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v The first verse of all of the books of the Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi)

v Translator’s Forward to Ecclesiasticus (in some editions, “Sirach”), before Chapter 1

Vatican II, Dei Verbum. All of it would be good. But as it’s a bit long, and time might not be available, please read at least chapter two (only three or four pages long).

God has spoken to us, he has not abandon us to the power of sin and death. His Word is a saving and living Word. Essentially the Word of his revelation is the same as the person of the Word who is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

We have already considered the question of revelation in our first unit. Revelation has come to us in the forms of sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture through the prophets and Apostles, and they are interpreted authoritatively and infallibly by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. By exploring the Church’s teaching about the Bible, its origin, and the keys to interpreting it, this unit serves as a wonderful introduction to those later units where we will discuss the doctrinal elements of different parts of the scriptures, such as the Pentateuch, the Historical Books, the Prophets, the Gospels, and the rest.

“Critical.” Exegetes pride themselves upon being “critical.” By this they mean that they apply the most objective scientific criteria known to date when settling a question. It’s not critical in the sense of slander, gossip or nitpicking. The word was made popular in academic circles mostly by a generally communist group of philosophers called the Frankfurt Circle. Often the word can be abused to cover up the pride of rejecting the Church’s teaching on the basis that “my studies (or opinions) have led me to think the opposite,” which in fact is a very unscientific approach to theological science.

Exegesis. Exegesis is the branch of theology which investigates and expresses the true sense of Sacred Scripture.

Lectio divina. The reading of a more or less long passage of scripture in such a way to allow for prayer, for meditation, for contemplation in a recollected way led by the Holy Spirit.

New Testament. Jesus formed a new covenant, an everlasting one, by shedding his blood and perpetuating his sacrifice in the Eucharist. The books of the canon that pertain to this new dispensation of God’s grace, this last period until the end of the world, form the NT. It is the message that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, sent the Apostles to preach to the world.[2] The one God, the Holy Trinity, is the author of both Testaments.

Old Testament. “Testament” means the covenant. The OT is therefore the list of books in the canon that were revealed under the covenants previous to Jesus Christ. God truly spoke to Israel about himself and his plan of salvation, namely, Jesus the Lord; therefore these words still have value and are important today.[3]

Sacred Scripture. Those divinely revealed realities which were written down by the prophets and Apostles, and which the Apostles have authoritatively handed on to the Church as authentically inspired by the Holy Spirit.[4]

Sacred Tradition. Those divinely revealed realities which have been handed on faithfully, with the help of the Holy Spirit who acts in his Church, to the world. Sacred Tradition is perhaps better understood when comparing it to sacred Scripture:

For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.[5]

In the dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum, the Pope and the Bishops of Vatican II offered a pronouncement on what our faith is regarding sacred scriptures.

2. this is so because they were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit;

3. “they have God as their author, and have been handed on to the Church herself”;

4. God acted in and by the sacred authors, men God chose, making full use of their powers and faculties;

6. we have a definition of biblical inerrancy: “the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures.”[6]

The council fathers then exhort us to understand that “God speaks through men in human fashion.[7] Therefore we need to understand what the readers had in mind when they were writing. For whatever that was, these men, who had full use of their own “powers and faculties,”[8] were trying to say; for they were telling us what God had revealed to them.

When authors write in historical literature, they are expressing God’s revelation in this medium. When they write poetry, they are doing the same. Or sometimes they write “prophetic” literature, with the same end. So to do this, it is worth the effort to examine how these ancient authors used language, and how they applied certain conventions to their actions or speech. A shining example of this is the last supper, which, as most exegetes agree, was a Passover supper. Knowledge of the Passover supper and the four cups would offer plenty of comprehension to the meaning of the text, and help us better understand the writings of scripture. I would further add this was the Passover supper, from which all other Passover suppers gain their meaning.

It is essential to keep the Church in mind. As we interpret passages of scripture, we need to attend to the entire Tradition of the Church. If one were to interpret something in complete and flagrant contradiction to a solid Church teaching or liturgical practice, for example, one could discard that interpretation as erroneous. For the Church “exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God.”[9]

The beautiful analogy with the incarnation concludes this chapter of Dei Verbum. Just as God came to earth and became true man, so too God’s word came to earth and became truly human words. The fact that God spoke to us, and still speaks to us through sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture, should inspire the deepest sentiments of love, gratitude and adoration of the Holy Trinity.

Other chapters in this document refer more specifically to the Old and New Testament. We shall leave that for another day.

