The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament (4 page)

In the present edition the aim has been to make the minimum number of alterations and to change only what seemed absolutely necessary in the light of Catholic tradition. It has not been the aim to improve the translation as such. There are some places, however, where, the critical evidence being evenly balanced, considerations of Catholic tradition have favored a particular rendering or the inclusion of a passage omitted by the RSV translators.

The thanks of Catholics are due to their Bishops who have approved this edition and to the American Standard Bible Committee, who have throughout given an unfailing and generous support in spite of difficulties and delays.

May this edition of the New Testament contribute both to the increase in knowledge of God's Word and to better understanding between Christians according to the mind of our Savior, who prayed "that they may be one, even as we are one" (Jn 17:11).

The
Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The New Testament
is based on the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition. The Revised Standard Version is, of course, one of the more-highly-regarded modern translations of the Bible.

The New Testament of the RSV Second Catholic Edition differs somewhat both from the New Testament of the RSV and from that of the RSV Catholic Edition. It differs from the RSV—as the Introduction to the 1966 edition of the Catholic RSV notes—in that, in certain places where scholarship alone cannot determine the translation or the text, "considerations of Catholic tradition have favored a particular rendering or the inclusion of a passage omitted by the RSV translators." It differs from the RSV Catholic Edition in that archaisms (e.g., "thee" and "thou", along with their accompanying verbs, which the RSV uses when God is addressed) have been replaced by standard modern English.

The RSV Second Catholic Edition has also been revised according to
Liturgiam Authenticam,
the Vatican's instruction concerning vernacular languages in the Sacred Liturgy.

Abbreviations for the Books of the Bible

THE OLD TESTAMENT (OT)

Gen          Genesis

Ex          Exodus

Lev          Leviticus

Num          Numbers

Deut          Deuteronomy

Josh          Joshua

Judg          Judges

Ruth          Ruth

1 Sam        1 Samuel

2 Sam        2 Samuel

1 Kings        1 Kings

2 Kings        2 Kings

1 Chron        1 Chronicles

2 Chron        2 Chronicles

Ezra          Ezra

Neh          Nehemiah

Tob          Tobit

Jud          Judith

Esther          Esther

Job          Job

Ps          Psalms

Prov          Proverbs

Eccles         Ecclesiastes

Song          Song of Solomon

Wis          Wisdom

Sir          Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)

Is          Isaiah

Jer          Jeremiah

Lam          Lamentations

Bar          Baruch

Ezek          Ezekiel

Dan          Daniel

Hos          Hosea

Joel          Joel

Amos          Amos

Obad          Obadiah

Jon          Jonah

Mic          Micah

Nahum          Nahum

Hab          Habakkuk

Zeph          Zephaniah

Hag          Haggai

Zech          Zechariah

Mal          Malachi

1 Mac        1 Maccabees

2 Mac        2 Maccabees

THE NEW TESTAMENT (NT)

Mt          Matthew

Mk          Mark

Lk          Luke

Jn          John

Acts          Acts of the Apostles

Rom          Romans

1 Cor        1 Corinthians

2 Cor        2 Corinthians

Gal          Galatians

Eph          Ephesians

Phil          Philippians

Col          Colossians

1 Thess        1 Thessalonians

2 Thess        2 Thessalonians

1 Tim        1 Timothy

2 Tim        2 Timothy

Tit          Titus

Philem          Philemon

Heb          Hebrews

Jas          James

1 Pet          1 Peter

2 Pet          2 Peter

1 Jn          1 John

2 Jn          2 John

3 Jn          3 John

Jude          Jude

Rev          Revelation (Apocalypse)

by Curtis Mitch

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the foundational documents of historic Christianity. Most of what is known about the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth is known from these four books. Interlaced with their factual information about Christ is also the faith of the Church, the conviction that Jesus was the Messiah of ancient expectation and the eternal Son of God come in the flesh.

It is no surprise, then, that Christian tradition gives the four Gospels pride of place among the books of Sacred Scripture. They are placed first in the collection of New Testament writings, much as the five books of Moses, being the formative religious texts of Israel, stand at the head of the Old Testament. Without the Gospels, the Church would lack not only crucial information about her divine Founder but a vital source of strength and inspiration for her mission in the world.

Authority of the Gospels
   Because the Gospels give us unique access to the words and deeds of Jesus, they possess the very highest authority. The Church acknowledges this in various ways, most obviously in the liturgy, where the Gospels are held aloft in procession, perfumed with incense, and proclaimed as the word of God. Selections from all parts of the Scriptures are represented in the Church's lectionary, but the Gospel reading is always featured as the highpoint of the Liturgy of the Word. The belief is that Jesus is made present to his people in word and sacrament, both in the inspired accounts of the evangelists and in the consecrated elements of the Eucharist.

The authority of the Gospels is ultimately grounded in their divine inspiration, as is the case with all the books of the Bible. However, in addition to this theological conviction, the Church also maintains the historical conviction that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John bear witness to the preaching of the apostles. As recently as Vatican II, this teaching was reaffirmed with clarity and emphasis: "The Church has always and everywhere maintained, and continues to maintain, the apostolic origin of the four Gospels" (
Dei
Verbum
18). Unlike the many apocryphal gospels that proliferated in the second and third centuries, the four canonical Gospels come directly from the apostolic age. They express in written form what the apostles were preaching and teaching about Jesus in the earliest decades of Christian history.

