This is pretty cool: someone has gone through the entire Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and noted all the biblical references in it. A small example:

Choir: Through the prayers of the Theotokos (Mother of God), Savior, save us.

Bible References:  Galatians 3:24, Saint Luke 1: 46 – 55, Saint Luke 1:42

Deacon: Again and again in peace let us again pray to the Lord.

Bible References:  1 Thessalonians 5:17

Choir: Kyrie, eleison.

Translation:  Lord, have mercy.

Bible References:  Psalms 51:1

Deacon: Help us, save us, have mercy upon us, and protect us, O God, by Your grace.

Bible References:  Psalms 123:3, Psalms 106:47, Saint Mark 9:22

Choir: Amen.

Deacon: Remembering our most holy, pure, blessed, and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and ever virgin Mary, with all the saints, let us commit ourselves and one another, and our whole life to Christ our God.

Bible References:  Saint Luke 1:42

Choir: To You, O Lord.

Bible References:  Acts 20:32

Priest: For Thine is the majesty, and Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory:  of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages.

Bible References:  Revelation 8:12, 1 Chronicles 29:11, Saint Matthew 6:13, Daniel 4:34

Oftentimes Protestant Christians will accuse liturgical Christians such as Catholics or Orthodox of not engaging in “biblical worship”. This page shows that nothing could be further from the truth.

One of the primary fruits of the Enlightenment is the belief that we can put our complete faith in the results of science. If scientific testing shows something, then we can believe it is true without a shadow of a doubt. And many times this is true. There is no reason to doubt the law of gravity nor that the earth revolves around the sun nor countless other findings of science.

However, in the 19th century this assuredness transferred to the realm of Biblical studies. For over a millennium the Church was seen as the final authority on how to interpret Scripture. After the Protestant Reformation, the individual was seen as that authority. With the rise of biblical criticism, the scholar became the final authority in all matters biblical. In the world of biblical scholarship, certain theories are sacred cows that cannot be challenged, because the “assured results of scholarship” have magisterially declared that they must be true (the two-source hypothesis comes to mind). Yet the more you study such theories, the more you realize that many of them are built on questionable presuppositions and weak scholarship. Most of the “assured results” are anything but. I thought of this when I read this article about a fascinating discovery:

Bible Possibly Written Centuries Earlier, Text Suggests

Scientists have discovered the earliest known Hebrew writing — an inscription dating from the 10th century B.C., during the period of King David’s reign.

The breakthrough could mean that portions of the Bible were written centuries earlier than previously thought. (The Bible’s Old Testament is thought to have been first written down in an ancient form of Hebrew.)

Until now, many scholars have held that the Hebrew Bible originated in the 6th century B.C., because Hebrew writing was thought to stretch back no further. But the newly deciphered Hebrew text is about four centuries older, scientists announced this month.

“It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research,” said Gershon Galil, a professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, who deciphered the ancient text.

This is very typical; for a long time some scholars questioned if King David really existed, because there was no proof of him anywhere but in the Bible. Then an inscription was found outside of Israel which mentioned King David, and that theory was quickly discarded.

My point is not to say that biblical scholarship is worthless. Far from it: we have learned many invaluable things about Biblical times over the past two centuries. However, problems arise when the results of scholarship are elevated to magisterial status. The Holy Spirit has guaranteed to protect the Church, not PhD’s, from error, so we should be careful where we place our faith.

One of the most profound sections of the entire Bible is the first three chapters of Genesis. I tell my kids that everything we need to know about life can be found in those chapters, if we look carefully enough. Which is why it is so sad that it has become a battleground for a false dichotomy between faith and science and a litmus test for determining one’s political views.

Anglican bishop N.T. Wright (one of my favorite Scripture scholars) gives some good advice on how to read these chapters properly:

H/t: Dr. Beckwith

Today is the start of Ordinary season, when we come off the high of Christmas and everything (liturgical) turns green and “ordinary”. So what is the Gospel reading to start off this season? Well, it is anything but ordinary:

After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God:

“This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”

As he passed by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea; they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Then they left their nets and followed him. He walked along a little farther and saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They too were in a boat mending their nets. Then he called them.

So they left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed him. (Mark 1:14-20)

Although Mark does use rather ordinary language to describe this scene, think about the extraordinary step that these four men – Peter, Andrew, James and John – just took. They left their entire livelihood to take up with an itinerant preacher who, up to this point, had done nothing really spectacular and had no real following. Yet they answered Christ’s call and followed him. We have witnessed much greater works than they had up to this point – but are we following his call?

As our days become more ordinary, let us pray that we might make the extraordinary step each day of Ordinary time of leaving everything behind to follow Christ.

