The Bible, The Qur'an and
Science
by Dr. Maurice Bucaille
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES EXAMINED IN THE
LIGHT
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Back Cover
As a
surgeon, Maurice Bucaille has often been in a situation where he was able to
examine not only people's bodies, but their souls. This is how he was struck
by the existence of Muslim piety and by aspects of Islam which remain unknown
to the vast majority of non-Muslims. In his search for explanations which are
otherwise difficult to obtain, he learnt Arabic and studied the Qur'an. In
it, he was surprised to find statements on natural phenomena whose meaning
can only be understood through modern scientific knowledge. He then
turned to the question of the authenticity of the writings that constitute
the Holy Scriptures of the monotheistic religions. Finally, in the case of
the Bible, he proceeded to a confrontation between these writings and
scientific data. The
results of his research into the Judeo-Christian Revelation and the Qur'an
are set out in this book. Ansariyan
Publications |
Foreword
In his
objective study of the texts, Maurice Bucaille clears away many preconceived
ideas about the Old Testament, the Gospels and the Qur'an. He tries, in this
collection of Writings, to separate what belongs to Revelation from what is
the product of error or human interpretation. His study sheds new light on
the Holy Scriptures. At the end of a gripping account, he places the Believer
before a point of cardinal importance: the continuity of a Revelation
emanating from the same God, with modes of expression that differ in the
course of time. It leads us to meditate upon those factors which, in our day,
should spiritually unite rather than divide-Jews, Christians and Muslims. As a
surgeon, Maurice Bucaille has often been in a situation where he was able to
examine not only people's bodies, but their souls. This is how he was struck
by the existence of Muslim piety and by aspects of Islam which remain unknown
to the vast majority of non-Muslims. In his search for explanations which are
otherwise difficult to obtain, he learnt Arabic and studied the Qur'an. In
it, he was surprised to find statements on natural phenomena whose meaning
can only be understood through modern scientific knowledge. He then
turned to the question of the authenticity of the writings that constitute
the Holy Scriptures of the monotheistic religions. Finally, in the case of
the Bible, he proceeded to a confrontation between these writings and scientific
data. The
results of his research into the Judeo-Christian Revelation and the Qur'an
are set out in this book. |
Introduction
Each of
the three monotheistic religions possess its own collection of Scriptures.
For the faithful-be they Jews, Christians or Muslims-these documents
constitute the foundation of their belief. For them they are the material
transcription of a divine Revelation; directly, as in the case of Abraham and
Moses, who received the commandments from God Himself, or indirectly, as in
the case of Jesus and Muhammad, the first of whom stated that he was speaking
in the name of the Father, and the second of whom transmitted to men the
Revelation imparted to him by Archangel Gabriel. If we
take into consideration the objective facts of religious history, we must
place the Old Testament, the Gospels and the Qur'an on the same level as
being collections of written Revelation. Although this attitude is in
principle held by Muslims, the faithful in the West under the predominantly
Judeo-Christian influence refuse to ascribe to the Qur'an the character of a
book of Revelation. Such an
attitude may be explained by the position each religious community adopts
towards the other two with regard to the Scriptures. Judaism
has as its holy book the Hebraic Bible. This differs from the Old Testament
of the Christians in that the latter have included several books which did
not exist in Hebrew. In practice, this divergence hardly makes any difference
to the doctrine. Judaism does not however admit any revelation subsequent to
its own. Christianity
has taken the Hebraic Bible for itself and added a few supplements to it. It
has not however accepted all the published writings destined to make known to
men the Mission of Jesus. The Church has made incisive cuts in the profusion
of books relating the life and teachings of Jesus. It has only preserved a
limited number of writings in the New Testament, the most important of which
are the four Canonic Gospels. Christianity takes no account of any revelation
subsequent to Jesus and his Apostles. It therefore rules out the Qur'an. The
Qur'anic Revelation appeared six centuries after Jesus. It resumes numerous
data found in the Hebraic Bible and the Gospels since it quotes very
frequently from the 'Torah' [ What is meant by Torah are the first five books of
the Bible, in other words the Pentateuch of Moses (Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy).] and the 'Gospels.' The Qur'an directs
all Muslims to believe in the Scriptures that precede it (sura
4, verse 136). It stresses the important position occupied in the Revelation
by God's emissaries, such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Prophets and Jesus, to
whom they allocate a special position. His birth is described in the Qur'an,
and likewise in the Gospels, as a supernatural event. Mary is also given a
special place, as indicated by the fact that sura 19 bears her name. The
above facts concerning Islam are not generally known in the West. This is
hardly surprising, when we consider the way so many generations in the West
were instructed in the religious problems facing humanity and the ignorance
in which they were kept about anything related to Islam. The use of such
terms as 'Mohammedan religion' and 'Mohammedans' has been instrumental-even
to the present day-in maintaining the false notion that beliefs were involved
that were spread by the work of man among which God (in the Christian sense)
had no place. Many cultivated people today are interested in the
philosophical, social and political aspects of Islam, but they do not pause
to inquire about the Islamic Revelation itself, as indeed they should. In what
contempt the Muslims are held by certain Christian circles! I experienced
this when I tried to start an exchange of ideas arising from a comparative
analysis of Biblical and Qur'anic stories on the same theme. I noted a
systematic refusal, even for the purposes of simple reflection, to take any
account of what the Qur'an had to say on the subject in hand. It is as if a
quote from the Qur'an were a reference to the Devil! A
noticeable change seems however to be under way these days at the highest
levels of the Christian world. The Office for Non-Christian Affairs at the
Vatican has produced a document result. from the Second Vatican Council under
the French title Orientations pour un dialogue entre Chrétiens et
Musulmans[Pub. Ancora, Rome.]. (Orientations
for a Dialogue between Christians and Muslims), third French edition dated
1970, which bears witness to the profound change in official attitude. Once
the document has invited the reader to clear away the "out-dated image,
inherited from the past, or distorted by prejudice and slander" that
Christians have of Islam, the Vatican document proceeds to "recognize
the past injustice towards the Muslims for which the West, with its Christian
education, is to blame". It also criticizes the misconceptions
Christians have been under concerning Muslim fatalism, Islamic legalism,
fanaticism, etc. It stresses belief in unity of God and reminds us how
surprised the audience was at the Muslim University of Al Azhar, Cairo, when
Cardinal Koenig proclaimed this unity at the Great Mosque during an official
conference in March, 1969. It reminds us also that the Vatican Office in 1967
invited Christians to offer their best wishes to Muslims at the end of the
Fast of Ramadan with "genuine religious worth". Such
preliminary steps towards a closer relationship between the Roman Catholic
Curia and Islam have been followed by various manifestations and consolidated
by encounters between the two. There has been, however, little publicity
accorded to events of such great importance in the western world, where they
took place and where there are ample means of communication in the form of
press, radio and television. The
newspapers gave little coverage to the official visit of Cardinal Pignedoli,
the President of the Vatican Office of Non-Christian Affairs, on 24th April,
1974, to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. The French newspaper Le Monde on
25th April, 1974, dealt with it in a few lines. What momentous news they
contain, however, when we read how the Cardinal conveyed to the Sovereign a
message from Pope Paul VI expressing "the regards of His Holiness, moved
by a profound belief in the unification of Islamic and Christian worlds in the
worship of a single God, to His Majesty King Faisal as supreme head of the
Islamic world". Six months later, in October 1974, the Pope received the
official visit to the Vatican of the Grand Ulema of Saudi Arabia. It
occasioned a dialogue between Christians and Muslims on the "Cultural
Rights of Man in Islam". The Vatican newspaper, Observatore Romano,
on 26th October, 1974, reported this historic event in a front page story
that took up more space than the report on the closing day of the meeting
held by the Synod of Bishops in Rome. The
Grand Ulema of Saudi Arabia were afterwards received by the Ecumenical
Council of Churches of Geneva and by the Lord Bishop of Strasbourg, His Grace
Elchinger. The Bishop invited them to join in midday prayer before him in his
cathedral. The fact that the event Was reported seems to be more on account
of its unusual nature than because of its considerable religious
significance. At all events, among those whom I questioned about this
religious manifestation, there were very few who replied that they were aware
of it. The
open-minded attitude Pope Paul VI has towards Islam will certainly become a
milestone in the relations between the two religions. He himself Mid that he
was "moved by a profound belief in the unification of the Islamic and
Christian worlds in the worship of a single God". This reminder of the
sentiments of the head of the Catholic Church concerning Muslims is indeed
necessary. Far too many Christians, brought up in a spirit of open hostility,
are against any reflection about Islam on principle. The Vatican document
notes this with regret. It is on account of this that they remain totally
ignorant of what Islam is in reality, and retain notions about the Islamic
Revelation which are entirely mistaken. Nevertheless,
when studying an aspect of the Revelation of a monotheistic religion, it
seems quite in order to compare what the other two have to say on the same
subject. A comprehensive study of a problem is more interesting than a
compartmentalized one. The confrontation between certain subjects dealt with
in the Scriptures and the facts of 20th century science will therefore, in
this work, include all three religions. In addition it will be useful to
realize that the three religions should form a tighter block by virtue of
their closer relationship at a time when they are all threatened by the
onslaught of materialism. The notion that science and religion are
incompatible is as equally prevalent in countries under the Judeo-Christian
influence as in the world of Islam-especially in scientific circles. If this
question were to be dealt with comprehensively, a series of lengthy exposes
would be necessary. In this work, I intend to tackle only one aspect of it:
the examination of the Scriptures themselves in the light of modern
scientific knowledge. Before
proceeding with our task, we must ask a fundamental question: How authentic
are today's texts? It is a question which entails an examination of the
circumstances surrounding their composition and the way in which they have
come down to us. In the
West the critical study of the Scriptures is something quite recent. For
hundreds of years people were content to accept the Bible-both Old and New
Testaments-as it was. A reading produced nothing more than remarks
vindicating it. It would have been a sin to level the slightest criticism at
it. The clergy were priviledged in that they were easily able to have a
comprehensive knowledge of the Bible, while the majority of laymen heard only
selected readings as part of a sermon or the liturgy. Raised
to the level of a specialized study, textual criticism has been valuable in
uncovering and disseminating problems which are often very serious. How
disappointing it is therefore to read works of a so-called critical nature
which, when faced with very real problems of interpretation, merely provide
passages of an apologetical nature by means of which the author contrives to
hide his dilemma. Whoever retains his objective judgment and power of thought
at such a moment will not find the improbabilities and contradictions any the
less persistent. One can only regret an attitude which, in the face of all
logical reason, upholds certain passages in the Biblical Scriptures even
though they are riddled with errors. It can exercise an extremely damaging
influence upon the cultivated mind with regard to belief in God. Experience
shows however that even if the few are able to distinguish fallacies of this
kind, the vast majority of Christians have never taken any account of such
incompatibilities with their secular knowledge, even though they are often
very elementary. Islam
has something relatively comparable to the Gospels in some of the Hadiths.
These are the collected sayings of Muhammad and stories of his deeds. The
Gospels are nothing other than this for Jesus. Some of the collections of
Hadiths were written decades after the death of Muhammad, just as the Gospels
were written decades after Jesus. In both cases they bear human witness to
events in the past. We shall see how, contrary to what many people think, the
authors of the four Canonic Gospels were not the witnesses of the events they
relate. The same is true of the Hadiths referred to at the end of this book. Here
the comparison must end because even if the authenticity of such-and-such a
Hadith has been discussed and is still under discussion, in the early
centuries of the Church the problem of the vast number of Gospels was
definitively decided. Only four of them were proclaimed official, or canonic,
in spite of the many points on which they do not agree, and order was given
for the rest to be concealed; hence the term 'Apocrypha'. Another
fundamental difference in the Scriptures of Christianity and Islam is the
fact that Christianity does not have a text which is both revealed and
written down. Islam, however, has the Qur'an which fits this description. The
Qur'an is the expression of the Revelation made to Muhammad by the Archangel
Gabriel, which was immediately taken down, and was memorized and recited by
the faithful in their prayers, especially during the month of Ramadan.
Muhammad himself arranged it into suras, and these were collected soon after
the death of the Prophet, to form, under the rule of Caliph Uthman (12 to 24
years after the Prophet's death), the text we know today. In
contrast to this, the Christian Revelation is based on numerous indirect
human accounts. We do not in fact have an eyewitness account from the life of
Jesus, contrary to what many Christians imagine. The question of the
authenticity of the Christian and Islamic texts has thus now been formulated. The
confrontation between the texts of the Scriptures and scientific data has
always provided man with food for thought. It was
at first held that corroboration between the scriptures and science was a
necessary element to the authenticity of the sacred text. Saint Augustine, in
letter No. 82, which we shall quote later on, formally established this
principle. As science progressed however it became clear that there were
discrepancies between Biblical Scripture and science. It was therefore
decided that comparison would no longer be made. Thus a situation arose which
today, we are forced to admit, puts Biblical exegetes and scientists in
opposition to one another. We cannot, after all, accept a divine Revelation
making statements which are totally inaccurate. There was only one way of
logically reconciling the two; it lay in not considering a passage containing
unacceptable scientific data to be genuine. This solution was not adopted.
Instead, the integrity of the text was stubbornly maintained and experts were
obliged to adopt a position on the truth of the Biblical Scriptures which,
for the scientist, is hardly tenable. Like
Saint Augustine for the Bible, Islam has always assumed that the data
contained in the Holy Scriptures were in agreement with scientific fact. A
modern examination of the Islamic Revelation has not caused a change in this
position. As we shall see later on, the Qur'an deals with many subjects of
interest to science, far more in fact than the Bible. There is no comparison
between the limited number of Biblical statements which lead to a
confrontation With science, and the profusion of subjects mentioned in the
Qur'an that are of a scientific nature. None of the latter can be contested
from a scientific point of view. this is the basic fact that emerges from our
study. We shall see at the end of this work that such is not the case for the
Hadiths. These are collections of the Prophet's sayings, set aside from the
Qur'anic Revelation, certain of which are scientifically unacceptable. The
Hadiths in question have been under study in accordance with the strict
principles of the Qur'an which dictate that science and reason should always
be referred to, if necessary to deprive them of any authenticity. These
reflections on the scientifically acceptable or unacceptable nature of a
certain Scripture need some explanation. It must be stressed that when
scientific data are discussed here, what is meant is data definitely
established. This consideration rules out any explanatory theories, once
useful in illuminating a phenomenon and easily dispensed with to make way for
further explanations more in keeping with scientific progress. What I intend
to consider here are incontrovertible facts and even if science can only provide
incomplete data, they will nevertheless be sufficiently well established to
be used Without fear of error. Scientists
do not, for example, have even an approximate date for man's appearance on
Earth. They have however discovered remains of human works which we can
situate beyond a shadow of a doubt at before the tenth millenium B.C. Hence
we cannot consider the Biblical reality on this subject to be compatible with
science. In the Biblical text of Genesis, the dates and genealogies given
would place man's origins (i.e. the creation of Adam) at roughly thirty-seven
centuries B.C. In the future, science may be able to provide us with data
that are more precise than our present calculations, but we may rest assured
that it will never tell us that man first appeared on Earth 6,786 years ago,
as does the Hebraic calendar for 1976. The Biblical data concerning the
antiquity of man are therefore inaccurate. This
confrontation with science excludes all religious problems in the true sense
of the word. Science does not, for example, have any explanation of the
process whereby God manifested Himself to Moses. The same may be said for the
mystery surrounding the manner in which Jesus was born in the absence of a
biological father. The Scriptures moreover give no material explanation of
such data. This present study is concerned With what the Scriptures tell us
about extremely varied natural phenomena, which they surround to a lesser or
greater extent with commentaries and explanations. With this in mind, we must
note the contrast between the rich abundance of information on a given
subject in the Qur'anic Revelation and the modesty of the other two
revelations on the same subject. It was
in a totally objective spirit, and without any preconceived ideas that I
first examined the Qur'anic Revelation. I was looking for the degree of
compatibility between the Qur'anic text and the data of modern science. I
knew from translations that the Qur'an often made allusion to all sorts of
natural phenomena, but I had only a summary knowledge of it. It was only when
I examined the text very closely in Arabic that I kept a list of them at the
end of which I had to acknowledge the evidence in front of me: the Qur'an did
not contain a single statement that was assailable from a modern scientific
point of view. I
repeated the same test for the Old Testament and the Gospels, always
preserving the same objective outlook. In the former I did not even have to
go beyond the first book, Genesis, to find statements totally out of keeping
With the cast-iron facts of modern science. On
opening the Gospels, one is immediately confronted with a serious problem. On
the first page we find the genealogy of Jesus, but Matthew's text is in
evident contradiction to Luke's on the same question. There is a further
problem in that the latter's data on the antiquity of man on Earth are
incompatible with modern knowledge. The
existence of these contradictions, improbabilities and incompatibilities does
not seem to me to detract from the belief in God. They involve only man's
responsibility. No one can say what the original texts might have been, or
identify imaginative editing, deliberate manipulations of them by men, or
unintentional modification of the Scriptures. What strikes us today. when we
realize Biblical contradictions and incompatibilities with well-established
scientific data, is how specialists studying the texts either pretend to be
unaware of them, or else draw attention to these defects then try to
camouflage them with dialectic acrobatics. When we come to the Gospels
according to Matthew and John, I shall provide examples of this brilliant use
of apologetical turns of phrase by eminent experts in exegesis. Often the
attempt to camouflage an improbability or a contradiction, prudishly called a
'difficulty', is successful. This explains why so many Christians are unaware
of the serious defects contained in the Old Testament and the Gospels. The
reader will find precise examples of these in the first and second parts of
this work. In the
third part, there is the illustration of an unusual application of science to
a holy Scripture, the contribution of modern secular knowledge to a better
understanding of certain verses in the Qur'an which until now have remained
enigmatic, if not incomprehensible. Why should we be surprised at this when
we know that, for Islam, religion and science have always been considered
twin sisters? From the very beginning, Islam directed people to cultivate
science; the application of this precept brought with it the prodigious strides
in science taken during the great era of Islamic civilization, from which,
before the Renaissance, the West itself benefited. In the confrontation
between the Scriptures and science a high point of understanding has been
reached owing to the light thrown on Qur'anic passages by modern scientific
knowledge. Previously these passages were obscure owning to the
non-availability of knowledge which could help interpret them. |
The Old Testament
General Outlines
Who
is the author of the Old Testament? One
wonders how many readers of the Old Testament, if asked the above question,
would reply by repeating what they had read in the introduction to their
Bible. They might answer that, even though it was written by men inspired by
the Holy Ghost, the author was God. Sometimes,
the author of the Bible's presentation confines himself to informing his
reader of this succinct observation which puts an end to all further
questions. Sometimes he corrects it by warning him that details may
subsequently have been added to the primitive text by men, but that
nonetheless, the litigious character of a passage does not alter the general
"truth' that proceeds from it. This "truth' is stressed very
heavily. The Church Authorities answer for it, being the only body, With the
assistance of the Holy Ghost, able to enlighten the faithful on such points.
Since the Councils held in the Fourth century, it was the Church that issued
the list of Holy Books, ratified by the Councils of Florence (1441), Trent
(1546), and the First Vatican Council (1870), to form what today is known as
the Canon. Just recently, after so many encyclicals, the Second Vatican
Council published a text concerning the Revelation which is extremely
important. It took three years (1962-1966) of strenuous effort to produce.
The vast majority of the Bible's readers who find this highly reassuring
information at the head of a modern edition have been quite satisfied with
the guarantees of authenticity made over past centuries and have hardly
thought it possible to debate them. When
one refers however to works written by clergymen, not meant for mass
publication, one realizes that the question concerning the authenticity of
the books in the Bible is much more complex than one might suppose a
priori. For example, when one consults the modern publication in separate
installments of the Bible in French translated under the guidance of the
Biblical School of Jerusalem [ Pub. Cerf, Paris], the tone appears to be very different.
One realizes that the Old Testament, like the New Testament, raises problems
with controversial elements that, for the most part, the authors of
commentaries have not concealed. We also
find highly precise data in more condensed studies of a very objective
nature, such as Professor Edmond Jacob's study. The Old Testament
(L'Ancien Testament) [ Pub. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris
"Que sais-je?" collection]. This book gives an excellent general
view. Many
people are unaware, and Edmond Jacob points this out, that there were
originally a number of texts and not just one. Around the Third century B.C.,
there were at least three forms of the Hebrew text: the text which was to
become the Masoretic text, the text which was used, in part at least, for the
Greek translation, and the Samaritan Pentateuch. In the First century B.C.,
there was a tendency towards the establishment of a single text, but it was
not until a century after Christ that the Biblical text was definitely
established. If we
had had the three forms of the text, comparison would have been possible, and
we could have reached an opinion concerning what the original might have
been. Unfortunately, we do not have the slightest idea. Apart from the Dead
Sea Scrolls (Cave of Qumran) dating from a pre-Christian era near the time of
Jesus, a papyrus of the Ten Commandments of the Second century A.D.
presenting variations from the classical text, and a few fragments from the
Fifth century A.D. (Geniza of Cairo) , the oldest Hebrew text of the Bible
dates from the Ninth century A.D. The
Septuagint was probably the first translation in Greek. It dates from the
Third century B.C. and was written by Jews in Alexandria. It Was on this text
that the New Testament was based. It remained authoritative until the Seventh
century A.D. The basic Greek texts in general use in the Christian world are
from the manuscripts catalogued under the title Codex Vaticanus in the
Vatican City and Codex Sinaiticus at the British Museum, London. They
date from the Fourth century A.D. At the
beginning of the Fifth century A.D., Saint Jerome was able to produce a text
in latin using Hebrew documents. It was later to be called the Vulgate on
account of its universal distribution after the Seventh century A.D. For the
record, we shall mention the Aramaic version and the Syriac (Peshitta)
version, but these are incomplete. All of
these versions have enabled specialists to piece together so-called
'middle-of-the-road' texts, a sort of compromise between the different
versions. Multi-lingual collections have also been produced which juxtapose
the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Aramaic and even Arabic versions. This is
the case of the famous Walton Bible (London, 1667). For the sake of
completeness, let us mention that diverging Biblical conceptions are
responsible for the fact that the various Christian churches do not all
accept exactly the same books and have not until now had identical ideas on
translation into the same language. The Ecumenical Translation of the Old
Testament is a work of unification written by numerous Catholic and
Protestant experts now nearing completion [ Translator's Note: Published
December 1975 by Les Editions du Cerf and Les Bergers et les Mages, Paris] and should
result in a work of synthesis. Thus
the human element in the Old Testament is seen to be quite considerable. It
is not difficult to understand why from version to version, and translation
to translation, with all the corrections inevitably resulting, it was
possible for the original text to have been transformed during the course of
more than two thousand years. |
ORIGINS OF THE BIBLE
Before
it became a collection of books, it was a folk tradition that relied entirely
upon human memory, originally the only means of passing on ideas. This
tradition was sung. "At
an elementary stage, writes E. Jacob, every people sings; in Israel, as
elsewhere, poetry preceded prose. Israel sang long and well; led by
circumstances of his history to the heights of joy and the depths of despair,
taking part with intense feeling in all that happened to it, for everything
in their eyes had a sense, Israel gave its song a wide variety of
expression". They sang for the most diverse reasons and E. Jacob
mentions a number of them to which we find the accompanying songs in the
Bible: eating songs, harvest songs, songs connected with work, like the
famous Well Song (Numbers 21, 17), wedding songs, as in the Song of Songs,
and mourning songs. In the Bible there are numerous songs of war and among
these we find the Song of Deborah (Judges 5, 1-32) exalting Israel's victory
desired and led by Yahweh Himself, (Numbers 10, 35); "And whenever the
ark (of alliance) set out, Moses said, 'Arise, oh Yahweh, and let thy enemies
be scattered; and let them that hate thee nee before thee". There
are also the Maxims and Proverbs (Book of Proverbs, Proverbs and Maxims of
the Historic Books), words of blessing and curse, and the laws decreed to man
by the Prophets on reception of their Divine mandate. E.
