The Hermeneutic of Continuity

In the combox of the post " Telling the truth - a new corrected translation ", Lawrence the Roman writes concerning the new corrected ICEl translation of accipiens et hunc praeclarum calicem in sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas : Jesus Christ did not take “a precious chalice". "He the cup" (I Cor 11: 25) "He took a cup" (Matt 26:27) "He cup a cup" (Mark 14:23 "He did the same with the cup after supper.." (Luke: 22:20) "The inspired books teach the truth. Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confined to the Sacred Scriptures." (Catechism of the Catholic Church No. 107) Just as the Sacred Scripture is the “soul of theology” it should also be the “soul of the Liturgy”. Let’s not...

Baronius Press have published a newly typeset edition in four volumes of St Thomas Aquinas' Catena Aurea , as translated into English by the Venerable John Henry Newman. I was very excited to receive a copy of this recently. " Catena Aurea " means "golden chain" and the work consists of a running commentary on the four gospels, taken from the Fathers of the Church. It thus provides a sure guide to the spiritual sense of the gospels and the apostolic tradition in relation to their interpretation. The intrinsic quality of the work is remarkable: the theological genius of St Thomas Aquinas is applied to the selection of quotations from the Fathers, and summaries of their teaching. He was commissioned to compile the commentary by Pope Urban IV. There could scarcely be a better translator than Newman, a highly competent classicist in his own right, and a master of the use of the English language. In his preface to the 1841 edition, Newman wrote: [...] it is impossib...

There is a recent development at the ever excellent New Advent website. The Bible is presented in parallel columns: Greek on the left, English in the middle and the Latin Vulgate on the right. Navigation is provided by a list of all the books at the top and a list of chapters of the current book underneath. The English version is the Douai Rheims with the comments by Bishop Challoner. I am filled with admiration for Kevin Knight and others who help with the site. Their dedication has provided yet another superb resource for those who wish to deepen their faith. Rather than presume that everybody knows, I should add that New Advent also has the texts in English of many of the major works of the Fathers of the Church , the full texts of the 1909 Catholic Encyclopaedia , and the Summa Theologica in English, as well as many other articles of interest. The homepage is nowadays a blog roundup which offers a useful starting-point for good posts on other Catholic blogs. H/T Patricius at Si...

Baronius Press recently sent me a copy of their magnificent new Bible. I have kept it carefully on the table in my reception room downstairs and shown it to some admiring parishioners after weekday Mass. The Bible has the Clementine Vulgate in parallel columns with the Douai-Rheims translation with the notes by Bishop Richard Challoner. The Clementine Vulgate is named after Pope Clement VIII: the Council of Trent taught that the Vulgate was authentic and ordered that a standard text should be produced. The first effort, by Pope Sixtus V suffered from a number of errors and the revision produced under Clement VIII became the standard. The Douai-Rheims translation was a faithful and literal translation of the vulgate, making it an excellent tool for those who wish to follow the Latin text. The production of a bible with both versions side-by-side is a great gift to the Christian faithful. The Bible is beautifully produced: it is bound in dark green leather with ornate gold blocking on t...

Commenting on the previous post, Kevin Edgecomb has very kindly sent a link to an online collection of ancient and modern lectionaries, both Western and Eastern which he has compiled. See Lectionaries Old and New . He observes: Most often, the readings (in the original languages) will engage in wordplay, as in the numerous readings involving crowns on St Stephen's day (stephanos=crown), and so on. It is the liturgical voice of the Church, as canonical as anything can possibly be, directing the hearing of the people to a depth of reading that the black-and-white printed pages convey. The Church has always done as Blake said he did: "Both read the Bible day & night / But thou readst black where I read white."

