Introduction To The Sacred Scriptures

INTRODUCTION TO
THE SACRED
SCRIPTURES
WELCOME TO THE
BIBLE
WHY SOME CHRISTIANS DO NOT
READ THE BIBLE
a. The Bible is Primitive
Some Christians do not read Bible because they
believe that the Bible is a primitive book that has
little relevance to the realities of modern life. The
world economic and banking system would
collapse if we followed literally the Bible
injunction not to lay up treasure for ourselves here
on earth (Matthew 6:19).
READ THE BIBLE
Law and order could not be maintained in the
society if we followed literally the Bible injunction
not to judge others (Matthew 7:1) but to turn the
other cheek (Matthew 5: 38-41).
The Bible does not take an incontrovertible stand

on racial, sexual or social discrimination. It does
not always speak out clear and strong in
condemnation of some forms of social injustice.
READ THE BIBLE
For example, the Bible does not a clear stand
against slavery and genocide in war. As a matter of
fact, many Bible reading Christians are known to be
very insensitive to issues of social injustice and
very slow to act in pursuance of justice and peace.
In the past, and up to the present in some quarters,
the Bible has been used as a weapon to rob people
of their God-given freedom and suppress their
efforts at liberation and self-determination.
READ THE BIBLE
True, the Bible is an ancient book dealing in the
first instance with the problems of those times. But
a deeper analysis of the human situation reveals
that most of those ancient problems are still with
us, clamoring for a solution. How do we individuals
live happy and meaningful lives? How do we as a
society build a community of peace and justice and
prosperity for all?
READ THE BIBLE
These are some of the ancient problems of
humankind that are as relevant and urgent today as
they were in the days of yore. As the book of
Ecclesiastes says,
What has been is what will be, and what has been
done; and there is nothing new under the sun. is
there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”?
It has been already, in the ages before us.
(Ecclesiastes 1:9-10)
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The fundamental problems of humankind have not
changed. And so the Bible which address these
problems will always be found to be relevant until
the end of times. As the Lord himself said,
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words

will not pass away. (Mark 13:31)
READ THE BIBLE
What needs also to be underlined here is that in
spite of the fact of the Bible being an ancient book
it does have an enduring value. Recognition of the
age of the Bible should go hand in hand with
recognition of its eternal value. The Bible could be
old but it could never be out of date.
READ THE BIBLE
b. The Bible is Foreign
Some educated Christians say that the Bible is a
product of a foreign religion and culture meant for
believers in a foreign God. The Bible, they argue,
was not intended for Christians and using the
Bible to seek solutions to Christian problems
would be tantamount to putting a square peg in a
round hole.
READ THE BIBLE
According to this point of view, the Bible is simply
irrelevant in Africa. Worse still, it could be
downright negative and harmful in its effects on the
religions and cultures of Christian peoples which it
seeks to replace with a foreign one.
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The God of the Bible is none other than the same
God Creator of heaven and earth worshiped by our
ancestors (Genesis 1:1; Isaiah 45:12). Though God
is sometimes spoken of as the “creator of Israel”
(Isaiah 43:15), He is also believed to be the “creator
of the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 40:28). The same
God who revealed Himself in a general way to all
peoples of the earth in creation (Psalm 19[18]: 1-4)
also revealed Himself in a special way to the
Israelites through their prophets and especially
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through His Son Jesus Christ (Heb 1:1). The
relevance and importance of the Bible to all who
seek to know and serve God is that in it we have a
record of God our Father’s self-revelation to the
whole world given through given His messenger,
Israel.
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c. The Bible is Dangerous
Before the awakening of interest in the Bible
among Nigerian Christians that gave rise to the
biblical movement in the 1970’s many stories were
circulating, especially in Roman Catholic circles,
that tried to show that it was a dangerous thing for
the ordinary Christian to read the Bible.
READ THE BIBLE
These stories spoke of people who dabbled into the
Bible out of curiosity and without any special
training and how they ended up becoming blind or
insane. It was then believed that only specially
trained people, namely the priests and religious,
could safely read the Bible.
READ THE BIBLE
The Bible is good. But some people do not know
how to use it and this produces harmful results.
Many centuries ago, St. Augustine (+A.D. 430) asked
the question, “Do you know how heresies [false
teachings] are produced?” He answered the
question: it is because “the Scriptures, which are
good in themselves, were badly interpreted.”
Knowing this, therefore, what do we do? Run away
from the Bible? No. try to know better so as to avoid
the pitfalls in the interpretation of the Bible? Yes.
WHY READ THE BIBLE
a. To Satisfy One’s Spiritual Hunger
Bible reading is one of the ways through which

we seek to satisfy this hunger for God’s Word
which God Himself has put into the human soul.
WHY READ THE BIBLE
b. To Learn the Wisdom that Leads to Salvation

The human spirit loves wisdom. We love to know
the difference between reality illusion, good and
bad, right and wrong, so that we could devote our
energies to the pursuit of the one and the
avoidance of the other. Now there is worldly
wisdom which helps one only in this passing world
and there is divine wisdom which leads one
through this life into eternity.
WHY READ THE BIBLE
This is the wisdom that leads to salvation. This is

the kind of wisdom one can acquire through
knowledge of the holy scriptures, as Paul says:
Ever since you were child, you have known the

scriptures – from these you can learn the wisdom
that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
(2 timothy 3:15 NJB)
WHY READ THE BIBLE
c. To Learn to Grow Strong in the Faith

Bible reading is an activity recommended to
Christians, that is, those already believe in God
and in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Whether
a non-believer could arrive at the faith through
unguided reading of the Bible is debatable. The
point here is that Bible reading is seen as a useful
means fir Christians who already believe to build
up their faith.
WHY READ THE BIBLE
This story gives us a model of the relationship

between faith and scripture. The model is:
i. Initial faith: the word is received with eagerness,

ii. Recourse to the scriptures: faith is confirmed,
iii. Mature faith: the word deepens and grows.
WHY READ THE BIBLE
d. To Learn How to Overcome Sin and Live a Godly

Life
Many Christians are in a constant struggle to
uproot sin and sinful habits from their lives. They
experience the moral dilemma faced by St. Paul as
described in his letter to the Romans:
WHY READ THE BIBLE
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not

do the very thing I hate. …. I can will what is right,
but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want,
but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans
7:15-19)
WHY READ THE BIBLE
e. To learn to Defend the Truth and Refute Error

Many conflicting teaching are circulating in
different Christian circles today. Faithfulness in
the right way demands that one be equipped to
distinguish between truth and falsity and
especially to be able to see through deceptive half
truths. Knowledge of the Bible helps us to do this
in a number of ways:
WHY READ THE BIBLE
i. It helps us to know he truth ourselves. The Jews

did not recognize the truth of Jesus’ teachings on
account of their ignorance of the scriptures:
Jesus said to them, “Is not this why you are

wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor
the power of God? (Mark 12:24)
WHY READ THE BIBLE
ii. Knowledge of the Bible helps us see the subtle

falsehood in partial truths as well as how to refute
them by presenting the integral truth of the
revealed mind of God on the issue. As Paul said,
All scripture is inspired by God and useful for

refuting error …. (2 Timothy 3:16 NJB)
WHY READ THE BIBLE
iii. The Elder, Peter, advises believers in the faith

always to have an answer ready for those who ask
them the reason for their belief.
In your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always

be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls
you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it
with gentleness and reverence. (1 Peter 3:15).
WHY READ THE BIBLE
What better way can we prepare to do this than to

acquire a deeper knowledge of the Bible on which
the inquirers more often than not base their
questions.
WHY READ THE BIBLE
g. To Learn How to Witness to Christ

Sharing the faith with others is one of our
Christian obligations. In John 1 we read how
Andrew found Simon his brother and brought him
to Jesus, and how Philip found Nathaniel
(probably his friend) and brought him to Jesus.
There are many ways we can witness the Good
News to our family members and friends.
WHY READ THE BIBLE
We can do that by teaching the ignorant, by

correcting the erring and by reproving the adamant.
In all these forms of witnessing we shall find a
knowledge of the Bible to be of great help. This is
because
WHY READ THE BIBLE
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for

teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training in righteousness, so that everyone who
belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for
every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17 NRSV).
HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO US
The English word “Bible” ultimately derives from

the Greek word “biblia,” a plural meaning books.
“Bible,” however, has come to designate that
“book,” in the singular, that brings together the
books holding a special place in the life of the
Church. The Bible came into being as the traditions
reflected in each of its books were the Bible is
God’s revelation and God’s people’s response to
that revelation.
How the Books of the Bible Were
Written
The earliest Christians did not have a Bible such
as we have today, since parts of it had not been
written yet. Furthermore, it was not until much later
that all the books could be bound together in one
volume to become one book. Originally, the
different books of the Bible circulated separately as
individual books, and only later as separate groups
of books such as the collection of four gospels.
Written
In the early part of the first century of our era,
however, the only books of the bible that Christians
had in writing were the ones that made up the
authoritative written literature or “scripture(s),” in
use by their Jewish contemporaries. This literature,
later expanded to include other words, was
eventually to be known to Christians as the Old
Testament.
Written
That Jewish literature itself had gradually come
into existence over a period of more than
millennium, a period that had itself been preceded
by a period of transmission of individual units of
older traditions, such as the victory song found in
Judges. In other words, the bible grew
incrementally. We find a reference to a prior
tradition in 2 Kings 22:8, which tells how the High
Priest Hilkiah discovered “the book of the law,”
which had been lost in the Temple.
Written
Scholars have identified this lost-and-found book
with at least part of the book of Deuteronomy. In
the NT we are taken behind the scenes by one
author to see how the editing of the gospel took
place. In Luke 1:1-4 the author tells us that behind
the editing was the tradition, including the oral
proclamation, and behind the tradition the historical
event or events.
Written
Ireneaus (ca. 130-ca.200 C.E.) the bishop of
Lyons, was the first person to use the term “New
Testament” to designate the new Christian
literature telling about Jesus and the emerging
Church. This made it possible for the first time to
talk about an “Old Testament.” The designation
about the two testament as the “Bible “goes back
to John Chrysostom (ca. 347-407 CE), bishop of the
Constantinople.
Written
We do not know how wrote most of the books of the
Bible, although later traditions were traditions were to
assign names to them. What do we know however, is
that the writings took place not only about a period of
more than a thousand years and in many different
locations in different continents, but also in three
different languages: the OT mostly in Hebrew but also in
Aramaic (two words in Gen 31:47; Ezra 4:8-6;18; 7:12-26;
Jer 10:11; and Dan 2:4b-7:28) and most deuterocanonical
books of the OT and all of the NT in Greek.
Written
Background
Part of the backdrop to this writing was the

domination of Palestine and the rest of the eastern
Mediterranean region for a period of over a
thousand years, up to and including the time of
Christ and the early reflects the hopes and
aspirations of a small nation living under the
domination of imperial powers.
Written
The God of the Bible is the God of the people who seek freedom
from the oppression domination.
One legacy of the domination of this area of the world by the

Greek-speaking Macedonian Alexander the Great and his
successors was the spread of a form of Greek known as “Kione”
(meaning “common”), that served as the common language down
into the time of the Roman empire. Acts 21:37 describes a Roman
official communicating with Paul in Greek. It was in this
“common” that Paul and the other authors of the NT wrote, even
though such books of the gospels depended at least in part on an
earlier tradition translated orally in Aramaic.
Written
Other defining moments in history left a particular
stamp on the writers and assemblers of the
traditions found in the Bible: the exodus of the
Jewish people from Egypt under Moses and his
receiving the Law at Sinai, the unification of the
people of Israel under King David, the capture of the
northern kingdom by Assyria, the destruction of the
Solomonic Temple and the captivity of a large part
of the population of the southern kingdom in
Babylon and their return in the Persian period,
Written
the persecution of the Jews in the Syrian
successors to Alexander the Great, and the capture
of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Herodian
Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E.
Written
Overlapping Traditions
Those responsible for assembling the traditions in

the Bible did not always eliminate overlapping
traditions. The book of Psalms was originally five
different books or collections of Psalms, but when
they were brought together in one collection both
Psalm 14 (= Vulgate Psalm 13) and Psalm 53
(=Vulgate 52) were retained although they are
Written
Essentially the same teaching in Mt 5:29-30 and
18:8-9 may be explained on similar grounds.
When a story was retold it was because the need

was to felt to recast the story in such a way as to
meet the needs of a new situation in the life of
God’s people. The biggest block of repeated
materials in the OT is found in 1 Chronicles 10-12
Chronicles 36, which covers roughly the same
Written
grounds as 1 Samuel 31 – 2 Kings 25, namely the
story of the people of Israel from the death of Saul
to the fall of Jerusalem.
In the NT it is the existence of four different

gospels that constitutes the most notable example
of multiple traditions. Each gospel tells about
Jesus’ life and ministry in its own way, as the
example of the different timings of Jesus’’ action
Written
in the Temple demonstrates. The major
convergence occurs in the narrative of the Passion.
There are small overlaps as well, including three

different accounts of the giving of the Ten (or more)
commandments to Moses; not only in Exodus 20,
but also in Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 5.
Written
There are likewise three different accounts of
Saul/Paul’s conversion: in Acts 9, 22, and 26. much
of the material in Colossians is also found in
Ephesians; similarly, many of the verses in Jude
have parallels in 2 Peter.
How the Books of the Bible were
Collected and Selected
Not all the books that were written have survived.
“The Book of Jashar,” mentioned in Josh 10:13 and
2 Sam 1:18, is a case in point. There are still other
books that used to be part of some Christian Bibles
but are no longer included in most of our Bibles
even though they have survived, such as the Letter
of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and 1 and 2
Clement. The Letter of Barnabas and the Shepherd
of Hermas are found in Codex Sinaiticus dating from
the 4th century, but are not in our current Bibles.
First and Second Clement, however, which are
found in Codex Alexandrinus, a 5th century
manuscript of the Bible, are included in the Coptic
Orthodox Church’s NT, along with the “Apostolic
Constitutions,” making a New Testament of 30
books.
Still other books were slow to be accepted.