Jacobs notes that these words were either passed down from family to family
or channelled through the sanctuaries in the form of an account of the
history of God's chosen people. History quickly turned into fable, as in the
Fable of Jotham (Judges 9, 7-21), where "the trees went forth to anoint
a king over them; and they asked in turn the olive tree, the fig tree, the
vine and the bramble", which allows E. Jacob to note "animated by
the need to tell a good story, the narration was not perturbed by subjects or
times whose history was not well known", from which he concludes: "It
is probable that what the Old Testament narrates about Moses and the
patriarchs only roughly corresponds to the succession of historic facts. The
narrators however, even at the stage of oral transmission, were able to bring
into play such grace and imagination to blend between them highly varied
episodes, that when all is said and done, they were able to present as a
history that was fairly credible to critical thinkers what happened at the
beginning of humanity and the world". There
is good reason to believe that after the Jewish people settled in Canaan, at
the end of the Thirteenth century B.C., writing was used to preserve and hand
down the tradition. There was not however complete accuracy, even in what to
men seems to demand the greatest durability, i.e. the laws. Among these, the
laws which are supposed to have been written by God's own hand, the Ten
Commandments, were transmitted in the Old Testament in two versions; Exodus
(20,1-21) and Deuteronomy (5, 1-30). They are the same in spirit, but the
variations are obvious. There is also a concern to keep a large written
record of contracts, letters, lists of personalities (Judges, high city
officials, genealogical tables), lists of offerings and plunder. In this way,
archives were created which provided documentation for the later editing of
definitive works resulting in the books we have today. Thus in each book
there is a mixture of different literary genres: it can be left to the
specialists to find the reasons for this odd assortment of documents. The Old
Testament is a disparate whole based upon an initially oral tradition. It is
interesting therefore to compare the process by which it was constituted with
what could happen in another period and another place at the time when a
primitive literature was born. Let us
take, for example, the birth of French literature at the time of the Frankish
Royalty. The same oral tradition presided over the preservation of important
deeds: wars, often in the defense of Christianity, various sensational
events, where heroes distinguished themselves, that were destined centuries
later to inspire court poets, chroniclers and authors of various 'cycles'. In
this way, from the Eleventh century A.D. onwards, these narrative poems, in
which reality is mixed with legend, were to appear and constitute the first
monument in epic poetry. The most famous of all is the Song of Roland
(La Chanson de Roland) a biographical chant about a feat of arms in which
Roland was the commander of Emperor Charlemagne's rearguard on its way home
from an expedition in Spain. The sacrifice of Roland is not just an episode
invented to meet the needs of the story. It took place on 15th August, 778.
In actual fact it was an attack by Basques living in the mountains. This
literary work is not just legend ; it has a historical basis, but no
historian would take it literally. This
parallel between the birth of the Bible and a secular literature seems to
correspond exactly with reality. It is in no way meant to relegate the whole
Biblical text as we know it today to the store of mythological collections,
as do so many of those who systematically negate the idea of God. It is
perfectly possible to believe in the reality of the Creation, God's
transmission to Moses of the Ten Commandments, Divine intercession in human
affairs, e.g. at the time of Solomon. This does not stop us, at the same
time, from considering that what has been conveyed to us is the gist of these
facts, and that the detail in the description should be subjected to rigorous
criticism, the reason for this being that the element of human participation
in the transcription of originally oral traditions is so great. |
The Books of the Old
Testament
The Old
Testament is a collection of works of greatly differing length and many
different genres. They were written in several languages over a period of
more than nine hundred years, based on oral traditions. Many of these works
were corrected and completed in accordance with events or special
requirements, often at periods that were very distant from one another. This copious
literature probably flowered at the beginning of the Israelite Monarchy,
around the Eleventh century B.C. It was at this period that a body of scribes
appeared among the members of the royal household. They were cultivated men
whose role was not limited to writing. The first incomplete writings,
mentioned in the preceding chapter, may date from this period. There was a
special reason for writing these works down; there were a certain number of
songs (mentioned earlier), the prophetic oracles of Jacob and Moses, the Ten
Commandments and, on a more general level, the legislative texts which
established a religious tradition before the formation of the law. All these
texts constitute fragments scattered here and there throughout the various
collections of the Old Testament. It was
not until a little later, possibly during the Tenth century B.C., that the
so-called 'Yahvist' [ So called because God is named Yahweh in this text.] text of the
Pentateuch was written. This text was to form the backbone of the first five
books ascribed to Moses. Later, the so-called 'Elohist' [ So
called because God is named Elohim in this text.] text was to be
added, and also the so-called 'Sacerdotal' [ From the preachers in
the Temple at Jerusalem.] version. The initial Yahvist text deals with the origins of the
world up to the death of Jacob. This text comes from the southern kingdom,
Judah. At the
end of the Ninth century and in the middle of the Eighth century B.C., the
prophetic influence of Elias and Elisha took shape and spread. We have their
books today. This is also the time of the Elohist text of the Pentateuch
which covers a much smaller period than the Yahvist text because it limits
itself to facts relating to Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. The books of Joshua
and Judges date from this time. The
Eighth century B.C. saw the appearance of the writer prophets: Amos and Hosea
in Israel, and Michah in Judah. In 721
B.C., the fall of Samaria put an end to the Kingdom of Israel. The Kingdom of
Judah took over its religious heritage. The collection of Proverbs dates from
this period, distinguished in particular by the fusion into a single book of
the Yahvist and Elohist texts of the Pentateuch; in this way the Torah was
constituted. Deuteronomy was written at this time. In the
second half of the Seventh century B.C., the reign of Josiah coincided with
the appearance of the prophet Jeremiah, but his work did not take definitive
shape until a century later. Before
the first deportation to Babylon in 598 B.C., there appeared the Books of
Zephaniah, Nahum and Habakkuk. Ezekiel was already prophesying during this
first deportation. The fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. marked the beginning of
the second deportation which lasted until 538 B.C. The
Book of Ezekiel, the last great prophet and the prophet of exile, was not
arranged into its present form until after his death by the scribes that were
to become his spiritual inheritors. These same scribes were to resume Genesis
in a third version, the so-called 'Sacerdotal' version, for the section going
from the Creation to the death of Jacob. In this way a third text was to be
inserted into the central fabric of the Yahvist and Elohist texts of the
Torah. We shall see later on, in the books written roughly two and four
centuries earlier, an aspect of the intricacies of this third text. It was at
this time that the Lamentations appeared. On the
order of Cyrus, the deportation to Babylon came to an end in 538 B.C. The
Jews returned to Palestine and the Temple at Jerusalem was rebuilt. The
prophets' activities began again, resulting in the books of Haggai,
Zechariah, the third book of Isaiah, Malachi, Daniel and Baruch (the last
being in Greek). The period following the deportation is also the period of
the Books of Wisdom: Proverbs was written definitively around 480 B.C., Job
in the middle of the Fifth century B.C., Ecclesiastes or Koheleth dates from
the Third century B.C., as do the Song of Songs, Chronicles I & II, Ezra
and Nehemiah; Ecclesiasticus or Sirah appeared in the Second century B.C.;
the Book of Wisdom and the Book of Maccabees I & II were written one
century before Christ. The Books of Ruth, Esther and Jonah are not easily
datable. The same is true for Tobit and Judith. All these dates are given on
the understanding that there may have been subsequent adaptations, since it
was only circa one century before Christ that form was first given to the
writings of the Old Testament. For many this did not become definitive until
one century after Christ. Thus
the Old Testament appears as a literary monument to the Jewish people, from
its origins to the coming of Christianity. The books it consists of were
written, completed and revised between the Tenth and the First centuries B.C.
This is in no way a personal point of view on the history of its composition.
The essential data for this historical survey were taken from the entry The
Bible in the Encyclopedia Universalis [ Paris, 1974 edition, Vol. a,
pp. 246-263.] by J. P. Sandroz, a professor at the Dominican Faculties,
Saulchoir. To understand what the Old Testament represents, it is important
to retain this information, correctly established today by highly qualified
specialists. A
Revelation is mingled in all these writings, but all we possess today is what
men have seen fit to leave us. These men manipulated the texts to please
themselves, according to the circumstances they were in and the necessities
they had to meet. When
these objective data are compared with those found in various prefaces to
Bibles destined today for mass publication, one realizes that facts are
presented in them in quite a different way. Fundamental facts concerning the
writing of the books are passed over in silence, ambiguities which mislead
the reader are maintained, facts are minimalised to such an extent that a
false idea of reality is conveyed. A large number of prefaces or
introductions to the Bible misrepresent reality in this way. In the case of
books that were adapted several times (like the Pentateuch), it is said that
certain details may have been added later on. A discussion of an unimportant
passage of a book is introduced, but crucial facts warranting lengthy
expositions are passed over in silence. It is distressing to see such
inaccurate information on the Bible maintained for mass publication. |
THE TORAH OR PENTATEUCH
Torah
is the Semitic name. The
Greek expression, which in English gives us 'Pentateuch', designates a work
in five parts; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These
were to form the five primary elements of the collection of thirty-nine
volumes that makes up the Old Testament. This
group of texts deals with the origins of the world up to the entry of the
Jewish people into Canaan, the land promised to them after their exile in
Egypt, more precisely until the death of Moses. The narration of these facts
serves however as a general framework for a description of the provisions
made for the religious and social life of the Jewish people, hence the name
Law or Torah. Judaism
and Christianity for many centuries considered that the author was Moses
himself. Perhaps this affirmation was based on the fact that God said to
Moses (Exodus 17, 14): "Write this (the defeat of Amalek) as a memorial
in a book", or again, talking of the Exodus from Egypt, "Moses
wrote down their starting places" (Numbers 33, 2), and finally "And
Moses wrote this law" (Deuteronomy 31, 9). From the First century B.C.
onwards, the theory that Moses wrote the Pentateuch was upheld; Flavius
Josephus and Philo of Alexandria maintain it. Today,
this theory has been completely abandoned; everybody is in agreement on this
point. The New Testament nevertheless ascribes the authorship to Moses. Paul,
in his Letter to the Romans (10, 5) quoting from Leviticus, affirms that
"Moses writes that the man who practices righteousness which is based on
the law . . ." etc. John, in his Gospel (5,46-47), makes Jesus say the
following: "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of
me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my
words?" We have here an example of editing, because the Greek word that
corresponds to the original (written in Greek) is episteuete, so that
the Evangelist is putting an affirmation into Jesus's mouth that is totally
wrong: the following demonstrates this. I am
borrowing the elements of this demonstration from Father de Vaux, Head of the
Biblical School of Jerusalem. He prefaced his French translation of Genesis
in 1962 with a General Introduction to the Pentateuch which contained
valuable arguments. These ran contrary to the affirmations of the Evangelists
on the authorship of the work in question. Father de Vaux reminds us that the
"Jewish tradition which was followed by Christ and his Apostles"
was accepted up to the end of the Middle Ages. The only person to contest
this theory was Abenezra in the Twelfth century. It was in the Sixteenth
century that Calstadt noted that Moses could not have written the account of
his own death in Deuteronomy (34, 5-12). The author then quotes other critics
who refuse to ascribe to Moses a part, at least, of the Pentateuch. It was
above all the work of Richard Simon, father of the Oratory, Critical
History of the Old Testament (Histoire critique du Vieux Testament) 1678,
that underlined the chronological difficulties, the repetitions, the confusion
of the stories and stylistic differences in the Pentateuch. The book caused a
scandal. R. Simon's line of argument was barely followed in history books at
the beginning of the Eighteenth century. At this time, the references to
antiquity very often proceeded from what "Moses had written". One can
easily imagine how difficult it was to combat a legend strengthened by Jesus
himself who, as we have seen, supported it in the New Testament. It is to
Jean Astruc, Louis XV's doctor, that we owe the decisive argument. By
publishing, in 1753, his Conjectures on the original writings which it
appears Moses used to compose the Book of Genesis (Conjectures sur les
Mèmoires originaux dont il parait que Moyse s'est servi pour composer le
livre de la Genèse), he placed the accent on the plurality of sources. He was
probably not the first to have noticed it, but he did however have the
courage to make public an observation of prime importance: two texts, each
denoted by the way in which God was named either Yahweh or Elohim, were
present side by side in Genesis. The latter therefore contained two
juxtaposed texts. Eichorn (1780-1783) made the same discovery for the other
four books; then Ilgen (1798) noticed that one of the texts isolated by
Astruc, the one where God is named Elohim, was itself divided into two. The
Pentateuch literally fell apart. The
Nineteenth century saw an even more minute search into the sources. In 1854,
four sources were recognised. They were called the Yahvist version, the
Elohist version, Deuteronomy, and the Sacerdotal version. It was even
possible to date them: 1.
The Yahvist version was placed in the
Ninth century B.C. (written in Judah) 2.
The Elohist version was probably a
little more recent (written in Israel) 3.
Deuteronomy was from the Eighth century
B.C. for some (E. Jacob) , and from the time of Josiah for others (Father de
Vaux) 4.
The Sacerdotal version came from the
period of exile or after the exile: Sixth century B.C. It can
be seen that the arrangement of the text of the Pentateuch spans at least
three centuries. The
problem is, however, even more complex. In 1941, A. Lods singled out three
sources in the Yahvist version, four in the Elohist version, six in
Deuteronomy, nine in the Sacerdotal version, "not including the
additions spread out among eight different authors" writes Father de
Vaux. More recently, it has been thought that "many of the constitutions
or laws contained in the Pentateuch had parallels outside the Bible going
back much further than the dates ascribed to the documents themselves"
and that "many of the stories of the Pentateuch presupposed a background
that was different from-and older than-the one from which these documents
were supposed to have come". This leads on to "an interest in the
formation of traditions". The problem then appears so complicated that
nobody knows where he is anymore. The
multiplicity of sources brings with it numerous disagreements and
repetitions. Father de Vaux gives examples of this overlapping of traditions
in the case of the Flood, the kidnapping of Joseph, his adventures in Egypt,
disagreement of names relating to the same character, differing descriptions
of important events. Thus
the Pentateuch is shown to be formed from various traditions brought together
more or less skillfully by its authors. The latter sometimes juxtaposed their
compilations and sometimes adapted the stories for the sake of synthesis.
They allowed improbabilities and disagreements to appear in the texts,
however, which have led modern man to the objective study of the sources. As far
as textual criticism is concerned, the Pentateuch provides what is probably
the most obvious example of adaptations made by the hand of man. These were
made at different times in the history of the Jewish people, taken from oral
traditions and texts handed down from preceding generations. It was begun in
the Tenth or Ninth century B.C. with the Yahvist tradition which took the
story from its very beginnings. The latter sketches Israel's own particular
destiny to "fit it back into God's Grand Design for humanity"
(Father de Vaux). It was concluded in the Sixth century B.C. with the
Sacerdotal tradition that is meticulous in its precise mention of dates and
genealogies. [ We shall see in the next chapter, when confronted
with modern scientific data, the extent of the narrative errors committed by
authors of the Sacerdotal version on the subject of the antiquity of man on
Earth, his situation in time and the course of the Creation. They are
obviously errors arising from manipulation of the texts.] Father de Vaux
writes that "The few stories this tradition has of its own bear witness
to legal preoccupations: Sabbatical rest at the completion of the Creation,
the alliance with Noah, the alliance with Abraham and the circumcision, the
purchase of the Cave of Makpela that gave the Patriarchs land in
Canaan". We must bear in mind that the Sacerdotal tradition dates from
the time of the deportation to Babylon and the return to Palestine starting
in 538 B.C. There is therefore a mixture of religious and purely political
problems. For
Genesis alone, the division of the Book into three sources has been firmly
established: Father de Vaux in the commentary to his translation lists for
each source the passages in the present text of Genesis that rely on them. On
the evidence of these data it is possible to pinpoint the contribution made
by the various sources to any one of the chapters. For example, in the case
of the Creation, the Flood and the period that goes from the Flood to
Abraham, occupying as it does the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we can
see alternating in the Biblical text a section of the Yahvist and a section
of the Sacerdotal texts. The Elohist text is not present in the first eleven
chapters. The overlapping of Yahvist and Sacerdotal contributions is here
quite clear. For the Creation and up to Noah (first five chapter's), the
arrangement is simple: a Yahvist passage alternates with a Sacerdotal passage
from beginning to end of the narration. For the Flood and especially chapters
7 and 8 moreover, the cutting of the text according to its source is narrowed
down to very short passages and even to a single sentence. In the space of
little more than a hundred lines of English text, the text changes seventeen
times. It is from this that the improbabilities and contradictions arise when
we read the present-day text. (see Table on
page 15 for schematic distribution of sources) |
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS
In
these books we enter into the history of the Jewish people, from the time
they came to the Promised Land (which is most likely to have been at the end
of the Thirteenth century B.C.) to the deportation to Babylon in the Sixth
century B.C. Here
stress is laid upon what one might call the 'national event' which is
presented as the fulfillment of Divine word. In the narration however,
historical accuracy has rather been brushed aside: a work such as the Book of
Joshua complies first and foremost with theological intentions. With this in
mind, E. Jacob underlines the obvious contradiction between archaeology and
the texts in the case of the supposed destruction of Jericho and Ay. The
Book of Judges is centered on the defense of the chosen people against
surrounding enemies and on the support given to them by God. The Book was
adapted several times, as Father A. Lefèvre notes with great objectivity in
his Preamble to the Crampon Bible. the various prefaces in the text and the
appendices bear witness to this. The story of Ruth is attached to the
narrations contained in Judges.
The
first figure indicates the chapter. Letters:
Y indicates Yahvist text S indicates Sacerdotal text Example:
The first line of the table indicates: from Chapter 1, phrase 1 to Chapter 2,
phrase 4a, the text published in present day Bibles is the Sacerdotal text.
What
simpler illustration can there be of the way men have manipulated the
Biblical Scriptures? The
Book of Samuel and the two Books of Kings are above all biographical
collections concerning Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon. Their historic worth
is the subject of debate. From this point of view E. Jacob finds numerous
errors in it, because there are sometimes two and even three versions of the
same event. The prophets Elias, Elisha and Isaiah also figure here, mixing
elements of history and legend. For other commentators, such as Father A.
Lefèvre, "the historical value of these books is fundamental." Chronicles
I & II, the Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah have a single author,
called 'the Chronicler', writing in the Fourth century B.C. He resumes the
whole history of the Creation up to this period, although his genealogical
tables only go up to David. In actual fact, he is using above all the Book of
Samuel and the Book of Kings, "mechanically copying them out without
regard to the inconsistencies" (E. Jacob), but he nevertheless adds precise
facts that have been confirmed by archaeology. In these works care is taken
to adapt history to the needs of theology. E. Jacob notes that the author
"sometimes writes history according to theology". "To explain
the fact that King Manasseh, who was a sacrilegious persecutor, had a long
and prosperous reign, he postulates a conversion of the King during a stay in
Assyria (Chronicles II, 33/11) although there is no mention of this in any
Biblical or non-Biblical source". The Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah
have been severely criticised because they are full of obscure points, and
because the period they deal with (the Fourth century B.C.) is itself not
very well known, there being few non-Biblical documents from it. The
Books of Tobit, Judith and Esther are classed among the Historical Books. In
them very big liberties are taken with history. proper names are changed,
characters and events are invented, all for the best of religious reasons.
They are in fact stories designed to serve a moral end, pepll)ered with
historical improbabilities and inaccuracies. The
Books of Maccabees are of quite a different order. They provide a version of
events that took place in the Second century B.C. which is as exact a record
of the history of this period as may be found. It is for this reason that
they constitute accounts of great value. The
collection of books under the heading 'historical' is therefore highly
disparate. History is treated in both a scientific and a whimsical fashion. |
THE PROPHETIC BOOKS
Under
this heading we find the preachings of various prophets who in the Old
Testament have been classed separately from the first great prophets such as
Moses, Samuel, Elias and Elisha, whose teachings are referred to in other
books. The
prophetic books cover the period from the Eighth to the Second century B.C. In the
Eighth century B.C., there were the books of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Michah.
The first of these is famous for his condemnation of social injustice, the
second for his religious corruption which leads him to bodily suffering (for
being forced to marry a sacred harlot of a pagan cult), like God suffering
for the degradation of His people but still granting them His love. Isaiah is
a figure of political history. he is consulted by kings and dominates events;
he is the prophet of grandeur. In addition to his personal works, his oracles
are published by his disciples right up until the Third century B.C.:
protests against iniquities, fear of God's judgement, proclamations of
liberation at the time of exile and later on the return of the Jews to
Palestine. It is certain that in the case of the second and third Isaiah, the
prophetic intention is paralleled by political considerations that are as
clear as daylight. The preaching of Michah, a contemporary of Isaiah, follows
the same general ideas. In the
Seventh century B.C., Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Nahum and Habakkuk distinguished
themselves by their preachings. Jeremiah became a martyr. His oracles were
collected by Baruch who is also perhaps the author of Lamentations. The
period of exile in Babylon at the beginning of the Sixth century B.C. gave
birth to intense prophetic activity. Ezekiel figures importantly as the
consoler of his brothers, inspiring hope among them. His visions are famous.
The Book of Obadiah deals with the misery of a conquered Jerusalem. After
the exile, which came to an end in 538 B.C., prophetic activity resumed with
Haggai and Zechariah who urged the reconstruction of the Temple. When it was
completed, writings going under the name of Malachi appeared. They contain
various oracles of a spiritual nature. One
wonders why the Book of Jonah is included in the prophetic books when the Old
Testament does not give it any real text to speak of. Jonah is a story from
which one principle fact emerges: the necessary submission to Divine Will. Daniel
was written in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek). According to
Christian commentators, it is a , disconcerting' Apocalypse from an
historical point of view. It is probably a work from the Maccabaean period,
Second century B.C. Its author wished to maintain the faith of his
countrymen, at the time of the 'abomination of desolation', by convincing
them that the moment of deliverance was at hand. (E. Jacob) |
THE BOOKS OF POETRY AND
WISDOM
These
form collections of unquestionable literary unity. Foremost among them are
the Psalms, the greatest monument to Hebrew poetry. A large number were
composed by David and the others by priests and levites. Their themes are
praises, supplications and meditations, and they served a liturgical
function. The
book of Job, the book of wisdom and piety par excellence, probably
dates from 400-500 B.C. The
author of 'Lamentations' on the fall of Jerusalem at the beginning of the
Sixth century B.C. may well be Jeremiah. We must
once again mention the Song of Songs, allegorical chants mostly about Divine
love, the Book of Proverbs, a collection of the words of Solomon and other
wise men of the court, and Ecclesiastes or Koheleth, where earthly happiness
and wisdom are debated. We have,
therefore, a collection of works with highly disparate contents written over
at least seven centuries, using extremely varied sources before being
amalgamated inside a single work. How was
this collection able, over the centuries, to constitute an inseparable whole
and-with a few variations according to community-become the book containing
the Judeo-Christian Revelation? This book was called in Greek the 'canon'
because of the idea of intangibility it conveys. The
amalgam does not date from the Christian period, but from Judaism itself,
probably with a primary stage in the Seventh century B.C. before later books
were added to those already accepted. It is to be noted however that the
first five books, forming the Torah or Pentateuch, have always been given
pride of place. Once the proclamations of the prophets (the prediction of a
chastisement commensurate with misdemeanour) had been fulfilled, there was no
difficulty in adding their texts to the books that had already been admitted.
