Pope's book should boost Scripture studies, Cardinal Ouellet says
March 11, 2011
At a March 10 press conference introducing the 2nd volume of Pope Benedict’s book Jesus of Nazareth, Cardinal Marc Ouellet said that he believed the Pope’s work could lead to “the dawn of a new era of exegesis, a promising age of theological interpretation.”
Cardinal Ouellet, the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and a former student of then-Professor Ratzinger, emphasized the scholarly quality of the Pope’s book, and particularly its challenge to contemporary Scripture scholars. He pointed out that the Pontiff “first enters into dialogue with German exegesis, though he does not overlook other important authors from the French, English, or Romance language areas.” The Pope’s thorough knowledge of the field, displayed in this work, should “enliven debates that have become stagnated because of rationalist or positivist prejudices,” he said.
The Pope’s new work, Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, also demands that Scripture scholars recognize the true claims of Jesus as Messiah, the cardinal said. “A number of modern exegetes, under the influence of dominant ideologies, have made Jesus out to be a revolutionary, a master of morality, an eschatological prophet, an idealist rabbi, a madman of God, a messiah in some way in the image of His exegete,” he observed.
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