THE 1310 Lecture 3

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Topics:

• Unity of Scripture and its Parts
• Literary Tools for Old Testament Study

Dei Verbum (cont)

Last time: left off with inerrancy: message of God conveyed by scripture entirely and without error, despite our human "attempts" to mess it up.

Principles for Catholic Biblical Hermeneutics

hermeneutics = interpretation

• Human Author: what did he/she mean to say?
  • Source Criticism: studies the original pieces on which the scriptures were written
  • Form Criticism: studies oral traditions and genres
  • Textual Criticism: studies transcription/scribal errors
  • Redaction Criticism: studies how parts of scripture were assembled
• Divine Author: what is God saying?
• Content and unity of all scripture
  • meanings arise in light of more recently written books

Senses of Scripture

• Literal
  • What did the author say?
  • This also includes morals, figurative meanings, and metaphors that the author was trying to convey to the audience at the time.
• Spiritual (based off Literal)
  • Allegorical (typological): In light of Christ's revelation (e.g., Red Sea is a prefigures baptism)
  • Moral: How we are to act today
  • Anagogical: Signs of the fulfillment of time; eternal significance

Vocabulary

eisegesis

reading into; author injects thoughts into scripture; BAD!

exegesis

reading from; extracting the originally intended meaning from scripture; GOOD!

Tracing Revelation Over Time

• Everything begins with human experience
• News of experience is handed down
  • Typically orally at first
  • Written down later

Ratzinger's "Methods"

• "Method A"
  • Apostles and Church fathers looked at OT in light of experience of Jesus
  • wrote homilies and letters
  • St. Augustine: "NT concealed in OT; OT revealed in NT"
• "Method B"
  • modern historian / critical method
  • compare ancient texts to understand the culture of the time
  • "get in the mind of the author"
  • tends to lose sight of sacredness of scripture
• "Method C"
  • Combine the best of A and B
  • What we're trying to do in this class

Charts for Study

• Ancient Historian vs. Modern Historian (p. 59)
• Chronology of Ancient Israel (p. 11)