Vittorio Messori has never just been a journalist who writes about the Church and has published book-length interviews with two Popes, but he has primarily been a student of the Christian religion, having written many scholarly books in this respect. In fact, he has the distinction of having been cited by Benedict XVI in the second volume of JESUS OF NAZARETH, for the thesis he expressed in his book entitled 'He suffered under Pontius Pilate' on the passion and death of Jesus, in which he says that Jesus acted according to Jewish Law when he 'cleaned out' the Temple of Jerusalem.
Once again, I thank Beatrice for leading me to this article which Messori wrote for the September issue of the monthly Catholic newspaper Il Timone (she is much more conscientious than I am in checking out Messori's online site, from which this article comes). In the article, Messori calls attention to a little-remarked verse from the Prologue to the Gospel of John which, but for a single and simple historical change to the grammatical number of a verb - from singular to plural - appears to be the most direct and clearest testimonial in the Gospels to the 'triple virginity' of Mary...
The great surprise
in the Gospel of John
Jesuit Fr. Ignace de la Potterie for a long time held the professorial chair for the New Testament - rightly considered the most important academic post in the Pontifical Biblical Institute, in its turn rightly considered the most authoritative Church institution for the study of the Scriptures.
The Institute is an offshoot of the Pontifical Gregorian University (run by the Jesuits) whose Rector is named by the Pope himself, to indicate how important it is.
The 'Biblico', as it is familiarly known, was founded by St. Pope Pius X in 1909 to respond - with the same weapons of scientific rigor - to the attacks against the very foundations of the faith by so-called 'independent critics'.
Namely, those critics who parsed the texts of the Old and New Testaments, especially the latter, often concluding that the Bible was not about history but rather a collection of myths, symbols and legends, and that therefore the 'historical Jesus... the one who really lived' was an obscure person of uncertain biography who had little or nothing to do with the 'Christ of the faith'.
in short, that the Credo has inauthentic bases that are historically not sustainable, and Christianity was nothing but a fairly late construction by Hellenists and marginal elements of an obscure Judaism.
In the face of such an assault, the Church finally realized that it was not enough to be indignant and to launch invectives against the 'unbelievers' but that she must respond with the same instruments and the same quality of erudition.
And the Biblico dedicated itself to the task with positive results that, first of all, took away from Catholics the fear that the foundations of their faith were no longer defensible before Science (with the capital S that secular university professors insist on using), and took away their suspision - perhaps unexpressed but tormenting - that the very incarnation of God in history was unthinkable according to the rigorous categories of modern thought.
Prof. De la Potterie, who died a few years ago, was an eminent part most worthy of a spot among the distinguished Catholic scholars of the Biblico in the past century, among whom was one Carlo Maria Martini who was a professor and then rector of the Biblico (before being named Rector of the Gregorian University, and later, Archbishop of Milan).
Obviously highly cultured, with a mastery of several ancient and modern languages, Fr. Ignace honored me with his friendship and shared with me (at my level of being a non-specialist, though well-informed on the subject matter as much as I possibly could) what he was trying to do in order to confirm the historicity of the Gospels.
And when, at an advanced age, he retired to his native Belgium, he would surprise me now and then with a telephone call that both gladdened and saddened me. In effect, he was venting his feelings with me, disapproving of a certain 'modernism' and 'rationalism' that had affected even Catholic Biblicists, often in imitation of overly-venerated professors in the Protestant theological faculties, which still exist in German state universities.
I could only agree with him, if only because Fr. Ignace was anything but a closed traditionalist - rather he knew all the modern theories and methods, of which he accepted those that did not tend to transform the historical realism of the Gospels into myth or symbol.
On the other hand, there are professors and scholars for whom nothing in Scripture can be taken as written, and for whom the only indisputable things are their own notes and their efforts to 'demythify' the Bible.
But although he moved with mastery through all of Scripture, and especially, the New Testament, De la Potterie was known specifically as the best scholar on the evangelist John: on his Gospel, obviously, but also the three Letters attributed to him.