The general rule in Internet writing is “short is sweet”. Because most people are reading these articles on their computer screen (or even their cell phone screen) it is a good idea to keep articles relatively brief or else you will lose most readers.

I’ve mentioned before that when I started blogging I decided to try to keep my blogs to less than 400 words if possible. I often break that barrier, but I still try to keep all posts under 1,000 words unless I just really can’t shut up. The Internet, generally, isn’t a very conducive medium for long, drawn-out arguments; most people aren’t going to stay that long at one site. Conventional wisdom says that the longer an article is, the less likely it is to be read or commented on.

So what if I told you someone wrote an Internet article that was over 18,000 words and included almost 100 footnotes? And that it had generated, at last count, almost 700 comments? Sounds interesting, even if a bit insane, does it not?

Bryan Cross over at Called to Communion is the author of such audacity and the topic of the article is Solo Scriptura vs. Sola Scriptura. Over the past decade or so, Catholic apologists have been very successful showing the weaknesses of a “Bible Alone” approach to authority as it is practiced by Protestants today; common sense alone shows that having the Bible as the only authority is simply illogical. In response, Keith Mathison has crafted a Protestant reply: he has distinguished between Solo Scriptura and Sola Scriptura. The former, which is practiced by most Protestants over the past 150 years, takes the Bible as the only authority. The latter, on the other hand, accepts the Bible as the only infallible authority. True followers of Sola Scriptura, according to Mathison, accept other authorities, such as church councils and creeds, but they accept only Scripture as infallible. Mathison’s argument is a strong one, and it is good to see Protestants recognizing the faults in how their conferees have practiced their faith in the past two centuries.

However, Cross in his article details (in great detail!) why ultimately both Solo Scriptura and Sola Scriptura end up with the same interpretive authority: oneself. It is only through apostolic succession, argues Cross, that one can escape this conundrum and have a truly independent authority.

I recommend the article highly. I printed it out (25 pages in 10-point type!) and read it at my leisure rather than burn out my eyeballs staring at the computer screen. This article and the ensuing discussion gives me hope that the Internet hasn’t completely made us stupid yet!

I have recently been engaged in a study of the book of Hebrews, which has coincided with a class I recently taught on the usage of the Old Testament by Christ and the writers of the New Testament. The author of Hebrews, of course, uses the Old Testament copiously throughout his letter. What I found interesting is that his use of the Old Testament goes against everything you learn in a Biblical Studies class at almost any Catholic theology school in this country.

For example, in Chapter 1 of Hebrews, the author (I really wish we know his name, so I could stop writing “the author”) is defending the divinity of Christ, and in verse 8 he refers to Christ as “God” – one of only three times in the New Testament that Christ is explicitly called “God” (cf. John 1:1 and 20:28). He uses Psalm 45:7-8 to do so, writing,

[to] the Son [God says]: “Your throne, O God, stands forever and ever; and a righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom. You loved justice and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions”

Now any first-year theology student can tell you that Psalm 45 isn’t God talking to “the Son”, but is instead an unknown Psalmist speaking to a king and using the term “god” hyperbolically. Yet it is clear from the context that Hebrews is using it to defend the divinity of Christ.

Later, the author of Hebrews does it again, when in Chapter 2 he reinterprets Psalm 8 to prove that Christ is superior to the angels. He writes,

Instead, someone has testified somewhere: “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor, subjecting all things under his feet.” In “subjecting” all things (to him), he left nothing not “subject to him.” Yet at present we do not see “all things subject to him,” but we do see Jesus “crowned with glory and honor” because he suffered death, he who “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels,” that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

Not only doesn’t he know the exact reference (“someone has testified somewhere”? – try that phrase in Biblical Studies 101 sometime), he changes the clear literal meaning of the Psalm to fit his argument (I think they call that “eisegesis”). Instead of seeing “son of man” as a reference to mankind in general, he takes it to refer directly to Christ, thus showing how the incarnation only made him temporarily lower than the angels. Even the part that he translates “for a little while” isn’t the meaning of the original Psalm; instead it really means “to a small extent”. Boy, I can’t see this guy even making it through the first semester at most theology schools.

Why do I write this? Am I questioning Holy Scripture? No, the opposite: I am questioning the presuppositions at most theology schools, especially when it comes to biblical studies. The Church has always taught that the literal sense of a passage is the foundation for its spiritual meaning. However, for too long biblical scholars have studied the literal sense completely divorced from any spiritual meaning. They have treated the Bible like a cadaver to be dissected rather than as a living word which has multiple meanings.

