XIII It is suggested that the matters depend only on reading the New Testament, not anything in the Old.

List of claims

In fact, many of the Catholic beliefs contested by Protestants here have an OT history.

Was the mother of a Jewish king queen? That cannot be checked in NT, it has to be checked in OT.

Would the words of Elisabeth refer to Genesis 3:15? Would Christ's repeated use of "woman" to His mother refer to Genesis 3:15? Well, if so, you must check what Genesis 3:15 actually says ... and that involves going to the old Testament.

On Petrine claims of papacy, what do "keys of the kingdom" mean in Old Testament? What does "bind and loose" mean in Rabbinic (not yet apostasised) Jewish custom?

Again, we must look to the Old Testament about this. And furthermore, so much in the Old Testament is typologically prophetic about the New Testament. Actually, this is in and of itself an argument for the need of unbroken Apostolic tradition, since the OT does not specify exactly when, where and how each part of it is fulfilled as prophecy in NT, and since the NT has so much to tell over and above the OT, is shorter than it and therefore obviously also does not contain a full Christian exegesis of OT.

However, that this typology exists legitimately in NT is brought forth not just by sparse hints here and there on some one topic, weighty as it may be, but also by this:

"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him."
[Luke 24:27]

"And he said to them: These are the words which I spoke to you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me."
[Luke 24:44]

And by this and this:

"And when they had appointed him a day, there came very many to him unto his lodgings; to whom he expounded, testifying the kingdom of God, and persuading them concerning Jesus, out of the law of Moses and the prophets, from morning until evening."
[Acts Of Apostles 28:23]

"But being aided by the help of God, I stand unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying no other thing than those which the prophets, and Moses did say should come to pass:"
[Acts Of Apostles 26:22]

This means that there is lots of OT exegesis the Apostles had from Christ and it is too vast to be accessible in full from the NT scriptures alone. Therefore, there is a part of tradition which is involved with OT exegesis, and it is very relevant to the topics here at hand. Obviously, purgatory or at least praying for the dead is a somewhat easier topic to handle from OT even without typology : since purgatory existed back then too and since souls could be transferred from purgatory to bosom of Abraham just as they now can be and eventually all remaining are transferred from purgatory to heaven.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. John of Matha
8.II.2019

Mark Shea Advises a Convert, Making Some Mistakes

Catholic and Enjoying It : On the Development of Doctrine–for a Perplexed Reader
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2015/03/on-the-development-of-doctrine-for-a-perplexed-reader.html

Reader of Mark Shea

I converted to the Catholic faith in 2000. I accepted the fact that revelation, from the Church’s viewpoint, includes both Scripture and Sacred Tradition. At that time, however, I understood that Tradition came from the Apostles.

Mark Shea

It does. But it often comes in seed form and is most assuredly not fleshed out by the apostles. They gave no though whatsoever to matters ranging from the doctrine of the Trinity to the problem of embryonic stem cell research. But as the Church marches out into history, she is forced to and draws on the tradition to help navigate such waters.

Me

Ouch.

Apostles giving no thought whatsoever to doctrine of the Trinity hurts. They were after all baptising in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost!

I hope Mark Shea meant there were details in it to which they gave no thought.

As to whether Holy Ghost when proceeding from the Father “at the same time” (but procession is ab aeterno!) proceeds from the Son, one can have three opinions on whether Apostles dealt with it:

• they said no and the West bungled it
• they said yes and parts of the East bungled it
• or they had no thought on the matter and both sides added.

Of these alternatives, the last one, which is pretty much what Mark Shea is saying, is the least convincing. Especially as Christ promised the Apostles that the Spirit would instruct them in ALL truth. Either Filioquism or Photianism being a heresy is perhaps not necessary but more sensible than saying BOTH sides and therefore ALL of the Church erred by adding and by dogmatising additions.

Stem cell research may or may not have been on their minds, but since stem cells from embrya come from aborted such, their thoughts on abortion are sufficient guidance as to those (there are also adult stem cells, for which this is not quite the case), and they were very clear as we see from Didaché.

Reader of Mark Shea

Right now I struggle in the fact that many of the dogmas have little basis in the Scriptures (or going far beyond anything written in Scripture) and many have very little support in the Patristic Fathers.

Mark Shea

Scripture is not the *basis* of the Church’s teaching, but the witness to it.

Me

Scripture and Tradition contain all the bases (plural) which the Magisterium can ever have for declaring any doctrine revealed. Tradition means mainly Magisterium of the past, but also writings approved by it, as through canonisation of authors.

Reader of Mark Shea

The doctrines on Mary really didn’t get a solid foundation until 800 a.d. and have been developing throughout Church history.

Mark Shea

Not so. Every one of the Marian dogmas (there are only four) is reflected in Scripture. Indeed, the actual reason you don’t hear about the Marian beliefs of the Church is that they are not controversial in the early Church. They are simply a part of life and become enshrined in liturgy without much ruckus because everybody takes them for granted. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the oldest writing is the first time somebody thought of something.

