In this episode, I present material based on the second lesson I taught in my local Catholic parish inquiry program for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we explore the Catholic Church’s approach to authoritative teaching based not only on Scripture alone, as the Protestants do, but on a combination of sacred Scripture and sacred tradition.

In this episode, I wrap up part three of my series based on the first lesson I taught in my local Catholic parish inquiry program for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we explore how Scripture scholars use historical critical methods, textual analysis, and knowledge of ancient languages and cultures to help us understand the original intent of the Sacred Authors.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 92 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

Whenever I talk about religion, I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

This week, I will talk more about how scripture scholars use historical critical analysis to help us understand the deeper truths to be found in Scripture. This episode is part 3 of the first class I ever taught for the RCIA program.

That lesson was titled “Revelation and the Bible.”

As previously mentioned, the Bible was written over the period of perhaps 1000 years by at least 50 different authors in three different languages. In our last episode, we discussed the scholarly debate over the translation of the opening word of the Old Testament. While the average person can typically find something meaningful and useful in Scripture translated into their native language, such as English, if we want to get serious about what the Bible really means; we have to rely on people who have a deeper understanding of ancient languages, ancient culture, textual analysis, and ancient history.

We also need to understand the distinction between what the Bible actually says and how our particular denomination or faith tradition interprets Scripture. One of my favorite Scripture scholars, Dan McClellan, says we need to consider data over dogma. Although I quote him often and use him as a valuable and respected resource, personally, I don’t place data over dogma. I simply believe it’s important to understand the distinction between the two.

In the same way that I trust scholarly investigation to help me understand the original intent of the Sacred Authors in the context in which the works were written, I also trust the centuries of church leadership who have reflected on how to apply Scripture to everyday life and to clarify the deeper meaning behind the written words.

In short, the scholars tell us what Scripture really says. The theologians and church leadership help us understand what it means.

While I don’t have the skills to teach an entire course on scriptural analysis, I want to give you some insights into the types of things that scholars use to help us understand scripture better. The general name for their work is the “historical critical” method of Scripture analysis.

This method is not just used by atheists or Catholic theologians. Such analysis is also used by many of the mainstream Protestant denominations, which are not those that would be described as Evangelical. We are talking about certain branches of Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and Anglican as well as Reformed Jewish traditions. These denominations do not take a strictly literal, “what it says is what it means exactly” approach.

In contrast, Evangelical churches such as Southern Baptist, Church of God, Church of Christ, and others interpret Scripture in an extremely literal manner. These denominations take the “descending view” of Scripture that we talked about earlier, in which what is written is totally inspired, inerrant, and univocal.

So, here are some things that Scripture scholars consider to understand the original meaning intended by the Sacred Authors.

1) HISTORICAL CRITICISM: What were the historical circumstances when the book was written? For example, many people interpret the Book of Revelation as predicting what will happen in the end times. However, we need to understand that it was written in a time when Christians were being persecuted. It was written to comfort first-century Christians and reassure them that although they were suffering for their faith now, the good guys would win in the end.

Other historical issues to consider… Is it verifiable in secular history? Do we have evidence of the facts of the story from nonbiblical sources?

For example, we have no outside sources to indicate that the plagues described in Exodus actually occurred in Egypt in Mosaic times. Many scholars even question whether Moses was a real person or was simply a legendary character, similar to someone like King Arthur. There probably was a historic Moses, but the stories have been elaborated and may be an amalgam of various early Jewish leaders.

On the other hand, we do have nonbiblical sources that talk about Jesus of Nazareth, around whom the Christian religion was founded, and which confirm that he was crucified by the Romans. A Roman historian, Josephus, describes Jesus and reports that his followers claimed he rose from the dead. It stops short of saying he actually did rise.

2) SOURCE CRITICISM: What sources did the author use? For example, the gospel of Matthew and Luke have copied entire sections of Mark. Furthermore, there are sections of Matthew and Luke that are common to one another that are not found in Mark. Scholars believe that it came from a third source, which they called the “Q” source. We’ve already seen that Genesis 1 and 2 apparently came from independent sources. Sometimes, this analysis notes that the style changed. While the books of 1 and 2 Timothy, as well as Titus, claimed to have been written by Paul, analysis shows that the style is significantly different from other Pauline epistles and in places contradicts the principles found in genuine works by Paul.

3) TEXTUAL ANALYSIS: Scholars look at what the earliest manuscripts said. The older the manuscript, the more likely it is that it has not been altered. One of the problems is that even our earliest manuscripts were produced a couple of hundred years after the originals were written. We have no idea what kind of changes may have been made during that time.

In some instances, we have direct evidence that changes have been made. We have a manuscript where a verse was written in the margin. Manuscripts prior to that version did not contain the verse in question; however, manuscripts produced after that alteration do contain the extra verse. See the video linked in the description where Dan McClellan describes several places where we believe verses were added at a later date. Modern translations usually delete these verses that make reference to them in a footnote. It reports that some manuscripts include this verse.

When given conflicting manuscripts, one of the rules of thumb that scholars use is that the more difficult it is to understand a particular passage, the more likely it is that this is the original. The thought being that somewhere along the way, someone found these difficult passages and tried to fix them by rewriting them to make them clearer. It’s unlikely someone would deliberately rewrite something to make it more confusing. So, scholars favor the confusing version as being the original and the easy version as being something that was edited.

4) LITERARY FORM: We earlier discussed that Scripture uses many literary forms and genres, including myth, law, poetry, history, epic stories, parables, and philosophical statements such as proverbs. You can’t interpret poetry as you would history. You don’t read law like parables. In modern times, we have difficulty distinguishing between editorials and news sometimes. So you have to understand the genre of writing you are reading.

5) INTENT and CONTEXT: We already discussed that Revelation was not intended to predict the end of the world but rather to comfort troubled Christians. We have to determine intent based on context. Here is an example of a simple English sentence with seven words in it. Without context, we can put emphasis on any of these seven words and come up with seven different meanings.

Consider the sentence “I never said he stole the money.” Here are seven variations

“-I- never said he stole the money.” You said that. I didn’t.

“I NEVER said he stole the money.” Not once! Not ever did I say that.

“I never SAID he stole the money.” I may have implied it, but I never outright said so.

“I never said HE stole the money.” Maybe she did, or someone else? Not him.

“I never said he STOLE the money.” He just borrowed it, but didn’t return it for a long time.

“I never said he stole THE money.” Not the money you were talking about. Different money. Not the money.

“I never said he stole the MONEY.” Just the jewelry and the artwork, but not the money.

If we don’t understand the context of that sentence, we cannot determine the author’s intent.

6) CULTURE and TIMES: This is a big one. Consider what the role of women was in biblical times. When Paul says that wives should be obedient and subservient to their husbands, consider that he also said husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church. And how did Christ love the church? He died for it. The first-century model of a marriage in which both parties were committed to one another meant that wives obeyed and were subservient to their husbands, and husbands sacrificed for their wives. It’s not at all the model we use today, but it is the one used in ancient times. Today, we consider marriage as a partnership of equals. That was a foreign concept to people in biblical times. But the core idea of total commitment is the same. That remains the same in both cultures. They expressed that total commitment to one another in vastly different ways.

7) PERSPECTIVE: Different people can view the same event from different perspectives. For example, as I’m writing this, the Indiana Pacers just lost Game 3 of the second round of the NBA playoffs, 126-104, at Gainbridge Fieldhouse last night.

Consider how different people view the event.

Coach Carlisle: “We didn’t play to our potential. And the referees were against us.”

Pacers owners, the Simon brothers: “It was great! We sold out every ticket.”

Mayor Hogsett: “Indianapolis is a major league city, not just known for auto racing. The city looked good on national TV.”

A teenager who didn’t see any of his friends at the game: “Nobody was there.” As if the 17,000 fans in attendance didn’t count.

Cleveland fans: “God is on our side.”

Pacers fans: “God abandoned us.”

You have to understand the perspective. What are the biases? How do people view the same events differently? Remember that Scripture sees things through a theological perspective, not a scientific or historical perspective.

