{N}1.1:{/} {N}INTERPRETATIONS OF SCRIPTURE {/}[Gen_3,1]
{N}FUNDAMENTALISM{/}
Our interpretation of chapters 1 to 3 of Genesis differs greatly from the literal interpretations of the last century, as if those biblical pages were describing how God created the world and especially human beings. And our interpretation of Adam's sin is also different. This development invites us to say something about distinct ways of interpreting Scripture and about the inspiration of the Bible.
Our changed perspective results from the different way in which we answer the following question: Is it possible that Scripture be the Word of God valid for all times, if it is proved that the human authors wrote that Word with all the personal and cultural limitations of their times? How can we sort out these seemingly contradictory components in order to discover the lasting message that is specifically valid for us now? Let's examine different responses to that question.
Let's hear first about the fundamentalist interpretation. A fundamentalist reads Scripture as he does the daily newspaper, as if it were something happening now. He doesn't ask what the ancient author himself was experiencing or what symbolic meaning his words might have had in that culture over two thousand years ago, nor how God might have been inspiring an even more profound message through what was being written. The fundamentalist focuses only on the page in front of him, myopically believing that each idea and each text was inspired by God exactly as the modern reader views them now. In so doing he overlooks two aspects of this same word:
First, the word does not communicate its message to anyone unwilling to hear how the author himself understood it.
Second, any page or particular book loses value as the Word of God if the reader separates it from the rest of Scripture. Why? Because each book has its own limited perspective and today's reader must have in mind the overall view so as not to be blinded by a limited viewpoint.
Anyone who does not situate particular texts in their specific time and circumstances misses the dimension that Scripture acquired through the gradual pedagogy of God. The Holy Spirit has been revealing the Holy Story incrementally since the very beginning, from the time of the Patriarchs and prophets until the coming of Jesus and the Apostles. And the Spirit revealed the Word through a myriad of human efforts and factors, nationally and internationally, in order to make the revelation destined for the world grow and mature in Israel. Anyone not recognizing this pedagogical process going on within the life of God's people, may indeed talk about the Holy Story, but only from the superficial perspective of wars and tests of the unfaithful Israelites and of God's manifestation of his justice and mercy. Such a shallow reading overlooks the time and circumstances in which each book was written as well as the specific focus that each author brought to his work, in addition to the contemporary level of religious maturity of his community. Each factor colors one's reading as much as daylight, shadows, and darkness influence one's sight.
A fundamentalist's interpretation distorts Scripture particularly when applied to the first chapters of Genesis. First, he ignores how much the ancient mythological stories of the Middle East influenced the story of Eden. They were written and extensively incorporated into those cultures centuries before the biblical story appeared. Later, the fundamentalist interprets these chapters literally as if God had dictated them to the holy author as an eyewitness account of what He had done in the beginning. As an example: He took clay (even though God has no hands) and He breathed (without a mouth). God spoke to the first man (even though languages did not exist then) and He named him Adam (a name that would have meaning only many centuries later when the Hebrew language was formed). And a talking serpent came to the woman (but she was not surprised that the serpent spoke to her)... 
Actually, we should not condemn fundamentalists too severely, since the Jews, Jesus himself, and the Apostles interpreted Scripture to a certain degree in the same way. Why? Because they did not have the scientific vision of history that we have today nor our understanding of the influences of each distinct culture on Scripture. For example, they were not aware that the so-called "Books of Moses" were written several centuries after him, and even after the books of the prophets. Jesus' contemporaries were also convinced that David had written all the Psalms. A moderating factor to this historical, scientific ignorance was that the same Hebrew culture that had produced these books provided continuity for later generations. Similarly, the tradition of the synagogue where Jews read and commented the Scriptures weekly limited possible excesses that might result from interpretations outside of the Jewish scriptural context. 
To illustrate how interpretation out of context can have disastrous effects, let's take another look at Adam and the Garden of Eden. The name, Adam, means both: Father of the race, as well as the race as a whole-humanity, as was customary among nomadic people. Nomads claimed to be direct descendants from a specific mythical founder of their tribe, e.g., Abraham, as well as to be of the tribe of Abraham. 
Another example of how interpretation out of context distorts the original story is the fifth century theologizing of Adam's Original Sin. Though writers of Jesus' time and Paul himself comment the relation between Adam's sin and death, they did not consider Adam's disobedience any differently than any other collective action. In fact it is impossible to find in the gospels any allusion to this individual sin. However, Christian theologians who had forgotten how to read Hebrew stories as Jews did, interpreted Adam's story literally as do fundamentalists today. Theologians began to teach that the punishment of death and hell for all humanity resulted from a single sin of a certain Adam. That interpretation made out of its original cultural context has had disastrous consequences.
However, we may dare to infer that Jesus and the Apostles suffered from a certain degree of fundamentalism that did not permit them to recognize many aspects of God's pedagogy in the biblical texts. For them the damage was not great because they lived in times in which God's pedagogy through historical changes did not affect religious culture or the values of daily life. And the Law directed as much the relationships between the believers with non-Jews, as the rules of conduct in all the different areas of existence. It was of less importance for the believers whether they saw history as a pedagogy of God and that they also read about the lived experiences and events as if they were set out by God to guide and instruct us (see however [Mt_16,2]).
Their faith that had been transmitted to them through their community and their family imposed before anything else the absolute observance of a detailed code of conduct. The options were simple: Follow the Law or be outcast as a rebel. The Law determined as much the relationships between believers and non-Jews, as the minute conduct of Jews at every moment of daily life. At that time it was not necessary for the believers to see history as a pedagogy of God and to read his will through the events and national or worldwide cultural changes (See however [Mt_16,2]).
The cultural revolutions of our century, specifically the second half of it, have put us back on the path of questioning things. Whether we try to separate church teaching that is transitory from what cannot change, or whether we try to understand rapid developments within church communities, we have to return to the process of change evident in Scripture where we witness faith that has been actually lived. And this is where a fundamentalist vision can paralyze us if we attempt to reconcile the many diverse and often contradictory testimonies within Scripture into a religion codified by God Himself. That would turn the Word of God into a catechism supported by Scripture, but no longer a Word capable of giving life.

{N}1.2:{/} {N}BEGINNINGS OF THE BIBLE{/} [Ezra_7,1]
Several times in this chapter, Ezra is called a scribe {C}well educated in the Law{/}, which the Jews called the Law of Yahweh. The Persian government referred to it in an official letter as the Law of the God of Heaven, which is the name they gave to Yahweh. Ezra is usually credited as having gathered the first nucleus of books that today compose our Bible. Of these, the books of Moses, called the Law, form the essential part. It is at this time that the Law of God begins to designate a group of books considered as sacred or holy: see [2Mac_2,13] in this respect, which attributes this initiative to Nehemiah.
This development prompts us to ask how books become recognized as sacred. When we buy a Bible we believe it contains inspired books and is in fact the Word of God. But who determines that, what criteria are used, and which books are actually sacred or inspired? This question is fundamental to all Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant. No matter what church we belong to, all of us base our faith on these Scriptures. But how can we agree on this, unless we also recognize a common authority that decided which books are inspired and what credence we can give them? Without such an authority there is no Christian faith, but rather only a certain respect we give to the writings of wise men, holy persons, and prophetic individuals. What then, is the basis for our belief that biblical Scriptures give us the eternal truth, which came from God himself? 
{N}THE CANON OF THE SCRIPTURES{/}
The official list of biblical books is called the "Canon," a Greek word meaning the guiding rule. This definitive catalogue specifies which books are sacred or "inspired by God," exclusive of all others. It is definitive because divine revelation culminated in Jesus Christ. Christians believe that the Sacred Scriptures provide the criteria for Christian faith and morals. That assurance rests on the certainty that God entrusted the special assistance of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles of Jesus, and through them to the Church, in order to determine without error the canon of sacred books. Let us investigate this in more detail, including those books called deuterocanonical.
{N}HEBREW CANON{/}
The development of the Israelite canon goes back to the teaching of the prophets and their disciples or of other sages and holy men and women, who proclaimed the will of God to the people. They spoke with authority, although some of them may not have been conscious of being inspired by God or aware that their teachings, preserved on scrolls, were the Word of God. However, prophets based their proclamations on Israel's traditions, convinced that they could interpret God's actions in the contemporary history of the people. How were their teachings preserved and passed on?
Considering Israel's tumultuous history of wars, infidelity, and repentance, we can only say that God's hand subtly guided the slow composition, preservation, editing, and designation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Disciples memorized the teaching of their prophet at a time of universal illiteracy; rulers had them preserved on precious parchment (skin) scrolls and may even have started small libraries, only to see them lost again perhaps in a fire. Sometimes a priest or rabbi pieced together the memories of the community, adding his own comments to update the message for a new generation. Perhaps a pious traveler memorized the contents in stories, poems, and songs, and taught other communities on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 
Many Jews never saw the scrolls until a time of religious revival when authorities collected them, perhaps rejecting parts that were not used in liturgies. As traditions stabilized, they were read and discussed weekly in the synagogues as the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. Jesus and the early Christians were immersed in this tradition. At the end of the first century, and during the fourth century, Jewish and Christian leaders respectively held councils to codify their Sacred Scriptures in the name of God. Today's believers, as the heirs of those authoritative pronouncements, make an act of faith that the Bible we hold in our hands contains the message that God wants to leave his people in all places and for all times.
How should we modern believers react to this very earthy process-with doubt and disdain or with wonder, gratitude, and confidence? From the time of Abraham, the experience of God's people has been constant: That God walks through the desert with the refugees; that God sings the psalms with David while fleeing from Saul; that God mourns with the exiles in Babylon-and all the time, nobody saw Him! Sometimes his voice is more evident in the leaders, sometimes in the people, at other times in the poets. Our conclusion is that we will never know how one or other book made its way into the Canon or catalogue of the Scriptures, but the fact is that it entered through the life and struggles of the community, both Jewish and Christian, and the people never rejected it. In keeping with the tradition of the Apostles and guided by the Spirit, faith is a decision by which we recognize and commit ourselves both to the People of God and to the Word of God.
{N}AFTER EZRA{/}
Most likely, Ezra already shaped his early collection of Scriptures into two categories: the Law and the Prophets. The Law included the five books attributed to Moses, and the Prophets included both the historical books of prophetic inspiration as well as the writings of the prophets. Only later did the third category, the "Writings," appear, all of which can be generally classified as "Wisdom Literature," although it contains a great variety of literature. The prologue of the Book of Sirach testifies to the creation of a whole wisdom culture that became dominant in Israel a century and a half before Christ.
The fact that Jews reverenced these three literary collections as sacred books did not impede respected authorities from revising and expanding them "in the name of the community", as was the practice for example in the Qumran community. Jewish leaders felt empowered as much to correct the activities of the People of God as to interpret and alter the Scriptures so that they better express the received faith. They added books both to the Hebrew version and to the Greek Septuagint collection, since both were equally accepted and used in Palestine and in the Diaspora. 
However this ambivalent situation could not last forever. At some point authorities were bound to step in to create a single canon of sacred books, even determining whether particular writings were complete or were still in the process of composition. The coming of Jesus and the establishment of the Church would hasten this process.
{N}THE JEWISH CANON OF JAMNIA{/}
The Romans began a military campaign against Jewish independence forces in 66 A.D. Many Christians, feeling cut off from the synagogue, fled Jerusalem in 68 A.D. After the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D., regional Jewish resistance forces continued until their defeat in 74 A.D. After those four intervening years, the Pharisees were the only surviving party capable of restoring institutional religion without a priesthood, sacrificial worship, or a Temple. Rabbis came together to define the major Jewish link to their ancient past-namely, to their Sacred Scriptures.
Although facts about the codification of the Hebrew Canon are scarce and controverted, it is generally suggested that rabbis of the synagogue school of Jamnia agreed upon what has been called, "The Palestinian Canon," sometime between (80?) 90 and 100 A.D. What criteria they used in their choice is not clear, but incorporation of texts into the liturgy is a strong possibility. Language and place of composition: Hebrew (not Greek) and Palestine (not in the Diaspora) may be others. 
