Good morning!
I always say that the Septuagint (the Old Testament in Greek) was the Bible of Jesus and the apostles. And I stand by that. This means that they were reading the so-called deuterocanonical books (or often inaccurately called "the apocrypha" ). In fact, Jesus quoted or alluded to several of these in his teaching, but that's a conversation for another day.
The thing is, I've been recently discovering a few Old Testament books that are not even in the Septuagint, but are in the Bibles of our Ethiopian Orthodox and Coptic brothers and sisters. In fact, if you look up their Bible on Amazon, you will get some that advertise it is the most complete Bible in the world! I haven't yet gotten my hands on a complete Coptic or Ethiopian Christian Bible, but in the meantime, I'm reading through some of the documents they include in their OT, that even we Catholics don't have. These documents include The Book of Jubilees (a summary of Genesis, I think, haven't read this one yet) and a collection of Psalms called the Psalms of Solomon. Then there is also the book of Enoch, which has some really interesting apocalyptic/messianic stuff, and which is actually referenced by St. Jude in his NT letter (vv. 14-15)!
Thankfully, though, all Christians have the same New Testament, though there are few variations in where the chapter or verse numbers fall, I'm thinking specifically in the book of Revelation. But remember that ALL of the chapter and verse divisions came much later, I think in the 13th or 14th century. This is important to keep in mind when doing biblical interpretation, since you can't assume that chapter and verse divisions always correctly denote a change in topic or whatever. Case in point, Catholic apologists will argue that there should not be a chapter division in the book of Revelation where chapter 12 begins, because Rev. 11:19 ("And God’s temple in heaven was opened and the Ark of his Covenant was seen in his temple. And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, crashes of thunder, an earthquake, and a great hailstorm." ) should lead right into the description of the vision of the Ark, which IS the Woman with the crown of stars, i.e., Mary is the Ark of the (New) Covenant. We can debate whether the Ark seen in the temple is indeed the same as the sign that appeared in the sky, but the point is, you can't use the chapter division to say it's not.
Well, the real point for today is that when it comes to the Old Testament, we don't all have the same canon, which is kind of eye-opening if one wants to adhere to a doctrine of sola Scriptura - the very doctrine begs the question because what counts as Scripture (for the OT) is not completely agreed upon by all Christians, and in fact those who do accept sola Scriptura find that they must take the minimalist view and have the smallest OT canon, since the more OT books you include, it becomes less and less possible to interpret the OT like a fundamentalist, and of course by including the books in the Catholic OT, you would have to admit that Scripture supports the intercession of the saints, the veneration of relics, and prayers for the dead, etc. (which is essentially the reason why they were taken out by Protestants).
We think we know what "the Bible" is, but the story is longer and more complex that most people know. Don't get me wrong, I have a very high view of Scripture, but that does not require reading it like a fundamentalist (or a Calvinist, or a dispensationalist).
Anyone want to weigh in on this, or fill the rest of us in on who put the chapter and verse divisions and what that was? Anyway know more about that?
Here's a short (about a minute) video I took going around the Holy Column in the church of Santa Prassede. This is the column that Jesus was tied to when he was scourged by Pontius Pilate. They don't always have the barrier down, so you usually don't get to see it from all the way around. I wanted to get video of the whole thing all the way around because I ran across a note in an ancient document that said that those who made a pilgrimage (at that time to the Holy Land, since it was still in Jerusalem) could visit the Holy Column, and could see marks left from the hands of Jesus where he gripped it as he was being whipped. I assume that this is pious legend, but I figured since the column has that dark & light marble, maybe there's a place where the dark parts look like hands. I did not see it, but if you do, let me know!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
My voice was still recovering from a bad cold, so not sounding my best, but this was a great conversation about pilgrimage, for the Jubilee year - more of this coming in other interviews! (FYI, I think I was the third of three guests that day, so you will have to fast forward to find me)
It seems that one way or another we need to talk about different kinds, or different levels of heresy. What I have been calling heresy vs. heterodoxy, others call heresy on fundamental doctrines vs. heresy on less fundamental doctrines. In other words, Heresy with a capital H (over fundamental doctrines like the Trinity and christology) are the kinds of heresies that move one outside the boundaries of what Christianity is, and that's because the very definition of Christianity is defined according to these fundamental doctrines. To refuse to sign the Creed at the Council of Nicaea in 325, or the Council of Constantinople in 381 - and indeed to reject any of the contents of the Creed today - means that a person is NOT a Christian.
So are the non-chalcedonians, such as the miaphysites (including St. Gregory of Narek, and today's Coptic Christians) - are they heretics? Well, like it is with a lot of things, that depends on your definition of heresy. If you include in your definition of ...
As promised, I thought that this would be a good discussion starter here in the community - this is from a conversation I had with my producer at Catholic Culture, around the podcast episodes on St. Gregory of Narek. If you've listened to the first episode on St. Gregory, you know that he is the first and only Doctor of the Church who was not Catholic! What are we to make of this? How do we explain it? Well, it was within the context of me trying to explain it that two really fundamental questions came up, and had to be hashed out between me and my producer. The first question - and this was surprising, given that we had a whole series on The Heresies - the first question is: What is a heresy? And how you answer that has serious implications for the second question, which is: What is the Universal Church? And that has serious implications for ecumenical dialogue, not to mention how we think about our fellow Christians who are not Catholic. So let's take the first question first (and here's ...
