I fall surprisingly short when it comes to Old Testament history. I definitely need to learn more about this to be an effective evangelizer (is that a word? [yes, it is–Jimmy]) and teacher.

I plan to re-read Genesis and Exodus. I think that will be a good start to learn about the beginnings of our Jewish ancestors. Beyond that, I was curious if you know of any books (or anything else for that matter) that would help me in learning the history of the Jewish people. I’m also looking for something with as many references to scripture as possible. I was hoping that there is an equivalent to "Triumph" by H. W. Crocker III (which I thought was excelent by the way) but for the Old Testament Jewish people.

Of course I’m looking for something Orthodox, not something the Jesus Seminar would be happy with.

Do you know of anything that would help me in learning more in this area?

I’d recommend three things:

  1. Don’t stop at Genesis and Exodus. Read all of the historical books of the Old Testament. In fact, read the whole Old Testament. In fact, read the whole Bible. Four chapters a day will get it done in a year.
  2. If you’d like a book summarizing Old Testament history from a traditional perspective, I’d recommend A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age Through the Jewish Wars by the Evangelical scholar Walter Kaiser. (Though I see the one copy they have at Amazon at the moment is quite expensive. I’d check with other vendors to see if they have it.)
  3. I’d also recommend a book about the life and institutions of ancient Israel by the Dominican scholar Roland de Vaux. It will help you understand what’s going on in the history of Israel better. Since it’s about ancient Israel’s life and institutions, it’s called Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions. Good stuff!

Hope this helps, and God bless!

Bible Scholar Recommends

A reader writes:

The recent blog post about the Pentateuch brought something to mind I hope you can help me with. I know you are busy and I don’t want to take much of your time, but my difficulty is how to find scholars whose works I can trust and learn from. I have heard you recommend the Word Biblical Commentary series before (which I intend to look into), but I am thinking more of Catholic individuals like Joseph Fitzmyer and Raymond Brown and the like. Both of these men have been members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and one would think that means they have some good things to say, but I have also heard some reservations expressed about some of their work. Finding sources I can trust has been a serious stumbling block for my delving deeply into scripture. I am not trying to open a political can of worms but I don’t know of any objective source to learn about scripture scholars. Who to read and who to avoid? Any thoughts you may have would be appreciated.

I wish I was able to offer more encouraging thoughts than what I am able to, but here is what I can tell you:

  1. The state of Catholic biblical scholarship today is such that I can only recommend individual commentaries by individual authors here and there.
  2. The biggest names (e.g., Ray Brown) cannot be recommended to a general audience. They do have good things to say, but they frequently are far too uncritical of higher critical ideas and they present their material in a way that is often faith-challenging rather than faith affirming. A lot of the time it comes down to how you say things, and these guys don’t have the knack of saying things in a way that communicates the concept in a way that makes it clear to the average reader how this is to be harmonized with the faith.
  3. A lot of the problem goes to the hermeneutic of suspicion that is possessed of contemporary critical scholarship. Rome has been growing increasingly concerned about this problem and has been making noise about it but hasn’t yet acted decisively on it.
  4. From what I can tell, it seems to me that the different biblical scholarship communities–Catholic, Protestant, Jewish–go through cycles in which the commentaries they are cranking out are flourishing or moribund. Currently, the Catholic community is in a largely moribund phase, though with some bright spots here and there.
  5. What I would suggest is that you start by getting a copy of the 1950s edition of Bernard Orchard’s A Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, which is out of print but can be ordered from used book services like Loome Theological Booksellers. The scholarship is somewhat out of date, but at least it’s faith-affirming and will give you a baseline, traditional Catholic take on Scripture.
  6. Once you have that, branch out by comparing what it says to more recent commentaries. Don’t limit yourself to Catholic ones, either. The Word Biblical Commentary is a good set, and it’s Protestant (broadly Evangelical, specifically). The Navarre Bible (a Catholic set that doesn’t cover the whole Bible yet) is orthodox and more contemporary but is more devotional than scholarly.
  7. Some of the best commentaries I’ve read of late have actually been Jewish (they seem to be going through a flourishing phase). The Jewish Publication Society’s JPS Torah Commentary (edited by Nahum Sarna) is particularly good. Also, reading some Medieval Jewish commentaries like Rashi on Genesis is good.
  8. There are some volumes of the Sacra Pagina set that are good, but I haven’t read them all, so I can’t give a general recommend.

Wish I could give better news, but that’s what I would recommend at present.

NOTE: I’d ask folks not to recommend this and that scholar or commentary in the comments box as I likely have not read and would not feel comfortabl letting a recommendation of this nature stand without having done so. If you want to suggest one, e-mail me and if I have read it and agree, I may include it in an update to this post. Thanks!

(Other comments are fair game.)