The Jamnia Canon was not proposed as a law, but by way of moral persuasion in a time of crisis, insisting that no doubt existed any longer regarding the content of Hebrew Sacred Scriptures as the Law (Torah), the Prophets (Nebiim), and the Writings (Ketubim) -abbreviated TaNaK). Considering the fluidity of so many other essentials of Jewish religion, clarity about Scripture became an imperative. 
{N}THE CANON OF THE CHURCH{/}
Early Christians did not involve themselves in the Jewish Canon controversy, since they had already broken off from the synagogue and because they continued the traditional use of the Greek Septuagint books. Rather, their energy went into rapid expansion throughout the Empire, sometimes amid persecution, at the same time that the Apostles and other official witnesses of the oral traditions were suffering martyrdom and exile. Oral traditions about Jesus' life and teachings were added to a growing number of letters being written by the Apostles or by their disciples in their name.
Christian communities around the Mediterranean Sea frequently shared their traditions and experiences with one another. The community in Rome shared the Gospel according to Mark, the major letters of Paul, and the Acts of the Apostles. Syria was probably the place of origin of the Gospel according to Matthew and the letter from James. Asia Minor and Greek cities added their own contributions. A phrase from Peter's second letter, written around the year 125, indicates that Paul's letters were already considered to be inspired texts equal to the Old Testament, "the same as the rest of the Scriptures" [2P_3,16].
Not everything was received with the same acceptance. During the second century of the Christian era, some Gospels and Acts written much later than the canonical ones were rejected because they seemed to depart from the apostolic faith or to express fantasies. However a few, such as the Gospel of Thomas, may actually have preserved authentic words of Jesus which have not come to us in any other way. Another reason for rejection would be if a text had not been used in the liturgy, as was the case with the Jewish Canon. Lack of apostolic authorship would have been a further reason. This explains why the so called Catholic Epistles, written mainly by second and third generation Christians, were presented as letters from Peter, Jude, and James.
By the end of the second century there was widespread agreement about the NT canon, although only in the third century did two councils and Pope Damasus (280) officially designate the list as we have it today. Disputes about two books continued into the fourth century. Christians in the East rejected the Letter to the Hebrews because they saw clearly that it was not from Paul, and the church of Rome did not recognize the Book of Revelation as written by John the Apostle.
{N}DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS{/}
At the same time that the NT Canon was being fixed, doubts about the Jamnia Canon were arising. Were the reasons for rejecting the longer Greek Septuagint list valid? Eastern Christians as a whole were inclined towards the shorter Jewish list. The West, with Augustine at the head, favored the longer canon. Ironically, Augustine's efforts prevailed thanks to Jerome's earlier contribution of the Vulgate Old Testament, although he himself opposed the longer list because of his preference for the Hebrew sources.
Jerome, as had Origen before him, wanted the church to base its Scriptures on the original language, so he translated the OT into Latin directly from Hebrew manuscripts, instead of relying on Greek Septuagint texts as was customary from the time of the Apostles. Jerome held books originally in Greek in such disregard that he translated the whole book of Tobit rapidly in a single night (and without a computer). Nevertheless, Jerome included this and other Greek texts in his Latin Vulgate to the frustration of some later critics. In contrast, the Book of Sirach (called Ecclesiasticus in Latin texts--"the Book of the Congregation or of the Church") enjoyed great prestige. Second Maccabees and the Book of Wisdom were also favorite sources for early expressions of faith in the resurrection of the faithful.
Consequently, when bishops gathered at the Council of Trent in the 16th century to consider the proclamation of an irreversible biblical canon with the whole authority of the Church, the majority followed the thousand year Christian tradition established by St. Jerome's Vulgate, without distinguishing whether the books were of Hebrew or Greek origin. The seven Greek books in question are: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, plus parts of Esther and Daniel. These are called "Deuterocanonical Books," meaning books of the second list.
{N}PROTESTANT QUESTIONING{/}
The infallible decree of the Council of Trent ended all discussion in the Catholic Church regarding the canonicity of the deuteronical texts, despite the objections of many Catholic experts versed in biblical cultures and languages. The discussion continued, however, in Reformation Churches. They placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of their Bibles as "useful," but not as authoritative literature. Later, Protestants excluded the Deuterocanonicals, only to include them again separately after the II Vatican Council as ecumenical collaboration increased. Protestants refer to these seven books as the "Apocryphal Books."
These last developments mark the end of an arbitrary theological prejudice, which has been supported during four centuries. Then many among them placed, between the times of the Old Testament, during which God could only speak in Hebrew, and the times of the New Testament, when he spoke Greek, a period of three centuries called Intertestamentary, during which the divine inspiration and the progress of the faith were excluded.

{N}1.3:{/} {N}THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE {/}[2Tim_3,16]
"All Scripture is inspired by God..." This phrase may also be translated: "All inspired Scripture is useful for...." If we take some liberties with the text, it might be even more meaningful to translate it: "All Scripture is a bearer of the Spirit of God." Why? Because not only was the Bible written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but we must also add that biblical texts are the Word of God for us only to the degree that we read them under the guidance of the Spirit. 
The Bible is not first of all a prestigious literary work, but neither is it simply a religious text. This text is {C}useful for teaching, refuting error, for correcting{/}," only to the degree that we allow ourselves to be guided by the Spirit. The Eastern liturgy of St. John Chrisostomus says it eloquently: the Book of the Gospels is placed together with the bread and the wine on the offertory table and then brought to the altar with the same solemn ritual. The Liturgy of the Eucharist demonstrates that we should consider God's Word as a "sacrament" of God's presence, since the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist are presented with equal dignity. The Spirit is invoked as much over the bread and the wine for them to become the Body and Blood of Christ, as over the Lectionary for it to become the bearer of the breath of God.
{N}INSPIRATION{/}
Sacred Scripture is as much the work of God as it is of the human author. The author may not even have been conscious that God was guiding him. He may simply have set out to write something useful, influenced as much by his own preoccupations as by the limitations of his culture. In the process, however God was coordinating or planning the composition of Scripture, including the complexity of later editing (cf. the note about the Canon of the sacred books in the Introduction to the Book of Ezra). 
