XXI.
THE POSITION OF THE CHURCH IN THE PRESENT STATE
OF THE SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY REGARDING THE BIBLE.
In one of the old churches of Wales you may see the Ten Commandments written upon the wall, and beneath them the following inscription, the meaning of which, it is said, had for a long time remained a mystery to the people:
P R S V R Y P R F C T M N,
V R K P T H S P R C P T S T N.
Some one supplied the key to the interpretation by suggesting the letter E. Then everybody read the lines, and the old folks told their children, who inform the casual visitor that the strange letters plainly mean: Persevere ye perfect men, ever keep these precepts ten.
The inscription in the old Welsh church is a good illustration of the old text of the Bible, which had no vowels, no division of words and sentences. God gave the key to its meaning through an intelligent interpreter, and the men of learning supply the divisions—even in this sense that they sometimes dispute the place where to insert and where to omit the E.
The original obscurity has induced many to study the Bible, and the grand result of this study in our day has been to lead the great majority of scientific men, whether they are believers in the divine origin of the Book or not, to the conclusion that it is, to say the least, an historical monument of the highest antiquity, the contents of which have come down to us in that genuine and authentic form which is claimed for it; that is to say, that it has not been tampered with or falsified to such an extent as would render its statements materially other than they were from the beginning.
Tischendorf, one of the leading Biblical text critics in recent times, allows indeed some 30,000 variations for the New Testament alone in the different manuscripts of which we possess any trace. Although these variations are on the whole very slight, so as not to affect the genuineness of the Scripture documents, they establish the fact that we do not possess the text of the Bible in the literal form in which the inspired writers originally wrote it down.
Whatever changes have crept into the text of the Bible, through inadvertence of copyists or defective translations into other languages, it is a settled fact among Catholic divines that they do not affect the moral and dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church. They regard either purely historical incidents or scientific facts, neither of which are the object of the doctrinal definitions or moral teachings of the Church. They are the proper subject for the study of human reason and investigation. Hence philological science may very becomingly occupy itself with the verbal criticism of the language and thought of the Bible. But the Catholic Church, as a teacher of religious truth, has an interest in these studies of verbal criticism in so far only as they may become a help or a hindrance to her legitimate activity of preaching and preserving the truth of Christianity. As a rule, the Church anticipates the dangerous issues arising from the misuse of such studies by deliberately defining not only the right use of the instruments employed for the purpose of criticism, but also what she herself deems the subject-matter lying outside of the domain of such criticism. Thus, in a negative way, she points out the field for the exercise of theories, or rather she defines the lines beyond which speculation may not safely go. The Church would have no end of tasks if she undertook to defend her position against the continuously proposed hypotheses by which any chance comer might venture to challenge her veracity or authority. Most theories are ephemeral; two, succeeding each other, are often mutually destructive. Prof. H. L. Hastings in his "Higher Criticism" tells us that since 1850 there have been published 747 theories, known to him, about the origin and authenticity of the Bible. Of these 747 theories he counts 608 as now defunct, and as the Professor wrote several years ago, we may assume that nearly all of the remaining 139 are dead by this time, although a few new ones have come in to take their place for a day.[[1]]
What, then, is the position of the Catholic Church, as limited by positive definition, with regard to the text of the Bible, by which she limits the aggressiveness of Biblical criticism?