I think too much credit is assumed to the likes of the Bill Mahers of this world when they advance their ideology by only scandalizing others. If they had ownership of the “truth” it would be self-evident.

Whatever our thoughts of Bill Maher are he is no dummy. I don’t think he believes half the garbage he’s spewing. His modus operandi is attempting to tap the easy money of the Dan Brown Da Vinci Code like scandals.

I think we should instead expose him for the jerk that he is and how it takes more faith to believe in nothing than to believe that something greater than ourselves really exists. Going on the defensive gives him too much credit. The Church does own the truth---use it.

I wish this were the most-read column this month. Great, great article, Mark. This article should be part of RCIA classes and adult education programs.

I'm forwarding this to some of my non-Christian friends; I think it explains the Catholic view wonderfully.

Excellent article.

Of course miracles happen.

We are here. Even Bill Maher. How is that not a miracle?

Only have a minute so this may be less than coherent, but here are my thoughts. Bill Maher is an entertainer, that's all. For me, he calls to mind a televangelist for atheists; he's funny and engaging (and angry and sad) and is selling a product - himself - based on a very thin premise - his own limited worldview. Ironically, the very same people who would ridicule televangelists hang on this guys every word. Maher, and others in his class (John Stewart comes to mind), peddle humor, cynicism and sarcasm as deep thinking - they can't make a serious statement that isn't cloaked in glibness. I haven't seen Maher's movie, but from what I understand, when he gets earnest at the end it all falls apart.

Only those who glean their entire exposure to the interior life from our devastated popular culture would turn to him for their views on religion - people who are trying to piece together a perspective from nothing, because they have never had one minute's worth of decent instruction in anything meaningful or transcendent.

If my only exposure to Beethoven was from watching the Bugs Bunny episode where he attempts to play the 9th while being hindered by his nemesis, I wouldn't know much about Beethoven, would I? (or was it Tom and Jerry?)

Thank you, Mark Shea for opening minds.

I truly enjoyed this article. It reminds me of a comment from CS Lewis (which I'm sure I'll get only partly right). Regarding those who ridicule the view of God as a king on a throne with a golden crown and scepter, that those who are only capable of understanding children's books should not read books meant for adults (or something like that).

Now, my request. I have recently fallen head-over-heels for audio courses from the Teaching Company. I have covered topics from St. Augustine's "Confessions" to "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music," to the history of Judaism. My latest is "The Historical Jesus," taught by Prof. Bart Ehrman, an historian at UNC Chapel Hill. Professor Ehrman views Christ as an apocalyptic prophet who understood himself as such, preaching an imminent apocalypse. Using an historian's framework, he picks apart the "believable" from the "unlikely" in the New Testament accounts. I found myself a bit disoriented by the course. Not that it affected my faith in any way, but it left me feeling less well prepared to discuss and defend it.

Does anyone out there have recommendations for readings that might help? Thanx to one and all!

Nick Palmer,
"apocalyptic prophet" "preaching an imminent apocalypse"

Scott Hahn, The lamb's SupperISBN 0-385-49659-1

"This remarkable book brings together several powerful spiritual realities---all of them important to the believing Christians, and all of them apparently so diverse as to superficially appear unrelated: the end of the world and the daily Mass; the Apocalypse and the Lord's Supper; the humdrum of daily life and the Parousia, the coming of the Lord."

Fr. Benedict J. groeschel C.F.R.

God Bless

Nick,

I'd recommend "Jesus of Nazareth" by Pope Bendict XVI.

Ehrman is an Evangelical who lost his faith, but not his missionary zeal. He is out to de-convert. A little learning is a dangerous thing.

My suggestion is that you take a look at the work of Scott Hahn (particularly his commentaries on the gospels) as well as N.T. Wright's fine The Resurrection of the Son of God. Also, I concur that Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth is very good.

Mark,

Maybe you could address not just the scripture study class, but in particular the book Misquoting Jesus? The main claim of that book, I'm sure you recall, is that “None of the copies is completely accurate, since the scribes who produced them inadvertently and/or intentionally changed them in place. So, rather than actually having the inspired words of the autographs of the Bible, what we have are the error-ridden copies of the autographs.”

Could you include a reference to the book in your response to Nick?

--Eric

of the "fundamentalist and inerrancy" lobby within the Church itself, who are anxious to libel the Bishops' Synod, claiming that even Pope Benedict is showing his "Romanitas" by not returning to "fundamentalism."

Isn't it time that all serious Catholics learned to read the Bible in an adult manner?

Hi Nick:

I'd like to add my suggestion here. Pope Benedict's book, Jesus of Nazareth, is a wonderful meditation on the Gospels. He also clears away a lot of the nonsense that many exegetes have written about the reliability of the Gospels and who Jesus "really" (!!) was. However, his purpose is not so much to deal with those critics in detail as to bring us closer to Christ.

A book I found very helpful and very compatible with Pope Benedict's approach to the Gospels is The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd. The authors really tackle head on with the tools of modern scholarship those people like Professor Ehrman who interpret the Gospels in a way very contrary to orthodox faith. I found I understood what Pope Benedict was getting at in his discussions on modern scholarship much better after reading Eddy and Boyd. If you really want to investigate the reasons why many modern exegetes read the Gospels as they do and understand what the weaknesses are in their case, then this is the book for you!

