Shining the light of the Bible on the issues of today

A new Biblical anthropology seeks to answer the perennial question, what is man, Ruadhán Jones hears

Scriptural studies are as old as the hills; anthropology is little more than 150 years old. In bringing the two together, the Pontifical Biblical Commission is living out the call of Vatican II to read the signs of the times in the light of faith. The result was always likely to produce a few surprises, and one of the author’s says that was in fact the commission’s hope.

Fr Adrian Graffy joined the commission – which advises the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on issues pertaining to Scripture – in 2013, and in 2014 the commission settled on a topic for discussion: Biblical anthropology. In the finished product, What is man? A Biblical Anthropology, the commission seeks to answer a question which has tested the minds of men and women down through the ages – what is man?

“We were given choices [of topics for study] and at some point, we don’t know quite how, Pope Francis was involved,” Fr Graffy tells me over Zoom. “The first meeting I had was in 2014 and the Pope had chosen the topic of Biblical anthropology, in other words how human beings are presented in the Scriptures. What was in Pope Francis’ head we don’t know, I don’t know that it was one idea, but maybe it appealed to him as this whole topic could be looked at profitably and hopefully it’s going to be of use at many levels.

“I think that because anthropology studies something of the identity of human beings, problems around gender and sexuality – that may have been part of the reason it was chosen. But then, there are also the issues of human beings as brothers and sisters, all the huge implications for migration and the way you treat foreigners etc., and the climate.”

Biblical anthropology

As Fr Graffy implies, the way we answer the question ‘what is man’ is very important, with implications for all aspects of human life. Anthropology is a broad field, which Fr Graffy sums up as being “the study of human beings, whatever we can say about” them, so it is well suited to analysing the multifarious components of human nature. It is broken down into smaller fields of study, including social anthropology, cultural, linguistic and more.

Now, the Biblical commission has effectively added a new field, that of Biblical anthropology, which examines “what does the Bible say about human beings, which might sound  a pretty easy question to answer, but on the other hand it’s a very complex question”, Fr Graffy explains.

“The way we’ve gone about it, which is thought to be quite sort of original, is that we want to cover the whole of Scripture, but we need a starting point,” he continues. “So the starting point is Genesis chapters 2 and 3, which are the story of Eden, the creation of the man and the woman and then the sin in the Garden of Eden.

“Those are the texts which give us the starting point. And then in four different chapters we sort of build on them and go through the rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament as well. It’s quite wide ranging, and you don’t get stuck anywhere. You’re suddenly taken on to something in the New Testament, the Gospels and St Paul.”

Human relationships

The areas the commission were interested in exploring were as wide ranging as the texts in the Bible, Fr Graffy says, with human relationships and sexuality being one of the preoccupations.

“There is a very long chapter on man and woman, and that develops into other human relationships, parents and children, siblings, and takes material from Genesis and takes it through, you know, seeing what the rest of scripture says. That’s one of the preoccupations. But every chapter [differs] – the final chapter is basically a whole panorama of what we would call the history of salvation. Sin and salvation, what does that mean? How is that understood? How are those concepts understood through the scriptures.

“It’s after that it comes into contact with thinkers who are coming at these issues from other perspectives. My anxiety would be, is it going to remain a book in a library? Or are people going to say, well this is quite interesting. To make it attractive, and I have to say a word on the publisher, they’ve done such a good job on it, Darton, Longman and Todd. It’s very readable and I think, this is the kind of book that someone who wants to explore the Bible and is anxious about, well, what does the Bible really say? Because we’ve got so many false interpretations. We just hope that it’s going to do some good.”

Surprising interpretations

There are areas in which the commission’s interpretations may prove surprising, Fr Graffy says, and adds that this was his hope: “I think for people with a lively interest and an open mind, I think they might be quite surprised by what they find in this in this document, I hope they would be.”

One area in which this comes to the fore is on the issue of the climate and climate change. Fr Graffy says that, quite independently of the Pope, the study came to focus on the issues analysed by Francis in two of his encyclicals, Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti.

“One thing that has struck me working on it in translation and subsequently is the way that the issues which are absolutely essential to the life of the Church now, and the world, like climate, the protection of creation and also the brothers and sisters issues – the two great encyclicals of Pope Francis – those issues are emerging from the text quite independently,” Fr Graffy explains. “We didn’t confer with Pope Francis and he didn’t confer with us, but they emerge from Scripture. Scripture has something to say, which is quite surprising, it’s absolutely in your face about looking after creation, which we haven’t done, looking after brothers and sisters, which we don’t do.

“These are issues related to anthropology, related to the presentation of human beings, through the Bible. As well as giving so much evidence of the failure of human beings in this regard. I mean, all the wars there are in Scripture and then the basic call of the Gospel to treat people right, which is what a lot of the protests are saying these days. Why don’t we finally get a grip of this and behave differently? But of course, there are so many different interests involved that it’s hard to change people’s hearts or to invite them to think. I think it’s a book with a lot of ramifications, a lot of connections.”

