Dear students: Several of our meetings will be dedicated to discussing Dei Verbum.

Read the
article attached and get introduced to this Church
document. To evaluate your comprehension and the capacity to inquire outside
this article kindly answer the questions provided here.  

What is Dei Verbum and how is it related to the study and

understanding of the Bible?
Dei Verbum is the word of God and this is very related to the study and understanding of the
Bible because it is guided by the holy spirit. The Bible communicates the word of God and all
that is necessary for the salvation.

 Before Vatican II, what influences to the faith did the

Church fear? How did this fear impact Biblical Studies at the time?

The decades before Vatican II were marked by intense discussions around complicated
theological issues; these formed a backdrop for the drafting of the first documents (technically,
schemata) to be considered at the Council itself. The Church had struggled throughout the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with modern ideas, scientific develop-ments, and
secular influences and their impact on the faith. We need not recount the well-known stories of
the anti-Modernist campaign or the crisis of Americanism, and the like. We do, however, need
to take a quick glance at how Biblical Studies fared in this environment, because these
influences, in fact, set the stage for the struggles that focused immediately on the first schema,
which eventually become Dei Verbum.
 
 What did the scholars
reconsider in the Pentateuch and the New Testament with the rise of the new
means of studying the Sacred Scriptures?
scholars began to see cracks in the presumed historical veneer of the biblical books. At first,
their attention was cast on the Old Testament, the Pentateuch in particular, where some
questioned the Mosa-ic authorship of the first five books of the Bible. Quickly, how-ever, the
New Testament came into view, with questions aris-ing particularly around the historical
reliability of the Gospels.
 What other Church encyclicals regarding the Bible were
written before Dei Verbum? What do these encyclicals say and what result did
they attain so far?
is its fairly balanced ap-proach to new developments in Scripture studies given the
predominance of literal habits of reading sacred texts. While Pope Leo cautioned Catholic
exegetes to embark on new re-search from the perspective of faith and from within the
Church’s doctrinal framework, he also encouraged them to make good use of the modern
methods of Scripture study,

 Why do we have Dei Verbum?

This is the foundation of our faith and we believe that through his word we can find salvation
and by the word of God we will be guided in our daily life.
Explain with YOUR OWN WORDS the meaning of this statement:
“Tradition and Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God.”
Use illustration if necessary.
Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed
to the Church. They flow out of the same divine wellspring and together make up one sacred
deposit of faith from which the Church derives her certainty about revelation.
How do you understand the statement: “God and human authors
are affirmed as true authors of the Scriptures”?
the Constitution asserts the inspiration of the Scriptures through the Holy Spirit, who guided
the human authors of the Bible to ensure that their writings would express the proper divine
message. God and human are affirmed as the true authors the Scriptures. According to 2tim.
3:16-17, that all Scriptures is given by inspiration by God.

What are the novelties proposed by Dei Verbum?

 continuous reference to teachings from Trent and Vatican Council I, among other Councils,
concerning the canon, inspiration, and truth of the Scriptures;
 multiple references to biblical texts and Fathers of the Church, especially notables like
Jerome, Augustine, Ire-naeus, and John Chrysostom;
 affirmation that the Sacred Scriptures were inspired by the Holy Spirit, with God as their
author;
 reiteration of the concept of revelation as God’s mysteri-ous but direct self-communication to
human beings, of which Jesus Christ is both the goal and foremost expres-sion;
 affirmation that both the Old and New Testaments are fully God’s Word, and that the Old
Testament is hidden in the New, while the New Testament fulfills and makes fully understood
the Old;
 encouragement to use the Bible as a reliable and divinely-inspired guide for teaching, moral
instruction, prayer, and the spiritual growth;
 mention of the time-honored place of the Vulgate in Cath-olic scriptural reading;
 preservation of the role of the Magisterium of the Church, under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, to guarantee the faithful interpretation of the Bible.

Many more could be added to this list to show how Dei Ver-bum was in line with earlier Church
teaching. And yet, some novel aspects introduced by Dei Verbum should not be over-looked. A
short list would include the following:
 extensive treatment of the mystery of revelation in person-alistic terms, employing the
language of friendship, and parental imagery (as in a mother speaking to her children), with a
concomitant avoidance of propositional language;

 explanation of the complex interrelationship between Sa-cred Scripture and tradition as one
unified source of divine revelation;
 analogical use of the Incarnation to explain the Bible as equally the Word of God and the
product of real human authors;
 explicit adoption of the teaching of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s identification of three
layers of tradition within the canonical Gospels (Sancta Mater Ecclesia), thus acknowledging a
more complex process for their birth;
 the call for complete and easy access to the Bible in order that all the faithful might read it;
 the presence of an ecumenical orientation in the Constitu-tion, consistent with the other
conciliar documents, but especially in the call for ecumenical translations of the Bible;
 the refusal to invoke the word “inerrancy” to defend the basic truth of Scripture, instead
asserting “that the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth
which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures” (Dei
Verbum, 11, emphases added);
 the lack of any anathemas, despite evident tensions in the decades prior to the Council
between Catholic exegetes and Roman Curial officials over the proper interpretation of
Scripture.

According to the article, is there any other Catholic

teaching on the Bible that came after Dei Verbum? Elaborate on your answer.