Catholics from Arkansas and six other states tackled five “puzzling” Scripture passages during the annual Bible Institute at St. John Center in Little Rock July 8-10.
For the past 21 years Little Rock Scripture Study has hosted a weekend event to bring a well-known scholar to Arkansas.
This year’s event, “And God Said What?,” was led by Father Patrick Mullen, a professor of biblical studies at St. John Seminary in Camarillo, Calif.
LRSS director Cackie Upchurch said this year’s topic was of major interest to the participants, according to their surveys. She said there are many passages that are not understood by today’s readers.
“We don’t know enough to put together what the original writer and the original audience understood,” she said.
Father Mullen helped the 123 participants understand some of the most confusing passages from the Old and New testaments.
In one session Father Mullen discussed war, violence and anger in the Hebrew Bible. He used the example of Deuteronomy 20:16-17: “… you shall not leave a single soul alive. You must doom them all … as the Lord, your God, has commanded you.”
In Joshua 11:6-23, Joshua was ordered to “hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.”
“Are the Scriptures history? Not at least as we know it,” he said.
He said “objective history” is a relatively modern idea.
“Can we take our 21st century skepticism and impose it on a document written 600 years before our time?” he asked. “Unfortunately we don’t have any Hebrew historians.”
The writers were not trying to convey the stories as facts, he said.
“It may not be fact, but it is true,” he said, adding that history books need to be based on facts, but Christian faith needs to be based on truth.
Other sessions covered Noah’s story and “why God killed just about everyone”; how the infancy narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke can both work at the same time; why Jesus would be baptized and have to die; and St. Paul’s verse in Ephesians, “wives be obedient to your husbands.”
The 2012 Bible Institute will be held June 29-July 1 with Abbot Gregory Polan, OSB, of Conception Abbey in Missouri. He will discuss “Psalms: Heartbeat of the Bible.”
