As we continue considering the Bible as the collection of writings accepted by the Church as inspired by God, we now focus on “inspiration.” We may speak of a movie or a song as being inspiring, but when we say “inspired” in the context of Scripture, we mean a text through which God communicates to man. The Catechism tells us the Holy Spirit assisted the human authors to write faithfully & without error the truths that God wished to impart to us for our salvation (105-107).When we think about the inspiration of the Old Testament, the epic events might come to mind, like the parting of the Red Sea or Elijah & the prophets of Baal. But how about the seemingly endless lists of strange names in the book of Numbers? So, perhaps “inspiring” may not be the best way to determine what is inspired.
Ancient texts like Genesis are surely inspired, right? Yet, the definitive version was only completed after the Israelites returned home from the exile in Babylon in 438 B.C. What about books written in Greek in the Hellenistic era? Could the Spirit of God not also speak through Greek-speaking Jews scattered throughout the Mediterranean world after the Exile?
The Church had to listen to the Spirit to discern which writings were inspired - basically the same list as the Greek version of the Old Testament. It was only 1,500 years later when Protestants began to question the inspiration of some of the books of the Old Testament that the Church at the Council of Trent formally defined the list of inspired books. So, we can see that inspiration is not self-evident, but requires some authority to separate what is truly inspired from God versus what is simply useful & edifying.
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