Eastern Christianity was reluctant to accept
Revelation (the Apocalypse) and Western
Christianity was reluctant of accept Hebrews. The
other NT books that generated the most debate
were James, 2 Peter, 2 John, and Jude. The OT
books that were most disputed were Esther,
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Ezekiel.
To this day different branches of Christendom
have different contents in their Bible. Roman
Catholics in their official list (“canon”) include
seven OT books that they call “deuterocanonicals”
(meaning belonging to the second canon), namely,
Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom,
Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), and Baruch. They are called
“deuterocanonical” because they were not included
in the Hebrew Bible, whose contents are designated
as “protocanonical,” or belonging to the first canon.
The deuterocanonical books were included in the
Greek translation known as Septuagint (LXX), as
well as in the Latin translation known as the
Vulgate. Their inclusion makes an OT of 46 books in
the Catholic Bibles. These deuterocanonical books,
plus three others, 1 and 2 Esdras and Prayer of
Manasseh, and the additions made to the books of
Daniel and Esther, are those that Protestants call
“apocryphal,” picking up on a designation
introduced by Jerome.
They were included in Protestant Bibles including
the King James version (Authorized Version), but in
the 19th century it become popular among some
Protestants to omit them from the Bibles.
Protestant made no new translation of them into
English between 1827 and 1939, but have made
several since 1939. many Protestant versions of the
Bible are now available in two editions, one with
and one without these books called the
“Apocrypha.”
In all Protestant Bibles all the Apocrypha are
grouped together between the OT and the NT
instead of being interspersed among the books of
the OT as in the Greek Septuagint.
For Jews the only books to be included in their
Bible, the “Hebrew Bible,” were those that
Catholics and Protestants call the “Old Testament,”
not including the “deuterocanonical” or the
“apocryphal” books. Although no final decision was
made concerning the contents of the Bible until the
2nd century of our era, the books that were included
had been collected and selected a long time
previous to that. These books were numbered in
such a way as to make a total of 24 books and
grouped into 3 divisions. The 3 divisions were not all
accepted as Scriptures by the Jews at the same time.
The 1st division, or collection, made was known as “The
Law,” or “Torah,” also called “The Five Books of Moses,”
or “Pentateuch.” it contains the 1st books of the Hebrew
Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. These books were considered the most
important part of the Hebrew Bible. When they were
later being translated orally into Aramaic the translation
was only allowed to proceed at the rate of one verse
At a time. “The Prophets” includes Joshua, Judges, 1
and 2 Kings, as well as what the Christians refer to as
“the prophets:” Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and
Hosea through Malachi.
In last place came the third division, “The Writings,”

including poetical books (Psalms, Jobs, and Proverbs),
“five rolls” (Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes,
Lamentations, and Esther), prophecy (Daniel), and
history (Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles). Note that the
Note that the last book in this division is (2)
Chronicles, which may explain the reference in
Luke 11:50-51 to the period stretching from the
creation of the world to the murder of Zechariah (2
Chron 24:20-22), which would correspond to an
order beginning with Genesis and ending with (2)
Chronicles. The acceptance of this third division
came much later, and gradually.
This “Hebrew Bible” is now numbered in English
translation as 39 books and so identical in content
with the OT of the Protestant Bible although, as we
have seen, the order of the books is not the same.
The order of the Books in the Catholic traditionally
called the “Apocrypha” is still another group of
some 60 books including, for example, First (or
Ethiopian) Enoch, referred to in Jude 14-15. these
same books have come to be called the
“Pseudepigrapha” by most Protestants.
In parallel development in various collections of
the OT came those collections of various categories
of books that met different needs of the growing
Christian Church: gospels, Acts, letters and
Revelation. The final decision as to the content of
the (Catholic) Christian Bible was made by the
Roman Catholic Church on 8 April 1546, at the
Council of Trent. Eastern Orthodox churches
decided the contents of their Bible in 1672 at the
Synod of Jerusalem; they included most of the
“deuterocanonical” books. The Eastern Orthodox
Holy Synod in 1950 added 3 Maccabees, 4
Maccabees (in an appendix), and Psalm 151. The
New Revised Standard Version is available in an
edition that includes all those books and chapters.
Protestant have never made, and never will be

able to make, any universally binding decision in
this matter because there is no worldwide authority
That can speak for all of them. Most Protestants
tend not to use the “deuterocanonical” or
“apocryphal” books of the OT, but readings in these
books are included in the Anglican and Episcopal
lectionaries. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and
Eastern Orthodox agree , however, in having the
same 27 books in their NT: gospels, Acts, 21
epistles or letters, and Revelation.
Eventually and inevitably, by analogy, Christians
were to accord the same authority to their own
Christian traditions as they had been giving to the
Jewish Scriptures. As the original eyewitnesses
were dying off, Christians felt the need to preserve
the written accounts of Christ’s words and deeds by
collecting them. They also were obliged to do some
selecting, eventually eliminating competing gospels
such as the Gospel of Peter, which was still
referred to by Origen (185-254 C.E.).
By 200 C.E. there was a four-fold gospel canon, a
collection of Paul’s letters, Acts, 1 Peter and 1
John. Later, but not necessarily in the following
order, other books were added, notably those
whose inclusion was delayed the longest: Hebrews,
James, 2 Peter, 2 John, Jude and Revelation.
As in the case of the OT, where the Law took
precedence over the other divisions, so in the NT
the four gospels were to occupy a preeminent place
and letter attributed to Paul were to take
precedence over later letters attributed to other
apostles.
Other factors also had an impact on, and
hastened the process of collection and selection
(canonization) of the books of the NT. One was the
need to provide guidance for the Church as it
consciously settled down for the long haul after
realizing the end of time was going to be longer in
coming than originally thought. Still more important
was the need, in the face of persecution, to identify
which books were worth dying for.
In 303 C.E. the Roman Emperor Diocletian launched
and empire-wide persecution of Christians during
which some believers were put to death for refusing
to turn-over the Scriptures.
In earlier times, the direct, or indirect,
association of the various books of the NT with an
apostles and the “correct” teaching in these books
were seen as important factors contributing to their
inclusion by the Church as part of “Scripture” but in
time the greatest use of these books by the largest
number of Christians over the widest area emerged
as a primary consideration.
What is the Bible?
What do you say about the Bible? What are your
questions about the Bible? How do you get the
answers?
What do the people say about the Bible? What are

their questions? What are your answers?
How can you encourage people to read the Bible?

What should you do to have a meaningful reading of
the Bible, not just a casual one?
Terminology:
The word “Bible” comes from the Greek words ta

bibla meaning “the books.” it is not just a book but a
collection of many individual books.
O.T. 39 in Jewish/Prot. 46 Catholic N.T. 27

THE NAME BIBLE
The term Bible is a modification of the Latin word

biblia which is itself a loanword from Greek. As for
Greek biblia, it is the plural of the neuter noun
biblos, “a book”. Now the neuter plural became a
feminine singular in Latin, and hence La Bible in
French, La Bibbia in Italian, and so on.
THE NAME BIBLE
The Bible is at times called Scripture (the Scriptures),

a name which is modified form of Latin scriptura, “what
is written, writing, book,” whose equivalents in Greek
are gramma (neuter; plural grammata) and graphe
(feminine; plural graphai). The New Testament (abbr.NT)
attests phrases such as ta hiera grammata (2 Tim 3:15),
“the sacred writings,” and pasa graphe (2 Tim 3:16), “all
scriptures;” compare en tais graphais (Mt 21:43), “in the
scriptures.” The Jews call the Bible kitbe haqqodesh,
“holy books” (compare Holy Writ, Holy Scriptures).
THE BIBLE AS THE WORD OF
GOD
The Hebrew expression dabar, “word,” has in the OT
several meanings, such as utterance, speech,
event, happening, process, occurrence, action, etc.,
and when the Israelites speak of Yahweh’s dabar,
they include all these nuances, which must all be
borne in mind in order to understand the
discussions that follow. At the outset we say, the
Bible is God’s verbum dictum as well as verbum
dicens, phrases that call for some explanation.
THE BIBLE AS THE WORD OF
GOD
The Bible is the word that God has spoken (verbum
dictum), in the sense that it narrates the history of
God’s saving work among men, a history that by its
very nature is salvific or redemptive, for by running
it course, it brings to realization God’s salvific
designs for mankind. This realization can very well
be called God’s verbum dictum, the word he has
uttered in the past, and the Bible is its expression in
black and white.
THE TWO TESTAMENTS
The Bible consist of two volumes or parts, the OT and the

NT. The appellation Testament comes from Latin
testamentum, a juridical term that denotes a will made
by a person especially before death, and that came to be
used by the Latin-speaking Christians as the equivalent
of Greek diatheke, “agreement, pact, covenant.” the
Greek expression translates admirably well the Hebrew
technical term berith, “covenant” (i.e. between Yahweh
and his people); accordingly, then, it would be more
accurate to speak of the two Covenants.
THE TWO TESTAMENTS
The two Testaments from a single whole, in the

sense that they proclaim Christ in whom the history
of salvation reaches its final term. The OT announce
him as the one who will come and accomplish the
work of redemption, and the NT, as the one who has
come and accomplished the work of redemption and
will come again at the end of time. Christ is therefore
the one who gives unity to the rich variety we have in
the Bible, and the Christian reading of the Bible is
necessarily Christological.
THE ORDER OF BOOKS IN THE
HEBREW BIBLE
II) The Latter Prophets: 1) Isaiah, 2) Jeremiah,
3) Ezekiel, 4) the Twelve Minor Prophets;
C) Ketubim, “the Writings:” 1) Psalms, 2 Job,
3) Proverbs, 4) Ruth, 5) Song of Songs,
6) Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth, 7) Lamentations,
8) Esther, 9) Daniel, 10) Ezra, 11) Nehemiah,
12) 1 Chronicles, 13) 2 Chronicles.
HEBREW BIBLE
In the Synagogue Scrolls the Hebrew Bible is
divided into twenty-four books, five of the Law,
eight of the Prophets, and eleven of the Writings.
This total follows the story in 2 Ezra (also called 4
Ezra) 14:44-45, which describes how Ezra was
asked by God to keep hidden seventy of the ninety-
four books he had written and to make public only
twenty-four.
HEBREW BIBLE
There is too the Jewish tradition that the canon
consists of twenty-two books, corresponding to the
twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; this
figure was obtained by combining Ruth with Judges
and Lamentations with Jeremiah.
THE TITLES OF BOOKS IN THE
HEBREW BIBLE
We add here the Hebrew titles of the books of the
OT; the sequence in this section is the one found in
the printed editions of the Hebrew Bible, which
differs in some respects from the one occurring in
the scrolls drawn up for use in the Synagogues.
HEBREW BIBLE
TORAH, “the Law”
1. Bereshith, “in the beginning”
2. we’elleh shemoth, or Shemoth, “And these are
the names,” or “Names”
3. Wayyqri, “And he called”
4. Bemidbar, “In the wilderness”
5. Elleh haddebarim, or Debarim, “These are the
words,” or “Words”
HEBREW BIBLE
Nebiim, “the Prophets”
Nebiim rishonim, “the Former Prophets”
6.Yehoshua, “Joshua”
7. Shophetim, “Judges”
8. Shemuel 1, “1 Samuel”
9. Shemuel 2, “2 Samuel”
10. Melakim 1, “1 Kings”
11. Melakim 2, “2 Kings”
HEBREW BIBLE
Nebiim aharonim, “the Latter Prophets”
12.Yeshayahu, “Isaiah”
13. Yiremeyahu, “Jeremiah”
14. Yehezqel, “Ezekiel”
15. Hoseha, “Hosea”
16. Yoel, “Joel”
17. Amos, “Amos”
18. Obadyah, “Obadiah”
HEBREW BIBLE
19.Yonah, “Jonah”
20. Mikah, “Micah”
21. Nahuma, “Nahum”
22. Habaqquq, “Habakkuk”
23. Tsephanyah, “Zephaniah”
24. Haggai, “Haggai”
25. Zakaryah, “Zechariah”
26. Malaki, “Malachi”
HEBREW BIBLE
Ketubim, “the Writings”
27.Tehillim, “the Psalms”
28. Mishe Shelomoh, “the Proverbs of Solomon”
29. Iyyob, “Job”
30. Shir hashshirim, “Song of Songs”
31. Ruth, “Ruth”
32. Ekah, “Lamentations”
33. Qoheleth, “Ecclesiastes”
HEBREW BIBLE
34.Ester, “Esther”
35. Daniyyel, “Daniel”
36. Ezra, “Ezra”
37. Nehemyah, “Nehemiah”
38. Dibre hayyamin 1, “the Words of the Days” (1
Chronicles)
39. Dibre hayyamin 2, “the Words of the Days” (2
Chronicles)
HEBREW BIBLE
The following books form a small collection, the five
Megilloth, “Scrolls,” which were read on special
feast days:
1. Shir hashshirim, “Song of Songs” Passover
2. Ruth, “Ruth” Pentecost
3. Ekah, “Lamentations” Anniversary of
the destruction of
Jerusalem
HEBREW BIBLE
4. Qoheleth, “Ecclesiastes” Booths
5. Ester, “Esther” Purim
The present collection is patterned upon the

Torah or the Pentateuch.
VULGATE
Manuscript and printed editions of the Latin Bible
contain at times non-canonical works (e.g. 3-4 Esdras)
which will be omitted from our list.
1. Genesis, “Genesis”
2. Exodus, “Exodus”
3. Leviticus, “Leviticus”
4. Numeri, “Numbers”
5. Deuteronomium, “Deuteronomy”
6. Iosue, “Joshua”
VULGATE
7. Iudice, “Judges”
8. Ruth, “Ruth”
9. Regum 1, “1 Kings” (=1 Samuel)
10. Regum 2, “2 Kings” (=2 Samuel)
11. Regum 3, “3 Kings” (=1 Kings)
12. Regum 4, “4 Kings” (=2 Kings)
13. Paralipomenon 1, “1 Chronicles”
14. Paralipomenon 2, “2 Chronicles”
VULGATE
15. Esdras 1, “Ezra”
16. Esdras 2, “Nehemiah”
17. Tobias, “Tobit”
18. Iudith, “Judith”
19. Esther, “Esther”
20. Iob, “Job”
21. Psalmi, “Psalms”
22. Proverbia, “Proverbs”
VULGATE
23.Ecclesiastes, “Qoheleth”
24. Canticum canticorum, “Song of Songs”
25. Sapienta, “Wisdom”
26. Ecclesiasticus, “Ecclesiasticus” (=Sirach)
27. Isaias, “Isaiah”
28. Ieremias, “Jeremiah”
29. Lamentationes, or Thremi, “Lamentations”
30. Baruch, “Baruch”
VULGATE
31. Ezechiel, “Ezekiel”
32. Daniel, “Daniel"
33. Osee, “Hosea”
34.Ioel, “Joel”
35. Amos, “Amos”
36. Abdias, “Obadiah”
37. Iomas, “Jonas”
38. Michaeas, “Micha”
VULGATE
39. Nahum, “Nahum
40. Habacuc, “Habakkuk”
41. Sophonias, “Zephaniah”
42. Aggaeus, “Haggai”
43. Zacharias, “Zechariah”
44. Malachias, “Malachi”
45. Macchabaeorum 1, “1 Maccabees”
46. Macchabaeorum 2, “2 Maccabees”
VULGATE
The English Bibles (both Catholic and Protestant)
have adopted the arrangement of the books in the
Vulgate; the contents, however, of the OT part of
the Protestant Bibles are those of the Hebrew Bible.
THE BIBLICAL LANGUAGES
The original languages of the Bible are Hebrew,

