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Britain
Catholic Church: Bible Not Entirely True
2005-10-05
THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true. The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect "total accuracy" from the Bible.

"We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision," they say in The Gift of Scripture.

The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US. Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools, believing "intelligent design" to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began.

But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be "historical". At most, they say, they may contain "historical traces".

Posted by:Anonymoose

#9  Didn't grasp that symbolic stuff, huh?
Posted by: .com   2005-10-05 22:01  

#8  Desert Blonde ... I knew a few old time New Guinea missionaries.... and well ... they really liked Christianity because of well.. this little bit about the Body and Blood of Christ in the communion service.... er.. well sorry... I will just slip away....
Posted by: 3dc   2005-10-05 21:56  

#7  Good points, Desert Blondie. In fact, hand written copies of the Jewish Bible can be dated by the errors (each copy is supposed to be exactly like its predecessor), and its chain of descent traced. So the chain of copyists in Iran had a different collection of errors than the chain of copyists in Egypt, than those in Spain who escaped to Turkey in 1492... Which is one reason, besides the Christian-like eschatological writings, that the Dead Sea Scrolls are so fascinating: ~250 years of copies of Old Testament and Apocrypha scrolls, which ended in 70 A.D. Lots of errors could be cleared up, you see, not merely compared and debated. ;-)
Posted by: trailing wife   2005-10-05 20:39  

#6  Anonymoose, I was taught even as a tiny little girl that not everything in the Bible is literally true, especially in the book of Genesis. There's a lot of symbolism throughout the book. (See Song of Solomon for further....er....erudition on this point. Or Revelations.)

Besides, even granting the point that it is all true for the sake of argument, consider that there have been many translations from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. There are, and always will be, some concepts and ideas that cannot be exactly translated from one language to another, no matter how gifted the translator.

Case in point: My old parish supported a missionary in Papua New Guinea who was working on translating the Bible for the tribe he worked with. Instead of using "Lamb of God", he used the next closest idea that they could understand. He came up with "Small Furry Pig of God". Hardly kosher, but he defended it as saying they could understand that concept since they had never seen sheep and had no idea what a lamb was.

Plus, the idea that there would never be an error that worked its way into the "original" over the years is nuts. To use a non-Biblical example, remember the "72 virgins or 72 crystal raisins of clarity" debate earlier this year.

(Fatwa coming any day now on my a$$, I'm sure.)

Very, very few Catholics believe the Bible is literally true. This is why some Fundamentalists have decided that we aren't real Christians.

Fine by us! ;)
Posted by: Desert Blondie   2005-10-05 18:37  

#5  A close readingof the both the Old Testament and the New Testament reveals all sorts of contradictions between the various books. Comparison with archeological evidence throughout the regions covered by the various tales reveals even more, plus some unexpected confirmations. So what?
Posted by: trailing wife   2005-10-05 14:19  

#4  And then God looked at primitive man and said I have all the time in the world but not the patience required to explain evolution and DNA and all that to these near-cavemen. Time for metaphors to explain things quick in a way they can understand.

When they've advanced far enough they'll understand. Mostly.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2005-10-05 12:57  

#3  But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be "historical". At most, they say, they may contain "historical traces".

This is the critical point that I think is the most important. This is also the part of the Bible which is most troubling to me, and has been all my life. Too much a feel of Mythology in the first part of Genesis. It seems we are too much like other cultures. We diminish the messages elsewhere by sticking to that as literal rather then allegorical. People get too lost on 4004BC, and have less time to promote the message of Jesus, which had it's foundations with that "little mountain hike" Moses took...

God made the Earth, but I believe it was 4.5 billion years ago, not 6000...
Posted by: BigEd   2005-10-05 12:27  

#2  'Moose, this is utterly un-newsworthy. This has been the stance of the Catholic Church for decades.
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2005-10-05 12:20  

#1  Moose - Good of you to post this, but I think the Catholics are right in finally saying this.
Posted by: BigEd   2005-10-05 12:19  

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