The same was true for the assurances of hope given by these prophets. By the
Second century B.C., the 'Canon' of the prophets had been formed. Other
books, e.g. Psalms, on account of their liturgical function, were integrated
along with further writings, such as Lamentations, the Book of Wisdom and the
Book of Job. Christianity,
which was initially Judeo-Christianity, has been carefully studied-as we
shall see later on-by modern authors, such as Cardinal Daniélou. Before it
was transformed under Paul's influence, Christianity accepted the heritage of
the Old Testament without difficulty. The authors of the Gospels adhered very
strictly to the latter, but whereas a 'purge' has been made of the Gospels by
ruling out the 'Apocrypha', the same selection has not been deemed necessary
for the Old Testament. Everything, or nearly everything, has been accepted. Who
would have dared dispute any aspects of this disparate amalgam before the end
of the Middle Ages-in the West at least? The answer is nobody, or almost
nobody. From the end of the Middle Ages up to the beginning of modern times,
one or two critics began to appear; but, as we have already seen, the Church
Authorities have always succeeded in having their own way. Nowadays, there is
without doubt a genuine body of textual criticism, but even if ecclesiastic
specialists have devoted many of their efforts to examining a multitude of
detailed points, they have preferred not to go too deeply into what they
euphemistically call difficulties'. They hardly seem disposed to study them
in the light of modern knowledge. They may well establish parallels with
history-principally when history and Biblical narration appear to be in
agreement-but so far they have not committed themselves to be a frank and
thorough comparison with scientific ideas. They realize that this would lead
people to contest notions about the truth of Judeo-Christian Scriptures,
which have so far remained undisputed. |
The Old Testament and
Science Findings
Few of
the subjects dealt within the Old Testament, and likewise the Gospels, give
rise to a confrontation with the data of modern knowledge. When an
incompatibility does occur between the Biblical text and science, however, it
is on extremely important points. As we
have already seen in the preceding chapter, historical errors were found in
the Bible and we have quoted several of these pinpointed by Jewish and
Christian experts in exegesis. The latter have naturally had a tendency to
minimize the importance of such errors. They find it quite natural for a
sacred author to present historical fact in accordance with theology and to
write history to suit certain needs. We shall see further on, in the case of
the Gospel according to Matthew, the same liberties taken with reality and
the same commentaries aimed at making admissible as reality what is in
contradiction to it. A logical and objective mind cannot be content with this
procedure. From a
logical angle, it is possible to single out a large number of contradictions
and improbabilities. The existence of different sources that might have been
used in the writing of a description may be at the origin of two different
presentations of the same fact. This is not all; different adaptations, later
additions to the text itself, like the commentaries added a posteriori,
then included in the text later on when a new copy was made-these are
perfectly recognized by specialists in textual criticism and very frankly
underlined by some of them. In the case of the Pentateuch alone, for example,
Father de Vaux in the General Introduction preceding his translation of
Genesis (pages 13 and 14), has drawn attention to numerous disagreements. We
shall not quote them here since we shall be quoting several of them later on
in this study. The general impression one gains is that one must not follow
the text to the letter. Here is
a very typical example: In
Genesis (6, 3), God decides just before the Flood henceforth to limit man's
lifespan to one hundred and twenty years, "... his days shall be a
hundred and twenty years". Further on however, we note in Genesis (11,
10-32) that the ten descendants of Noah had lifespans that range from 148 to
600 years (see table in this chapter showing Noah's descendants down to
Abraham). The contradiction between these two passages is quite obvious. The
explanation is elementary. The first passage (Genesis 6, 3) is a Yahvist
text, probably dating as we have already seen from the Tenth century B.C. The
second passage in Genesis (11, 10-32) is a much more recent text (Sixth
century B.C.) from the Sacerdotal version. This version is at the origin of
these genealogies, which are as precise in their information on lifespans as
they are improbable when taken en masse. It is
in Genesis that we find the most evident incompatibilities with modern
science. These concern three essential points: 1.
the Creation of the world and its
stages; 2.
the date of the Creation of the world
and the date of man's appearance on earth; 3.
the description of the Flood. |
THE CREATION OF THE WORLD
As
Father de Vaux points out, Genesis "starts with two juxtaposed
descriptions of the Creation". When examining them from the point of
view of their compatibility with modern scientific data, we must look at each
one separately.
|
THE DATE OF THE WORLD'S
CREATION AND THE DATE OF MAN'S APPEARANCE ON EARTH
The
Jewish calendar, which follows the data contained in the Old Testament,
places the dates of the above very precisely. The second half of the
Christian year 1975 corresponds to the beginning of the 5, 736th year of the
creation of the world. The creation of man followed several days later, so that
he has the same numerical age, counted in years, as in the Jewish calendar. There
is probably a correction to be made on account of the fact that time was
originally calculated in lunar years, while the calendar used in the West is
based on solar years. This correction would have to be made if one wanted to
be absolutely exact, but as it represents only 3%, it is of very little
consequence. To simplify our calculations, it is easier to disregard it. What
matters here is the order of magnitude. It is therefore of little importance
if, over a thousand years, our calculations are thirty years out. We are
nearer the truth in following this Hebraic estimate of the creation of the
world if we say that it happened roughly thirty-seven centuries before Christ. What
does modern science tell us? It would be difficult to reply to the question
concerning the formation of the Universe. All we can provide figures for is
the era in time when the solar system was formed. It is possible to arrive at
a reasonable approximation of this. The time between it and the present is
estimated at four and a half billion years. We can therefore measure the
margin separating the firmly established reality we know today and the data
taken from the Old Testament. We shall expand on this in the third part of
the present work. These facts emerge from a close scrutiny of the Biblical
text. Genesis provides very precise information on the time that elapsed
between Adam and Abraham. For the period from the time of Abraham to the
beginnings of Christianity, the information provided is insufficient. It must
be supported by other sources.
|
|
|
date
of birth after creation of Adam |
length of life |
date
of death |
|
Adam |
|
930 |
930 |
2. From Abraham to The
Beginnings Of Christianity
The
Bible does not provide any numerical information on this period that might
lead to such precise estimates as those found in Genesis on Abraham's
ancestors. We must look to other sources to estimate the time separating
Abraham from Jesus. At present, allowing for a slight margin of error, the
time of Abraham is situated at roughly eighteen centuries before Jesus.
Combined with information in Genesis on the interval separating Abraham and
Adam, this would place Adam at roughly thirty-eight centuries before Jesus.
This estimate is undeniably wrong: the origins of this inaccuracy arise from
the mistakes in the Bible on the Adam-Abraham period. The Jewish tradition
still founds its calendar on this. Nowadays, we can challenge the traditional
defenders of Biblical truth with the incompatibility between the whimsical
estimates of Jewish priests living in the Sixth century B.C. and modern data.
For centuries, the events of antiquity relating to Jesus were situated in
time according to information based on these estimates.
Before
modern times, editions of the Bible frequently provided the reader with a
preamble explaining the historical sequence of events that had come to pass
between the creation of the world and the time when the books were edited.
The figures vary slightly according to the time. For example, the Clementine
Vulgate, 1621, gave this information, although it did place Abraham a little
earlier and the Creation at roughly the 40th century B.C. Walton's polyglot
Bible, produced in the 17th century, in addition to Biblical texts in several
languages, gave the reader tables similar to the one shown here for Abraham's
ancestors. Almost all the estimates coincide with the figures given here.
With the arrival of modern times, editors were no longer able to maintain
such whimsical chronologies without going against scientific discovery that
placed the Creation at a much earlier date. They were content to abolish
these tables and preambles, but they avoided warning the reader that the
Biblical texts on which these chronologies were based had become obsolete and
could no longer be considered to express the truth. They preferred to draw a
modest veil over them, and invent set-phrases of cunning dialectics that
would make acceptable the text as it had formerly been, without any
subtractions from it.
This is
why the genealogies contained in the Sacerdotal text of the Bible are still
honoured, even though in the Twentieth century one cannot reasonably continue
to count time on the basis of such fiction.
Modern
scientific data do not allow us to establish the date of man's appearance on
earth beyond a certain limit. We may be certain that man, with the capacity
for action and intelligent thought that distinguishes him from beings that
appear to be anatomically similar to him, existed on Earth after a certain
estimable date. Nobody however can say at what exact date he appeared. What
we can say today is that remains have been found of a humanity capable of
human thought and action whose age may be calculated in tens of thousands of
years.
This
approximate dating refers to the prehistoric human species, the most recently
discovered being the Cro-Magnon Man. There have of course been many other
discoveries all over the world of remains that appear to be human. These
relate to less highly evolved species, and their age could be somewhere in
the hundreds of thousands of years. But were they genuine men?
Whatever
the answer may be, scientific data are sufficiently precise concerning the
prehistoric species like the Cro-Magnon Man, to be able to place them much
further back than the epoch in which Genesis places the first men. There is
therefore an obvious incompatibility between what we can derive from the
numerical data in Genesis about the date of man's appearance on Earth and the
firmly established facts of modern scientific knowledge.
THE FLOOD
Chapters
6, 7 and 8 are devoted to the description of the Flood. In actual fact, there
are two descriptions; they have not been placed side by side, but are
distributed all the way through. Passages are interwoven to give the
appearance of a coherent succession of varying episodes. In these three
chapters there are, in reality, blatant contradictions; here again the
explanation lies in the existence of two quite distinct sources: the Yahvist
and Sacerdotal versions. It has
been shown earlier that they formed a disparate amalgam; each original text
has been broken down into paragraphs or phrases, elements of one source
alternating with the other, so that in the course of the complete
description, we go from one to another seventeen times in roughly one hundred
lines of English text. Taken
as a whole, the story goes as follows: Rainwater
is given as the agent of the Flood in one (Yahvist) passage, but in another
(Sacerdotal), the Flood is given a double cause: rainwater and the waters of
the Earth. The
Earth was submerged right up to and above the mountain peaks. All life
perished. After one year, when the waters had receded, Noah emerged from the
Ark that had come to rest on Mount Ararat. One
might add that the Flood lasted differing lengths of time according to the
source used: forty days for the Yahvist version and one hundred and fifty in
the Sacerdotal text. The
Yahvist version does not tell us when the event took place in Noah's life,
but the Sacerdotal text tells us that he was six hundred years old. The
latter also provides information in its genealogies that situates him in
relation to Adam and Abraham. If we calculate according to the information
contained in Genesis, Noah was born 1,056 years after Adam (see table of
Abraham's Genealogy) and the Flood therefore took place 1,656 years after the
creation of Adam. In relation to Abraham, Genesis places the Flood 292 years
before the birth of this Patriarch. According
to Genesis, the Flood affected the whole of the human race and all living
creatures created by God on the face of the Earth were destroyed. Humanity
was then reconstituted by Noah's three sons and their wives so that when
Abraham was born roughly three centuries later, he found a humanity that Was
already re-formed into separate communities. How could this reconstruction
have taken place in such a short time? This simple observation deprives the
narration of all verisimilitude. Furthermore,
historical data show its incompatibility with modern knowledge. Abraham is
placed in the period 1800-1850 B.C., and if the Flood took place, as Genesis
suggests in its genealogies, roughly three centuries before Abraham, we would
have to place him somewhere in the Twenty-first to Twenty-second century B.C.
Modern historical knowledge confirms that at this period, civilizations had
sprung up in several parts of the world; for their remains have been left to
posterity. In the
case of Egypt for example, the remains correspond to the period preceding the
Middle Kingdom (2,100 B.C.) at roughly the date of the First Intermediate
Period before the Eleventh Dynasty. In Babylonia it is the Third Dynasty at
Ur. We know for certain that there was no break in these civilizations, so
that there could have been no destruction affecting the whole of humanity, as
it appears in the Bible. We
cannot therefore consider that these three Biblical narrations provide man
with an account of facts that correspond to the truth. We are obliged to
admit that, objectively speaking, the texts which have come down to us do not
represent the expression of reality. We may ask ourselves whether it is
possible for God to have revealed anything other than the truth. It is
difficult to entertain the idea that God taught to man ideas that were not
only fictitious, but contradictory. We naturally arrive therefore at the
hypothesis that distortions occurred that were made by man or that arose from
traditions passed down from one generation to another by word of mouth, or
from the texts of these traditions once they were written down. When one
knows that a work such as Genesis was adapted at least twice over a period of
not less than three centuries, it is hardly surprising to find
improbabilities or descriptions that are incompatible with reality. This is
because the progress made in human knowledge has enabled us to know, if not
everything, enough at least about certain events to be able to judge the
degree of compatibility between our knowledge and the ancient descriptions of
them. There is nothing more logical than to maintain this interpretation of
Biblical errors which only implicates man himself. It is a great pity that
the majority of commentators, both Jewish and Christian, do not hold with it.
The arguments they use nevertheless deserve careful attention. |
Position Of Christian
Authors With Regard To Scientific Error In The Biblical Texts.
A Critical Examination.
One is
struck by the diverse nature of Christian commentators' reactions to the
existence of these accumulated errors, improbabilities and contradictions.
Certain commentators acknowledge some of them and do not hesitate in their
work to tackle thorny problems. Others pass lightly over unacceptable
statements and insist on defending the text word for word. The latter try to
convince people by apologetic declarations, heavily reinforced by arguments
which are often unexpected, in the hope that what is logically unacceptable
will be forgotten. In the
Introduction to his translation of Genesis, Father de Vaux acknowledges the
existence of critical arguments and even expands upon their cogency.
Nevertheless, for him the objective reconstitution of past events has little
interest. As he writes in his notes, the fact that the Bible resumes
"the memory of one or two disastrous floods of the valleys of the Tigris
and Euphrates, enlarged by tradition until they took on the dimensions of a
universal cataclysm" is neither here nor there; "the essential
thing is, however, that the sacred author has infused into this memory
eternal teachings on the justice and mercy of God toward the malice of man
and the salvation of the righteous." In this
way justification is found for the transformation of a popular legend into an
event of divine proportions-and it is as such that it is thought fit to
present the legend to men's faith-following the principle that an author has
made use of it to illustrate religious teachings. An apologetic position of
this kind justifies all the liberties taken in the composition of writings
which are supposed to be sacred and to contain the word of God. If one
acknowledges such human interference in what is divine, all the human
manipulations of the Biblical texts will be accounted for. If there are
theological intentions, all manipulations become legitimate; so that those of
the 'Sacerdotal' authors of the Sixth century are justified, including their
legalist preoccupations that turned into the whimsical descriptions we have already
seen. A large
number of Christian commentators have found it more ingenious to explain
errors, improbabilities and contradictions in Biblical descriptions by using
the excuse that the Biblical authors were expressing ideas in accordance with
the social factors of a different culture or mentality. From this arose the
definition of respective 'literary genres' which was introduced into the
subtle dialectics of commentators, so that it accounts for all difficulties.
Any contradictions there are between two texts are then explained by the
difference in the way each author expressed ideas in his own particular
'literary genre'. This argument is not, of course, acknowledged by everybody
because it lacks gravity. It has not entirely fallen into disuse today however,
and we shall see in the New Testament its extravagant use as an attempt to
explain blatant contradictions in the Gospels. Another
way of making acceptable what would be rejected by logic when applied to a
litigious text, is to surround the text in question with apologetical
considerations. The reader's attention is distracted from the crucial problem
of the truth of the text itself and deflected towards other problems. Cardinal
Daniélou's reflections on the Flood follow this mode of expression. They
appear in the review Living God (Dieu Vivant) [ No.
38, 1974, pp. 95-112)] under the title: 'Flood, Baptism, Judgment', (Deluge,
Baptème, Judgment ) where he writes "The oldest tradition of the
Church has seen in the theology of the Flood an image of Christ and the
Church". It is "an episode of great significance" . . .
"a judgment striking the whole human race." Having quoted from
Origin in his Homilies on Ezekiel, he talks of '"the shipwreck of
the entire universe saved in the Ark", Cardinal Daniélou dwells upon the
value of the number eight "expressing the number of people that were
saved in the Ark (Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives)".
He turns to his own use Justin's writings in his Dialogue. "They
represent the symbol of the eighth day when Christ rose from the dead"
and "Noah, the first born of a new creation, is an image of Christ who
was to do in reality what Noah had prefigured." He continues the
comparison between Noah on the one hand, who was saved by the ark made of
wood and the water that made it float ("water of the Flood from which a
new humanity was born"), and on the other, the cross made of wood. He
stresses the value of this symbolism and concludes by underlining the
"spiritual and doctrinal wealth of the sacrament of the Flood"
(sic). There
is much that one could say about such apologetical comparisons. We should
always remember that they are commentaries on an event that it is not
possible to defend as reality, either on a universal scale or in terms of the
time in which the Bible places it. With a commentary such as Cardinal
Daniélou's we are back in the Middle Ages, where the text had to be accepted
as it was and any discussion, other than conformist, was off the point. It is
nevertheless reassuring to find that prior to that age of imposed
obscurantism, highly logical attitudes were adopted. One might mention those
of Saint Augustine which proceed from his thought, that was singularly
advanced for the age he lived in. At the time of the Fathers of the Church,
there must have been problems of textual criticism because Saint Augustine
raises them in his letter No. 82. The most typical of them is the following
passage: "It
is solely to those books of Scripture which are called 'canonic' that I have
learned to grant such attention and respect that I firmly believe that their
authors have made no errors in writing them. When I encounter in these books
a statement which seems to contradict reality, I am in no doubt that either
the text (of my copy) is faulty, or that the translator has not been faithful
to the original, or that my understanding is deficient." It was
inconceivable to Saint Augustine that a sacred text might contain an error.
Saint Augustine defined very clearly the dogma of infallibility when,
confronted with a passage that seemed to contradict the truth, he thought of
looking for its cause, without excluding the hypothesis of a human fault.
This is the attitude of a believer with a critical outlook. In Saint
Augustine's day, there was no possibility of a confrontation between the
Biblical text and science. An open-mindedness akin to his would today
eliminate a lot of the difficulties raised by the confrontation of certain
Biblical texts with scientific knowledge. Present-day
specialists, on the contrary, go to great trouble to defend the Biblical text
from any accusation of error. In his introduction to Genesis, Father de Vaux
explains the reasons compelling him to defend the text at all costs, even if,
quite obviously, it is historically or scientifically unacceptable. He asks
us not to view Biblical history "according to the rules of historical
study observed by people today", as if the existence of several
different ways of writing history was possible. History, when it is told in
an inaccurate fashion, (as anyone will admit), becomes a historical novel.
Here however, it does not have to comply with the standards established by
our conceptions. The Biblical commentator rejects any verification of
Biblical descriptions through geology, paleontology or pre-historical data.
"The Bible is not answerable to any of these disciplines, and were one
to confront it with the data obtained from these sciences, it would only lead
to an unreal opposition or an artificial concordance." [Introduction
to Genesis, page 35.] One might point out that these reflections are made on what, in
Genesis, is in no way in harmony with modern scientific data-in this case the
first eleven chapters. When however, in the present day, a few descriptions
have been perfectly verified, in this case certain episodes from the time of
the patriarchs, the author does not fail to support the truth of the Bible
with modern knowledge. "The doubt cast upon these descriptions should
yield to the favorable witness that history and eastern archaeology bear them."
[Introduction to Genesis, page 34.] In other words. if science is
useful in confirming the Biblical description, it is invoked, but if it
invalidates the latter, reference to it is not permitted. To
reconcile the irreconcilable, i.e. the theory of the truth of the Bible with
the inaccurate nature of certain facts reported in the descriptions in the
Old Testament, modern theologians have applied their efforts to a revision of
the classical concepts of truth. It lies outside the scope of this book to
give a detailed expose of the subtle ideas that are developed at length in
works dealing with the truth of the Bible; such as O. Loretz's work (1972) What
is the Truth of the Bible? (Quelle est la Vérité de la Bible?) [ Pub.
Le Centurion, Paris]. This judgment concerning science will have to suffice: The
author remarks that the Second Vatican Council "has avoided providing
rules to distinguish between error and truth in the Bible. Basic
considerations show that this is impossible, because the Church cannot
determine the truth or otherwise of scientific methods in such a way as to
decide in principle and on a general level the question of the truth of the
Scriptures". It is
obvious that the Church is not in a position to make a pronouncement on the
value of scientific 'method' as a means of access to knowledge. The point
here is quite different. It is not a question of theories, but of firmly
established facts. In our day and age, it is not necessary to be highly
learned to know that the world was not created thirty-seven or thirty-eight
centuries ago. We know that man did not appear then and that the Biblical
genealogies on which this estimate is based have been proven wrong beyond any
shadow of a doubt. The author quoted here must be aware of this. His
statements on science are only aimed at side-stepping the issue so that he
does not have to deal with it the way he ought to. The
reminder of all these different attitudes adopted by Christian authors when
confronted with the scientific errors of Biblical texts is a good
illustration of the uneasiness they engender. It recalls the impossibility of
defining a logical position other than by recognizing their human origins and
the impossibility of acknowledging that they form part of a Revelation. The
uneasiness prevalent in Christian circles concerning the Revelation became
clear at the Second Vatican Council (19621965) where it took no less than
five drafts before there was any agreement on the final text, after three
years of discussions. It was only then that "this painful situation
threatening to engulf the Council" came to an end, to use His Grace
Weber's expression in his introduction to the Conciliar Document No. 4 on the
Revelation [ Pub. Le Centurion, 1966, Paris]. Two
sentences in this document concerning the Old Testament (chap IV, page 53)
describe the imperfections and obsolescence of certain texts in a way that
cannot be contested: "In
view of the human situation prevailing before Christ's foundation of
salvation, the Books of the Old Testament enable everybody to know who
is God and who is man, and also the way in which God, in his justice and
mercy, behaves towards men. These books, even though they contain material
which is imperfect and obsolete, nevertheless bear witness to truly divine
teachings." There is
no better statement than the use of the adjectives 'imperfect' and 'obsolete'
applied to certain texts, to indicate that the latter are open to criticism
and might even be abandoned; the principle is very clearly acknowledged. This
text forms part of a general declaration which was definitively ratified by
2,344 votes to 6; nevertheless, one might question this almost total
unanimity. In actual fact, in the commentaries of the official document
signed by His Grace Weber, there is one phrase in particular which obviously
corrects the solemn affirmation of the council on the obsolescence of certain
texts: '"Certain books of the Jewish Bible have a temporary application
and have something imperfect in them." 'Obsolete',
the expression used in the official declaration, is hardly a synonym for
'temporary application', to use the commentator's phrase. As for the epithet
'Jewish' which the latter curiously adds, it suggests that the conciliar text
only criticized the version in Hebrew. This is not at all the case. It is
indeed the Christian Old Testament alone that, at the Council, was the object
of a judgment concerning the imperfection and obsolescence of certain parts. |
Conclusions
The
Biblical Scriptures must be examined without being embellished artificially
with qualities one would like them to have. They must be seen objectively as
they are. This implies not only a knowledge of the texts, but also of their
history. The latter makes it possible to form an idea of the circumstances
which brought about textual adaptations over the centuries, the slow
formation of the collection that we have today, with its numerous
subtractions and additions. The
above makes it quite possible to believe that different versions of the same
description can be found in the Old Testament, as well as contradictions,
historical errors, improbabilities and incompatibilities with firmly
established scientific data. They are quite natural in human works of a very
great age. How could one fail to find them in the books written in the same
conditions in which the Biblical text was composed? At a
time when it was not yet possible to ask scientific questions, and one could
only decide on improbabilities or contradictions, a man of good sense, such
as Saint Augustine, considered that God could not teach man things that did
not correspond to reality. He therefore put forward the principle that it was
not possible for an affirmation contrary to the truth to be of divine origin,
and was prepared to exclude from all the sacred texts anything that appeared
to him to merit exclusion on these grounds. Later,
at a time when the incompatibility of certain passages of the Bible with
modern knowledge has been realized, the same attitude has not been followed.
This refusal has been so insistent that a whole literature has sprung up,
aimed at justifying the fact that, in the face of all opposition, texts have
been retained in the Bible that have no reason to be there. The
Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) has greatly reduced this uncompromising
attitude by introducing reservations about the "Books of the Old
Testament" which "contain material that is imperfect and
obsolete". One wonders if this will remain a pious wish or if it will be
followed by a change in attitude towards material which, in the Twentieth
century, is no longer acceptable in the books of the Bible. In actual fact,
save for any human manipulation, the latter were destined to be the
"witness of true teachings coming from God". |
||
The Gospels
Introduction
Many
readers of the Gospels are embarrassed and even abashed when they stop to
think about the meaning of certain descriptions. The same is true when they
make comparisons between different versions of the same event found in
several Gospels. This observation is made by Father Roguet in his book Initiation
to the Gospels (Initiation à l'Evangile) [ Pub. Editions du
Seuil, Paris, 1973]. With the wide experience he has gained in his many years of
answering perturbed readers' letters in a Catholic weekly, he has been able
to assess just how greatly they have been worried by what they have read. His
questioners come from widely varying social and cultural backgrounds. He
notes that their requests for explanations concern texts that are
"considered abstruse, incomprehensible, if not contradictory, absurd or
scandalous'. There can be no doubt that a complete reading of the Gospels is
likely to disturb Christians profoundly. This
observation is very recent: Father Roguet's book was published in 1973. Not
so very long ago, the majority of Christians knew only selected sections of
the Gospels that were read during services or commented upon during sermons.
With the exception of the Protestants, it was not customary for Christians to
read the Gospels in their entirety. Books of religious instruction only contained
extracts; the in extenso text hardly circulated at all. At a Roman
Catholic school Ihad copies of the works of Virgil and Plato, but I did not
have the New Testament. The Greek text of this would nevertheless have been
very instructive: it was only much later on that I realized why they had not
set us translations of the holy writings of Christianity. The latter could
have led us to ask our teachers questions they would have found it difficult
to answer. These
discoveries, made if one has a critical outlook during a reading in extens
of the Gospels, have led the Church to come to the aid of readers by helping
them overcome their perplexity. "Many Christians need to learn how to
read the Gospels", notes Father Roguet. Whether or not one agrees with the
explanations he gives, it is greatly to the author's credit that he actually
tackles these delicate problems. Unfortunately, it is not always like this in
many writings on the Christian Revelation. In
editions of the Bible produced for widespread publication, introductory notes
more often than not set out a collection of ideas that would tend to persuade
the reader that the Gospels hardly raise any problems concerning the
personalities of the authors of the various books, the authenticity of the
texts and the truth of the descriptions. In spite of the fact that there are
so many unknowns concerning authors of whose identity we are not at all sure,
we find a wealth of precise information in this kind of introductory note.
Often they present as a certainty what is pure hypothesis, or they state that
such-and-such an evangelist was an eye-witness of the events, while
specialist works claim the opposite. The time that elapsed between the end of
Jesus' ministry and the appearance of the texts is drastically reduced. They
would have one believe that these were written by one man taken from an oral
tradition, when in fact specialists have pointed out adaptations to the
texts. Of course, certain difficulties of interpretation are mentioned here
and there, but they ride rough shod over glaring contradictions that must
strike anyone who thinks about them. In the little glossaries one finds among
the appendices complementing a reassuring preface, one observes how
improbabilities, contradictions or blatant errors have been hidden or stifled
under clever arguments of an apologetic nature. This disturbing state of
affairs shows up the misleading nature of such commentaries. The
ideas to be developed in the coming pages will without doubt leave any
readers still unaware of these problems quite amazed. Before going into
detail however, I will provide an immediate illustration of my ideas with an
example that seems to me quite conclusive. Neither
Matthew nor John speaks of Jesus's Ascension. Luke in his Gospel places it on
the day of the Resurrection and forty days later in the Acts of the Apostles
of which he is said to be the author. Mark mentions it (without giving a
date) in a conclusion considered unauthentic today. The Ascension therefore
has no solid scriptural basis. Commentators nevertheless approach this
important question with incredible lightness. A.