Aramaic and Greek, the first two belonging to the
Semitic family of languages and the last to the Indo-
European one; some general idea of the genius of
the sacred tongues – a field where so much
research is being done – is a must for all believers.
The term Semitic comes from Sem (the Greek and

Latin form of Shem), the name of one of Noah’s sons
who, according to biblical tradition, was the
ancestor of the people of Israel (Gen 11:30-32). The
language from which aal the Semitic dialects of
historical times evolved is called Proto-Semitic, and
while there are in existence no documents written
in it, it can, to a certain extant, be reconstructed.
We do not know where exactly the home of the

Proto-Semites, but in the third millennium we find
their descendants settled in Mesopotamia (the
East), in Syria Palestine (the Northwest) and in
Arabia and Ethiopia (the Southwest); on the basis of
this geographical distribution of the Semites, we
can divide their languages into three groups.
East Semitic id generally known as Accadian, from

Accad (a modification of Sumerian Agade), the
centre of the Semites in Mesopotamia, and it had
two dialects, Assyrian (in the North) and Babylonian
(in the South). Southwest Semitic is represented by
the languages of Arabia and Ethiopia.
THE TEXT OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT
Before the Babylonian Exile (587-538 B.C.) the
written text of the Bible had no significant role to
play in the life of the people of Israel. True, some
parts of the OT were committed to writing, and the
script used was the Phoenician one; these “books”
were deposited in the temple archives, while the
written copies of the prophets’ oracles were
treasured and preserved by the circles of their
disciples.
THE TEXT OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT
During and after the Exile the Jews became the
people of the book, and the OT came to be written
down in the elegant square script popularized by
the Arameans (which is now found in the
manuscripts and the printed editions of the Hebrew
Bible). The text was exclusively consonantal,
whose reading was no problem at all to experts.
THE TEXT OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT
After the catastrophe of A.D. 70 the text of the Bible
acquired paramount significance, for it was the only
principle that could preserve the Jewish faith and
identity, and so Jewish scholars produced a uniform
and authoritative text of the OT.
THE TEXT OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT
The Hebrew original enjoys far greater authority
than all the versions and on the whole it is quite
reliable, reproducing the traditional text in use
among the Jews from times immemorial. There are
passages which are corrupt, and there are too
inaccuracies, inconsistencies, etc. in the matter of
orthography, vocalization and the like, which do not
in any way diminish the value of the Hebrew Bible.
THE VERSION OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT
There are numerous versions of the OT, of which
only the principal ones dating from pre-Christian
and Christian antiquity need be mentioned here, and
the discussions will naturally be quite brief.
THE GREEK VERSIONS
The pre-Christian rendering of the OT published by the

Jews in Egypt is known as the Septuagint, from Latin
septuaginta, “seventy” (and hence the abbreviation
LXX). The title arose from the legend that the
Pentateuch was translated from the Hebrew on the
orders of king Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt (285-246)
by seventy scholars in seventy days, and all produced
indentical translations! At the beginning of the
Christian era there was in existence a complete OT in
Greek which included too the Deuterocanonical books.
THE GREEK VERSIONS
Among all the versions of the OT, the Septuagint

occupies the first place, and it is based on a pre-
Masoretic Hebrew text; the accuracy of the
rendering varies according to books.
THE ARAMAIC VERSIONS
Since the Jewish masses did not understand the

Hebrew language, there arose the need to paraphrase
the original text into Aramaic, their vernacular, during
synagogal worship. The paraphrases that thus saw
the light of day are known as Targumim, plural of
Targum, “translation,” from the Aramaic verb targen,
“to translate, interpret” (a verb cognate with Arabic
tarjama, “to translate”); scholars at times employ the
plural form Targums as well.
THE SYRIAC VERSIONS
Syriac was the dialect of East Aramaic that the

Arameans who were converted to the Christian faith
were using. There is the likelihood that the earliest
translation of the Torah was made by Jews for
Jews, and already towards the end of the second
century A.D. work had commenced on the Christian
version of the Bible.
THE SYRIAC VERSIONS
The common Bible of the Syriac-speaking

communities is the Peshitta (also Peshitto), “the
simple version,” which is a very important
translation, in as much as it is the rendering from
one Semitic language into another, but in the case
of some books which gave been revised according
to the Septuagint, the critical value is not much.
THE LATIN VERSIONS
During the second and third centuries the faithful in

Rome were speaking Greek, and the well-known
Roman scholar St. Hippolytus wrote his works in
Greek. However, Christians in Africa were Latin-
speakers, and the Latin version made for them from
the Septuagint is called Vetus Latina, “the Old
Latin”(version); at times the phrase Vetus Itala, “the
Old Italic” (version) is employed, which, giving as it
does the impression that the translation originated in
Italy, is not accurate and so be better avoided.
THE TEXT OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT
The books of the NT were all written roughly
between A.D. 50-110, and immediately after their
publication most of them were recognized as
inspired and canonical. Though we do not have the
autographs of the sacred writers, we are in
possession of their authentic text. The Greek NT as
we have it now is substantially unchanged and
uncorrupted, and according to the verdict of critics,
seven-eighths of the NT is critically certain.
THE TEXT OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT
True, the manuscripts include a large number of
variant readings, which, however, do not
substantially affect the meaning of the text.
THE VERSIONS OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT
Our discussions can be quite brief, for the NT
versions do not have a complicated history like that
of the OT versions. This is something easily
understandable, because the NT is a tiny volume in
comparison with the OT.
TESTAMENT
Around 175 Tatian, a disciple of St.Justin the Martyr,
compiled a harmony of the Gospels in Syriac, the
Diatessaron, which was soon translated into Greek.
Whether the Vetus Syra, “the Old Syriac” version of
the Gospels is anterior or posterior to the
Diatessaron is not clear, and the most unfornate
thing is that the leaders of the Syriac Church
managed to have so many copies of Tatian’s work
destroyed that its original is no more extant.
TESTAMENT
The Syriac Peshitta (Peshitto) includes the NT,
which is an excellent rendering of the Greek. The
Vetus Latina NT was published in the secondary
century, and the Vulgate NT is not a new translation
but only St. Jerome’s revised edition of the Old
Coptic, the Ethiopic, the Armenian (known as the
queen of versions), the Gothic and the Georgian.
Terminology:
OT is called Hebrews Scriptures, which the NT

Christian Scriptures. It is not easy to understand
the Bible, but why do we read it? For those who
have found the key to understand:
1) It is the treasure chest of wisdom and

inspiration.
2) It contains the most profound insights on the
meaning of human life.
Terminology:
3) It has a deep influence on our modern religious

thought.
4) It provides a history of the ancient past.
1. The Bible as a Literature
The Bible was not written in the same way, at one

particular time and by one particular author. If we
examine the Bible, there are prose and poetry,
songs, history and prophecy, proverbs, and letters.
No other book contains so much literary genius as

the Bible, we find a wide range of different kinds
stories in different forms, we encounter the
fascinating “novel” of the beginnings of life and
faith in Genesis. And then we find the powerful

narrative poetry in the Book of Job, the love lyrics of
the Songs of Songs, the heated urgency of the
prophets, to the moving reports of the life of Christ
which we call the Gospels.
For thousands of years, writers and readers,

believers or not, have marveled at the beauty and
power of the Bible as literature, and the great writers
like Shakespeare have used it as a model.
The Bible is the world’s all time best selling book.

About 2.5 billion copies have been printed in over
700 languages.
The Bible spans approximately 1,500 years. The

Catholic canon contains 73 books. Some Bibles
which do not follow the Catholic canon exclude the
OT books which have Greek but not Hebrew
originals and contain 66 books.
Each book is an individual masterpiece. For the

student of the Bible as literature, the Bible is an
anthology – a collection – of the best writings of
inspired Jews and Christians, the greatest thinkers
of their times.
Scholars believe there were about 80 contributing
authors: Moses, Solomon, David, the Apostles John
and Peter, and the evangelist Paul among them, and
many remain anonymous. The editors who gave
the Bible its final form must also have been

inspired, for the arrangement of books in the Bible
is an artistic achievement in itself.
2. The Bible as God’s revelation.
What is divine revelation? It is the process by

which God manifests and communicates himself to
human beings and his designs for our salvation.
Yaweh is the God of revelation. This is

fundamental to Old testament belief. Yaweh as a
personal being cannot be known except through
revelation. The acts of Yaweh are forms of
revelation.
God’s revelation of himself occurs in history and

is an event that Old Testament and New Testament
locate in time and place. It is a developing process,
not a result of a single encounter. Insights into the
character of Yaweh grows deeper through the
successive periods of Israelite history. To
understand God’s revelation, therefore, we need to
study history of Israel and the early church. The
understanding of Yaweh during the time of David is
different from that of the post-exilic writings.
Revelation found in each writings is a response to a

determined historical situation.
The Church’s document, Dei Verbum, says that

God reveals himself as the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit and his will to men (Eph 1,9). Our God is
not an isolated being. The Trinity lives in eternal
dialogue and mutual self-gift and reveals himself in
history as outlined:
1900 BCE Abraham - promise

1500 Moses - covenant
800 Prophets - reminders
30 CE Jesus Christ ( Heb 1,1-2)
- in words and works
signs and miracles
death and resurrection
sent the Holy Spirit
Sacred Tradition:
The apostles preached, warned the faithful to

maintain traditions learned by word of mouth or by
letter (2 Thess 2,15; Jude 3). They also gave
example.
They and their associates wrote later on,

collected and compiled materials about Jesus
Christ – Mk, Mt, Lk, and Jn.
Sacred Tradition:
The successor of the apostles, the bishops, took
the position of teaching authority.
The Church fathers contemplating and studying

the traditions (Luke 2,51.19) gave witness, set the
canon of the sacred books, the written tradition.
Magisterium is the authority of the Church, It

interprets the SS.
Sacred Tradition:
The Bible is part of the stream of the living
Tradition of the Church, which in turn, checks what
might destroy the integrity of Tradition.
Paul illustrated what Tradition is: “For I delivered

to you as of first importance what I also received,
that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the
Scriptures. . . Whether then it was I or they, so we
preach and so you believed” (1 Cor 15:3,11). The
apostles praised those who followed Tradition: “I
commend you because you remember me in
everything and maintain the traditions even as I
have delivered them to you” (1 Cor 11:2).
The first Christians “devoted themselves to the

apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42) long before there
was a New Testament. The fullness of Christian
teaching was found, right form the first, in the
Church as the living embodiment of Christ, not in a
book. The teaching Church, with its oral, apostolic
traditions, was authoritative. Paul himself gives a
quotation from Jesus that was handed down orally
to him: “It is more blessed to give than to receive”
(Acts 20:35).
The Bible is not a primarily a body of truths or

doctrines to be memorized or to be debated upon. It
is God himself, who makes known his love for his
people. This God, in Israel’s tradition, made himself
known in numerous ways, including in nature, but
above all in certain “mighty acts” when he saved
Israel as a people – in their exodus from Egypt, in the
conquest of Palestine, in the selection of David as
king, etc. In other words, such as the covenant given
on Mount Sinai with its Torah, or Law, which outlines
the response and way of life to be followed.
Each type of literature in the OT witnesses these

various ways of revelation in its own manner. Thus
the Pentateuch contains the mighty deeds and the
Law; the prophets stress the covenant and the Law;
the Wisdom writings often add beautiful reflections
on God’s manifestation in nature; the gospels tell
about Jesus Christ the way to the Father; the
epistles further explain the mystery of Christ and
our salvation.
This whole understanding of the communal faith

lived and witnessed and passed on in different ways
warns us at the start never to read only one book of
the Bible as thought it contains the whole
revelation. Each book must be read in the context
of the whole collection of sacred writings, and be
seen as part of an ever-growing faith. The Decree
on Revelation of Vatican II sums up this way:
To this people which he had acquired for himself,

he so manifested himself through words and deeds
as the one true and living God that Israel came to
know by experience the ways of God within men
(n.11).
To understand the Bible as God’s revelation, we must

not think of it merely as a book for people living two
thousand years or more in the past. The Bible still
speaks to us of the modern times. When we read about
the experience of Israel, we discern a living God who
still speaks to us. By looking into their history, we can
learn about the values of our own history and our goals.
In the most important aspects of our lives, the discovery
of who we are and what we believe in, the Bible offers a
great wealth of insights, both negatively and positively.
Negatively, it reveals what destroys and breaks up

a people by showing the results of sin and unbelief.
Positively, it offers a way of life on discovering and
obeying a loving God.
The Bible has unique importance because it

contains both the narrative of the foundational
salvific action of God and the basic interpretation of
that action, but there can be subsequent normative
interpretation of that action which is not found in
Scripture. Thus, for example the raising from death
to glory of all the faithful disciples of Christ is an
interpretation of salvation revealed in the New
Testament; and although not found in Scripture, the
doctrine of the Assumption of Mary
can be seen by Roman Catholics as a particular

application of that interpretation – and
interpretation developing from a late New
Testament tendency visible in Luke and John to see
Mary as a privileged disciple?
Questions:
1) Why is it so important to read the Bible?

2) Is it possible to appreciate the Bible without
considering it as a literary piece?
3) What does the Dei Verbum say about the Bible?
4) What is divine revelation?
5) What is the place of the Bible in the life of the
Church?
6) Is there contradiction between sacred traditions
and the Bible?
Questions:
7) What’s wrong with the “sola scriptura” attitude?

8) What is so important about Sacred Traditions?
INSPIRATION
In the Second Vatican Council’s
document on divine revelation, Dei Verbum
(Latin: The Word of God), the relationship
between Tradition and Scripture is
explained: “Hence there exist a close
connection and communication between
sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture. For
both of them, flowing from the same divine
wellspring, in a certain way merge into a
unity and tend toward the same end.
Inspiration of the divine Spirit. To the
successors of the apostles, sacred Tradition
hands on in its full purity God’s word, which
was entrusted to the apostles by the Christ
the Lord and the Holy Spirit.
“Thus, by the light of the Spirit of truth,

these successors can in their preaching
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 devotion and reverence.”
1) The word “inspiration”
Inspiration is the urge to create a work of beauty

(artist), a constructive outlook on reality
(philosophers) or a solution to a problem (scientist).
How do we explain this inspiration?
First of all, inspiration is related to a certain

sensitivity which exists in a society at a given time.
This sensitivity inspires gifted individuals in that
society, who in turn heighten that sensitivity in their
fellow citizens.
We see in the Hebrew people a highly developed

sensitivity for God’s presence in their lives. From
these pious Hebrew communities, arise prophets,
preachers, writers, who offered their (first spoken)
reflection on that shared experience of God’s
presence with his people. In turn, these prophets,
preachers and writers heightened that religious
sensitivity in their people.
There is similarity between Hebrew literature and

art. Both are inspired. But Hebrew literature is more
than that. It is inspired (breathed upon) in a very
special way by Almighty God.
This does not mean that God dictated his message

as a businessman dictates a letter to a secretary.
God takes the author as he is and leaves him free to
choose his own means of communication.
Isaiah was great poet and composed beautiful

poems to convey his message. Ezekiel was not well
versed in letters and his language is rather poor.
Some authors chose existing folk tales and even
beast fables to bring out their point. Inspiration is
guidance.
2) Historical development
We can trace the history of how the Bible came

about, the process of growth and development of
the tradition, its process of transmission, and how
the people of Israel tried to reshape and reinterpret
the tradition, and how the people particularly the
scribes decided which books had to be considered
canonical or binding. The canonicity brought to an
end to the creative process of writing.
So far, based on historical research, we can say

that human authorship was at work in the process
of writing. Human beings wee involved in the
making of the Bible. Many people were involved, not
only the writers, but also those who had religious
experience in their communities as it moved in
history.
Speaking of inspiration, we try to combine human

and divine authorships. We can describe it in one
sentence: God inspired those human writers who in
any way contributed to the writing of the Bible.
Thus, the Bible can claim to have human and divine
authorship. Human writers did not just write what
they thought, God also entered into the process of
writing.
3) Two biblical passages on
inspiration.
There are two most important scriptural passages
which deal with inspiration so that there should be
no questioning whether the Bible is inspired or not.
a.) 2 Tim 3, 16-17. The Bible itself claim that the

Bible is divinely inspired: “All Scripture is inspired
of God and is useful for teaching – for reproof,
correction, and training in holiness” (2 Tim 2,16).
3) Two biblical passages on
inspiration.
Here the word “inspired” can mean either “breathed
of” God. The Latin Vulgate uses inspired (lit., “to
breathe in”). While the community believes that the
Sacred continue to communicate God’s word to us
today (breathes God), it is the passive the sense of
the verb that is traditionally preferred: The Sacred
Scriptures have been “breathed of” God. This idea
recalls the familiar prophetic theme of the breath or
spirit of God, that dynamic manifestation of God’s
action in the world.
4) Models of Inspiration
(Theories)
To be precise, how did inspiration take place? How did
God inspire? Here some proposed models of inspiration,
their implications and objections.
a) Plenary verbal Inspiration. Biblical inspiration has

often been understood as similar to prophetic
inspiration or prophetic possession. The theory is called
the plenary verbal inspiration, (or divine dictation
theory) which was promoted by Melchior Cano, the 16 th
century Dominican systematic theologian.
(Theories)
He said, “Everything great or small has been edited by
the sacred authors at the dictation of the Holy Spirit.”
God alone is responsible for the contents of the Bible.
The human authors were merely tape recorders, or
robots, who wrote down what God had dictated to them.
Or, the human authors were caught up in some mystical
trance and reproduced God’s word without knowing
what they were writing. We might also assume that
each individual book can be traced back to one author
who was inspired or whose words were inspired.
(Theories)
Implications: 1) Every Scripture is the word of God;
2) Since God is not false, every word in the
Scriptures must be true; 3) The truth of the Bible
bars any real contradictions among the biblical
texts; 4) The Bible does not simply contain or bear
witness to revelation; rather the Bible itself is
revelation.
(Theories)
Objection to the Verbal Plenary Inspiration:
1) Are not the events of salvation history revelatory?
Are not the exodus-event and the Jesus-event
primary forms of God’s communication with his
people?
2) The biblical text themselves suggest that normal
human writing processes were at work in the
production of the Scriptures (Ezra 7,11-26) there are
self corrections (1 Cor 1,16; Jon 4,2). Luke surveyed
the accounts written about Jesus and
(Theories)
and took information from eyewitnesses and
ministers of the word (Luke 1,1-2).
3) One may tend to assume that each individual
book can be traced back to one author who was
inspired or whose words were inspired. The process
of tradition formation rejects such notion of
authorship.
(Theories)
4) Another objection for the prophetic model of
inspiration is that, it minimizes the role played by
human reflection and creativity. The prophetic
model would lead us imagine that God takes
possession of the imagination and thought of the
individual and sometimes dictated idea and the very
words.
(Theories)
b) Negative Assistance Theory. According to this
theory of the Jesuit L. Lessius (1554-1623), 1) For
something to be Holy Scripture, its individual words
need not be inspired by the Holy Spirit; 2) The
individual truths and statements need not be
immediately inspired in the writer by the Holy Spirit;
3) If a book (e.g., 2Macc) were to be written through
purely human endeavor without the assistance of
the Holy Spirit, who would later certify that there
was nothing false therein, the book would become
(Theories)
Holy Scripture. Lessius wrote to the Archbishop of
Malines pertinent to (2)
It is enough that the sacred writer be divinely
drawn to write down what he sees, hears or knows
otherwise, that he enjoy infallible assistance of the
Holy Spirit to prevent him from mistakes even in
matters he knows on the word of others, or from his
own experience, or by his own natural reasoning. It
is this assistance that gives Scripture its infallible
truth.
(Theories)
In this 19th century this negative assistance theory
of inspiration would appear again: The Holy Spirit
acts upon a human author in such a way as to
preserve him form error.
Objection: This theory suggests that the Bible is

little more than a religious textbook design to
provide right answers to particular problems.
(Theories)
According to this theory, the divine influence is not
present in the setting forth of God’s truth, except
in a negative way. This theory does not allow for
the unique character of the Bible as the Word of
God in the words of men (not accepted by the
Church).
(Theories)
c) Subsequent Approbation Theory. The human
authors were alone responsible for the writing of
the books except when they were in danger of
leading the reader into religious error. God, in some
way, intervened and directed the author to the
truth. God approved of the Bible only after it was
completed. He thereby made it his own. This theory
may, indeed, assure us that the Bible contains the
truth about God and his relationship to the world.
(Theories)
Objection: But how could such a word be “like fire
burning in my heart” (Jer 20,9)”Or how could we
speak of such Scripture as “inspired by God” (2 Tim
3,16)? (not accepted by the Church).
How then did inspiration take place if we do not

accept these theories?
5) The Church can at least say
two things:
a) The first is that God is actively present in a
unique way in the composition of the biblical books.
The gift of presence to the communities of Isael and
to the early Christian Church is demanded both by
those passages, which do speak of inspiration in
the Bible (e.g., 2 Tim 3,15-17 and 2 Peter 1,20-21),
and by the constant tradition of the Church. The
Bible is, in a real sense, the Word of God.
two things:
b) The second element is the freedom of the human
authors in making use of their own talents and
resources, in cooperation with the Spirit of God, in
composing the sacred books. This is demanded both by
the many references of the human efforts expanded by
writing the books (e.g., Jer 36,17-18; Luke 1,1-4; Gal
6,11) and by the statement of the Church. Thus, Pope
Benedict XV, in the Encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus, wrote
that “the individual authors of these Books worked in full
freedom under the divine inspiration, each of them in
two things:
accordance with his individual nature and
character” (II,I). This conviction was repeated by
Pius XII in the Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu
(#33) and by the Second Vatican Council (Dei
Verbum, #11). Because of this human element, we
can rightly say that the Bible is the “Word of God in
the words of men and women.”
6) From the historical point of
view, who were really inspired?
Those who first recognized the action of God
within their history and then developed a tradition
to testify to that action, those who later reshaped
that tradition in order that it speak to a new
community at a new given time, and those who set
the tradition down in its final (written) form were all
communities inspired by God.
7) Formation of tradition as
framework of inspiration.
Mutual formation. As the community was forming
the tradition, the community itself was also being
formed by the tradition in the making. The dynamic
power of God continued to work in the process of
formation of both the tradition and the community.
The dynamic force operative in the development of
the people was God’s self-disclosure. The dynamic
force operative in the development of the tradition
was God’s inspiration. God’s activity cannot be
confined to one moment of development.
Those who had the actual experience saw it as
contributing to their identity and to their life. By
transmitting this formative tradition to others, they
were inviting these others to be formed by the
tradition just as they had been. Thus, there was a
dimension to the tradition that was continually
formative.
How do we arrive at a conclusion that God was at
work at this or that moment? Which instrument do
we use to be able to detect God’s inspiration? We
can trace the development of a tradition though it is
difficult, but we can never pinpoint the exact
moment of divinity or author by faith only. A
community of faith believes that God is revealed in
its midst and communicates with the people
through their religious traditions.
Inspiration as ongoing. Since the dynamic faith of
the community claims that God is not bound to the
past but brings the power to the past into the
newness of the present with an openness to the
future, then, correspondingly, God’s inspiration
must be seen as ongoing. Traditions that originated
in the past must continue to speak to the active
presence of God in the ongoing life of the
community. The Bible was inspired, for during its
growth and development it continually formed a
believing community. The Bible is inspired, for it
has not ceased to perform this same wonder, giving
witness even to this day to the community’s origin
and continually awakening to its purpose.
8) Inerrancy.
Inspiration is intimately related to the discussion of

inerrancy. If we say the Bible is inspired, we must
believe that it is trustworthy and helps us deepen
our relationship with God and we are not led astray
by it.
Is the Bible inerrant, free from errors? How can

we say it is inerrant when we find many
contradictions in it like,
8) Inerrancy.
• The creation of man: after the plants (Gen 1,

12.21.25.27) while the earth was still uninhabited
(Gen2,5.9)
• The creation of light before the creation of the sun
(Gen 1,3.16)
• Chronology in the Bible – cleansing the Temple
before (John 2, 13-17) or after of his Galilean
ministry? (Mt 21,12-17; Mk 11,15-19; Luke 19,45-
48)
9) Summary
Biblical traditions have been described as

testimonies arising from human experiences. What
is the relationship between the testimonies and the
revelation of God to which they testify? This
relationship has been understood in significantly
different ways, depending upon how one has come
to understand inspiration.
9) Summary
Those who hold that the words are inspired are

more likely to revere the Bible itself as revelation.
Others who believe that God is revealed primarily in
the events of the history are more inclined to regard
the Bible as the interpreted testimony to those
events. According to this latter view, the Bible is
witness to revelation. The basic difference between
these two views, in essence, is the difference
between what is said and what is meant. While both
perspective are indeed aspects of the
9) Summary
same reality, they most certainly are not identical.

Knowing what the Bible says is not the same as
knowing what the Bible means.
Tradition criticism will help us realize that what the

community cherished was not some specific
expression of the tradition but rather the fundamental
meaning of it. If this were not the case, then the
community would have resisted any attempt of
reformulation.
9) Summary
As stated earlier, the dynamic force operative in the

development of the people was God’s self-
disclosure. The dynamic force operative in the
development of tradition was God’s inspiration. The
Bible claims to be not only a testimony to God’s
self-disclosure and to the community’s
transformation in the past, but also a unique
occasion for a comparable disclosure and
transformation in the present. To the extent that
this claim is verified again and again,
9) Summary
the truthfulness of the Bible can be affirmed. It is

not so much the accuracy of the words but rather
the power of the message that bears witness to its
truthfulness. The same Spirit that was operative in
the formation of Scriptures continues to bear
witness to its truthfulness and to convince us of its
inspired nature.
9) Summary
But as text critics would note, the of the Bible has

undergone a lot of changes in the course of years
and even centuries in the process of transmission.
This idea should lead us then to study the text and
version which is the realm of textual criticism.
1) The word “canon.”
The Greek canon is derived from a Semitic word for

“reed” (qanu in Assyrian, qaneh in Hebrew, qn in
Ugaritic). In our usage, canon derives from the
Hebrew word for a stalk or a stem of a plant. When
cut, it could be used as a “yardstick” or “ruler” for
measurement. It could be also a straight rod or bar.
Canon refers to the norms for deciding or

“measuring” what belongs in the Bible or in any
book of the Bible, what must be believed as the
Word of God and acted upon with obedient faith.
The Bible as transmitted to us in its number of
books and in their sequence is received as our
canon of sacred literature.
A canonical book is one that the Church acknowledge

as belonging to its list of sacred books, as inspired by
God, and as having a regulating (rule) value for faith
and morals.
The biblical canon is a collection of books which the

