Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 40

Before the word was written, it was first spoken. God first said, “Let there be light,” and later on, the sacred author wrote those words on paper. Jesus first spoke the word when He preached His Sermon on the Mount. He didn’t dictate to Matthew as He was preaching. Instead, Matthew wrote things down much later, well after Jesus died, rose, and ascended into heaven. None of the Gospels were written during Jesus’s life on earth. He died in A.d. 33, and the earliest Gospel manuscript, which is the Aramaic version of Matthew (alluded to by ancient sources), was written between A.d. 40 and 50. The other three Gospels — Mark, Luke, and John — were written between A.d. 53 and 100. Matthew and John, who wrote the first and the last Gospels, were two of the original Twelve Apostles, so they personally heard what Jesus said and saw with their own eyes what He did. Mark and Luke weren’t apostles but disciples, and most of their information on what Jesus said and did wasn’t a first-hand eyewitness account; rather, their information was handed down to them by others who were witnesses. (Remember that the word tradition means “to hand down.”) The unwritten or spoken Gospel was told by word of mouth by the Apostles well before the evangelists, the Gospel writers, ever wrote one word. Luke received much of his data from Jesus’s mother, the Virgin Mary, and Mark received plenty of info from Peter, the apostle Jesus left in charge.

If some time passed between what Jesus actually said and did and when the Gospel writers put His words and actions on paper (actually on parchment), what took place during that period? Before the written word was the unwritten, or spoken, word. In the Old Testament, things happened and were said long before they were written down. So, too, in the New Testament, Jesus preached His sermons and worked His miracles, died on the Cross, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven long before anyone wrote it down. No one took notes while He preached. No letters were written between Jesus and the Apostles. Sacred Tradition predates and precedes Sacred Scripture, but both come from the same source: God.

The New Testament is totally silent on whether Jesus ever married or had children. The Bible says nothing about His marital status, yet Christians believe He had neither a wife nor kids. Sacred Tradition tells that He never married, just as Sacred Tradition says that the Gospels number only four. Without a written list, who decides (and how) if the Old Testament contains 39 books in Protestant Bibles or 46 books in Catholic Bibles and the New Testament has 27? If Catholics were to believe only in the written word, then no answer would exist. But another avenue exists, the unwritten word, and we can go by that.