Tricot, in his Little Dictionary of the New Testament (Petit
Dictionnaire du Nouveau Testament) in the Crampon Bible, (1960 edition) [ Pub.
Desclée and Co., Paris.], a work produced for mass publication, does not devote an entry
to the Ascension. The Synopsis of the Four Gospels (Synopse des Quatre
Evangiles) by Fathers Benoît and Boismard, teachers at the Biblical School of
Jerusalem, (1972 edition) [ Pub. Editions du Cerf, Paris], informs us in
volume II, pages 451 and 452, that the contradiction between Luke's Gospel
and the Acts of the Apostles may be explained by a 'literary artifice': this
is, to say the least, difficult to follow ! . In all
probability, Father Roguet in his Initiation to the Gospel, 1973, (pg.
187) has not been convinced by the above argument. The explanation he gives
us is curious, to say the least: '"Here,
as in many similar cases, the problem only appears insuperable if one takes
Biblical statements literally, and forgets their religious significance. It
is not a matter of breaking down the factual reality into a symbolism which
is inconsistent, but rather of looking for the theological intentions of
those revealing these mysteries to us by providing us with facts we can
apprehend with our senses and signs appropriate to our incarnate
spirit." How is
it possible to be satisfied by an exegesis of this kind. Only a person who
accepted everything unconditionally would find such apologetic set-phrases acceptable. Another
interesting aspect of Father Roguet's commentary is his admission that there
are 'many similar cases'; similar, that is, to the Ascension in the Gospels.
The problem therefore has to be approached as a whole, objectively and in
depth. It would seem reasonable to look for an explanation by studying the
conditions attendant upon the writing of the Gospels, or the religious
atmosphere prevailing at the time. When adaptations of the original writings
taken from oral traditions are pointed out, and we see the way texts handed
down to us have been corrupted, the presence of obscure, incomprehensible,
contradictory, improbable, and even absurd passages comes as much less of a
surprise. The same may be said of texts which are incompatible with today's
proven reality, thanks to scientific progress. Observations such as these
denote the element of human participation in the writing and modification of
the texts. Admittedly,
in the last few decades, objective research on the Scriptures has gained attention.
In a recent book, Faith in the Resurrection, Resurrection of Faith [ Pub.
Beauchesne, Coll. 'Le Point théologique'. Paris. 1974] (Foi en la
Resurrection, Resurrection de la foi), Father Kannengiesser, a professor at
the Catholic Institute of Paris, outlines this profound change in the
following terms: "The faithful are hardly aware that a revolution has
taken place in methods of Biblical exegesis since the time of Pious XII"
[ Pious XII was Pope from 1939 to 1959]. The
'Revolution' that the author mentions is therefore very recent. It is
beginning to be extended to the teaching of the faithful, in the case of
certain specialists at least, who are animated by this spirit of revival.
"The overthrow of the most assured prospects of the pastoral tradition,"
the author writes, "has more or less begun with this revolution in
methods of exegesis." Father
Kannengiesser warns that 'one should not take literally' facts reported about
Jesus by the Gospels, because they are 'writings suited to an occasion' or 'to
combat', whose authors 'are writing down the traditions of their own
community about Jesus'. Concerning the Resurrection of Jesus, which is the
subject of his book, he stresses that none of the authors of the Gospels can
claim to have been an eye-witness. He intimates that, as far as the rest of
Jesus's public life is concerned, the same must be true because, according to
the Gospels, none of the Apostles-apart from Judas Iscariot-left Jesus from
the moment he first followed Him until His last earthly manifestations. We have
come a long way from the traditional position, which was once again solemnly
confirmed by the Second Vatican Council only ten years ago. This once again
is resumed by modern works of popularization destined to be read by the
faithful. Little by little the truth is coming to light however. It is
not easy to grasp, because the weight of such a bitterly defended tradition
is very heavy indeed. To free oneself from it, one has to strike at the roots
of the problem, i.e. examine first the circumstances that marked the birth of
Christianity. |
||
Historical Reminder
Judeo-Christian and Saint Paul
The
majority of Christians believe that the Gospels were written by direct
witnesses of the life of Jesus and therefore constitute unquestionable evidence
concerning the events high-lighting His life and preachings. One wonders, in
the presence of such guarantees of authenticity, how it is possible to
discuss the teachings derived from them and how one can cast doubt upon the
validity of the Church as an institution applying the general instructions
Jesus Himself gave. Today's popular editions of the Gospels contain
commentaries aimed at propagating these ideas among the general public. The
value the authors of the Gospels have as eye-witnesses is always presented to
the faithful as axiomatic. In the middle of the Second century, Saint Justin
did, after all, call the Gospels the 'Memoirs of the Apostles'. There are
moreover so many details proclaimed concerning the authors that it is a
wonder that one could ever doubt their accuracy. 'Matthew was a well-known
character 'a customs officer employed at the tollgate or customs house at
Capharnaum'; it is even said that he spoke Aramaic and Greek. Mark is also
easily identifiable as Peter's colleague; there is no doubt that he too was
an eye-witness. Luke is the 'dear physician' of whom Paul talks: information
on him is very precise. John is the Apostle who was always near to Jesus, son
of Zebedee, fisherman on the Sea of Galilee. Modern
studies on the beginnings of Christianity show that this way of presenting
things hardly corresponds to reality. We shall see who the authors of the
Gospels really were. As far as the decades following Jesus's mission are
concerned, it must be understood that events did not at all happen in the way
they have been said to have taken place and that Peter's arrival in Rome in
no way laid the foundations for the Church. On the contrary, from the time
Jesus left earth to the second half of the Second century, there was a
struggle between two factions. One was what one might call Pauline
Christianity and the other Judeo-Christianity. It was only very slowly that
the first supplanted the second, and Pauline Christianity triumphed over
Judeo-Christianity. A large
number of very recent works are based on contemporary discoveries about
Christianity. Among them we find Cardinal Daniélou's name. In December 1967
he published an article in the review Studies (Etudes) entitled. 'A New
Representation of the Origins of Christianity: Judeo-Christianity'. (Une
vision nouvelle des origines chrétiennes, le judéo-christianisme). Here he
reviews past works, retraces its history and enables us to place the
appearance of the Gospels in quite a different context from the one that
emerges on reading accounts intended for mass publication. What follows is a
condensed version of the essential points made in his article, including many
quotations from it. After
Jesus's departure, the "little group of Apostles" formed a
"Jewish sect that remained faithful to the form of worship practised in
the Temple". However, when the observances of converts from paganism
were added to them, a 'special system' was offered to them, as it were: the
Council of Jerusalem in 49 A.D. exempted them from circumcision and Jewish observances;
"many Judeo-Christians rejected this concession". This group was
quite separate from Paul's. What is more, Paul and the Judeo-Christians were
in conflict over the question of pagans who had turned to Christianity, (the
incident of Antioch, 49 A.D.). "For Paul, the circumcision, Sabbath, and
form of worship practised in the Temple were henceforth old fashioned, even
for the Jews. Christianity was to free itself from its
political-cum-religious adherence to Judaism and open itself to the Gentiles."
For
those Judeo-Christians who remained 'loyal Jews,' Paul was a traitor.
Judeo-Christian documents call him an 'enemy', accuse him of 'tactical
double-dealing', . . . '"Until 70 A.D., Judeo-Christianity represents
the majority of the Church" and "Paul remains an isolated
case". The head of the community at that time was James, a relation of
Jesus. With him were Peter (at the beginning) and John. "James may be
considered to represent the Judeo-Christian camp, which deliberately clung to
Judaism as opposed to Pauline Christianity." Jesus's family has a very
important place in the Judeo-Christian Church of Jerusalem. "James's
successor was Simeon, son of Cleopas, a cousin of the Lord". Cardinal
Danielou here quotes Judeo-Christian writings which express the views on
Jesus of this community which initially formed around the apostles: the
Gospel of the Hebrews (coming from a Judeo-Christian community in Egypt), the
writings of Clement: Homilies and Recognitions, 'Hypotyposeis', the Second
Apocalypse of James, the Gospel of Thomas. [ One could note here
that all these writings were later to be classed as Apocrypha, i.e. they had
to be concealed by the victorious Church which was born of Paul's success.
This Church made obvious excisions in the Gospel literature and retained only
the four Canonic Gospels.] "It is to the Judeo-Christians that one must ascribe the
oldest writings of Christian literature." Cardinal Daniélou mentions
them in detail. "It
was not just in Jerusalem and Palestine that Judeo-Christianity predominated
during the first hundred years of the Church. The Judeo-Christian mission
seems everywhere to have developed before the Pauline mission. This is
certainly the explanation of the fact that the letters of Paul allude to a
conflict." They were the same adversaries he was to meet everywhere: in
Galatia, Corinth, Colossae, Rome and Antioch. The
Syro-Palestinian coast from Gaza to Antioch was Judeo-Christian '"as
witnessed by the Acts of the Apostles and Clementine writings". In Asia
Minor, the existence of Judeo-Christians is indicated in Paul's letters to
the Galatians and Colossians. Papias's writings give us information about
Judeo-Christianity in Phrygia. In Greece, Paul's first letter to the
Corinthians mentions Judeo-Christians, especially at Apollos. According to
Clement's letter and the Shepherd of Hermas, Rome was an 'important centre'.
For Suetonius and Tacitus, the Christians represented a Jewish sect. Cardinal
Daniélou thinks that the first evangelization in Africa was Judeo-Christian.
The Gospel of the Hebrews and the writings of Clement of Alexandria link up
with this. It is
essential to know these facts to understand the struggle between communities
that formed the background against which the Gospels were written. The texts
that we have today, after many adaptations from the sources, began to appear
around 70 A.D., the time when the two rival communities were engaged in a
fierce struggle, with the Judeo-Christians still retaining the upper hand.
With the Jewish war and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. the situation was to
be reversed. This is how Cardinal Daniélou explains the decline: "After
the Jews had been discredited in the Empire, the Christians tended to detach
themselves from them. The Hellenistic peoples of Christian persuasion then gained
the upper hand. Paul won a posthumous victory. Christianity separated itself
politically and sociologically from Judaism; it became the third people. All
the same, until the Jewish revolt in 140 A.D., Judeo-Christianity continued
to predominate culturally" From 70
A.D. to a period sometime before 110 A.D. the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke
and John were produced. They do not constitute the first written Christian
documents: the letters of Paul date from well before them. According to O.
Culmann, Paul probably wrote his letter to the Thessalonians in 50 A.D. He
had probably disappeared several years prior to the completion of Mark's
Gospel. Paul is
the most controversial figure in Christianity. He was considered to be a
traitor to Jesus's thought by the latter's family and by the apostles who had
stayed in Jerusalem in the circle around James. Paul created Christianity at
the expense of those whom Jesus had gathered around him to spread his
teachings. He had not known Jesus during his lifetime and he proved the
legitimacy of his mission by declaring that Jesus, raised from the dead, had
appeared to him on the road to Damascus. It is quite reasonable to ask what
Christianity might have been without Paul and one could no doubt construct
all sorts of hypotheses on this subject. As far as the Gospels are concerned
however, it is almost certain that if this atmosphere of struggle between
communities had not existed, we would not have had the writings we possess
today. They appeared at a time of fierce struggle between the two
communities. These 'combat writings', as Father Kannengiesser calls them,
emerged from the multitude of writings on Jesus. These occurred at the time
when Paul's style of Christianity won through definitively, and created its
own collection of official texts. These texts constituted the 'Canon' which
condemned and excluded as unorthodox any other documents that were not suited
to the line adopted by the Church. The
Judeo-Christians have now disappeared as a community with any influence, but
one still hears people talking about them under the general term of
'Judaïstic'. This is how Cardinal Daniélou describes their disappearance: "When
they were cut off -from the Great Church, that gradually freed itself from
its Jewish attachments, they petered out very quickly in the West. In the
East however it is possible to find traces of them in the Third and Fourth
Centuries A.D., especially in Palestine, Arabia, Transjordania, Syria and
Mesopotamia. Others joined in the orthodoxy of the Great Church, at the same
time preserving traces of Semitic culture; some of these still persist in the
Churches of Ethiopia and Chaldea". |
The Four Gospels
Sources and History
In the
writings that come from the early stages of Christianity, the Gospels are not
mentioned until long after the works of Paul. It was not until the middle of
the Second century A.D., after 140 A.D. to be precise, that accounts began to
appear concerning a collection of Evangelic writings, In spite of this,
"from the beginning of the Second century A.D., many Christian authors
clearly intimate that they knew a. great many of Paul's letters." These
observations are set out in the Introduction to the Ecumenical Translation
of the Bible, New Testament (Introduction à la Traduction oecuménique de
la Bible, Nouveau Testament) edited 1972 [ Pub. Editions du Cerf et Les
Bergers et les Mages, Paris.]. They are worth mentioning from the outset, and it is useful to
point out here that the work referred to is the result of a collective effort
which brought together more than one hundred Catholic and Protestant
specialists. The
Gospels, later to become official, i.e. canonic, did not become known until
fairly late, even though they were completed at the beginning of the Second
century A.D. According to the Ecumenical Translation, stories belonging to
them began to be quoted around the middle of the Second century A.D.
Nevertheless, "it is nearly always difficult to decide whether the
quotations come from written texts that the authors had next to them or if
the latter were content to evoke the memory of fragments of the oral
tradition." "Before
140 A.D." we read in the commentaries this translation of the Bible
contains, "there was, in any case, no account by which one might have
recognised a collection of evangelic writings". This statement is the
opposite of what A. Tricot writes (1960) in the commentary to his translation
of the New Testament: "Very early on, from the beginning of the Second
century A.D., it became a habit to say "Gospel' meaning the books that
Saint Justin around 150 A.D. had also called "The Memoirs of the
Apostles'." Unfortunately, assertions of this kind are sufficiently
common for the public to have ideas on the date of the Gospels which are
mistaken. The
Gospels did not form a complete whole 'very early on'; it did not happen
until more than a century after the end of Jesus's mission. The Ecumenical
Translation of the Bible estimates the date the four Gospels acquired the
status of canonic literature at around 170 A.D. Justin's
statement which calls the authors 'Apostles' is not acceptable either, as we
shall see. As far
as the date the Gospels were written is concerned, A. Tricot states that
Matthew's, Mark's and Luke's Gospels were written before 70 A.D.: but this is
not acceptable, except perhaps for Mark. Following many others, this
commentator goes out of his way to present the authors of the Gospels as the
apostles or the companions of Jesus. For this reason he suggests dates of
writing that place them very near to the time Jesus lived. As for John, whom
A. Tricot has us believe lived until roughly 100 A.D., Christians have always
been used to seeing him depicted as being very near to Jesus on ceremonial
occasions. It is very difficult however to assert that he is the author of the
Gospel that bears his name. For A. Tricot, as for other commentators, the
Apostle John (like Matthew) was the officially qualified witness of the facts
he recounts, although the majority of critics do not support the hypothesis
which says he wrote the fourth Gospel. If
however the four Gospels in question cannot reasonably be regarded as the
'Memoirs' of the apostles or companions of Jesus, where do they come from? Culmann,
in his book The New Testament (Le Nouveau Testament) [ Pub.
Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1967], says of this that the
evangelists were only the "spokesmen of the early Christian community
which wrote down the oral tradition. For thirty or forty years, the Gospel
had existed as an almost exclusively oral tradition: the latter only
transmitted sayings and isolated narratives. The evangelists strung them
together, each in his own way according to his own character and theological
preoccupations. They linked up the narrations and sayings handed down by the
prevailing tradition. The grouping of Jesus's sayings and likewise the
sequence of narratives is made by the use of fairly vague linking phrases
such as 'after this', 'when he had' etc. In other words, the 'framework' of
the Synoptic Gospels [ The three Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke.] is of a purely
literary order and is not based on history." The
same author continues as follows: "It
must be noted that the needs of preaching, worship and teaching, more than
biographical considerations, were what guided the early community when it
wrote down the tradition of the life of Jesus. The apostles illustrated the
truth of the faith they were preaching by describing the events in the life
of Jesus. Their sermons are what caused the descriptions to be written down.
The sayings of Jesus were transmitted, in particular, in the teaching of the
catechism of the early Church." This is
exactly how the commentators of the Ecumenical Translation of the Bible (Traduction
oecuménique de la Bible) describe the writing of the Gospels: the formation
of an oral tradition influenced by the preachings of Jesus's disciples and
other preachers; the preservation by preaching of this material, which is in
actual fact found in the Gospels, by preaching, liturgy, and teaching of the
faithful; the slender possibility of a concrete form given by writings to
certain confessions of faith, sayings of Jesus, descriptions of the Passion
for example; the fact that the evangelists resort to various written forms as
well as data contained in the oral tradition. They resort to these to produce
texts which "are suitable for various circles, which meet the needs of
the Church, explain observations on the Scriptures, correct errors and even,
on occasion, answer adversaries' objections. Thus the evangelists, each according
to his own outlook, have collected and recorded in writing the material given
to them by the oral tradition". This
position has been collectively adopted by more than one hundred experts in
the exegesis of the New Testament, both Catholic and Protestant. It diverges
widely from the line established by the Second Vatican Council in its
dogmatic constitution on the Revelation drawn up between 1962 and 1965. This
conciliar document has already been referred to once above, when talking of
the Old Testament. The Council was able to declare of the latter that the
books which compose it "contain material which is imperfect and
obsolete", but it has not expressed the same reservations about the
Gospels. On the contrary, as we read in the following. "Nobody
can overlook the fact that, among all the Scriptures, even those of the New
Testament, the Gospels have a well-deserved position of superiority. This is
by virtue of the fact that they represent the most pre-eminent witness to the
life and teachings of the Incarnate Word, Our Saviour. At all times and in
all places the Church has maintained and still maintains the apostolic origin
of the four Gospels. What the apostles actually preached on Christ's orders,
both they and the men in their following subsequently transmitted, with the
divine inspiration of the Spirit, in writings which are the foundation of the
faith, i.e. the fourfold Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John." "Our
Holy Mother, the Church, has firmly maintained and still maintains with the
greatest constancy, that these four Gospels, which it unhesitatingly confirms
are historically authentic, faithfully transmit what Jesus, Son Of God,
actually did and taught during his life among men for their eternal salvation
until the day when He was taken up into the heavens. . . . The sacred authors
therefore composed the four Gospels in such a way as to always give us true
and frank information on the life of Jesus". This is
an unambiguous affirmation of the fidelity with which the Gospels transmit
the acts and sayings of Jesus. There
is hardly any compatibility between the Council's affirmation and what the
authors quoted above claim. In particular the following: The
Gospels "are not to be taken literally" they are "writings
suited to an occasion" or "combat writings". Their
authors "are writing down the traditions of their own community
concerning Jesus". (Father Kannengiesser). The
Gospels are texts which "are suitable for various circles, meet the
needs of the Church, explain observations on the Scriptures, correct errors
and even, on occasion, answer adversaries' objections. Thus, the evangelists,
each according to his own outlook, have collected and recorded in writing the
material given to them by the oral tradition". (Ecumenical
Translation of the Bible). It is
quite clear that we are here faced with contradictory statements: the
declaration of the Council on the one hand, and more recently adopted
attitudes on the other. According to the declaration of the Second Vatican
Council, a faithful account of the actions and words of Jesus is to be found
in the Gospels; but it is impossible to reconcile this with the existence in
the text of contradictions, improbabilities, things which are materially
impossible or statements which run contrary to firmly established reality. If, on
the other hand, one chooses to regard the Gospels as expressing the personal
point of view of those who collected the oral traditions that belonged to
various communities, or as writings suited to an occasion or combat-writings,
it does not come as a surprise to find faults in the Gospels. All these
faults are the sign that they were written by men in circumstances such as
these. The writers may have been quite sincere, even though they relate facts
without doubting their inaccuracy. They provide us with descriptions which
contradict other authors' narrations, or are influenced by reasons of
religious rivalry between communities. They therefore present stories about
the life of Jesus from a completely different angle than their adversaries. It has
already been shown how the historical context is in harmony with the second
approach to the Gospels. The data we have on the texts themselves
definitively confirms it. |
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO
MATTHEW
Matthew's
is the first of the four Gospels as they appear in the New Testament. This
position is perfectly justified by the fact that it is a prolongation, as it
were, of the Old Testament. It was written to show that "Jesus fulfilled
the history of Israel", as the commentators of the Ecumenical
Translation of the Bible note and on which we shall be drawing heavily.
To do BO, Matthew constantly refers to quotations from the Old Testament
which show how Jesus acted as if he were the Messiah the Jews were awaiting. This
Gospel begins with a genealogy of Jesus [ The fact that it is in
contradiction with Luke's Gospel will be dealt with in a separate chapter.]. Matthew traces
it back to Abraham via David. We shall presently see the fault in the text
that most commentators silently ignore. Matthew's obvious intention was
nevertheless to indicate the general tenor of his work straight away by
establishing this line of descendants. The author continues the same line of
thought by constantly bringing to the forefront Jesus's attitude toward
Jewish law, the main principles of which (praying, fasting, and dispensing
charity) are summarized here. Jesus
addresses His teachings first and foremost to His own people. This is how He
speaks to the twelve Apostles "go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter
no town of the Samaritans [ The Samaritans' religious code was the Torah or
Pentateuch; they lived in the expectation of the Messiah and were faithful to
most Jewish observances, but they had built a rival Temple to the one at
Jerusalem.]
but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Matthew 10,
5-6). "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel".
(Matthew 15, 24). At the end of his Gospel, in second place, Matthew extends
the apostolic mission of Jesus's first disciples to all nations. He makes
Jesus give the following order. "Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations" (Matthew 28, 19), but the primary destination must be the
'house of Israel'. Tricot
says of this Gospel, "Beneath its Greek garb, the flesh and bones of
this book are Jewish, and so is its spirit; it has a Jewish feel and bears
its distinctive signs". On the
basis of these observations alone, the origins of Matthew's Gospel may be
placed in the tradition of a Judeo-Christian community. According to O.
Culmann, this community "was trying to break away from Judaism while at
the same time preserving the continuity of the Old Testament. The main
preoccupations and the general tenor of this Gospel point towards a strained
situation." There
are also political factors to be found in the text. The Roman occupation of
Palestine naturally heightened the desire of this country to see itself
liberated. They prayed for God to intervene in favour of the people He had
chosen among all others, and as their omnipotent sovereign who could give
direct support to the affairs of men, as He had already done many times in
the course of history. What
sort of person was Matthew? Let us say straight away that he is no longer
acknowledged to be one of Jesus's companions. A. Tricot nevertheless presents
him as such in his commentary to the translation of the New Testament, 1960:
"Matthew alias, Levi, was a customs officer employed at the tollgate or
customs house at Capharnaum when Jesus called him to be one of His
disciples." This is the opinion of the Fathers of the Church, Origen,
Jerome and Epiphanes. This opinion is no longer held today. One point which
is uncontested is that the author is writing "for people who speak
Greek, but nevertheless know Jewish customs and the Aramaic language." It
would seem that for the commentators of the Ecumenical Translation, the
origins of this Gospel are as follows: "It
is normally considered to have been written in Syria, perhaps at Antioch (. .