Church has accepted as inspired and normative,
containing truths which are conducive to salvation.
St. Athanasius (367) was the first to use the word
“canon” in reference to the Bible; he noted that the
canonical books differed from all inspired writings.
OT books are divided into protocanonical books (39)

and deuterocanonical books (7). The latter are the
following: Tobit, Judith, 1-2 Maccabees, Wisdom,
Sirach, Baruch (plus parts of Esther and Daniel).
This does not imply that the protocanonical is more

canonical than the deuterocanonical. Only that the
protocanonical books were accepted with little or
no debate, while there was a serious debate about
the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books.
Sixtus of Siena (1520-1569) coined the term
“protocanonical” and “deuterocanonical”.
The term apocrypha comes from St. Jerome who

first considered the deuterocanonical as “inter
apocrypha.” However, when he learned that the
African Churches were accepting the
deuterocanonical books as canonical, Jerome
agreed with the decision and cited with
introductory formula “God says in the Scriptures,”
which he use for quotations from the canonical
books.
How about the apocryphal books? Athanasius

distinguishes canonical books from apocryphal.
They are originally described hidden or secret
writings destined to be read only by those initiated
into a given (Christian) sect, but it came to mean
books which are similar (in content, form or title) to
scriptural books but not accepted into the canon.
They are regarded as useful and edifying, but not
necessarily as fully binding.
In Protestant Bibles, apocrypha covers the

deuterocanonical books of the Catholic Bible (but
usually printed separately from either Testament
and with the addition of 1-2 Esdra, Prayer of
Manasseh, and sometimes 3-4 Macc.) What
Catholics call apocrypha, Protestant call
pseudepigrapha.
Catholic Protestant
OT Protocanonical 39 = Canonical OT
OT Deuterocanonical 7 = Apocrypha
OT Apocrypha = Pseudepigrapha
The Greek Orthodox Church uses the LXX, which

includes longer canon (Catholic canon) and 1 and 2
Esdras. Prayer of Manasseh, Ps 151 and 3 Macc in
some versions the Ode of Solomon, the Psalms of
Solomon and 4 Maccabees. The Ethiopian Orthodox
Church also includes 1 Enoch and Jubilees.
2) Canonical listing of OLD
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
JEWISH CANON ALEXANDRIAN CANON
Torah (Law, instruction) Pentateuch
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
Prophets (Former) History
Joshua Joshua
Judges Judges
1-2 Samuel 1-2 Samuel
1-2 Kings 1-2 Kings
1-2 Chronicles
Ezra-Nehemiah
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
(Later)
Isaiah Esther
Jeremiah *Judith
Ezekiel * Tobit
(12 minor) *1-2 Maccabees
Hosea
Joel
Amos
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
(12 minor) Poetry/ Writings
Obadiah Job
Jonah Psalms
Micah Proverbs
Nahum Ecclesiastes
Habakkuk Song of Songs
Zephaniah *Wisdom of Solomon
Haggai * Sirach
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
(12 minor)
Zechariah
Melachi
Writings
Psalms Job
Proverbs Ruth
Song of Songs Qoheleth
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
Writings
Lamentations Esther
Daniel Ezra-Nehemiah
1-2 Chronicles
Prophets (Major)
Isaiah Jeremiah
Baruch* Lamentations
Ezekiel Daniel
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
Prophets (Minor)
Hosea Nahum
Amos Habakkuk
Micah Zephaniah
Joel Haggai
Obadiah Zechariah
Jonah Melachi
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
Three arguments for an Alexandrian canon which no
longer find acceptance:
1) The information supplied by E. Aristeas

concerning the composition of the LXX is legendary.
Neither the Pentateuch nor the entire OT was
translated into Greek at one time (i.e., in 72 days,
ca. 275 B.C.E.) by 72 or 70 translators working
under the patronage of Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
If this legend were true, a fixed number of books
would be plausible. But when we consider that the
LXX was the product of several centuries both of
translating and of original composition, the question
of a set number of books becomes more
problematic.
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
2) It was once thought that the extra
(deuterocanonical) books in the Alexandrian canon
had been composed in Greek and not in Hebrew or
Aramaic, the sacred languages known in Palestine.
Actually, a good number of the deuterocanonical
books were originally composed in Hebrew (Sir, Jdt,
1 Macc) or Aramaic (Tob). The Qumran discoveries
prove that some of these books were in circulation
in Palestine and were accepted by Jewish groups
there. The fact the codices of the LXX do not
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
isolate the deuterocanonical books as a group but
mix then in with the Prophets (Bar) and the Writings
(Sir, Wis) shows that there was no awareness that
these books had a unique origin, as there would
have been if they were thought to be later and
foreign additions to an already fixed collection
translated from Hebrew.
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
3) The thesis that the Jews in Alexandria had a
different theory of inspiration from the theory shared
by the Jews in Jerusalem is gratuities.
We cannot make precise conclusions regarding the

number of books in the Alexandrian canon. Sundbegr
shows this in charts. For instance, on the question of
Macc, Codex Vaticanus contains no book of the
Maccabees, Sinaiticus has 1 Macc and 4 Macc, and
Alexandrinus has all four books.
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
So, it is so difficult to deny Sundberg’s thesis that
the Jews in Alexandria did not have a fixed list of
books. They were in the same situation as were
those in Palestine in the 1st century C.E., i.e., they
had a large numbers of sacred books, some of
which were recognized by all as older and more
sacred than others. It was not the Jews of
Alexandria but the Christian Church that, working
with the LXX, ultimately drew up an exclusive
canon. In fact, when the Alexandrian Jews
TESTAMENT (NJBC)
Eventually did not accept a canon, they, like Jews
elsewhere, accepted the one fixed by discussion in
the late 2nd century in the rabbinical schools of
Palestine. Indeed, after the depopulation of
Egyptian Jewry in the revolt of 115-117 C.E., re-
establishment may have come through immigration
from Palestine.
a) The Books of the Hebrew
Bible (Jewish Canon)
TORAH NEBIIM KETUBIM
Former Latter
1. Bereshith 6. Yeshoshua 10. Yeshayahu 14. Tehilim
2. Shemoth 7. Shofetim 11. Yimeyahu 15. Iyyob
3. Wayiqra 8. Shemuel 12. Yehezqel 16. Mishle (Prov)
4. Bemidbar 9. Melakim 13. Tere Astar 17. Ruth
5. Debarim Hoshea 18. Shir
Hashirim
Yoel 19. Qoheleth
a) The Books of the Hebrew Bible
(Jewish Canon)
TORAH NEBIIM KETUBIM
Former Latter
Yonah 22. Daniel
Micah 23. Ezra -
Nahum Nehemiah
Habaqquq 24. Dibre

Zephanyah Hayamim (Chrn)
Haggai
Zekaryahu
b) The Books of the Septuagint
PENTATEUCH HISTORICAL B. WISDOM WR. PROPHETS

1. Genesis 6. Joshua 22. Job 29. Isaiah
2. Exodus 7. Judges 23. Psalms 30. Jeremiah
3. Leviticus 8. Ruth 24. Proverbs 31. Lamentation
4. Number 9-10. 1-2 Sam 25. Ecclesiastes 32. Baruch*
5. Deuteronomy 11-12. 1-2 Kings 26. Song of Sol. 33. Ezekiel
13-14. 1-2 Chrn 27. Wisdom 34. Daniel
15-16. Ezra-Neh 28. 35. Hosea
Ecclesiasticus*
17. Esther 36. Joel
b) The Books of the Septuagint
PENTATEUCH HISTORICAL B. WISDOM WR. PROPHETS

19. Judith* 38. Obadiah
20. 1 Macc* 39. Jonah
21. 2 Macc* 40. Micah
41. Nahum
42. Habakkuk
43. Zephaniah
44. Haggai
45. Zechariah
3) Date of Compositon
The composition of the OT was a process that took over

1,000 years. The first poetic compositions, e.g., the Song of
Miriam (Exod 15,1-18) and the Song of Deborah (Judg 5),
probably go back to the 12th century B.C. The latest books in
the Roman Catholic canon, 2 Macc and Wisdom, were
composed ca. 100 B.C. During this long period of
composition. Others were composed during the period when
the biblical books were being written, some slightly later.
Some of these were lost; others were preserved but did not
received acceptance.
4) Works of the OT Era: Approximate
dates of their Collection or Composition
B.C THE LAW PROPHETS LATTER THE DTCAN &
FORMER WRITINGS APOC
15th – 11th Career of Moses Stories of Conquest
Traditions Traditions underlying
underlying Pent. Jdg and 1 Sam. Early
Taking shape; early poetry (Jdg 5)
law codes; early
poetry (Ex 15)
10th J tradition put into Stories of David. Use of Pss in
writing “Court History” (2 Temple worship
Sam 9-20; 1 Kgs 1-2) begins. Cultivation
of proverbial
wisdom in
Jerusalem count
under Solomon
THE LAW PROPHETS LATTER THE DTCAN &
9th E tradition Preservation of royal Ruth Marriage songs
composed annals of Judah and of later echoed in
Israel (source of 1-2 Canticles
Kgs and 1-2 Kgs 17-2
Kgs 10)
8th J and E merged Preservation of royals Amos and Hosea in Hezekiah is a
under Hezekiah annals of Judah and Israel; Isaiah and traditional patron of
Israel Micah in Judah Proverbial wisdom
(Prov 25)
7th Nucleus in Dt is Preservation of royal Oracles of is
made basis of annals and Judah collected by disciples
Josiah’s reform and edited. Zeph,
(ca.622) Nah, Hab. Jer dictates
to Baruch
6th P is compiled from Deut. History edited Ez in Babylon. Dt-is Lamentations
earlier sources and in Exile. (ca.550) Editing of
gives structure to Preexilic prophetic
emerging Pentaeuch corpus. Job?
Porstexilic oracles of
Haggal, Zech 1-9 and
Trito-Is.
5th Completion of Malachi Memoirs of Neh and
Pentateuch Obaduah? Ez Prov 1-9 written
(ca.400?) as preface to prov
10ff
4th Jonah? Sayings of Qoheleth
3rd Joel? (Ecc) edited by
Isaian Apoc (24-27) students. Collections
Dt.-Zech 9-14 of Ps?
2nd Ester? Daniel Sirach (190) 1
Enoch*,
Jubilees*
Baruch (comp)
Tobit. Judith.
Esp. Aristeas* T.12
Pats* (Grk Esther,
Grk parts of Daniel,
1 Macc
1st 2 Macc, Wisdom, 3
Macc*, 1 Esdras* 3,
Pss of Solomon
5) Works of the NT: Approximate
Dates Of Composition (NJBC,1045)
Early 50s Mid/Late Early 60s Mid-60s 70s-80s 90s After
50s 100
1 Thess Gal Phlm (?) MARK MATTHEW JOHN 2 Pet
2 Thess(?) 1 Cor Col (?) Titus (?) LUKE Rev

2 Cor Eph (?) 1 Tim (?) ACTS 1 John
Rom 2 Tim (?) Col (?) 2 John
Phil 1 Pet (?) Jude (?) 3 John
Phlm(?) James (?) James (?) Jude (?)
Heb (?) Heb (?) 2 Thess (?)
5) Works of the NT: Approximate
Dates Of Composition (NJBC,1045)
Early 50s Mid/Late Early 60s Mid-60s 70s-80s 90s After
50s 100
1 Pet (?) Eph (?)
Titus (?)
1 Tim (?)
2 Tim (?)
6) Works of the New Testament
according to this classification:
A) Pauline Corpus Date
Early Letters - 1 Thess 51
- 2 Thess 51 or 90s
Great Letters - Gal 54-57
- Phil 56-57
- 1 Cor 57
- 2 Cor 57
- Rom 58
A) Pauline Corpus Date
Captivity Let - Phlm 56-57 or 61-63
- Col 61-63 or 70-80
- Eph 61-63 or 90-100
Pastoral Let - Titus 65 or 95-100
- 1 Tim 65 or 95-100
- 2 Tim 66-67 or 95-100
B) Gospels Date
- Mark 65-70
- Matthew 70s-80s
- Luke 70s-80s
- John 90s
C) Catholic Epistles Date
- 1 Pet 64 or 70s-80s
- James 62 or 70s-80s
- Jude 70s-90s
- 1 John 90s
- 2 John 90s
- 3 John 90s
- 2 Peter 100-150
D) Other Writings Date
- Acts 70s-80s
- Hebrews 62 or 70s-80s
- Rev 90s
7) History of Canonization
At first, there was no consensus among Christians in the

second century C.E. as to which Old testament books
were canonical. Among the Jews and the Samaritans,
disagreements went still further. In the Christians
Church, the controversy over the OT in mid second
century C.E. arose when Marcion rejected the whole OT
again when Theodore of Mopsuestia rejected some of it.
At the end of the 4th century, “canon” describing a
collection of scriptural books had become common
Ecclesiastical usage in both East and West.
• There had been earlier list of biblical books, e.g.,

in the 2nd century, the Muratorian Fragment and
Melito (bishop of Sardis), 171 CE; and, in the 3 rd
century, Origen (lived in Alexandria, wrote
thousands of scrolls, biblical critic and exegete).
But now the lists took on ecclesiastical status and became

more set in content, which does gave rise to the twofold
thrust of “canon” that would dominate subsequent theology
(norm for the Church). In a addition to those of Eusebius and
Athanasius, lists are found in Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius,
Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, Amphilocius of Iconium,
Jerome, Canon 59/60 of the Council of Laodicea (ca.360) and
the decree of Pope Damasus (382). A basic list was
endorsed by the Councils of Hippo (393), Carthage III (397)
And Carthage IV (419).
• Athanasius (293-373) is the oldest witness to the

citation of 27 NT books. Both he and Jerome (347-419)
list 22 books from the Jewish Scriptures corresponding
to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Since
the 12 Minor Prophets were considered a single book,
and there were 5 double books (=10: 1-2 Kgs; 1-2 Chr;
Ezra-Neh; Jer-Lam), and Ruth was joined to Judg,
their 22 books correspond to 39 (protocanonical) books

in a modern Bible.
• In De doctrina christiana 2.8.13 (396-397 AD),

Augustine listed 44 OT books (=46, since Lamentation
and Baruch are part of Jeremiah) including the
deuterocanonical books, and his great stature tended
to close discussion in the West on the extent of the
canon.
Thus, the Western council mentioned above and the

letter of Pope Innocent I in 405 agreed on a list of
46 OT and 27 NT books. Yet the production of
several lists in 692 at the Quinisextine Council of
Constantinople, known as Trullo II warns against
being too simplistic about the fixity of the
consensus that existed at the end of the 4th century.
• In continuity with the dominant tradition, there

were 46 OT books and 27 NT books (73 total)
listed in the bull Cantate Domino of the
(ecumenical) Council of Florence, promulgated in
1442 as a document of union between Rome and
the Coptic Christians.
• At Trent, the discussion revealed doubt about the

binding force of the bull. When the Reformers presented
their own canon and opinion on the Scriptures,
following the lead of Jerome and put distinction
between the Apocrypha of the Greek and Latin Bibles
(good for edification only) and the books of the Hebrew
Bible (inspired and authoritative), in 1546 Council of
Trent at its fourth session as a reaction promulgated
De Canonicis Scripturis, “so that no doubt may
remain as to which books are recognized.”
• Trent listed as sacred and canonical “with all their

parts” and as inspired by the Holy Spirit 73 books.
Including the OT books (deuterocanonical) which were
not accepted by many Jews and Protestants. The
Reformers replied by echoing Augustine’s claim that
Jesus himself endorsed the Jewish canon which did not
include the Apocrypha.
The Reformers were defeated later by subsequent

discoveries. In 1616, the Samaritan Pentateuch (see
Eissfeldt, 694) was first brought to the West by
Pietro della Valle, and remained the Church that
there was a rival Hebrew Bible in existence. In
1719, Francis Lee said that the Alexandrian Jews
had a wider canon, than the Palestinian.
HISTORY OF METHODS AND
APPROACHES OF
INTERPRETATION
A. HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION:
An Outline
In the first place, we make the following outline:
A. OT Interpretation in the NT
B. Apostolic Fathers and Apologies
Apostolic Fathers
1. Clement
2. Didache
3. Shepherd of Hermas
4. Epistle of Barnabas
An Outline
Apostolic Fathers and Apologies
Apologist
1. Justin Martyr, 114-165, vs. Jew Trypho
2. Irenaeus, 130-200, vs. Marcion (a Christian who
rejected the OT
3. Tertullian, 160-225
An Outline
C. The Exegitacal Schools of Alexandria and Antioch (2 nd –
5th C.E.)
Alexandria
1. Clement of Alexandria, 180-215
2. Origen, 185-253, in his greatest work Hexapla, place in
parallel columns the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, a
Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Text, the LXX version
used in the
An Outline
Christian Churches, plus three other widely used Greek
version. Origen visited biblical places to verify their
exact location. He acquired a working knowledge of
Hebrew at a time when this was a rare accomplishment
of Christian scholar. He not only consulted the works of
the rabbis, but all the rabbis themselves. He made use
of the historical and literary knowledge of his time.
Thus, Origen, the classical theoretician and practitioner
of the spiritual sense, might be considered the true
An Outline
Creation of scientific exegesis in the Christian
world. (Fuerst, 37-38)
Antioch
1. Diodore of Tarsus, 378
2. Theodore of Mopsuestia, 350-430
An Outline
D. Jerome, 331-420 and Augustine, 354-430
In the fourth century AD, the language of the Roman