The first Christians and the Fathers of the Church understood this and they reveled in reinterpreting Old Testament passages in the light of Christ. The original Psalmist might have used the term “God” to refer to an earthly king, but the Holy Spirit inspired him to make that choice – a choice the same Holy Spirit would exploit in Hebrews to proclaim the divinity of Christ. The author of Psalm 8 might have meant all of humanity when he used the phrase “son of man”, but the Holy Spirit led him to use that specific phrase and could then use it to refer to Christ in Hebrews. These are legitimate interpretations of Scripture in the light of Christian Revelation.

Does this mean that the first Christians and Fathers of the Church ignored the literal sense of those passages? Not at all; instead they saw that the literal sense was only one level of meaning – and often not even the most important meaning. Like the author of Hebrews, they understood that all passages of the Scriptures ultimately point to Christ and all must be read in the light of his saving mysteries.

We too should read the Bible like the author of the Hebrews did, finding Jesus throughout the pages of God’s Word.

I decided to take my own advice this morning and read the Scriptures aloud. So what is today’s Gospel? The geneaology of Jesus.

My tongue is still tied up on Amminadab…

I came across a wonderful post over at Preachers Institute called “AAA: Reading the Bible the Orthodox Way“, which I would rename simply “AAA: Reading the Bible the Christian Way”, as the suggestions in it should apply to all Christians. Fr. Peck breaks down the reading of Scripture into three basic steps, easily remembered by “AAA”:

ALOUD – Read it aloud;

APPLY it to yourself;

ACT on it immediately.

I think most people will trip up on that first one: “Read it aloud”? Why? Fr. Peck notes,

Read it aloud. The Scriptures are literature, and literature, believe it or not, is written to be read aloud. Try reading Shakespeare or Milton aloud and you’ll discover things which you missed before. Likewise, the Scriptures were written to be read aloud, to inspire faith in the listener, not the reader.

I can vouch for this statement. When I first went to read Milton’s Paradise Lost I had a hard time getting through it. But then I read somewhere that reading it aloud would make my reading more fruitful, so I tried it. Surprisingly (at least to me), I was able to follow the text much more closely by reading it aloud. Reading aloud is very foreign to our modern culture, but it was standard practice in Biblical times and even beyond. In the fourth century, St. Augustine marveled that St. Ambrose was able to read without moving his lips! This was practically unheard of in Augustine’s time. Try reading the Bible sometime aloud – I think you’ll be surprised at the difference.

Fr. Peck’s other suggestions are more familiar, but no less vital. We need to apply the words of Scripture to our own lives. As the Letter to the Hebrews states, “the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). Reading the Bible should change your life.

Also, we need to act on the words of Scripture immediately. The death of the spiritual life is procrastination. After reading a passage of Scripture, you should make an immediate resolution as to how you will apply it to your life and then do it. Waiting until later means ignoring it.

The video is a joke, but sadly, the “Conservative Bible” is not:

H/t: The American Catholic

Heard from my son the other day: “Dad, the Old Testament is like a HUGE Advent!”

I recently gave a two-part class at my parish entitled “Encountering Christ in the Scriptures: Reading the Bible Spiritually”.

The purpose of this class is to help Catholics read the Bible fruitfully. Too often the main focus of Scripture studies over the past few decades has been historical and scholarly details – who wrote this book, when did he write it, why did he write it? Those are important questions, but they are not questions which help the typical Catholic to draw closer to Christ and live a more fulfilling life.

These questions also neglect the intentions of the other author of the Scriptures – the Holy Spirit. My class is thus directed towards a “spiritual study” of the Bible, and the key to this study is encountering Christ in the pages of Scripture. I discuss how Old Testament figures such as Adam and Moses allow us to understand Christ better and deepen our knowledge of him. We see how all the Scriptures are directed towards Christ (see Luke 24:27). And all of this is done within the Church and as part of a sacramental life.

Here is a short (3 1/2 minute) sample from the class, where I talk about how the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 helps us to encounter Christ on the Cross:

You can listen to both classes in their entirety here and here. The first class is more theoretical – what does it mean to do a spiritual study, how do we do it? The second class includes practical applications of the theory. Each class is about 1 1/2 hours in length.

“[Christianity] is not a new philosophy or a new form of morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ…We can…encounter Christ in reading Holy Scripture, in prayer, and in the liturgical life of the Church – touch Christ’s heart and feel that Christ touches ours. And it is only in this personal relationship with Christ, in this meeting with the Risen One, that we are truly Christian.” – Pope Benedict XVI

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus doing something he rarely did during his ministry:

Amen, I say to you,
among those born of women
there has been none greater than John the Baptist
(Matthew 11:11)

So what is so rare about this statement? Jesus is praising someone! If you look through the Gospels, he scarcely ever praises others – and the few he praises, such as the centurion (Matthew 8:10) or the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:28), are usually those not considered part of the people of God. He even follows his praise of John by saying, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (I can just see John thinking, “thanks a lot for the compliment, Jesus!”)