There’s much out there today about where the Bible came from. The most recent theory to take the popular opinion by storm has been that suggested by Dan Brown in his error ridden and blasphemous book, The Da Vinci Code. He says that countless anonymous people composed these religious writings, then Constantine selected the most women hating books out of all of them, and forced the Council of Nicea to declare his list as the canon of scripture; all other competition was consigned to fires. And thus the Catholic Church was victorious, re-writing sacred history in such a way as to defend its power and influence.

Needless to say, every point of his account is erroneous. But since such a popular book has spread its poisonous theories down the spiritual throats of so many souls, a lot of attention has been drawn to the question, “Where does the Bible come from?”

1. The Bible was written by “chosen men”[10] and inspired in its totality by the Holy Spirit. Some of the content of scripture was probably at first oral tradition, in both the Old and the New Testaments. The creation accounts at the beginning of Genesis seem to predate the time of Moses. Furthermore, the writings of the Gospel weren’t developed along the way during Jesus’ life, but the apostles wrote them later. Therefore there was a time when even the Gospels were believed by the Catholic Church, but not yet written down. The authors of the Old and New Testaments have generally different titles: prophets and apostles, respectively.

2. Each book has its own complicated history of development. The introductions to each book found in such texts as the New Jerome Biblical Commentary and the New Jerusalem Bible present to the contemporary reader the state of the opinion regarding the historical development of the texts: which part was written in which order and why, and so forth. The Deposit of Faith Series is only introductory, so we will spare the reader all the gory details. You can find them there.

3. There have always been a huge plethora of religious writings. Not all of them are divine revelation. The Church, inspired by the gift of infallibility which the Holy Spirit pours out upon her (see unit 1.1), has had the duty and the right to discern which books are of divine inspiration, which have come to us authoritatively from those God sent into the world to spread and teach his revelation.[11]

Therefore, to the question, “where did the Bible come from,” there is one, simple answer: The Catholic Church. The Church, and only the Church, has provided the World with the sacred scriptures. Theologians didn’t, exegetes didn’t, and Dan Brown certainly didn’t. It was even the Catholic Church that gave the Bible to those protestants who claimed that the Bible was the only authority, rejecting any authority of the Catholic hierarchy in matters of faith and morals. Yet it was this authority alone upon which the Church proclaimed to the world the canon of the sacred Scripture (the canon was also discussed in unit 1.1).

In the following lines, we will briefly review different exegetical methods, and put some of them to practice in a simple, introductory way. Let the simplicity of this introduction not discard the intellectual depth behind each of these; and each student is encouraged to research, with good books, deeper into each method, aware of it’s strengths and weaknesses. But first a two preliminary notes.

What is “exegesis”? Exegesis is a discipline by which one sets out to discover the true sense (or senses) of sacred scripture. That one same passage can have more than one true interpretation was defended by St. Augustine in his work, The City of God.[12] Surely the effort of working on exegesis is very demanding mentally; Augustine says it is comparable to straining our eyes to see the “light inaccessible” (1 Tim 6:16).[13]

Why do exegesis? Pope John Paul II, speaking to the Pontifical Biblical Commission, stated:

The manner of interpreting the biblical texts has, for the men and women of today, some direct consequences upon their personal and communal relationship with God, and is even strictly bound to the mission of the Church. We are dealing with a vital problem that merits your entire attention.[14]

The Church has published official documents regarding the interpretation of the Scriptures with great care,[15] writing not a lot and making it dense. It is a very delicate matter. It is so delicate because of the relationships Pope John Paul II point out between the interpretation of the Bible, one’s spiritual life, and the mission of the Church. All of these things are based on the same fundamental reality: the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ. This very fact brings up beautiful reflections perhaps more appropriate for our unit on Christology, for example, that Jesus Christ is the start and goal of the whole of everything in the Church, and in fact, in the Universe. But more on Christology later.

This said, let us delve into a selection of some methods practiced today, of course in an introductory way, and apply some of them to particular passages with the objective of gaining a first impression of each.[16]

Reader Effect Approach. This is a new method, developed between 1960 and 1970, which studies the effect which the text has upon the reader. For example, when one reads the Canticle of Canticles, a love poem at times appealing to even the physical expression of love between spouses, or the passage of the Rich Young Man (Mt. 19:16-26), and then one studies the writings of saints and of the Magisterium on these passages, one can see points of concurrence, points of contrast, and thereby draw deeper reflections about the text. This method requires historical research into the writings of the saints and of the Magisterium.

