But Seriously — Who Holds the Bible’s Copyright?

As Elmer Fudd might say, “Vewy, vewy swowly.” Divine revelation didn’t happen in a blinding flash—such as God dropping the Summa Theologiae on top of a mountain and waiting for people to invent the Latin language so they could read it. (Though He could have given them magical spectacles that would translate it for them….) It seems that God preferred to slowly unfold His personality and His will for us through the course of tangled, messy human history. We might wonder why, and call up the divine customer service line to ask why in heck human nature arrived in the mail without the instructions. I don’t pretend to know what He was thinking here, but I find it aesthetically fitting that our knowledge of God evolved in much the way that animal species did, over a long time and by fits and starts, with sudden leaps whenever God saw fit, until finally the world was ready to receive the final product: in creation, man, in revelation, the Son of Man. God seems to prefer planting seeds to winding up robots.

So we start with traces of a primitive monotheism among some scattered peoples of the world—which might have been long-faded memories of what Adam told his children about the whole “apple incident,” combined with crude deductions that boil down to “Nothing comes from nothing.” But mankind pretty much wandered around with no more than that for quite some time, and this was when he employed the inductive method to discover the hemorrhoid god.

The first incident in Jewish-Christian scriptures that suggests God revealed Himself to us after that is the rather discouraging narrative of Noah. According to the story, the human race went so wrong so fast that God decided to backspace over most of it, leaving only a single righteous family, trapped on a stinky boat with way too many pets. When they landed, they had no more idea of what to do with themselves than the cast of Gilligan’s Island, so God gave them instructions: We call this the Covenant of Noah. The Jews believe that these are the only commandments God gave to the Gentiles—7 of them, instead of 613—and that the rest of us can please God just by keeping them. That’s the reason that Jews don’t generally try to make converts. (Who are we to run around making things harder for people? Feh!) The Jewish Talmud enumerates the 7 laws of Noah as follows:

Most of this sounds fairly obvious and commonsensical—though we might wonder why it was necessary to tell people to stop pulling off pieces of live animals and eating them. They must have gotten into some pretty bad habits while they were still stuck on that ark.

Q. …to fit all those elephants, hippos, rhinos, tree sloths, polar bears, gorillas, lions and moose…

Q. …not to mention breeding pairs of more than 1,000,000 species of insects. Sure they’re mostly small, but those creepy-crawlies add up.

Spoken like a true-believing member of Campus Crusade for Cthulu, complete with a bad case of acne and involuntary celibacy. Maybe you should focus on Onan instead of Noah.

Look, there’s a reason why Catholics don’t read the bible in an exclusively literal sense, and haven’t since the time of Origen (+253). The Church looks at the books of scripture according to the genres in which they were written (history, allegory, wisdom, prophecy, and so on). And this story, clearly, was intended as allegory—which means that on top of some historical content (and there’s flotsam from flood-narratives in the basement of most ancient cultures) the writer piled up details to make a point. Unlike liberal Protestants, we don’t use this principle to explain away Jesus’ miracles and the moral law. Nor are we fundamentalists who take everything in the bible literally—except for “This is my body,” (Luke 22: 19) “Thou art Peter,” (Matthew 16: 18) and “No, your pastor can’t get divorced.” (Cleopatra 7: 14) The Church responded to biblical criticism with appropriate skepticism at first, and accepted the useful parts (like reading original languages and looking for ancient manuscripts), without throwing out the traditional mode of reading the bible in light of how the Church Fathers traditionally understood it.

In the case of the New Testament, the Church had transcribed the books; shouldn’t we own the copyright to our own memoirs? When the list of accepted gospels and epistles was drawn up, there were more surplus candidates milling around than in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, before a primary—some of them inspirational but probably inauthentic, like the Protoevangelium that tells the story of Mary’s childhood; others creepily gnostic, like the “Gospel of Thomas,” which has Jesus using His “superpowers” to wreak revenge on His schoolmates. (That gospel is always popular, since it shows Jesus doing exactly what each of us would really do in His place.) The decision on which books were divinely inspired was based largely on the evidence of the liturgy: which books had been used in churches for services in the most places for the longest. As I like to tell Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to my door: that bible you’re waving at me was codified by a council of Catholic bishops who prayed to Mary and the saints, baptized infants, and venerated the Eucharist. So you could say that as the original, earthly author and editor, the Church has a better claim of knowing how to read it than the reporters at National Geographic—who every Christmas or Easter discover some new and tantalizing scrap of papyrus containing gnostic sex magic tips or Judas’ “To-do” list.

In the case of the Old Testament, the Church draws heavily on how Jews traditionally read their own scriptures—but with one important and obvious difference. We are the descendants of the faction of Jews who accepted Christ as the Messiah and evangelized the gentiles, all the while considering themselves the “faithful remnant” who’d remained true to the faith of Abraham. So we see throughout the Old Testament foreshadowings of Christ, for instance in Abraham’s sacrifice, and Isaiah’s references to the “suffering servant.” The Jews who were skeptical of Jesus believed that they were heroically resisting a blasphemous false prophet who’d tempted them to idolatry. As the Church spread and gained political clout, and Christians began to shamefully mistreat the people from whom they’d gotten monotheism in the first place, there surely was genuine heroism entailed in standing firm. I often wonder how many Jews would be drawn to Jesus if they could separate Him from the sins committed against their great-grandparents in His name….

