Book review: Jesus of Nazareth, by Pope Benedict XVI
OK, let me start by saying that I am going to rate this one an A+. But let me also state that it is NOT simply because I am a Catholic priest, and this book is written by the Pope. In his introduction, Pope Benedict wrote:
It goes without saying that this book is in no way an exercise of the magisterium, but solely an expression of my personal search “for the face of the Lord”…Everyone is free, then, to contradict me.
“Fair enough,” I thought, and I decided then and there that I was going to review this book as critically as I would any other. As a quick survey of my reviews would show, I am tough to please. And so, from the start of my reading this book I took careful margin notes (as I always do), looking for the good, the bad, and the ugly. About a third of the way through, though, I knew this one was going to get a rating somewhere in the A-range, simply from the experience itself of reading the book. For as I read it, I would find myself drifting off from the text into prayer and contemplation. I found myself falling in love with Christ all over again, growing closer to him in a way that seemed almost tangible. Any book that can do that, I figure, deserves an “A”.
Please don’t misunderstand, this did not happen at every paragraph. There are parts of the book that can be very dry and technical, and to be sure your average reader needs to have a strong background in the Bible and in Christian theology to “get” everything the book has to offer. But in this book, one does not need to sift a lot of textual sand to find literary gems. At times, Pope Benedict amazes with the depth of theological insight, which just makes the story and person of Jesus come alive. At other times, he shares the depth of his faith and devotion to Christ, and the reader finds himself discovering a Person that Benedict clearly not only knows, but loves. To put it simply, this book is one of the clearest examples of *theology* that I have ever found, and “theology” understood in the proper sense as “faith seeking understanding”. Pope Benedict is clearly intelligent — that much we all already knew — but in his book it becomes clear that his intelligence is clearly at the service of something — or, more accurately, Someone — far greater. He is tracing a path for all theologians and persons of faith — for theologians, that they never forget the faith that drives their quest to understand, and for everyone else, that they might discover how the use of reason does not diminish faith, but can strengthen and deepen it.
I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is particularly significant for two reasons. First of all, it is going to spark a HUGE debate within the exegetical community about HOW to do Biblical study. Pope Benedict regularly compares modern Biblical scripture scholars with the — ahem — the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ day. Not all, of course, simply those who undertake to study the Bible without considering that it is actually inspired by the Holy Spirit and so has only one true Author. He regularly points out what he considers major flaws and shortcomings in some elements of their method, and is essentially issuing a call for the Church to once again rediscover the field of Biblical theology as distinct from exegesis — so as to rescue Biblical theology, you might say, from those who sometimes seem they can only see the trees and not the forest. Pope Benedict has thrown down the gauntlet to the exegetes of the world to show how their rational conclusions are genuinely “theological”, springing from faith and leading back to it.
The second major impact that this book will have, in my opinion, is within the Protestant community, particularly the Evangelicals. Two things come out crystal clear within Jesus of Nazareth: the Pope knows and loves the Bible, and the Pope knows and loves Jesus. Protestants struggling with the the interpretations of classical liberal Protestant exegesis are going to find this book a safe harbour for their Biblical faith. Of course, a key issue they will face is that this is a Catholic harbour (you don’t get much more Catholic than a book written by a Pope!) — but it will be more than just “any port in a storm”. I think the Evangelical Protestant community is going to discover that Pope Benedict is a true brother in Christ, and this will cause a lot of barriers and prejudices to be dropped. I expect great things to happen in Catholic-Protestant relations thanks to this book.
What more can I say? Thank you, Doubleday, for sending me this gem. My rating: A+.
I’ve started into this book and it is definitely not an easy read! I gave up on the Prologue part way through and will go back to it later. I’m now up to page 36 and have had to “hit” the dictionary a few times for some of the words used i.e. exegesis. However, I’ll take it one page at a time and see where it leads me.
I hear you, Don. Like I said in my review, a strong background in the Bible + theology can at times be necessary. Another approach, though, might be to form a book club on the topic, with a knowledgeable resource person. Think anybody would be interested? We could do it on-line, through Skype.
[...] I’ve mentioned to others recently that the recent book by the Pope, while brilliant, does require some theological background in order to be able to tap all its treasures. However, if readers were to form a book club, with a theological resource person as part of it, the experience could be very enriching. So why not use the power of the Internet to do just that? If anybody is interested in forming an on-line book club, drop a comment and we’ll see what Adventus can do. [...]
