Apocrypha Yesterday and Today
If you go over to New Advent's entry on the Book of Judith, you'll find a rousing defense of its historicity. What brought this up was that I was talking to a Catholic friend of mine about Judith, and she mentioned that her Bible describes the book as a "novel" in the preface, i.e. a work of fiction. Her Bible was published after Vatican II. The Catholic Encyclopedia was published in 1910. I have no commentary on this.
posted by Stewart @ 2:01 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Yeah, but if it's the New Jerusalem Bible - which is almost painfully post-V2 - then it says much the same thing about the book of Daniel.
Well, when you insert Bel and the Dragon into the book by fiat, I don't see how you can avoid seeing it that way. The role of higher criticism in Catholicism today is certainly worth exploring more. Interestingly, higher criticism is allowed in commentary, but textual criticism, which is used in every Protestant Bible, is severely restricted in translations. I don't know how effective the Tridentine view of the Vulgate is in Catholic Bible, but at the very least, it prevents the translators from trying to get at the original text of Daniel or Judith.
Well, I wonder how committed the New Jerusalem Bible, at least, is to the Vulgate. The Greek additions to the OT are rendered entirely in italics, and they even seem a bit grumpy about retaining the Roman Catholic numbering for the psalms.
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