God, who revealed himself in a thousand ways throughout history, willed that the Bible would have a special quality, not so much in its individual parts, but rather taken as a whole. In its totality, the Bible is identified with Christ as God's Word.
When we study the historical development of biblical writings, we become aware of problems that often make us wonder how one or other book was written and then even became recognized as the Word of God. Chance seems to have played an important role in the process leading to its acceptance into the canon of inspired books. Why was one book accepted instead of another? Was it necessary to include Obadiah, Esther, or the Letter of Jude? 
However, if we look at the process from God's perspective, blind chance had nothing to do with it. Rather, God's objective guided everything, even those events made up of unforeseen circumstances and involving many individuals. 
From the beginning, God willed the salvation that Christ would bring. He also willed to provide us with a written form of revelation whose full sense would gradually become apparent after the Spirit had been poured out upon the people of God. Therefore we can say that God planned that the Bible would come into existence as the instrument of the Spirit.
If we understand inspiration in this way, we can avoid an otherwise insoluble dilemma, which has confused many people. Namely, if all biblical words are inspired, isn't God responsible for all of the Bible's errors and weaknesses? 
Some people attempt to resolve this last problem by suggesting that inspiration guarantees the accuracy only of the Bible's religious message, but not any historical or scientific errors that might occur in the text. This reasoning is true only to a certain degree, as we see when we examine how the apostles used texts from earlier Scriptures. For them, every word could be significant. Look, for example, how Paul interpreted the collective word, "descendants," in [Gal_3,16] as referring to a specific descendant, Christ. Furthermore, if one argues that inspiration extends only to the religious meaning of a text, who is to say which part of the biblical message is "religious" and which not? Or even more basic, is it even correct to say that the Bible is a message?
We ought to maintain that the whole text is inspired, but not in the literal way that Muslims understand the inspiration of the Koran. For them the text, all the words and every word of the text, is directly inspired by God in Arabic, and only this Arabic text is inspired. It should never even be translated into any other language! In contrast, Christians treat the biblical text as a sign and instrument, like a "sacrament" of God speaking to us. As a result, the Spirit is never enslaved to the letter of the original text. God does not speak Hebrew, but He did reveal Himself to people who spoke Hebrew and Greek. From this we can draw two conclusions.
1. We do not have to worry about occasional errors and weaknesses of the biblical text when measured with the criteria of our modern culture. We recognize that the Bible is both a perfect and an imperfect instrument, which the Spirit chooses to use for our benefit. The Gospel message is capable of communicating itself and of producing fruit, even when it uses dubious cultural symbols and examples from a past age. This is the promise of [Jn_16,12] - [Jn_16,13], namely, that the Spirit will still inspire later readers to change to a new way of life today through the instrumentality of the biblical text. 
2. The inspiration of the original scriptural text will carry over to its translations even when, as the proverb says, a translation always distorts to some degree the meaning of the original text.
{N}TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE{/}
It is a fact that the great majority of believers know the Bible only through one of its many translations (no matter how much the Church (or churches) has encouraged them to read the Bible.) This was already true about the Jewish community at the time of Jesus when the estimated Jewish population was about 8% of the Roman Empire, or six million people. Of these, no more than a half a million lived in Palestine. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Septuagint) was without question the version most commonly used .by Jews. It was found even in Palestine, the heart of Judaism, where Hebrew was the official language. The writers of the New Testament, when quoting Scripture used the Greek Septuagint. 
The Apostles and the primitive Christian communities only knew God's Word through the Septuagint translation, which was usually quoted in the New Testament. That version was very accurate for the Pentateuch, but was much less reliable for the rest of the books and even seems to drift away from the true sense of the prophets. Does this mean that the Early Church, which relied on this translation, never had access to this essential part of God's Word, namely the Old Testament? In chapter 15 of Acts is found a very interesting case relevant to this question. The Apostle James bases his teaching on a text from [Am_15,17] in its Septuagint Greek translation. That Greek, however, differs greatly from the original Hebrew text. This demonstrates that many members of the Primitive Church considered the Septuagint version to be just as inspired as the Hebrew text.
At the end of the third century, the Roman Church adapted itself to the changing dominant culture of the Empire and switched its official language from Greek to Latin. Another century later, the great scholar Saint Jerome completed the Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin, which became the official Bible of the Catholic Church until the middle of the twentieth century! Jerome, like Origen before him, considered the Hebrew versions of Scripture to be more exact than the Greek, so he based the Vulgate on Hebrew manuscripts. Despite the many qualities of his version called the Vulgate, we must recognize today that it contains many errors. Even so, it is a fact that the Vulgate served as the dominant source for preaching, teaching, scholarship, and spirituality within the Catholic Church for all those centuries.
How easily we ignore this historical, transient reality of translations when discussing the inspiration of biblical texts. When all is said and done, the people of God depend upon existing translations, however accurate or inaccurate they might be, as their source for the Word of God. And don't we simply have to admit that the Spirit, who inspired the original text, continues to act with total liberty through whichever translations are available? 
{N}PRECISE TRANSLATIONS AND PASTORAL VERSIONS{/}
What we have just said about the early Greek and Latin versions is also valid for modern versions. Any translator has to keep at least three objectives in mind: To remain faithful to the original text, to express its message accurately in the new target language, and to accommodate the final vocabulary and style to a specific audience within that linguistic group. For example, if he prepares a scholarly version for students familiar with ancient languages and history, he will deliberately choose precise, technical words similar to the original Hebrew. He might also legitimately distort the accustomed literary style of the target language so that it reflects more closely the sentence structure and style of the original source language. For example, the scholarly translator might simulate Saint Paul's practice of writing a single sentence containing over ten lines. These are the guidelines a translator uses to remain faithful to the original text, to his target audience, and to his literary or scientific purpose. 
