Faith Series Talk 1: The Bible and its Development

This was originally in outline form, adjusted here to read more like an essay, please forgive the grammar.  Picture is that of St. Jerome translating the Old and New Testaments into Latin.  St. Jerome was born in what was called Stridon, Dalmatia, now better known as Split, Croatia.  

Introduction:  As you know Pope Benedict has declared this year as “A Year of Faith” and has encouraged the entire Church, especially at the local level, the Parish to offer reflection, prayer, fellowship, study, liturgy, etc. for the benefit of the faithful.  We have been asked to reflect especially on Vatican Council II, the Catechism, and our beliefs as Catholics.

My approach will apologetical, based on Sacred Scripture and the Church fathers.  My themes will be taken from Gus Llyods’ “A Minute in the Church” which we have more of in the Narthex.

What are apologetics?  You may have heard this term before.  Apologetics as defined by Gus Lloyd is, “the branch of theology concerned with the defense and rational justification of Christianity (in our case, Catholicism).” P.7

When I thought about where I would start, I thought why not from the beginning, from Scripture.

So, tonight I want to take a look at what the Bible is, how it formed, and its use in the Church.

What is the Bible?

Simply put the bible or Sacred Scripture is the inerrant and inspired Word of God.

Now that is a mouthful, what does inerrant mean?  Inerrant means, “Without error.” Inspired means that God either through direct revelation, visions, dreams, prayer, to the authors of Scripture helped them to write exactly what He wanted.  This does not mean, however, that the author’s personality, writing style, quirks, foibles, and everything about them is not present within the writing, it is.  It means that in some Divine way, without hindering the author, God got His Word across.

Sacred Scripture is NOT a police report, nor is it written in modern style.  It does not follow a nice historical timeline or record events the way we expect.  The authors were men of their time, influenced and educated differently, teaching styles tended to be much more repetitive, there was no mandatory rule to give credit to previous authors or resources you may have used, no such thing as plagiarism in those days.  They tended to write more fluidly when it came to history or recording events, especially when dealing with the Divine.  For example, if I asked you to write a biography on Abraham Lincoln you would follow certain rules and go about it in a very uniformed way.  You would first sit and think about a thesis statement, then from there you would acquire resource materials to help prove your thesis.  You most likely would follow a very chronological time line, trying to be as historically accurate as possible.  That is the way we write about history today, but not the way they did 2,000 or 3,000 years ago.

The Bible is also made up of two parts, which we call “The Old Testament” and “The New Testament.”

The Old Testament tells the story of Creation, the Law, the Prophets, and God’s unfolding plan of salvation.

The New Testament tells the story of the plan of salvation coming to fruition, the prophecies now fulfilled in God made man, Jesus Christ.

The entire Bible is God speaking to us, historically, theologically, and even personally, revealing to us God and His promises.

Knowing what the Bible is – is very important but so too is its development.  As Gus Lloyd says, “You see, the Bible didn’t just fall out of the sky, or off of a local printing press,” no indeed, it actually took quite some time for all the letters and books of the Old and New Testament to take shape and then to be considered Sacred Scripture.

The Old Testament developed under many sources, some of which are referred to as the priestly class, the Elhoist class, the Deuteronomist and the Yahwist class.  They had a great influence, especially on the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, also referred to as the Law.  The Old Testament is also made up of single authors, multiple authors, students or disciples of prophets and oral Tradition finding its way onto written parchment.  Eventually the Old Testament would be Hellenized; fancy way of saying that those Jews who lived in Greek areas had a Greek version and those Jews from Israel had a more Hebrew version.  Aside from all of that it took a couple of thousand years for the books to find themselves in one volume.  It took the decision of the People of Israel, mainly its scholars and priestly class through the power of the Holy Spirit to give us what we have today in what we call the Jewish Scripture or Old Testament.  You can clearly see that something of this nature took time and did not fall out of the sky.

The New Testament also took some time to all come together into the neat package we have today that consists of Four Gospels, Two books: Acts and Revelation, and 21 letters, 13 from St. Paul, 3 from St. John,  2 from St. Peter, 1 from James, and 1 from St. Jude, and one unknown author to the Hebrews.  The first letter written was from St. Paul about 20 years after Jesus’ resurrection and the last book written was Revelation about 95 AD.  So we have about a 50 year period in which these works were written.  Then it took another 300 years or so for the Church to decide, dogmatically which books and letters made up the New Testament – the Canon of Scripture.

How did they go about doing this, what was the criteria they used to decide what was inspired by God and what was not?

They used two major criteria to determine what would make up the New Testament Canon.

What were the people using at Liturgy?

Which letters, books, and Gospels held commonality and continuity?

Also looked at the books, letters, and Gospels themselves to see if they claimed to be Scripture, which was rare – only happens in three places.

"And consider the patience of our Lord as salvation, as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, also wrote to you, speaking of these things as he does in all his letters. In them there are some things hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures." 2 Pt. 3:15-16.

"Give greetings to the brothers in Laodicea and to Nympha and to the church in her house. And when this letter is read before you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and you yourselves read the one from Laodicea. And tell Archippus, “See that you fulfill the ministry that you received in the Lord.” The greeting is in my own hand, Paul’s. Remember my chains. Grace be with you." Col 4:15-18

"All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work." 1 Tim. 3:16-17

Even with all these three passages we are not given a comprehensive and definite statement of which books and letters are truly inspired and which are not, for e.g. the Gospel of Matthew does not say “This is Scripture”  No book or letter explicitly says that.

The Church for three hundred years or so went by popular opinion or the voice of the people “vox popoli” or better to say “sensus fidelium” – sense of the faithful.  It was not until approx 375 AD that Pope Damasus the 1st asked St. Jerome to translate the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Scriptures into Latin, from which came the Latin Vulgate.  When Jerome completed his work Pope Damasus also asked St. Augustine and others to determine what the churches were using in their worship, their liturgy and also to look at what provided continuity.

Hence Pope Damasus declared in 382 by virtue of his office what books and letters comprised the OT and NT, his decisions were also ratified in subsequent Church councils of Hippo and Carthage in 393 and 397, both of which were presided by St. Augustine and again confirmed by Rome.  From that period up until the Reformation, 1,200 years, there was no real major concern with the Canon.

Finally the usages of the Bible in the Church.

Even though we have a Magisterium, a governing body with authority the Scriptures remain the norm for the Church, we are shaped by them, influenced by them, and know that it is the Word of God.

We use it throughout mass, the readings, prayers, hymns, etc.

We need to use it more for prayer, study, and reflection.

Public vs. Private Revelation: Public Revelation is all of Sacred Scripture and all Sacred Tradition.  There is no longer any public revelation.  Once the last Apostle died, John, all public revelation stopped.  Any revealing of dogmatic Truth that is defined by the Church as public belief finds its roots in Scripture or Oral Tradition from that time before the last apostle’s death.

Private Revelation is that revelation given by the Holy Spirit to any believer outside of Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition, i.e. Fatima.  There are two kinds of private revelations, those affirmed by the Church as authentic and those that are not (either because they are still being investigated or they have been deemed heretical or false)  For e.g. Medjugorge, has not been affirmed.  In either case, whether affirmed by the Church or not each individual believer is given the option to either accept or not to accept any private revelation.  The Church encourages those private revelations, i.e. Sr. Faustina for our benefit, but we are not bound to them in regards to our salvation or sanctification.

There are false teachings out there as well, those that oppose Sacred Scripture and the Church, be careful in your readings and devotions, for e.g. one such false prophet or teaching comes from Maria Divine Mercy.  Please check the following to link to see her numerous errors: http://warningsecondcoming.blogspot.com/