Happy exploring!
Mary Anne

I truly appreciate the kind comments, ideas, and recommendations from Fr. Groeschel, Bruce Roeder, Mark Shea, and Mary Anne. I both read and thoroughly enjoyed Pope Benedict XVI's "Jesus of Nazareth." It was marvelously written, scholarly yet readable, and uplifting. As for the other recommendations, Amazon.com will be hearing from me today!

Thanks, too, to the entire insidecatholic.com community, from authors to bloggers to fellow readers. I was saddened when Crisis ceased publication, but the liveliness and currency of this site make it one of my three "must-sees" on any day I have Internet access (WSJ and NRO are the other two).

God bless you all!

I suppose this is somewhat incidental to the main purpose of the article. But I have long tried to track down the original reference, where St. Jerome says what Mark says he says ("After the manner of a popular poet"). I'm willing to bet that Mark got that quote from CS Lewis, which is where I initially heard it too. But I have since come to believe that it was a phrase uttered by John Colet, at the turn of the 16th century, and that CS Lewis simply got his quotes confused. Click the link associated with this comment for a fuller treatment of what I found a few months ago, when I did a cursory investigation into the quote.

Great article, though, Mark.

I am always seeking better ways to explain such things as how Adam and Eve represented actual First Parents with eternal souls, and how generations could have followed after - in a way that meets the minds of teenagers who are always so seemingly ready to mock matters of religious faith. Noah is another story that seems to draw a lot of comic chatter in Bible Reflections. And of course the bit in 2 Kings where the children are killed by She-Bears after calling a prophet "Bald Head".

I am always open to suggestions on how to better present these Biblical events/depictions to teens or skeptical kids of all ages-

For myself, I do try to wrap my head around the pre-human evolutionary bodies that preceded the ensoulment event- I know that there is no "missing link" per se, but I know that there cannot be any real disagreement between what is scientifically true and what is religiously true, so I am more excited by the challenge in trying to comprehend how both inform the other.

Maybe Mark can write a book specifically on the tough cases in Scripture- where God seems to endorse violence or extreme retribution, or where the line between historical and mythic poetic is more confusing like in the examples I mentioned above. It would sure help out with teen evangelization for Bible experts with the gift of creative, amusing prose to put something together.

Well written and constructed.

That's why I read more than post, someone else can explain it better than I in an eloquent and coherent manner.

In Jesus, Mary, & Joseph,

Tito

Yes. Benedict does an excellent job of tearing the argument of Jesus as an earthly sage to pieces.

To wit: Benedict points out that scholars often try to separate what Jesus said from what they think was "added on" later by misguided disciples. The problem with this approach is that it takes as its starting point the idea that the Gospels are not a true representation of Jesus' teachings. And how can they prove that? They can't.

In fact, Pope Benedict's close reading of the four gospels shows that they agree far more completely on the divinity of Jesus than a superficial reading suggests. Even in his most mundane, earthy pronouncements Jesus repeatedly puts himself in the place of Old Covenant, as the fulfillment of the Old Testament. The Sonship of Jesus is so tightly woven into the fabric of the New Testament, Benedict argues, that the two cannot be separated without denying the entire account as fictional. There is no distinction between the "historical" Jesus and the "divine" Jesus. Scholars who think there is are just out to make a name for themselves.

I wonder, sometimes, about the persistence of creation-in-six-days literalism.

It's not that God couldn't do it that way if He wished.

But even the most wild-eyed literalist does not, I think, believe that Jesus' parables detail historical persons: That the prodigal son was named Ahmed and stood five-foot-seven.

And he's usually willing to agree that, while Job may easily have been a historical figure, that the discursive dialogues of him and his friends were not taken down verbatim by a court reporter...nor did that court-reporter have access to the throne room in heaven, to record Satan's "skin for skin" comment!

Yet put that literalist in front of Genesis chapters 1-3, and he's insistent. He won't budge. The story of "why the snake has no feet" rings so much like the story of Paul Bunyan dragging his axe behind him and thereby accidentally digging the Grand Canyon, but...no. St. Augustine argued in...what 405 AD? 410? sometime around then? that the six days were obviously intended to make the point of completeness, not represent literal time periods, but here we are 1,600 years later, and some folks have never heard that. (He also made a remark to the effect that Christians should be cautious about using Scripture to justify ill-educated ideas about the "physical sciences," especially in the presence of more well-informed persons, because it might damage their Christian witness.)

One does not dishonor the word of God by reading the text as it was intended to be read -- even when it's intended to be read as fiction with a moral or theological point.

And, one doesn't honor it by claiming it means to say something it plainly doesn't.

If any man claims Genesis does not teach us that we're made in God's likeness, that He created all things, that He is external to space and time and subordinate to them but rather their creator, that man's distance from God is man's own willful, stubborn, ungracious, sinful fault, not God's, and that there is emnity between Satan and the human race, I'll get in his face about it.

But if any man claims Genesis doesn't require a literal six-day creation? No news to me at all.

If such literalism had been that important, it'd be required in the Creeds.

But it isn't.