From the desk of the pastor for May 4, 2025

The Lord be with you! A week before Easter we began discussing how to read the Bible well. Having established the many different senses to Scripture, we can now focus on understanding the literal sense and why parts of the Bible can be very challenging for us to read.

When the Catechism tells us that the literal sense depends on sound interpretation, it means that we read with the mindset of the human author first. As human language has changed - Latin became Italian for example - human customs also change. To translate the Bible into English requires choices to be made that can often be surprising. For example, ancient Greek did not express color the way we do so any description using such words can be tricky. Whenever possible translators rely on archeology to establish what ancient texts cannot, such as the locations of cities that no longer exist.

If we follow the traditional dating of the Bible, the Old and New Testaments were written between 1500 BC and AD 100. Originally written in Hebrew and Greek, the Bible must be translated well and understood in the context it was written in. As mentioned above, the very languages and customs involved changed during and after its composition.

Ancient Israel lived amid a variety of cultures and civilizations in what we now call the Ancient Near East. The Ancient Egyptians of the New Kingdom (when Exodus happened) had a different political system than the Egyptians of the Second Intermediate Period (when the Israelites migrated there under Joseph). Fun fact: one argument for Moses being the author of the Torah is that the covenants are written in the structure of New Kingdom political treaties. If the above seems arcane and confusing, it is! It takes years of study to understand and situate the Bible in its historic circumstances.

Although the particular stories of the Bible have their own coherence and meaning that everyone can grasp, the Bible is filled with details that only experts can appreciate. Accordingly, we should use Scripture Commentaries whenever we want to understand everything in a particular pas-sage. When I prepare my homilies, I often read the Gospel in English and Greek with a commentary open.

The belief that the Bible can be read by anyone is correct, but the belief that everyone will be able to understand it equally well is just false. Among our Protestant cousins is the thought that each person’s interpretation of Sacred Scripture is equally true. That is relativism. Moreover, there are many puzzling phrases and details that require careful study.

When we read the Bible we should be humbled. Humbled by God’s Providence, and humbled by our own limitations. If we approach the Word of God with an open mind and heart, we will discover that God has more to say that we can understand. May we desire all the more to know as God would have us.

In His Sacred Heart,

Fr. John