Me

That is perfectly true.

Genesis 3:15 is giving a promise which implies Mary was always enemy and never slave of the Serpent.

The two who call her Blessed among Women and her own qualification of Blessed refer back to only four women in the Old Testament. The ones called Blessed among women (of Israel or who live in tents, not among all women like the Blessed Virgin) were so called because of having won very complete victories over Sisera and Holophernes – which underlines Genesis 3:15.

And absence of Marian tractates reflect uncontroversiality of this traditional reading.

More from Shea’s self quote

Science and theology have this in common: they’re constrained to deal with facts, not fancy. But facts, of course, are tricky things. As any murder mys¬tery fan knows, facts can point in all sorts of confusing directions and leave you puzzling for a very long time. It’s the same with science and theology.

For a long time, there was open debate about the shape of the earth. Some thought it might be round since they noticed the way coastlines sank below the horizon when you sail away from them. By the third century b.c., the Greek astronomer and mathematician Eratosthenes had already estimated the earth’s size by comparing shadows cast at two locations at noon and concluded that the earth must be a giant ball. But, of course, many other people trusted the obvious evidence of the senses: after all, in Kansas, at sea, or on the Russian steppe any idiot could see the world was flat. Just look at it!

Various schools of thought contended for years. Sometimes compro¬mises were proposed, such as the Pizza Theory (“The world is round, yet flat!”). But eventually, a consensus in the educated community arose that Eratosthenes was right: The world was spherical. And so, among the edu-cated it became, if you will, a “scientific dogma” that the earth was a sphere, centuries before it was possible to go into space and verify the dogma by direct observation. Science stopped debating the question of the earth’s shape and those who continued to assert a flat earth were no longer taken seriously by anyone who knew what he was talking about.

So, a question: Does the dogma of a round earth stifle thought and crush the human quest for knowledge and truth? Nope. Instead, it does what all real dogma does: It says, “We’ve examined all the evidence soberly and come to the right conclusion. We’re really done debating this question. Instead of ever learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth (cf. 2 Tim 3:7), let’s accept the fact that this matter is now settled and move on to talk about something more interesting.” Indeed, the dogma of a spheri¬cal earth, like all real dogma, serves as the foundation upon which later explorers, wonderers, and questioners can stand as they conduct their next investigations of reality. Dogma is not the prohibition of thought. It is the conclusion of thought. It’s what you get when you’re done thinking some¬thing through.

Me

We knew Earth was a globe since, not space travel (those pictures could be conspiracies) but well before : Vasco da Gama. Heliocentrism so far has no real Vasco da Gama, Han Solo does not count. Earth turning even has no Vasco da Gama, not even if Moon Landing was genuine : if Geocentrism is true, Moon circles us at less than the Sun’s angular speed Westward and the men on the Moon who “saw the Earth turning around itself” were subject to the same illusion they claim the rest of us are always subject to when observing the matter from Earth.

So, trusting the senses Earth stands still is NOT a bad idea, just as with Scripture trusting the literal sense is NOT a bad idea either.

Now, does the witness of the senses in any way shape or form make a good case against a spherical Earth?

No.

"But, of course, many other people trusted the obvious evidence of the senses: after all, in Kansas, at sea, or on the Russian steppe any idiot could see the world was flat. Just look at it!"

In Kansas, at sea, or on the Hungarian Puszta, any stay at home can see that the world is flat and any traveller can correct the impression by travelling far enough. Whichever direction is not obfuscated by anything before horizon, horizon is surprisingly round. Whichever direction you approach sufficiently high objects (mountains or buildings in ports approached from sea and mountains and buildings on land close to borders of the plains) the lower parts appear later than the higher ones, due to curvature of the plain. At the most, if only oldsters are listened to and they sit in mid plain and look and have forgot the phenomenon, the youngsters who travel and can see it can be too shy to correct them. And in the more numerous non-plain, either hilly or mountainous, regions, there is not so much of even a vision of unbounded flatness. So, the flat Earth heresy has another source than trusting the senses. I think I have discovered it here:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Flat Earth theories - Common Sense or Solar Mythology?
http://filolohika.blogspot.fr/2014/12/flat-earth-theories-common-sense-or.html

Similarily, no Protestant heresy ever came from reading Biblical History in the obvious literal sense. They also have other sources. The Denial of Real Presence even flies in face of obvious literal sense and it can probably be traced to a sect in Orléans which denied Incarnation due to its miracles being impossible.

Hans Georg Lundahl
from Nanterre
University Library
Solemnity of Annunciation
of the BVM, 2015

Sylvain Romerowski admits Mosaic authorship of Pentateuch, disputes four senses and Baruch. Part I, Chuck Missler versus Reformers

I wrote an ironic theory about Apollonius Rhodus writing Iliad and Odyssey, as a parallel to the widely accepted idiocy that Ezra wrote the Pentateuch.