Someone making a modern popular translation intended for the less scholarly majority of readers will follow the same rules, but express the message in a very different way. For him, the principal question isn't what was the original structure of the text, but rather, how do the readers of my translation think and talk? In doing so, the translator follows in the footsteps of most of the original authors who wrote in the language of the common and mostly illiterate population. Similarly, one acceptable modern method is to provide a "dynamic equivalent" translation of the original. While respecting the literal meaning each word, the translator expresses the message of a sentence as simply and directly as possible as a whole. If one word expresses the idea better, he might eliminate three words of the original. The entire message, not the individual words, is his starting point, and communicating that message in a way understandable to his contemporary audience is his objective. That is good dynamic equivalent translating.
This whole question of inspiration and translation should be considered in the perspective of the Pentecost event and the coming of the Spirit. The Church's priority is not to form specialists, but rather to proclaim God's Word to the simple people of society, each in their own language.
..
{N}THE USE OF THE INSPIRED TEXTS{/} [2P_1,21]
This text comes to complete what is said in [1Tim_3,16] about the use of the biblical texts. The author opposes the innovators who base themselves on an unknown interpretation of some texts in order to question the traditional faith. This paragraph makes it understood that the truth is given by God to his people and it is kept in the interior of these people of God. The Scripture, born of their experiences and proclaimed under the impulse of the Spirit, ("impelled by the Spirit") delivers its truth only to those who share the sentiment of this people and who live on their spirit. This text justifies the intervention of the hierarchy in order to defend the inheritance of faith and the traditional interpretation of a text in the measure that faith depends on that interpretation. It is known however that more than once the hierarchy has wanted to base itself on biblical texts in order to justify some legitimate but debatable conceptions that unduly confused with faith.
In reality our text goes further than this problem. If the hierarchy can and must intervene against personal interpretations that threaten faith, it is not because it's the only one that know how to read the Scriptures, but because it is part of the service of the Spirit and it has the keys. The hierarchy took part in the formation of the holy books, at the side of the prophets, the wise men and the people holding responsible positions within the human commmunity, and sometimes against them. And in the same way, the hierarchy takes part in the interpretation of the Scriptures, which in the first place is the work of the Spirit. It would be a mistake to believe that the key to the Scriptures is in the hands of the specialists who study the Bible starting from human disciplines such as history, linguistics or sociology. Their studies give a more exact knowledge of the text, but the spiritual experience and new steps in the action of missionaries are decisive grounds in which the Spirit acts to refresh the message and give it its true sense. It is then when "every scribe who is learned in the reign of God" can bring new things from his storeroom [Mt_13,52].
Therefore it is understood then that the same text may result in commentaries of very diverse spirits. For a charismatic commentator or a poetry lover the choice of words is very important because it leads in part the echoes that can be looked for in other inspired passages. On the other hand, for one who teaches or is taught, the simplicity of language is essential. For one who reprehends or scolds, the text is the basis of a warning that should directly reach the people and denounce the actions in the actual circumstances. Therefrom the comprehension of the Bible principally depends, not on some hebrew or greek nuance, but on the gifts of wisdom and spiritual insight that Paul speaks to us about in so many places in the Bible, and which are the condition of all efficient apostolate ([Rom_10,2]; [Eph_1,17]; [Phil_1,9]; [Col_1,9], [Col_3,10]) and in chapter 17 of the Gospel according to John.

{N}1.4:{/} {N}THE ABSENCE OF ERRORS IN THE BIBLE {/}[Jn_10,35]
{C}The Scripture cannot be changed (One cannot change the Scripture{/}?). With this reply that leaves his listeners very surprised, Jesus invites us to look more closely at many biblical texts that we underrate and we do not know how to go deeper into because they do not fit into our way of thinking and with our own religious convictions. Jesus' listeners knew that the Name of the only God cannot be communicated to just any creature, but, was it necessary to exclude all communion of humankind with God in order to save this certainty and this faith? Would it not be possible to say that God makes himself present within humanity? And precisely the whole Gospel of John emphasizes, together with the divinity of the One Sent by God, God's will to make us divine. On the other hand the adversaries of Jesus remained on the plane of the precepts and the traditions that they should observe in order to be catalogued among those who were good.
Yet it is also a fact that Jesus' statement touches on the theme of the absence of errors in the Scripture. We know that since a century or two ago the character of divine truth that is attributed to the sacred books has been objected to with arguments coming from very diverse sides.
{N}THE ABSENCE OF ERRORS IN THE BIBLE{/}
For a believer the absence of error in the Word of God goes without saying, but even so it is necessary to state clearly what kind of truth we expect from that word. For example, if we compare two stories about the same event in the different gospels we observe numerous contradictions in the details. Compare, for example, [Mt_20,30] and [Mk_10,46]; [Mt_18,1] - [Mt_18,3] and [Mk_9,33] - [Mk_9,35]. We must therefore admit that God did not give an official record of what happened to the authors of the sacred books. The testimonies and the manner of transmitting them orally up until the time in which they were put down in writing obeyed one general rule: the best testimonies always depend in part on the person who sees and who unwillingly gives a certain interpretation of what he saw.
As the modern civilization was developing, even more important difficulties have been arising. In the first place the development of the sciences has taken place, and there has been a large amount of trouble because of the opposition that emerged between the vision of the world and the origins of humankind that science gave and the one that the authors of the Bible wrote. This referred especially to the first chapters of Genesis. Then the Christians have become divided. While the fundamentalists took the story literally, even as far as denying the most established scientific facts, the others had to acknowledge that the truth of the bible story was not in the description of our origins. It is in the place that those pages attributed to the creatures and to humankind in God's plan. See the note in this respect put down in [Gen_1,1].
Later historic difficulties arose. It was necessary to acknowledge that the authors of the Bible did not have our means of research and investigation available in the past. On the other hand they saw in history an illustration of the action of God in history: the picture was true although not all of the events could be verified.
Right away the evolution of morals came. Many moral laws, inherited from the Bible and considered until then as obligatory ones for every person of good faith, were no longer evident for our contemporaries. Should we not forget the sexual prohibitions of the Bible? See the commentary on [1Cor_7,1] in this respect.