8) ADAPTATION: How does the author adapt the Gospel message into stories? Take, for example, the story of the paralytic at Capernaum. This story is found in Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:1-12, and Luke 5:17-26. This is one of my favorite stories of the New Testament. Jesus was preaching in a building surrounded by a huge crowd. There was a paralyzed man whose friends wanted to bring him to see Jesus, but it was so crowded they could not carry him in through the door. So, his friends carried him on a mat up to the roof, opened a hole in the roof, and lowered him down so that he could see Jesus. I often say this illustrates one of the earliest examples of a disabled person who could not get into church because of a lack of proper accessibility.

Anyway, in Luke’s version of the story, he says that they removed the tiles from the roof to make a hole. Neither Matthew nor Mark included that detail. They just said the friends opened a hole in the roof and lowered him down. They did not mention the tiles. There’s a good reason for that. Luke was unaware of the fact that the buildings in Capernaum did not have tile roofs. Luke had heard the story, and he lived in an area where there were tile roofs. He presumed that if you’re going to lower someone down through a hole in the roof, you would have to remove some tiles.

There are many such geographic errors throughout Scripture because the author was not intimately familiar with the exact details of the geography. Yet they adapted the same stories to their own needs and told the stories in their own manner.

Speaking of tiles and accessibility, one day I was entering our parish facility to teach this very lesson. Our meeting room is on the lower floor of the building, which I entered through the Northeast corner of the building. As I went down the hall, a workman was replacing the tile floor that had been damaged. He had just spread a layer of contact cement over the concrete floor and was waiting for it to get sticky so that he could lay the new tile. The area completely stretched across the entire hallway, and there was no way around it.

He laid down a pair of wooden planks over the sticky area, and I carefully rolled my wheelchair over this impromptu bridge. When I got to this part of the story, I began laughing uncontrollably until I could compose myself and explain to the class that they nearly had to open a hole in the roof to get me there that night.

In subsequent years, I thought that story over and over again, but I didn’t realize until now the irony that it was missing tiles that prohibited me from getting in the building, whereas in Luke’s story, they had to remove tiles to get the disabled guy into the building.

Let’s take another example of adapting the same story in three different ways. In Mark 8:34, it reports that Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” In Matthew 16:24, it says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” However, in Luke 9:23, it says, “Take up your cross and follow me EACH DAY.”

In the time and place in which Mark and Matthew were written, the church was very much under persecution, and people were literally at serious risk of crucifixion or other forms of death for their beliefs. However, when Luke wrote, things were a bit easier on Christians. Furthermore, it was becoming more apparent that Jesus might not return as quickly as early believers thought he would. Luke’s message is that the day-to-day challenges of living life as a Christian are a different way to take up your cross and follow Jesus, and to do so each day, not one time, literally on a cross.

For many years, I would follow up on this story of how Luke adapted the words of Jesus to his own audience by commenting that we were fortunate to live in times that were more like Luke and less like Mark and Matthew. These days, we don’t face crucifixion. So, we take up our cross each day.

I used that observation until 1999. That is because on April 20, 1999, two armed students walked into Columbine High School in Colorado and killed 13 students and one teacher. Media reports at the time said that two different female students were asked by the gunmen if they believed in God. When they answered yes, they were killed.

From 1999 onward, I pointed out that post-Columbine, maybe we do live in times more like Mark and Matthew, where we might die for our beliefs.

In my research for this podcast, I discovered that the accounts of the martyrdom of these two young women may not have been accurate. Still, I think we can all agree that we live in dangerous times, and while we should follow Luke’s advice to take up the cross of Christianity in our daily struggles, we never know when we might have to sacrifice for our beliefs.

The point is, as circumstances evolved over my 30 years of teaching, I had to adapt my material to my particular audience. The Sacred Authors adapted their material based on their cultural conditions and intended audience when they wrote Scripture.

To summarize, to accurately understand the original intent of the Sacred Authors, one has to be well-versed in ancient languages, ancient culture, cognitive linguistics, and a variety of other disciplines. Internet research on such topics has pitfalls unless you are confident of the sources the Internet presents to you. There are a lot of people who are trying to renegotiate what the text means to suit their own social identities and political agendas.

I’ve recommended scholars such as Dan McClellan and Bart Ehrman because they have well-established academic credentials and claim to represent the views of a consensus of Scripture scholars. They back up their views with recommendations of other well-credentialed scholars, if you want to read further on these topics.

Even if you do find reliable sources, the consensus among well-trained Scripture scholars is a constantly evolving endeavor.

Attempting to use biblical concordances or Greek and Hebrew dictionaries can lead to erroneous assumptions. See the McClellan video I’ve linked on the problem with dictionaries.

The bottom line is, unless you intend to do sufficient research to become an academic scholar on these topics, take my advice and, as they say, “Don’t try this at home.” That may sound hypocritical coming from someone with no formal theological training. However, I know my limitations. Everything I present on these topics has come from trustworthy sources. I’m not attempting to do my own historical critical scriptural analysis. I’m just reporting what I have found to be the consensus.

Before we wrap up this lesson, let’s define some terminology we use and give you a brief overview of what’s in the Bible.

Bible: from Greek “Biblia” (books) – a collection of inspired writings arranged into 72 books which relate the faith experience of God’s saving activity among his people.

Testament: (covenant) – agreement between God and His people. “Old Testament” – offered by God to Abraham and Moses. “New Testament” – offered through Christ to all who believe in Him.

Scripture: (writing) – that part of the Church’s experience of God that has been written – much of it hasn’t been; and including some writings not included in the Bible as we have it today, (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas and the letter of Barnabas).

Gospel: (good news) – the account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and his teaching understood as the good news of God’s love for us and our forgiveness in Christ.

Epistle: (circular) – a letter from an apostle offering spiritual guidance and encouragement.

Revelation: (making known) – that which God shares with us about Himself. Also, the name of the last book of the Bible.

Literary Form: a form of literature (history, poetry, myth, parables, law, proverbs, hymns, epic) used to reveal God’s truth. Some forms employ imagery and symbolic language as a means of proclaiming a deeper level of truth. Accuracy of detail is readily sacrificed for the purpose of a more easily related presentation of the deeper truths.

Canon: (collection) – the set of books of scripture held to be the inspired word of God. The church determines what is or is not canonical.

Now, let’s take a very brief overview of what’s in the Bible.

The Hebrew Scriptures, referred to by Christians as the Old Testament, are a collection of 46 books written somewhere between 900 BCE and 100 BCE. There are seven books and parts of two others that are accepted by Catholic and Orthodox churches, which are not present in the official canon of Jewish tradition, and many Protestant churches. We will discuss those more in the next episode.

The first five books are known as the Pentateuch or the Jewish tradition called the Torah. They consist of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It is the most important part for Jewish people.

This is followed by historical books Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, which relate the story of Israel in the first days it entered Palestine. Note that while we describe a book as “historical,” it does not necessarily mean that it is strictly a history book. It is the story of the Chosen People that is told through a theological perspective.

This is followed by 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, and 2 Chronicles. These are also historical books about Israel’s rise to power during the reign of the kings and the Babylonian exile, which is attributed to their infidelity to God.

Ezra and Nehemiah are historical books about the return of the Jews to Jerusalem at the end of their captivity.

The books of Tobit, Judith, and Esther are parables or morality stories that probably do not have a genuine historical basis.

1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees are historical books from the era just before the time of Jesus. They are the latest written of any of the books of the Old Testament.

There are wisdom books that describe how a good Hebrew should live their life. These include Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Songs, Wisdom, and Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus).

We then have books about the prophets divided into major and minor prophets. This refers only to the book’s size and not its contents’ importance. Major prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The minor prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

The New Testament consists of 27 books written between about 48 CE and 100 CE. Protestant and Catholic Bibles do not disagree on which books belong in the New Testament.

We begin with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which recount Jesus’s life and teachings. This is followed by the Acts of the Apostles, which is the history of the early church and is believed to have been written by Luke as an extension to his gospel.