And it is precisely from the fourth evangelist that De la Potterie has identified, clarified and highlighted with a certainty that has not been attained before, an aspect that is as important as it is little known. Which is nothing less than this: in the famous Prologue to the Gospel ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God..."), John gives us explicit and precise testimony of the triple virginity of Mary - before, during and after the birth of Jesus.
Fr De la Potterie would tell me, as he wrote in his articles, that Biblicists today (unfortunately, even in some Catholic universities) prefer to ignore this aspect though it so important for the history of Redemption.
In some circles, whoever still speaks with conviction of the
semper Virgo (ever Virgin) raises suspicion almost as though he were a 'fundamentalist', or looked on askance as one would an old and obstinate retrograde.
Instead, there was this distinguished professor of a distinguished pontifical institute scrutinizing what 'his' John wrote to discover (or rediscover, as we shall see) that
at the very start of the Gospel, the text had been manipulated since early times to hide the truth by simply changing a verb from the singular to the plural form.
Prof. De la Potterie wrote about his very well-documented hypothesis in two articles of 50 pages each for
Marianum. the magazine of the homonymously named pontifical theological faculty, in 1978, and then reprised the argument, enriched with new researches, in 1983.
Those hundred page, dense with footnotes and citations in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, were much read by Biblical specialists who chose, however, to pass over it in silence.
That often happens in the world of Biblical scholars: Anything that could raise questions about prevailing prejudices and thought schemes is set aside, if a definitive demolition of the argument was not possible, considering, as in this case, the rigorous critical seriousness of the research and the writer's authoritativeness.
I remember that in one of our last telephone conversations, the aged scholar expressed bitter disappointment at the silence of his peers about such an important subject. It seemed to me that he was reaching out with a tacit but otherwise explicit call for me to help him make his discovery known, which was so relevant for the faith since it placed the authority of the fourth evangelist in support of the dogma of Mary's perennial virginity.
And so, in these pages, I will try to carry out Fr. Ignace's wish, by reporting the research of which he was a very effective instrument, though it was certainly not for his own sake or his academic career, but for our faith as Catholics.
I shall obviously be able to give just an initial but correct (or so I hope) summary after having examined those hundred pages with great care and attention. But it would be best for those who wish to know more about it in depth to read the two articles by De la Potterie in
Marianum, which may be acquired by requesting the magazine for a copy (through marianum@marianum.it), I assure you it is well worth your while.
This is not some sort of curiosity but a way to reinforce - based on Scripture itself - a truth about Mary that the Church has always believed and proclaimed.
Let us see what this is all about, by first reproducing the brief verse on which it is based. It is the thirteenth verse of Chapter I, the Johannine Prologue which we referred to earlie,r and which I will cite in the latest version of the Bible (2007) in the Italian translation authorized by the Italian bishops' conference.
But to understand it better, we must also look at the two preceding verses, the 11th and 12th.
[I am citing the English translation from the New American Bible of the USCCB.]
11 He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.
12 But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name,
13 who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.
[I never really examined this line before, but looking at verses 12 and 13 now, in the English translation, it is grammatically obvious that the antecedent of 'born not by natural generation, etc' is not the preceding "children of God... who believe in his name", but 'his name' alone, and therefore, the next clause must read "(he) who was born not by natural generation, etc". Of course, I have no scientific grounds for 'deciding' this on the basis only of an English translation many times removed from the original un-manipulated text..]
In Italian, verse 13 reads (in my translation): "who
were generated, not by blood, nor desire of flesh, nor human will, but by God".
(Certainly more colorful than the insipid Enqlish equivalent from the USCCB's NAB!)
That has been the traditional version, whereas according to De la Potterie, the authentic version was: "who (Jesus) was generated not by bloods, nor desire of flesh, nor human will, but by God".
One can see that the verb 'generate' is in the singular form not plural as in the versions of Scripture that we know. In effect, the subject is singular: Jesus. Whereas in the traditional version, the verb is plural, since the antecedent subject is taken to be "those who believe in his name".
[This grammatical point is seen much more obviously in the English NAB translation, as sub-optimal at that is in general.]
To repeat this crucial point more clearly: In the singular, the verse tells us that Jesus was divinely generated; in the plural, it refers to the transformation of believers through him.