The movement for feminine emancipation provoked in its time a terrible objection: the Bible was written totally in the framework of a patriarchal culture. The religious experiences that it tells were in their majority lived, interpreted and told by men, in circumstances when women did not have the means to express themselves nor to manifest their own identity. What is the value of a God'image at the likeness of a dominating male warrior, as it appears in so many pages of the Bible? And does not the proclaimed inferiority of women [1Tim_2,11] - [1Tim_2,15]) throw a blanket of doubt over the whole human message of the Bible?
A last attack came from a more impartial look with respect to the rest of the religions. From the moment in which it was admitted that God effectively foresaw the salvation of all humankind and not only for those who believe and are baptized, what is the purpose of so many discourses, especially in the New Testament, that seem to say that there is no salvation without the Gospel, without the baptism, without the faith in Christ? See the notes put down in [Mk_16,15] and [Rev_22,3] in this respect.
Therefore we must say some words about the Absence of errors in the Scripture.
{N}THE SACRAMENT OF THE WORD{/}
The sacred book is totally a work of God and totally a work of a human author, just as was said in the note about the Inspiration, with regard to [2Tim_3,16]. God did not dictate it. Neither did he place pressure on the author for him to say what he never thought about saying and for him to go against his own culture. The work of the Spirit has been very discreet because the Spirit knows how to make itself our own spirit. God and humans: human authors provided their religious experience and the one of their community, each with its limitations; God made it so that that book occupies its place within a collection where all of the necessary revelation should be inscribed for all those whom He wished to call, so that they know his Only Son. Only starting from that double project, God's and the author's, can one speak of errors or the absence of errors in the Scripture.
We must confess that the habitual use of the term {C}absence of errors{/} in order to refer to this subject is rather unfortunate, since at the starting point one is placed in a defensive position. The adversary attacks: Your Bible contains errors! And one responds as one can. The fundamentalist sticks to his guns; adapting the history told by Di Melo, the archaeologist says to him: they have just found some bones in a ground that is 30,000 years old; your creation of man from only 5,000 years ago is an invention! One moment, responds the fundamentalist, what happens is that God put those bones in that place in order to test our faith. The immense majority of the believers will respond simply that although the inspiration of the author guarantees the truth of the religious message, it does not free it from its human limits nor from the characteristics of his culture. But without a doubt it would be better to deepen into the fact that the Truth is God.
What God is always looking for is to put us in the truth, never to give us truths with which we could make a didactic book, one that would be sufficient enough to look at in order to have always the right response. More than defending the Bible and talking about the absence of errors in a general manner, abstractly, we should ask ourselves if at times the Bible might have induced us to error ourselves, or if it has brought us to make a bad decision. If we approach the text with the faith in sight, it will always let loose the certainty of having touched on the truth. The page, read with faith and placed within the collection of God's words in the Bible, will not lead us wrong. It will be discovered that the whole Old Testament is a long pedagogy of God, that many truths were emerging little by little and that some even were consolidated only with the coming of Jesus. But if we need a key to interpret that long journey of the people of God and to reintroduce some of the more absent and more ignored actors (such as women), it will be found in the person of the Son of God made human. Because God ordered the whole revelation in such a way that it would lead to Him and it is in Him where it ends.
In the text we have quoted from John, Jesus supports himself with a phrase and an exact word. The modern reader has then the right to ask himself if he can also support himself with the same certainty with the words that he finds. But we will never find simple criteria, with an easy application, that permit us to read the inspired words without error. History teaches us that the religious discussions among adversaries that made the same use of the Bible few times led to reconciliation. And when we have to make a decision, how many times have we wondered if we could trust in the biblical word? This was not our worry.
The use of the word of God is like a game that compromises the whole person; its rules remain hidden for the one who looks at the Bible from outside (as the devil does in the Temptation of Jesus). The believer who receives the Bible as a revelation of the divine Wisdom, the same that has been fully manifested in Jesus Christ, will know how to discern when it is necessary. But there will still be room for our own errors, because our culture and our religious experience are not any more certain than those of the past centuries.

{N}1.5:{/} {N}THE SCRIPT AND THE BOOK IN BIBLICAL TIMES{/}
{N}THE SCRIPT{/}
It had been twelve or fifteen centuries since scripture had been invented when Abraham went through the desolate lands of Palestine, going around the cities of Canaan or of the Nile delta; that certainly does not mean that nomads like Abraham had any knowledge of it. In the two tips of the "Fertile Crescent", in Babylon and in Egypt, the needs of commerce had accelerated the invention of graphic systems. In Egypt the {N}hieroglyphics{/} (sacred paintings) had been invented, a system of schematized drawings that corresponded to objects or syllables. In Mesopotamia, there was the {N}cuneiform{/} script (in the shape of wedges: Latin, cuneus); its strokes made with reed on clay represented mainly syllables. The Egyptian script was very much linked to their language, and this made it difficult to adapt it to other languages. All the peoples of Mesopotamia, Syria and Canaan on the other hand, adopted the cuneiform script.
Script had become indispensable for diplomacy, commerce and administration. When Moses led his troop out of Egypt, he avoided the way of the forts where there was an officer who daily took note of all entries and exits. Around those same years, the Egyptians of the royal city of Pharaoh Akhenaton used an Egyptian-Babylonian dictionary for their translations. Books circulated and in the excavations of Palestine and Syria, both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Babylonian writings in cuneiform script have been found.
{N}THE ALPHABET{/}
When, in the tenth century before Christ, Solomon gathered the most learned people of Israel, the era of the alphabet had just started. Script had already existed for twenty centuries, but the writing systems were becoming more and more unsatisfactory: too much effort was required to learn how to read and write. After many trials, a novelty was about to prevail: the alphabet of twenty five to thirty letters, with the distinction of vowels and consonants, an instrument that could be adapted to any language. The demands of commerce in Phoenicia, in the lands of Biblos, of Tyre and of Sidon stimulated investigation which produced results. The alphabet - or one of the Phoenician alphabets - was soon adopted everywhere except in Egypt and mainly in the principalities of the land of Canaan. From it derive all the Western or Semitic scripts (like Arabic or Hebrew).
