Thoughts on Scripture from Benedict

I thought this went nicely with some of what we're reading in Benedict's "Jesus of Nazareth".


To interpret Scripture theologically means not only to listen to the historical authors whom it juxtaposes, even opposes, but to seek the one voice of the whole, to seek the inner identity that sustains the whole and binds it together. A purely historical method attempts to distill the historical moment of genesis, thereby setting it apart from all others and fixing it. Theological exegesis, while not displacing such a historical approach from its proper terrain, nonetheless does transcend it. The moment does not exist in isolation. It is part of a whole, and I do not really understand even this part until I understand it together with the whole... Scripture is interpreted by Scripture... The reading of Scripture as a unity thus logically entails a second principle. It means reading it as something present, not only in order to learn about what was once the case or what people once thought, but to learn what is true. This, too, is an aim that a strictly historical exegesis cannot directly pursue. Such an exegesis focuses, after all, on the past moment of the genesis of the text and therefore necessarily reads it in relation to its prior history... The question of truth is a naive, unscientific question. And yet, it is the real question of the Bible as such... The question is meaningful only if the Bible itself is something present, if a subject that is present speaks out of it, and if this subject stands apart from all other living historical subjects because it is bound up with the truth and, therefore, can convey knowledge of the truth in human speech. -- Pope Benedict XVI