BiBlical Theology BulleTin Volume 42 Number 2 Pages 81-89 © The Author(s), Author(s), 2012. 2012. Reprints and Permissions: htt p://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0146107912441306 http://btb.sagepub.com
Further Reections on Biblical Inspiration and Truth Prosper Prosper Grech Abstract The present article is a theological and, in some ways, a philosophical interpretation of neglected aspects of the traditional doctrine on the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. The essay carries forward a discourse on the same subject initiated in some articles of mine in Italian (see P. P. Grech 1985, 2005, 2010). It is a ddressed to colleagues in biblical studies who take inspiration seriously for a possible discussion on this topic, which has perplexed the minds of theologians throughout the centuries. Key words: words: language, revelation, scribes, scribes, truth, inspiration, spirit, canon formation.
B
efore proceeding to pinpoint pinpoint biblical inspiration as such it is useful to consider it in a broader context and narrow it down within a series of concentric circles to understand its various relationships. relationships. This is what W. Dilthey calls Lebensäusserungen. Here and in the following paragraphs I am borrowing some philosophical philosophical analogies from the herhermeneutical theories of Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, which I nd helpful to to clarify my thoughts on canon, canon, revelarevelation and inspiration. inspiration.
The Birth of a Classic The biblical books of both the Old and the New Testament are Christian classics. Every literate people or country has its own classics. A classic is a work that creates or broadens language, which it injects into the cultural mainstream mainstrea m and serves as a model for subsequent writers. By language it is not only lingua (latin)—tongue (English) that is meant, but all that which externalizes externalizes the culture culture of a certain race, race, ‘language.’ It can be a sculpture or painting, a symphony, social structure or a book. All these are manifestations of the character or forma mentis of a people; they are produced by specially talented men or women and often by real geniuses. Classics are
not proclaimed by an act of parliament; they are recognized as such by the multitude born into a linguistic mainstream, which provides a pre-understandi pre-understanding ng for their fuller fuller comprehension. According According to H.-G. H.-G. Gadamer, Gadamer, in in his classical classical work Wahrheit und Methode, the tradition or Wirkungsgeschichte of an ancient writing acts as pre-comprehension within the same stream of language. Classics are “canonized” by public acclamation, and this “canon” is proudly treasured as the patrimony of that country or people. It is difcult to enter into the workings of an artist’s mind; we must must reckon with the input input from his masters, his environment and his personal experiences, but at a cert ain moment these elements coalesce to spark off an intuition that has to be expressed and communicated. The artist or writer nds Prosper Grech, Gre ch, S.T S.T.D. (Gregorian University), University), S.S.Lic. (Biblical Institute, Rome). Rome). is Professor Emeritus at the Patristic Patrist ic Institute and PIB in Rome (e-mail:
[email protected]). Co-founder and rst President of the Augustinianum, he lectured at the Biblical Institute in Rome for over thirty years. His latest publications are Il messaggio biblico e la sua interpretazione (Bologna: EDB, 2005), An Outline of New Testament Spirituality (Eerdmans, 2011), and Signore insegnaci a pregare (Vatican, (Vatic an, 2011) 2011).. 81
Grech, “Further Reflections on Biblical Iinspiration and Truth” traditional language too narrow to express his thoughts, it needs broadening if it is to express rightly the original intuition. If the new language is successful, and the intuition is authentic, then a new work of art is born to enrich the nation’s culture. Later writers or artists will take it as a model, to be superseded by future creative minds. What is true of literature in general is no less true of religious writings. If we take the word “prophet” in its broadest possible sense, the prophet too inherits his environmental input, but he claims to have a deeper experience of “the Holy” which he either writes down or preaches orally. One cannot speak of “inspiration” apart from the Holy Scriptures. One must keep in mind, however, Clement of Alexandria’s teaching about the Logos illuminating the Greeks as a preparation for the Gospel (cf. Redemptoris missio, 28.) The entire expression of his experience, however, makes use of ritual, statues, music and other means of communication. The Upanishads, the Quran, and the writings about Buddha are all religious classics, or “canons” better understood by those who read them within their own tradition, which serves them as a pre-understanding, than by an outsider who reads them more critically but aseptically. The “truth” of a writing, whether sacred or profane, depends on the authenticity of the original intuition, that is, whether it corresponds in some way or other to reality (even in a novel), on the preciseness of how it is conceptualized in the author’s mind, and on the adequacy of its communication to its audience. Many religious classics, and this includes biblical books, are born orally and are later written down by others. The relationship between orality and writing has been the subject of many studies (see especially Ong). They may sometimes coincide, though not always. Writing objecties, it is more impersonal, it lives on its own, it is subject to acquiring the paternity of the reader and is more atemporal. Sometimes words themselves speak over and above t he intention of the writer. The classical example is Caiphas’ condemnation of Jesus in John 11:49–50. Very ancient writing becomes outdated in vocabulary and style, metaphors, and world-view, and is only intelligible through the common stream of human or ethnic experience. An oral delivery is usually more lively, as words are illustrated by facial expression and gestures; moreover the speaker has the opportunity to correct misunderstandings on the spot. However, the writing down of sagas, oral legislation and of the Gospels themselves crys82
tallizes the tradition, to which it adds some interpretation. In the case of Christian and Jewish classics, these may comprise the Bible, the Talmud, and the Church Fathers. Here however, we limit ourselves to speak of the founding classics—the books of the Old and New Testaments, which we consider the word of God.
