The Critical Study of the New Testament in a Catholic Context
The following videos introduce how the Catholic Church interprets the Bible and how scholars approach it using the available manuscript evidence.
The three numbered videos are the most important material, corresponding to the slides. While you don't have to watch them, they may help you prepare for class or fill in gaps after. Below the numbered videos, you will find some optional videos and links.
Use the links to the right to access pdf files of the slides shown in the videos. Two formats are available: 1 slide per page and three slides per page. Both versions have slides for all four required videos.
The videos below are thumbnails; to enlarge the view, click the play button and select at the bottom of the frame either "YouTube" (to watch the video on YouTube, which in some cases will be clearer) or the full-screen icon ().
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Catholic Approaches to the Bible, Part 1: The Impact of the Protestant Reformation
This video explains the challenge to Catholic biblical interpretation that the Protestant Reformation posed, and the initial response of the Catholic Church to these challenges. It provides background for the changes in Catholic interpretation that would take place in the mid-twentieth century, the subject of the next video.
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Catholic Approaches to the Bible, Part 2: Principles of Catholic Biblical Interpretation
This video explores the principles of Catholic biblical interpretation that were developed in the mid-twentieth century, with Pope Pius XII's encyclical, Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) and with Vatican II's dogmatic constitution, Dei Verbum (1965).
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How Scholars Build the Bible
This video discusses one aspect of the academic approach to the Bible by explaining what you're really looking at when you open a Bible. Far from being one book, it is of course many books—but you could have guessed that from looking at its table of contents. What you might not know from the table of contents is how ancient each of these books is. That is, how close are the versions you're reading (in English translation, of course) to the "autograph" or original text we imagine each ancient author wrote (in Hebrew or Aramaic, for the Jewish scriptures, in Greek for the Christian books)? How do scholars take the available manuscript evidence and get us to our modern translations?
Virtual Tour of Qumran - Take a virtual tour of the Qumran site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found (required Flash). Hosted by the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The video to the right is one of a number of reconstructions created by Robert Cargill.
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The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls - in September 2011, Google Books finished digitizing the first five of the 950+ Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts, selecting the best-preserved scrolls housed at the Shrine of the Book Museum (most of the rest are managed elsewhere by the Israel Antiquities Authority). Here is the YouTube video promoting the effort.
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The Leon Levy Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Library - While the Shrine of the Book has some of the larger scrolls, the bulk of the manuscripts are under the supervision of the Israel Antiquities Authority and have been digitized for scholars and the public.
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The Digital Restoration Initiative - Dr. Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky has pioneered a technique to adapt CT scanning technologies to burnt and damaged ancient scrolls, allowing us to "unwrap" them digitally and read them. Here is a video of how the technique works, applied to a small, burnt scroll found in a fourth century CE synagogue at ʿEin Gedi, near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
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Great Codices from the Early Centuries
The Aleppo Codex - One of the two most important manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, this 9th century manuscript is older than the other (the Leningrad Codex) but less complete. This excellent Web site provides access to the text and wonderful background information on the manuscript. A beautiful Web site hosted by the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem.
Codex Sinaiticus - Inscribed in the fourth century CE, this Greek copy of the Old and New Testaments is one of the oldest Christian Bibles in the world, and the largest book to have survived antiquity. Another fabulous Web site that lets you explore the manuscript as if it were right in front of you. Hosted by the Codex Sinaiticus Project, in partnership with the four institutions that currently house part of the manuscript (The British Library, the National Library of Russia, St. Catherine's Monastery, and Leipzig University).
Discovering Sacred Texts - With a grant from Jewish philanthropist David Dangoor, the British Library has published 250 rare religious writings from all of the world's major religious traditions, indluding the Codex Sinaiticus, the 8th century Ma'il Koran, the 10th century Gaster Bible (a Hebrew biblical codex), and only of the only copies of the Jewish Talmud to have escaped the public burnings of Jewish law books during the Middle Ages.
Oxyrhynchus
POxy: Oxyrhynchus Online,Papyrology at Oxford, Oxford University - Grenfell and Hunt, the scholars who discovered the papyrus dump at Oxyrhynchus, worked at Oxford University. This Web site provides access to information and exhibits about the discovery and to the publications of the Egypt Exploration Society.
The following videos introduce how the Catholic Church interprets the Bible and how scholars approach it using the available manuscript evidence.
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