March 03, 2005
WSJ’s Review of Whose Bible is it? by Jaroslav Pelikan
The Wall Street Journal featured an interesting review of a new book by Jaroslav Pelikan – a history professor at Yale – entitled Whose Bible is it? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages. I don’t know much about Mr. Pelican, but the review by George Sim Johnston made a few points I think are very important:
In the beginning, Mr. Pelikan reminds us, was the spoken word. The biblical God who speaks to man does not “write” anything until 80 chapters into the Old Testament. Similarly, Christ did not write anything (except on sand), nor did he tell his disciples to do so. When picking up a Bible, we should recall that its words were “heard long before they could ever have been read.” Faith, as St. Paul reminds us, comes from hearing.Both the Old and New Testaments came out of a strong oral tradition . . .
We’ve been making these points, but it is nice to see others pointing this out as well. Another point:
When St. Paul in his letters quotes Jewish scripture, he is not referring to this official Hebrew Bible (compiled in 100 A.D.), which in any case did not yet exist, but to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of Hebrew Scripture that had been made for Jews who lived outside of Palestine and no longer spoke Hebrew. The Septuagint contained several books, including Tobit and first and second Maccabees, that were not included in the Hebrew Bible. But it was this Greek version that became the Old Testament for all Christians – until, that is, Luther demoted those books to “Apocryptha,” which is why Catholics and Protestants have different Old Testaments.
Remember, this is a history professor at Yale, rather than a Catholic apologist – I don’t believe he is Catholic, in fact. And this review is penned exactly on the book, which might be a good read for non-Catholics interested in the history of the Bible.
The review makes several other important points and discusses that it took the Church until almost 400 A.D. to decide which books to include or exclude. But the two passages above should offer enough to make you want to learn more. The questions are: why isn’t spoken Tradition valid – after all this is what the Bible was based on for hundreds of years; Also, did Martin Luther really have the authority from God to remove books of the Bible? These are serious questions for non-Catholics who base their faith upon the Bible.
God bless,
Jay
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Pelikan is an Orthodox convert from Lutheranism.
Posted by: ELC at March 3, 2005 03:19 PM
