The Catholic bishops of England and Wales, and of Scotland, have prepared a teaching document, The Gift of Scripture that, as reported in The Times, "instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true."
In the words of the bishops, one should not expect "total accuracy" from the Bible. "We should not," they say, "expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision."
In contrast, for example, to fundamentalist Christians whose commitment to the "inerrancy" of the Bible includes a literal affirmation of the creation narrative, the Catholic bishops say the account "cannot be 'historical'. At most, they say, they may contain 'historical traces'."
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Commenting on how the Catholic Church has changed its position regarding the Bible, The Times comments:
Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible.
In the document, the bishops acknowledge their debt to biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be approached in the knowledge that it is "God's word expressed in human language" and that proper acknowledgement should be given both to the word of God and its human dimensions.
The bishops attempt to distinguish between passages in the Bible pertaining to salvation, which they affirm as true, and secular passages, where "total accuracy" should not be expected:
The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: "We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters."
They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its "intransigent intolerance" and to warn of "significant dangers" involved in a fundamentalist approach.
The bishops also take on, and reject, anti-Jewish passages, for example:
Of the notorious anti-Jewish curse in Matthew 27:25, "His blood be on us and on our children", a passage used to justify centuries of antisemitism, the bishops say these and other words must never be used again as a pretext to treat Jewish people with contempt. Describing this passage as an example of dramatic exaggeration, the bishops say they have had "tragic consequences" in encouraging hatred and persecution. "The attitudes and language of first-century quarrels between Jews and Jewish Christians should never again be emulated in relations between Jews and Christians."
They also reject the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation:
The bishops say: "Such symbolic language must be respected for what it is, and is not to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to discover in this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and about when the end will come."