Then we have a collection of epistles or letters beginning with the letters of Paul to various churches. We have Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. This is followed by personal letters written to individuals supposedly by Paul. It includes 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Note that only Philemon is undisputed in its authorship. The other three so-called pastoral letters were probably written by someone impersonating Paul because the style is significantly different, sometimes contradicts earlier teaching of Paul, and shows evidence that it was written after his death.

The letter to the Hebrews was once believed to have been written by Paul, but that is generally rejected because it reads nothing like Paul. It explains Christian theology in the context of Jewish tradition.

We have what are known as the “Catholic letters,” although that has nothing to do with the Catholic Church. The word Catholic simply means “universal.” These books appear in both Catholic and Protestant Bibles. In this context, it simply means they were written to the entire church and not specific individuals or church communities. They bear the names of their authors. We have James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude. The Johannine letters are believed to have been written by the author of the Gospel of John, who also wrote the book of Revelation. Note that this John is not John the Baptist nor John the Apostle. He is often referred to as John the Evangelist to distinguish him from other Johns.

Finally, we have the Book of Revelation, sometimes called the Book of the Apocalypse. It is a highly symbolic work of apocalyptic literature designed to give comfort to first-century Christians in their struggles against Roman occupation. It was not designed to predict the end of the world.

This wraps up our three-part series covering the first lesson I taught for RCIA. In our next episode, we will dive into my second lesson, which discusses the role of tradition in the Catholic Church. Protestants believe in a doctrine called sola scriptura, which means Scripture alone. This means that the Bible is the sole authority and only method for passing on what God has revealed. In contrast, Catholics believe that both sacred Scripture and sacred tradition have authority and are means by which we preserve what has been revealed. We will explore all of these topics in the next few episodes.

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I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I continue a multipart series in which I adapt some of the lesson plans I used as I taught the Catholic faith for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we explore how Scripture looks at historical events through God’s eyes and not from a human perspective. We will also debate how and when to use God’s Divine Name.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 91 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

Whenever I talk about religion, I always include this disclaimer that I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

At the end of the previous episode, I said, “In the next episode, I will talk more about how scripture scholars use historical critical analysis to help us understand the deeper truths to be found in Scripture.” Well… as usual, I’m going to go off on a couple of tangents in this episode, so we will barely scratch the surface of what I thought we would be talking about this week. Still, this is good stuff, so let’s dive into what will already be a pretty long episode that will not get nearly as far into the material as I anticipated.

This episode is part 2 of the first class I ever taught for the RCIA program.

That lesson was titled “Revelation and the Bible.”

Not everything in the Bible is considered “Revelation,” that is, something that can only be known if God reveals it. Some things we know to be historically accurate from outside sources. For example, we can be pretty sure that Jesus was a real historical figure who the Romans crucified because we have nonbiblical sources that record these events. So, the existence of the historical Jesus is not revelation.

On the other hand, there are things that we would only know because God revealed them. For example, God revealed his name to Moses in Exodus 3:13-14, which says,

“But,” said Moses to God, “if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them?” God replied to Moses: ”I am who I am.” Then he added: “This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”

So, God reveals to Moses that his name is “I am”. The actual word used is a form of the Hebrew verb HAYAH, which means “to be”. This Hebrew word, transliterated into English, could be pronounced Yahweh. So, in effect, the name of God is Yahweh, just like my name is Chris, or you might be Joe, Pete, Sally, or Sue. Words such as “God”, “Lord”, or “Almighty” are what He is or how He is, but His name is Yahweh. More on that in a moment.

The point is that we wouldn’t know that name if God hadn’t told us. Later in Exodus 6:2-3, God makes a bigger deal out of this revelation when He reminds Moses that when He appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He just referred to Himself as God Almighty, which in Hebrew is El Shaddai.

When I used to teach this lesson, I also gave the example of the Trinity as something we wouldn’t know if God hadn’t revealed it to us. Yet, as I have become more familiar with critical scriptural scholarship through the works of Dan McClellan, it is debatable that the Bible really discusses the Trinity as we know it. Sure, it mentions the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but it doesn’t explicitly lay out the doctrine of three persons in one God as we understand it today. There are other concepts in Scripture, such as God’s plans for our salvation, that we would not know had he not revealed them to us.

We are going to go off on a tangent here for a minute because we need to discuss further the use of the Divine Name as God revealed it to Moses.

Old Testament manuscripts depict this name with four characters, YHWH, which Scripture scholars call the tetragrammaton (a fancy way of saying the four-letter name). Hebrew has vowels, but they aren’t always put in written text. Vowels are implied or deduced from the context. So, if you put the right vowels in YHWH, it would be pronounced Yahweh.

One of the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20:7 says, “You shall not invoke the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.” The Jewish people were so afraid that they would use his name in vain, they were afraid to say it at all. When reading Scripture, the practice was to use the Hebrew word Adonai, which means “Lord”. Greek translations of the Old Testament use the word Kyrios, which also translates as Lord. When Scripture was translated into Latin, these four characters were usually replaced with the Latin word Dominus, which also translates as Lord.

The New American Standard translation of the Bible, which we use for all the Scripture readings at Mass and is considered the official Catholic translation, uses the phrase “the LORD” to render the tetragrammaton, but it uses small uppercase letters for ORD. So, whenever you see this version of the word LORD with an uppercase “L” and a small caps “ORD,” you know the original Hebrew used the Divine Name. The word Lord in any other type style it simply means Lord. It doesn’t mean that Divine Name.

Various forms of this word evolved over the ages. The letter “Y” can sometimes be pronounced like a “J”, and if you throw some vowels, change the W to a V, you get the word Jehovah, which is also used as an alternative to say the name of God without really saying it.

One exception to the rule that you can’t pronounce the Divine Name is in the word hallelujah or alleluia because these words are created from the phrase Hallelu-Yah (Praise Yah). Apparently, the shortened form Yah, when combined with the word “praise,” has been and remains acceptable.

In modern times, the use of the word Yahweh grew in great popularity thanks to a translation of Scripture known as the Jerusalem Bible (JB). Published first in French and later in English in 1966, it used the word Yahweh wherever the tetragrammaton appeared. It was updated as the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) in 1985.

The Jerusalem Bible was published as an official Roman Catholic translation with full imprimatur. Imprimatur is a kind of stamp of approval by the Catholic Church. It is a Latin word meaning “let it be printed.” English-speaking countries outside North America used the JB in Mass and other liturgies, while North America uses the NASB..

The JB and the NASB were created as a response to Pope Pius XII’s call in 1943 for new translations of Scripture to be prepared. These translations were to be based not on the Latin version, which had been used for centuries, but on the original Greek and Hebrew texts.

The JB was extremely popular in my parish. It also had extensive footnotes, which made it a huge volume. See the YouTube version of this episode for a photo. My mother joked that she was going to get her orthopedic doctor to write her prescription for a small print version of the Jerusalem Bible so that she wouldn’t hurt her back. She finally did get a smaller edition with very thin pages and very small text.

On June 29, 2008, the Vatican wrote to the presidents of all conferences of bishops at the behest of Pope Benedict XVI, stating that the use of the name Yahweh was to be dropped from Catholic Bibles in liturgical use as well as from songs and prayers, since pronunciation of this name violates long-standing Jewish and Christian tradition.

Dan Schutte, of the St. Louis Jesuits, who has composed many popular Catholic hymns, explained that he and other composers were attracted to the use of the word Yahweh in the JB and thought that it added something significant to the lyrics of their songs, most of which were adapted from the Psalms. He is the composer of a popular Catholic hymn, “You Are Here,” which begins with “Yahweh, I know you are here, standing always at my side”. His publisher, Oregon Catholic Press, has rereleased versions of his and other songs that use the word Yahweh. They have suggested alternative lyrics so that these songs can continue to be used in our liturgy. Typically, the revisions use “Oh, Lord,” because it keeps it to two syllables to fit the music well.

