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Pope Urges Prayerful Reading of Bible

Amen to that. Reading the Bible did wonders for Martin Luther!

Ping to check out the thread later

The article quotes Benedict as having said "the central nucleus of Origen's immense literary works consists in his 'three-pronged reading' of the Bible." He further states that "the second prong was reading Scripture along with its most famous commentaries". Let's think about this for a second. Let's even lay aside the obvious question, "How does Benedict know how Origen went about his studies?"

Origen lived from about 155 A.D. to about 254 A.D. How many commentaries could possibly have existed? Certainly there were a few who put to paper their ideas (Ignatius, Polycarp, Barnabas, Clement, etc.), but were these really commentaries? Commentaries of what? Scripture?

According to the article, Benedict "explained Origen's methodology in studying sacred Scripture". The RCC claims that the New Testament was not cannonized until its council of Trent in 1545 A.D. Prior to that, we are to believe that all of Christendom was in a daze of confusion as to which writings were authentic and authoritative. If this is the case, what Scripture could Origen possibly have had around 200 A.D.? At best he'd have had a collection of letters and writings from a variety of sources, but without the guidance of the RCC, how would he have known which were inspired and which were fraud?

It seems that Benedict's own words drive nails in the coffin of oft debunked RCC positions. For starters, the RCC did not exist at the time of Origen. Yes, there was a church at Rome, but it had not yet morphed into what would become the RCC. Christians, at the time of Origen, were under persecution. Constantine hadn't yet "embraced" Christianity, and the church at Rome had not yet become vogue with the Roman elite. Hence it had not yet gained political influence, and its paganization had not yet begun.

Next, the full set of letters that would become the New Testament were in circulation among and between the many congregations of Believers. The vast majority of such letters were generally accepted as inspired, authoritative, and known to be authentic. Early church "theologians", such as Origen, quoted liberally from the letters that would be included in the New Testament. In fact, the entirety of the New Testament could be assembled from the writings of these early authors. So the reality is that the books and epistles that would eventually be canonized as New Testament Scripture were understood to be such from the very earliest time. No "council" 14 centuries after the fact was necessary.

The idea that there could be many and various possible meanings and translations (see the "first prong") is ridiculous. While translations do vary, the differences are in nuance and word selection. Seldom is there a wide difference in meaning. Could it be that Benny wants to sow suspicion in the minds of his flock? Is his intent in sowing this suspicion to provide a "justified" escape from the many conflicts and contradictions between RCC doctrine and actual Scripture?

Why would Benedict want to promote the idea of reading Scripture alongside the "most famous commentaries" (second prong)? Should we substitute the word "catholic" for "famous"? Could it be that ol' Benedict wants to be sure that if his "faithful" actually do start reading the Bible, they have a catholic guidebook next to them to "clarify" the discrepancies?

What about the "third prong" that Benedict assigns to Origen? Frankly I found the statements made to be mostly gibberish. However, the key statement is, There is the 'literal' sense, but this hides depths that are not apparent upon a first reading. Allow me to translate this into plain English: "Listen to the RCC, and don't believe your lyin' eyes!" Basically, Benedict doesn't want his flock to take the Bible at its Word. The "deeper" meanings (read, contradictory) require more "insight" (read, purposeful misrepresentation).

I am very encouraged by this message from Benedict. It means that more and more catholics are reading the Bible. Let's pray that the Truth will set more and more free!

Wow! Bump to the top of the page. I love this!

Origen takes every opportunity to mention the various senses of sacred Scripture that help or express a way of growth in faith; There is the 'literal' sense, but this hides depths that are not apparent upon a first reading; the second dimension is the 'moral' sense: what we must do as we live the Word; and in the end we have the 'spiritual' sense, the unity of Scripture in its diversity."

Food for thought for "the Bible sez....." crowd.

in the first column, he would put the Hebrew original. And in five parallel columns, Origen would do a transliteration and four different translations into Greek.

Wow! Had heard this before, but it is interesting to see it on FR.

Wow. New Pope acting like a wannabee protestant. :-)

“Don’t read the bible, son, we’ve got our own faith tradition.” (Just a line I heard once.)

"We are compelled to concede to the Papists
that they have the Word of God,
that we received it from them,
and that without them
we should have no knowledge of it at all."

~ Martin Luther

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