God, The Author of Scripture | Preface to God and His Image: An Outline of Biblical Theology | Fr. Dominique Barthélemy, O.P.
This book is the work of an amateur. An "amateur", from the Latin amare, is one who hastens toward the things he loves, without constantly checking that the ground he treads on is solid, recovering by his next step the balance he lost
in the last, uncertain one. Yet in spite of this too simple
apology; the pages that I now offer for publication cause
me a little misgiving. I am afraid that in writing them I
have succeeded only too well in forgetting what I know
about textual or literary criticism. When I set forth certain
precepts of the law, the Elohistic and Deuteronomic codes
intermingle without the least constraint. Traits in the character of
Moses are gathered from Yahwistic, Elohistic and sometimes priestly
traditions as though it were quite in order
to unite their witness without learned preliminary discussions. The
Books of Exodus, Ezekiel and Revelation converse together like old
friends, without any introduction. I
am therefore afraid that those who peruse these pages may
be shocked to find me regarding the Bible as the work of a
single author. I am aware that a work cannot be called
serious--in the critical sense--if it springs from such an
old-fashioned idea. So it must be clearly understood that in
this sense the present work is not serious.
However, I bring myself to publish it because I have come to the conclusion that reams written in an overcritical spirit run the risk of concealing the fundamental nature of Holy Scripture: a word of God spoken to his people today, spoken to you and me. Just before writing the ten chapters of this book, I spent ten whole years studying the Palestinian recensions of the Greek Bible made during the first century of the Christian era. This work is now in the hands of printers in Holland. [1] I do not belittle it, but I confess it brought me no new light whatsoever on the impact that the Word of God must have on my life. One could take a painting and write the story of the successive varnishings and cleanings it has undergone and discuss the changes of emphasis these have led to. One might write the history of the progress of the cracks in the Mona Lisa and seek to discover when it was that the crack joining the inner corner of the right eye to the right nostril first appeared, or the slightly winding one a little to the right of it. This has importance, for these two cracks make it difficult to perceive the transition from the nose to the cheek, both of which are equally clear, and yet are placed on two different planes. Since the Bible is the word of God, it is only right that much time and trouble should be given to the study of the various transformations undergone by its text. But the enlarged photographic effect thus produced has little connection with the viewpoint of lectio divina.
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