Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Catholicism For Dummies

Catholics regard the Bible as the inspired and revealed Word of God, but it’s also seen as a collection of sacred literature. Rather than just looking at the Bible as one big book, Catholicism treats the Bible as a collection of smaller books under one cover: the Word of God written by men yet inspired by God. Since the time of the Reformation, opinion on the interpretation of the sacred text has differed significantly. Some Christians hold for a literal interpretation of every word and phrase of Scripture; other Christians hold for a faithful interpretation, which is sometimes literal and sometimes not. (In other words, some text is meant to be interpreted figuratively.) Catholics belong to the second camp.

The Bible tells the history of salvation, but it’s much more than a history book. It contains the Psalms of David — songs that the king wrote in honor of God — yet the Bible is much more than a hymnal. It contains poetry, prose, history, theology, imagery, metaphor, analogy, irony, hyperbole, and so on. Because it’s not exclusively one form of literature, as you would have in a science textbook, one needs to know and appreciate the various literary forms in the Bible in order to interpret it as the author intended.

For example, when Jesus says in the Gospel (Mark 9:43), “And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off,” the Catholic Church has interpreted that to be a figure of speech rather than something to be taken literally. At the same time, Catholicism interprets literally the passage of John 6:55 — “For my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed.” Because individuals can disagree on what should be interpreted literally and what shouldn’t, Catholicism resorts to one final authority to definitively interpret for all Catholics what the biblical text means for the Catholic faith. That ultimate authority is called the Magisterium (from the Latin word magister meaning “teacher”), which is the authority of the pope and the bishops around the world in union with him to instruct the faithful. (For more on the Magisterium, see Chapter 6.) Catholics believe that Christ founded the Church (“I will build my Church” [Matthew 16:18]), a necessary institution, to safeguard and protect revelation by authentically interpreting the biblical texts. The Church is not superior to Scripture, but she’s the steward and guardian as well as interpreter of the inspired and revealed Word of God. The Church assumes the role of authentic interpreter not on her own but by the authority given her by Christ: “He who hears you, hears me” (Luke 10:16). The Church makes an authentic interpretation and an authoritative decision regarding those issues that aren’t explicitly addressed in Sacred Scripture, but only because Christ has entrusted her to do so. To find out how the Church views tough modern-day issues that aren’t addressed in the Bible, flip to Chapter 14.

Want a few interesting Bible tidbits? You got it.

The word bible isn’t even in the Bible. Do a word search on your computer, and you’ll see that nowhere from Genesis to the Apocalypse (Revelation) is the word bible ever mentioned. But the word Scripture appears 53 times in the King James Version of the Bible, and the phrase Word of God appears 55 times. So if the word itself isn’t in the Bible, why call it the Bible? The word comes from the Greek biblia, meaning “a collection of books,” and the origin goes back even farther to the word biblos, meaning “papyrus.” In ancient times, the paper from trees to write on didn’t exist — only stone or papyrus. Imagine — stone books.

The Catholic Church gave the name Bible to the Bible — to the collection of inspired books known as the Old and New Testaments. The Church also decided which books belonged in the Bible and which were left out, because nowhere from Genesis to Apocalypse (Revelation) can you find a list of which documents belong and which don’t. Modern-day Bible publishers and editors have added the table of contents, but the contents weren’t disclosed in the sacred text itself. Why does the Bible contain four Gospels? Who decided that Matthew should come before Mark? Why isn’t the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Peter in the Bible? Who says that the New Testament contains only 27 books? What happened to the Apocalypse of Moses and the Apocalypse of Adam? The Bible doesn’t tell you what books belong in it, so the Church had to use her authority to make that decision. You can read more on this subject in the nearby section “ Trusting the authority of the Catholic Bible.”

What follows is a snapshot of how the Bible was created and how different versions evolved — the Catholic versions and the Protestant versions. If you’re eager for more information on the Bible, however, check out The Bible For Dummies by Jeffrey Geoghegan and Michael Homan (Wiley) .

To understand the history of the Bible, you really have to go back to around 1800 B.c. when the oral tradition of the Hebrew people started, because Abraham and his tribes were nomadic people and didn’t have a written language of their own. Mothers and fathers verbally (orally) handed down the stories of the Old Testament about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and so on. (The Latin word traditio means “to hand down,” and it’s the root of the English word for tradition. ) The stories of the Old Testament were all told by word of mouth, which we call oral tradition.

Moses appeared sometime around 1250 B.c., when God delivered the Hebrew people from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, and they entered the Promised Land. The era of Moses opened the road to some of the written word because Moses was raised in the court of Pharaoh, where he learned how to read and write. But the predominant bulk of revelation was still the oral tradition, handed down from generation to generation, because the rest of the Hebrews were slaves, and most were unable to read or write at that time. Substantial writings weren’t saved until 950 B.c., during the reign of King Solomon. But after his death, King Solomon’s kingdom was divided between the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel and Judah, respectively.

The Assyrians conquered Israel in 721 B.c., and the Babylonians conquered Judah in 587 B.c. During the time of the Babylonian captivity and exile, the Jews of the Diaspora (forced exile of Jews) were spread all over the known world. Some retained their Hebrew language, but most lost it and adopted the common language: Greek. (If you could read and write at this time in history, most likely you were reading and writing Greek.)

Consequently, in the year 250 B.c., an effort was underway to translate all Jewish Scripture into the Greek language. The thing is, more Jews lived outside of Palestine than within it. In the third century B.c., nearly two-fifths of the population in Egypt alone, especially in Alexandria, was Jewish and yet unable to read and write in Hebrew. These Greek-speaking Jews were known as Hellenistic Jews. Seven books of Scripture were written in Greek by these Hellenistic Jews and were considered as inspired as the 39 Scriptural books written in Hebrew before the Diaspora.

The Greek version of the Old Testament was called the Septuagint (symbolized by the Roman numeral LXX for the number 70) because it took 70 scholars allegedly 70 years to complete the task. They met in Alexandria, Egypt, and translated 39 Hebrew Scriptures into Greek and included 7 other books originally written by Jews in the Greek language. These seven books — the Books of Baruch, Maccabees I and II, Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach ), and Wisdom — were known and used by Jews even in the Holy Land, including Jesus and His disciples. The early Christians likewise accepted the inspired status of these seven books because no one had refuted them during the time of Christ. Because they were later additions to the more ancient Hebrew writings, however, these seven books were called the Deuterocanonical Books (meaning second canon ); the 39 Hebrew books were known as the Canonical Books.