The biblical texts were then written beginning in that epoch in society when the majority did not know how to read, but when the administration and the Temple could not have been without written texts. In the time of the kings any militar post had at least an officer capable of receiving and sending messages. As regards the Bible, after nine centuries of oral tradition (for the history of Abraham), and after three centuries of much more oral than written tradition (for Moses), they were entering the era of the book.
{N}THE BRICK AND THE PAPYRUS{/}
On what did they write? They wrote on anything, on everything they had at hand: bronze, stone, plaster of the sanctuaries, remnants of ceramics, etc. But from the beginnings, that is from the 30th century  before Christ, two great supports of writing appeared: brick and papyrus.
The peoples of Mesopotamia were great consumers of {N}bricks {/}made of baked clay [Gen 11,3]. Twenty centuries before Christ there was nothing better than bricks to write poems as well as checks on them. Contracts were written and sealed on a brick which was in its turn wrapped in a new coat of clay on which the writing was repeated, then all of this was left to dry slowly. This wise procedure made fraud impossible. So then the annals of the kings as well as the great religious texts were written for eternity; in the eighth century before Christ, more bricks of written documents had been classified in the shelves of the great library of Assurbanipal than would be needed to build the walls.
The Egyptians on their part had used a somewhat lighter material, the {N}papyrus.{/} From the 30th century before Christ a type of reed from the Nile was debarked and with the strips of bark sheets were made that could reach sizes between 40 and 50 cm. Each sheet was made of two layers: in the first the bark strips were horizontal, and in the second, vertical. The first one formed the right side of the sheet, easier to write on since they wrote horizontally, from right to left, -which reveals a conservative spirit-, and from top to bottom: this was the inner part of the scroll. But it was also possible to write on the other side: the scroll was therefore written on both sides [Ezk 2,10]. The normal scroll was composed of twenty sheets stuck together one beside the other, its height being one half of the original size, thus making it 20 cm wide and about 7 meters long.
The only disadvantage of the papyrus, and it is not a small one, is that it deteriorates quickly with humidity. It has hardly been conserved except in Egypt, and here only in very dry regions. But then the dryness makes it very breakable (as is the case with the papyruses kept in the museums), although it is firm when fresh. It was possible to wash away the ink and write a new text, the same as it was done with leather. In the excavations of Palestine frequently a clay seal was found that was used to keep together a bundle of papyruses, but the papyruses had disappeared long time ago.
They used to write in ink [Jer 36,18]; [3Jn 13,1] made with soot and rubber, as our ancestors used to do with the Indian ink; they had a cake of hard ink that was diluted at the time it was to be used. For the titles and the marginal notes they had red ink. They wrote with a cut reed, the tip of which had been chewed. The scribe then arrived with his material [Ezk 9,2], including the palette on which he wrote, the ink cakes and the reed-pens. Normally they wrote sitting like a tailor or kneeling, until the time when, like in Qumran, they preferred to sit in front of long tables.
{N}THE PARCHMENT{/}
Leather was not much used. It was then called {N}parchment{/} [2Tim 4,13], from the name of the city of Pergamum that specialized in the preparation of skins for that purpose. Its use developed during the Christian era, from the moment the exportation of papyrus to the West was made difficult up to the time when paper began to be manufactured. Paper had been invented much earlier by the Chinese and was introduced by the Arabs. Parchment could be used in scrolls, and the Jews had kept this use. The book made up of stitched sheets was used only for commercial needs and to take notes. The book made of folded sheets of papyrus or parchment, cut and glued, was at the time called {N}codex{/}, from the name of the wooden plates with which the covers were made. The Christians, unlike the Jews, immediately adopted the latter for the biblical texts; doubtless we can see here the sign of the social environment to which many of them belonged: people of middle class and merchants, not illiterates, but more interested in the practical aspect than restrained by artistic or literary scruples.
As regards our biblical texts, most of the documents through which the original text has come to us are {C}codices{/} (plural of codex), and these were parchments. Texts of the New Testament written in papyruses, be it in scrolls or fragments, have been found almost exclusively in Egypt. And these papyruses are frequently much older than our oldest parchments.
{N}THE SCRIBES{/}
The use of papyrus, a perishable material, required the  recourse to many scribes in order to recopy the books and other important documents. In the countries of the Middle East the scribe was a learned person, highly considered, frequently a functionary, like Baruch, the secretary -secretary and minister of the king- who became the secretary of Jeremiah [Jer_32,1]; [Jer_35,1]; [Jer_43,1].
It was very different  in the Roman world; cultural tasks were usually entrusted to obscure people there, at times Greek slaves who had a whole tradition behind them. After the barbarian invasions, the work of the scribe was mainly an activity of the monks; they concerned themselves with conserving the riches of ancient thought and that work that demanded as much toil as patience was very suitable to their state. From there comes the Spanish expression: {C}obra de benedictinos (Benedictines' task) {/}to express a huge, long task.
It was always possible for the scribe to commit errors. For that reason, from the highest antiquity controls had been established: thus, for example, every ten lines a mark was placed, and at the end of the book the exact number of lines was noted. Those regulations reached the highest strictness when in the time of Jesus the {N}Masoretes{/} strengthened the controls for any copy of a biblical text. Then all the letters of the book were counted and it was noted which letter was in the middle. This explains how, even when after centuries there may be manuscripts that contain errors, those errors very seldom altered the sense of the text.
The most notable differences between the copies we have available and their originals are often the explanations or annotations added by some scribe to determine exactly the meaning of a word or a phrase that he thought was difficult to understand by the reader. And it would not be strange that the explanation could be erroneous. Usually the scribes showed a great respect for the text, but sometimes they put in the margin either an explanatory note to some expression, or the correction of an error they had committed: a clear example of this is [1Cor_4,6]. In the case of the books of the Old Testament it is much more difficult to speak of commentaries, because those books are at times the result of a long gestation. In that case, the most ancient texts were retaken, combined, reoriented by new authors who acted with full responsibility: it is the last daft of the text, as it entered the Bible, which is an inspired book.

