The Christian Biblical Hierarchy
The Christian Bible is a library composed of the Septuagint,
the Gospels and a set of other Christian texts (the Acts of the
Apostles, some of their letters, a sermon and a strange book
called Revelation).The Church Fathers decided that these alone
constituted the Christian sacred library, though they considered
some books more important than others.
1. The Primacy of the Gospels
The Gospels tell Jesus' story. His
story is fundamental to all the Churches including mine,
the Roman Catholic Church. So the four
Gospels occupy a very special place in all of them.
I will here take as an example of this special place some of the liturgical
practices of the Roman
Catholic Church, practices which send a definite message to the faithful.
During Mass, the most important assembly of this Church,
the congregation rises only for the proclamation of the Gospel
but not for that of the other texts of Scripture.
The same happens for the Gospel Canticles at the Morning, Evening
and Night prayers of the Divine Office.
We Roman Catholics believe that Jesus is God Incarnate. The
Gospel writers also believed that. Not only is it clearly stated
in the beginning of John's Gospel1
as well as at its end,2
it is apparent on every page.
After all, why were these written if not because they
contain a very important message, so important that people were
ready to forgo everything, even life, to pursue it? The Gospel
message had to come from God as they were for the Jews the only
messages worth dying for. While the other messages from God start
with «Thus says the LORD God», Jesus' sayings start with
«I say».3
Nowhere in the Gospels
does Jesus complain about His mission or get His marching orders;
He does pray and is far from happy about the prospect of torture,
but then who is? Nowhere in the Gospels does God speak to Jesus;
only to others.4 In John, Jesus is
unequivocal : He and the Father are
one.5 He speaks for the
Father,6 He is God's Voice.
So His sayings are the most important ones there is,
because they are God's own sayings. They are what God wanted
known of Himself and His purpose. Jesus' life is also part of
God's self-revelation. His life is an example not only of how a
Christian should live but also of how God acts, in His intercourse
with humans and their society, be it at the religious, political
or individual level.
This is why the Gospels are so
important to Christians. They express
Who God really is, and what humans
really should be to have eternal life,7
that is, to be taken up in God.
What I say here is that Christians
cannot put a text from the
Septuagint on par with a text from
the Gospel. The Gospels override
the Septuagint; they also override the other Christian texts
which should derive from the Gospels.
This statement is very important. If true, it means that
finding out what we must be to be saved only requires looking at
four books in the whole Christian library. It is not that the
others are not beneficial or useful; just that they are not at
the core of what it means to be a Christian.
Of course, the Gospels are immersed in the Septuagint. They constantly
make reference to it. Jesus often comments it or uses it as the
basis for His arguments. So there is a way one can say that a proper
understanding of the Gospels requires a good knowledge of the Septuagint.
This being said, the reading of the Septuagint is then made from the
perspective of a Gospel text rather than per se and one can
still note that a great many Septuagint texts are never referred to
in the Gospels.
The concept of original sin, a concept
Christians associate with the action described in Genesis of Adam and Eve
eating of a forbidden fruit while in Paradise,
is not found in rabbinical litterature. The Christian interpretation of this
text is thus very different from that of the rabbis. Furthermore, Christians
do not interpretet the Septuagint as rabbis do from
within their rich Talmudic tradition but from a very different one indeed.
This being said, my statement on the supremacy of the Gospels stands
logically only if there is nothing in the Gospels to contradict it.
There is found in them no reference to other sacred texts written
by Christians (hardly surprising, as the Gospels refer to a period
prior and were, I believe, written before) so there is no mention
of these being at par.
But can we find something in the Gospels to
contradict what I have said about the Gospels overriding the
Septuagint? Some people would answer by an emphatic «yes».
Before I look into this point, there is another that must
be examined first.
2. The Principle of Coherence
I consider it is impossible to accept any
interpretation of any text in any Gospel which would contradict
any other Gospel text. This is what I call the principle of
coherence. Contradictions cannot have been introduced in the text
by the author or by Jesus Himself. As Jesus Himself
said: «Every kingdom divided
against itself is brought to
desolation; and every city or house divided against itself
shall not stand».8
This is a most important principle in reading each of the
Gospels: any interpretation of any excerpt that involves a
contradiction of another excerpt is a false interpretation.
The only acceptable interpretations are those which permit
the entire text to stand as a coherent whole.
This means that the reading of verses must not be done
in isolation but within the context of the whole passage and
of what else Jesus said or did. Only then can we know the all
important inflexion in His voice that can change the meaning
of a text completely. The Gospel authors never described such
a thing as His tone of voice, but anyone who reads a novel
knows how important this is.
This has to apply to the four Gospels taken together as
they represent the life and sayings of the same Person by people
who where in agreement over His message. There is one caveat:
this does not apply to incidental details, details that do not
change the meaning of the story, details that the normal reader
of such texts would find irrelevant.
