Opening the Word: Catholics and the Bible

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Instructor

Vern Steiner

As the first of two interterm courses built into our Creation to New Creation program, this five-week study is designed to familiarize students with the Bible generally, preparing them to read, study, pray, love, and live the Sacred Scriptures. Clergy and Christian faithful (Consecrated Religious, teachers and catechists, Bible study leaders, dads and moms, missionaries, the curious and inquisitive)—are all welcome. This course is required for those pursuing the Emmaus certificate.

Opening the Word: Catholics and the Bible will consist in five sessions, each focusing on a question aimed at Bible familiarity:

Session 1: Can Catholics Be Bible Christians, or Why Should They Be?

Session 2: What is the Bible, and How Did We Get It? Part 1

Session 3: What is the Bible, and How Did We Get It? Part 2

Session 4: Can We Trust the Bible, (and if so) Why Are We Not Bible-Only Christians?

Session 5: What Does the Bible Say, and Why Does It Matter?

Included are discussions on some of the myths many Catholics and non-Catholics believe about each other and the Bible, why God chose written words as a medium of divine communication, how stories became books and books became collections and collections became Testaments, why Catholic Bibles are bigger than Protestant Bibles, how and why Bible versions vary and which ones are to be preferred, a consideration of those parts of the Bible that are hard to square with modern-day conceptions and objections about reality and morality, and an overview of the whole Bible that is conveniently memorable.

This course should ideally be viewed as prerequisite to a second interterm course one year later which will focus on questions of biblical interpretation. That course will move further along a path from theory to practice, from guiding principles to their application in the actual task of making sense of the meaning and message of biblical texts—how to read and understand the Bible, in other words.

Required Texts:

Sacred Scripture, the Bible (preferably ESVCE [English Standard Version, Catholic Edition] or RSVCE 2nd edition [Revised Standard Version; Catholic Edition])
Instructor’s notes (provided and included in the registration cost)

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Comments (Add your own)

Vern,

Just read your short summary on why Catholic bibles are bigger than Protestant bibles. Can you please tell me what four books Luther sought to exclude from the New Testament and why he sought to exclude them.

Thanks!

Al Kroner

Al, thanks for your question. Luther cordoned off Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation because he did not find these books congenial to his version of the gospel, i.e., they did not support the gospel as he conceived it. For Luther, in other words, not only the seven “deuterocanonical” Old Testament books but even some New Testament books could be analogously relegated to a kind of “apocryphal” appendix if they were deemed to be theologically deficient. He disparaged these four New Testament books because he did not find them to align comfortably with his theological presuppositions. Specifically, these books challenged, or failed to support, his view of justification by faith alone (his “canon within the canon” by which everything else is to be measured). The lesson in this for all of us is that, while we all operate with certain prior assumptions, we must be willing to subject our presuppositions to an authority other than ourselves or our own interpretations.

Dr Steiner,
Have you ever heard of Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura and her work on the Masoretic Texts? The link I’ve posted explains more about her work.

You wrote, ” . . . we must be willing to subject our presuppositions to an authority other than ourselves or our own.”

Religiously, that can involve a conflict between establishing a “personal relationship with God” and acknowledging an authority other than ourselves. Accepting that we individually are not an authority requires humility and discernment of a legit authority. We Catholics have the teaching authority of the Church, a blessing for those who accept it, even when difficult, and a bane to those who reject it..

Similar conflicts occur in many other aspects of or lives, “me and my beliefs” verses “the experts.” The idea that our personal knowledge can approach that of an expert is fostered by internet searches for information. We tend to gravitate toward info that reinforces our notions and reject info that challenges them, just like Luther did with his selection and rejection of books in the Bible.

There are many people willing to be the authority. “Who says so?” and “How do they know?” summarizes how I try to assess information that I encounter. Those questions are not always easy to answer.

I recommend the book “The Death of Expertise, The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters,” By Tom Nichols, published in 2017 by Oxford University Press. His arguments are interesting.

Jenn, thank you for calling my attention to Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura, the 20th-century French musician and composer. I do not recall encountering her name before, and it does not appear in my library sources on the Masoretic scribes and their contribution to preserving the Hebrew biblical text. This is understandable, as her work focused primarily on an attempt to decode the cantillation marks preserved in the accentual system of the Masoretic Text. How successful she was in recovering and reconstructing an ancient musical notation system based on scribal accents is beyond my ability to judge.

Vern, Just watched your lecture for Session 3. I have one of each Catholic Bible translation that is currently available for sale (except the NRSVCE) and I checked the placement of Maccabees in all. It’s at the end of the OT in Douay Rheims, Knox, RSVCE and RSV2ndCE. its in the Historical books in all the others.

The ESVCE has been chosen for the Lecionary in India, England, and Wales. The Revised New Jerusalem has been selected in Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand. Canada uses the NRSVCE. In the US, the copyright for the NAB is owned by the USCCB so not likely to see a change here. jim

Jim,
Thank you for this information, some of which I remember from our previous conversations. I thought of you often during that part of the class, as I know of your strong interest in the various Bible translations. I still have your notes from the presentation you gave in class several years ago and have used them as a resource.
Vern

I wanted to update and correct my 14 February post. I mixed up my Celtic countries. Scotland will be using the ESV-CE for their Lectionary, and Ireland will be using the RNJB for theirs.

And I verified the NRSV-CE puts Maccabees with the other Historical books.

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