http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org/

On October 5th, 2005, the hierarchy of the Roman
Catholic Church published a teaching document
instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible
are not actually true. The publication entitled The
Gift of Scripture says, We should not expect to find
in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete
historical precision. The article states that the
first eleven chapters of Genesis are not accurate. The
report also denies Matthew 27:25 and the entire book
of Revelation.
 

"The Times reporter treats what students have long
been taught at modern seminaries as if it were
astonishing new information the Church has never
recognized up to now."

London Times, Oct. 5, 2005, by Ruth Gledhill, London,
England

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland
are warning their five million worshippers, as well as
any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they
should not expect "total accuracy" from the Bible. "We
should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific
accuracy or complete historical precision," they say
in The Gift of Scripture.

The document is timely, coming as it does amid the
rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US.
Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the
story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught
alongside Darwin's theory of evolution in schools,
believing "intelligent design" to be an equally
plausible theory of how the world began. But the first
11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at
times conflicting stories of creation are told, are
among those that this country's Catholic bishops
insist cannot be "historical". At most, they say, they
may contain "historical traces".

The document shows how far the Catholic Church has
come since the 17th century, when Galileo was
condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal
belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by
advocating the Copernican view of the solar system.
Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist
Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical
methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible.
In the document, the bishops acknowledge their debt to
biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be
approached in the knowledge that it is "God's word
expressed in human language" and that proper
acknowledgement should be given both to the word of
God and its human dimensions.

They say the Church must offer the gospel in ways
"appropriate to changing times, intelligible and
attractive to our contemporaries". The Bible is true
in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but
continue: "We should not expect total accuracy from
the Bible in other, secular matters." They go on to
condemn fundamentalism for its "intransigent
intolerance" and to warn of "significant dangers"
involved in a fundamentalist approach. "Such an
approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one
nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their
own superiority, and even consider themselves
permitted by the Bible to use violence against
others."

Of the notorious anti-Jewish curse in Matthew 27:25,
"His blood be on us and on our children", a passage
used to justify centuries of anti-Semitism, the
bishops say these and other words must never be used
again as a pretext to treat Jewish people with
contempt. Describing this passage as an example of
dramatic exaggeration, the bishops say they have had
"tragic consequences" in encouraging hatred and
persecution. "The attitudes and language of
first-century quarrels between Jews and Jewish
Christians should never again be emulated in relations
between Jews and Christians." As examples of passages
not to be taken literally, the bishops cite the early
chapters of Genesis, comparing them with early
creation legends from other cultures, especially from
the ancient East. The bishops say it is clear that the
primary purpose of these chapters was to provide
religious teaching and that they could not be
described as historical writing.

Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of
Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, in
which the writer describes the work of the risen
Jesus, the death of the Beast and the wedding feast of
Christ the Lamb. The bishops say: "Such symbolic
language must be respected for what it is, and is not
to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to
discover in this book details about the end of the
world, about how many will be saved and about when the
end will come." In their foreword to the teaching
document, the two most senior Catholics of the land,
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of
Westminster, and Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Archbishop of
St Andrew's and Edinburgh, explain its context. They
say people today are searching for what is worthwhile,
what has real value, what can be trusted and what is
really true. The new teaching has been issued as part
of the 40th anniversary celebrations of Dei Verbum,
the Second Vatican Council document explaining the
place of Scripture in revelation. In the past 40
years, Catholics have learnt more than ever before to
cherish the Bible. "We have rediscovered the Bible as
a precious treasure, both ancient and ever new."

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