Biblical Revelation These preliminary considerations were deemed necessary so as to place biblical inspiration in a broader context as well as to provide an analogy that can lead us further towards some kind of denition. There is a distinction between revelation and inspiration. It is preferable to limit inspiration to the act of writing. Jesus Christ is the apex of God’s revelation, but he did not write anything. The author of 2 Maccabees provides us with some historical research, as did Josephus Flavius, but he was inspired to write the tail end of Old Testament salvation history. Revelation and inspiration may coincide in one single author in various proportions: Paul himself wrote down the “mystery” of the call of the gentiles revealed to him, as did the seer in the Book of Revelation (cf. Jeremiah’s letter in Jer 21: 1-14; and Revelation 1:11; 10: 4; 14:13). The Old Testament prophets sometimes wrote, at other times they spoke the living word, which was put down in writing by their various schools. In the wisdom literature we nd collections of proverbs common to the Middle East, but selected and reinforced in their authority by inspiration. The Synoptic Gospels collected the Jesus traditions and wrote them down as their own redactional theology through inspiration. What is revelation? The traditional scholastic concept of revelation as some kind of truth dropping down from heaven is rather narrow. Dei Verbum denes it as God’s self-manifestation and the manifestation of his will through which, by means of Christ, the Word made esh, and in the Holy Spirit we have access to the Father and participate in the divine nature ( DV 2). In DV 11 inspiration is conned to the books contained in the Catholic canon. The distinction is therefore valid. Vatican II’s denition, of course, speaks of divine revelation in the full Christian sense. Let us go back, however, to some other analogies that will lead us step by step to a better understanding. God manifests himself in many ways: through his creation, through history, and through the happenings of our
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY BULL ETIN • VOLUME 42
daily lives. It is possible for the human mind to raise itself from these signs to acknowledge a Superior Being, and to respond by means of the language of cult. A poet walking through a beautiful forest will capture its silent voice within his heart, which sparks off an intuition that pleads to be expressed in human language. When he does so the poet is lending his voice to the silent voice of being to share his experience with other men and women. This is t he later Heidegger’s contribution in Unterwegs zur Sprache: 37. He may even rise above this human experience to praise the greatness of the creator of such beauty. Through his linguistic response he becomes a “prophet” of nature. The same thing can be said of responses to historical events or of one’s personal vicissitudes. They ‘inspire’ him/her in a broad sense. We are dealing here with an analogy. Jewish and Christian revelation is, of course, another matter. It concerns experiences and concepts that transcend merely human capabilities. God’s self-manifestation in re-velation is his own “truth”: a-letheia means un-veiling, emergence from hiddenness. Heidegger’s etymology serves us in the case of God’s self-manifestation, when he emerges from his hiddenness. It cannot, however, be applied universally to biblical truth. It may occur in a variety of ways: as the recipients themselves in both Testaments testify, it can take place by means of visions or auditions—whether subjective or real—intuitions of the meaning of historical events, experience of God’s presence in acts of liberation and the sad plight of human existence. These experiences elicit a response in an act of faith, be it wonder, gratitude, repentance, prayer, or confession. The response seems to be natural and spontaneous, but it is actually guided by the Spirit. Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God was elicited by the Father, even though it was imperfect, as his subsequent upbraiding by Jesus testies (Matt 16:17). Like that of the above mentioned poet, the fundamental experience of the divine by a prophet may be called primary language, perhaps also non-conceptual. The recipient will then express it to himself in conceptual language, which is already a hermeneutic, and then address it to the congregation in either actions or words, by means of the habitual literary genres of that people. But we cannot establish this as a general rule. In an audition, for example, the words are given directly. On the other hand, some experiences are ineffable, as was Paul’s vision in the third heaven; others, like the gift of tongues in Corinth, needed translation by
other charismatics. Nor are we necessarily talking here of mystical experiences: a historical event, like the t rumpets of war heard by Jeremiah (Jer 4: 19), or a person’s sufferings, as in many psalms, may trigger them off. So God’s selfmanifestation enters among us in many and various ways, not always of the same intensity, but always revealing a facet of his being to open our eyes to penetrate further into the mystery of his salvic design.