Schutte notes that the Jerusalem Bible does have an imprimatur from the Catholic Church. He suggests we should feel free to use the Jerusalem Bible for any other prayers privately that use the word Yahweh if we feel that will make it a richer experience for us. I personally agree. Sometimes I like to use the word. It makes it more personal if you are addressing God by name.

One problem translators have with using the word LORD to render the tetragrammaton is that there are, by my count, over 300 places in the JB that have the phrase “Lord Yahweh.” In Hebrew, this would be “Adonai Yahweh.” That would translate into English as Lord Lord. The translators have been told that the word Adonai should be translated as Lord (without the small caps) and that Yahweh should be translated as God. So instead of saying “the Lord Yahweh,” or “Lord Lord,” it would say “the Lord God”.

I don’t know how to discuss the above without occasionally pronouncing the Divine Name directly. It is my policy in this podcast not to use the Divine Name unless I have to out of respect for Church policy and feelings of our Jewish brethren. Because my Scripture quotes are from the NASB, which uses LORD, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Okay, let’s get back on topic.

We need to understand that the Bible is primarily theology, not history. It interprets history and world events, especially about Israel and the chosen people, from God’s point of view. Let’s take the example of the epic Old Testament story of Joseph, son of Jacob, which appears in Genesis chapters 37-50.

Joseph was the youngest of 12 brothers, and as is often the case, the baby of the family gets a lot of attention. His father spoiled him so much that he gave him a coat of many colors. The story is the basis of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

Joseph had prophetic dreams that predicted that someday his brothers would be bowing down to him. This made them quite jealous. One day, while they were all out tending the flocks, they grew so angry with him that they threw him down a cistern, and then calmly went off to share a meal. A group of traveling traders from Egypt came by, and the brothers decided to get Joseph out of the well and sell him into slavery to the Egyptians

Joseph was a handsome fellow and attracted the attention of the Pharaoh’s daughter, who tried to seduce him. When he refused her advances, she accused him of assaulting her and had him thrown in prison.

Joseph continued to have prophetic dreams and could interpret other people’s dreams. When he correctly interpreted the dream of one of his jailers, the word got around to Pharaoh, who called him in to interpret the Pharaoh’s dreams. Joseph said that he could not only interpret a dream for Pharaoh, but he could tell him what the dream was without having been told in advance.

Without going into the details here, Joseph explained the dream meant there would be seven years of prosperity with good harvests. This would be followed by a drought of seven years in which there would be little or no harvest. The Pharaoh was so impressed that Joseph knew the dream without having been told what it was, he put Joseph in charge of the program to save up resources during the seven prosperous years so that they could withstand the seven lean years. Joseph went from being a slave in jail to becoming a very powerful person in the court of the Pharaoh.

As predicted, the drought came. Joseph’s father, Jacob, sent the brothers to the Pharaoh to see if he would give them provisions to survive the tough times. When they arrived in Egypt, they were sent to Joseph, who was in charge of the Pharaoh’s reserves. In Genesis 45:3-11, we see what happens when they realize their salvation lies in the rejected brother Joseph.

“I am Joseph,” he said to his brothers. “Is my father still in good health?” But his brothers could give him no answer, so dumbfounded were they at him. “Come closer to me,” he told his brothers. When they had done so, he said: “I am your brother Joseph, whom you once sold into Egypt. But now do not be distressed, and do not reproach yourselves for having sold me here. It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you. For two years now, the famine has been in the land, and for five more years tillage will yield no harvest. God, therefore, sent me on ahead of you to ensure for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So it was not really you but God who had me come here; and he has made of me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt. Hurry back, then, to my father and tell him: ‘Thus says your son Joseph: God has made me lord of all Egypt; come to me without delay. You will settle in the region of Goshen, where you will be near me–you and your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and everything that you own. Since five years of famine still lie ahead, I will provide for you there, so that you and your family and all that are yours may not suffer want.’”

If this were an episode of ABC 20/20 or Dateline NBC, it would be told as the lurid tale of jealous brothers who turned against Dad’s favorite son. But it’s not a true crime drama or the story of a family feud. From Joseph’s perspective, and that of the Bible, this is the story of divine providence. It was God’s will that all of these horrible things happened to Joseph so that he would later be in a position to save his family.

It tells the story from a theological perspective, not from a simple human drama. Let’s take a couple of other examples.

According to the Bible, Kings rule because God lets them. In Wisdom 6:1-9, we read

Hear, therefore, kings, and understand; learn, you magistrates of the earth’s expanse! Hearken, you who are in power over the multitude and lord it over throngs of peoples. Because authority was given you by the LORD and sovereignty by the Most High, who shall probe your works and scrutinize your counsels. Because, though you were ministers of his kingdom, you judged not rightly, and did not keep the law, nor walk according to the will of God, Terribly and swiftly shall he come against you, because judgment is stern for the exalted. For the lowly may be pardoned out of mercy, but the mighty shall be mightily put to the test. For the Lord of all shows no partiality, nor does he fear greatness, Because he himself made the great as well as the small, and he provides for all alike; but for those in power a rigorous scrutiny impends. To you, therefore, O princes, are my words addressed that you may learn wisdom and that you may not sin.

Around 20 years ago, when I taught this lesson, I would say, from a historical point of view, George W. Bush became president either because Florida voters did know how to operate a punchcard voting system or perhaps because the Supreme Court handed it to him. But if this were a Bible story, it would say that God chose him to be president and will scrutinize his actions to an extremely high standard. While our current president and his minions believe that he was appointed by God, it’s not so much that God wanted him to be president, but that God allows him to be president and will hold him to a very high standard. In the words of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

One final example, when Jesus is on trial before Pontius Pilate, we read in John 19:10-11

So Pilate said to him, “Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?” Jesus answered (him), “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above.”

We can imagine that when Pilate heard this, he was thinking in worldly terms. He thought that Jesus was talking about Caesar in Rome, who was the source of Pontius Pilate’s power, but Jesus was talking about God, who allowed Pilate to rule. That’s the difference between a secular view of history and a theological view. The Bible looks at things from God’s perspective and not from a secular human perspective.

When we read the Bible, we need to be aware that it is literature that uses the various forms (history, poetry, myth, parables, law, proverbs, hymns, and epic stories) to reveal God’s truths. You don’t read poetry the same way you read a legal text. You don’t read an epic story of a hero in the same way you read a history book or a political analysis. Nothing in the Bible is intended to be a science textbook.

In episode 89, I discussed the use of myth in the Bible. Recall that we said that a myth teaches truths that facts cannot reveal. I read to you portions of two different creation stories: one of them in Genesis chapter 1 and the other in Genesis chapter 2. We pointed out the inconsistencies between these two versions of creation.

Different communities wrote these different stories at different times. You might think that because we’ve ordered them as Genesis 1 and 2, that is how they were written, but Scripture scholars believe that Genesis 2 is older.

It begins with the earth already formed, and then God creates humans out of the dust of the earth, followed by plants and animals. Some argue that this simply fills in the details missing from Genesis 1. However, Scripture scholars believe that after Genesis 2 was written, they went back and wrote Genesis 1 to emphasize that God had not just created humans, plants, and animals but created the entire heavens and earth. So, it is Genesis 1 that is filling in earlier details that were skipped over by Genesis 2.

By the way, when Scripture speaks of “heaven and earth,” it is because they didn’t have a word for the universe. So when we read “heaven and earth,” you need to think of it as “the universe” or “everything.”

We discussed these two different creation stories in Episode 89, and I mentioned that Genesis 1 came from a source that scholars call “J” and that Genesis 2 came from a source they call “P”. I gave you homework asking you to think about what we could learn about these two different communities of believers who are the source of the oral traditions behind these written narratives.

Let’s look in more detail.

