February 1, 2010

To understand Scripture, read Scripture

In my previous post, I listed the various saints, doctors, Fathers, and other Christians whose work I quote in “Who Do You Say That I Am?” As I mentioned in that post, I don’t want to invent any new interpretation or new doctrine; instead, I want to stand on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before us in the Faith.

But the greatest literary giants of Christianity of course are the authors of Scripture itself. These men were theologians of the first order, and unlike any other authors, their work was inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Bible is the primary source for theology and any Catholic work should be soaked in the Sacred Page. And this is true of any Scriptural study as well: you must use the Scriptures to understand the Scriptures. One must always recognize the context in which a biblical book was written – not only the cultural context, but the canonical context. By placing these books in one Bible, the Church tells us that they are all interrelated on a deep level. So if we want to understand what Matthew is saying about Jesus, we must look also to the other biblical books to see what they also say about Jesus.

With that in mind, here is a list of all the biblical books I quote, along with the number of times the book was quoted:

Old Testament

Genesis (13)
Exodus (5)
Leviticus (1)
Deuteronomy (1)
1 Samuel (3)
2 Samuel (3)
1 Kings (3)
2 Maccabees (1)
Psalms (5)
Proverbs (1)
Song of Songs (1)
Isaiah (7)
Jeremiah (4)
Ezekiel (2)
Daniel (1)
Hosea (2)
Micah (1)
Zechariah (1)
Malachi (2)

New Testament

Matthew (109)
Luke (8)
John (9)
Acts (6)
Romans (6)
1 Corinthians (11)
2 Corinthians (2)
Galatians (4)
Ephesians (2)
Philippians (5)
Colossians (5)
Hebrews (1)
James (1)
1 Peter (1)
2 Peter (1)
1 John (4)
Revelation (4)

I’m happy I was able to include such a wide breath of biblical texts. The only omission that might stand out is that I didn’t quote the Gospel of Mark at all. This is mostly because whenever I had a text which was shared by both Matthew and Mark, I always chose Matthew, since that is the basis of the book. No slight was intended to Mark!