I’ve just finished the book and I have one severe criticsm and that is the Pope’s choice of the RSV edition of the Bible as a source for his scriptual quotations. This is an edition providided by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council Churches of Christ of the United States. Since there are at least a hundred textual quotations in the book this presents a problem since this edition is so loose and imaginative in its textual renderings as to be an unreliable if not misleading source for the transmission of the inspired Word. Let me cite two glaring examples.
We find 1 Cor10:3f rendered on pg 244 as: “All ate the same pneumatic food and all drank the same pneumatic drink: for they drank from the pneumatic rock that went with them. But the rock was Christ.” 99% of American Catholics would be totally dismayed by this rendering. That was my reaction. Pneumatic!!! But the dictionary told me that ” spiritual ” was an alternate meaning for pneuma. And then the glossary does explain what it means. But I didn’t go there till later. One must say that too American ears it is at best awkward.
The second example is 2 Cor 1:19f rendered as: ” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ whom we preached among you… was not Yes and No: but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” This is an absolute butchering of the authorized Vulgate text and changes the meaning entirely. The literal translation of the autherized Vulgate is rendered as: ” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, preached among you by me and Silvanus and Timothy was not He is and ( He is ) not, but He is was in Him. In other words God was in him, the Father was in him, the Holy Sprit was in him, which is the point of the whole book. ” Yes ” and ” No ” may sound good, may read well but misses the boat entirely.
Well, the scriptual quotations are important or they woudln’t be there. And I’m not going to reread the book with my Duay-Rhiems on my lap. Even the Pope himself pointed out the difficiency in the rendering of one text in one of the earlier chapters. Well why didn’t he use an edition of the Bible which was faithful to the Vulgate!!! And why choose a non-Catholic edition of the Bible!!!
Hi Ed,
I admire your passion to be faithful to Scripture!
Just to be clear, the Pope actually wrote his book in German, not English. It would be the translators who picked the RSV text, I imagine.
But are you sure it is the RSV text in every instance? I have an RSV in front of me as I write this, and it does not use the word “pneumatic” for the 1 Cor 10:3 passage (even though it is actually the most accurate word possible).
As for the second passage, 2 Cor 1:19, the “Yes” and “No” terms are actually a more accurate translation into English than what the Douay-Rheims contains. You see, Latin does not actually have a word for “Yes” with a directly opposite “No”, so the Latin translation of the Greek has to use the approximation “He/It is” with “He/It is not” as its opposite. English, however, DOES have words to directly translate the original Greek, so it is actually more faithful to Scripture to use the RSV translation you mention — in this case, the Douay-Rhiems, which is a translation of a translation, turns out to be less accurate.
With regards to the RSV text, while the copyright is held by the NCCC a Catholic edition does exist (published currently by Ignatius Press as the “Ignatius Bible”). I have an old Catholic-edition RSV sitting on my desk, bearing an Imprimatur from the Archbishop of Edinburgh. The RSV is also one of the few English translations that the Vatican has approved for public proclamation in churches. So it seems logical to use it.
Cheers to our American friends!
FR. Doud,
Thank you for your response. If you go to the publisher’s page in front of the book, you will see that all scriptual quotations in the book from the RSV edition. The publisher goes on to say that the Bible used is the one translated under the direction of the Churches of Christ of the U.S. So one must assume that it is the non-Catholic edition used. The Pope himself criticises the RSV on pg 102 where he says, ” the RSV translation unfortunately tones this ( ” alarm ” ) down to “astonishment.” So if the choise of which edition to use was left up to the publisher and the editiors( my first thought ), then one must take this comment by the Pope as an editorial comment made during proof reading.
My Vulgate is Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum, 1979, authorized and promulgated by Pope John Paul ll as a fruit of Vatican ll and it is a Vatican Library edition. So my translation for 2 Cor 1:19f is a literal translation. I know enough Latin to read what it says and to translate it. However, I checked it with my Duay-Rhiems. By the way don’t pooh-hoo the Duay too much. It may be a little stilted but it does follow the old Vulgate pretty slavishly. On the other hand my St Joseph Bible agrees with you and even the context of the Vulgate of 1 Cor 10 seems to call for “yes” or “no.”