Genesis 1 is all about water. They believed that the universe initially consisted of an infinite ocean of water until the second day, when God created the dome of the sky to separate the waters above the dome from the waters below it. Then, God separated the land from the sea on the third day. Note, it doesn’t say he created the land. It was already there, presumably beneath the waters, or who knows? It doesn’t really say. It just says that he separated the land from the sea. Genesis 1 also talks a lot about sea creatures. It discusses the sun, moon, and stars. One can easily conclude that these were people who lived near the sea. Their livelihood comes from the sea. How does one navigate the sea? By tracking the sun, moon, and stars. So, they wrote a creation story about the things that were important to them.

In contrast, Genesis 2 was probably a community of farmers. It’s all about the land. It explains that no plants existed because God had not yet created a man to till the soil. Adam lives in a garden that is full of food to sustain him. God creates animals for man, but concludes they are not suitable companions and, almost as an afterthought, decides to create woman. What does that tell you about the community that wrote this story?

Each of these communities discovered God in the nature around them, but one saw it connected to the water, and the others saw it connected to the land.

After publishing Episode 89 in which I read these sections of Genesis, I’ve begun to read Dan McClellan’s new book, “The Bible Says So: What Scripture Gets Right and Wrong About Today’s Most Controversial Topics.” Dan points out that if we strictly focus only on what Scripture really says, God didn’t create everything out of nothing. In Genesis 1, the water and the land already existed, and he just divided them with the help of the dome.

Other passages that seem to imply that God created everything out of nothing actually talk about God creating things out of some sort of primordial raw materials. Greek philosophers believed that this disorganized nonbeing matter, which had no function, was coeternal with God. It wasn’t until the second century CE that Christians began to argue that God created everything out of absolutely nothing.

This was an uphill battle because 1800 years ago, the Greeks had already deduced that matter could be neither created nor destroyed. That is a very modern scientific concept. It wasn’t until Einstein illustrated that matter and energy can be transformed into one another that we understood that matter could be created and destroyed. But the total amount of matter/energy in the universe remains constant. Energy eventually dissipates to the point where it is no longer useful, but there is still a fixed amount of matter/energy.

Going back to that dome issue again, if you look around social media, you will see that many of the people who believe that the Earth is flat also believe that this dome exists. See the YouTube version of this episode for a drawing illustrating how ancient people viewed the world. They believed that when God opened up the floodgates of the dome, it would rain. These modern-day flat-earth fanatics think that all of space travel has been faked because obviously, if you went up in a rocket, you would crash into the dome. It’s truly sad that ancient Greeks understood the nature of the universe better than these religious fanatics who still believe such ridiculous things as a solid dome in the sky, because they insist that a 3000-year-old model of the universe has to be accurate, simply because it is recorded in Scripture. It’s just sad.

Moving on, McClellan explains that the typical translation of the opening phrase of the Bible, “In the beginning…” is a bad translation. We tend to think of the phrase “In the beginning” as referring to “the beginning of time.” In my own teaching, I used to describe that word as meaning “forever ago.” That’s all wrong.

The Hebrew word used here is bereshit. However, if the author intended to mean “in the beginning,” the first word wouldn’t have been bereshit; it would have been barishonah. Some have suggested that the word be translated as “in a beginning,” But that isn’t completely right either.

McClellan explains this word doesn’t mean “In a beginning something happened.” Rather, it means, “In the beginning of something happening…”

The printed NASB version that I’ve had for many years says, “In the beginning God created…” The NASB 1995 edition at the Bible Gateway website also uses that same traditional translation. However, the latest update on the website of the US Council of Catholic Bishops, which I presume is from the 2020 NASB update, says, “In the beginning, when God created…” McClellan likes the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVue), which says: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth…”

If Scripture scholars are still debating how to translate the opening word of the Bible, what hope do we have in really understanding it? Well, we just have to trust the latest information that we can obtain from the most trustworthy scholarship.

In our next episode, I will finally get around to talking about some of the techniques that Scripture scholars use to come to a deeper understanding of the original intent of the author in the context of the culture in which they wrote and their intended audience.

So, as always… if you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and other exclusive content. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

As always, my deepest thanks to my financial supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express.

Even if you cannot provide financial support, please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience. I just want more people to be able to hear my stories.

All of my back episodes are available, and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback, please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you found this podcast.

I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I continue a multipart series in which I adapt some of the lesson plans I used as I taught the Catholic faith for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories. In this episode, we try to understand how Scripture was created from oral traditions. We engage in an exercise where we write some Scripture of our own.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 90 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I continue a multi-part series based on my 30 years teaching the Catholic faith in my local parish’s inquiry program.

Whenever I talk about religion, I always include this disclaimer that I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

This episode is based on the first class I ever taught for the RCIA program, so it was someone I taught at least 30 times. I spent weeks developing a lesson, practicing it, reworking it, and sweating over the details. I felt like I had to amass at least twice as much information as I put into the lesson in case someone asked a question. I didn’t want to be ill-prepared. After about 8 years or so, in which I adapted and adjusted the material, I had a lecture that worked every time. I had revised it into a really well-thought-out outline that I could deliver without any further preparation. Just print out copies of the handouts and my notes, and I was off and running.

As my repertoire of topics grew, I went through the same process. Sweat blood over the initial development, revise over the course of 4-8 years, and then deliver the same well-tested material thereafter.

First, a bit of housekeeping that I should have included in the last episode. All of the Scripture quotes I’m using are from a translation known as the New American Standard Bible or NASB. Although not strictly a Catholic edition, it is the translation approved for use in US Catholic churches for all of our liturgy. I provided links to all of the passages from the NASB provided on the website of the US Council of Catholic Bishops. There is also a Wikipedia article talking about the origins and updates to the NASB.

Moving along… Typically, we would begin the evening with an opening prayer, and while I don’t intend to do so in all of the lessons I present here, I have an opening prayer I usually use on the first evening that I would like to share with you. It set the tone for what I was trying to achieve with my teaching and what our entire program was trying to achieve with our participants who were considering this spiritual journey with us. I also used this prayer in a program I presented called “Catholics Returning Home,” which was designed to help people who had left the church for whatever reason to consider returning and becoming active again.

It is called “The Prayer of Thomas Merton.”

Thomas Merton lived from 1915 to 1968. He was a Catholic Trappist monk from the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky. He studied at Cambridge and Columbia. He is known as a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion. He wrote more than 70 books on spirituality, social justice, and pacifism.

Let us pray, [The Prayer of Thomas Merton]

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Amen.

The title of this lesson is “Revelation and the Bible.”

This is the first of four lessons in a row that I taught about Scripture. The overarching theme of these lessons is that our God is a God who speaks. We know what we know about God because it has been revealed to us throughout the ages. We talked earlier about the various ways that people come to know God, such as through nature, their upbringing, personal spiritual experiences, and so on.

What do I mean by revelation?

I would ask the class, “Tell me everything you know about my friend from Arizona.” Well, you know that they are from Arizona. You don’t know if they are male or female. You don’t know how I met them. You can speculate it’s an old college buddy. Maybe it’s a former girlfriend. Perhaps it’s someone with a disability like mine. Unless I reveal it to you, you can speculate, but you wouldn’t know.

What we know about God, we know because He has revealed things to us in a variety of ways. God speaks to us.

In Scripture, we are told that God spoke directly with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:9. In Exodus 3:4, we read that God spoke directly to Moses. In 1 Kings 19:11-18, we read how God spoke to the prophet Elijah. We will discuss the role of a prophet in more detail in a future lesson. And finally, in the letter to the Hebrews 1:1-3, it says, “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe.”

God has revealed mysteries. Eph 1:8-10 says, “In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.”

So, Scripture outlines for us various ways that God has spoken to us. But in order to understand Scripture properly, we need to understand who wrote it and how it was written.

As we explained in the last lesson, while God is the ultimate authority behind Scripture, it is mostly the product of human authorship written over the course of about 1000 years in a variety of places around the Middle East. It was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The sacred authors came from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, and they had a variety of audiences in mind when they wrote what they wrote.

Except for perhaps the letters of the New Testament, called epistles, all of Scripture began with oral traditions. People would sit around campfires and tell stories. Some of it was in the form of, “My God is better than your God.” They would recount the history of their culture and how God had guided them throughout that history. They would tell stories of battles won because God was on their side. They would talk of times when they were unfaithful and turned away from God and were forced to suffer the consequences of their misdeeds.