{N}1.6:{/} {N}THE ORIGINAL TEXTS OF THE BIBLE{/}
{N}WHERE ARE THE ORIGINAL TEXTS OF THE BIBLE?{/}
This is the first question that many ask when treating with Scripture. Since the Bible has been translated into all languages, where are the original texts upon which all of these translations are based? Or again, since many translations differ from one another, where are the authentic texts which experts can consult in order to judge which translations are correct?
It is difficult to respond adequately to these questions until we establish that when discussing the Bible the term, "original text," does not mean the same thing as when, for example, experts examine the original text of one of Shakespeare's works.
When we critically examine a modern work, we are dealing with a manuscript written by one or more authors. This manuscript is the original text. The mission of the publisher is to publish this text. If we have suspicions that the editor might have made changes to the original text, we would simply examine the manuscript that the author had written. 
The Bible was born in a completely different context. The majority of Old Testament books went through a long historical process until the final moment when the religious community identified them as witnesses of their religious tradition and decided to put them together with with others. Perhaps that manuscript had passed through many hands, was recopied many times, and was subjected to multiple modifications. At one moment the community recognized the book as authentic and sacred and decided to reproduce it in its present form. For more information, consult the article on The Canon of Scriptures.
The collection of the sacred books of the people of Israel took place during the last four centuries before the Christian era. This collection is known as the TaNaK, that is, in an abbreviated way, the Law-the Prophets-the Writings. We refer to them as the Old Testament. In contrast, the Scriptures of the New Testament went through a relatively short process between the writing of the manuscript and its distribution as a book recognized by the community as sacred. The process for the Gospels lasted between ten and thirty years. The letters of Paul, with some exceptional cases, were not re-edited. It is only probable that two or three of the present epistles may have been formed by taking the more important paragraphs from various letters of Paul. And even though there may have been doubts for three centuries about recognizing some of these books as inspired, even these were not subjected to much modification.
{N}FROM THE COPYISTS TO THE MUSEUM{/}
It should be very evident that in the case of the books of the Bible, we do not possess the original manuscript in the modern sense of this term. We only have copies. The reason is simple. The original manuscripts deteriorated rapidly and copies had to be made of them. For more information, consult the article, "The Book and Scripture," especially the paragraph on "The Scribes."
For many centuries experts have zealously searched for the most ancient documents, because the less any manuscript has been copied, the less chance there is theoretically that it has been corrupted by copyists' errors. Great effort has been made to gather these numerous manuscripts into collections according to their differences in order to discover the pattern of where the errors began. This is the same thing that a teacher does to discover which students have copied from whom. With a little common sense and following the rules of textual criticism, it has been possible to establish which manuscripts are copied from earlier ones and which work is more original.
With regard to the Hebrew Old Testament, Jewish leaders became alarmed in the tenth century of our modern era regarding how many small differences there actually were among the many existing manuscripts. They chose which of these appeared to be most authentic and declared them to be the official texts. They then destroyed the rest! Fortunately, still other ancient manuscripts were later discovered that had survived the bonfire, and these served to correct some errors that were discovered in the official text.
The Greek text of the Old Testament had the disadvantage most times of not being the original text, but only a translation of an original Hebrew manuscript. Frequently the Greek texts were a good translation, but any translation  never has the authority of the original. However there was a great compensation in Greek. Beautiful parchment manuscripts were made in the fourth century of our era which are, therefore, much more ancient than the actual copies of the Hebrew text. In a number of cases the parchment version was much closer to the ancient original Hebrew than was the official Hebrew that we have access to today. These parchments have helped us discover the primitive meaning of many texts.
In the case of the New Testament, textual criticism has produced much more satisfactory results because existing copies date very closely to the time of the authors. We not only possess entire parchment texts of the whole New Testament from the fourth century, but we also have partial texts copied onto papyrus some of which date from the beginning of the second century. These originated scarcely fifty years after the appearance of the book. Among these are included, for example, the epistles, the four Gospels, one or other book, or only a few pages from one New Testament book which had been copied privately by individuals.
This study of manuscripts has been facilitated by the parallel study of all of the written works of Christian authors since the first century. The authors quote and comment on the Bible. They discuss the meaning of the texts or of variations of them which do not manifest the same vision of faith. There is not a single text of the New Testament that has not been quoted by several of these authors. This gives us a means of knowing what they were reading in their Bible, and this is the same as what we read today.
For over a century enormous work has been done to discover the original texts of Scripture in addition to establishing the innumerable small details in which manuscripts differ from one another. This has been a very rewarding effort, even though discussions still continue about the exact text of many verses. Very few places exist where the text has been seriously changed. The result is that we can claim without fear of contradiction that no single text of ancient literature, no sacred text of another religion, has been subjected to such similar critical investigation whereby its authenticity can be established.
{N}WHERE ARE THE ORIGINALS?{/}
The reader may have reached the conclusion that we do not speak of originals, but of our originals. In reality, we are dealing with the most ancient and reliable copies. Whichever great museums and ancient libraries of Europe one visits, one finds manuscripts that originated in Europe or that were brought there from the Middle East by archeological researchers (and at times by thieves). It is not worth going there to check these ancient originals, except perhaps to satisfy one's curiosity, because all have been published. For those desiring to know and to quote the titles, we can name the great and best known codices (Consult the article: The Book and Scripture): The Vaticanus, The Sinaiticus, The Alexandrinus, The Codex of Bezae, as well as the famous papyrus of Bodmer.
Not only the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and its Greek version, but the Greek text of the New Testament as well, are published in economic editions and are available at least in all biblical bookstores. These are editions showing all the variant details existing in the manuscripts and which variants experts have declared to be most probably the best. Moreover, almost all editions indicate in the footnotes those doubtful details of variants found in certain manuscripts. 
Finally, we can conclude that nothing separates us from the Bible "letter" except our personal talents and our effort to learn and to develop our culture. With regard to making the Word of God our own, this is not simply a question of study. We should not forget that this is an inspired book, that is, the instrument of the Holy Spirit, and therefore it is accessible only to those who are open to the Spirit of Jesus.