Inspiration As already stated, it is preferable to limit the term inspiration to that added charism, given to the recipient of revelation himself or to others, to x in writing the words or deeds of that revelation for contemporary and future generations. Studies on inspiration usually limit themselves to the moment of writing. We prefer to extend the time of inuence of the Holy Spirit, underlining, of course, the moment of actual composition, to acquire a global view of this charismatic phenomenon. Inspiration is commonly limited to the moment a hagiographer puts pen to paper. At this moment the Spirit begins to guide and ends his guidance when the book is nished. Things are often more complex, however. Vatican II, in DV 13, brings in Chrysostom’s doctrine of “condescension” ( syn katabasis—In gen, 3,8 (hom 17,1) PG 53, 134). That is, God lowers himself not only to the human level of understanding, but even to the individual author’s cultural and religious qualities; but are these “cultural” and “religious” qualities totally independent of the Spirit? Jeremiah and Paul claim that they were called from their mother’s womb, as was John the Baptist (Isa 49:1; Jer 1:5; Luke 1:15; Gal 1:15). Would not the Spirit have “educated” them with his guidance throughout their lives, until they reached that point of maturity to be capable of receiving his inspiration; and even later through the sufferings they had to endure for the sake of their preaching? Was it not the Spirit who fortied them after their written testimony to endure sufferings and even death to provide f urther witness to the truth of their writings (Matt 10:20)? Further, we speak of an inspired book. A book of the Bible, of the OT especially, has a long life. It may have begun as a collection of traditions around a sanctuary or as an oracle pronounced by a prophet, later transmitted and reinterpreted by disciples, glossed over by scribes, until it reached its “canonical form,” which constitutes today’s authoritative text. Does the Spirit follow the whole process or 83
Grech, “Further Reflections on Biblical Iinspiration and Truth” is only the nal product inspired? There are many points of intersection on the trajectories of t he authors’ and the book ’s evolution, which constitute the high points of actual inspiration over and above the Spirit’s providential guidance during the formative process. Even a book, however, has a long afterlife subsequent to its publication. The Wirkungsgeschichte of a biblical book produces the Sacred Tradition of the Church as well as its interpretation, both guided by the Holy Spirit. It is the same Spirit who inspired it who sounds the depth of the mysteries hidden in it, as DV 13 and John 16:13 make clear.
Just as the Word incarnate took on a com plete human nature and made it his own, the Spirit pervades the mind, heart, sentiments, and desires of the writer. At this point we can therefore say that inspiration, in this broader view, is that activity of the Holy Spirit which prepares an author or authors for the production of a wr itten text, in which this activity reaches its distinctive moment, to encapsulate revelation. This text is destined to accompany the Church along her history like the Rock that accompanied the Israelites during their march in the desert in rabbinic tradition, constantly pouring its waters of wisdom to enlighten her way in history. In 1 Corinthians 10:4 Paul interprets the Rock as Christ, Christianizing the rabbinic tradition. It should be obvious that the word “inspiration” in this broad sense, though it is the work of the Spirit, is used in an analogical sense.
Prophets and Scribes St. Thomas writes about inspiration in his questiones on prophecy (S.Th II-II, qq. CLXXI- CLXXIV). As we said earlier, some prophets did write down their oracles, as did the author of Revelation, thus uniting their gifts of revelation and inspiration. If, however, we distinguish revelation from inspiration, and reduce inspiration to its minimal denominator, for example, in works that require little or no revelation, yet contain something authoritative regarding our salvation, can such a work be classed as “prophecy,” or would it not be more appropriate to classify it in a “wisdom” category? (On the theo84
logical aspect of Wisdom literature see L. G. Purdue.) If this is so, inspiration becomes the charism of scribes and wise men. St Thomas places prophecy within the category of gr ace. Like justness that renders a man just, it is not an efcient cause, but a formal cause, of the motions of the soul to which it adheres, but it exercises an inuence on its faculties: the intellect and the will (STh II-I q. 110, a. 2). The prophet possesses a spirit of discernment to know with certainty whether or not a revelation comes from God (II-II q. 171, a. 5). This gift of discernment is also given to wise men in the case of truths that do not require a revelation. In II-II, q. 174, a. 3 Thomas writes: The second grade of prophecy occurs when one is enlightened interiorly to know things that are not above the limits of natural reason, as is said of Solomon in 3 Kings 4: 32–33 . . . and this takes place through divine inspiration. In fact it is introduced by the words “God gave Solomon wisdom and much prudence.”