Eventually, as these stories grew in importance to the people, someone would write them down. Keep in mind that in ancient times, most people could not read or write. You had to hire scribes to write for you. I like to think of computer programmers and IT specialists as modern-day scribes who understand the mysterious ways to keep records in formats that only they can read.

I would then invite the class to engage in an exercise where they would attempt to write Scripture of their own. This was an exercise I experienced in my first RCIA program as a participant. It was led by Father Conrad Cambron, but I think he got the idea out of a book.

I would explain to the class, “We are going to write our own Gospels. Use the blank side of the handout I gave you this evening and write down about 8-10 or so things you know about Jesus. Assume I just landed from Mars and asked you, ‘What can you tell me about this guy Jesus?’ Take about 10 minutes to do that. Just random sentences.”

As I explained before, the participants were sitting at cafeteria tables with about 5-6 people per table. I would then say, “Have everyone at your table read off the list of things that they wrote. Then appoint one person from your table to be your official scribe. With the help of the entire group, the scribe should create some sort of narrative based on the things that each of you wrote. Try to include at least one thing from each person at your table. Put them in whatever order makes sense to you. Some people will duplicate items, of course. After all, we are all talking about the same guy. Put it in whatever order makes sense to you. Take about 10 minutes to do that. You should come up with something that’s maybe 12-15 sentences long.”

When they were finished, I would ask the scribe from each table to stand up and read the gospel that was produced by their table. I would say, “Who is the scribe from this table? Stand up and tell us your name.” A woman would stand and say, “I’m Susie Smith.”

I would reply, “Ladies and gentlemen, we will now have a reading from the Gospel According to Susie.”

Invariably, the scribe would always say, “It’s not my gospel. I just wrote it for my table.”

To which I would reply, “That’s the point. Your name is on it. But it is a product of your community. You may have contributed something of yourself, but it’s not just you. It’s the work of the collected traditions of your people. It’s a world of their experiences of who Jesus is.”

Here is an example of two typical Gospels I might have heard. I made these up, but this is the type of thing I would get.

“Jesus was the son of God. He was born in Bethlehem to the Virgin Mary. He was visited by shepherds and wise men. When he was 12, he was lost in the temple, but his parents found him conversing with the elders, who were impressed by him. He began his public ministry at age 30 by calling 12 people who were apostles to follow him. For three years, he preached a message of forgiveness and repentance and talked about the kingdom of God. He was betrayed by one of the apostles, Judas, who handed him over to be tried and sentenced by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. He was tortured and crucified and died. Three days later, he rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles several times before he ascended to heaven, where he sits at the right hand of the Father. He will return in the end times.”

The class would applaud. Another table might write something like this…

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Gospel according to Steve. Jesus is my Lord and Savior who sacrificed himself for the sins of the world. He is the son of God, and he is God as well, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He became human and taught us that God is love and we should love one another. He healed the sick. He raised the dead man named Lazarus. He gathered with his apostles the night he was arrested and celebrated the Last Supper with them when he offered bread and wine, he said, ‘This is my body. This is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.’ He was crucified, died, and rose from the dead three days later. He sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us and remind us of all that he taught. He has prepared a place for us in heaven.”

Then I would ask questions. Susie, did your Jesus heal sick people, raise a dead man, and have a Last Supper with his apostles? She would respond, “Yes, but we just didn’t have time to put in all those details.” Then I would ask Steve, “Was your Jesus born in Bethlehem and visited by shepherds and wise men? Was he betrayed by Judas? Is he coming back in the end times?” To which Steve would reply similarly, “Yes, but like Susie, we couldn’t tell everything in all that detail. We had to pick and choose what our people said.”

I would ask them each, “Is there anything in the other Gospels you heard here that you disagree with?” They would always say no.

I explained… Note that there is an overlap in the essential items. Jesus is God. He taught. He died for us. He rose 3 days later. But the differences don’t make any of it less true. Along the way, we could have had details that didn’t line up 100%. You might have put things in a different order. You put emphasis on different things. One of our Gospels focused on what Jesus did. But the other one focused on what it meant. Jesus is a personal savior.

While this isn’t exactly how the Gospels were written, it’s pretty close. The stories written in the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the result of the experience of early Christians. In an upcoming lesson, we will take a more detailed look at each of these gospels and how they compare to one another. We will learn something about the communities that generated the scriptures and the intended audience for which they were written.

I want to talk about two views of Scripture. This discussion is based upon a lecture seriesl by my colleague from St. Monica Parish, Jim Welter.

On the one hand, we have what we will call “The Descending View.” God handed down His word. Human authors wrote exactly what God wanted written. In essence, “Divine dictation.”

On the other hand, we have “The Ascending View.” The community of believers experienced God in their lives and created oral traditions about His works in the world and their relationship with God. These oral traditions were then assembled into the written word by human authors. In effect the community offers up the Scriptures they wrote saying to God in prayer: This is what you revealed to me that I will hand down for generations. Although it is the work of human authors, it is still the revealed word of God protected from error by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is word of God. God is the author but there is also human authorship too. However, the Bible is not the result of Divine dictation. In 1 Thes 2:13 we read, “And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.”

Scripture is divinely inspired, written at God’s will, at his inspiration. We read in 2 Peter 1:19-21, “Moreover, we possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable. You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God.”

We can rely on scripture. According to 2 Tim 3:14-17, “But you, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it, and that from infancy you have known (the) sacred scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

It’s time to depart a bit from the “official positions” and acknowledge the fact that we are using Scripture to say that we should use Scripture. It’s reliable because it tells us it’s reliable. This is obviously highly circular reasoning. In this instance, I’m not trying to “prove Scripture is true.” I’m merely explaining how Christian apologists defend their dogmatic beliefs about Scripture.

I also have to refer back to Scripture scholar Dan McClellan, whom I introduced you to last time. He points out that when these passages talk about “Scripture,” they’re not talking about the entire Bible as we know it today. Much of the New Testament had not yet been written when the Epistles were written. And even if they were written and widely distributed and known, they had not yet reached the level of importance of “Scripture” that we assign to them today. So, when he says “all Scripture is inspired by God,” he is probably just talking about the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, as we call it. Even then, scholars debate when the official list of writings that make up the Old Testament today was officially approved

Back to the official dogma…

Given all the caveats we have made about Scripture, is the Bible true? It may sound like we are engaging in doublespeak or parsing words in a manipulative manner, but we need to talk about the difference between “truth” and “facts.”

Factually, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of mistakes in the Bible. It is not scientifically accurate. It is not historically accurate. But it contains deeper truth about who God is, what his plan is for us, and how we can develop a relationship with him.

The word “inspiration” means “breathing into” or “life-giving,” In the same way that God blew into the nostrils of Adam and brought him to life. It comes from the same root as respiration, which means to breathe in and out.

Inspiration is the activity by which the Holy Spirit influences a person to act, think, speak, or write, according to God’s will and plan. Inspiration does not preclude the free will, experience, or disposition of the one inspired. It is not equivalent to divine dictation. When Catholics say the Bible is “inspired,” it means what the Bible says about God is reliably true. However, other historical facts or details may have been adapted or created to fit the purpose of the story.

We also need to discuss the ancient concept of authorship and how it is vastly different from what we think of today. To say that someone is the author of the work means that it was written under their authority. For example, it appears that parts of the Gospel of John were written by one of his disciples rather than by John himself, but was written under the authority of John.

Also, because Scripture is based upon oral tradition, the source of that tradition comes from the community and not from any single individual, as we saw in our Scripture writing exercise earlier.

The goal is to try to understand the original intent of the author in the context of their culture and their intended audience. To do that, we need to rely on Scripture scholars who can analyze various samples of ancient texts. The scholars have a deep understanding of ancient languages and can interpret the meaning for us so that we can appreciate the true message and not get hung up on factual errors or inconsistencies.