As the matter is sacred, even at the risk of spoiling a joke, I have to give serious credit to a scholar who credits Moses with the Pentateuch. Irony off here.

My credit will put his good achievement in the middle, surrounded by first a misunderstanding on his part, second (or third, after the credit) a criticism on his take on the sometimes so called « Apocryphs of the Old Testament » or sometimes rather Deuterocanonic Books. His name is Sylvain Romerowski, his book is called « D’où vient la Bible ? » and his problems which around the credit I will try to correct are connected with the fact he is a Protestant. When I first read his argument in favour of Mosaic authorship and then starting his discussion about deuterocanonic books, I first thought he was a Modernist Catholic. No such luck for them, he was a Protestant.

Part I, Divergent or Convergent Meanings ?
or Chuck Missler versus Reformers

Now for the correction, after discussing the canon he also gives some hints on how to interpret the Bible. One thing he rejects is the four senses, although he shows they have quite a patristic pedigree. His one argument against them is that a well written text to a reader reading it correctly cannot have divergent senses. There is one correct way of reading it.

He makes this point as against one Stanley FISH, « Is There a Text in this Class ? », Harvard University Press 1990. If it were impossible for readers with widely divergent backgrounds to read Stanley as he intended to be read, rather than in senses diverging from it, he would hardly have written the book at all.

Here I must give a credit to Stanley Fish on the issue there are interpretative communities. In Latin, in Hebrew (I presume) and in Modern Languages, there are three different standard ways of communicating a quote. Let’s take a famous one from Caesar.

On this occasion he said « veni, vidi, vici » / On this occasion he said « I came, I saw, I conquered. »

This is the modern procedure. The words are exactly the ones said (or an exact translation in case it was said in a different language), the quote is marked with quotation marks at the beginning and the end.

Homer has a similar procedure. I will not try to equal him in Homeric Greek, but will just give a fair prose translation :

Caesar, when the fair memories hastened to remind his thoughts of a battle, unleashed his tongue from the fetters of the teeth and said I came I saw I conquered, and having said these winged words awaited the worthy appraisal.

He gives a start which goes « unleashed his tongue from the fetters of the teeth and said » as his equivalent of first quotation mark, and he gives in lieu of ending quotation mark « and having said these winged words » plus some words about what he did next.

Holy Bible at least in Greek has a similar approach, « Jesus said » and then the words He said. If I recall OT passages correctly, the not-need of ending quotation marks usually depends on the words after the quote showing who answered or what happened after the dialogue.

Latin – the language of Caesar – has what is called « oratio obliqua ».

« Veni, vidi, vici » becomes « Caesar dixit se venisse, vidisse, vicisse. » Or for that matter, « Caesar dixit se, postquam et venisset et statim vidissed, mox vicisse. » Se is in accusative. The finite verb forms are changed to infinitive (Latin has both present, future and past such). But this is not so in subordinate clauses.

Now, there is a place, not in Holy Bible but in an encyclical of Pius XII where this has been missed.

Quemadmodum autem in biologicis et anthropologicis disciplinis, ita etiam in historicis sunt qui limites et cautelas ab Ecclesia statuta audacter transgrediantur. Ac peculiari modo deploranda est quaedam nimio liberior libros historicos Veteris Testamenti interpretandi ratio, cuius fautores Epistulam haud ita multo ante a Pontificio Consilio de re biblica Archiepiscopo Parisiensi datam ad suam defendendam causam immerito referunt. Haec enim Epistula aperte monet undecim priora capita Geneseos, quamvis cum historicae compositionis rationibus proprie non conveniant, quibus eximii rerum gestarum scriptores graeci et latini, vel nostrae aetatis periti usi fuerint,nihilominus quodam vero sensu, exegetis amplius investigando ac determinando, ad genus historiae pertinere;eademque capita, oratione simplici ac figurata mentique populi parum exculti accommodata, tum praecipuas veritates referre, quibus aeterna nostra procuranda salus innititur,tum etiam popularem descriptionem originis generis humani populique electi . Si quid autem hagiographi antiqui ex narrationibus popularibus hauserint (quod quidem concedi potest), numquam obliviscendum est eos ita egisse divinae inspirationis afflatu adiutos, quo in seligendis ac diiudicandis documentis illis ab omni errore immunes praemuniebantur. Quae autem ex popularibus narrationibus in Sacris Litteris recepta sunt, ea cum mythologiis aliisve id genus minime ae quanda sunt, quae magis ex effusa imaginatione procedunt quam ex illo veritatis ac simplicitatis studio, quod in Sacris Libris Veteris etiam Testamenti adeo elucet ut hagiographi nostri antiquos profanos scriptores aperte praecellere dicendi sint.