We often imagine scribes to be mere copyists; nothing can be more mistaken. Recent studies (by, e.g., K. Van der Toorn and P. R. Davies) on this category have brought out that scribes in the ancient Middle East were highly educated persons who acted as librarians, archivists, jurists, diplomats, and court advisers. As far as the Old Testament is concerned, it is most probably these scribes who put together the traditions, partially written oracles, and documents from the royal and temple archives, to constitute what is now the Pentateuch, the Deuteronomic history and the prophetic books as they stand. They will have ordered their material and inserted glosses in such a way that it conveyed a clear message to their contemporaries. Their nal products now belong to the relative canons of Jews and Christians. In the New Testament Matthew considers himself as a scribe (Matt 13:52); by analogy, so were Mark and Luke. Therefore, if the Spirit had followed the process from prophetic revelation, through its handing down in wr itten or oral form by the schools, to its nal product, it is in t he minds of these wise scribes that the Holy Spirit completed his activity as Author of the sacred books. The scribes themselves were not unaware of their endowment with the Spirit. In Sirach 39 Ben Sirach, himself a scribe, lists the activities of those who devote themselves to the study of the Law, the wisdom of the ancients, the prophecies, parables and proverbs. He concludes that “the Lord
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY BULL ETIN • VOLUME 42
will direct his counsel and knowledge, as he meditates on his mysteries” (39:7). In 24:33–34 Sirach confesses: “I will again pour out teaching like prophecy, and leave it to all future generations. Observe that I have not labored for myself alone, but for all who seek wisdom.” And in Job 32:8. we read: “But truly, it is the spirit in a mortal, the breath of Shaddai, that makes for understanding” as opposed to mere human experiences. The Book of Wisdom identies wisdom with God’s Spirit: “For wisdom is a kindly spirit” (1:6), whose attributes are carefully enumerated in 7:22–27. But “who has learned counsel, unless you have given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high?” (9:17). In these texts we observe that wisdom, understanding, God’s Spirit, and prophecy are grouped together. In the New Testament, Paul distinguishes between the gifts of prophecy and the language of wisdom and understanding, but the giver of both is the Spirit (1 Cor 12: 4–11). The problem with these quotations is whether to write spirit with a small ‘s’ or a capital ‘S’—that is, whether the author is referring to the spirit of man breathed into him by God, or to the Holy Spirit as the transcendent endower of inspiration. It is not only in biblical exegesis we nd this difculty; it exists even in the writings of the Fathers, in Origen’s especially (see M. Simonetti’s treatment in Monaci Castagno: 450–56, with ample bibliography). It is not easy to discern when they are speaking of man’s spirit, and when of God’s. The creed attributes prophesy to the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Blessed Trinity, “who spoke through the prophets.” This is said in retrospect, however, as the Spirit in the Old Testament and in some passages of the New, in so far as it is God’s Spirit, denotes that divine power active in creation over and above human or natural possibilities. Prophets experience this divine power, and the words they proffer to the people they simply attribute to God. Is it possible to say something about the dynamic relationship of the human spirit to the divine Spirit in the production of an inspired writing? Because, as already stated, revelation as such can take place in many ways, we shall limit ourselves to inspiration in its pure form as described above. We have seen that even St, Thomas acknowledges divine inspiration in matters that can be known by human reason alone to endow them with t he authority of God’s word. He also says that prophecy (by which he sometimes means inspiration) is a gratia gratis data for the sake of the community that encompasses the whole soul so t hat it may conform
itself to his way of thinking. We have also seen that in Job, Sirach and Wisdom (S)spirit, prophecy and wisdom are interrelated. Hans Hübner (1999) summarizes this interrelationship nicely in his comment on Wisdom 7: 22–30: Das Problem ist jedoch, dass nach dem Argumentationsduktus der Sap der Weise, aufgrund seiner Begabung mit der Weisheit in der Gemeinschaft mit ihr das denden kann, was sie denkt, dass es geradezu die Weisheit selbst ist, die in und durch den Weisen denkt. Das wird zwar nicht so eindeutig gesagt, liegt aber in der Konsekuenz der Gesagten.