In the next episode, I will talk more about how scripture scholars use historical critical analysis to help us understand the deeper truth to be found in Scripture. This is still a continuation of my first lesson on Scripture.

So, as always… if you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and other exclusive content. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

As always, my deepest thanks to my financial supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express.

Even if you cannot provide financial support, please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience. I just want more people to be able to hear my stories.

All of my back episodes are available, and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback, please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you found this podcast.

I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I begin a lengthy multipart series in which I adapt some of the lesson plans I used as I taught the Catholic faith for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 88 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I kick off a multipart series in which I return to the topic of religion.

Whenever I talk about religion, I always include this disclaimer that I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

For 30 years, I taught classes to people considering converting to Catholicism. The classes were part of a program called RCIA, which stands for Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Note that “rite” is spelled RITE, not RIGHT or WRITE, because the program includes a series of rites or rituals that are part of the initiation process. Recently, the program has been renamed OCIA for the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. I continue to call it RCIA because that’s what we called it when I was teaching.

The classes met one night per week, usually Thursdays, beginning in late August or early September and running a few weeks past Easter. The program’s first half is just basic instruction in Christianity and the Catholic faith. We clarify that there should be no pressure for you to join. In fact, sometimes, our pastors would say to the group, “Don’t tell me you are ready to join the Catholic Church. You don’t know what the Catholic Church really is.”

Sometime in January, the priest would interview each participant privately and see if they were still interested in converting to Catholicism. They could continue the classes even if they didn’t want to convert. The second half of the curriculum focused more directly on preparing you to receive the Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation. These sacraments would be administered at a special ceremony the night before Easter.

Two categories of non-Catholics attend the program. First, we have catechumens who have not been baptized in any other Christian religion. We also have candidates who are people who have been baptized but want to convert from some other form of Christianity to become Catholic. The program was essentially the same for both of them. The only distinction was which rituals they would participate in for their initiation.

In addition to the non-Catholics who attended the program possibly to convert, nearly half of the class participants were already Catholic. Often, these were Catholic spouses, fiancées, or fiancés who were there to support their partners in their faith journey. Some attendees had converted the previous year but wanted to come back again for a deeper understanding of what they had learned the prior year. Others were simply Catholics who wanted to update their faith.

I first attended the program in 1984-85 as someone who had left the church in their late teens and was returning to investigate whether or not the Church was right for me.

A year or two later, I began teaching some of the classes as part of our RCIA Team. I will explain later about my failing recollection as to when I actually started teaching.

In this series of episodes, I will dust off some of my old lesson plans and turn them into podcast episodes. When I taught these lessons, I felt obligated to adhere to official Catholic teaching to the extent I could. However, in this series, I might diverge a bit and talk about my own personal beliefs that may not be 100% the Catholic doctrine. I will talk about things I’ve learned about theology, especially interpretation of Scripture, in the few years since I retired from teaching. I will try to clarify what portions of my discussion represent genuine Catholic doctrine and where I go off on a tangent from time to time.

What I am about to present is not exactly how I would’ve taught it in my 30 years of service to my parish. I’m simply using my old lesson plans as an outline or a jumping-off point to talk about religion in general.

Before we get started, let me provide some context and background.

In previous episodes, I talked about the early part of my faith journey, from my indoctrination in the Roman Catholic Church beginning in first grade through my eventual departure from the Church in my late teens and my return to the Catholic Church in my late 20s. The details are in episodes 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 14. Although it’s not 100% necessary to review those episodes if you haven’t already heard them, I encourage you to check them out. It gives you a deeper understanding of how I got to where I felt that my faith had grown sufficiently that I was confident I could teach.

Additionally, I did a series of episodes about my early ministry in the Church once I returned. Most of that was about work I did as a member of the Saint Gabriel Parrish Finance Committee and Pastoral Council. These topics are covered in episodes 37 through 42. It’s not as necessary that you hear those episodes before we proceed, but I just thought I would mention them here. My ministry with the finance committee was ongoing during my first years of teaching.

You’re probably wondering how a guy with a BS degree in computer science ended up teaching Catholic Theology. Here’s the back story…

In addition to the full year of attending RCIA as a returning ex-Catholic, I also attended many other adult education programs offered by my parish. The most influential and inspiring one was a series of lectures on the Catholic approach to Scripture given by Jim Welter of nearby Saint Monica Parish. He called his lecture series “The Ascending View.” I already explained what he meant by that phrase in episode 13, but I will cover it more in later episodes here. I was quite impressed both intellectually and spiritually by Jim’s work. I was particularly interested in the sections where he would share part of his personal faith journey in the context of his teaching.

Whether one is teaching an adult education program, Catholic Sunday school, or religion in a Catholic parochial school, we are not called “teachers.” The term we use is “catechist.” This is defined as “someone who instructs by sharing their faith.” Jim taught me by his example what that means.

In preparation for these episodes, I tried to locate Jim Welter. His website domain has been taken over by someone else. I found him on Facebook, and I’m trying to contact him to thank him for all I learned from his work. I always gave him full credit for teaching me much of what I know about the Catholic approach to Scripture. One of my lessons was essentially a stripped it down condensation of what he taught over a series of three or four lectures.

One of the questions I cannot answer is, “Exactly when did I begin teaching?” We are talking about events from 40 years ago so my recollection is a bit fuzzy on the details.

The timeline begins on April 21, 1984, when I attended the Easter Vigil service at the invitation of my friend Judy to see her husband Paul initiated into the church. They had just completed a year of RCIA classes. Attending that service was my entry back to the church after an absence of about nine years. Judy and Paul returned to the classes in the fall of 1984, and I joined them. I attended through the 1984-85 sessions.

If you had asked me a few days ago when I began teaching, I would’ve said it was the following year in the 1985-86 sessions. But the more I think about it, I don’t think I started until 1986-87. Upon deeper reflection over the past day or so, here’s what I think really happened.

In the 84-85 sessions, our Associate Pastor, Fr. Conrad Camberon, taught the Introduction to Scripture lesson. He used a class participation exercise that I later incorporated into my introduction to Scripture lesson.

Sometime, probably in 1985, I attended those lectures by Jim Welter, where I learned more about the Catholic approach to Scripture.

For the 1985-86 sessions, our pastor, Fr. Paul Landwerlen, taught the Scripture lesson. He seemed to me to be struggling a bit with teaching the lesson. Because I was freshly armed with abundant knowledge on the topic from Jim Welter, my reaction was, “I could do better than that.” After class, I approached Fr. Paul and asked if perhaps I could teach the class next year. He agreed.

In the second week of the 1986-87 season, I presented a lesson about the Catholic approach to Scripture. Father Paul attended. I was happy to have him there as backup lest I accidentally preached some heresy or misrepresented the Church doctrine. After class, he approached with a big smile and said, “You teach that material better than I do. We were taught all of that in the seminary, but it’s not something we preach or teach about on a regular basis.”

I’m pretty sure I simply thanked him for the compliment and for placing his trust in me, but I know inside I was thinking, “Yeah… I know I can do it better than you. That’s why I volunteered.”

So anyway, that’s how I got started.

Let’s talk about a typical year in the program after I had been teaching a few years.

Father Paul would teach the vast majority of the lessons. He was supported by a small team of parishioners known as the RCIA Team. That consisted of me, my mom, Judy, and our Pastoral Associate Sr. Mary Timothy Kavanagh. Father Conrad had been reassigned as pastor of a different parish so we only had one priest going forward. I would teach 4-6 lessons per year. Sr. Tim would do one or two. Judy and my mom were there to help keep things organized, provide hospitality, and moral support.

For many years, we would attract as many as 20 or more people to the class. We met in the parish meeting room sitting around cafeteria tables that would seat 6-8 people. The class was scheduled for 2 hours from 7-9 PM but we would take a 15 minute break in the middle for refreshments and socializing.

Parts of each lesson generally included a discussion period. The team would position themselves at different tables around the room to help facilitate the discussion and to be eyes and ears for Father to see if there was anything he needed to address with individuals or the entire group. Often the Team would sit around after class to discuss how the evening went. Sometimes these debriefing sessions ended up at Denny’s for coffee and pie.

