thegiftofscripture.docVIP

THE GIFT OF SCRIPTURE This day marks an important fortieth anniversary. Forty years ago today there took place in Rome an event which will always be important for me personally, and which I may without exaggeration say has marked my life. Those who have read the Foreword to The Gift of Scripture, and certainly their Eminences who wrote it, will be thinking I am referring to, and perhaps even a little overplaying, the publication of the Conciliar decree on Revelation, Dei Verbum, promulgated on 18th November, 1965. However, on that day, in another part of the Vatican, another event was taking place: I was sitting my final examination for the Licence in Sacred Scripture. I dare to mention this comparatively trivial event because the examination itself marks how far we have come since then. The exam was in biblical history. Biblical history was, for this purpose, divided into 30 periods, of which one was to be set for the 3-hour exam, written of course in Latin. It was received wisdom that one of those subjects could not be set and need not be revised. Accordingly, I revised only the 29 other topics, and inevitably found myself obliged to write for three hours on the one I had not revised: ‘The historical and geographical order of the ministry of Jesus’. Presumably candidates were expected to harmonise the divergent chronologies of the gospels, to describe the routes taken by Jesus on his journeys, the order in which his miracles occurred and the exact location on the hill above the Lake of Galilee where he preached the Sermon on the Mount. To complete the picture of how far we have come I dare also to say that a few days previously I had lunched at the English College with the Bishops assembled for the Council. In the course of the lunch my episcopal neighbour remarked, ‘Oh, you are a student of the Bible, are you? I suppose that means you don’t believe in it.’ In the 40 years which have passed since the promulgation of Dei Verbum we have come a long way, both in th