That is, the elevatio mentis is the absorbing of the mind by Wisdom.) A further illustration of this interrelationship can be drawn from Michelangelo’s well known fresco in the Sistine Chapel of the creation of Adam. God descends and all but touches with his extended nger the extended forenger of Adam’s inanimate body. We can easily imagine an “electric spark” lling the tiny gap that infuses God’s living breath into Adam and turns him into an animate being. When Wisdom/Spirit envelops the human mind it “sparks off” intuitions and concepts to conform it to its own thought. These cry out to be spoken or written within the personal, cultural and linguistic limits of the recipient. Hence the written text with all its imperfections; this is “condescension.” Biblical texts, however, do not address only a person’s intellect. Just as the Word incarnate took on a complete human nature and made it his own, the Spirit pervades the mind, heart, sentiments, and desires of the writer. St. Augustine ( De doctrina cristiana, I, 23; CSEL vol. 80) stressed the point that the nal purpose of Scripture reading was love of God and neighbor—whoever reads but does not love has not understood anything. The psalms elicit praise, thanksgiving, penance, wonder, petition, and adoration. Biblical wisdom is not conned to the intellect; it leads a person to think, love, live, and act in accordance with the creative Wisdom of God which knows best his creative purpose and the order of creation. The wise man seeks to conform his whole personality to this creative design. It recalls the Stoics’ Logos. How is all this related to the above mentioned scribes? The category existed in Israel ever since there was a temple and a royal palace. If we limit ourselves to the Old Testament, however, it is after the exile that their main biblical activity reaches its peak. The returned exiles and the new state 85
Grech, “Further Reflections on Biblical Iinspiration and Truth” that had been instituted under Persian rule needed consolidation, for which some kind of Constitution was indispensible, and the people needed self-denition both socially and religiously. The cult in the new temple had to be restored and the attachment to the Land consolidated. A people is dened by its venerable history, its heroes of the past, and its Weltan schauung . This was the Israelites’ main endeavor when they began to collect oral traditions, written documents, prophetic oracles, and various narratives transmitted from ancient times. It is in this context that the text and the canon which began to proceed to their nal stage are to be interpreted (see Davies 2002). It is well known that absolute monotheism in Israel was reached by a gradual process during a long process of ups and downs in Israelite religious thought and practice. Each step forward required a re-reading of past history, the production of new writings and a re-interpretation of earlier ones. Each and every part of this collection had its own purpose in its selection, its way of being written down and its place in this vast heterogeneous and seemingly haphazard anthology. The scribes were not mere collectors, however; theirs is what we now call “redactional theology,” an activity over and above the Traditionsgeschichte through which the oracles and narrative had already gone. Theology needs inspiration if it is to b e authoritative as God’s word. It is at this point that the gift of the Spirit of wisdom is accorded to the scribes and wise men who completed the Old Testament. Although one of the purposes of inspiration is the authentic preservation of revelation, it is itself, one can say, a minor kind of revelation, as it seals, interprets and lends authority to the words of past authors and transmitters. This is obviously not to say that if Isaiah or Jeremiah wrote down their pronouncements they were not inspired; we are here speaking, as we said above, mainly of those writings in which revelation does not totally coincide with inspiration; we are dealing with scribes and wise men, not with prophets or apostles. The writings of the New Testament are to be judged in an analogical way; but here we may talk of scribes only in the case of the evangelists and those who might have played a redactional part in the nal text of the epistles. While the Old Testament canon was completed and closed by the Jews at the beginning of the second Century AD, the canon of the New Testament was only closed in the fourth or fth Century. Out of dozens of books circulating under the name of apostles the Christian communities retained, with some hesitation here and there, our present twenty-seven books 86
as authoritative. The criteria of selection were apostolicity, in the sense of a writing belonging to an apostle or to someone of his circle; antiquity; universal public reading, meaning that it was received and read liturgically by all or most churches; lastly, non-contradiction with the rule of faith professed in baptism, that is, the Christian community could recognize its own professed faith in them. This excluded many Gnostic works and others that appealed merely to popular legend (see Metzger 1987: 254-54).
The Truth of Scripture Text books and papal documents prior to Vatican II linked inspiration with inerrancy, the latter being the consequence of the former. Inerrancy is a negative term meaning that Scripture could contain no error, it being the word of God. The term persisted till the fourth draft of Dei Verbum, whence it was removed and replaced by the positive term Truth (Stakemeier: 154–58). Both inerrancy and truth can be interpreted in an absolute sense of no possible error whatsoever, or absolute truth: scientic, historical, linguistic, chronological or otherwise. The Fathers were already aware of certain contradictions in Scripture: the order of creation in Gen 1, attributions of quotations by the NT to the wrong prophet (e.g., Mark 1:2). and discrepancies among the Synoptics, which they tried hard to explain away. Therefore, inerrancy in an absolute sense cannot be maintained. Nor can absolute truth, as the Galileo case demonstrates; the Bible is not interested in teaching astronomy. So what would be the limitations of biblical truth? In the nal text of DV 11 we read: Cum ergo omne id, quod auctores inspirati seu hagiographi asserunt, retineri debeat assertum a Spiritu Sancto, inde Scripturae libri veritatem, quam Deus nostrae salutis causa, Litteris Sacris consignar i voluit, rmiter, deliter et sine errore docere protendi sunt. Itaque “omnis Scriptura divinitus inspirata et utilis ad docendum, ad arguendum, ad corripiendum, ad erudiendum in iustitia: ut perfectus sit homo Dei ad omne opus bonum instructus” (2 Tim 3:16–17 gr).