As I mentioned, we started the class either in late August or the first week of September. The first session was just to get acquainted. Father would give an overview of the program and present an outline of lesson topics. Then he invited everyone to introduce themselves. He had a brief outline: Who are you? Who or what brought you here? What do you hope to gain from these sessions? He would invite the Team to share first to get the ball rolling.

When it came to my question of, “What brought you here?” I typically said, “I rode in that blue van in the parking lot.” I’m sure my team got sick of the joke, but it always got a big laugh from the new people. The team members, including Father, always insisted that we got as much or more from the sessions as the participants. The example of Judy’s husband and others who joined the church at the Easter Vigil inspired me to return to the church. Seeing more and more people joining the church through the RCIA program and playing a part in their journey greatly recharged the spiritual batteries of the entire team.

The following week, the lesson was a basic introduction to some core concepts about who God is and what is our relationship with Him. Both Father Paul and, years later, Father Larry Crawford taught a similar lesson. What follows in this episode is based on an outline by Father Larry with my own personal spin on the topic.

Father Larry would begin with a reference to the 1966 Michael Caine film “Alfie,” in which the opening song asked the musical question, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” Father explained that we all want to know what life is all about. Why are we here? How did we get here? What is our purpose in life?

By the way, I’m old enough to remember the film and the song, but many of the people in the class had no idea what he was talking about in referring to the film. Sometimes, they were a bit less confused if he prefaced the reference with something like, “There was this movie years ago about a guy named Alfie, and the theme song of the movie asked the musical question, ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’” It always illustrated to me that whether teaching a lesson or writing fiction, you should ensure your audience understands your cultural references.

For Father Larry, the answer was, “It’s all about God and our relationship with Him. That’s what life is all about.”

It’s part of our human nature to ask these questions. The Church has tried to address those. Even back in first grade, when I was learning Catholicism from the Baltimore Catechism, the first three questions were:

Q1. “Who made me?”

A. “God made me”

Q2. “Who is God?”

A. “God is the Supreme Being who made all things.”

The third question asks, “Why did God make me?” The answer was, “God made me to show forth his goodness and share with his everlasting life.”

The fourth question is, “What must I do to share in God’s everlasting life?”

Answer: “To share in God’s everlasting life, we must know, love, and serve him.”

For a further discussion about these four questions of the old catechism, see episode 6.

So, the process is to know God, love God, and serve God.

How do people come to know God? Here’s an overview of just a few of the ways as presented by Father Larry.

Some people grow up with knowledge of God. That probably accounts for the majority of believers. If you are raised in a religious tradition, that is your first encounter with the divine. It’s where I began. Along the way, that was insufficient, and I left. But I came back for my own reasons.

Some people come to know God by reflecting on the course of their life. They look at their blessings. They reflect on the times that they survived hardship. They conclude God’s presence in their life.

Some people find God’s presence in nature. I once heard astrophysicist and science educator Neil deGrasse Tyson explain that when out in the wilderness away from city lights, looking up at the stars, he can rightly describe it as a spiritual experience. For him, that is insufficient to lead him to believe in an anthropomorphic supreme being. However, it is common to find God in nature. I’ve experienced some of that as a sense of awe or wonder that I find in nature. I’ve often described science as the study of things God made. For better or worse, this phenomenon among fundamentalist Christians leads them to try to develop a science of intelligent design. While I have no problem considering God as the architect of the universe, I don’t use that philosophy to justify interpreting Scripture in a manner that defies scientific fact. The fundamentalist do that to maintain a false view of the inspiration, inerrancy, and univocality of Scripture.

Some people are convinced they have personally experienced God. I’m not talking about necessarily hearing voices from God. They simply have had transcendent, spiritual experiences in which they feel in contact with the divine. For example, a father witnessing the birth of their children or a woman giving birth can be a spiritual experience when they realize the miracle that is human life and the fact that they were able to participate in it. Perhaps surviving an accident, illness or disaster can lead you to the divine. As the saying goes, “There are no atheists in a foxhole.” These personal experiences of God are similar to the nature issue we discussed earlier, but it doesn’t always have to be an encounter with nature to instigate such feelings.

Some people are helped to know God by demonstration from reason. There are many philosophers throughout the centuries who have attempted to prove or disprove the existence of God. The most common one is titled “prime mover” argument. Take any object around you. A table, chair, lamp, your computer… Whatever. Where did that come from? The table is made from wood. Where did the wood come from? Where did the tree come from? Where did the seed from which the tree grew come from? No matter what you encounter, you can continually ask what came before. Even scientists cannot explain what happened before the Big Bang. Ultimately, when you can go back no further… they argue that is God.

If you go back to my earlier episodes about my spiritual journey, you will see that my “argument from reason” is that you don’t prove there is a God. You simply assume there is and see where that takes you. In mathematics, geometry, and logic, you always begin with axioms. These are unprovable truths that you accept as fact to have a basis from which to build everything else. If all of mathematics is based on axioms that are taken without proof, why can we not have axioms for religion? For me, God is an axiom. See episode 14 for more details on this topic.

Some people come to God through their desire for perfect unconditional love. In some respects, this also reflects my philosophy. I look at the blessings in my life, especially the people in my life–my family and friends who take care of me, and I sometimes feel unworthy to be so blessed. My logical conclusion is that these people were put in my life by a God who loves me. And I see it as my mission to be a blessing in their lives as well.

Some people are led to God by people who love God. This is similar to being brought up by believers. However, this can occur later in life. You associate with religious people, see the value it brings to their lives, and you adopt new traditions to get a piece of that peace.

Finally, some people cannot express why they believe or what God means to them.

It is simply beyond their capability to express what it means to them. And that’s okay. God is hard to explain. I think a saying attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas is illustrative. He said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

I look to Matthew 22:21, Jesus says, “Render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar’s and render unto God, that which is God’s.” I adapt the idea to deal with the dichotomy of faith and reason. I render unto reason that which requires reason, and I render unto God that which requires faith.

Going off-topic for a moment. I recently wrote a sci-fi murder mystery in which a church official is murdered. I invented a fictitious religion that claimed they could merge faith and reason. This fits my general category of sci-fi stories: “You can’t do that. But what if you could?” For me, I don’t try to merge or reconcile faith and reason. I give them each their own domain.

Anyway, back to God… Ultimately, what it takes to know God is experience. And we’ve already listed a variety of ways in which people come to experience and know God.

Father Crawford would say that God is wholly other. That is, wholly spelled WHOLLY, not HOLY. By definition, God is beyond human understanding. But we can talk about what we do know about God. We can discuss some of God’s attributes. We can say God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-forgiving, and unconditionally loving. Can we really understand what those things mean? Can we really experience unconditional love? That’s ,eyond human experience

For many people, God is distant. Jewish tradition is that only Moses was able to be in the presence of God. That is why many of them failed to accept the idea that Jesus was God in human form. It was a radical concept that God would be with us personally here on earth.

For others, their relationship with God is quite personal. The image of a divine Jesus walking the earth as one of us and calling us brothers and sisters makes God more accessible and people have a personal relationship with God much more easily than they would with a distant God the Father sitting on a heavenly throne.

The theme of the four lessons that I taught after the opening lesson about God Is that our God is a god who speaks to us. He has revealed himself to us in a variety of ways. We will talk about what has been revealed, how we preserve and pass on that revelation, and what we have learned by reflecting upon what has been revealed.

Ultimately, we know most of what we know about God through Jesus.

We are going to wrap things up for today. In the next episode, we will discuss human nature. How we view ourselves as human beings affects how we see our relationship with God. We will also discuss good and evil and how we use the metaphors of Angels and Demons to discuss these concepts. All of that was included in our opening lesson in the RCIA program.

Remember that our weekly sessions were about 90 minutes or more, and I try to keep these podcasts not much longer than 30 minutes. So, it will take a while to get to each lesson plan.

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