Empire began to change. Before that, Greek was in
use. The Romans too encouraged Greek because
they believed they were heir of Greek culture and
civilization. Christian used LXX.
An Outline
Gradually, Latin replaced Greek. The Church faced a
serious problem. Responding to the pastoral need,
Christian scholars attempted to produce versions of
the Bible in Latin. Unfortunately, none of these has
survived. We know them only from citation in
theological works. They had difficulties: 1) They were
not a product of careful study of ancient manuscripts,
2) The Latin in these early translations was not the
best.
An Outline
It was Pope Damasus who wanted a good Latin text
of the gospel for the liturgy. In 382, he
commissioned Jerome to revise the Latin versions
of the gospels that were in circulation. Why did the
Pope choose Jerome?
An Outline
 Pope’s secretary, trilingual, could speak and write
Latin, Greek and Hebrew.
 Also studied Aramaic, spoke Syriac and knew
Arabic.
 Trained in the Latin classics, studied rhetoric in
Rome when he was 12, under Donatus, a famous
Latin grammarian.
An Outline
Jerome produced a revision of the Gospels; also
produced the Latin translation of the Psalms and some
OT books; worked for more than 20 years.
When Pope Damasus died in 384, Jerome went to

Antioch, then to Alexandria and then to Bethlehem in
386. Jerome did more than giving a good Latin
translation of the Gospels. He also decided to use the
Hebrew version in translating the OT;
An Outline
He consulted Jewish scholars and could not rely on
the LXX alone. This made St. Augustine and others
furious. Augustine accused Jerome of driving a
wedge between the Christians of the East and West,
since the Greek-speaking Christians of the East were
still using the LXX. Jerome should not have used the
Hebrew since there were still conscious efforts of the
Church to distance itself from its Jewish background.
An Outline
The principle that Jerome used as he translated
was not “word for word” but “sense for sense,” this
he learned from Cicero. This is today’s dynamic
equivalence, like the Liturgical Psalter sponsored
by the International Committee on English in the
Liturgy.
An Outline
Jerome was also gifted interpreter; made
commentaries on the prophets. At first, he
employed allegory, common to his days. But then he
considered later the historical and literal approach
more. He had 117 surviving letters to testify to his
method.
An Outline
Though merciless to his opponents, he was good
to his friends; founded a school for boys at
Bethlehem, served as spiritual guide for the monks
and nuns near Bethlehem; gave shelter to the
refugees who came to the Holy Land following the
sack of Rome by the Vandals in 410.
An Outline
E. The 5th to the 15th (See Medieval Ages, p.37)
Apostolical Constitutional
Cyril of Alexandria, dispensationalism, 412-444
1100 School of St. Victor, Paris
1141 Hugh
1147 Andrew
1220 Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
An Outline
1230 William of Auverna’s, De Legibus
1228-1249 John of La Rochelle’s Tractatus
1225-1274 Thomas of Aquinas
1135-1204 Joachim of Fiore,
dispensationalism and
apocalypticism
An Outline
Use in philosophy in OT interpretation
Aquinas used Aristotle (in Maimonides’ Guide of the
Perplexed)
Abelard, 1079-1142. studied Plato’s Timaeu
Wycliffe was converted from nominalism to realism;
developed all self-sufficiency of the Bible.
Practice of copying the books of the OT together with the

glosses or postilla from Rashi’s commentary.
An Outline
F. Reformation
 1506 First Hebrew grammar written by a Christian,
J Reuchlin. There was a revival of learning along
with the commentary on the Psalms by Faber
Stapulensis (ca. 1455-1536) which led to reformation.
 Martin Luther, 1485-1546, founder of Reformation
 John Calvin, 1509-1564. worked in Geneva from 1536
until his death.
An Outline
 Martin Bucer, 1491-1551, Strasbourg reformer, De
Regno Christi, rehabilitation of the OT judicial law.
 Heinrich Bullinger, 1504-1575, Zurich reformer
 Melanchton’s Loci communes, first published 1521
 J. Gerhard, 1582-1637, identified the 10
commands with the moral law
An Outline
G. Beginnings of Biblical Criticism: Already in Origen and
Augustine.
New moves from Holland, circles loyal to Arminius.
 Hugo Grotius, 1583-1645, The Annotata and Vetus
Testamentum, published in Parish, 1644, advocated
literal and historical interpretations.
 Benedict Spinoza, 1634-1677, Tractates Theologico-
Politicus (1679), author of Torah is not Moses, but Ezra.
An Outline
In France, Richard Simon, Histoire critique du Vieux
Testament (1678), Catholic, argued for a new translation
of OT from Hebrew text. Richard Simon a convent from
Protestant and a priest of the Oratory, began the new
era of modern biblical criticism with his three volume
Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (1638-1712). In
vol.1, Simon talked about the authorship of the Bible. He
said that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch
Vols.2 and 3 contain a history of the chief translations
An Outline
Of the Bible, together with rules for textual
criticism and for more exact translation. He was
also convinced that oral traditions lie at the base of
literary history. Hence, the beginning of from
criticism.
An Outline
H. From 1750 to 1890
 J.D. Michaelis, 1717-1791, student of Baumgarten,
published commentaries on the law of Moses, 1770-
1775.
We owe the rise of historical criticism to J.D. Michaelis
(1717-1791). His chief contributions to biblical studies
were in the auxiliary sciences such as philology,
oriental studies, geography and archaeology.
An Outline
In 1769, he began translating the Bible, proposing
philological exactness and proper geographic,
historical and theological interpretation as his goal.
He was followed by the following schoolars: J.
Astruc, J.S. Semler, J.G. Hamann, J.G. Herder and
J.G. Eichhorn. To know a little bit their
contributions, read NJBC.
Negative results:
1. Some left the foundations of their were

shattered. Findings did not square with their
own devotional, allegorical, moral or
eschatological interpretations.
Negative results:
2. It did not lead people to know the theology of the

past. Instead, new questions arose: does biblical
theology have any relevance for our day? How to
be relevant? These led scholars to look beyond
historical criticism and to turn to the issue of
hermeneutics or interpretation.
Positive results of the historical
method:
1. Sacred Scriptures began to be appreciated as a
human expression of the faith of a people.
2. Contemporary men and women could now see

their ancient counterparts as being engaged in
the very same struggles of life as they
themselves were and are.
Positive results of the historical
method:
3. They began to read biblical narratives with
renewed interest.
4. Biblical theology came to occupy a significant

place in their lives.
5. They sought to respond to God’s presence in their

own history.
Outline given by Bergant, CBC
I. PRE-CRITICAL – MESSAGE/TEXT
(1st – 17th cent. A.D.)
A. Patristic interpretation (2nd – 6th cent.)
B. Medieval (7th – 17th cent.)
1) Literal sense
2) Allegorical sense
3) Moral sense
4) Eschatological sense
C) Clarification (PBC, 1993)

1) Literal sense
2) Fuller sense (=allegorical)
3) Spiritual sense (=moral and eschatological)
II. CRITICAL – SENDER/AUTHOR
(17TH – 20Th cent. A.D.)
A. History
B. Critical Methods
1) Textual criticism
2) Source criticism
3) Form criticism
4) Tradition criticism
5) Redaction criticism
C. Reactions
1) Positive
2) Negative
D. Catholic Church
1) Providentissimus Deus (Nov. 18, 1893)
- Vigilantes, PBC (Oct. 30, 1902)
2) Divino Afflante Spiritu (Sept. 30, 1943)

3) Dei Verbum (Nov. 18, 1965)
4) The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church
(April 1993) - Outline
E. Evaluation of Historical Criticism

1) diachronic
2) strength
3) weakness
III. POST-CRITICAL – RECEIVER/AUDIENCE
(20Th)
A. History
B. Approaches
1) Canonical approach
2) Social approaches
a) Linguistic
b) Structuralism (synchronic)
c) Materialist approach
3) Rhetorical criticism
4) Reader-Response
5) Committed interpretation
6) Feminist approach
The Bible as a basic literary reality is a form of
communication comprised of 3 principal
components, or elements of interpretation, lack of
one renders interpretation impossible:
1) Message or text
2) Sender or author
3) Receiver or audience
The pre-critical period of interpretation emphasized
the message; the critical period, the meaning of the
author. The post-critical period emphasizes the
meaning given by the receiver. We should be careful
in making other conclusions regarding this 3 fold
division of the history of interpretation. For in the
post-critical period, it does not mean that the
approaches of the other two are no longer needed.
I. PRE-CRITICAL –
MESSAGE/TEXT
(1st – 17th cent. A.D.)

A. PATRISTIC INTERPRETATION
(2nd-6th cent.)
The best patristic interpretation might be summed

up in the words: “Beginning with Moses and all the
prophets, Jesus interpreted to them in all the
Scriptures the things concerning himself”
(Luke 24,27).
(2nd-6th cent.)
Patristic interpretation is a reading of Scriptures
that sees the mystery of Christ as extending into the
Church and into the life of Christians. It would include
both phases of that life: here on earth and fulfilled in
heaven. This approach is not so much a matter of logic
or technique as it is a matter of familiarity with sacred
history experiencing its own fulfillment in Christ. It is
matter of sensing that this fulfillment is what God has
been up to all along.
(2nd-6th cent.)
This approach involves in attempt to live what one
reads, thus gaining an experiential insight into the
Scriptures. It implies openness to the Spirit, the author
and inspirer of both Old and New Testaments. For the
convinced, God’s Word is meant for us, God speaks it
to us here and now. This approach of the early Church
might just as well be called the interpretation of the
New Testament, or even that of Christ himself.
(2nd-6th cent.)
Does this suggest that any text can mean what we
want it to mean? Not really! The more we know about
the literal sense (what the words meant to the author)
the better chance we have of keeping our
interpretation within the original sense. Still, there is
nothing wrong with a playful reading of the Bible, one
that lets the imagination venture more freely in the
realm of association. The Bible is ours, and the Holy
Spirit can speak through this kind of reading, too.
(2nd-6th cent.)
God’s Word may surface from the depths of our souls in
this way. But the other kind of reading, one that takes
care about the literal sense in the first instance, is
important, and in fact, is foundational to any further level
of meaning. It gives God’s Word a chance to break in
from the outside in ways we might never have dreamed.
The more familiar we are with the Scriptures and the
more we try to live by them, the more likely it is that
connections between the Bible and life will occur to us.
(2nd-6th cent.)
This is how the early Church writers did their
interpretation. They were at home in the Bible, and
they lived it. They moved with ease from one end of
the Bible to the other, from one point in sacred
history to any other. They were their own biblical
dictionaries. When a themed occurred in their
reading, it evoked a host of other occurrences
(2nd-6th cent.)
And, like the Bible, their lives were centered on
Christ: they were on the outlook for him. These
early writers also did the best they could with the
tools at hand to grasp the original sense. If the
instruments of modern interpretation had been
available to them, no one would have used them
more avidly.
B. MEDIEVAL AGES
(1st-6th] 7th-17th cent.)
The message was the primary focus throughout

earliest centuries. Interpretation was a translation
of this message into the new world. By the middle
ages, 4 types of interpretation had been developed:
B. MEDIEVAL AGES
1) Literal sense refers to a meaning that the words

themselves convey. There was no problem with
the original audience. But the meaning of words
changes in time and culture. Rigid literal or
fundamentalistic interpretations fail to recognize
change and development of language.
B. MEDIEVAL AGES
2) Allegorical sense open the Bible to many
interpretations. Here the text intends to say
something other than that which its literal wording
suggests. Deeper mystical meanings lie hidden
beneath the words. Actually, those deeper
meanings originate from outside the text, brought
in by the interpreter. It yields rich meaning, but
these may be arbitrary, subjective and remote.
B. MEDIEVAL AGES
3) Moral sense. The text is understood primarily in
terms of the spiritual life of every individual
believer. Anyone and everyone is Abraham called
into new relationship with God. It is employed by
spiritual writers to nourish the interior lives of
religious individuals. It has serious deficiencies.
The Bible’s communal sense is lost, social
responsibilities ae overlooked.
B. MEDIEVAL AGES
4) Eschatological sense refers to the spiritual
meaning of the text as this pertains to the future
heavenly or eschatological realities. The
“promised land” is neither the historical Israel,
nor the Church of Christ, nor the soul of the
redeemed Christian, but the future kingdom of
heaven. This tends to minimize the importance of
life in this world.
II. CRITICAL –
SENDER/AUTHOR
(17th-20th cent. C.E.)