The clause quam Deus nostrae salutis causa, Litteris Sacris consignari voluit limits the extension of biblical truth. For differing opinions see the articles in Hahn & Scott. That this adjectival clause refers to veritatem and to no
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY BULL ETIN • VOLUME 42
other word was ofcially explained to Paul VI by the theological commission that inserted it. It had replaced an earlier insertion, veritas salutaris, which was considered inadequate as it could have meant that verses of Scripture that had no contents of faith were not inspired. That is, Scriptural inspiration does not proceed materially in dots and dashes, some parts being inspired and others not, which reminds us of Newman’s obiter dicta ( Stakemeier, ibid.). The limitation is qualitative, not quantitative; that is, biblical texts are inspired in whole and in part, but are true only in so far as they mean to contribute to our salvation rather than to our historical or scientic curiosity. In fact, the Council cites, in note 5, St Augustine’s De Gen. ad litt. 2, 9, 20 and Ep 82, 5. St Thomas himself had appealed to Augustine when he wrote: illa vero, quae ad salutem pertinere non possunt, sunt extranea a materia prophetiae ( De veritate, q. 12, 783). This is the doctrine of Vatican II, but how can we discern the salvic meaning of individual passages? The Council, following Pius XII’s encyclical Divino afante Spiritu (EB 557–62), proposes rst of all the study of literar y genres. Every literary genre has its own way of being true, however di verse one genre may be from another. The truth of a lyric depends on the authenticity of the poet’s “inspiration”; the truth of a novel is to be measured, not by the facts it narrates, but by the genuineness of the original intuition that gave rise to it. Oliver Twist never existed, of course, but Dickens’s world was full of Oliver Twists whose plight the author wanted to make known. He could have chosen some other genre to achieve his purpose, a moral treatise or an article in a paper for example, but he decided that the novel form was more adequate for his purpose. It is true if it achieves this intention. In the Bible we usually distinguish the historical, the prophetic, and the wisdom genre, but each one of these has innumerable sub-genres. The Gospels contain parables, miracles, wisdom sayings, etc., and each one of them has its own way of telling the truth. A second criterion is canonical criticism. The contributions of Childs and Sanders are well known. For a comment from the Catholic standpoint see Senecki. It must be asked why the post-exilic scribes chose a certain document from their archives, rear ranged and perhaps completed it and inserted it into their new collection. What purpose did it serve their contemporaries who were str uggling to regain their selfconsciousness? Of course the hermeneutical circle comes immediately to mind. The whole is explained from its parts,
and the parts from the whole. (This principle is as old as Irenaeus, who wrote against the Gnostics who attributed the Old Testament to the Demiurge and extrapolated phrases from their context to insert them into their own Gnostic context.) The whole, however, is not the whole book, but the whole canon. Why, for example was Qoheleth placed alongside Sirach and Job and the Psalms? The discrepancy would have been obvious to the collectors. Were there pluralistic streams of thought among them? (See Gottwald: 514–90). God’s mystery cannot be encapsulated by the human mind into one totally coherent system, as Job teaches us. This too, is Scripture’s “condescension.” Rhetorical criticism also comes into play. Many verses are seemingly meaningless if taken by themselves, but if they were inserted into a denite context they must have been considered to have some rhetorical purpose—parenetic, didactic, or narrative. If we take Newman’s example of obiter dicta, the fact that Tobit’s dog accompanied his master there and back on his journey (Tob 6:1; 11:9), this can hardly be said to contribute to our salvation. Yet, as a part of Scripture we consider it as inspired (see Burtchaell: 74ff.). In this case it is narrative and rhetorical criticism together that will have to provide an answer to the exegete to understand how even such minute details serve a literary purpose, which, ultimately, is a theological one. That was about the Old Testament, but the Christian Bible is composed of both Testaments, Old and New. This broadens the canonical context and shifts the focal point, which is no longer the self-identity of the Jewish people. The focal point of both Testaments is now Christ, who is the truth, the supreme revelation of God. This means that the old dispensation had not yet reached its nal goal and looked forward to the fulllment of its promises and hopes. There are therefore two ways of reading the Old Testament: one in itself and in its own historical and social context, the other as related to the New. (The question of the value of the Old Testament for Christians was radically revived by Bultmann (cf. Hübner and Gunneweg). The modern exegete who reads every verse with reference to Christ, as some of the Fathers did, is certainly transgressing his methodical limits. On the other hand, given the continual intertextuality within the New testament writings, to exclude an Old Testament reading in the light of the New Testament creates a hiatus between both dispensations that have the one God as their author and may lead to a Marcionite exclusiveness. The point was especially 87
Grech, “Further Reflections on Biblical Iinspiration and Truth” stressed in the second century by Irenaeus.