3. Jesus rewrote the Septuagint with His message
We can now come back to our problem about the
Septuagint's status. The text that people would quote to prove
that the Septuagint has to be considered on par
with the Gospels
is this text from Matthew:
[17] Think not that I am come to
destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but
to fulfil. [18] For verily I say unto you,
Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law,
till all be fulfilled. [19]
Whosoever therefore shall break one
of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be
called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall
do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom
of heaven.9
In verse 18, Jesus states that nothing from the Law,
however small, shall disappear until the physical world as we
know it disappears. He adds in verse 19 that one has to live by
and teach all the Law's commandments to be great in the Kingdom
of Heaven.
In verse 17, Jesus says that He has not come
to dissolve, destroy, overturn or make obsolete the Law and the
Prophets as these terms translate the Greek verb used «katalusai»
(καταλυσαι).
Jesus says He has come to fulfill, complete the Law and the
Prophets as these are the translation of the Greek verb «plèrôsai»
(πληρωσαι)
which, by the way,
could also be translated as fecundate
(as a man makes a woman pregnant).
What does Jesus means by fulfilling the Law and the
Prophets? That question needs an answer if we are to make
sense of this text. The verse that follows the ones already
quoted: «For I say unto you, That except your righteousness
shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,
ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of
heaven.»10
gives the answer.
The commandments of the Law, lived in their entirety by the
scribes and Pharisees, are not complete but miss some crucial
elements. Jesus then proceeds to fill a few of them. They all
have to do with interpersonal relations. He starts with what
was incomplete «Ye have heard that it was said by them of old
time», and follows it by «But I say unto you» which fulfills
the original commandment by making it much stronger as in the
following case:
Ye have heard that it was said by them
of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill
shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That
whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be
in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother,
Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall
say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell
fire.11
or by changing it
completely as in this case:
Ye have heard that it hath
been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But
I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall
smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also.12
It is thus clear
that in these instances, Jesus fulfills the Law by rewriting it!
And rewrite He goes on doing, as in this other excerpt from
Matthew:
The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him,
and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his
wife for every cause? And he answered and
said unto them, Have
ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made
them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave
father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain
shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one
flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put
asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give
a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? [8] He saith
unto them, Moses
because of the hardness of your hearts suffered
you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not
so. [9] And I say unto you,
Whosoever shall put away his wife,
except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth
adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit
adultery.13
Verse 8 of this last quote makes it clear that for Jesus
the Law - of Moses, not of God - is flawed; He fulfills it,
makes it what it was meant to be. Verse 9 makes clear that for
Jesus the Law of Moses condones pure and simple
adultery.14
So Jesus corrects the errors
from Moses and others, so as to make the Law what it was meant
to be.
Someone could say that the Law Jesus refers
to in the verses 17 to 19 previously examined is the «real»
Law of God, while the Jews were following the «error-filled»
Law given by Moses and so manage to reconcile His statements
that way. While I have to agree that this is possible, I do
not find this very convincing, as He would not then say that
all the Law must be obeyed. So I maintain that Jesus was not
serious about that statement but just said what some wanted to
hear before He got down to the business of «fulfilling» the Law.
It should be apparent that I have applied here my
Principle of Coherence: I have refused to take a verse like
«Think not that I am come
to destroy the law, or the prophets:
I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.» out of context. It
is only in its context that this verse can be understood as what
Jesus meant it, as a piece of irony. Jesus is pulling the leg
of His hearers as He really came to make clear a message that
had not been clearly understood. And the proof of that
is in the following verses, where He attacks quite
a few verses of the Law of
Moses. He renews His attack elsewhere, as I will show later in
this Chapter.
There are many other examples of Jesus'
irony in the Gospels. He enjoys poking fun at His hearers. He
says things He does not mean so as to grab His hearers' attention,
finds them all taken in, and then humours them.
That my understanding corresponds to that of Christians is
proven by the fact that they do not follow the various laws that
Jews follow to this day. If they really took the
verses 18 and 19
[18] For verily I say unto you,
Till heaven and earth pass,
one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till
all be fulfilled. [19] Whosoever
therefore shall break one of these
least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called
the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and
teach them, the same shall be called
great in the kingdom of
heaven.15
seriously, they would
have to follow the whole Law, all the various Jewish feasts as
well as observe the sabbath as observant Jews do. And, with
perhaps a few exceptions, they do not.
We have examined
a first way in which Jesus fulfils the Law and the Prophets. But
there is a second one, also very important. The risen Jesus says:
«These are the words
which I spake unto you, while I was yet with
you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the
law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning
me.»16
Jesus states
categorically that He fulfilled in His life and sayings all that
was written about Him in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and
the Psalms. This is the other way He fulfilled the Law.
4. The Septuagint must be read in the Gospels' light
Any Christian reading of the Septuagint must be done
within the Gospels' perspective; first because Jesus rewrote what
was badly done or flawed in the Law of Moses, and second, because
it must be understood in many cases as referring to Him. Which
parts refer to Him? We find: «And beginning at Moses and all the
prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things
concerning himself.»17 So it seems
from that text that the Christian understanding of the Septuagint
as found in the Gospels and other Christian sacred texts goes
back to Jesus Himself.
So for the Christian
the Septuagint is completely
subservient to the Gospels: it cannot stand alone.