Have you noted « Haec enim Epistula aperte monet » followed by accusative « undecim priora capita Geneseos, » followed, after some subordinate clauses (which the type of inderect speech does not change to accusative with infinitive), by the words leading up to an infinitive « nihilominus quodam vero sensu, exegetis amplius investigando ac determinando, ad genus historiae pertinere ». Likewise «  eademque capita » (the same chapters, accusative) « tum praecipuas veritates referre » (infinitive) « tum etiam popularem descriptionem originis generis humani populique electi ».

All this is then the words of the Pontifical Biblical Commission to the Archbishop of Paris. Here comes the thing : the Pope just had introduced this by saying these words had been abused to an all to free exegesis of historical sense. He now comes with his own words, not referring the following accusative with infinitive (which is not reserved for indirect speech !) to the answer to Paris, but to the new heading, said on his own account « numquam obliviscendum est » (it must never be forgotten) … I will spare you the grammatical analysis, but the translation of a EWTN has as finale of the paragraph : « If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents. »

So the Pope is conceding part of what he just cited and reminding of inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. You can of course see that unfamiliarity with the accusative and infinitive may have given rise to misunderstandings going the way of liberal theology, when taking certain things as said on the Pope’s own account.

But when this has been said, such discrepancies of interpretative praxis are on a level which can easily be learned and therefore be guarded against misunderstandings.

Therefore, I must agree with Sylvain against Stanley that in the end, any work made accessible to any public (excepting perhaps people living in very rude conditions and unknowledgeable of culture, and even here God can have adapted their understanding to His word) can and should be read with all of the originally intended sense intact.

Now, the problem with Sylvain’s position is that there are other works than the Bible that have more than one convergent sense.

The today most famous allegories are perhaps Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan and Animal Farm by George Orwell. They do have the sense – as tall and entertaining stories – of the words written on the page. They very obviously also have another sense altogether. But not a divergent one, rather a convergent one on another level. It is on this other level that the works are if not true in every detail at least intended to be so. The Pig Napoleon has never existed on any farm, except in the fantasy of George Orwell, but Stalin has very definitely existed at the same time when George Orwell wrote. The City of Destruction has never had physical city walls, even Babylon is not quiet the same thing, but the state of mortal sin does exist and does require leaving it before it is too late.

This is allegory verses history, and in these works only allegory is true, whereas history as such is false. Made up. A fable.

Now, this procedure was also current in ancient times. At least it had been current to reinterpret Homer allegorically, when his statements about the gods made no sense to the philosophical spirit of the readers in Alexandria. It can be argued that Apollonius Rhodus was so familiar with this procedure that he used it backwards and adapted his fable to allegorical interpretations in advance (let us not go into which ones!) So, this procedure was already familiar to Hellenistic Jews at least in the time of the New Testament. And it was on more than one occasion used to interpret the Old Testament by New Testament writers.

Not quite for the same motive as people disenchanted with Homeric pagan theology still refused to give up Homer as an author. No, but because just as a human author can adapt a fable to an allegoric purpose, so God who is almighty over real history and wiser than any human author can do so with real history for an allegory of real prophecy.

One had not yet come to writing full scale allegories, I think, like Pilgrim's Progress or Animal Farm. Not before Psychomachia by Prudentius I think (I consulted CSL's The Allegory of Love, and it has one chapter about allegory and one about courteous love before getting into definite portions of the main subject, where they are intertwined). But one had definitely come to interpreting long works as, though united in a story, having in each or at least more than one location an allegorical meaning. And this is what the theory of the four senses, at least as far as the allegoric sense is concerned.

Therefore the senses are not divergent but rather convergent on different levels. One of them, the moral sense, is actually not unknown to Protestants. As a child within the Protestant communities, I heard some preach over the courage of Daniel or the coping of Ruth and their confidence in God really being applicable to us, a model for us.

One major difference would be that in four senses reading, the moral sense might be an allegorical one (as when Origen gives a moral sense for Joshua's routing of armies under the Solar Miracle : so we must fight our sins and rout our vices under the Sun of Justice who is Christ, similar for the Psalm 137), whereas to deniers of the allegoric sense, the moral sense would often enough be simply parallel in a literal sense. Puritan readings of Joshua have encouraged them to bad treatment of both Irish and Red Indians.

There are other issues, where later-than-the-Reformers Protestants would agree, there are more than the Literal senses to the Bible. Have you heard Chuck Missler recite Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan*, Mahalalel*, Jared, Henoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah and then give the translations? Man (is) Appointed Mortal Sorrow (but) The-Blessed-God Will-Descend**, Teaching (that) His-Death-Shall-Bring (to?) the Despairing Rest. I would of course agree to it, except Henoch is not just "teaching" but "initiating", and Christ (who is the Blessed God who after this prophecy really did Descend) not just taught this, but initiated this blessing by the First Holy Mass on Maundy Thursday.

So where did Reformers rejecting the Four Senses get the curious idea that the other than literal senses were divergent senses?

The fact is, much of Catholic or Orthodox, much of Monophysite and I suppose also Nestorian statements about the Blessed Virgin Mary are really Biblical if you take certain Old Testament passages as Allegoric prophecies about Her.

The first OT statement about the Blessed Virgin is in Genesis 3. "I will put enmities between the woman and thyself, between her seed and thy seed". Sinning means being a slave of the old serpent. Enmity is incompatible with slavery, since slavery is a kind of peace. Therefore, God putting enmities between the old serpent and the woman means there must be one woman who is sinless. That one sinless woman is not Eve, obviously, she just came from sinning. Of course Eve also became an enemy of the serpent by doing penance. But the Blessed Virgin Mary fully fulfilled this part, just as there is enmity between Christ (the woman's seed) and Antichrist (the serpents' seed, see Apocalypse 19), there is enmity between her and Satan.

Now, such statements, and others meaning we do right to confide in her mediation (an allegoric reading of Esther, for instance), are in themselves not at variance with any literal statement in all of the Old or New Testament.

But they are at variance with a misreading of some such, namely for instance when Jeremiah condemns the idolatry of "the queen of heaven", meaning not the Jewish Queen-Mother of the Heavenly Jerusalem which we honour in Mary, but rather the false "queen" of "heaven", Ishtar. Refomers very sadly thought this word, to be taken literally, would also forbid honouring the Blessed Virgin as the Queen of Heaven, and therefore they came up with this cock-and-bull argument or pilpul against, on one hand what Protestants have called Mariolatry and on the other hand the very known connexion of this to the Allegoric Sense and therefore the Allegoric Sense as such, also.

Let this suffice against Sylvain Romerowski's attack on the Four Senses, which is in the Interpreting the Bible chapters.

Hans Georg Lundahl
UL of Nanterre
San Lorenzo Giustiniani
First Patriarch of Venice***
5-IX-2014

* Kenan is often spelled Cainan in Catholic Bibles. Probably because the Hebrew sound of èè no longer corresponded to the Greek letter η but instead was the new pronunciation of the earlier diphthong αι - as if a transliteration into Irish English had written it Keanan or as if a transliteration into other modern English had written it Kaynan (Tea/Tay, remember!). Mahalal-El is respelled Malaleel, with a vowel collide representing the h, but this displaced in relation to the Ls. ** Chuck Missler did not use the one verb "descend" but the verb and particle "come down". They mean the same thing and the Hebrew has in Jared no separate particle meaning "down" but rather a Perfect (or Prophetic Future) third person singular masculine (if I looked with sufficient correctitude at my mother's Hebrew studies) of a verb which has down in its stem meaning - a but like descend, though in Latin "de" actually means "down from", "down off" later only "from", "off". *** That is, first bishop of Venice to actually have been elevated into a Patriarch. He was canonised by Pope Alexander VIII in 1690 and himself lived on earth to January 8 1456. The date is when he was forced to become Patriarch, he did not want the post.

Mark Shea's Understanding of Scripture

1) Creation vs. Evolution : If some pseudo-orthodox thinks Patristic and Literal interpretation of Genesis are incompatible ..., 2) CMI on Allegorical Method - Answered, 3) Literal Sense vs Literalistic Approach, Allegoric Sense vs Figurative Approach, 4) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Congratulating Lita Cosner on agreeing basically with StThomas Aquinas, 5) Mark Shea's Understanding of Scripture, 6) HGL's F.B. writings : Neither Sungenis nor Palm is totally right on Psalm 18 (Sungenis is less off)

The Literal Sense of Scripture
http://www.mark-shea.com/scrip3.html

A very good summing up, as far as it goes, or nearly so:

Scripture has what are known as different senses. That is, there are layers of meaning found in apparently simple sentences and images. ... Sometimes, the deeper sense of something can reveal a truth that takes your breath away, as when Jesus tells James and John that they shouldn't fight about who is to be at his right and left hand when he comes into his kingdom since only God can ordain this--and we finally see who has been reserved for that privileged position only when Jesus is crucified between two thieves.

But also:

The notion that Scripture has different senses is as old as Jesus himself. After all, it was he who said (Luke 24) that the whole Old Testament was actually about him. In other words, as St. Augustine said, the New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is only fully revealed in the New.

That said, it is important to remember that the first and foundational sense of Scripture is the most obvious one: the literal sense. In other words, before we go looking for hidden meanings we have to pay attention to obvious ones.

Here too is very good, as far as it goes:

The key to understanding the literal sense of Scripture is to distinguish between the terms literal and literalistic. ... If I tell you, "My heart is broken" I have a definite meaning I'm trying to convey: I am deeply grieved. But I am not using literalistic language to convey that meaning. I don't mean "My cardiac tissue is torn." Same with the biblical authors. They employ all sorts of linguistic tricks of the trade--poetry, history, parable, hymn, fiction, reportage, myth, argumentation, legal codes, apocalyptic--to get their various points across. But however they express themselves, they all have a meaning they intend us to get. That meaning is what is meant by the literal sense of Scripture.

The point I would like to make is this is not something reserved for Catholic Modernists and Orthodox Modernists and Anglicans. Meaning those of the rather usual Modernist kind.

Lita Cosner and Jonathan Sarfati say the same thing when speaking about passages that were used against Galileo by St Robert Bellarmine in his friendly discussion with Galileo.

I would not agree. But I would agree this is a very apt thing to observe against the Skoptsi heresy who took "if your right eye is a scandal to thee, pluck it out" in a very literalistic way. Though not necessarily about eyes.

There is one thing however:

We have to, in short, understand what the human author was trying to say, the way in which he was trying to say it, and what is incidental to the assertion.

I quite agree with Lita, that no statement is merely incidental. Even what is incidental to main points is not incidental to the truth of the Bible.

Now we get to his grasp of Allegorical sense:

The Allegorical Sense of Scripture
(excerpted from Chapter 7 of Making Senses Out of Scripture)
http://www.mark-shea.com/7.html

As we mentioned in the last chapter, one of the standing temptations of the biblical student is to oversimplify by seizing on one truth and using it to discount other, equally important truths.

Here too I heartily agree. BUT, the next passage will signal my stance for a disagreement:

One such oversimplification consists of the habit some modern people have of exalting the primacy of the literal sense of Scripture into a flat denial of the possibility of any other senses of Scripture at all.

True, but very much less current than the oversimplification of people wanting to defend Scripture by exaggerating the estimates of what is incidental and resorting to the allegoric sense when the literal one will do just fine. As soon as you actually get at it.

This denial of a second sense in Scripture can lead to curious results, as a friend of mine discovered one evening watching one of those "Mysteries of the Bible" shows on TV. On the show were a couple of theologians eager to get their 15 minutes of fame on the tube. So rather than talk about the Faith, they obligingly told the camera that Jesus was not born of a virgin and based their claim on the allegation that St. Matthew misunderstood the prophet Isaiah.

The Literal Sense will do just fine. Isaiah very much did prophecy that Christ was to be born of a Virgin.

This statement may sound somewhat peculiar to some publics, but is nevertheless right. I will first let Mark Shea state the problem, before giving my solution:

It's like this, said the scholars: A couple of centuries after Isaiah wrote, the Hebrew Bible (including the book of Isaiah) was translated into Greek (since many Jews were spread over the Greek-speaking ancient world and were forgetting their Hebrew just as European immigrants to the United States forgot their Yiddish in an English-speaking culture). This Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (that is, the Old Testament) is called the Septuagint.

Now in the original Hebrew text of Isaiah 7:14 we read the prophecy that "the 'almah' shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name 'Immanuel.'" "Almah" means in Hebrew "young woman" and refers to any young woman, virgin or not. But when the Jewish translators of the Septuagint translated Isaiah into Greek (decades before the birth of Christ), they did not translate the term as "young woman" but as "parthenos" which means "virgin." Later on, after Christ comes, St. Matthew is reading this Greek translation, not the original Hebrew when he declares of the Virgin Birth, "All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.'" But, said the TV theologians, we now know St. Matthew was mistaken to believe in the Virgin Birth since Isaiah did not say "virgin" but "young woman."

There is a problem in the statement:

"Almah" means in Hebrew "young woman" and refers to any young woman, virgin or not.

It is that we do not know that Almah has never had the exact meaning Virgin.

First of all, I do not know Hebrew, when discussing this earlier I was met with the assertion, as my memory recalls, that Almah is the word for young plus the - even to me obvious - feminine ending -ah. Then, even so, a word that etymologically means "young woman" need not therefore be referrable to just any young woman even not a virgin. This is not based on my expertise of Hebrew, which as just admitted does not exist. It is based instead of my knowledge of how meanings change.

Does Mark Shea know what the word "sad" etymologically means? I suspect a man whose blog is called "Catholic and Enjoying It", and who is often smiling, would think the word "sad" is less applicable to him than the word "glad".