History:
The history of critical approaches spans from the

17th century to the 20th century. If the focus of pre-
critical period is the message, here the focus is the
author, the sender.
A. HISTORICAL –
CRITICAL METHODS
Brief History of Textual Criticism
The method of textual criticism which has been

generally practiced by editors of classical Greek and
Latin text involves two main processes, recension
and emendation. Recension is the selection, after
examination of all available material, of the most
trustworthy evidence on which to base a text.
Emendation is the attempt to eliminate the errors
which are found even in the best manuscripts.
A French oratorian, Morinus asserted (1633) that

the LXX furnishes a better reading and a more fruitful
tradition than does the Masoretic Text (MT); in fact,
the MT (see Eissfeldt, 679-687) is so filled with errors
that is cannot stand as a norm for biblical studies.
Capellus, a French Protestant, showed that the
vocalization of the MT is late in origin and that its
consonantal text is imperfectly preserved.
The application of critical methods in the editing of

classical text was developed principally by three
German scholars, Friedrich Wolf (1759-1824), one of the
founders of classical philology, Immanuel Bekker
(1785-1871), and Karl Lachmann (1793-1851). Bekker
devoted his long life to the preparations of critical
editions of Greek texts. Bekker collated some 400
manuscript, grouped existing manuscripts of an author
into families where one was derived from another,
and published sixty volumes of improved editions of

Greek authors. Lachmann went further than Bekker,
showing how, by comparison of manuscripts, it is
possible to draw inferences as to their lost
ancestors or archetypes, their condition, and even
their pagination.
The basic principle which underlies the process of

constructing a stemma, or family tree, of manuscript is
that, apart from accident, identify of reading implies
identity of origin. Often, however, difficulties hinder the
construction a stemma of manuscripts. A disturbing
element enters when mixture has occurred, that is,
when a copyist has had two or more manuscripts before
him and has followed sometimes one, sometimes the
other; or, as sometimes happened, when a scribe copied
when a scribe copied a manuscript from one

exemplar and corrected it against another. To the
extent that manuscripts have a “mixed” ancestry,
the genealogical relations among them become
progressively more complex and obscure to the
investigator.
Textual criticism, often called lower criticism, is

the oldest of the critical disciplines of biblical
scholarship. It aims at recovering the original
biblical texts or the most accurate by comparing all
available materials, all of which inevitably contain
mistakes.
Textual criticism attempts to take out all the

alterations that have occurred in the process of
transmission and recover the earliest from of the
text when they attained their present shape and
content and became canonical writings.
Textual criticism ask a prior question before a

sound interpretation take place: What is the original
text?
Principles of Textual Criticism
Canons of Lobegott Friedrich Constantin von Tischendorf

(1815-1874)
The text is to be sought from the most ancient evidence,

meaning especially the oldest Greek manuscript; (2) a
reading peculiar to single document is to be considered
suspect; (3) an obvious scribal error is to be rejected
even though well supported in the manuscript;
Principles of Textual Criticism
(4) In parallel passages the tendency of copyists would be to

make the readings agree and therefore, in such passages,
testimonies are to be preferred which are not in precise
accordance; (5) that reading to be preferred which could
have given occasions to the others, or which appears to
comprise the elements of the others; and (6) that reading is
to be preferred which accords with NT Greek or with the
style of the individual writer. (Summarized by Finegan,
Encountering NT Manuscripts, p.63)
I. Metzger Criteria
I. EXTERNAL EVIDENCE, involving considerations

bearing upon:
1. The date of the witness or, rather, of the type of text.
2. The geographical distribution of the witnesses that
agree in supporting a variant.
3. The genealogical relationship of texts and families of
witnesses: Witnesses are weighed rather than
counted.
I. Metzger Criteria
II. INTERNAL EVIDENCE, involving two kinds of

probabilities:
i. Transcriptional Probabilities depend upon considerations
of palaeographical details and the habits of scribes. Thus:
1. In general the more difficult reading is to be preferred.
2. In general the shorter reading is to be preferred.
3. That reading is to be preferred which stands in verbal
dissidence with the other.
SOURCE CRITICISM
When you write a thesis, where do you get
your materials? Do you acknowledge them or
pass them as your own?
How do you differ from your source? Do you

copy word for word or paraphrase or you
totally change the wordings and expressions
to suit to your style and purpose?
Once called literally criticism, =source criticism
attempts to establish the meaning of a text by
studying its historical and literary environment. This
approach involves a whole range of concerns and is
often called higher criticism. Attention in higher
criticism is given to problems of authorship,
authenticity, collaboration, revision, chronology,
genry, and even such details as word usage, sentence
structure and paragraph construction.
It studies the specific problem of whether there are
written documents behind our present text.
The traditional and Christian manner of reading the

Pentateuch assumed that the five books had been
written by Moses and represented a unified and
datable composition which depicted historical events
from the creation of the world until the death of Moses.
A) Mosaic Authorship of
the Pentateuch
It has always been the view of the synagogue and

the Church that Moses is the author or the compiler
of the Pentateuch.
the Pentateuch
1) Books of the Old Testament attest to this: It is
called by the Bible itself “the book of Moses”
(Neh 13,1; 1 Chrm 25,4) or the “book of the law of
Moses” (Josh 8,31; 23,6; 2 Kgs 14,6) or “the law
of Moses, the servant of God” (Dan 9,11; Mal 4,44-
45; 31,24; 32,45). Other texts in O.T.: 1.2
Chronicles 30,16; Ezra 10.3; Nehemiah 8,3
the Pentateuch
2) In the New Testament,
- Mark 12,26 – says the “book of Moses”
- Matthew 19,3-8
- Lk 2,22
- Jn 7,23 – “the law of Moses”
B) Doubts regarding its authenticity
1. In early Christianity, anti-Christian polemics

(Porphyry and Celsus) doubt the Mosaic
authenticity of the books. Also heretical and
gnostic sects doubted for dogmatic but not for
critical reasons.
2. In Medieval ages, Jewish authors noticed many

inconsistencies between the traditional view ans
what they read in the text. At the time of
Reformation, Carlstadt in 1530. and during the
time of the counter-reformation, by R. Simon in
1678.
3. In modern age, other objections arose from historical

criticism of from the criticism of style and form. It
was recognized that the text itself demands a date
of composition different from that of the tradition. It
was noted that in the books which follow on the
Pentateuch, the supposed work of Moses, the style
was substantially the same as before that no clear
difference of style was observable as one might have
expected with a change of compiler.
C. Objection to Mosaic Authorship
Certain problem with the traditional view arose

regarding the authorship of the Pentateuch,
especially in the 17th century under Spinoza,
Oratorian Richard Simon (1678) and Le Clerc. They
observed that there are lots of repetitions,
inconsistencies and lack of style of a single author
found in the Pentateuch.
Determining the Source
Without doubt, the Pentateuch contains diverse literary

styles and units. This can be seen, for example, by
comparing the literary structure and systematic
ordering of Gen 1 with the story-like nature of Gen 2-3.
once that diversity is recognized, however, key issues
emerge. Can we articulately and consistently use these
different styles and structures to discern earlier
Pentateuchal sources, as well as the historical matrix
in which they were composed?
And, how much reliance can we place on any particular

iteration of the documentary hypothesis as we reconstruct
various aspects of ancient Israelite religion, literature, and
history? Entire worlds of biblical scholarship have been
built on the documentary hypothesis construct. But has
this helped us to understand the Old Testament? I cite
David Clines’s questions presented last year at the
International SBL meeting in Edinburgh: “Is such a theory
useful? Should I be interested in it?
How important is it to have a theory of Pentateuchal

origins?” Many rigorous studies on Pentateuchal sources
have been published, but consensus regarding these
sources continues to elude us. Yet, even if a stable
consensus on the sources and their historical contexts
were to appear, recent methodological concerns lead us
to ask whether source-critical analysis is the best way
to study the Pentateuch in the twenty-first century,
since the conceptual framework for biblical
scholarship is changing rapidly. See Rolf Rendtorff’s

excellent survey of recent source critical analysis.
Historical Context of the Sources
Source critical reconstruction presupposes sufficient

knowledge of ancient Israelite history to reconstruct
the specific contexts of the several writers/editors who
composed the various Pentateuchal sources. Today,
scholars are questioning this presupposition, and the
dates and contexts proposed for the sources vary
considerably. For example, John Van Seters places J in
the Exilic era, rather than, as typically has been done,
in the period of the early monarchy.
The Priestly source, considered that latest source of the

Pentateuch, is commonly placed in the Postexilic era, a time
frame in which any attempt to reconstruct ancient Israelite
history struggles. After the events of 587, 538, and 515
B.C.E., Israelite history essentially drops off the radar
screen, with only the time of Ezra and Nehemiah receiving
significant attention in biblical literature prior to the
Hasmonean Era. Yet, it is precisely in this historical black
hole that the final compilation of the Pentateuch is typically
vested.
The uncertainties of this period therefore provide a

wide-open breeding ground for theories about the
communities that produced P, as well as the final
compilation of the Pentateuch. There is little
dependable, core knowledge to which these
theories can be attached.
Scholars are, for all practical purposes, given a blank

sheet of paper on which they can compose the nature
of the historical community responsible for the
source(s) that scholars have feed back into
reconstructed. Reconstructed communities feed into
reconstructed sources, which in turn feed back into
reconstructed communities. But what is holding the
Jello to the wall? And how solid as anchor for the study
of the OT are these Pentateuch source theories?
FORM CRITICISM
In your experience as a writer or student of
literature, what kind of literature do you
like best? What kind of literature do you
read?
Do you supposed that whatever is written

comes straight from the heads of the
writers?
Form criticism is one of the methods by which the student
of the Bible can shed light upon the Old Testament and
New Testament. Specifically, it offers ways of gaining
insight into the oral tradition which lies behind most of the
individual passages of the Bible. By examining each
passage in terms of its structure and genre, the student
gains a fuller understanding of its meaning and intention,
and of its setting in the life of ancient Israel. That is the
purpose of form criticism: To relate the texts before us to
the living people and institutions of Israel. Read Roland de
Vaux, Institutions of Ancient Israel.
Born in the dismay over the excesses of some
source critics, =form criticism, or genre analysis
focuses more on the individual literary sub-units or
periscopes. Genre analysis examines the form,
content and function of a particular unit and asks
whether these are definite enough and typical
enough that the unit can be considered a literary
genry in its own right.
Form criticism is the examination of stories that are
told, retold, sometimes developed and then passed
on perhaps for several generations before eventually
being reduced to writing. This approach begins with
individual unit (stories, poems, legends, etc.) within
the documents and seeks to determine the life
situation in ancient Israel that gave rise to the unit
and accordingly help give its literary structure.
Concrete Work of a Form Critics
1. Defining the unit (division). In order to identify the

form critic must have the whole piece, nothing
more and nothing less, or he may confuse
different types together. Our modern Bibles often
mark off different units by paragraphs or boldtype
headings.
2. Naming the form used (literary genre). It the unit

a lament? A letter? A saga? This is often referred
to as naming the literary genre of the unit. If we
miss the proper kind genre or form, we may never
find out how it came to be used where it is.
3. Describing its life-setting (social context). After

knowing what form the piece has, we try to
identify its original social context, and further, to
ask what kind of thinking gave rise to such
expression. Can we know something about the
people from the way they spoke?
4. Identifying its purpose. The final step seeks what

function or purpose this piece served in the
original oral stage, and what purpose does it now
serve in the larger written work of which it is a
part. Can we trace what changed took place in
the people of Israel by knowing how these two
uses differ?
TRADITION CRITICISM
Form criticism by nature traces a text through all levels
from the most primitive oral saying up to the finished
product. But many biblical scholars because so
enthused over the search for the original, simplest oral
forms behind the biblical text that they almost forgot
the written and edited stages that we know much more
about. Tradition history is a kind of reaction to form
criticism. It focuses on the written transmission of the
canonical text. It was developed by Martin Noth.
So, in recent years, experts have been turning back
from too much emphasis on the oral stages of
=tradition, and have become more concerned with
the total process of growth. They are looking hard
at the various times when the biblical text were
edited, and the different circles from which the
editors came.
The positive role of editing, or redaction, is now
appreciated more. No longer do scholars see the
redactors as unimaginative bureaucrats pasting
together and re-expressing the traditions so that
they can speak to a new generation.
REDACTION CRITICISM
Redaction criticism is the study of how written sources
were used by an editor or redactor and what this
interpretative editing says about the theological interests
of the redactor. This discipline is like tradition criticism,
for both show how stages of development gave new
shapes to the tradition. Redaction criticism, however, is
concerned with the literary rather than the oral stages. As
tradition criticism is primarily an Old Testament discipline,
redaction criticism developed in NT study. Its principal
focus is on the final literary form, the form that has come
down to us.
It has been in gospel studies that =redaction
criticism has provided the greatest insights. By
comparing episodes from one synoptic gospel with
parallels that appear in the other two gospels,
redaction critics are able to discern the theological
point of view of the evangelist. In this way they
have contributed to our knowledge of the
theological history of early Chirstianity.
In contrast to the from-critical approach which tends to
undercut the personality and intention of the authors, the
redaction critic focuses instead on the author’s apparent
purpose and on the editorial process itself. The evangelists
of the gospels were not mere collectors and transmitters
of traditional materials, as the form critics claimed, but
redactors (editors and revisers) who arranged and altered
the material they received to express their own theology or
that of the Church of their day – a theology occasionally
quite different from the original.
As a methodology for NT study, redaction criticism attempts
to clarify the nature and extent of the author’s own
contribution to the work. It presupposes literary, source and
form criticism but moves on to determine how the NT
authors collected, arranged and edited traditional material
in a particular set of circumstances with a specific objective
in mind. In order to make; (2) the modification of the
material; (3) the arrangement of the material; and (4)
contributions from the author’s own theological intention.
The reduction critic investigates how smaller units
– both simple and composite – from the oral
tradition or from written sources were put together
to form larger complexes, and he is especially
interested in the formation of the Gospels as
finished products.
B. NEW METHODS OF
LITERARY ANALYSIS
RHETORICAL
ANALYSIS
Presumption:
There are three different approaches of rhetorical

analysis. The first is based upon classical Greco-
Roman rhetoric, the second devotes itself to
Semitic procedures of composition; the third takes
its inspiration from more recent studies, namely,
from what is called the “new rhetoric.”
Presumption:
All discourse is aimed at influencing a particular

audience at a particular time. Rhetoric is an art of
composing discourse which is aimed as persuasion.
The basic principle of the =rhetorical analysis is
that texts must reveal the contexts both of the
author and of the reader.
Presumption:
The new rhetoric aims to be something more than a

simple catalogue of stylistic figures, oratorical patterns
and various kinds of discourse. Applied to the Bible, the
new rhetoric aims to penetrate to the very core of the
language of revelation precisely as persuasive religious
discourse and to the capacity of language to persuade
and convince. The Bible is not simply a statement of
truths. It is a message that carries within itself a
function of communication within a particular context.
Presumption:
The new rhetorical criticism is interested not just in the
rules and devices for argumentation used by the writer,
but in all the strategies whereby the interest, values and
emotions of readers (both original and later) are engaged.
Thus, it is as concerned with the process of interpretation
by readers as with the process of creation by the author.
A.N wilder (Early Christian Rhetoric, London, 1964) has
demonstrated the fecundity for the interpretation of NT of
the rhetorical approach; it has been applied in particular
to the interpretation of the parables.
The Bible is scrutinized as one would scrutinize a work
of art, in order to discern the meaning conveyed by the
work of art itself as well as to experience the meaning
received by the viewer or reader. It moves away from
understanding literature and language as a reflection of
reality, that is, reality is apart from and independent of
the literature. Instead, it regards the literature as being
in communication, in persuasion, in identification and
transformation of reality.
Saul, David, Samuel, Moses, or the Pharisees and
the Jews in the Gospels.
Rhetorical criticism invites the reader to interact