The version of the Old Testament that Catholics and Orthodox use is different from what Jews use today. Our version, based on the Septuagint translation into Greek, is somewhat longer, and includes some later documents that Jews accepted right up to the time Saint Paul converted—books that illustrate a lot of the mature developments in Judaism which led up to the coming of Christ. The very fact that Christian apostles were using these books may have led the rabbis to eventually reject them. (Since the biblical references to Purgatory can be found in these books, Martin Luther and the Anglicans also excluded them.) Ironically, the Book of Maccabees exists in Catholic bibles but not Jewish ones, and right up until Vatican II we had a Feast of the Maccabees—which means that you could call Chanukah a Catholic holiday. But don’t tell the judges in New York City, or they’ll pull all the menorahs out of the schools.

One, indeed, need to read the Holy Scripture with attention and intelligence in order to be able to tell when the allegorical language is chosen and when, direct.

In the "vine and branches" discourse Jesus blends the image into its true topic, discipleship, so it should be clear to any listener with adult intelligence that "husbandman", "fruit", "branches" refer to God the Father, works of love, and discipleship (John 15:6-10).

In the "door" discourse it is abundantly clear that the language is allegorical: in John 10 verse 1-2 He speaks of a physical door, in verse 9 Jesus says "I am the door", and in verse 11 He already says "I am the good shepherd", explaining the "door" allegory.

In the three accounts of the Last Supper there is no hint of allegory and Jesus actually says to the Apostles "do it". One cannot give a command to "do" an allegory. Surely the Apostles did not take it as an allegory: St. Paul urges us to "discern the body of the Lord" in the Eucharist. Further, in John 6 the physicality of the Eucharistic food and the fact that it at the same time is His flesh "indeed" is stressed.

But a Protestant would engage in such foolishness because to him the Holy Scripture is not the Word of God, but a source of quotes that he combines at will without regard to context, like a child plays with wood blocks. The fog would lift at once if the Fathers of the Church were consulted. How did they understand the Last Supper?

Here are some:

St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Nor doubt that this is true; for He plainly says, This is my body; but rather receive the words of your Savior in faith. For since He is the Truth, He lies not. They rave foolishly then who say that the mystical blessing loses its power of sanctifying, if any remains are left till the following day. For the most holy Body of Christ will not be changed, but the power of blessing and the life giving grace is ever abiding in it. For the life-giving power of God the Father is the only-begotten Word, which was made flesh not ceasing to be the Word, but making the flesh life giving. What then? since we have in us the life of God, the Word of God dwelling in us, will our body be life-giving? But it is one thing for us by the habit of participation to have in ourselves the Son of God, another for Himself to have been made flesh, that is, to have made the body which He took from the pure Virgin His own Body. He must needs then be in a certain manner united to our bodies by His holy Body and precious Blood, which we have received for a life giving blessing in the bread and wine. For lest we should be shocked, seeing the Flesh and Blood placed on the holy altars, God, in compassion to our infirmities, pours into the offerings the power of life, changing them into the reality of His own flesh, that the body of life may be found in us, as it were a certain life-giving seed. He adds, Do this in commemoration of me.
St. John Chrysostom: For this Blood molds in us a royal image, it suffers not our nobleness of soul to waste away, moreover it refreshes the soul, and inspires it with great virtue. This Blood puts to flight the devils, summons angels, and the Lord of angels. This Blood poured forth washed the world, and made heaven open. They that partake of it are built up with heavenly virtues, and arrayed in the royal robes of Christ; yes rather clothed upon by the King Himself. And since if you come clean, you come healthfully; so if polluted by an evil conscience, you come to your own destruction, to pain and torment. For if they who defile the imperial purple are smitten with the same punishment as those who tear it asunder, it is not unreasonable that they who with an unclean heart receive Christ should be beaten with the same stripes as they were who pierced Him with nails.
(from Catena Aurea to Luke 22:19-20)

You could have studied all this for yourself; what prevented you?

Why “this is my body,” and “do this in remembrance of Me?”

It seems rather straightforward to me.

Jesus is instituting a new sacrament, at Passover, to fulfill and take the place of Passover.

At Passover, the Jews remember the Angel of Death “passing over” them as he saw the blood upon their door way.

Jesus Christ is our passover lamb, now “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:” (1st Cor. 5:7) Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world! (John 1:29)

The angel of death will pass over those of us who are protected by the blood of our passover lamb - Jesus Christ. The sacrament of communion fulfills and takes over for the Passover Feast.

So He says, this is my body, this is my blood, do this in remembrance of Me. So we do.

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