Controversy

Another area in which the book courts controversy is around issues of translation. These can appear nitpicking, but have significant ramifications. For instance, do we translate the Hebrew word “adam” in Genesis as being “man” or “human being”? And how then does this affect New Testament interpretations of the text? Fr Graffy, along with Fr Fearghus Ó’Fearghail, was responsible for translating the original Italian text into English and this was one of the many such issues they faced in writing the book in English.

“And of course the whole issue of, do you translate adam as man,” Fr Graffy begins. “There has been controversy and there has been argument about why is the book called, What is Man? Why isn’t it called ‘what are human beings’ or ‘what is the human being’, because that’s what it really means.

“The tendency would be to say, well that’s the traditional translation. But I would sort of apologise that it’s called what is man. It’s from Psalm 8, it doesn’t even use that term (adam), it uses the word enosh, which is another Hebrew word for man. The essence of this is, what is the essence of the human being created by God, the star of creation? Human beings, man, that’s a huge issue and of course it translates into the Liturgy, where we need language which is sensitive to the way we understand these words today, not the way they were understood 50 years ago.”

St Paul

Fr Graffy says that the book is “quite critical” of some of the statements from St Paul, which relate to the relationship between man and woman. One example is St Paul’s comment that “man did not come from woman; no, woman came from man”.

“I think you’ll find that the document is quite critical of some of those bland statements which would have come out of St Paul’s culture,” Fr Graffy says. “So we can’t possibly be talking of the wife as being less than the husband. This is no longer acceptable. There’s quite a lot, for people who think, this is a Church document, there are quite actually surprising statements. Like, we accept and we realise that the Scripture is of its day, it has something to say through the culture of the day and we are now in a different culture. We have to ask ourselves, what is the enduring weight of that, or do we have to move on to something quite different?”

History of salvation

While there is a great deal of focus on the “new issues”, as Fr Graffy puts it, the book also devotes one of its four chapters to an “old issue” – the history of salvation. In this chapter, the Biblical commission draws out the “unique aspects” of the Christian message, including Original Sin, the Ten Commandments and God’s intervention into history for our salvation.

The chapter explores “the question of the Commandments as being not a limitation of human beings, but an invitation to accept our position that there are limits to what we can and really what we should do, that God is sort of subtly instructing us”, Fr Graffy says.

“You know, there are things that are beyond what we should be doing and that, when we get to the climate issue, it’s there, directly in our faces,” he continues. “Some say, no, no, we’re going to do this anyway – I don’t need to list the politicians that take that attitude, they’re lining up at the present time. That vision of the Commandments, or what we learn from Scripture as regards our behaviour as being a gift rather than something which is set there by God to limit us and to stop us. It’s fascinating.

“[O]ne of the things that comes out at the end is that everything God does is for our good. Even judgement is for our good, the apparent limitations are for the good of human beings. And the whole panorama of, where are we moving towards? That’s what it comes down to in the end, from the very beginning of the book when it begins to talk about death and our sort of vision, what is the basic mystery of human beings? That we’re being prepared for life with God, and once you start grappling with that, you’ve got a huge sort of vision that will have huge implications for so much.”

Fr Graffy hopes that the book will be of interest to a wide audience, reiterating his desire that it would not end up on a library shelf somewhere.

“I hope it will appeal to anybody who’s starting to have a serious interest, either in the Scriptures or the teaching of the Church, morality, those kind of issues,” he explains. “Say they haven’t looked seriously at the Bible at this point, I think this is somewhere they could start. As you can see, the print size varies and actually the small size you can actually skip that and read through the major statements.

“But if you want to go into detail, there are things there you can look at. One of the innovations we put in for the English translation is the index, which I think will be a great help. If someone wants to look up something they’re interested in and find something instead of having to wade through the whole thing.”

Privilege

Reflecting on the experience of researching, writing and then translating the Biblical anthropology, Fr Graffy says it was a “great privilege” to be one of the 20 scholars working on the Commission.

“I was involved in teaching Scripture, I was involved with the bishops of England and Wales, and producing resources for Scripture,” he says. “I was really quite amazed to be asked to be involved in this and it’s been a wonderful experience, from the point of view of international cooperation with different men and women. I think we were the first group with women on the commission, and in years to come I think more will be on the commission and we have a woman secretary.

“That is part of maybe how the Vatican is slow to change things, but there are changes coming about. And particularly on an argument like this, you have to have the woman’s perspective as well. It’s been a great privilege for me, I’m delighted to be able to take part in the production of the next document.”

Fr Adrian Graffy is a priest in the diocese of Brentwood, England and a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. What is Man? A Journey Through Biblical Anthropology was produced by the commission and translated to English by Fr Graffy and Fr Fearghus Ó’Fearghail. It was published on April 1 of this year by Darton, Longman and Todd and is available online.