Sacred Scripture

Divine Revelation:

One source of Revelation: God

Two conduits of reception:

-Sacred Tradition

-Sacred Scripture

Inspiration: Dual Authorship

Inerrancy: Scripture is free from error in what it teaches to be true.

Continuity: The OT and the NT are one book to be read together.

The Catholic Church

Magisterium: Official teaching body of the Church
- Comprised of:
  - all official Church Teachings
  - The teachings of the Pope and the bishops in union with him
  - Note**- Not all papal comments are infallible.

Reliability of Sacred Scripture

Are the stories of Jesus simply made up by the New Testament writers

First standard: Common ancient text evaluation
Are these copies that are close to the original writing?
There are over 500 examples of scripture that date from before 500 A.D.
There are additional texts found from the same era that do not refute but support what is in scripture
The question is then is, why is the bible treated to a different standard when looked at only as a historical document?

Second Standard: Dating of the texts
If, as some claim, there were revisionists that added to scripture the miracles and other stories of Jesus 100 years after his death we would find evidence of that revision
The letters of St. Paul have been affirmed many times to have been written before his death in c. 63 A.D. (Ephesians may have been written by a disciple later)
The Gospel Dating is also confirms all of the synoptic Gospels were written between 55-70 A.D. and John around 90 A.D.
The oldest manuscripts in existence do not show significant deviation from the newer ones (Not referring to translations) The only differences appear to be word order, not meaning

Third Standard: Witness of the Martyrs
If the Gospels were a myth, who created them?
If it was the Apostles, what did they have to do to gain…Martyrdom?
- Martyrdom does no necessarily prove the truth of something just that someone believes it to be true, What could have caused a large group of people to believe so close to Christ himself?
If it were revisionists later in history… what caused the (historically accurate) 1st century Christians to go to their deaths joyfully?
How has this myth inspired countless generations to continue to give their lives?

Writings about Sacred Scripture

There have been many documents on the reading and studying of Sacred Scripture, but we will only look at 2 in any depth
Providentissimus Deus (God of all providence)
- Written by Pope Leo XIII in 1893

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.”

Exegesis: Critical reading and interpretation of Sacred Scripture

117 the spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of Gods plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.
(1) The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.
(2) The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”.
(3) The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.

Hermeneutical:
Hermeneutics: A method of interpretation: Reading scripture with an idea already in mind.
- Ex: Reading St. Paul thinking that he believes that the resurrection is going to come in his lifetime

“… And so the study of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred theology”
“… Prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture,