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 SCRIPTURE

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SCRIPTURE

Lyons (1272). The same formula was repeated in the fifteenth century by Eugenius IV in his Decree for the Jacobites, in the sixteenth century by the Council of Trent (Sess. IV, deer, de can. Script.), and in the nineteenth century by the Vatican Council. What is impUed in this Divine authorship of Sacred Scripture, and how it is to be explained, has been set forth in the article Inspiration.

III. Collection of Sacred Books. — What has been said implies that Scripture does not refer to any single book, but comprises a number of books written at different times and by different writers working under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Hence the question, how could such a collection be made, and how was it made in point of fact?

A. Question of Right. — The main difficulty as to the first question (quoestio juris) arises from the fact that a book must be Divinely inspired in order to lay claim to the dignity of being regarded as Scripture. Various methods have been suggested for ascertain- ing the fact of inspiration. It has been claimed that so-called internal criteria are sufficient to lead us to the knowledge of this fact. But on closer investiga- tion they prove inadequate. (1) Miracles and prophe- cies require a Divine intervention in order that they may happen, not in order that they may be recorded; hence a work relating miracles or prophecies is not necessarily inspired. (2) The so-called ethico-ses- thetic criterium is inadequate. It fails to establish that certain portions of Scripture are inspired writ- ings, e. g., the genealogical tables, and the summary accounts of the kings of Juda, while it favours the in- spiration of several post-Apostolic works, e. g., of the "Imitation of Christ", and of the "Epistles" of St. Ignatius Martyr. (3) The same must be said of the psychological criterium, or the effect which the perusal of Scripture produces in the heart of the reader. Such emotions are subjective, and vary in different readers. The Epistle of St. James appeared strawlike to Luther, divine to Calvin. (4) These internal criteria are inadequate even if they be taken collectively. Wrong keys are unable to open a lock whether they be used singly or collectively.

Other students of this subject have endeavored to establish Apostolic authorship as a criterium of in- spiration. But this answer does not give us a criterium for the inspiration of the Old Testament books, nor does it touch the inspiration of the Gos- pels of St. Mark and St. Luke, neither of whom was an Apostle. Besides, the Apostles were endowed with the gift of infallibility in their teaching, and in their writing as far as it formed part of their teaching; but infallibility in writing does not imply insi)iration. Certain writings of the Roman pontiff may be infal- lible, but they are not inspired; God is not their author. Nor can the criterium of inspiration be placed in the testimony of history. For inspiration is a supernatural fact, known only to God and prob- ably to the inspired writer. Hence human testimony concerning inspiration is based, at best, on the testi- mony of one person who is, naturally speaking, an in- terested party in the matter concerning which he tes- tifies. The history of the false prophets of former times as well as of our own day teaches us the futility of such testimony. It is true that miracles and prophecy may, at times, confirm such human testi- mony as to the inspiration of a work. But, in the first place, not all inspired writers have been prophets or workers of miracles; in the second place, in order that prophecies or miracles may serve as proof of in- spiration, it must be clear that the miracles were per- formed, and the prophecies were uttered, to establish the fact in question; in the third place, if this condi- tion be verified, the testimony for inspiration is no longer merely human, but it has become Divine. No one will doubt the sufficiency of Divine testimony to establish the fact of inspiration; on the other hand,

no one can deny the need of such testimony in order that we may distinguish with certainty between an inspired and a non-inspired book.

B. Question of Fact. — It is a rather difficult prob- lem to state with certainty, how and when the several books of the Old and the New Testament were received as sacred by the religious community. Deut., xxxi, 9, 24 sqq., informs us that Moses delivered the Book of the Law to the Levites and the ancients of Israel to be deposited "in the side of the ark of the covenant"; according to Deut., xvii, 18, the king had to procure for himself a copy of at least a part of the book, so as to "read it all the days of his life". Josue (xxiv, 26) added his portion to the law-book of Israel, and this may be regarded as the second step in the collection of the Old Testament writings. According to Is., xxxiv, 16, and Jer., xxxvi, 4, the prophets Isaias and Jeremias collected their respective prophetic utter- ances. The words of II Par., xxix, 30, lead us to sup- pose that in the days of King Ezechias there either existed or originated a collection of the Psalms of David and of Asaph. From Prov., xxv, 1, one may infer that about the same time there was made a col- lection of the Solomonic writings, which may have have been added to the collection of psalms. In the second century B.C. the Minor Prophets had been col- lected into one work (Ecclus., xlix, 12) which is cited in Acts, vii, 42, as " the books of the prophets". The expressions found in Dan., ix, 2, and I Mach., xii, 9, suggest that even these smaller collections had been gathered into a larger body of sacred books. Such a larger collection is certainly implied in the words II Mach., ii, 13, and the prologue of Ecclesiasticus. Since these two passages mention the main divisions of the Old-Testament canon, this latter must have been completed, at least with regard to the earlier books, during the course of the second century b. c.

It is generally granted that the Jews in the time of Jesus Christ acknowledged as canonical or included in their collection of sacred writings all the so-called protocanonical books of the Old Testament. Christ and the Apostles endorsed this faith of the Jews, so that we have Divine authority for their Scriptural character. As there are solid reasons for maintain- ing that some of the New-Testament writers made use of the Septuagint version which contained the deute- rocanonical books of the Old Testament, these latter too are in so far attested as part of Sacred Scrip- ture. Again, II Pet., iii, 15-16, ranks all the Epis- tles of St. Paul with the "other scriptures", and I Tim., V, 18, seems to quote Luke, x, 7, and to place it on a level with Deut., xxv, 4. But these arguments for the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, of the Pauline Epistles, and of the Gospel of St. Luke do not exclude all reasonable doubt. Only the Church, the infallible bearer of tra- dition, can furnish us invincible certainty as to the number of the Divinely inspired books of both the Old and the New Testament. See Canon of the Holy Scriptures.

IV. Division of Scripture. A. Old and New Testaments.— As the two dispensations of grace sepa- rated from each other by the advent of Jesus are called the Old and the New Testament (Matt., xxvi, 28; II Cor., iii, 14), so were the inspired writings be- longing to either economy of grace from the earliest times called books of the Old or of the New Testa- ment, or simply the Old or the New Testament. This name of the two great divisions of the inspired writings has been practically common among Latin Chris- tians from the time of Tertullian, though Tertullian himself frequently employs the name "Instrumen- tum" or legally authentic document; Cassiodorus uses the title "Sacred Pandects", or sacred digest of law. B. Protocanonical and Deuterocanonical. — The word "canon" denoted at first the material rule, or instrument, employed in various trades; in a meta-