But the context in which it occurs in the book is all about God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit being in Jesus, the true vine. Indeed that is the point of the entire chapter and of the entire book. The whole context demands ” He is.” ” yes ” is out of place totally. Then, was the wrong text used or are we allowed to translate it according do the demands of the context of the book as opposed to the context of chap 10 in the Bible? It seems clear that the Pope intends or should intend ” He is.”
Remember me at Mass
Pax Tecum
Fr. Dowd,
I’ve thought some more about your comment and mine. You are absolutely right. Latin has no word for “yes.” The Vulgate for
” Yes ” in 2 Cor 1:19f is ” est. ” The Duay-Rhiems translates ” est ” as ” it is. ” The footnote in my edition of Duay ( FR. Haydock’s Commentary) does explain that ” it is ” means ” yes.” So that leaves me with two thoughts.
One, the context of pg 259 of the book on which this text is used clearly calls for ” I am, or He is or It is. ” The Pope, on this page is clearly emphasizing the I Am of God. I Am is in Jesus and that is why the Vine can never be uprooted again. All God’s promises are fulfilled and completed in Jesus because I Am is in Him.
So one of two things should have been done, either by the Pope or by the editors. One, either no scriptual quotation should have been used here ( because the one used here just doesn’t work ). Or a more appropriate one should have been used. I just don’t see how the text used fits the context.
But my comment about 1 Cor 10:f on pg 244 stands. Most English speaking people will automatically associate ” pneumatic ” with mechanics as in a pneumatic pump or a pneumatic air line such as used in the commen jack hammer. They simply will not make the connection with ” spiritual ” even though the glossary does explain the special theological use of the term. Even if the reader was aware of this it still grates on the nerves. And though I think the term is used once in an earlier chapter, throughout most of the book ” spirit ” and ” spiritual ” are used, not ” pneuma ” or ” pneumatic. ”
You asked if the RSV was used for all scriptual quotations? The publishers page says that all scriptual quotations are from the RSV provided by the National Council of the Churches of Christ of the U.S. except those provided by the author’s original translation. But the text of the book offers no help in identifing where these differences occur within the text, there are no footnotes in the text!!! So one is left wondering just how reliable or orthodox the scriptual quotations are – or at least I wonder.
Thanks again.
I finished “The Creed” by Luke Timothy Johnson and when I lent it to a member of my bible study group, he asked me, “Does it have an imprimatur.” I said I wasn’t sure but thought it didn’t. He looked and it didn’t.
When I got back home I looked at my copy of doubleday’s Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI and that didn’t have an imprimatur (imprimi potest/nihil obstat)on it either.
Can anyone explain to me why these two popular works by Catholic theologians do not carry an imprimatur of one sort or another?
Thanks
It seems ludicrous to make use of the Vulgate – a flawed translation of the Greek Testament – when we have the Greek Testament available to us.
The only remaining use for the Vulgate is in the Scriptural passages in the Latin Mass. It is not good enough for scholarly use. English translations based on the Vulgate such as the Douay Rheims and that of Mgr. Ronald Knox are similarly flawed not because of the quality of their translation but because of their flawed source material.
Hello John,
Well, there is actually an additional use to the Vulgate: it helps determine the canon of scripture, not just in the books, but the passages within the books themselves.
The problem with saying ‘we have the Greek Testament available to us’ is that we don’t, really. We can have scholars take certain original manuscripts and, using time-honoured techniques of paleography, produce a critical edition. But there are always still some open questions within the context of a critical edition, as evident by the many many footnotes. Some Greek expressions are also ambiguous in their wording or in how they are to be properly translated. And finally, there are the complexities of most of the Old Testament books, available in both Greek and Hebrew. The advantage of having an official version in Latin is that is that it permits us to at least say “This content is orthodox”.
As for the editions of the Douay-Rheims and Mgr. Ronald Knox, I agree that the source material (the Clementine Vulgate edition) is flawed. On the other hand, the Catholic Church now has the recently-promulgated Nova Vulgata, which corrected a lot of the errors that had crept into the previous editions over time.
I would therefore say the surest way to translate the Bible today in a way that is faithful to the Catholic mind is to use the original language texts, see what meaning emerges in the Nova Vulgata translation, and produce a vernacular edition that is faithful to both.
I am obviously very late to this conversation. I am half way through the book and find it facination. Can anyone tell me if there is a book club out there that meets via skype to discuss books such as this one. I travel and have found it difficult to find a way to meet if not through skype.
I appreciate anyone who can shed some light on this.