I agree that Mark Shea is more glad than sorrowful. But the etymological meaning of "sad" is NOT sorrowful. It is a description of how Mark Shea feels after eating his favourite meals in the favourite quantities no quite allowed during Lent (be patient Shea! Easter is soon at hand and then there are 50 days without fasting!), and second meaning is how Mark Shea weighs on the scales. So, first meaning is "full" or "having eaten one's fill" (like German "satt"), and that is the etymology. Second meaning is "heavy". It is only FROM the second meaning heavy that you get a third meaning, like "serious" or "important" or "not negligible". And only from there do you get a FOURTH meaning of sorrowful, since our existence on earth is such that mirth is easier overlooked in its importance than sorrow. By the way, I mentioned that "having eaten one's fill" is in German "satt". As for "sorrow" it is in German "Sorge" or "Trauer" (hence "sorrowful" = "besorgt" / "traurig"), but rather with Trauer/traurig as real equivalent, "Sorge" and "besorgt" verging on "[having] something on one's mind" (in a sorrowful rather than merely pensive way). Swedish does not have the word "sad" in the first meaning, but uses "mätt" (a word related to meat, perhaps, and to Swedish "mat"="food"), however "sorrow" or "sadness" (modern sense) are "sorg". And "sorrowful" is "sorgesam".

So, proving that Almah etymologically means "young" and stands in the feminine noun form is not equal to proving it grammatically in Isaiah's Hebrew meant "young woman" and on top of that referred to any young woman, whether virgin or not. One can easily see how a word starting out to mean "young woman" can easily come to mean "virgin" - especially in a society expecting Virginity to be what young women did up to marriage. And especially if the word ceases to apply at marriage - like Miss becomes Mrs or Mademoiselle becomes Madame.

This is a first problem with the assertion that Isaiah - as the unstated logical conclusion would go - used a word meaning "young woman" rather than Virgin.

There is another problem: how do we know Isaiah wrote Almah? Well, the Masoretic text has, obviously, Almah. But the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX) was translated by Seventy translators (hence the name) and it translated the word as παρθενος, which means Virgin. And St Jerome had access to a Hebrew text, and he translated Virgo, which means virgin and is also the very same word. A traditional Catholic or Orthodox, if seeing a contradiction between LXX and Masoretic text, or between Vulgate and Masoretic text will tend to say that the Masoretic text has been deliberately corrupted by Jews.

And indeed after the Jews rejected Jesus, they had a real motive to corrupt precisely that passage. Either by changing the word or by changing the meaning of the word. Either the Hebrew word had been another word than Almah, and in that case they might have stamped copies using it as heretical and Christian and burnt them. Or Almah had had the meaning Virgin, and they had changed the meaning, which was so much easier as:

• Hebrew was a study language so it could be manipulated by an élite if they controlled studies of it sufficiently centrally;
• "Almah" had the etymological semantics appropriate for meaning "young woman."

There is actually a third solution. Suppose Almah means "young woman". Suppose it was the word in Isaiah from the start. Even so, it would automatically carry the meaning of "virgin", due to the Hebrew law. A young woman giving up her virginity was to be stoned. A young woman loosing it by rape was to be compensated. One option for her father being to demand the rapist marry her. In such a scenario, she could possibly be a young woman while conceiving, but not any more while giving birth. Nine months after loosing a virginity a Hebrew young lady was either married or stoned. And if Isaiah had meant that someone would conceive as a young woman though no longer virgin and give birth as married to the child's physical father, he would not have said that word "shall conceive and bear a son". He would have said "yes, a newly wed shall bear a son".

This being so, we must conclude that Isaiah indeed literally prophecied the Virgin Birth.

But he did not literally prophecy that Jesus would be called Jesus? No, but Jesus is a synonym of Emmanuel.

Isaiah did literally prophecy that Cyrus would be called Cyrus. The prophecy was fulfilled through parents who did not know it. But parents must not be in a position to manipulate the prophecy by knowing it.

If we take a prophecy about quite another kind of guy, namely Antichrist, I think people whose parents have choosen names so that Hebrew or Greek sums of the letters shall add up to the number that is 18 times 37 or the 36:th triangular number, may be pretty safe. The name of Antichrist must add up either in a less obvious way (I have heard that Barack Hussein Obama does not add up to more than 501 - but each name has a meaning, their translations into English ... well, you see what I mean), or in a gematria not accessible at his birth (ASCII code was not around when I was born, and at that time - according to Padre Pio - Antichrist was already in the word, I hope I can add "also" - so someone's name adding p that way in ASCII code but his being born well before it was around may be a real sign, especially if no other names add up that way in ASCII code: and so far "Bergoglio" in block letters fits that, and "Pope Francis" is the only prominent such alive today).

If St Joseph had named the child Emmanuel, he would have been seen as manipulating the prophecy. He could be aware that Jesus by its meaning implied Emmanuel, but he had not choosen it himself, he had been ordered by the angel.

This brings us to a point where Mark Shea is wrong.

The first and most obvious point in the New Testament, as we saw in chapter 5, is that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. The apostles came to believe this, not because they saw the Virgin Birth, but because they saw the risen Christ. And the risen Christ, as we saw previously, is the one who did not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17) and, after his resurrection, tells his disciples that "Moses and all the prophets" had written "concerning himself" (Luke 24:26-27). This is where the apostles get the idea that the whole life and ministry of Christ "fulfilled the Scriptures." So far so good.