A big hat tip to Fr Ray Blake for passing on news of the Codex Sinaiticus project . The Codex Sinaiticus was written between 330 and 350. It contains the whole of the New Testament and about half of the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) together with the epistle of Barnabas and the "Shepherd" of Hermas. the website has more about the content . The British Library, the National Library of Russia, St Catherine's Monastery, and Leipzig Univeristy Library are collaborating on a project which involves historical research into the text, conservation of it, and digital photography of each of the leaves. This means that the codex can be reunited "virtually" on the website. The photographs of the leaves are taken with standard, evenly distributed lighting, and with "raking" light, i.e. light from an angle which shows more clearly the physical characteristics of the leaves. A further project has been a careful digital transcription of the text, using collating ...

Family Publications have kindly sent me a review copy of their new publication " St Paul Prayer Book." Produced for the Year of St Paul, this little prayer book helps the ordinary Catholic in their devotion to St Paul by picking out some of the most important themes in St Paul's life and preaching and making them the focus of prayer. Handsomely produced with glossy paper and colour illustrations throughout, this will be a good antidote to the "St Paul didn't really believe in the divinity of Christ" school of thought. The list price is £4.50 but there are substantial discounts for schools and parishes for bulk purchases. Order from Family Publications .

A friend from my Wonersh days back in the late 1970's, Canon Michael Lewis of Menevia Diocese, has kindly sent me a copy of his pamphlet "The Depths of Scripture. The Bible in the Light of the Catechism." which has recently been published by the Catholic Truth Society (CTS) in its "Deeper Christianity Series." Canon Lewis has provided a balanced and truly Catholic introduction to the Scriptures in this very sound guide that is underpinned by a love of the Hebrew language and of the Fathers of the Church, without ever losing the ordinary reader. There are many insights that prompted me to stop and think. For example, he says: Strangely enough, there is one mystery of Christ that is often overlooked: the mystery of Christ as the perfect reader of Scripture. We forget all to easily that the incarnate Word himself read and loved the Scriptures as he received them as a child, from within the community of the Jewish people. The way in which Christ read the Scriptures...

Westminster Diocese is awash with rumblings about a talk given last Wednesday at the All Saints Pastoral Centre, London Colney to over 200 priests by Fr Jerome Murphy-O'Connor (the Cardinal's cousin) on "Paul the Pastor". It does not sound good. The talk was not given from a prepared script nor was it recorded and therefore I can only go by what I am told by those who were there. Here are some key points that I have summarised from the accounts of many priests. If anyone wishes to offer corrections of serious errors of fact, I will be happy to amend the post. ******************** St Paul didn't believe in the divinity of Christ - he didn't deny it but his thought hadn't taken him that far. For Paul, Jesus was the model man - he showed us what we are capable of, by the example of his life. [ Cp. the Office of Readings for today in the Liturgia Horarum: St Gregory of Nyssa "On Christian Perfection", beginning "More than anyone, St Paul underst...

The Congregation for the clergy has a good collection of documents available on its website and has an email news service (low traffic) to advise of updates. The latest one came the other day with a letter from Cardinal Hummes. I think that this is a great way for the Vatican to use IT to assist priests and have written to thank the good Cardinal. Vatican, on the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception Dear Priests, Deacons and Catechists: The Congregation for the Clergy, always attentive to your present needs in the field of formation, wants to introduce to you its new IT services as a further assistance in the ministerial and catechetical tasks. Besides the usual themes that - since that day of the solemnity of Our Immaulate Mother of 1997 – were always present in the web, in the “Clerus.org” site ( www.clerus.org ) we have now decided to expand the electronic library, which represents for all of you a valuable means for studying and preaching. You will also realise that, through ...

The University of Michigan has the text of the RSV online with some useful tools (proximity and boolean searches). Crosswalk also has various bible study tools including the text of the RSV. (Thanks to commenters.)