Numerous ancient writers contend that the four Gospels represent the authority of four apostles of Christ. Virtually everyone in earliest times held that the first and the fourth Gospels were penned by the apostles Matthew (the tax collector) and John (the son of Zebedee), both of whom were companions and eyewitnesses of Jesus during his historical ministry (Mt 9:9; 10:2-3; Mk 1:19-20; Jn 19:35). The situation is different in the case of the second and third Gospels, which primitive testimony ascribes to two apostolic associates, Mark (also called John; see Acts 15:37) and Luke (the physician; Col 4:14). These individuals were not personal companions of Jesus but worked in close collaboration with the apostles Peter and Paul (see Col 4:11, 14; 2 Tim 4:11; 1 Pet 5:13). So whereas the Gospels of Matthew and John are apostolic writings in the strict sense, the Gospels of Mark and Luke are said to embody the apostolic witness of Peter and Paul, respectively.

One of the great strengths of these traditions of authorship is their unanimity. It is remarkable that there are no rival claims either disputing the apostolic origin of the four Gospels or purporting to identify different individuals as responsible for writing them. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are consistently named as the Gospel writers throughout Christian antiquity.
¹
Indeed, there is no variation at all in the ancient Greek manuscripts with respect to the names that appear in the headings of the four Gospels ("The Gospel according to Matthew", "The Gospel according to Mark", etc.).

Scholars often assert that the Gospels initially circulated without titles and that only around
A.D.
125 were they supplied with superscriptions giving the names of the evangelists. But this claim, while theoretically possible, is historically unlikely. First of all, every extant Gospel text with a surviving title page includes a superscription with the name of the evangelist as given by tradition. If untitled Gospels ever existed, none has survived to confirm the assertion. Second, given the need to tag and identify books stored in church libraries and archives, there is reason to suppose that the Gospels were quickly supplied with some kind of heading (perhaps standardized into a common format at a later point) around the time of their publication. Such a need would be felt as soon as two or more Gospels were in circulation within the Christian community. Third, there was need to verify the authority of works read in the Christian liturgy alongside the books of the Old Testament. Since many produced written accounts about Jesus in the first century (see Lk 1:1), identifying the evangelist was one way to ensure that a given book was an authentic expression of apostolic testimony. In the end, no other scenario satisfactorily explains how the titles of the four Gospels were consistently used from the second century onward.
²
In all probability, the names of the four evangelists represent a tradition that goes back to the first century.

Another strength of the tradition of Gospel authorship is its unlikelihood as guesswork. Some would argue that the titles and traditions linked with the Gospels are historically unreliable. But if the Gospels were initially disseminated as anonymous works, and only decades later ideas about their origin began to crystallize and take hold throughout the Christian community, then we are left with a situation that is very difficult to explain. Not only are the names of the evangelists unanimously attested in the second century, but one is hard-pressed to account for why these names and not others were chosen and universally agreed upon. The apostle John may be thought an obvious choice to credit with a Gospel, given the extent of his influence in early Christianity. By why attribute the other Gospels to figures such as Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Even though Matthew was one of the Twelve, he appears only a few times in the New Testament and never in such a way that later generations would conclude that he was a figure of towering importance. Even more, it is unlikely that a Gospel addressed to readers from a Jewish background would be attributed to a tax collector, since tax collectors were generally despised by Jews as morally corrupt, ritually unclean, and politically traitorous. The problem is even more acute in the case of Mark and Luke, neither of whom was an apostle and neither of whom appears in the writings of the New Testament as a prominent authority figure in the earliest Christian community. If churchmen in the second century were merely speculating about the authorship of the Gospels, one might reasonably expect them to have preferred more illustrious personalities such as Peter or Paul. At the very least, one would expect more than one opinion to have made itself heard in the annals of Christian history.

Canon of the Gospels
Christianity recognizes and reveres four Gospels, no more and no less. Only the texts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are accepted as inspired witnesses to the life of Jesus and to what he accomplished for our salvation. These four writings stand as four pillars supporting the Church's faith and proclamation for all time.

In contrast, several heresies that sprouted up in the second century
A.D.
made the mistake of reducing or expanding the Church's fourfold Gospel collection. Some went astray by seizing upon a single Gospel to the neglect or outright rejection of the others. For example, it is said that the Ebionites made exclusive use of (some form of) Matthew. Likewise, Marcion and his band of followers acknowledged none but a mutilated and downsized version of Luke. Others moved in the opposite direction by composing spurious gospels to stand alongside the canonical Gospels. This was the fault of various Gnostic communities, who produced an array of pseudo-gospels in the second and third centuries, none of which has a serious claim to preserve eyewitness testimony from the first century.

Even within the Church it was necessary to safeguard the integrity of the fourfold Gospel. This need was first felt when Tatian, a student of St. Justin Martyr, compiled the
Diatessaron,
a work in which the four Gospels were woven together into a single, continuous narrative of the life and ministry of Jesus (ca.
A.D.
170). Even this pious attempt to harmonize the Gospel accounts was deemed unacceptable by the Church. The integrity of the four Gospels as four distinct witnesses to Jesus Christ was not to be compromised.

The evidence of early Christian writings suggests that the authority of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John was widely acknowledged by the middle of the second century. By this time it was already an established custom to read the Gospels, called "the memoirs of the apostles", alongside the books of the Old Testament in the Church's liturgy (see St. Justin Martyr,
First Apology
67). Indeed, it is probable that the canon of the four Gospels was the first part of the New Testament canon to become a universal tradition in the Church. Doubts lingered about the authenticity of several biblical books during the early centuries, and the New Testament canon of twenty-seven books was not ratified by regional synods until the late fourth and early fifth centuries. But the collection of Gospels deemed worthy of liturgical proclamation and instruction was a settled matter long before that.