Narrative Analysis. Since much of the Bible is a narration of the history of Israel, and of the life of Jesus Christ and the acts of the Apostles, narration plays a crucial role in scripture. So one compares the narration of the life of Jesus, to, for example, the narrations of the lives of David or Moses. Even more modern canons of narration can be applied, for example, if the passage contains a conflict and resolution, or the development of characters.

Semiotic Analysis. One studies the written text and its interior logic and inner relations putting aside details external to the text, such as the author, the recipients, or the historicity of the events being narrated. One analyzes the steps in the narration; or perhaps lists the characters, their actions, their words; or perhaps studies the use of word types such as nouns, or verbs, or which verbs are active or passive, or which ones express movement or being. An easy example is to take the passage of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then to inquire into the parts of the narration; or just list which actions Jesus takes (which, curiously enough, underscores his role as protagonist in the Passion in a brilliantly clear way), or the words that describe him (cf. Lk 22:39-46).

Rhetorical Analysis. The ancients were normally trained, in their education, in the seven liberal arts, much different to our method of education today. This curriculum included the Trivium of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, and the Quadrivium of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy.[17] Trained in Rhetoric, including things such as persuasive discourses or forensic discourses, the ancient writers would sometimes employ the methods and outlines proper to rhetoric in how the expressed themselves, which would bring the exegete to understand the writing more deeply.

The Historical-Critical Method. One inquires to the historical development of the text, which passages were written by whom and in which order; and places texts in their historical context. The strong point is that this method should help one ascertain a better grasp of the human side of the divine text. The risk is that one can very, very easily trip into the pitfall of emptying the text of its supernatural content; of supposing the principle of scripture are the non-divine elements when they are in fact the truth of God’s revelation; and that historical meanings need always to be discerned according to the Church’s teachings and interpretation of revelation.

The Canonical Approach. One takes the passage and, keeping it in the context of the particular book of the Bible, attempts to place it in the whole canon of Scripture, that is, in the whole picture of written revelation. The strong point about this method is that it always appeals to the big picture and is careful to read things in context. Some even try to mix the Historical-Critical Method with the Canonical, to study a passage at the time it was written fitting it into the whole of the History of Salvation; the risk is that one could, by doing this, eclipse the teachings of the Magisterium about what the canon actually contains and is.

Various Methods Applying the Human Sciences. One examines sociology, cultural anthropology, psychology, etc., to see how these might shed some light on a passage.

Reflection with Jewish Exegetical Methods. For example, the Rabbi Hillel, c. 10 a.d., taught seven principles for exegesis which were probably widely practiced when Jesus was alive. It is curious to see how the Jewish scholars dealt with the scriptures, having had the revelation of God but without knowing or believing in Jesus Christ, the Messiah.[18]

1. There always seems to be a literal sense of the text which is always respected, and a spiritual sense which builds upon the literal. St. Thomas Aquinas stresses this foundational role of the literal sense of the Scriptures.[19] The spiritual sense can go down one of three paths, allegorical, moral, or eschatological (anagogical).[20]

2. The Catechism offers us a very old, simple to apply, very profound method which has had centuries of proven fruitfulness under its belt. It is an expression of Augustine of Dacia:[21]

3. Scripture uses scripture. It is wonderful to consider how one text in the Old Testament uses another text in the Old Testament. Or even compare similar words or expressions that one same biblical book has, such as “going up to Jerusalem” in the Gospel of Luke. One of my personal favorites is to compare and contrast the eight beatitudes to the eight “woes” in the Gospel of Matthew (cf. Mt. 5:1-12; Mt 23).

4. It all speaks about Jesus Christ.[22] “As God he is the Goal; as man he is the way.”[23]

5. We learn best by two ways: reading those who did such work, most especially the Fathers of the Church, but also by great saints and theologians from every period in history; second, by practicing and frequently dedicating time to read sacred Scripture pausing enough to reflect. All this makes for fruitful prayer and fruitful spiritual reading.

6. The mind of the Church always sets the boundaries for our interpretation. The teachings of the Church are, in fact, powerful keys to open up the meaning of scripture, starting with the most basic of all texts, the Creed.

7. Scripture should never be a cold, academic text book. It is God’s living and active Word, by which he truly speaks to us, as if in a dialogue. Don’t just read the scriptures, pray them, and read them on your knees.

For this unit, some apologetic work has been done. We have covered various problems with which people confront the Church.