Earlier this month, I mentioned that the RSV Catholic edition of the Bible was online. Thank goodness it is! Today I noticed via John Three Sixteen that the Virginia etext version of the non-Catholic RSV has now been removed because of the assertion of copyright by the NCCCUSA: We regret that we are unable to host the Revised Standard Version of the Bible on our website any longer. We were recently contacted by the National Council of Churches of Christ ( http://www.ncccusa.org/ ), who own the copyright for the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in the USA. They have asked us to remove the text from our website, and we have complied with their request. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. The NCCCUSA owns the copyright to the RSV and the NRSV. It has a page for its Permissions Policy which seems to rule out the possibility of anyone publishing the texts online. On the Bible menu page, it says: The Bible Translation and Utilization program ministry seeks: to encour...

For ages now, I have had the RSV bible from Etext Center on my Firefox toolbar. Thanks to PhatCatholic , I learn that the Catholic edition is now online. It is well implemented with all the books listed on a single screen. Each book opens up quickly as one page with anchor links to individual chapters. The bonus is that it is far quicker than the Etext version.

One or two people have asked me what I think about The Gospel According to Judas . To be honest, it was on the list of things to think about when some rather more important tasks had been tackled. Back from an afternoon's walk to Aylesford, I cooked up something to eat and read the Catholic Herald . They have a good article on it which got me looking on the internet. Courtesy of The Cafeteria is Closed , I found the article by Fr Paul Mankowski which the Herald had quoted. In his remarks on the gospel according to judas , Mankowski offers the following clarfications: The Pope did not "bless" the Archer-Moloney novel. The Pontifical Biblical Institute provided the bottled water at the speaker's rostrum for the Archer-Moloney press conference. Its scholars had nothing whatever to do with the book's content. The Archer-Moloney novel was not "published with Vatican approval." No biblical scholar, including my former colleague Fr. Frank Moloney, believes Fr. ...

After Fr Hugh MacKenzie had led us through the question of realism in Catholic philosophy, Wednesday morning saw us taken in a different direction by the paper of Fr Dominic Rolls, part time lecturer in scripture at St John's Seminary, Wonersh and parish priest at Dorking . Fr Rolls spoke of the Psalms, and particularly how they show the "quickening touch of the Living God upon man as a wise and loving relationship continuing into eternity." The lecture focussed on the nature of revelation as the work of God in his wisdom and love upon the soul of the human person, teaching and drawing us to himself in the truth. The written word of the Bible is inspired by God as the authoritative communication of his living wisdom, always looking toward "the one who is to come." Fr Rolls used psalms 8 and 135 to illustrate the dignity of the human person and the revelation of God through the history of his people. The discussion raised questions about the nature of inspirat...

Interesting post from Gerald Augustinus about a Bible version that tailors itself to your name. See The Bible is all about me . You can get the picture from a couple of examples that came up for me: John 15:15 Fr Tim Finigan is a friend of Christ. No longer do I call Fr Tim Finigan a servant, for a servant doesn't know what his lord does. But I have called Fr Tim Finigan a friend, for everything that I heard from My Father, I have made known to Fr Tim Finigan. II Cor. 2:14 Fr Tim Finigan is led triumphantly by Christ. But thanks be to God, who always leads Fr Tim Finigan in triumph in Christ, and reveals through Fr Tim Finigan the sweet aroma of His knowledge in every place. I can see the point of encouraging people to understand that the scriptures apply to them personally and this kind of thing could (sparingly) be used as a homiletic device, perhaps. However, the rather self-indulgent feel of overdoing the personalisation is accentuated when you discover that the Personal Pr...

A commenter says (of St Jerome's translation of Genesis 3.15) "That is not what the lectionary says." I am sure he/she is right, whichever lectionary is used. In fact, the Nova Vulgata , the Church's new official translation of the Bible in Latin, translates the Hebrew with the neuter ipsum . Here is the (old) Vulgate text again for the sake of reference: Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem et semen tuum et semen illius ipsa conteret caput tuum et tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius. (I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.) The word ipsa translates an epicene Hebrew personal pronoun: one that has only one form to denote either male or female. It can legitimately be translated either as "he", "she", or "it." In one place, St Jerome quoted the Vetus Latina version which gives ipse . (Lib. Quaest. Heb. in Gen. PL 23.943) and this has been t...