Daily Retreat 07/18/08

2008 Jul 18 Fri Is 38: 1-6. 21-22. 7-8/ Is 38: 10. 11. 12abcd. 16/ Mt 12: 1-8   From today's readings:  "O LORD, remember how faithfully and wholeheartedly I conducted myself in Your presence, doing what was pleasing to You!...  Those live whom the LORD protects; Yours is the life of my spirit....   the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."   An Isaiah Aside   A few weeks ago, the two Books of Kings were skimmed during the daily first readings.  Those with a good memory will recall mention of Hezekiah, one of the few good kings (though not perfect!) in the history of Judah and Israel who instigated reforms to uproot idolatry and return the people to worship of the True God.  Some highlights of his reign are recorded in chapters 18-20 of the Second Book of Kings, and those chapters are included (almost verbatim!) in chapters 36-39 of Isaiah.   This duplication of the history of Hezekiah reveals a thought-provoking anomaly found in the book of Isaiah: verses 21-22 of chapter 38 are clearly out of order!  The lectionary text, in fact, corrects the deviation and inserts those verses between verses 6 and 7, which better preserves the sense and also echoes the order in II Kings 20.  Then, there follows the Psalm-prayer of Hezekiah, most of which is read today in place of the responsorial psalm.  Although beautiful, this prayer has also suffered textual corruption, necessitating quite a bit of pure conjecture to establish the meaning (this can be noted by contrasting two translations, for which the major differences will betray the sketchy underlying original Hebrew text).   Since we recognize the Bible as the Word of God and profess a belief in the "inerrancy of Scripture," what are we to make of such scribal glosses that have crept into the text of the Bible over the course of centuries?  First, we cannot justify them all as somehow "intentional," as if the scribes were led by the Holy Spirit to make "slips of the pen" errors which would lead to thought-provoking insights of faith.  Inerrancy of Scripture applies to the sacred writers, not the copyists!  If you or I copy some verses from scriptures, there's no guarantee that we won't misspell, omit, or change the order of words (either by accident, or even on purpose!), and the scribes of the past had the same fallibility.     On the other hand, we need not be alarmed, because while there are many examples of such textual problems, their presence in the whole huge corpus of Scripture turns out to be the exceptions which prove the rule, because, by and large, the words of Holy Writ are remarkably well-preserved and firmly established by a near unanimity of ancient copies and translations - no other work of antiquity has anything close to the level of certainty that can be established for the text of Scripture.    I apologize to those who find my musing today to be too focused on somewhat technical aspects - I generally keep all that to a minimum, but sometimes such explanations are needed to reflect on the Church's approach to Scripture as a whole - clearly, appeal must occasionally be made to an authority outside of the Bible alone!