Good day everyone! Excellent to have you back today!
So the last couple of days I have spoken a bit about Divine Revelation. God coming to meet man and his revelation to mankind. How we can interpret and how the teaching mechanism of the Church really works. And works very well actually.
The Bible Itself
So the next logical step in talking about God’s revelation to man would be the Bible! Now the Bible is really not a single book although in all ways there is consistency throughout it. But there has to be some recognition that there are numerous books with numerous genres. There is some history some poetry some specialized genres like apocalyptic writings and even biographies
There are two parts to the Christian Bible at least, the Old Testament and the New Testament. And If I asked you to tell me how many books there are in the Bible there would be most of you who would say 73 books; a slightly smaller but similarly sized group would say 67 and then a group would say uhh I don’t know and then a number would say 79 if they were Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox would say 81!
Some History of Scripture
I do not really want to go down the road of which# is correct. But let’s head from about the 300s the 27 books of the New Testament have been paired with the 46 books of the Old Testament in the Catholic Faith. Martin Luther revised the Canon keeping the 27 in the New Testament but only keeping 39 of the Old Testament. Moving some of these letters to the Apocrypha in the back of the Lutheran Bible. And many other protestant churches joined him. In the Orthodox Christian traditions, they have had their own councils to determine their Canon of Scripture.
But how did the books come to be? This is pretty much agreed upon. God inspired the writing of the scriptures using the human beings and their own styles and languages. The books that were written were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
“And the Church relying on the faith of the apostolic age accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the Testaments, whole and entire with all their parts, on the grounds that written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself”
Dei Verbum 11
Now this quote comes from Dei Verbum but is grounded on actual scripture verses
John 20:31;
2 Timothy 3:16;
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness,*
2 Peter1 19-21
Moreover, we possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable. You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
Now all of this is predicated on the fact of Christ. Christ is the Word made flesh. The entire Jewish Scriptures are fulfilled and lived out in Jesus the Messiah. How he lived this out is in the New Testament writings.
How did the Holy Scriptures become written?
So in Sacred Scripture God speaks to man in a human way. But God used human beings to bring this writing. So we have to look at what the human authors were truly wanted to affirm and what God wanted to revel by these words.
I pretty simple concept really… Let’s say God was talking of the Eifel Tower. There would be nothing that the author in 75 ad could relate that to. However, they would be able to make correlations and draw upon the culture of the day. In this way we can look back to our knowledge of what 1st century Jerusalem was. The types of writings, the culture of the time. Whom they were writing to.
The Culture and people are important
Matthew would have been writing to a Jewish audience, so he does not go into the detail of Jewish traditions that Luke does who was writing to a Greek God-fearing audience
Tomorrow we will take a look at the ways to interpret Scripture. But we must remember that as the Sacred Scripture is inspired and must be read and interpreted in light of the Same Spirit by whom it was written.
The Bible is not a dead letter… It is alive speaking to us today and will remain speaking to humanity until the end of the world. God speaks to us in His Word and love.
Tomorrow we can look at the Criteria for interpreting Scripture along with the Senses of Scripture.
Have a marvelous night and tomorrow we will be celebrating Easter and that is a magnificent thing to do!
Be good Play Nice Think God!
For additional information please see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 101 – 110