What is not so good however is that it is easy for the modern reader to adopt a kind of "checklist" mentality about messianic prophecy, as though every first century Jew had an agreed-upon set of "Messianic Verses" in the Old Testament against which all messianic claimants were measured. Indeed, many books of Christian apologetics today lay out precisely this sort of schema:

Prophecy:   Source   Fulfillment The Messiah must...   In the Old Testament   in the New Testament Be the born in Bethlehem   Micah 5:1   Matthew 2:1; Luke 2:4-7 Be adored by great persons   Psalm 72:10-11   Matthew 2:1-11 Be sold for 30 pieces of silver   Zechariah 11:12   Matthew 26:15

and so forth. One could easily get the impression that all a first century Jew had to do was follow Jesus around, ticking off prophecy fulfillments on his Old Testament Messianic Prophecy Checklist and he ought to have known everything that Jesus was going to do before he ever did it.

...

This is why nobody before these events says, "Why, it's plain from Scripture that the Messiah will be born of a virgin, rejected by the chief priests, handed over to Gentiles, crucified with thieves, risen, ascended, and that he will abrogate the circumcision demand for Gentiles as he breaks down the barrier between man and woman, slave and free, Jew and Gentile." Even the disciples themselves, close as they were to Jesus, make it clear they did not anticipate the crucifixion, much less the resurrection, one little bit-even when Jesus rubbed their noses in it (Mark 9:9-10). As John says, they did not understand from the Scripture that the Messiah had to rise from the dead, even while they were standing in the mouth of the empty tomb gawking at his graveclothes (John 20:1-10).

The problem is that the checklist did in fact exist. I do not know about a set list of items with a fixed order and all, that, but a Jew who had studied the Scriptures and waited for the Messiah would know what he was looking for. The shepherds were told and had probably no previous studies. I do not know what verbal prophecy their presence fulfilled, but they did so to speak stay in Bethlehem as colleagues to young David before he was a King. He too was a shepherd. So, their adoration fulfilled the words "dixit Dominus Domino meo" since to those that knew it, they were showing forth King David acknowledging the main character of that Psalm as not just his son (which is allegorically shown by the shepherds being obviously older than Jesus) but also his Lord.

But the shepherds didn't know. Nor did the disciples.

Even the disciples themselves, close as they were to Jesus, make it clear they did not anticipate the crucifixion, much less the resurrection, one little bit-even when Jesus rubbed their noses in it (Mark 9:9-10). As John says, they did not understand from the Scripture that the Messiah had to rise from the dead, even while they were standing in the mouth of the empty tomb gawking at his graveclothes (John 20:1-10).

They were chosen among people who had not studied. Galilean Fishermen would very obviously not know the checklist. Pharisees would know it far better than they. They would be ticking off occasion on occasion as they hoped for a discrepancy between Jesus' actions and the prophecies. And they would time after time be disappointed. And the disciples would simply not know all that was happening. Close as they were to Jesus. The one man with some real Hebrew letters among them was St Matthew. And he had been neglecting them for years on end as he was collecting taxes. Sts Paul and Barnabas would have known all this too, but they were not yet among the disciples.

So, though one prophecy was fulfilled in a way that was literally true but not literalistic - Jesus fulfilling Emmanuel - nevertheless the fulfilment of these prophecies (those on checklist) were literal fulfilments, but not allegorical fulfilments.

We get to allegory when Jesus explains ALL of the Old Testament as prophecy, not just the prophetic passages.

We get to allegory when David saying "the Lord said unto my Lord" is allegorically present in the shepherds of Bethlehem. We get to allegory when Jesus explains how Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac is a prophecy in very great allegorical detail of his own via Dolorosa. We get to allegory when the stars fighting from their orbits against Sisera are there again as the Sun goes dark over Calvary. We get to allegory when the fleece of Gideon is a prophecy of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But for the proper understanding of Isaiah 7:14, we can be satisfied with the letter.

Mark Shea does not quite miss that:

So, for instance, Hebrews 2:13 quotes Isaiah 8:18: "Here I am, and the children God has given me." In its literal sense, Isaiah is speaking about his own disciples with no hint of messianic intent behind these words. Yet the author of Hebrews sees Christ, far more than Isaiah, fulfilling the text. Why? Because Christ and his Church are, most fully, what Isaiah and his disciples were in a kind of foreshadow.

That indeed is what the Sensus Allegoricus is all about.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre, UL
Pope St Xystus I
Martyr
3-IV-2014

Romae natalis beati Xysti Primi, Papae et Martyris; qui, temporibus Hadriani Imperatoris, summa cum laude rexit Ecclesiam, ac demum, sub Antonino Pio, ut sibi Christum lucrifaceret, libenter mortem sustinuit temporalem.