.), or in Phoenicia, because a great many Jews lived in these countries. [ It
has been thought that the Judeo-Christian community that Matthew belonged to
might just as easily have been situated at Alexandria. O. Culmann refers to
this hypothesis along with many others.] (. . .) we have indications of a
polemic against the orthodox Judaism of the Synagogue and the Pharasees such
as was manifested at the synagogal assembly at Jamina circa 80 A.D." In
such conditions, there are many authors who date the first of the Gospels at
about 80-90 A.D., perhaps also a little earlier. it is not possible to be
absolutely definite about this . . . since we do not know the author's exact
name, we must be satisfied with a few outlines traced in the Gospel itself.
the author can be recognized by his profession. He is well-versed in Jewish writings
and traditions. He knows, respects, but vigorously challenges the religious
leaders of his people. He is a past master in the art of teaching and making
Jesus understandable to his listeners. He always insists on the practical
consequences of his teachings. He would fit fairly well the description of an
educated Jew turned Christian; a householder "who brings out of his
treasure what is new and what is old" as Matthew says (13,52). This is a
long way from the civil servant at Capharnaum, whom Mark and Luke call Levi,
and who had become one of the twelve Apostles . . . Everyone
agrees in thinking that Matthew wrote his Gospel using the same sources as
Mark and Luke. His narration is, as we shall see, different on several
essential points. In spite of this, Matthew borrowed heavily from Mark's
Gospel although the latter was not one of Jesus's disciples (O. Culmann). Matthew
takes very serious liberties with the text. We shall see this when we discuss
the Old Testament in relation to the genealogy of Jesus which is placed at
the beginning of his Gospel. He
inserts into his book descriptions which are quite literally incredible. This
is the adjective used in the work mentioned above by Father Kannengiesser
referring to an episode in the Resurrection. the episode of the guard. He
points out the improbability of the story referring to military guards at the
tomb, "these Gentile soldiers" who "report, not to their
hierarchical superiors, but to the high priests who pay them to tell
lies". He adds however: "One must not laugh at him because
Matthew's intention was extremely serious. In his own way he incorporates
ancient data from the oral tradition into his written work. The scenario is
nevertheless worthy of Jesus Christ Superstar. [ An
American film which parodies the life of Jesus.]" Let us
not forget that this opinion on Matthew comes from an eminent theologian
teaching at the Catholic Institute of Paris (Institut Catholique de Paris). Matthew
relates in his narration the events accompanying the death of Jesus. They are
another example of his imagination. "And
behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and
the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and
many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out
of tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to
many." This
passage from Matthew (27, 51-53) has no corresponding passage in the other
Gospels. It is difficult to see how the bodies of the saints in question
could have raised from the dead at the time of Jesus's death
(according to the Gospels it was on the eve of the Sabbath) and only emerge
from their tombs after his resurrection (according to the same sources
on the day after the Sabbath). The
most notable improbability is perhaps to be found in Matthew. It is the most
difficult to rationalize of all that the Gospel authors claim Jesus said. He
relates in chapter 12, 38-40 the episode concerning Jonah's sign: Jesus
was among the scribes and pharisees who addressed him in the following terms: "Teacher,
we wish to see a sign from you. But he answered them, "An evil and
adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it
except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three
nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth." Jesus
therefore proclaims that he will stay in the earth three days and three
nights. So Matthew, along with Luke and Mark, place the death and burial of
Jesus on the eve of the Sabbath. This, of course, makes the time spent in the
earth three days (treis êmeras in the Greek text), but this period can
only include two and not three nights (treis nuktas in the Greek text [ In
another part of his Gospel Matthew again refers to this episode but without
being precise about the time (16, 1-4). The same is true for Luke (11,
29-32). We shall see later on how in Mark, Jesus is said to have declared
that no sign would be given to that generation (Mark 8, 11-12).]). Gospel
commentators frequently ignore this episode. Father Roguet nevertheless
points out this improbability when he notes that Jesus "only stayed in
the tomb" three days (one of them complete) and two nights. He adds
however that "it is a set expression and really means three days".
It is disturbing to see commentators reduced to using arguments that do not
contain any positive meaning. It would be much more satisfying intellectually
to say that a gross error such as this was the result of a scribe's mistake! Apart
from these improbabilities, what mostly distinguishes Matthew's Gospel is
that it is the work of a Judeo-Christian community in the process of breaking
away from Judaism while remaining in line with the Old Testament. From the
point of view of Judeo-Christian history it is very important. |
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO
MARK
This is
the shortest of the four Gospels. It is also the oldest, but in spite of this
it is not a book written by an apostle. At best it was written by an
apostle's disciple. O.
Culmann has written that he does not consider Mark to be a disciple of Jesus.
The author nevertheless points out, to those who have misgivings about the
ascription of this Gospel to the Apostle Mark, that "Matthew and Luke
would not have used this Gospel in the way they did had they not known that
it was indeed based on the teachings of an apostle". This argument is in
no way decisive. O. Culmann backs up the reservations he expresses by saying
that he frequently quotes from the New Testament the sayings of a certain
'John nicknamed Mark'. These quotations. do not however mention the name of a
Gospel author, and the text of Mark itself does not name any author. The
paucity of information on this point has led commentators to dwell on details
that seem rather extravagant: using the pretext, for example, that Mark was
the only evangelist to relate in his description of the Passion the story of
the young man who had nothing but a linen cloth about his body and, when
seized, left the linen cloth and ran away naked (Mark 14, 51-52), they
conclude that the young man must have been Mark, "the faithful disciple
who tried to follow the teacher" (Ecumenical Translation). Other
commentators see in this "personal memory a sign of authenticity, an anonymous
signature", which "proves that he was an eyewitness" (O.
Culmann). O.
Culmann considers that "many turns of phrase corroborate the hypothesis
that the author was of Jewish origin," but the presence of Latin
expressions might suggest that he had written his Gospel in Rome. "He
addresses himself moreover to Christians not living in Palestine and is
careful to explain the Aramic expressions he uses." Tradition
has indeed tended to see Mark as Peter's companion in Rome. It is founded on
the final section of Peter's first letter (always supposing that he was
indeed the author) . Peter wrote in his letter. "The community which is
at Babylon, which is likewise chosen, sends you greetings; and so does my son
Mark." "By Babylon, what is probably meant is Rome" we read in
the commentary to the Ecumenical Translation. From this, the commentators
then imagine themselves authorized to conclude that Mark, who was supposed to
have been with Peter in Rome, was the Evangelist . . .One wonders whether it
was not the same line of reasoning that led Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis in
circa 150 A.D., to ascribe this Gospel to Mark as 'Peter's interpreter' and
the possible collaborator of Paul. Seen
from this point of view, the composition of Mark's Gospel could be placed after
Peter's death, i.e. at between 65 and 70 A.D. for the Ecumenical Translation
and circa 70 A.D. for O. Culmann. The
text itself unquestionably reveals a major flaw. it is written with a total
disregard to chronology. Mark therefore places, at the beginning of his
narration (1, 16-20), the episode of the four fishermen whom Jesus leads to
follow him by simply saying "I will make you become fishers of
men", though they do not even know Him. The evangelist shows, among
other things, a complete lack of plausibility. As
Father Roguet has said, Mark is 'a clumsy writer', 'the weakest of all the
evangelists'; he hardly knows how to write a narrative. The commentator
reinforces his observation by quoting a passage about how the twelve Apostles
were selected. Here is
the literal translation: "And
he went up into the hills, and called to him those whom he desired; and they
came to him. And he made that the twelve were to be with him, and to be sent
out to preach and have authority to cast out demons; and he made the twelve
and imposed the name Simon on Peter" (Mark, 3, 13-16). He
contradicts Matthew and Luke, as has already been noted above, with regard to
the sign of Jonah. On the subject of signs given by Jesus to men in the
course of His mission Mark (8, 11-13) describes an episode that is hardly
credible: "The
Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from
heaven, to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and said, 'Why does
this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to
this generation.' And he left them, and getting into the boat again he
departed to the other side." There
can be no doubt that this is an affirmation coming from Jesus Himself about
his intention not to commit any act which might appear supernatural.
Therefore the commentators of the Ecumenical Translation, who are surprised
that Luke says Jesus will only give one sign (the sign of Jonah; see
Matthew's Gospel) , consider it 'paradoxical' that Mark should say "no
sign shall be given to this generation" seeing, as they note, the
"miracles that Jesus himself gives as a sign" (Luke 7,22 and
11,20). Mark's
Gospel as a whole is officially recognised as being canonic. All the same,
the final section of Mark's Gospel (16,1920) is considered by modem authors
to have been tacked on to the basic work: the Ecumenical Translation is quite
explicit about this. This
final section is not contained in the two oldest complete manuscripts of the
Gospels, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus that date
from the Fourth century A.D. O. Culmann notes on this subject that:
"More recent Greek manuscripts and certain versions at this point added
a conclusion on appearances which is not drawn from Mark but from the other
Gospels." In fact, the versions of this added ending are very numerous.
In the texts there are long and short versions (both are reproduced in the
Bible, Revised Standard Version, 1952). Sometimes the long version has some
additional material. Father
Kannengiesser makes the following comments on the ending. "The last
verses must have been surpressed when his work was officially received (or
the popular version of it) in the community that guaranteed its validity.
Neither Matthew, Luke or a fortiori John saw the missing section.
Nevertheless, the gap was unacceptable. A long time afterwards, when the
writings of Matthew, Luke and John, all of them similar, had been in
circulation, a worthy ending to Mark was composed. Its elements were taken
from sources throughout the other Gospels. It would be easy to recognise the
pieces of the puzzle by enumerating Mark (16,9-20). One would gain a more
concrete idea of the free way in which the literary genre of the evangelic
narration was handled until the beginnings of the Second century A.D." What a
blunt admission is provided for us here, in the thoughts of a great
theologian, that human manipulation exists in the texts of the Scriptures! |
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO
LUKE
For O.
Culmann, Luke is a 'chronicler', and for Father Kannengiesser he is a 'true
novelist'. In his prologue to Theophilus, Luke warns us that he, in his turn,
following on from others who have written accounts concerning Jesus, is going
to write a narrative of the same facts using the accounts and information of
eyewitnesses-implying that he himself is not one-including information from
the apostles' preachings. It is therefore to be a methodical piece of work
which he introduces in the following terms: "Inasmuch
as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been
accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from
the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to
me also, having informed myself about all things from their beginnings, to
write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may
know the truth concerning things of which you have been informed." From
the very first line one can see all that separates Luke from the 'scribbler'
Mark to whose work we have just referred. Luke's Gospel is incontestably a
literary work written in classical Greek free from any barbarisms. Luke
was a cultivated Gentile convert to Christianity. His attitude towards the
Jews is immediately apparent. As O. Culmann points out, Luke leaves out
Mark's most Judaic verses and highlights the Jews' incredulity at Jesus's
words, throwing into relief his good relations with the Samaritans, whom the
Jews detested. Matthew, on the other hand, has Jesus ask the apostles to flee
from them. This is just one of many striking examples of the fact that the
evangelists make Jesus say whatever suits their own personal outlook. They
probably do so with sincere conviction. They give us the version of Jesus's
words that is adapted to the point of view of their own community. How can
one deny in the face of such evidence that the Gospels are 'combat writings'
or 'writings suited to an occasion', as has been mentioned already? The
comparison between the general tone of Luke's Gospel and Matthew's is in this
respect a good demonstration. Who was
Luke? An attempt has been made to identify him with the physician of the same
name referred to by Paul in several of his letters. The Ecumenical
Translation notes that "several commentators have found the medical
occupation of the author of this Gospel confirmed by the precision with which
he describes the sick". This assessment is in fact exaggerated out of
all proportion. Luke does not properly speaking 'describe' things of this
kind; "the vocabulary he uses is that of a cultivated man of his
time". There was a Luke who was Paul's travelling companion, but was he
the same person? O. Culmann thinks he was. The
date of Luke's Gospel can be estimated according to several factors: Luke
used Mark's and Matthew's Gospels. From what we read in the Ecumenical Translation,
it seems that he witnessed the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus's
armies in 70 A.D. The Gospel probably dates from after this time. Present-day
critics situate the time it was written at .circa 80-90 A.D., but several
place it at an even earlier date. The
various narrations in Luke show important differences when compared to his
predecessors. An outline of this has already been given. The Ecumenical
Translation indicates them on pages 181 et sec. O. Culmann, in his book,
The New Testament (Le Nouveau Testament) page 18, cites descriptions in
Luke's Gospel that are not to be found anywhere else. And they are not about
minor points of detail. The
descriptions of Jesus's childhood are unique to Luke's Gospel. Matthew
describes Jesus's childhood differently from Luke, and Mark does not mention
it at all. Matthew
and Luke both provide different genealogies of Jesus: the contradictions are
so large and the improbabilities so great, from a scientific point of view,
that a special chapter of this book has been devoted to the subject. It is
possible to explain why Matthew, who was addressing himself to Jews, should
begin the genealogy at Abraham, and include David in it, and that Luke, as a
converted Gentile, should want to go back even farther. We shall see however
that the two genealogies contradict each other from David onwards. Jesus's
mission is described differently on many points by Luke, Matthew and Mark. An
event of such great importance to Christians as the institution of the
Eucharist gives rise to variations between Luke and the other two
evangelists. [ It is not possible to establish a comparison with
John because he does not refer to the institution of the Eucharist during the
Last Supper prior to the Passion.] Father Roguet notes in his book Initiation
to the Gospel (Initiation à l'Evangile) page 75, that the words used to
institute the Eucharist are reported by Luke (22,19-24) in a form very
different from the wording in Matthew (26,26-29) and in Mark (14,22-24) which
is almost identical. "On
the contrary" he writes, "the wording transmitted by Luke is very
similar to that evoked by Saint Paul" (First Letter to the Corinthians,
11,23-25) . As we
have seen, in his Gospel, Luke expresses ideas on the subject of Jesus's
Ascension which contradict what he says in the Acts of the Apostles. He is
recognized as their author and they form an integral part of the New
Testament. In his Gospel he situates the Ascension on Easter Day, and in the
Acts forty days later. We already know to what strange commentaries this
contradiction has led Christian experts in exegesis. Commentators
wishing to be objective, such as those of the Ecumenical Translation of the
Bible, have been obliged to recognise as a general rule the fact that for
Luke "the main preoccupation was not to write facts corresponding to
material accuracy". When Father Kannengiesser compares the descriptions
in the Acts of the Apostles written by Luke himself with the description of
similar facts on Jesus raised from the dead by Paul, he pronounces the
following opinion on Luke: "Luke is the most sensitive and literary of
the four evangelists, he has all the qualities of a true novelist". |
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO
JOHN
John's
Gospel is radically different from the three others; to such an extent indeed
that Father Roguet in his book Initiation to the Gospel (Initiation à
l'Evangile), having commented on the other three, immediately evokes a
startling image for the fourth. He calls it , different world'. It is indeed
a unique book; different in the arrangement and choice of subject,
description and speech; different in its style, geography, chronology; there
are even differences in theological outlook (O. Culmann). Jesus's words are
therefore differently recorded by John from the other evangelists: Father
Roguet notes on this that whereas the synoptics record Jesus's words in a
style that is "striking, much nearer to the oral style", in John
all is meditation; to such an extent indeed that "one sometimes wonders
if Jesus is still speaking or whether His ideas have not imperceptibly been
extended by the Evangelist's own thoughts". Who was
the author? This is a highly debated question and extremely varying opinions
have been expressed on this subject. A.
Tricot and Father Roguet belong to a camp that does not have the slightest
misgivings: John's Gospel is the work of an eyewitness, its author is John,
son of Zebedee and brother of James. Many details are known about this
apostle and are set out in works for mass publication. Popular iconography puts
him near Jesus, as in the Last Supper prior to the Passion. Who could imagine
that John's Gospel was not the work of John the Apostle whose figure is so
familiar? The
fact that the fourth Gospel was written so late is not a serious argument
against this opinion. The definitive version was probably written around the
end of the First century A.D. To situate the time it was written at sixty
years after Jesus would be in keeping with an apostle who was very young at
the time of Jesus and who lived to be almost a hundred. Father
Kannengiesser, in his study on the Resurrection, arrives at the conclusion
that none of the New Testament authors, save Paul, can claim to have been
eyewitnesses to Jesus's Resurrection. John nevertheless related the
appearance to a number of the assembled apostles, of which he was probably a
member, in the absence of Thomas (20,19-24), then eight days later to the
full group of apostles (20,25-29). O.
Culmann in his work The New Testament does not subscribe to this view. The Ecumenical
Translation of the Bible states that the majority of critics do not
accept the hypothesis that the Gospel was written by John, although this
possibility cannot be entirely ruled out. Everything points however towards
the fact that the text we know today had several authors: "It is
probable that the Gospel as it stands today was put into circulation by the
author's disciples who added chapter 21 and very likely several annotations
(i.e. 4,2 and perhaps 4,1; 4,44; 7,37b; 11,2; 19,35). With regard to the story
of the adulterous woman (7,53-8,11), everyone agrees that it is a fragment of
unknown origin inserted later (but nevertheless belonging to canonic
Scripture)". Passage 19,35 appears as a 'signature' of an 'eyewitness'
(O. Culmann), the only explicit signature in the whole of John's Gospel; but
commentators believe that it was probably added later. O.
Culmann thinks that latter additions are obvious in this Gospel; such as
chapter 21 which is probably the work of a "disciple who may well have
made slight alterations to the main body of the Gospel". It is
not necessary to mention all the hypotheses suggested by experts in exegesis.
The remarks recorded here made by the most eminent Christian writers on the
questions of the authorship of the fourth Gospel are sufficient to show the
extent of the confusion reigning on the subject of its authorship. The
historical value of John's stories has been contested to a great extent. The
discrepancy between them and the other three Gospels is quite blatant. O.
Culman offers an explanation for this; he sees in John a different
theological point of view from the other evangelists. This aim "directs
the choice of stories from the Logia [ Words.] recorded, as
well as the way in which they are reproduced . . . Thus the author often
prolongs the lines and makes the historical Jesus say what the Holy Spirit
Itself revealed to Him". This, for the exegete in question, is the
reason for the discrepancies. It is
of course quite conceivable that John, who was writing after the other
evangelists, should have chosen certain stories suitable for illustrating his
own theories. One should not be surprised by the fact that certain
descriptions contained in the other Gospels are missing in John. The Ecumenical
Translation picks out a certain number of such instances (page 282).
Certain gaps hardly seem credible however, like the fact that the Institution
of the Eucharist is not described. It is unthinkable that an episode so basic
to Christianity, one indeed that was to be the mainstay of its liturgy, i.e.
the mass, should not be mentioned by John, the most pre-eminently meditative
evangelist. The fact is, he limits himself, in the narrative of the supper
prior to the Passion, to simply describing the washing of the disciples'
feet, the prediction of Judas's betrayal and Peter's denial. In
contrast to this, there are stories which are unique to John and not present
in the other three. The Ecumenical Translation mentions these (page 283).
Here again, one could infer that the three authors did not see the importance
in these episodes that John saw in them. It is difficult however not to be
taken aback when one finds in John a description of the appearance of Jesus raised
from the dead to his disciples beside the Sea of Tiberias (John 21,1-14).
The description is nothing less than the reproduction (with numerous added
details) of the miracle catch of fish which Luke (5,1-11) presents as an
episode that occurred during Jesus's life. In his description Luke
alludes to the presence of the Apostle John who, as tradition has it, was the
evangelist, Since this description in John's Gospel forms part of chapter 21,
agreed to be a later addition, one can easily imagine that the reference to
John's name in Luke could have led to its artificial inclusion in the fourth
Gospel. The necessity of transforming a description from Jesus's life to a
posthumous description in no way prevented the evangelical text from being
manipulated. Another
important point on which John's Gospel differs from the other three is in the
duration of Jesus's mission. Mark, Matthew and Luke place it over a period of
one year. John spreads it over two years. O. Culmann notes this fact. On this
subject the Ecumenical Translation expresses the following . "The
synoptics describe a long period in Galilee followed by a march that was more
or less prolonged towards Judea, and finally a brief stay in Jerusalem. John,
on the other hand, describes frequent journeys from one area to another and
mentions a long stay in Judea, especially in Jerusalem (1,19-51; 2,13-3,36;
5,1-47; 14,20-31). He mentions several Passover celebrations (2,13; 5,1; 6,4;
11,55) and thus suggests a ministry that lasted more than two years". Which
one of them should one believe-Mark, Matthew, Luke or John? |
SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS
The
general outline that has been given here of the Gospels and which emerges
from a critical examination of the texts tends to make one think of a
literature which is "disjointed, with a plan that lacks continuity"
and "seemingly insuperable contradictions". These are the terms
used in the judgement passed on them by the commentators of the Ecumenical
Translation of the Bible. It is important to refer to their authority
because the consequences of an appraisal of this subject are extremely
serious. It has already been seen how a few notions concerning the religious
history of the time when the Gospels were written helped to explain certain
disconcerting aspects of this literature apparent to the thoughtful reader.
It is necessary to continue, however, and ascertain what present-day works
can tell us about the sources the Evangelists drew on when writing their
texts. It is also interesting to see whether the history of the texts once
they were established can help to explain certain aspects they present today. The
problem of sources was approached in a very simplistic fashion at the time of
the Fathers of the Church. In the early centuries of Christianity, the only
source available was the Gospel that the complete manuscripts provided first,
i.e. Matthew's Gospel. The problem of sources only concerned Mark and Luke
because John constituted a quite separate case. Saint Augustine held that
Mark, who appears second in the traditional order of presentation, had been
inspired by Matthew and had summarized his work. He further considered that
Luke, who comes third in the manuscripts, had used data from both; his
prologue suggests this, and has already been discussed. The
experts in exegesis at this period were as able as we are to estimate the
degree of corroboration between the texts and find a large number of verses
common to two or three synoptics. Today, the commentators of the
Ecumenical Translation of the Bible provide the following figures: verses
common to all three synoptics -------------- 330 The
verses unique to each of the first three Gospels are as follows: Matthew 330,
Mark 53, and Luke 500. From
the Fathers of the Church until the end of the Eighteenth century A.D., one
and a half millenia passed without any new problems being raised on the
sources of the evangelists: people continued to follow tradition. It was not
until modem times that it was realized, on the basis of these data, how each
evangelist had taken material found in the others and compiled his own
specific narration guided by his own personal views. Great weight was
attached to actual collection of material for the narration. It came from the
oral traditions of the communities from which it originated on the one hand,
and from a common written Aramaic source that has not been rediscovered on
the other. This written source could have formed a compact mass or have been
composed of many fragments of different narrations used by each evangelist to
construct his own original work. More
intensive studies in circa the last hundred years have led to theories which
are more detailed and in time will become even more complicated. The first of
the modem theories is the so-called 'Holtzmann Two Sources Theory', (1863).
O. Culmann and the Ecumenical Translation explain that, according to this
theory, Matthew and Luke may have been inspired by Mark on the one hand and
on the other by a common document which has since been lost. The first two
moreover each had his own sources. This leads to the following diagram:
M. E.
BOISMARD Culmann
criticises the above on the following points: 1.
Mark's work, used by both Luke and Matthew, was probably not the author's
Gospel but an earlier version. 2. The
diagram does not lay enough emphasis on the oral tradition. This appears to
be of paramount importance because it alone preserved Jesus's words and the
descriptions of his mission during a period of thirty or forty years, as each
of the Evangelists was only the spokesman for the Christian community which
wrote down the oral tradition. This is
how it is possible to conclude that the Gospels we possess today are a
reflection of what the early Christian communities knew of Jesus's life and
ministry. They also mirror their beliefs and theological ideas, of which the
evangelists were the spokesmen. The
latest studies in textual criticism on the sources of the Gospels have
clearly shown an even more complicated formation process of the texts. A book
by Fathers Benoit and Boismard, both professors at the Biblical School of
Jerusalem (1972-1973), called the Synopsis of the Four Gospels
(Synopse des quatres Evangiles) stresses the evolution of the text in stages
parallel to the evolution of the tradition. This implies the conquences set
out by Father Benoit in his introduction to Father Boismard's part of the
work. He presents them in the following terms: "(.
