Graduate Program in Pastoral Ministries THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 1 Class 1 THE CRITICAL STUDY OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 2 Outline § Orientation to the Course ú Syllabus, website, workbook, readings, library § The Bible ú What it is and where it comes from ú How scholars build the Bible ú The New Testament • How Our Texts Circulated • The Fluidity of the Canon • A Timeline of the Christian Gospels § Principles of Catholic Biblical Interpretation § The Lives of Mark 3 1
The Synoptic Gospels ORIENTATION TO THE COURSE 4 Syllabus 5 Website 6 2
Synoptic Workbook 7 Books 8 Camino 9 3
Library Workbook, pp. 34-35 10 CATHOLIC BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION 11 Impact of the Protestant Reformation (1517–1648) § Reformers in Europe protested the teachings, rituals and structures of the Catholic Church § They sought to base all three on scripture alone; they considered subsequent developments aberrations § Since everyone needed access to scripture, and since the Catholic Church and its Latin translation were suspect, Protestants ² t ranslated the Bible into the vernacular(s) ² encouraged everyone to read it, not just the clergy ² resulting in diverging interpretations of scripture 12 4
The Catholic Response (1517–1948) § Some reforms of teachings, rituals and structures were undertaken, but scripture reforms were resisted until the 20 th century § Catholics asserted that scripture was not the only locus of revelation, but that God continued to guide the Church through its tradition § With regard to the Bible, the Catholic Church ² Retained the Bible in Latin; the first translations into the vernacular were based on the Vulgate rather than the original languages ² This naturally discouraged everyone but clergy and scholars from reading it 13 The Watershed: 1948 ( Divino Afflante Spiritu , Pope Pius XII) In this letter, Pope Pius XII encouraged a fresh approach to the Bible, articulating 5 principles of Catholic biblical interpretation: ² The Bible should be translated into the vernacular from the original languages ² Preference should be given to the “literal sense” of scripture, that is, the historical context and the meaning of the words in that context ² For that reason, we should also pay attention to the literary form and genre of biblical texts and their ancient Near Eastern counterparts; the Bible is not sui generis ² The interpretation of the Bible has never been unanimous ² But the Bible is still inspired: it contains the revelation and self-manifestation of God, but also the human response 14 Dei Verbum Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Vatican II Article 11 “The Bible teaches firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” 15 5
Dei Verbum Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Vatican II Article 12 “…the interpreter of sacred Scripture in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writer really intended and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.” • Literary forms • Historical circumstances of the time of writing • Customary and characteristic patterns which people in that period employed in dealing with each other 16 WHAT THE BIBLE IS AND WHERE IT COMES FROM 17 What the Bible Is ta biblia = the books Where it comes from… 18 6
19 ≠ 20 21 7
TEXT APPARATUS 22 HOW SCHOLARS BUILD THE BIBLE 23 How Scholars Build the Bible § They gather all the available manuscripts evidence § They compare every overlapping verse § If verses differ, they have to make a judgment about which version is earliest § They create a composite text verse by verse in the original language § This is translated for readers today § New manuscript discoveries are folded in 24 8
Eugene Ulrich Chief Editor of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts At work in the scrollery of the Rockefeller Museum, East Jerusalem October 1995 25 4QSamuel a Col. 10 (1 Samuel 10:27 + addition – 11:2) 26 New American Bible official Catholic translation in U.S. 1970 27 9
Ulrich Dissertation 1978 28 New Revised Standard Version official liberal Protestant Bible 1991 29 MANUSCRIPT DISCOVERIES 30 10
Manuscript Discoveries of the 20 th Century The Dead Sea Scrolls 1947–1955 900+ fragmentary mss of the Jewish Bible, apocrypha and sectarian texts Oxyrhynchus 1895–1930 50,000+ fragmentary Greek mss, some of them Christian Nag Hammadi 1945 13 books with 52 separate “tractates” — 4 th century copies of earlier gnostic works 31 32 The Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1 (1QIsa a ) 33 11
Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments bought from the Bedouin 34 The Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 (11QPs a ) 35 Part of the “Thanksgiving Scroll” from Cave 11 (11QH a ) Part of the same scroll, under normal (left) and infrared (right) light 36 12
Fragments of Exodus that belong to the same manuscript (4QpaleoExod m ) Scholars separating the scrolls manuscripts in Jerusalem 37 Published version, with some missing text filled in A reconstructed column of the Exodus manuscript 38 The New Testament How Our Texts Circulated § The “Bible” we know didn’t exist in antiquity • It was too big to fit existing book binding technologies, except in a few rare cases o Of 5,300+ extant NT mss, only 61 contain the entire NT v Of these, only 6-8 contain the entire Bible v And only four of these complete Bibles date to the first 500 years of Christian history o Most of the remaining 5,239+ mss indicate that books were bound in the following groupings: v 4 gospels v Paul v Acts & the catholic epistles v Revelation More than half of all continuous-text Greek copies of NT writings are the Tetraevangelium—the four gospels 39 13
The New Testament How Our Texts Circulated § The “Bible” we know didn’t exist in antiquity • The four “complete” Bibles include books we don’t and sometimes lack books we have (due to lacunae) Codex Sinaiticus Codex Vaticanus Codex Alexandrinus Ephraimi Rescriptus mid-300s c. 350 400s 500s • 15 x 14 inches • 10.6 x 10.6 inches • 12.6 x 10.4 inches • 10.2 x 12.6 inches • most of the LXX (incl. • most of LXX (incl. • entire LXX (incl. apocrypha) • entire LXX (incl. apocrypha; apocrypha) apocrypha, but gaps in + Ps 151 + 3–4 Maccabees + though much is lost) Genesis, Psalms) 14 odes • entire NT + Epistle of • entire NT (but gaps: • entire NT + Epistles of • entire NT Barnabas + Shepherd of Hebrews, Pastorals, Clement + Psalms of Hermas and Revelation) Solomon 40 Codex Vaticanus ca. 350 This manuscript of the Gospel of John lacks the story of the woman caught in adultery. Here is where you’d expect it to be — right after chapter 7. But this manuscript goes right from the end of chapter 7 (a controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees) to John 8:18 (“And Jesus spoke to them, saying: ‘I am the light of the world’”). 41 THE LIVES OF MARK 42 14
The Lives of Mark Peter’s Spirit’s Matthew’s scribe pen summarizer c.30 CE 65–75 75-90 c.130 200 400 Jesus dies Gospel Matt & Lk Papias Origen Augustine composed copy Mk scissors & paste man redactor & author theologian reporter narrator Mark 1555 1863 1901 1919-1945 1956 1970s-80s TODAY John Heinrich William M. Dibelius Willi Rhoads & Michie Tolbert Holtzmann Wrede R. Bultmann Marxsen Calvin Donahue 43 Exercise for Next Class Workbook pp. 43-44 § Mark episode breaks in Workbook version of the Gospel of Mark § Look for causal connections between episodes; mark repetitions of words and scenes to identify these links § Note awkward syntax, grammar or theology in the margins There’s no paper to write; this is an in-Workbook exercise 44 15
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