This is very important indeed. Jesus did not
condone stoning for adultery; so Christians do not. Christians cannot
just go to the Law of Moses and apply it. They have to see what Jesus
said and did about it first and foremost. He is their authority;
and it is in the Gospels that they find His sayings and actions.
This, I gather, is the true position of the Roman Catholic
Church since the Resurrection. The Church Fathers searched the
Septuagint to find various symbols of Christ, the Church, etc.
The Suffering Servant of Isaiah is read as a prophecy about Jesus;
the crossing of the Red Sea, as a prefiguration of the sacrament
of Baptism rather than as events pertaining to the Jewish people.
The Church does not obey the laws concerning the sabbath, Passover,
Succoth, etc. We are not told to go to
pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
We do not eat kosher even though this was a requirement for
all Christians according to the First Jerusalem Council attended
by the Apostles James, Peter and Paul and reported in the Book
of Acts.18
This of course
does not mean that the Septuagint is not important for us; just
that the texts that are important for us are the ones that shine
in the light of the Gospels. Some of the most beautiful pages
of the Christian Bible are to be found in the Septuagint. The Church Fathers
always had a predilection for the Book of Psalms, predilection
that is made obvious in the «Liturgy of Hours» of the Roman
Catholic Church. But it is also a fact that some Psalms, or
excerpts of Psalms, have been banned from the latest «Liturgy
of Hours» and that many texts of the Septuagint are not read
at Mass or in the Office of Readings.
Let me finish
this Chapter with two sayings of Jesus found in the second Chapter
of Mark's Gospel. There the Gospel's author clearly wants to
show how different Jesus' actions and sayings are from the Judaism
of His time. In it, Jesus cures a paralytic after forgiving
his sins,19 calls Himself a
«physician» trying to bring «sinners» to repentance as He eats
with them,20 does not fast
like His religious Jewish
contemporaries,21
and plucks ears of corn on
the sabbath and calls Himself «Lord ... of the
sabbath».22 In
everyone of these occasions,
Jesus is attacked, and rightly so, by the religious people
of His day for breaking the religious rules set by Moses. There
is no doubt that Jesus is not a good observant Jew.
Jesus' two sayings are :
No man also seweth a piece of
new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it
up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse. And
no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth
burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles
will be marred: but new wine must be put into new
bottles.23
Jesus considers
His message as totally different from the Judaism practiced in His day.
He sees the old religious mould as obsolete because His new
message does not fit in it. His new message, the new wine,
would break the present religious set-up, the old bottles, if
you tried to fit it in them. Put differently, the rent in the
old garment, the inadequacy of the old message, cannot be fixed
by His message as it will only make the tear worse.
So I suggest that Jesus Himself considered that He was
overhauling everything that had been said before and rewriting
not only the message but the way to live it (the religious
institutions that would go with it). This surely puts the
Septuagint totally subservient to the Gospels, which carry Jesus'
message.
To finish, the other Christian texts must
also be subservient to the Gospels as you cannot expect the
disciples to be greater than their
Master.24 There is no way that the
authors of the other Christian texts could have improved on
the Gospels by making within their texts more accurate statements
of the thoughts of Jesus than those found in the Gospels.
To sum up so far, I consider that the whole of the
Christian life must be based first and foremost on the Gospels, which
I consider accurate renditions of the preaching and actions of
Jesus as long as they are understood as a coherent whole.
Christians must pick and choose in the rest of their Bible just
as Jesus did with the Septuagint, by basing this process on
Jesus' life and message. Christians cannot pick and choose within
the Gospels: any passage of the Gospels must be understood in
a way that it is in accord with the rest.
1 «In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word was made flesh,
and dwelt among us,» (John 1:1;14)
2 «And Thomas answered and said unto him,
My Lord and my God.» (John 20:28)
3 «Ye have heard
that it hath been said, An eye
for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye
resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,
turn to him the other also.» (Matthew 5:38-9)
4 For instance: «And there was a cloud that
overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying,
This is my beloved Son: hear him.» (Mark 9:7). None of God's
utterings are directed at Jesus alone, but at the bystanders.
5 «I and my
Father are one.» (John 10:30)
6 «For I have
not spoken of myself; but the
Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should
say, and what I should speak.» (John 12:49)
7 «Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to
whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.» (John 6:68)
8 Matthew 12:25
9 Matthew 5:17-19
10 Matthew 5:20
11 Matthew 5:21-2
12 Matthew 5:38-39
13 Matthew 19:3-9
14 This quote by itself should make it evident
that there are some verses of the Septuagint which cannot be
the word of God for a follower of Jesus.
15 Matthew 5:18-19
16 Luke 24:44
17 Luke 24:27
18 «But that we write unto them, that they
abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and
from things strangled, and from blood.» (Acts 15:20). The fact
that this requirement has long since been dropped shows that
apostolic decisions are not final, even when found in the Bible.
19 Mark 2:1-12
20 Mark 2:16-17
21 Mark 2:18-20
22 Mark 2:23-28
23Mark 2:21-22
24 «The disciple
is not above his master,
nor the servant above his lord.» (Matthew 10:24)
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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, June 6th, 2004
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