1. We deal with the origin of the Bible, an important issue today in the wake of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

2. Why the Magisterium has the role of precedence when it comes to matters of interpreting sacred Scripture, and why it is not cowing ignorance, but rather well-informed wisdom, to always cede to the Church’s interpretation of the Bible.

Therefore it seems most proper for this part of the unit to dedicate our attention to a selection of passages, upon which we can practice some of the principles of exegesis we learned above. The passages for our work, in no particular order, are the following. In each passage, we can apply one or more of the exigetical methods at least to some degree, but always all the points cited in the summary.

Vatican II: Lumen Gentium,[24] paragraph 3; Gaudium et Spes,[25] paragraphs 22 and 45. (In all, a short read).

Vatican II: Sacrosanctum concilium, or The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. All.

(This prayer is inspired in the writings of several Fathers and Doctors of the Church.)

[1] Adapted from the introductory prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. Tr. author. Latin original, “Oremus. Aperi, Domine, os meum ad benedicen-dum Nomem Sanctum tuum: munda cor meum ab omnibus vanis, perversis, et alienis cogi-tationibus; intellectum illumina, affectum inflamma: ut digne, attente ac devote hoc officium recitare valeam, et exaudiri merear ante conspectum Divinae Maiestatis tuae. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen”

[2] cf. DV 17.

[3] cf. Vatican II, Dei Verbum (DV) 14.

[4] DV 11.

[5] DV 9; cf First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chap. 2, "On Revelation:" Denzinger 1786 (3005).

[6] The quotes in this list are from DV, 11.

[7] DV, 12. Cf. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei (The City of God) XVII, 6, 2.

[8] DV, 11.

[9] DV, 12; cf. Vatican I, De Fide Cath., c. 2 (de revelatione), Denz 1788 (3007).

[10] DV, 11; CCC 106.

[11] St. Augustine counts translators among those who are prophets; the miraculous origin of the Septuagint is narrated in The City of God, 18, 42-43

[12] St. Augustine, The City of God, 13, 21.

[13] Augustine, De Trinitate, II, Prologue; tr. Hill, p. 97.

[14] Pope John Paul II, Discourse of John Paul II on the Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, April 23, 1993. “Il modo di interpretare i testi biblici per gli uomini e le donne di oggi ha delle conseguenze dirette sul loro rapporto personale e comunitario con Dio, ed è anche strettamente legato alla missione della Chiesa. Si tratta di un problema vitale che meritava tutta la vostra attenzione.” (Italian original; tr. author).

[15] See Providentissimus Deus, and Divino affluante Spiritu.

[16] This outline is drawn from the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, April 15, 2993.

[17] These were codified in late antiquity by such writers as Varro and Martianus Capella. The Trivium is the artes sermocinales, or verbal arts; the quadrivium is the artes physicae or physical arts. Many writers have seen comparisons between these and man’s body-spirit nature, or even the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

[18] These seven principles are, pardoning a touch of oversimplification:

1. Light and heavy. Something like “If it’s true of X, it will be even more true of Y.”

2. Equivalence of expressions. Based on similar or related words, analogies can be drawn.

3. Building of the father from one text. One passage serves as a rule for all similar cases after that.

4. Building of the father from two or more texts. One text gives a principle, other texts elucidate it or show how it applies.

5. The general and the particular. A general statement, which another verse shows in a more particular way.

6. Analogy made from another passage. Two passages seem to conflict, until a third passage explains how they in fact are in harmony.

7. Explanation obtained from context.

[19] St. Thomas Aquinas, S. Th., I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 1

[20] CCC 115-119.

[21] CCC 118; Augustine of Dacia, Rotulus Pugillaris, I: ed. A. Walz, Angelicum 6 (1929) 256.

[22] cf. Vatican II, Dei Verbum, chapter II.

[23] St. Augustine, De Trinitate, XI, 2.

[24] In some editions, the Latin title might not appear: it is also the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.

[25] In some editions, the Latin title might not appear: it is also the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.

[26] Cf. Pope St. Gregory I (d. 604), Letters, 5, 46.

[27] Cf. St. John’s Second Homily on Matthew , 10 (5). “But what is the answer to these charges? ‘I am not,’ you will say, ‘one of the monks, but I have both a wife and children, and the care of a household.’ This is what has ruined everything, your thinking that the reading of scripture is for monks only, when you need it more than they do…”

[28] Cf. St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), Commentary on the Song of Songs, Sermon 23:3

[29] St. Theresa of Avila (1515 -1582), La Vida, 40, 1.