with the text, to feel with it, and to share its
experience.
NARRATIVE ANALYSIS
Narrative analysis ( as distinguished from
=narratology or the structural analysis of the story)
is the application of rhetorical analysis to stories,
whether these be full-length quasi-historical Gospel
narratives, shorter narratives such as the raising of
Lazarus in John 11, or fictional stories such as
Jonah or a parable.
It introduces to us a new way of reading the text. How do
we come into contact with the text? According to Ska, a
close reading of the original text is an excellent start.
Then to deepen the contact, we must analyze and make
ourselves familiar with the text. Now, since reading is
not just reading but also feeling with the text, we need to
make a literal translation into our own language the
original text. Next, we must be able to find the idiomatic
expressions and translate them into ours. The version
that we make must speak our modern language.
If the narrator and plot are the main elements of
narrative, it follows that dramatic criteria are more
important than mere stylistic criteria for the
delimitation of the text. Stylistic features are
present in poems, psalms, wisdom literature,
codices of laws, juridical texts, letters, discourses,
and prophetic oracles.
But the function of these stylistic features is not
the same in each case. So, it is advisable to analyze
the stylistic features in the context in which they
appear. In a narrative, a chiasm, a repetition or an
inclusion have a specific role in the dramatic action
as it is shaped by the narrator.
To be more concrete, the delimitation of narrative
units depends on one main criterion: the analysis of the
plot or the dramatic action. The main division (and
subdivision) of a narrative are divisions of this dramatic
action. The signals of change of action are normally
shifts or breaks in the temporal succession of events.
Change of time, change of place, change of characters
can be signals if passage from one unit to the other if
they indicate a shift or a progress in the dramatic action.
To sum up, the unity is first of all a unity of action, a
unity of plot. The narrative section finishes when
the action is completed. It is therefore essential to
analyze the main aspects of the plot and of its
temporal structure to establish the limits of the
narrative unit.
NARRATIVE CRITICISM
Secular literary scholarship knows no such

movement as narrative criticism. This movement
developed within the field of biblical studies without an
exact counterpart in the secular world. If classified by
secular critics, it might he viewed as a subspecies of
the new rhetorical criticism or as a variety of the
reader-response movement. Biblical scholars, however,
tend to think of narrative criticism as an independent,
parallel movement in its own right.
NARRATIVE CRITICISM
One of the most pressing issues in literary

criticism concerns the question. Who is the reader?
Rhetorical criticism is interested in the original
readers to whom a work was first addressed
(sometimes called the intended readers.)
NARRATIVE CRITICISM
Structuralism wants to define the response of a competed

reader who understand a work’s codes. Fish and lser
describe the responses of a first-time reader who
encounters the text in its sequential order. In his later
work, Fish suggests we think of reading communities.
Many of the divergent perspectives in literary criticism
today can be traced to different conceptions of the reader.
When a literary critic uses the term reader, it is important
to ask, which reader do you mean?
NARRATIVE CRITICISM
Narrative critics generally speak of an implied reader

who is presupposed by the narrative itself. The
implied reader is distinct from any real, historical
reader in the same way that the implied author is
distinct from the real, historical author. The actual
responses of real readers are unpredictable, but
there maybe clues within the narrative that indicate
an anticipated response from the implied reader.
NARRATIVE CRITICISM
The communications model for narrative criticism, then,

may be filled out as follows:
Real Author  Text  Real Reader
Implied
Author  Narrative  Implied Reader
LITERARY CRITICISM AND
HISTORICAL CRITICISM
The relationship between modern literary approaches to
the Bible and traditional historical-critical methodology is
somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, the literary
approaches may be viewed as logical developments within
the extensions of form and redaction criticism. On the
other hand, these newer literary approaches incorporate
concepts derived from movements in secular literary
criticism that repudiate the significance of historical
investigation for the interpretation of texts.
The major differences between literary criticism and
historical criticism are worth noting here.
1. Literary criticism focuses on the finished form of the text.
The objective of literary-critical analysis is not discover
the process through which a text has come into being but
to study the text that now exists. In historical-critical
research, the compositional history of the text is usually
significant. Source criticism, by definition, is devoted to
defining and evaluating the materials
that preceded our current Gospels and served as
sources for them. Form criticism is interested in the
traditional form that a periscope assumed before being
incorporated into the framework of a particular Gospel.
Redaction criticism maintains both these interests in
order to better asses the role of the evangelist in the
texts final stage of composition. Literary criticism does
not deny these observations regarding the development
of the text, but it does ignore them.
Ultimately, it makes no difference for a literary
interpretation whether certain portions of the text
once existed elsewhere in some other form. The
goal of literary criticism is to interpret the current
text, in its finished form.
2. Literary criticism emphasizes the unity of the text as a
whole.
Literary analysis does not dissect the text but discerns the
connecting threads that hold it together The Gospels are
viewed as coherent narratives and individual passages are
interpreted in terms of their contribution to the story as a
whole. In historical criticism, the Gospels are viewed as
compilations of loosely related periscopes, and these
individual units of tradition are most often the subject of
analysis.
In source criticism and form criticism, an attempt is
made to interpret particular sayings or stories apart
from their context in the Gospel as a whole. Even in
redaction criticism, sometimes more attention is
paid to comparisons between a passage and its
parallels in the other Gospels than to the internal
connections it may have to other passages in the
same book.
ADVANTAGES OF NARRATIVE
CRITICISM
1. Narrative criticism focuses on the text of Scripture itself.
For many, the great appeal of this method is that it is
text-centered, seeking to understand the Bible on its own
terms rather than in reference to something else. As such,
it is said to satisfy a desire often voiced by students of
religion to “spend less time studying about the Bible and
more time studying the Bible itself. “Elective use of
narrative criticism, however, demands knowledge of the
social and historical circumstances
CRITICISM
assumed by the narrative. The method does not really
allow one to escape the need to learn “about the
Bible.” Still, it is true that the process of narrative
criticism does involve a deep absorption into the
world of the text. In a sense, the text serves as its
own context; passages are read in light of the total
narrative without regard for discernment of previous
source strata or stages of composition. S
CRITICISM
The critic who follows this approach spends most of
his or her time actually reading and rereading the
text, reflecting upon what it means in light of its
own narrative context.
CRITICISM
2. Narrative criticism provides some insight into biblical
texts for which the historical background is uncertain.
In the past century, an enormous amount of research
has been devoted to questions regarding the authorship,
dating, provenance, and source of various New
Testament books. Nevertheless, the cases in which
anything like a consensus has been reached are few.
And advantage of narrative criticism is that it enables
scholars to learn much
CRITICISM
about the meaning and impact of certain books
without first having to settle these persistent and
perhaps unsolvable problems. For example, consider
the much-debated “synoptic problem”: Did Matthew
and Luke use Mark as a source or did Mark write last
and abridge the other two Gospels? Most redaction
critics have found it necessary to assume a particular
solution to this query and then proceed to interpret the
material accordingly.
CRITICISM
The advantage of narrative criticism is that it begins
with a given (the Narrative) rather than with a
hypothesis. William Farmer, who is not otherwise an
advocate of this approach, has agreed that literary
criticism provides a way around the impasses of source
theories that biblical scholars currently face. He
suggests that such approaches will be useful “for the
interim” until a better understanding of the historical
origins of this material is obtained.
E. CONTEXTUAL
APPROACHES
THE LIBERATIONIST APPROACH
The theology of liberation is a complex phenomenon

which should not be oversimplified. It begins as a
theological movement in the early 1970s. Over and
beyond the economic, social and political circumstances
of Latin America, its starting point is to be found in two
great events in the life of the Church: the Second
Vatican Council, with its declared intention of
aggiornamento” and of orienting the pastoral work of the
Church toward the needs of the contemporary world,
and the Second General Conference of the

Episcopate of Latin America held at Medellin in
1968 , which applied the teachings of the council to
the needs of Latin America. The movement has
since spread also to other parts of the World
(Africa, Asia, the black population of the United
States).
It is not all that easy to discern if there truly

exists “one” theology of liberation and to define
what its theology might be. It is equally difficult to
determine adequately its manner of reading the
Bible, in a way which would lead to an accurate
assessment of advantages and limitations. One can
say that liberation theology adopts no particular
methodology.
But starting from its own socio-cultural and political

point of view, it practices a reading of the Bible
which is oriented to the needs of the people, who
seeks in the Scriptures nourishment for their faith
and their life.
Liberation theology is not content with an

objectifying interpretations of what the text said in
its original context. It seeks reading drawn from the
situation of the people as it is lived here and now. If
a people lives in circumstance of oppression, one
must go to the Bible to find there nourishment
capable of sustaining the people in it struggles and
its hopes.
The reality of the present time should not be

ignored but, on the contrary, met head on, with a
view to shedding upon it the light of the Word. From
this light will come authentic Christian praxis,
leading to the transformation of society through
works of justice and love. Within the vision of faith,
Scriptures is transformed into a dynamic impulse
for full liberation.
The main principles guiding this approach are the

following:
 God is present in the history of his people,
bringing them salvation. He is the God of the poor
and cannot tolerate oppression or injustice.
 Itfollows that exegesis cannot be neutral, but

must, in imitation of God, take sides on behalf of
the poor and be engaged in the struggle to liberate
the oppressed.
It is precisely participation in this struggle that

allows those interpretations to surface which are
discovered only when the biblical texts are read in
a context of solidarity with the oppressed.
Because the liberation of the oppressed is a

communal process, the community of the poor is
the privileged addressee of the Bible as word of
liberation. Moreover, since the Biblical texts were
written for communities, it is to communities in the
first place that the reading of the Bible has been
entrusted. The word of God is fully relevant, above
all, because of the capacity inherent in the
“foundational events” (the exodus from Egypt, the
passion and resurrection of Jesus) for finding fresh
“foundational events” (the exodus from Egypt, the

passion and resurrection of Jesus) for finding fresh
realization again and again in the course of history.
Liberation theology includes elements of undoubted

value: the deep awareness of the presence of God
who saves; the insistence on the communal
dimension of faith; the pressing sense of need for a
liberating praxis rooted in justice and love; a fresh
reading of the Bible which seeks to make the word
of God the light and nourishment of the people of
God in the midst of its struggle and hopes. In all
these ways, it underlines the capacity of the
inspired text to speak to the world today.
Criticisms: A reading of the Bible from a stance of

such commitment also involves some risks. Since
liberation theology is tied to a movement that is
still in a process of development, the remarks that
follows can only be provisional.
This kind of reading is centered on narrative and

prophetic texts which highlight situation of
oppression and which inspire a praxis leading to
social change. At time, such a reading can be
limited not giving enough attention to other parts of
the Bible. It is true that exegesis cannot be neutral,
but it must also take care not to become one-sided.
Moreover, social and political action is not the
direct task of the exegete.
In their desire to insert the biblical message into a

socio-political context, some theologians and
exegetes have made use of various instruments for
the analysis of social reality. Within this
perspective certain streams of liberation theology
have conducted an analysis inspired by materialist
doctrines, and it is within such frames of reference
that they have also read the Bible, a practice which
is very questionable, especially when it involves the
Marxist principle of struggle.
Under the pressure of enormous social problems,

there has understandably been more emphasis on
an earthly eschatology. Sometimes this has been to
the detriment of the more transcendent dimensions
of Scriptural eschatology.
More recent social and political changes have ked

this approach to ask itself new questions and to ask
new directions. For its further development and
fruitfulness within the Church, a decisive factor will
be the clarification of its hermeneutical
presuppositions, its methods and its coherence
with the faith and with the tradition of the Church
as a whole.

Introduction To The Sacred Scriptures

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Introduction To The Sacred Scriptures

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INTRODUCTION TO

The Bible does not take an incontrovertible stand

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words

a. To Satisfy One’s Spiritual Hunger

Bible reading is one of the ways through which

b. To Learn the Wisdom that Leads to Salvation

This is the wisdom that leads to salvation. This is

Ever since you were child, you have known the

c. To Learn to Grow Strong in the Faith

This story gives us a model of the relationship

i. Initial faith: the word is received with eagerness,

d. To Learn How to Overcome Sin and Live a Godly

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not

e. To learn to Defend the Truth and Refute Error

i. It helps us to know he truth ourselves. The Jews

Jesus said to them, “Is not this why you are

ii. Knowledge of the Bible helps us see the subtle

All scripture is inspired by God and useful for

iii. The Elder, Peter, advises believers in the faith

In your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always

What better way can we prepare to do this than to

g. To Learn How to Witness to Christ

We can do that by teaching the ignorant, by

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for

The English word “Bible” ultimately derives from

Part of the backdrop to this writing was the

One legacy of the domination of this area of the world by the

Those responsible for assembling the traditions in

When a story was retold it was because the need

In the NT it is the existence of four different

There are small overlaps as well, including three

Still other books were slow to be accepted.

In last place came the third division, “The Writings,”

Protestant have never made, and never will be

What do the people say about the Bible? What are

How can you encourage people to read the Bible?

The word “Bible” comes from the Greek words ta

O.T. 39 in Jewish/Prot. 46 Catholic N.T. 27

The term Bible is a modification of the Latin word

The Bible is at times called Scripture (the Scriptures),

The Bible consist of two volumes or parts, the OT and the

The two Testaments from a single whole, in the

The present collection is patterned upon the

The original languages of the Bible are Hebrew,

The term Semitic comes from Sem (the Greek and

We do not know where exactly the home of the

East Semitic id generally known as Accadian, from

The pre-Christian rendering of the OT published by the

Among all the versions of the OT, the Septuagint

Since the Jewish masses did not understand the

Syriac was the dialect of East Aramaic that the

The common Bible of the Syriac-speaking

During the second and third centuries the faithful in

OT is called Hebrews Scriptures, which the NT

1) It is the treasure chest of wisdom and

3) It has a deep influence on our modern religious

The Bible was not written in the same way, at one

No other book contains so much literary genius as

faith in Genesis. And then we find the powerful

For thousands of years, writers and readers,

The Bible is the world’s all time best selling book.

The Bible spans approximately 1,500 years. The