. .) the wording and form of description that result from a long evolution of
tradition are not as authentic as in the original. some readers of this work
will perhaps be surprised or embarrassed to learn that certain of Jesus's
sayings, parables, or predictions of His destiny were not expressed in the
way we read them today, but were altered and adapted by those who transmitted
them to us. This may come as a source of amazement and even scandal to those
not used to this kind of historical investigation." The
alterations and adaptations to the texts made by those transmitting them to
us were done in a way that Father Boismard explains by means of a highly
complex diagram. It is a development of the so-called 'Two Sources Theory',
and is the product of examination and comparison of the texts which it is not
possible to summarize here. Those readers who are interested in obtaining
further details should consult the original work published by Les Editions du
Cerf, Paris. Four
basic documents-A, B, C and Q-represent the original sources of the Gospels
(see general diagram). Page 76. Document
A comes from a Judeo-Christian source. Matthew and Mark were inspired by it. None of
these basic documents led to the production of the definitive texts we know
today. Between them and the final version lay the intermediate versions:
Intermediate Matthew, Intermediate Mark, Intermediate Luke and Intermediate
John. These four intermediate documents were to lead to the final versions of
the four Gospels, as well as to inspire the final corresponding versions of
other Gospels. One only has to consult the diagram to see the intricate
relationships the author has revealed. The
results of this scriptural research are of great importance. They show how
the Gospel texts not only have a history (to be discussed later) but also a
'pre-history', to use Father Boismard's expression. What is meant is that
before the final versions appeared, they underwent alterations at the
Intermediate Document stage. Thus it is possible to explain, for example, how
a well-known story from Jesus's life, such as the miracle catch of fish, is
shown in Luke to be an event that happened during His life, and in John to be
one of His appearances after His Resurrection. The
conclusion to be drawn from the above is that when we read the Gospel, we can
no longer be at all sure that we are reading Jesus's word. Father Benoit
addresses himself to the readers of the Gospel by warning them and giving
them the following compensation: "If the reader is obliged in more than
one case to give up the notion of hearing Jesus's voice directly, he still
hears the voice of the Church and he relies upon it as the divinely appointed
interpreter of the Master who long ago spoke to us on earth and who now
speaks to us in His glory". How can
one reconcile this formal statement of the inauthenticity of certain texts
with the phrase used in the dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation by the
Second Vatican Council assuring us to the contrary, i.e. the faithful
transmission of Jesus's words: "These four Gospels, which it (the
Church) unhesitatingly confirms are historically authentic, faithfully
transmit what Jesus, Son of God, actually did and taught during his life
among men for their eternal salvation, until the day when he was taken up
into the heavens"? It is
quite clear that the work of the Biblical School of Jerusalem flatly
contradicts the Council's declaration. |
HISTORY OF THE TEXTS
One
would be mistaken in thinking that once the Gospels were written they
constituted the basic Scriptures of the newly born Christianity and that
people referred to them the same way they referred to the Old Testament. At
that time, the foremost authority was the oral tradition as a vehicle for
Jesus's words and the teachings of the apostles. The first writings to
circulate were Paul's letters and they occupied a prevalent position long
before the Gospels. They were, after all, written several decades earlier. It has
already been shown, that contrary to what certain commentators are still
writing today, before 140 A.D. there was no witness to the knowledge that a
collection of Gospel writings existed. It was not until circa 170 A.D. that
the four Gospels acquired the status of canonic literature. In the
early days of Christianity, many writings on Jesus were in circulation. They
were not subsequently retained as being worthy of authenticity and the Church
ordered them to be hidden, hence their name 'Apocrypha'. Some of the texts of
these works have been well preserved because they "benefitted from the
fact that they were generally valued", to quote the Ecumenical
Translation. The same was true for the Letter of Barnabas, but unfortunately
others were "more brutally thrust aside" and only fragments of them
remain. They were considered to be the messengers of error and were removed
from the sight of the faithful. Works such as the Gospels of the Nazarenes,
the Gospels of the Hebrews and the Gospels of the Egyptians, known through
quotations taken from the Fathers of the Church, were nevertheless fairly
closely related to the canonic Gospels. The same holds good for Thomas's
Gospel and Barnabas's Gospel. Some of
these apocryphal writings contain imaginary details, the product of popular
fantasy. Authors of works on the Apocrypha also quote with obvious
satisfaction passages which are literally ridiculous. Passages such as these
are however to be found in all the Gospels. One has only to think of
the imaginary description of events that Matthew claims took place at Jesus's
death. It is possible to find passages lacking seriousness in all the early
writings of Christianity: One must be honest enough to admit this. The
abundance of literature concerning Jesus led the Church to make certain
excisions while the latter was in the process of becoming organized. Perhaps
a hundred Gospels were suppressed. Only four were retained and put on the
official list of neo-Testament writings making up what is called the 'Canon'. In the
middle of the Second century A.D., Marcion of Sinope put heavy pressure on
the ecclesiastic authorities to take a stand on this. He was an ardent enemy
of the Jews and at that time rejected the whole of the Old Testament and
everything in writings produced after Jesus that seemed to him too close to
the Old Testament or to come from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Marcion only
acknowledged the value of Luke's Gospel because, he believed Luke to be the
spokesman of Paul and his writings. The
Church declared Marcion a heretic and put into its canon all the Letters of
Paul, but included the other Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They
also added several other works such as the Acts of the Apostles. The official
list nevertheless varies with time during the first centuries of
Christianity. For a while, works that were later considered not to be valid
(i.e. Apocrypha) figured in it, while other works contained in today's New
Testament Canon were excluded from it at this time. These hesitations lasted
until the Councils of Hippo Regius in 393 and Carthage in 397. The four
Gospels always figured in it however. One may
join Father Boismard in regretting the disappearance of a vast quantity of
literature declared apocryphal by the Church although it was of historical
interest. The above author indeed gives it a place in his Synopsis of the
Four Gospels alongside that of the official Gospels. He notes that these
books still existed in libraries near the end of the Fourth century A.D. This
was the century that saw things put into serious order. The oldest
manuscripts of the Gospels date from this period. Documents prior to this,
i.e. papyri from the Third century A.D. and one possibly dating from the
Second, only transmit fragments to us. The two oldest parchment manuscripts are
Greek, Fourth century A.D. They are the Codex Vaticanus, preserved in
the Vatican Library and whose place of discovery is unknown, and the Codex
Sinaiticus, which was discovered on Mount Sinai and is now preserved in the
British Museum, London. The second contains two apocryphal works. According
to the Ecumenical Translation, two hundred and fifty other known parchments
exist throughout the world, the last of these being from the Eleventh century
A.D. "Not all the copies of the New Testament that have come down to us
are identical" however. "On the contrary, it is possible to
distinguish differences of varying degrees of importance between them, but
however important they may be, there is always a large number of them. Some
of these only concern differences of grammatical detail, vocabulary or word
order. Elsewhere however, differences between manuscripts can be seen which
affect the meaning of whole passages". If one wishes to see the extent
of textual differences, one only has to glance through the Novum Testamentum
Graece. [Nestlé-Aland Pub. United Bible Societies, London,
1971]
This work contains a so-called 'middle-of-the-road' Greek text. It is a text
of synthesis with notes containing all the variations found in the different
versions. The
authenticity of a text, and of even the most venerable manuscript, is always
open to debate. The Codex Vaticanus is a good example of this. The
facsimile reproductions edited by the Vatican City, 1965, contains an
accompanying note from its editors informing us that "several centuries
after it was copied (believed to have been in circa the Tenth or Eleventh
century), a scribe inked over all the letters except those he thought were a
mistake". There are passages in the text where the original letters in
light brown still show through, contrasting visibly with the rest of the text
which is in dark brown. There is no indication that it was a faithful
restoration. The note states moreover that "the different hands that
corrected and annotated the manuscript over the centuries have not yet been
definitively discerned; a certain number of corrections were undoubtedly made
when the text was inked over." In all the religious manuals the text is
presented as a Fourth century copy. One has to go to sources at the Vatican
to discover that various hands may have altered the text centuries later. One
might reply that other texts may be used for comparison, but how does one
choose between variations that change the meaning? It is a well known fact
that a very old scribe's correction can lead to the definitive reproduction
of the corrected text. We shall see further on how a single word in a passage
from John concerning the Paraclete radically alters its meaning and
completely changes its sense when viewed from a theological point of view. O.
Culmann, in his book, The New Testament, writes the following on the
subject of variations: "Sometimes
the latter are the result of inadvertant flaws: the copier misses a word out,
or conversely writes it twice, or a whole section of a sentence is carelessly
omitted because in the manuscript to be copied it appeared between two
identical words. Sometimes it is a matter of deliberate corrections, either
the copier has taken the liberty of correcting the text according to his own
ideas or he has tried to bring it into line with a parallel text in a more or
less skilful attempt to reduce the number of discrepancies. As, little by
little, the New Testament writings broke away from the rest of early
Christian literature, and came to be regarded as Holy Scripture, so the
copiers became more and more hesitant about taking the same liberties as
their predecessors: they thought they were copying the authentic text, but in
fact wrote down the variations. Finally, a copier sometimes wrote annotations
in the margin to explain an obscure passage. The following copier, thinking
that the sentence he found in the margin had been left out of the passage by
his predecessor, thought it necessary to include the margin notes in the
text. This process often made the new text even more obscure." The
scribes of some manuscripts sometimes took exceedingly great liberties with
the texts. This is the case of one of the most venerable manuscripts after
the two referred to above, the Sixth century Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis.
The scribe probably noticed the difference between Luke's and Matthew's
genealogy of Jesus, so he put Matthew's genealogy into his copy of Luke, but
as the second contained fewer names than the first, he padded it out with
extra names (without balancing them up). Is it
possible to say that the Latin translations, such as Saint Jerome's Sixth
century Vulgate, or older translations (Vetus Itala), or Syriac and
Coptic translations are any more faithful than the basic Greek manuscripts?
They might have been made from manuscripts older than the ones referred to
above and subsequently lost to the present day. We just do not know. It has
been possible to group the bulk of these versions into families all bearing a
certain number of common traits. According to O. Culmann, one can define:
All
that modern textual criticism can do in this respect is to try and
reconstitute "a text which has the most likelihood of coming near to the
original. In any case, there can be no hope of going back to the original
text itself." (Ecumenical Translation) |
The Gospels and Modern
Science
The General Genealogies
of Jesus
The
Gospels contain very few passages which give rise to a confrontation with
modern scientific data. Firstly
however, there are many descriptions referring to miracles which hardly lend
themselves to scientific comment. The miracles concern people-the healing of
the sick (the insane, blind, paralytic ; the healing of lepers, resurrection
of Lazarus) as well as the purely material phenomena that lie outside the
laws of nature (the description of Jesus walking on water that held him up,
the changing of the water into wine). Sometimes a natural phenomenom is seen
from an unusual angle by virtue of the fact that the time element is very
short: the immediate calming of the storm, the instantaneous withering of the
fig tree, the miracle catch of fish, as if all the fish in the sea had come
together at exactly the place where the nets were cast. God
intervenes in His Omnipotent Power in all these episodes. One need not be
surprised by what He is able to achieve; by human standards it is stupendous,
but for Him it is not. This does not at all mean that a believer should
forget science. A belief in divine miracles and in science is quite
compatible: one is on a divine scale, the other on a human one. Personally,
I am very willing to believe that Jesus cured a leper, but I cannot accept
the fact that a text is declared authentic and inspired by God when I read
that only twenty generations existed between the first man and Abraham. Luke
says this in his Gospel (3, 23-28). We shall see in a moment the reasons that
show why Luke's text, like the Old Testament text on the same theme, is quite
simply a product of human imagination. The
Gospels (like the Qur'an) give us the same description of Jesus's biological
origins. The formation of Jesus in the maternal uterus occurred in
circumstances which lay outside the laws of nature common to all human
beings. The ovule produced by the mother's ovary did not need to join with a
spermatozoon, which should have come from his father, to form the embryo and
hence a viable infant. The phenomenon of the birth of a normal individual
without the fertilizing action of the male is called 'parthenogenesis'. In
the animal kingdom, parthenogenesis can be observed under certain conditions.
This is true for various insects, certain invertebrates and, very
occasionally, a select breed of bird. By way of experiment, it has been
possible, for example, in certain mammals (female rabbits), to obtain the
beginnings of a development of the ovule into an embryo at an extremely
rudimentary stage without any intervention of spermatozoon. It was not
possible to go any further however and an example of complete
parthenogenesis, whether experimental or natural, is unknown. Jesus is an
unique case. Mary was a virgin mother. She preserved her virginity and did
not have any children apart from Jesus. Jesus is a biological exception. [ The
Gospels sometimes refer to Jesus's 'brothers' and 'sisters' (Matthew l3,
46-60 and 64-68; Mark 6, 1-6; John 7, 3 and 2, 12). The Greek words used,
adelphoi and adelphai, indeed signify biological brothers and sisters; they
are most probably a defective translation of the original Semitic words which
just mean 'kin'. in this instance they were perhaps cousins.] |
THE GENEALOGIES OF JESUS
The two
genealogies contained in Matthew's and Luke's Gospels give rise to problems
of verisimilitude, and conformity with scientific data, and hence
authenticity. These problems are a source of great embarrassment to Christian
commentators because the latter refuse to see in them what is very obviously
the product of human imagination. The authors of the Sacerdotal text of
Genesis, Sixth century B.C., had already been inspired by imagination for
their genealogies of the first men. It again inspired Matthew and Luke for
the data they did not take from the Old Testament. One
must straight away note that the male genealogies have absolutely no
relevance to Jesus. Were one to give a genealogy to Mary's only son, who was
without a biological father, it would have to be the genealogy of his mother
Mary. Here is
the text of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, 1952: The
genealogy according to Matthew is at the beginning of his Gospel: "THE
BOOK OF THE GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST,
So all
the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from
David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the
deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations". (Matthew, I,
1-17) The
genealogy given by Luke (3, 23-38) is different from Matthew. The text
reproduced here is from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible: "Jesus,
when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as
was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of
Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of
Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of
Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son
of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of
Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the sOn of Melchi, the son
of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of
Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of
Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of
Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of
Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of
Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon, the son of
Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Ami, the SOD of Hezron, the son of
Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of
Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of
Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan,
the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the
son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel,
the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son
of God." The
genealogies appear more clearly when presented in two tables, one showing the
genealogy before David and the other after him. GENEALOGY
OF JESUS, BEFORE DAVID
|
||||||||||
VARIATIONS IN THE
MANUSCRIPTS AND IN RELATION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT
Apart
from variations in spelling, the following must be mentioned: a) Matthew's Gospel
The
genealogy has disappeared from the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, a very
important Six century manuscript in both Greek and Latin. It has completely
disappeared from the Greek text and also a large part of the Latin text. It
may quite simply be that the first pages were lost. One
must note here the great liberties Matthew has taken with the Old Testament.
He has pared down the genealogies for the sake of a strange numerical
demonstration (which, in the end, he does not give, as we shall see). b) Luke's Gospel
1.
Before Abraham: Luke mentions 20 names;
the Old Testament only mentions 19 (see table of Adam's descendants in the
Old Testament section of this work). After Arphaxad (No. 12) , Luke has added
a person called Cainan (No. 13), who is not mentioned in Genesis as the son
of Arphaxad. 2.
From Abraham to David: 14 to 16 names
are found according to the manuscripts. 3.
From David to Jesus. The
most important variation is the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis which
attributes to Luke a whimsical genealogy taken from Matthew and to which the
scribe has added five names. Unfortunately, the genealogy of Matthew's Gospel
has disappeared from this manuscript, so that comparison is no longer
possible. |
CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE
TEXTS
We are
here faced with two different genealogies having one essential point in
common, i.e. they both pass via Abraham and David. To make this examination
easier, we shall separate the whole into three critical sections: -From
Adam to Abraham.
|
COMMENTARIES OF MODERN
EXPERTS IN EXEGESIS
In his
book The Gospels of Childhood (1967) Les Evangiles de l'Enfance) [ Pub.
Editions du Seuil, Paris.], Cardinal Daniélou invests Matthew's 'numerical schematisation'
with a symbolic value of paramount importance since it is this that
establishes Jesus's ancestry, which is asserted also by Luke. For him Luke
and Matthew are 'historians' who have completed their 'historical
investigations', and the , genealogy' has been 'taken down from the archives
of Jesus family'. It must be added here that the archives have never been
found. [ Although the author assures us that he knows of the existence of
these supposed family archives from the Ecclesiastic History by Eusebius
Pamphili (about whose respectability much could be said), it is difficult to
see why Jesus's family should have two genealogical trees that were
necessarily different just because each of the two so-called 'historians'
gave a genealogy substantially different from the other concerning the names
of those who figure among Jesus's ancestors.] Cardinal Daniélou condemns out
of hand anyone who criticizes his point of view. "It is the Western
mentality, ignorance of Judeo-Christianity and the absence of a Semitic
outlook that have made so many experts in exegesis loose their way when
interpreting the Gospels. They have projected their own categories onto them:
(sic) Platonic, Cartesian, Hegelian and Heideggerian. It is easy to see why
everything is mixed up in their minds." Plato, Descartes, Hegel and
Heidegger obviously have nothing to do with the critical attitude one may
have towards these whimsical genealogies. In his
search for the meaning of Matthew's 3 x 14, the author expands on strange
suppositions. They are worth quoting here: "What may be meant are the
common ten weeks of the Jewish Apocalypse. The first three, corresponding to
the time from Adam to Abraham, would have been subtracted; seven weeks of
years would then remain, the first six would correspond to the six times
seven representing the three groups of fourteen and leaving the seventh,
started by Christ with whom the seventh age of the world begins."
Explanations like this are beyond comment! The
commentators of the Ecumenical Translation-New Testament-also give us
numerical variations of an apologetic nature which are equally unexpected:
For Matthew's 3 x 14: a) 14
could be the numerical total of the 3 consonants in the Hebrew name David (D=
4, V= 6), hence 4+6+4= 14. b) 3 x
14 = 6 x 7 and "Jesus came at the end of the sixth week of Holy history
beginning with Abraham." For
Luke, this translation gives 77 names from Adam to Jesus, allowing the number
7 to come up again, this time by dividing 77 by 7 (7x 11= 77). It is quite
apparent that for Luke the number of variations where words are added or
subtracted is such that a list of 77 names is completely artificial. It does
however have the advantage of adapting itself to these numerical games. The
genealogies of Jesus as they appear in the Gospels may perhaps be the subject
that has led Christian commentators to perform their most characteristic
feats of dialectic acrobatics, on par indeed with Luke's and Matthew's
imagination. |
||
Contradictions and
Improbabilities in the Descriptions
Each of
the four Gospels contains a large number of descriptions of events that may
be unique to one single Gospel or common to several if not all of them. When
they are unique to one Gospel, they sometimes raise serious problems. Thus,
in the case of an event of considerable importance, it is surprising to find
the event mentioned by only one evangelist; Jesus's Ascension into heaven on
the day of Resurrection, for example. Elsewhere, numerous events are
differently described-sometimes very differently indeed-by two or more
evangelists. Christians are very often astonished at the existence of such
contradictions between the Gospels-if they ever discover them. This is
because they have been repeatedly told in tones of the greatest assurance
that the New Testament authors were the eyewitnesses of the events they
describe! Some of
these disturbing improbabilities and contradictions have been shown in
previous chapters. It is however the later events of Jesus's life in
particular, along with the events following the Passion, that form the
subject of varying or contradictory descriptions. |
||
DESCRIPTIONS OF THE
PASSION
Father
Roguet himself notes that Passover is placed at different times in relation
to Jesus's Last Supper with His disciples in the Synoptic Gospels and John's
Gospel. John places the Last Supper 'before the Passover celebrations' and
the other three evangelists place it during the celebrations themselves.
Obvious improbabilities emerge from this divergence: a certain episode
becomes impossible because of the position of Passover in relation to it.
When one knows the importance it had in the Jewish liturgy and the importance
of the meal where Jesus bids farewell to his disciples, how is it possible to
believe that the memory of one event in relation to the other could have
faded to such an extent in the tradition recorded later by the evangelists? On a
more general level, the descriptions of the Passion differ from one
evangelist to another, and more particularly between John and the first three
Gospels. The Last Supper and the Passion in John's Gospel are both very long,
twice as long as in Mark and Luke, and roughly one and a half times as long
as Matthew's text. John records a very long speech of Jesus to His disciples
which takes up four chapters (14 to 17) of his Gospel. During this crowning
speech, Jesus announces that He will leave His last instructions and gives
them His last spiritual testament. There is no trace of this in the other Gospels.
The same process can work the other way however; Matthew, Luke and Mark all
relate Jesus's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, but John does not mention
it. |
JOHN'S GOSPEL DOES NOT
DESCRIBE THE INSTITUTION OF THE EUCHARIST
The
most important fact that strikes the reader of the Passion in John's Gospel
is that he makes absolutely no reference to the institution of the Eucharist
during the Last Supper of Jesus with His Apostles. There
is not a single Christian who does not know the iconography of the Last
Supper, where Jesus is for the last time seated among His Apostles at table.
The world's greatest painters have always represented this final gathering
with John sitting near Jesus, John whom we are accustomed to considering as
the author of the Gospel bearing that name. However
astonishing it may appear to many , the majority of specialists do not
consider John to have been the author of the fourth Gospel, nor does the
latter mention the institution of the Eucharist. The consecration of the
bread and wine, which become the body and blood of Jesus, is the most
essential act of the Christian liturgy. The other evangelists refer to it,
even if they do so in differing terms, as we have noted above. John does not
say anything about it. The four evangelists' descriptions have only two
single points in common: the prediction of Peter's denial and of the betrayal
by one of the Apostles (Judas Iscariot is only actually named in Matthew and
John). John's description is the only one which refers to Jesus washing his
disciples' feet at the beginning of the meal. How can
this omission in John's Gospel be explained? Let us
now examine some of the positions they have adopted. One is
surprised therefore both by John's silence on what the other three
evangelists relate and their silence on what, according to John, Jesus is
said to have predicted. The
commentators of the Ecumenical Translation of the Bible, New Testament,
do actually acknowledge this omission in John's Gospel. This is the
explanation they come up with to account for the fact that the description of
the institution of the Eucharist is missing: "In general, John is not
very interested in the traditions and institutions of a bygone Israel. This
may have dissuaded him from showing the establishment of the Eucharist in the
Passover liturgy". Are we seriously to believe that it was a lack of
interest in the Jewish Passover liturgy that led John not to describe the
institution of the most fundamental act. in the liturgy of the new religion? The
experts in exegesis are so embarrassed by the problem that theologians rack
their brains to find prefigurations or equivalents of the Eucharist in
episodes of Jesus's life recorded by John. O. Culmann for example, in his
book, The New Testament (Le Nouveau Testament), states that "the
changing of the water into wine and the feeding of the five thousand
prefigure the sacrament of the Last Supper (the 'Eucharist')". It is to
be remembered that the water was changed into wine because the latter had
failed at a wedding in Cana. (This was Jesus's first miracle, described by
John in chapter 2, 1-12. He is the only evangelist to do so). In the case of
the feeding of the five thousand, this was the number of people who were fed
on 5 barley loaves that were miraculously multiplied. When describing these
events, John makes no special comment, and the parallel exists only in the
mind of this expert in exegesis. One can no more understand the reasoning
behind the parallel he draws than his view that the curing of a paralized man
and of a man born blind 'predict the baptism' and that 'the water and blood
issuing from Jesus's side after his death unite in a single fact' a reference
to both baptism and the Eucharist. Another
parallel drawn by the same expert in exegesis conconcerning the Eucharist is
quoted by Father Roguet in his book Initiation to the Gospel (Initiation à
l'Evangile). "Some theologians, such as Oscar Culmann, see in the
description of the washing of the feet before the Last Supper a symbolical
equivalent to the institution of the Eucharist . . ." It is
difficult to see the cogency of all the parallels that commentators have
invented to help people accept more readily the most disconcerting omission
in John's Gospel. |
APPEARANCES OF JESUS
RAISED FROM THE DEAD
A prime
example of imagination at work in a description has already been given in the
portrayal of the abnormal phenomena said to have accompanied Jesus's death
given in Matthew's Gospel. The events that followed the Resurrection provided
material for contradictory and even absurd descriptions on the part of all
the evangelists. Father
Roguet in his Initiation to the Gospel (Initiation à l'Evangile), page
182, provides examples of the confusion, disorder and contradiction reigning
in these writings: "The
list of women who came to the tomb is not exactly the same in each of the
three Synoptic Gospels. In John only one woman came: Mary Magdalene. She
speaks in the plural however, as if she were accompanied: 'we do not know
where they have laid him.' In Matthew the Angel predicts to the women that
they will see Jesus in Galilee. A few moments later however, Jesus joins them
beside the tomb. Luke probably sensed this difficulty and altered the source
a little. The Angel says: "Remember how he told you, while he was still
in Galilee . . .' In fact, Luke only actually refers to three appearances . .
."-"John places two appearances at an interval of one week in the
upper room at Jerusalem and the third beside the lake, in Galilee therefore.
Matthew records only one appearance in Galilee." The commentator
excludes from this examination the last section of Mark's Gospel concerning
the appearances because he believes this was 'probably written by another
hand'. All
these facts contradict the mention of Jesus's appearances, contained in Paul's
First Letter to the Corinthians (15,5-7), to more than five hundred
people at once, to James, to all the Apostles and, of course, to Paul
himself. After
this, it is surprising therefore to find that Father Roguet stigmatizes, in
the same book, the 'grandiloquent and puerile phantasms of certain Apocrypha'
when talking of the Resurrection. Surely these terms are perfectly
appropriate to Matthew and Paul themselves: they are indeed in complete
contradiction with the other Apostles on the subject of the appearances of
Jesus raised from the dead. Apart
from this, there is a contradiction between Luke's description, in the Acts
of the Apostles, of Jesus's appearance to Paul and what Paul himself
succinctly tells us of it. This has led Father Kannengiesser in his book, Faith
in the Resurrection, Resurrection of Faith (Foi en la Resurrection,
Resurrection de la Foi), 1974, to stress that Paul, who was 'the sole
eyewitness of Christ's resurrection, whose voice comes directly to us from
his writings [ 'No other New Testament author can claim that
distinction', he notes.], never speaks of his personal encounter with Him Who was raised
from the dead-'. . . except for three extremely , 'he refrains moreover from
describing discreet references . . . it.' The
contradiction between Paul, who was the sole eyewitness but is dubious, and
the Gospels is quite obvious. O.