One must also note at this point that, in all the ancient texts available to us, the word 'blood', in Greek, is used in the plural
[i.e., 'bloods'), and though the Latin Vulgate respects the plural ('
ex sanguinibus'), it has always been translated into the singular generic form, 'blood'.
And yet (this can be checked out even in classical dictionaries like that of the Tommaseo), 'sangui' (plural of blood) is rarely used in Italian but the form exists and has been used by many reputed writers. If the word has not been used in the Italian translations of the Gospel and is not used even today, it is not because the plural of 'blood' does not exist in Italian, as many say, but because the importance of the concept of 'blood' in the plural in John's thought was not understood by translators. As we shall see.
The first question must be: Do the ancient texts we have of the New Testament permit the use of the third person singular of the verb 'generate' (attributing it to Jesus) instead of the third person plural, attributing it to Christians?
It must also be pointed out right away that the Greek texts use the plural. But the oldest of those date back only to the fourth century, if we exclude casual fragments from papyri. On the other hand, we have texts from early Christian writers and Fathers of the Church, dating back to the second century, which cite Verse 13 in the singular.
Going back to the oldest text, St. Irinaeus of Lyons, in 190, used the singular. And more to the point, the always polemical Tertullian, around the year 200, raised a dispute over this very verse, accusing a heretical sect of
having falsified the words of John by using the verb 'generate' in the plural form. But that was what became the official text of the Gospel and which is used in all our current editions of the Bible.
However, besides the Latin, the singular form is used in verse 13 even in the oldest surviving texts in Syriac, in Coptic, and in Ethiopian.
It must be pointed out for those who are not familiar with Biblical criticism: tje reconstruction of the original text of Scripture based only on surviving documents is called 'external criticism'. But all modern scholars agree that it must be complemented by 'internal criticism', which goes in deeper, and in the case we are discussing, leads to a preference for "He was generated" rather than "they were generated".
In short, the situation is such that Fr. De la Potterie could write, back in 1978, then reaffirmed in 1983 in his second essay, that precisely. research not just into ancient evangelical manuscripts but even into citations by the earliest Christian authors, seemed to make it necessary that we adopt the original "He was generated by God" with Jesus as the subject.
Let us now re-read Verse 13 in what would seem to be the original version that is finally restored according to the evangelist's intention, and we will immediately realize (as we shall see even better later) that what we have here is a most precious testimony on the triple virginity of Mary.
We are convinced that John was referring to her whom he never calls by name, but only as 'the mother of Jesus', in the episode about the marriage in Cana, and on her presence at the foot of the Cross. But now here emerges a third Marian testimonial from him, which has truly primary importance.
Let us now ask ourselves: Why was it that, by the fourth century, the reference to the divine origin of Jesus had disappeared, and the plural verb that has come down to our day was imposed on Gospel texts, but which, at closer look, seems to introduce a kind of extraneous entity?
Indeed, the whole of John's Prologue is a solemn hymn to the Incarnation of the Word, and all of a sudden, there appears in a manner that does not seem justified, "those who believe in his name", namely the members of the Church. In what way could the baptized - who are men in flesh and blood and not ethereal angels - have been generated "not by blood, nor the desire of the flesh nor human will"?
This is what seemed to have happened: In the primitive Church, the sect called the docetists - who denied the human nature of Jesus, and consequently, that he could have been conceived by Mary - were quite the rage. According to them, Mary was not the mother who had the infant Jesus in her womb, but simply a kind of watery tube through which Christ - whose human appearance was simply an illusion - had passed.
Docetism whose 'spiritualism' was particularly dangerous since it rendered Jesus not as a person but as some sort of super-archangel) relied precisely on Verse 13 of the Johannine Prologue that we are examining: Christ had come among us not just in a virginal way, as attested to by the words "not by desire of flesh or human will". But most especially, the docetist thesis was best proved, they claimed, by the phrase '
nec ex sanguinibus' (not by bloods).
But what are these 'bloods'? As I said earlier, there is no question that this plural form of the word 'blood' was the original text - all testimony says so - not just those in which Jesus is the subject, but even when his disciples are the subject.