Sore Points Whatever is to be said about Marcion, many Christians today feel a certain discomfort when reading the Old Testament. The main difculty is the herem, the extermination of all the male inhabitants of a captured city—indeed, said to be ordered by God. It is true that DV 15 acknowledges imperfections in the Old Testament, but to say that these populations were ordered to be exterminated because of their sins is an oversimplication. The matter must be considered according to the criteria listed above. The histories contained in the Old Testament—from the Deuteronomists onwards— are, as already said, not “histories of Israel” but theological history. They are addressed to hearers whose main sin was the compromising worship of false gods, to the neglect of that worship due to Yahweh alone and delity to the covenant. Strict and exclusive monotheism became the ideal especially of post-exilic Judaism. Again we must ask ourselves what function the stories contained in the book of Joshua had when they were inserted in the canon in formation. This is perhaps the reason why Joshua was not included in the Torah, in spite of the fact that the possession of the Land formed part of Israel’s Credo. The majority of the Jews still resided in Babylon and were reluctant to return. God’s “mighty deeds” recounted in this book would have acted as an exhortation for the exiles to return to his own Land. Today’s archeologists tend to consider the possession of the land as an inltration rather than an invasion (see the articles on t he settlement and the Judges’ period with ample bibliography in Meier & Chavalas). The “Mosaic tribes” who wandered into Canaan joined kindred tribes already settled there. There certainly were skirmishes with the local inhabitants. These will have been blown up in the course of oral narration to decisive wars and victories, and as such were used by the Deuteronomists and later historians for the parenetic purpose of keeping the Jews from any religious compromise with the surrounding peoples. On the other hand the books of Jonah and Ruth, the wholesale importation of myths and proverbs from the surrounding cultures opened up a relationship with the gentiles that was far from the extermination of enemies in battle. Socially speaking, the post-exilic period offers a variety of facets, often difcult to coordinate into an organic whole, as said above. We 88
encounter internal dissent, external menace and imposition, various grades of openness toward non-Israelites, traditionalist attitudes, as well as visions announcing the future. The writers of this period adopted various literary genres to indicate their perception of God’s will and purpose. We already notice a spiritualization of history in Third Isaiah, apocalyptic hopes in Zechariah and Daniel, openness to Hellenistic thought in Wisdom, and skepticism in Qoheleth. In such circumstances, who is actually “the enemy”? Former threats, curses and prayers against individual and national enemies now tend to be transposed to a more general and abstract level. Little by little they acquire an allegorical tinge, especially in apocalyptic literature (see Fishbane). An apocalyptic view of history is the theology of the conict between good and evil, God and Chaos—a “cry of the desperate.” This broadens and tones down the meaning of “enemy,” as is obvious in the New Testament book of Revelation, in which all the traditional phrases of destruction, vengeance, and bloody wars converge to con vince the persecuted Christian communities that their adherence to Christ as the Lord of lords and King of kings will suffer no compromise. And Revelation comes from John’s circle, with love as its central theme! If God is one, however, he is also the God of the Romans, and if God is love his mercy will extend to them as well. This book, therefore, apart from its being a key to the timeless formula to interpret contemporary happenings, makes use of its numerous Old Testament allusions as tesserae to recompose a mosaic of the Pantocrator, and has the function of reinterpreting the whole of Old Testament history as well. It nds its model in the reinterpretation of laws in Deuteronomy and of historical narratives in both the Deuteronomic and the Chronicler’s history for the post-exilic community. The OT stories, therefore, have a rhetorical function, mainly an exhortative one, in line with the exigencies of the day. A command by God in the past to exterminate every male in a conquered land now assumes a symbolic meaning to exhort to absolute monotheism without any compromise. Apocalyptic literature projects war and herem into an eschatological world-view. It is in this canonical context, with the aid of rhetorical and narrative criticism, that we can call these narratives “the word of God.” Because they are inspired, they communicate that truth which is necessary for our salvation. The Psalms too undergo this transposition and were recited by Jesus and his disciples without scruple. It was the Pharisaic attitude that scandalized Jesus, not the