Culmann in his book, The New Testament (Le Nouveau Testament), notes
the contradictions between Luke and Matthew. The first situates Jesus's
appearances in Judea, the second in Galilee. One
should also remember the Luke-John contradiction. John
(21, 1-14) relates an episode in which Jesus raised from the dead appears to
the fishermen beside the Sea of Tiberias; they subsequently catch so many
fish that they are unable to bring them all in. This is nothing other than a
repetition of the miracle catch of fish episode which took place at the same
spot and was also described by Luke (5, 1-11), as an event of Jesus's life. When
talking of these appearances, Father Roguet assures us in his book that
'their disjointed, blurred and disordered character inspires confidence'
because all these facts go to show that there was no connivance between the
evangelists [ It is difficult to see how there could have been!], otherwise they
would definitely have co-ordinated their stories. This is indeed a strange
line of argument. In actual fact, they could all have recorded, with complete
sincerity, traditions of the communities which (unknown to them) all
contained elements of fantasy. This hypothesis in unavoidable when one is
faced with so many contradictions and improbabilities in the description of
of events. |
ASCENSION OF JESUS
Contradictions
are present until the very end of the descriptions because neither John nor
Matthew refer to Jesus's Ascension. Mark and Luke are the only one to speak
of it. For
Mark (16, 19), Jesus was 'taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right
hand of God' without any precise date being given in relation to His
Resurrection. It must however be noted that the final passage of Mark
containing this sentence is, for Father Roguet, an 'invented' text, although
for the Church it is canonic! There
remains Luke, the only evangelist to provide an undisputed text of the
Ascension episode (24, 51): 'he parted from them [ i.e.
the eleven Apostles; Judos, the twelfth, was already dead.] and was carried
up into heaven'. The evangelist places the event at the end of the
description of the Resurrection and appearance to the eleven Apostles: the
details of the Gospel description imply that the Ascension took place on the
day of the Resurrection. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke (whom everybody
believes to be their author) describes in chapter 1, 3 Jesus's appearance to
the Apostles, between the Passion and the Ascension, in the following terms: "To
them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing
to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God." The
placing of the Christian festival of the Ascension at forty days after
Easter, the Festival of the Resurrection, originates from this passage in the
Acts of the Apostles. The date is therefore set in contradiction to Luke's
Gospel: none of the other Gospel texts say anything to justify this in a
different way. The
Christian who is aware of this situation is highly disconcerted by the
obviousness of the contradiction. The Ecumenical Translation of the Bible,
New Testament, acknowledges the facts but does not expand on the
contradiction. It limits itself to noting the relevance the forty days may
have had to Jesus's mission. Commentators
wishing to explain everything and reconcile the irreconciliable provide some
strange interpretations on this subject. The Synopsis
of the Four Gospels edited in 1972 by the Bibli cal School of Jerusalem
(vol. 2, page 451) contains, for example, some very strange commentaries. The
very word , Ascension' is criticized as follows: "In fact there was no
ascension in the actual physical sense because God is no more 'on high' than
he is 'below' " (sic). It is difficult to grasp the sense of this
comment because one wonders how Luke could otherwise have expressed himself. Elsewhere,
the author of this commentary sees a 'literary artifice' in the fact that
"in the Acts, the Ascension is said to have taken place forty days after
the resurrection". this 'artifice' is "intended to stress the
notion that the period of Jesus's appearances on earth is at an end". He
adds however, in relation to the fact that in Luke's Gospel, "the event
is situated during the evening of Easter Sunday, because the evangelist does
not put any breaks between the various episodes recorded following the
discovery of the empty tomb on the morning of the resurrection..."-".
. . surely this is also a literary artifice, intended to allow a certain
lapse of time before the appearance of Jesus raised from the dead."
(sic) The
feeling of embarrassment that surrounds these interpretations is even more
obvious in Father Roguet's book. He discerns not one, but two Ascensions! "Whereas
from Jesus's point of view the Ascension coincides with the Resurrection,
from the disciples' point of view it does not take place until Jesus ceases
definitely to present Himself to them, so that the Spirit may be given to
them and the period of the Church may begin." To
those readers who are not quite able to grasp the theological subtlety of his
argument (which has absolutely no Scriptural basis whatsoever), the author
issues the following general warning, which is a model of apologetical
verbiage: "Here,
as in many similar cases, the problem only appears insuperable if one takes
Biblical statements literally, and forgets their religious significance. It
is not a matter of breaking down the factual reality into a symbolism which
is inconsistent, but rather of looking for the theological intentions of
those revealing these mysteries to us by providing us with facts we can
apprehend with our senses and signs appropriate to our incarnate
spirit." |
JESUS'S LAST DIALOGUES -
THE PARACLETE OF JOHN'S GOSPEL
John is
the only evangelist to report the episode of the last dialogue with the
Apostles. It takes place at the end of the Last Supper and before Jesus's
arrest. It ends in a very long speech: four chapters in John's Gospel (14 to
17) are devoted to this narration which is not mentioned anywhere in the
other Gospels. These chapters of John nevertheless deal with questions of
prime importance and fundamental significance to the future outlook. They are
set out with all the grandeur and solemnity that characterizes the farewell
scene between the Master and His disciples. This
very touching farewell scene which contains Jesus's spiritual testament, is
entirely absent from Matthew, Mark and Luke. How can the absence of this
description be explained? One might ask the following. did the text initially
exist in the first three Gospels? Was it subsequently suppressed? Why? It
must be stated immediately that no answer can be found; the mystery
surrounding this huge gap in the narrations of the first three evangelists
remains as obscure as ever. The
dominating feature of this narration-seen in the crowning speech-is the view
of man's future that Jesus describes, His care in addressing His disciples,
and through them the whole of humanity, His recommendations and commandments
and His concern to specify the guide whom man must follow after His
departure. The text of John's Gospel is the only one to designate him as Parakletos
in Greek, which in English has become 'Paraclete'. The following are the
essential passages: "If
you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and
he will give you another Paraclete." (14, 15-16) What
does 'Paraclete' mean? The present text of John's Gospel explains its
meaning as follows: "But
the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will
teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to
you" (14, 26). "it
is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Paraclete
will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes,
he will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment . .
." (16, 7-8). "When
the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will
not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he
will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me . .
." (It
must be noted that the passages in John, chapters 14-17, which have not been
cited here, in no way alter the general meaning of these quotations). On a
cursory reading, the text which identifies the Greek word 'Paraclete' with
the Holy Spirit is unlikely to attract much attention. This is especially
true when the subtitles of the text are generally used for translations and
the terminology commentators employ in works for mass publication direct the
reader towards the meaning in these passages that an exemplary orthodoxy
would like them to have. Should one have the slightest dimculty in
comprehension, there are many explanations available, such as those given by
A. Tricot in his Little Dictionary of the New Testament (Petit
Dictionnaire du Nouveau Testament) to enlighten one on this subject. In his
entry on the Paraclete this commentator writes the following: "This
name or title translated from the Greek is only used in the New Testament by
John: he uses it four times in his account of Jesus's speech after the Last
Supper [ In fact, for John it was during the Last Supper itself that
Jesus delivered the long speech that mentions the Paraclete.] (14, 16 and 26;
15, 26; 16, 7) and once in his First Letter (2, 1). In John's Gospel the word
is applied to the Holy Spirit; in the Letter it refers to Christ. 'Paraclete'
was a term in current usage among the Hellenist Jews, First century A.D.,
meaning 'intercessor', 'defender' (. . .) Jesus predicts that the Spirit will
be sent by the Father and Son. Its mission will be to take the place of the
Son in the role he played during his mortal life as a helper for the benefit
of his disciples. The Spirit will intervene and act as a substitute for
Christ, adopting the role of Paraclete or omnipotent intercessor." This
commentary therefore makes the Holy Spirit into the ultimate guide of man
after Jesus's departure. How does it square with John's text? It is a
necessary question because a priori it seems strange to ascribe the
last paragraph quoted above to the Holy Spirit: "for he will not speak
on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will
declare to you the things that are to come." It seems inconceivable that
one could ascribe to the Holy Spirit the ability to speak and declare
whatever he hears . . . Logic demands that this question be raised, but to my
knowledge, it is not usually the subject of commentaries. To gain
an exact idea of the problem, one has to go back to the basic Greek text.
This is especially important because John is universally recognized to have
written in Greek instead of another language. The Greek text consulted was
the Novum Testamentum Graece [ Nestlé and Aland. Pub.
United Bibles Societies, London, 1971.]. Any
serious textual criticism begins with a search for variations. Here it would
seem that in all the known manuscripts of John's Gospel, the only variation
likely to change the meaning of the sentence Is in passage 14, 26 of the
famous Palimpsest version written in Syriac [ This manuscript was
written in the Fourth or Fifth century A.D. It was discovered in 1812 on
Mount Sinai by Agnes S.-Lewis and is so named because the first text had been
covered by a later one which, when obliterated, revealed the original.]. Here it is not
the Holy Spirit that is mentioned, but quite simply the Spirit. Did the
scribe merely miss out a word or, knowing full well that the text he was to
copy claimed to make the Holy Spirit hear and speak, did he perhaps lack the
audacity to write something that seemed absurd to him? Apart from this
observation there is little need to labour the other variations, they are
grammatical and do not change the general meaning. The important thing is
that what has been demonstrated here with regard to the exact meaning of the
verbs 'to hear' and 'to speak' should apply to all the other manuscripts of
John's Gospel, as is indeed the case. The
verb 'to hear, in the translation is the Greek verb 'akouô' meaning to
perceive sounds. It has, for example, given us the word 'acoustics', the
science of sounds. The
verb 'to speak' in the translation is the Greek verb 'laleô' which has
the general meaning of 'to emit sounds' and the specific meaning of 'to
speak'. This verb occurs very frequently in the Greek text of the Gospels. It
designates a solemn declaration made by Jesus during His preachings. It
therefore becomes clear that the communication to man which He here proclaims
does not in any way consist of a statement inspired by the agency of the Holy
Spirit. It has a very obvious material character moreover, which comes from
the idea of the emission of sounds conveyed by the Greek word that defines
it. The two
Greek verbs 'akouô' and 'laleô' therefore define concrete
actions which can only be applied to a being with hearing and speech organs.
It is consequently impossible to apply them to the Holy Spirit. For
this reason, the text of this passage from John's Gospel, as handed down to
us in Greek manuscripts, is quite incomprehensible if one takes it as a
whole, including the words 'Holy Spirit' in passage 14, 26. "But the
Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name" etc.
It is the only passage in John's Gospel that identifies the Paraclete with
the Holy Spirit. If the
words 'Holy Spirit' (to pneuma to agion) are ommitted from the
passage, the complete text of John then conveys a meaning which is perfectly
clear. It is confirmed moreover, by another text by the same evangelist, the
First Letter, where John uses the same word 'Paraclete' simply to mean Jesus,
the intercessor at God's side [ Many translations and
commentaries of the Gospel, especially older ones, use the word 'Consoler' to
translate this, but it is totally inaccurate.]. According to John, when Jesus
says (14, 16): "And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another
Paraclete", what He is saying is that 'another' intercessor will be sent
to man, as He Himself was at God's side on man's behalf during His earthly
life. According
to the rules of logic therefore, one is brought to see in John's Paraclete a
human being like Jesus, possessing the faculties of hearing and speech formally
implied in John's Greek text. Jesus therefore predicts that God will later
send a human being to Earth to take up the role defined by John, i.e. to be a
prophet who hears God's word and repeats his message to man. This is the
logical interpretation of John's texts arrived at if one attributes to the
words their proper meaning. The
presence of the term 'Holy Spirit' in today's text could easily have come
from a later addition made quite deliberately. It may have been intended to
change the original meaning which predicted the advent of a prophet
subsequent to Jesus and was therefore in contradiction with the teachings of
the Christian churches at the time of their formation; these teachings
maintained that Jesus was the last of the prophets. |
||
Conclusions
The
facts recorded here and the commentaries quoted from several extremely
eminent Christian experts in exegesis have refuted affirmations of orthodoxy
supported by the line adopted by the last Council on the absolute historical
authenticity of the Gospels. These are said to have faithfully transmitted
what Jesus actually did and taught. Several
different kinds of argument have been given. Firstly,
quotations from the Gospels themselves show flat contradictions. It is
impossible to believe two facts that contradict each other. Neither can one
accept certain improbabilities and affirmations that go against the cast-iron
data provided by modern knowledge. In this respect, the two genealogies of
Jesus given in the Gospels and the untruths implied in them are quite
conclusive. These
contradictions, improbabilities and incompatibilities pass unnoticed by many
Christians. They are astonished when they discover them because they have
been influenced by their reading of commentaries that provide subtle explanations
calculated to reassure them and orchestrated by an apologetic lyricism. Some
very typical examples have been given of the skill employed by certain
experts in exegesis in camouflaging what they modestly call 'difficulties'.
There are very few passages indeed in the Gospels that have been acknowledged
as inauthentic although the Church declares them canonic. According
to Father Kannengiesser, works of modern textual criticism have revealed data
which constitute a 'revolution in methods of Biblical exegesis' so that the
facts relating to Jesus recorded in the Gospels are no longer 'to be taken
literally', they are 'writings suited to an occasion' or 'combat writings'.
Modern knowledge has brought to light the history of Judeo-Christianity and
the rivalry between communities which accounts for the existence of facts
that today's readers find disconcerting. The concept of eyewitness
evangelists is no longer defensible, although numerous Christians still
retain it today. The work done at the Biblical School of Jerusalem (Fathers
Benoit and Boismard) shows very clearly that the Gospels were written,
revised and corrected several times. They also warn the reader that he is
"obliged in more than one case to give up the notion of hearing Jesus's
voice directly". The
historical nature of the Gospels is beyond question. Through descriptions
referring to Jesus however, these documents provide us above all with
information about the character of their authors, the spokesmen for the
tradition of the early Christian communities to which they belonged, and in
particular about the struggle between the Judeo-Christians and Paul: Cardinal
Daniélou's work is authoritative on these points. Why be
surprised by the fact that some evangelists distort certain events in Jesus's
life with the object of defending a personal point of view? Why be surprised
by the omission of certain events? Why be surprised by the fictitious nature
of other events described? This
leads us to compare the Gospels with the narrative poems found in Medieval
literature. A vivid comparison could be made with the Song of Roland
(Chanson de Roland), the most well-known of all poems of this kind, which
relates a real event in a fictitious light. It will be remembered that it
describes an actual episode: Roland was leading Charlemagne's rear-guard when
it was ambushed on the pass at Roncevaux. The episode which was of minor
importance, is said to have taken place on the 15th August, 778 according to
historical records (Eginhard). It was raised to the stature of a great feat
of arms, a battle in a war of religion. It is a whimsical description, but
the imaginary element does not obliterate one of the real battles that
Charlemagne had to fight in order to protect his frontiers against the
attempts made by neighbouring peoples to penetrate his borders. That is the
element of truth and the epic style of narrative does not remove it. The
same holds true for the Gospels: Matthew's phantasms, the fiat contradictions
between Gospels, the improbabilities, the incompatibilities with modern
scientific data, the successive distortions of the text-all these things add
up to the fact that the Gospels contain chapters and passages that are the
sole product of the human imagination. These flaws do not however cast doubt
on the existence of Jesus's mission: the doubt is solely confined to the
course it took. |
||
The Qur'an and Modern
Science
|
||
Authenticity of the Qur'an
How It Came To Be Written
Thanks
to its undisputed authenticity, the text of the Qur'an holds a unique place
among the books of Revelation, shared neither by the Old nor the New
Testament. In the first two sections of this work, a review was made of the
alterations undergone by the Old Testament and the Gospels before they were
handed down to us in the form we know today. The same is not true for the
Qur'an for the simple reason that it was written down at the time of the
Prophet; we shall see how it came to be written, i.e. the process involved. In this
context, the differences separating the Qur'an from the Bible are in no way
due to questions essentially concerned with date. Such questions are
constantly put forward by certain people without regard to the circumstances
prevailing at the time when the Judeo-Christian and the Qur'anic Revelations
were written; they have an equal disregard for the circumstances surrounding
the transmission of the Qur'an to the Prophet. It is suggested that a Seventh
century text had more likelihood of coming down to us unaltered than other
texts that are as many as fifteen centuries older. This comment, although
correct, does not constitute a sufficient reason ; it is made more to excuse
the alterations made in the Judeo-Christian texts in the course of centuries
than to underline the notion that the text of the Qur'an, which was more recent,
had less to fear from being modified by man. In the
case of the Old Testament, the sheer number of authors who tell the same
story, plus all the revisions carried out on the text of certain books from
the pre-Christian era, constitute as many reasons for inaccuracy and
contradiction. As for the Gospels, nobody can claim that they invariably
contain faithful accounts of Jesus's words or a description of his actions
strictly in keeping with reality. We have seen how successive versions of the
texts showed a lack of definite authenticity and moreover that their authors
were not eyewitnesses. Also to
be underlined is the distinction to be made between the Qur'an, a book of
written Revelation, and the hadiths, collections of statements concerning the
actions and sayings of Muhammad. Some of the Prophet's companions started to
write them down from the moment of his death. As an element of human error
could have slipped in, the collection had to be resumed later and subjected
to rigorous criticism so that the greatest credit is in practise given to
documents that came along after Muhammad. Their authenticity varies, like
that of the Gospels. Not a single Gospel was written down at the time of
Jesus (they were all written long after his earthly mission had come to an
end), and not a single collection of hadiths was compiled during the time of
the Prophet. The
situation is very different for the Qur'an. As the Revelation progressed, the
Prophet and the believers following him recited the text by heart and it was
also written down by the scribes in his following. It therefore starts off
with two elements of authenticity that the Gospels do not possess. This
continued up to the Prophet's death. At a time when not everybody could
write, but everyone was able to recite, recitation afforded a considerable
advantage because of the double-checking possible when the definitive text
was compiled. The
Qur'anic Revelation was made by Archangel Gabriel to Muhammad. It took place
over a period of more than twenty years of the Prophet's life, beginning with
the first verses of Sura 96, then resuming after a three-year break for a
long period of twenty years up to the death of the Prophet in 632 A.D., i.e.
ten years before Hegira and ten years after Hegira. [Muhammad's
departure from Makka to Madina, 622 A.D.] The
following was the first Revelation (sura 96, verses 1 to 5) [
Muhammad was totally overwhelmed by these words. We shall return to an
interpretation of them, especially with regard to the fact that Muhammad
could neither read nor write.]. "Read:
In the name of thy Lord who created, Professor
Hamidullah notes in the Introduction to his French translation of the Qur'an
that one of the themes of this first Revelation was the 'praise of the pen as
a means of human knowledge' which would 'explain the Prophet's concern for
the preservation of the Qur'an in writing.' Texts
formally prove that long before the Prophet left Makka for Madina (i.e. long
before Hegira), the Qur'anic text so far revealed had been written down. We
shall see how the Qur'an is authentic in this. We know that Muhammad and the
Believers who surrounded him were accustomed to reciting the revealed text
from memory. It is therefore inconceivable for the Qur'an to refer to facts
that did not square with reality because the latter could so easily be
checked with people in the Prophet's following, by asking the authors of the
transcription. Four
suras dating from a period prior to Hegira refer to the writing down of the
Qur'an before the Prophet left Makka in 622 (sura 80, verses 11 to 16): "By
no means! Indeed it is a message of instruction Yusuf
Ali, in the commentary to his translation, 1934, wrote that when the
Revelation of this sura was made, forty-two or forty-five others had been
written and were kept by Muslims in Makka (out of a total of 114). --Sura
85, verses 21 and 22: "Nay,
this is a glorious reading [In the text: Qur'an which also means 'reading'.] --Sura
56, verses 77 to 80: "This
is a glorious reading --Sura
25, verse 5: "They
said: Tales of the ancients which he has caused to be written and they are
dictated to him morning and evening." Here we have a reference to the
accusations made by the Prophet's enemies who treated him as an imposter.
They spread the rumour that stories of antiquity were being dictated to him
and he was writing them down or having them transcribed (the meaning of the
word is debatable, but one must remember that Muhammad was illiterate).
However this may be, the verse refers to this act of making a written record
which is pointed out by Muhammad's enemies themselves. A sura
that came after Hegira makes one last mention of the leaves on which these
divine instructions were written: --Sura
98, verses 2 and 3: "An
(apostle) from God recites leaves The
Qur'an itself therefore provides indications as to the fact that it was set
down in writing at the time of the Prophet. It is a known fact that there
were several scribes in his following, the most famous of whom, Zaid Ibn
Thâbit, has left his name to posterity. In the
preface to his French translation of the Qur'an (1971), Professor Hamidullah gives
an excellent description of the conditions that prevailed when the text of
the Qur'an was written, lasting up until the time of the Prophet's death: "The
sources all agree in stating that whenever a fragment of the Qur'an was
revealed, the Prophet called one of his literate companions and dictated it
to him, indicating at the same time the exact position of the new fragment in
the fabric of what had already been received . . . Descriptions note that
Muhammad asked the scribe to reread to him what had been dictated so that he
could correct any deficiencies . . . Another famous story tells how every
year in the month of Ramadan, the Prophet would recite the whole of the
Qur'an (so far revealed) to Gabriel . . ., that in the Ramadan preceding
Muhammad's death, Gabriel had made him recite it twice . . . It is known how
since the Prophet's time, Muslims acquired the habit of keeping vigil during
Ramadan, and of reciting the whole of the Qur'an in addition to the usual
prayers expected of them. Several sources add that Muhammad's scribe Zaid was
present at this final bringing-together of the texts. Elsewhere, numerous
other personalities are mentioned as well." Extremely
diverse materials were used for this first record: parchment, leather, wooden
tablets, camels' scapula, soft stone for inscriptions, etc. At the
same time however, Muhammad recommended that the faithful learn the Qur'an by
heart. They did this for a part if not all of the text recited during
prayers. Thus there were Hafizun who knew the whole of the Qur'an by
heart and spread it abroad. The method of doubly preserving the text both in
writing and by memorization proved to be extremely precious. Not
long after the Prophet's death (632), his successor Abu Bakr, the first
Caliph of Islam, asked Muhammad's former head scribe, Zaid Ibn Thâbit, to
make a copy. this he did. On Omar's initiative (the future second Caliph),
Zaid consulted all the information he could assemble at Madina: the witness
of the Hafizun, copies of the Book written on various materials
belonging to private individuals, all with the object of avoiding possible
errors in transcription. Thus an extremely faithful copy of the Book was
obtained. The
sources tell us that Caliph Omar, Abu Bakr's successor in 634, subsequently
made a single volume (mushaf) that he preserved and gave on his death
to his daughter Hafsa, the Prophet's widow. The
third Caliph of Islam, Uthman, who held the caliphate from 644 to 655,
entrusted a commission of experts with the preparation of the great recension
that bears his name. It checked the authenticity of the document produced
under Abu Bakr which had remained in Hafsa's possession until that time. The
commission consulted Muslims who knew the text by heart. The critical
analysis of the authenticity of the text was carried out very rigorously. The
agreement of the witnesses was deemed necessary before the slightest verse
containing debatable material was retained. It is indeed known how some
verses of the Qur'an correct others in the case of prescriptions: this may be
readily explained when one remembers that the Prophet's period of apostolic
activity stretched over twenty years (in round figures). The result is a text
containing an order of suras that reflects the order followed by the Prophet
in his complete recital of the Qur'an during Ramadan, as mentioned above. One
might perhaps ponder the motives that led the first three Caliphs, especially
Uthman, to commission collections and recensions of the text. The reasons are
in fact very simple: Islam's expansion in the very first decades following
Muhammad's death was very rapid indeed and it happened among peoples whose
native language was not Arabic. It was absolutely necessary to ensure the
spread of a text that retained its original purity. Uthman's recension had
this as its objective. Uthman
sent copies of the text of the recension to the centres of the Islamic Empire
and that is why, according to Professor Hamidullah, copies attributed to
Uthman exist in Tashkent and Istanbul. Apart from one or two possible
mistakes in copying, the oldest documents known to the present day, that are
to be found throughout the Islamic world, are identical; the same is true for
documents preserved in Europe (there are fragments in the Bibliothèque
Nationale in Paris which, according to the experts, date from the Eighth and
Ninth centuries A.D., i.e. the Second and Third Hegirian centuries). The
numerous ancient texts that are known to be in existence all agree except for
very minor variations which do not change the general meaning of the text at
all. If the context sometimes allows more than one interpretation, it may
well have to do with the fact that ancient writing was simpler than that of
the present day. [ The absence of diacritical marks, for example, could
make a verb either active or passive and in some instances, masculine or
feminine. More often than not however, this was hardly of any great
consequence since the context indicated the meaning in many instances.] The 114
suras were arranged in decreasing order of length; there were nevertheless
exceptions. The chronological sequence of the Revelation was not followed. In
the majority of cases however, this sequence is known. A large number of
descriptions are mentioned at several points in the text, sometimes giving rise
to repetitions. Very frequently a passage will add details to a description
that appears elsewhere in an incomplete form. Everything connected with
modern science is, like many subjects dealt with in the Qur'an, scattered
throughout the book without any semblance of classification.
|
||
The Creation of the Heavens
and the Earth.