This reticence to dispense praise goes against the spirit of our age. How often do we hear from the pulpit how great our parish is? How often are we told to lavish praise on our children? How often is the slightest accomplishment praised as if it were equivalent to landing on the moon? Yet Jesus felt no need to praise other people. Why is that?

I think part of the reason is simply cultural. Christ did not live in a time in which the praise was given freely. If he had been the equivalent of the modern glad-handing salesman, most of his contemporaries would have thought him crazy.

But I think his restraint in giving out compliments goes deeper than that. Christ recognizes no one is good but God alone (Matthew 19:17); he knows that any good someone does is due to God’s grace. See what happens after Peter makes his confession of faith – a confession no one else was able at this point to make:

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father (Matthew 16:17)

Jesus doesn’t say, “Great job Simon! You really are a bright guy! I’m so happy that you are part of my team!” No, Jesus instead points to the true source of Peter’s enlightenment: God.

We are complimented and praised so much in our day that it is easy to begin to think we are the source of our goodness. But this is a lie from the devil, one that he has been telling since the time of Adam and Eve. Anything good we do, any strength we have, any accomplishment we achieve: they all have their source in God alone.

To Him alone be praise and glory and honor.

It should not be this difficult. For all my seventeen and a half years as a Catholic, I have been dissatisfied with the selection of good study Bibles available for Catholics. I resigned myself to this plight long ago, but it has reared its ugly head now that I am looking to buy a good study Bible for my soon-to-be-teenage daughter. Here are my requirements:

Readable, yet respectful, translation: The “Good News Bible” is readable, but not respectable. The King James Version is respectful, yet not readable. I want a translation where I don’t trip over the antiquated words (and in my view, “thee” and “thou” are antiquated), but also don’t get distracted because the wording is too simplified or bland. My personal favorite translation is The Jerusalem Bible.

Good format: I would like the pages to not be whisper-thin and the text be in a clean, decent-sized font. Also, there should be decent margins for note-taking. The Catholic Study Bible is a good example of how a good study Bible is formatted (unfortunately, it doesn’t qualify on the other counts).

Faithful, traditional notes: I’m tired of Bible footnotes which, at worst, contradict or question Church teaching, and at best focus exclusively on source criticism. Reading the Bible fruitfully doesn’t just involve knowing who wrote a text and in what context. It also involves understanding a passage in connection with the rest of the Bible and understanding how it has been interpreted throughout the history of the Church.

Years of searching have been fruitless, and it doesn’t seem to me that my requirements are that strenuous. I currently use the Catholic Truth Society’s New Catholic Bible (available only in the UK), which has my favorite translations – the Jerusalem Bible with the Grail Psalter – and uses a beautiful font and clean layout. However, its notes are subpar and there are tiny margins for notetaking.

Perhaps I should just have the standards of this esteemed bible scholar:

I would wager to bet that almost every American feels confident that they know who Jesus is. However, if you surveyed Americans about his characteristics, I’d also be willing to bet that the image of Jesus most commonly held would look little like the Jesus presented in the Gospels. The American Jesus would be a tolerant, meek, slightly-effeminate preacher who only said nice things to everyone except those mean nasty religious leaders. He never said anything offensive and surely never said anything threatening.

I thought of this when I read the Gospel reading for today. Or, more precisely, when I read what was NOT included in today’s Gospel. The reading is Matthew 21,24-27, which says:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.
And everyone who listens to these words of mine
but does not act on them
will be like a fool who built his house on sand.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”

However, whenever a reading skips verses I like to go ahead and read them on my own so that I get the full context of the passage. In this case the skipped verses are 22-23, in which Jesus states:

Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’

Not exactly a tolerant meek nonthreatening Jesus, is it?

I understand that perhaps those who chose the readings for today did not think verses 22-23 fit the season of Advent. But I think it is problematic when we take out the “hard” sayings of Jesus from our readings. We already tend to downplay the difficult statements of Christ in order to live more comfortably (how often do we try to ignore the fact that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to fit through the eye of a needle?), so I think it would be useful to us all if we had to hear these passages during the Mass – to remind us that Jesus is not who we think he is.

Ten years ago, Ignatius Press released the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, which included the RSV translation of Matthew along with a commentary by Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch. I immediately snatched it up and have referred to it often over the years.

However, I quickly realized that Ignatius would be releasing each book of the New Testament separately and I would prefer to have the entire New Testament text and commentary in one book. So I decided to wait, guessing that eventually they would release a version that included all the books of the New Testament in one book.

My patience is about to pay off, as I just noticed that Amazon is accepting pre-orders for the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament. My long wait is almost over.