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY BULL ETIN • VOLUME 42
wars in the Old Testament. Literary genres, canonical, rhetorical and narrative critical methods can explain other “shocking” episodes in the Old Testament. The deluge, Noah’s sons, and Lot’s daughters are etiologies to explain the shameful origins of neighboring enemies. On the other hand, the exodus narrative is the literary outcome of a miraculous or providential founding experience of deliverance of the Mosaic tribes, grown like a rolling snowball down ages of oral repetition and liturgical rites until it reached its actual literary form. It is in this present literary form that we must seek the tr uth of the theology of salvation. What “actually happened” is often difcult to know, but, allowing ourselves a platitude, there can be no digestion on an empty stomach! It is well to repeat here that it is far from the intention of the present writer to belittle the importance of historical facts, particularly in the Gospels. There cannot be any Heilsgeschichte without Geschichte, no history of salvation without underlying facts or experiences. Still, it is well to keep in mind that the Bible is not a history textbook, even though “Histories of Israel” are based on it, helped by archeology, epigraphy, philology, studies on folklore, and the various ways of history-writing in the ancient world. Historical truth, therefore, is the correspondence between what actually happened and the historian’s presentation. Truth for our salvation means that which the inspired author, through his way of writing, wants the reader to understand regarding God’s saving design towards him. The progress in Scripture studies inaugurated by Pius XII and leading to the PBC’s 1993 document, far from being an obstacle to the faith of everyday Christians, helps them to acquire a deeper understanding of that biblical truth which is the backbone of their faith and to solve their understandable difculties.
Works Cited Burtchaell, J. T. 1969. Catholic Theories of Biblical Inspiration since 1810. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Davies, P. R. 2002. “The Jewish Scriptural Canon in Cultural Perspective.” Pp. 36–52 in The Canon Debate, edited by L. M. McDonald & J. A. Sanders. Cambridge, MA: Hendrickson. 1998. Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures. Louisville, KY: John Knox. Fishbane, M. 1985. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Ox-
ford, UK: Clarendon Press. Gadamer, H.-G. 1960. Wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr. Grech, P. 2010. “Ispirazione come saggezza.” Pp. 85–90 in Donorum commutatio: Studi in onore di J. Spiteris, edited by Joannis Asimakis. Analecta teologica 5, Tessalonica. 2005a. “‘Quid est veritas?’ Rivelazione e ispirazione: nuove prospettive.” Pp. 277–86 in Il messaggio biblico e la sua inter pretazione, edited by P. Grech. Bologna, Italy: EDB. 2005b. “Che signica ispirazione? Una visione globale.” Pp. 287–300 in Il messaggio biblico e la sua interpretazione, edited by P. Grech. Bologna, Italy: EDB. 1985. “Saggio sul linguaggio della Scrittura e la sua interpretazione.” Pp. 40 –58 in Ermeneutica e teologia biblica. Rome, Italy: Borla. The article is a revised translation into Italian of “The Language of Scripture and its Interpretation,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 6 (1976), 161–76. Gottwald, N. 1985. The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-literary Intro duction. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. Gunneweg, A. H. J. 1978. Understanding the Old Testament. London, UK: SCM. Hahn, Scott, & David Scott (eds.) 2010. Letter And Spirit, vol. 6: For the Sake of Our Salvation: The Truth and Humility of God’s Word . Steubenville, OH: St. Paul’s Center of Biblical Studies. Heidegger, M. 1959. Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske. Hübner, H. 1999. Die Weisheit Solomons. ATD Apokryphen Band 4, Göttingen, Germany: Vanderhoek und Rurprecht. 1984. “Rudolph Bultamnn und das Alte Testament.” Pp. 250–72 in Kerygma und Dogma 30: 250–72. Meier, S. A., & M. W. Chavalas. 2005. Dictionary of the Old Testament, Historical Books. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. Metzger, B. M. 1987. The Canon of the New Testament: Its Ori gin, Development and Signicance. Oxford, UK: Clarendon. Monaci Castagno (ed.). 2000. Origene: Dizionario, (Rome, Italy: Città Nuova. Ong, W. 1982. Orality and Literacy. London, UK: Methuen. Purdue, L. G. 2007. Wisdom Literature: A Theological History. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press. Senecki, A. 2004. Approccio canonico: Tra storia e teologia, alla ricerca di un nuovo paradigma post-critico. Rome, Italy: PUG. Stakemeier, E. 1966. Die Konzils-Konstitution über die Göttliche Offenbarung. Paderborn, Germany: Bonifacius. Van der Toorn, K. 2007. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
89
Copyright of Biblical Theology Bulletin is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