DIFFERENCES FROM AND
RESEMBLANCES TO THE BIBLICAL DESCRIPTION
In
contrast to the Old Testament, the Qur'an does not provide a unified
description of the Creation. Instead of a continuous narration, there are
passages scattered all over the Book which deal with certain aspects of the
Creation and provide information on the successive events marking its
development with varying degrees of detail. To gain a clear idea of how these
events are presented, the fragments scattered throughout a large number of
suras have to be brought together. This
dispersal throughout the Book of references to the same subject is not unique
to the theme of the Creation. Many important subjects are treated in the same
manner in the Qur'an: earthly or celestial phenomena, or problems concerning
man that are of interest to scientists. For each of these themes, the same
effort has been made here to bring all the verses together. For
many European commentators, the description of the Creation in the Qur'an is
very similar to the one in the Bible and they are quite content to present
the two descriptions side by side. I believe this concept is mistaken because
there are very obvious differences. On subjects that are by no means
unimportant from a scientific point of view, we find statements in the Qur'an
whose equivalents we search for in vain in the Bible. The latter contains
descriptions that have no equivalent in the Qur'an. The
obvious resemblances between the two texts are well known; among them is the
fact that, at first glance, the number given to the successive stages of the
Creation is identical: the six days in the Bible correspond to the six days
in the Qur'an. In fact however, the problem is more complex than this and it
is worth pausing to examine it. |
The Six Periods of the
Creation
There
is absolutely no ambiguity whatsoever in the Biblical [ The
Biblical description mentioned here is taken from the so-called Sacerdotal
version discussed in the first part of this work; the description taken from
the so-called Yahvist version has been compressed into the space of a few
lines in today s version of the Bible and is too insubstantial to be
considered here.] description of the Creation in six days followed by a day of
rest, the sabbath, analogous with the days of the week. It has been shown how
this mode of narration practiced by the priests of the Sixth century B.C.
served the purpose of encouraging the people to observe the sabbath. All Jews
were expected to rest [ 'Sabbath' in Hebrew means 'to rest'.] on the sabbath
as the Lord had done after he had laboured during the six days of the week. The way
the Bible interprets it, the word 'day' means the interval of time between
two successive sunrises or sunsets for an inhabitant of the Earth. When
defined in this way, the day is conditioned by the rotation of the Earth on
its own axis. It is obvious that logically-speaking there can be no question
of 'days' as defined just now, if the mechanism that causes them to
appear-i.e. the existence of the Earth and its rotation around the Sun-has
not already been fixed in the early stages of the Creation according to the
Biblical description. This impossibility has already been emphasized in the
first part of the present book. When we
refer to the majority of translations of the Qur'an, we read that-analogous
with the Biblical description-the process of the Creation for the Islamic
Revelation also took place over a period of six days. It is difficult to hold
against the translators the fact that they have translated the Arabic word by
its most common meaning. This is how it is usually expressed in translations
so that in the Qur'an, verse 54, sura 7 reads as follows: "Your
Lord is God Who created the heavens and the earth in six days." There
are very few translations and commentaries of the Qur'an that note how the
word 'days' should really be taken to mean 'periods'. It has moreover been
maintained that if the Qur'anic texts on the Creation divided its stages into
'days', it was with the deliberate intention of taking up beliefs held by all
the Jews and Christians at the dawn of Islam and of avoiding a head-on
confrontation with such a widely-held belief. Without
in any way wishing to reject this way of seeing it, one could perhaps examine
the problem a little more closely and scrutinize in the Qur'an itself,
and more generally in the language of the time, the possible meaning of the
word that many translators themselves still continue to translate by the word
'day' yaum, plural ayyam in Arabic. [ See
table on last page of present work for equivalence between Latin and Arabic
letters.]
Its
most common meaning is 'day' but it must be stressed that it tends more to
mean the diurnal light than the length of time that lapses between one day's
sunset and the next. The plural ayyam can mean, not just 'days', but
also 'long length of time', an indefinite period of time (but always long).
The meaning 'period of time' that the word contains is to he found elsewhere
in the Qur'an. Hence the following: --sura
32, verse 5: ".
. . in a period of time (yaum) whereof the measure is a thousand years
of your reckoning." --sura
70, verse 4: ".
. . in a period of time (yaum) whereof the measure is 50,000
years." The
fact that the word , yaum' could mean a period of time that was quite
different from the period that we mean by the word 'day' struck very early
commentators who, of course, did not have the knowledge we possess today
concerning the length of the stages in the formation of the Universe. In the
Sixteenth century A.D. for example, Abu al Su'ud, who could not have had any
idea of the day as defined astronomically in terms of the Earth's rotation,
thought that for the Creation a division must be considered that was not into
days as we usually understand the word, but into 'events' (in Arabic nauba).
Modern
commentators have gone back to this interpretation. Yusuf Ali (1934), in his
commentary on each of the verses that deals with the stages in the Creation,
insists on the importance of taking the word, elsewhere interpreted as
meaning 'days', to mean in reality 'very long Periods, or Ages, or Aeons'. It is
therefore possible to say that in the case of the Creation of the world, the
Qur'an allows for long periods of time numbering six. It is obvious that
modern science has not permitted man to establish the fact that the
complicated stages in the process leading to the formation of the Universe
numbered six, but it has clearly shown that long periods of time were
involved compared to which 'days' as we conceive them would be ridiculous. One of
the longest passages of the Qur'an, which deals with the Creation, describes
the latter by juxtaposing an account of earthly events and one of celestial
events. The verses in question are verses 9 to 12, sura 41: (God is
speaking to the Prophet) "Say.
Do you disbelieve Him Who created the earth in two periods? Do you ascribe
equals to Him. He is the Lord of the Worlds. These
four verses of sura 41 contain several points to which we shall return. the
initially gaseous state of celestial matter and the highly symbolic
definition of the number of heavens as seven. We shall see the meaning behind
this figure. Also of a symbolic nature is the dialogue between God on the one
hand and the primordial sky and earth on the other. here however it is only
to express the submission of the Heavens and Earth, once they were formed, to
divine orders. Critics
have seen in this passage a contradiction with the statement of the six
periods of the Creation. By adding the two periods of the formation of the
Earth to the four periods of the spreading of its sustenance to the
inhabitants, plus the two periods of the formation of the Heavens, we arrive
at eight periods. This would then be in contradiction with the six periods
mentioned above. In fact
however, this text, which leads man to reflect on divine Omnipotence,
beginning with the Earth and ending with the Heavens, provides two sections
that are expressed by the Arabic word tumma', translated by
'moreover', but which also means 'furthermore' or 'then'. The sense of a
'sequence' may therefore be implied referring to a sequence of events or a
series of man's reflections on the events mentioned here. It may equally be a
simple reference to events juxtaposed without any intention of bringing in
the notion of the one following the other. However this may be, the periods
of the Creation of the Heavens may just as easily coincide with the two
periods of the Earth's creation. A little later we shall examine how the
basic process of the formation of the Universe is presented in the Qur'an and
we shall see how it can be jointly applied to the Heavens and the Earth in
keeping with modern ideas. We shall then realize how perfectly reasonable
this way is of conceiving the simultaneous nature of the events here described. There
does not appear to be any contradiction between the passage quoted here and
the concept of the formation of the world in six stages that is to be found
in other texts in the Qur'an. |
THE QUR'AN DOES NOT LAY DOWN
A SEQUENCE FOR THE CREATION OF THE EARTH AND HEAVENS
In the
two passages from the Qur'an quoted above, reference was made in one of the
verses to the Creation of the Heavens and the Earth (sura 7, verse 54) , and
elsewhere to the Creation of the Earth and the Heavens (sura 41, verses 9 to
12). The Qur'an does not therefore appear to lay down a sequence for the
Creation of the Heavens and the Earth. The
number of verses in which the Earth is mentioned first is quite small, e.g.
sura 2, verse 29 and sura 20, verse 4, where a reference is made to "Him
Who created the earth and the high heavens". The number of verses where
the Heavens are mentioned before the Earth is, on the other hand, much
larger: (sura 7, verse 54; sura 10, verse 3; sura 11, verse 7; sura 25, verse
59; sura 32, verse 4; sura 50, verse 38; sura 57, verse 4; sura 79, verses 27
to 33; sura 91, verses 5 to 10). In
actual fact, apart from sura 79, there is not a single passage in the Qur'an
that lays down a definite sequence; a simple coordinating conjunction (wa)
meaning 'and' links two terms, or the word tumma which, as has been
seen in the above passage, can indicate either a simple juxtaposition or a
sequence. There
appears to me to be only one passage in the Qur'an where a definite sequence
is plainly established between different events in the Creation. It is
contained in verses 27 to 33, sura 79: "Are
you the harder to create Or. is it the heaven that (God) built? He raised its
canopy and fashioned it with harmony. He made dark the night and he brought
out the forenoon. And after that (ba' da dalika) He spread it out.
Therefrom he drew out its water and its pasture. And the mountains He has
fixed firmly. Goods for you and your cattle." This
list of earthly gifts from God to man, which is expressed In a language
suited to farmers or nomads on the Arabian Peninsula, is preceded by an
invitation to reflect on the creation of the heavens. The reference to the
stage when God spreads out the earth and renders it arable is very precisely
situated in time after the alternating of night and day has been achieved.
Two groups are therefore referred to here, one of celestial phenomena, and
the other of earthly phenomena articulated in time. The reference made here
implies that the earth must necessarily have existed before being spread out
and that it consequently existed when God created the Heavens. The idea of a concomitance
therefore arises from the heavenly and earthly evolutions with the
interlocking of the two phenomena. Hence, one must not look for any special
significance in the reference in the Qur'anic text to the Creation of the
Earth before the Heavens or the Heavens before the Earth: the position of the
words does not influence the order in which the Creation took place, unless
however it is specifically stated. |
THE BASIC PROCESS OF THE
FORMATION OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE RESULTING COMPOSITION OF THE WORLDS
The
Qur'an presents in two verses a brief synthesis of the phenomena that
constituted the basic process of the formation of the Universe. "Do
not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together,
then We clove them asunder and We got every living thing out of the water.
Will they not then believe?" --sura
41, verse 11. God orders the Prophet to speak after inviting him to reflect
on the subject of the earth's creation: "Moreover
(God) turned to the Heaven when it was smoke and said to it and to the earth
. . ." We
shall come back to the aquatic origins of life and examine them along with
other biological problems raised by the Qur'an. The important things to
remember at present are the following. a) The statement of the existence of a
gaseous mass with fine particles, for this is how the word 'smoke' (dukan
in Arabic) is to be interpreted. Smoke is generally made -up of a gaseous
substratum, plus, in more or less stable suspension, fine particles that may
belong to solid and even liquid states of matter at high or low temperature; b) The
reference to a separation process (fatq) of an primary single mass
whose elements were initially fused together (ratq). It must be noted
that in Arabic 'fatq' is the action of breaking, diffusing,
separating, and that 'ratq' is the action of fusing or binding
together elements to make a homogenous whole. This
concept of the separation of a whole into several parts is noted in other
passages of the Book with reference to multiple worlds. The first verse of
the first sura in the Qur'an proclaims, after the opening invocation, the
following: "In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful",
"Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds." The
terms 'worlds' reappears dozens of times in the Qur'an. The Heavens are
referred to as multiple as well, not only on account of their plural form,
but also because of their symbolic numerical quantity. 7. This
number is used 24 times throughout the Qur'an for various numerical
quantities. It often carries the meaning of 'many' although we do not know
exactly why this meaning of the figure was used. The Greeks and Romans also
seem to have used the number 7 to mean an undefined idea of plurality. In the
Qur'an, the number 7 refers to the Heavens themselves (samawat). It
alone is understood to mean 'Heavens'. The 7 roads of the Heavens are
mentioned once: --sura
2, verse 29: --sura
23, verse 17: --sura
67, verse 3: --sura
71, verse 15-16: --sura
78, verse 12: Here
the blazing lamp is the Sun. The
commentators on the Qur'an are in agreement on all these verses: the number 7
means no more than plurality. [ Apart from the Qur'an, we
often find the number 7 meaning plurality in texts from Muhammad's time, or
from the first centuries following him, which record his words (hadiths).] There
are therefore many Heavens and Earths, and it comes as no small surprise to
the reader of the Qur'an to find that earths such as our own may be found in
the Universe, a fact that has not yet been verified by man in our time. Verse
12 of sura 65 does however predict the following: Since 7
indicates an indefinite plurality (as we have seen), it is possible to
conclude that the Qur'anic text clearly indicates the existence of more than
one single Earth, our own Earth (ard); there are others like it in the
Universe. Another
observation which may surprise the Twentieth century reader of the Qur'an is
the fact that verses refer to three groups of things created, i.e. --things
in the Heavens. Here
are several of these verses: --sura
20, verse 6; --sura
25, verse 59: --sura
32, verse 4: --sura
50, verse 38: "We
created the heavens, the earth .and what is between them in six periods, and
no weariness touched Us." [ This statement that the
Creation did not make God at all weary stands out as an obvious reply to the
Biblical description, referred to in the first part of the present book,
where God is said to have rested on the seventh day from the preceding days'
work!] The
reference in the Qur'an to 'what is between the Heavens and the Earth' is
again to be found in the following verses: sura 21, verse 16; sura 44, verses
7 and 38 ; sura 78, verse 37; sura 15, verse 85; sura 46, verse 3; sura 43,
Verse 85. This
Creation outside the Heavens and outside the Earth, mentioned several times,
is a priori difficult to imagine. To understand these verses, reference must
be made to the most recent human observations on the existence of cosmic
extra-galactic material and one must indeed go back to ideas established by
contemporary science on the formation of the Universe, starting with the
simplest and proceeding to the most complex. These are the subject of the
following paragraph. Before
passing on to these purely scientific matters however, it is advisable to
recapitulate the main points on which the Qur'an gives us information about
the Creation. According to the preceding quotations, they are as follows: 1.
Existence of six periods for the
Creation in general. 2.
Interlocking of stages in the Creation
of the Heavens and the Earth. 3.
Creation of the Universe out of an
initially unique mass forming a block that subsequently split up. 4.
Plurality of the Heavens and of the
Earths. 5.
Existence of an intermediary creation
'between the Heavens and the Earth'. |
SOME MODERN SCIENTIFIC DATA
CONCERNING THE FORMATION OF THE UNIVERSE
|
CONFRONTATION WITH THE DATA
IN THE QUR'AN CONCERNING THE CREATION
We shall
examine the five main points on which the Qur'an gives information about the
Creation. 1.
The six periods of the Creation of the
Heavens and the Earth covered, according to the Qur'an, the formation of the
celestial bodies and the Earth, and the development of the latter until (with
its 'sustenance') it became inhabitable by man. In the case of the Earth, the
events described in the Qur'an happened over four periods. One could perhaps
see in them the four geological periods described by modern science, with
man's appearance, as we already know, taking place in the quaternary era.
This is purely a hypothesis since nobody has an answer to this
question. 2.
Science showed the interlocking of the
two stages in the formation of a star (like the Sun) and its satellite (like
the Earth). This interconnection is surely very evident in the text of the
Qur'an examined. 3.
The existence at an early stage of the
Universe of the 'smoke' referred to in the Qur'an, meaning the predominantly
gaseous state of the material that composes it, obviously corresponds to the
concept of the primary nebula put forward by modern science. 4.
The plurality of the heavens, expressed
in the Qur'an by the number 7, whose meaning we have discussed, is confirmed
by modern science due to the observations experts in astrophysics have made
on galactic systems and their very large number. On the other hand the
plurality of earths that are similar to ours (from certain points of view at
least) is an idea that arises in the text of the Qur'an but has not yet been
demonstrated to be true by science; all the same, specialists consider this
to be quite feasible. 5.
The existence of an intermediate
creation between 'the Heavens' and 'the Earth' expressed in the Qur'an may be
compared to the discovery of those bridges of material present outside
organized astronomic systems. Although
not all the questions raised by the descriptions in the Qur'an have been
completely confirmed by scientific data, there is in any case absolutely no
opposition between the data in the Qur'an on the Creation and modern
knowledge on the formation of the Universe. This fact is worth stressing for
the Qur'anic Revelation, whereas it is very obvious indeed that the
present-day text of the Old Testament provides data on the same events that
are unacceptable from a scientific point of view. It is hardly surprising,
since the description of the Creation in the Sacerdotal version of the Bible [ This
text completely overshadows the few lines contained in the Yahvist version.
The latter is too brief and too vague for the scientist to take account of
it.]
was written by priests at the time of the deportation to Babylon who had the
legalist intentions already described and therefore compiled a description
that fitted their theological views. The existence of such an enormous
difference between the Biblical description and the data in the Qur'an
concerning the Creation is worth underlining once again on account of the
totally gratuitous accusations leveled against Muhammad since the beginnings
of Islam to the effect that he copied the Biblical descriptions. As far as
the Creation is concerned, this accusation is totally unfounded. How could
a man living fourteen hundred years ago have made corrections to the existing
description to such an extent that he eliminated scientifically inaccurate
material and, on his own initiative, made statements that science has been
able to verify only in the present day? This hypothesis is completely
untenable. The description of the Creation given in the Qur'an is quite
different from the one in the Bible. |
ANSWERS TO CERTAIN
OBJECTIONS
Indisputably,
resemblances do exist between narrations dealing with other subjects,
particularly religious history, in the Bible and in the Qur'an. It is
moreover interesting to note from this point of view how nobody holds against
Jesus the fact that he takes up the same sort of facts and Biblical teachings.
This does not, of course, stop people in the West from accusing Muhammad of
referring to such facts in his teaching with the suggestion that he is an
imposter because he presents them as a Revelation. As for the proof that
Muhammad reproduced in the Qur'an what he had been told or dictated by the
rabbis, it has no more substance than the statement that a Christian monk
gave him a sound religious education. One would do well to re-read what R.
Blachère in his book, The Problem of Muhammad (Le Problème de Mahomet)
[ Pub. Presses Universitaries de France, Paris, 1952.], has to say
about this 'fable'. A hint
of a resemblance is also advanced between other statements in the Qur'an and
beliefs that go back a very long way, probably much further in time than the
Bible. More
generally speaking, the traces of certain cosmogonic myths have been sought
in the Holy Scriptures; for example the belief held by the Polynesians in the
existence of primeval waters that were covered in darkness until they
separated when light appeared; thus Heaven and Earth were formed. This myth
is compared to the description of the Creation in the Bible, where there is
undoubtedly a resemblance. It would however be superficial to then accuse the
Bible of having copied this from the cosmogonic myth. It is
just as superficial to see the Qur'anic concept of the division of the
primeval material constituting the Universe at its initial stage-a concept
held by modern science-as one that comes from various cosmogonic myths in one
form or another that express something resembling it. It is
worth analysing these mythical beliefs and descriptions more closely. Often
an initial idea appears among them which is reasonable in itself, and is in
some cases borne out by what we today know (or think we know) to be true,
except that fantastic descriptions are attached to it in the myth. This is
the case of the fairly widespread concept of the Heavens and the Earth
originally being united then subsequently separated. When, as in Japan, the
image of the egg plus an expression of chaos is attached to the above with
the idea of a seed inside the egg (as for all. eggs), the imaginative
addition makes the concept lose all semblance of seriousness. In other
countries, the idea of a plant is associated with it; the plant grows and in
so doing raises up the sky and separates the Heavens from the Earth. Here
again, the imaginative quality of the added detail lends the myth its very
distinctive character. Nevertheless a common characteristic remains, i.e. the
notion of a single mass at the beginning of the evolutionary process leading
to the formation of the Universe which then divided to form the various
'worlds. that we know today. The
reason these cosmogonic myths are mentioned here is to underline the way they
have been embroidered by man's imagination and to show the basic difference
between them and the statements in the Qur'an on the same subject. The latter
are free from any of the whimsical details accompanying such beliefs; on the
contrary, they are distinguished by the sober quality of the words in which
they are made and their agreement with scientific data. Such
statements in the Qur'an concerning the Creation, which appeared nearly
fourteen centuries ago, obviously do not lend themselves to a human
explanation. |
Astronomy in the Qur'an
The
Qur'an is full of reflections on the Heavens. In the preceding chapter on the
Creation, we saw how the plurality of the Heavens and Earths was referred to,
as well as what the Qur'an calls an intermediary creation 'between the
Heavens and the Earth', modern science has verified the latter. The verses
referring to the Creation already contain a broad idea of what is to be found
in the heavens, i.e. of everything outside the earth. Apart
from the verses that specifically describe the Creation, there are roughly
another forty verses in the Qur'an which provide information on astronomy
complementing what has already been given. Some of them are not much more
than reflections on the glory of the Creator, the Organizer of all the
stellar and planetary systems. These we know to be arranged according to
balancing positions whose stability Newton explained in his law of the mutual
attraction of bodies. The
first verses to be quoted here hardly furnish much material for scientific analysis:
the aim is simply to draw attention to God's Omnipotence. They must be
mentioned however to give a realistic idea of the way the Qur'anic text
described the organization of the Universe fourteen centuries ago. These
references constitute a new fact of divine Revelation. The organization of
the world is treated in neither the Gospels nor the Old Testament (except for
a few notions whose general inaccuracy we have already seen in the Biblical
description of the Creation). The Qur'an however deals with this subject in
depth. What it describes is important, but so is what it does not contain. It
does not in fact provide an account of the theories prevalent at the time
of the Revelation that deal with the organization of the celestial world,
theories that science was later to show were inaccurate. An example of this
will be given later. This negative consideration must however be pointed out.
[ I have often heard those who go to great lengths to find a human
explanation-and no other-to all the problems raised by the Qur'an Bay the
following: "if the Book contains surprising statements on astronomy, it
is because the Arabs were very knowledgeable on this subject." In so
doing they forget the fact that, in general, science in Islamic countries is
very much post-Qur'an, and that the scientific knowledge of this great period
would in any case not have been sufficient for a human being to write some of
the verses to be found in the Qur'an. This will be shown in the following
paragraphs.] |
A. GENERAL REFLECTIONS
CONCERNING THE SKY
--sura
50, verse 6. The subject is man in general. --sura
31, verse 10: --sura
13, verse 2: These
two verses refute the belief that the vault of the heavens was held up by
pillars, the only things preventing the former from crushing the earth. --sura
55, verse 7: --sura
22, verse 65: It is
known how the remoteness of celestial masses at great distance and in
proportion to the magnitude of their mass itself constitutes the foundation
of their equilibrium. The more remote the masses are, the weaker the force is
that attracts one to the other. The nearer they are, the stronger the
attraction is that one has to the other: this is true for the Moon, which is
near to the Earth (astronomically speaking) and exercises an influence by
laws of attraction on the position occupied by the waters of the sea, hence
the phenomenon of the tides. If two celestial bodies come too close to one
another, collision is inevitable. The fact that they are subjected to an
order is the sine qua non for the absence of disturbances. The
subjection of the Heavens to divine order is often referred to as well: --sura
23, verse 86. God is speaking to the Prophet. We have
already seen how by 'seven heavens' what is meant is not 7, but an indefinite
number of Heavens. --sura
45, verse 13: --sura
55, verse 5: --sura 6,
verse 96: --sura
14, verse 33: Here
one verse completes another: the calculations referred to result in the
regularity of the course described by the heavenly bodies in question, this
is expressed by the word da'ib, the present participle of a verb whose
original meaning was 'to work eagerly and assiduously at something'. Here it
is given the meaning of 'to apply oneself to something with care in a
perseverant, invariable manner, in accordance with set habits'. --sura
36, verse 39: God is speaking: This is
a reference to the curled form of the palm branch which, as it shrivels up,
takes on the moon's crescent. This commentary will be completed later. --sura
16, verse 12: The
practical angle from which this perfect celestial order is seen is underlined
on account of its value as an aid to man's travel on earth and by sea, and to
his calculation of time. This comment becomes clear when one bears in mind
the fact that the Qur'an was originally a preaching addressed to men who only
understood the simple language of their everyday lives. This explains the
presence of the following reflections. --sura
6, verse 97: --sura
16, verse 16: --sura
10, verse 5: This
calls for some comment. Whereas the Bible calls the Sun and Moon 'lights',
and merely adds to one the adjective 'greater' and to the other 'lesser', the
Qur'an ascribes differences other than that of dimension to each
respectively. Agreed, this is nothing more than a verbal distinction, but how
was one to communicate to men at this time without confusing them, while at
the same time expressing the notion that the Sun and Moon were not absolutely
identical 'lights'? |
B. NATURE OF HEAVENLY BODIES
|
C. CELESTIAL ORGANIZATION
The
information the Qur'an provides on this subject mainly deals with the solar
system. References are however made to phenomena that go beyond the solar
system itself: they have been discovered in recent times. There
are two very important verses on the orbits of the Sun and Moon: --sura
21, verse 33: --sura
36, verse 40: Here an e |