Nut if the Messiah was the subject in John's Prologue verse, the expression could easily be used by the docetists: If he had not been 'generated by bloods', it is because he did not have a body like all human beings, he was never born, a process which is always accompanied by an effusion of blood from the mother.
Therefore, citing textually from Fr. De la Potterie, "in order to radically resolve the question and take away a weapon from the heretics, probably around the start of the third century, Church writers started to change the verb to the plural form, displacing the meaning of the verse to all Christians, but in the process, interrupting, among other things, the Johannine Prologue which is all centered on the mystery of the Logos made flesh".
The ecclesiastical 'retouch' to John's Prologue ended up editing the original of the Gospel, and it has come down to our day.
But let us reflect on that word 'bloods' in the plural, with some help from the synthesis made by Fr. Domenico Marcucci, one oftheh few scholars who had the courage to break with the conformism of his colleagues, to seriously consider the research of Fr. De la Potterie.
"In the Greek texts,
aima (blood), is found only in the singular. But John uses the plural. Why? To understand this, De La Potterie turned to Hebrew, considering that the fourth evangelist was deeply enmeshed into his own culture, which was Jewish.
"In the Hebrew version of the Old Testament, the plural of 'blood' (damim) means the blood shed by a woman at menstruation and during delivery. This made her impure, for which she needed to go to the Temple afterwards to be purified. Therefore the phrase 'not of bloods' signifies that the birth of Jesus took place, unlike that of any other, without the effusion of blood, therefore, virginally".
Let us now look again at Verse 13 in the version that would have been the original and consider the consequences: Jesus was 'generated by God", and therefore, "not through the desire of flesh, nor the will of man" (
virginitas ante partum, virginity before giving birth).
Moreover, his birth took place 'not with bloods', therefore without the usual human injuries, in which John implies both the
virginitas in partu and
post partum, since the delivery of Mary's son was achieved without any bleeding, which means the mother was left intact.
One can see that this is a conclusion of extraordinary importance - and this, simply through changing a verb from plural to the singular, which was apparently John's intention. Among other things, it is clear that the verse does not dispute the corporeal materiality, the human reality, of Jesus.
Indeed, the Prologue continues with the words: "And the Word became flesh, and came to dwell among us..."
It is a fact that, as De la Potterie points out, if the early Fathers of the Church already found in Matthew and Luke elements regarding the virginal conception of Jesus, there was not just a confirmation of it in the first chapter of John's Gospel, but also a direct reference to virginal delivery, without the loss of that which Jews considered impure as the blood of all those who gave birth.
Now then, why such apparent lack of interest, such silence over the rediscovery of the possibly precise scriptural basis for a truth such as the
semper Virgo, which was already present in the Christian Tradition of the second century and which became a dogma of the Church?
It is an article of faith that is considered so important that, in the East, among the rigid rules of iconography, there is one that prohibits ever representing Mary the Theotokos (God-bearer) without three stars - one on her head, and one on each shoulder - to symbolize her triple virginity.
Fr. Ignace was right to denounce the conformism of so many among his peers, for whom such a subject is a source of embarrassment, such that, as Fr. Marcucci points out, "In many manuals of Mariology used in Catholic seminaries, Mary's virginity before, during and after the birth of Jesus is the object of an embarrassed silence rather than something to be seriously discussed".
In one of his last books, Fr. Stefano De Flores, who was probably our best Mariologist (he died recently), who was also a professor at the Gregorian, cited the studies of De la Potterie which he accepted with conviction, judging that they were based not just on documentary evidence but on the dynamic of John himself. He thought it was a truly important acknowledgment.
Fr. de la Potterie's latest essay on this subject was written in 1983. Why is it that the current Italian translation of the Bible, reviewed or updated by the CEI 24 years after that article, does not mention, at least in a footnote to John 1,13, the possibility - which seems to be close to certainty - that the original text of Verse 13 in John's Prologue had Jesus as the subject, not his people?
One thing, however, has been confirmed for the nth time: Scriptures continue to be able to surprise us, some of which, as in the case we just looked at, has to do with the Mother of God whose mystery is both simultaneously discreet and inexhaustible.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/10/2012 08:02]