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Still True After all These Years

Still True After all These Years

This magnificent hardbound book proves out the adage—no matter how things appear to change, they effectively remain the same. This old book still has much to teach us.

In the preface, Fr. Cahill says The Framework of a Christian State is intended primarily for students of social science. Its main purpose is to summarize and present in a consecutive and more or less scientific form the main elements of the teachings of the popes, bishops, and respected Catholic authors on social organization and public life. If read with an open mind, the self-evident truths of Roman Catholicism will spell out the need for morality and honesty as the basic tenets of Christian government—nay, any government.

The truths in this book also reveal the self-serving efforts of all too many political leaders. Cahill makes this abundantly clear and gives a quotation, from the encyclical on the Kingship of Jesus Christ, by Pope Pius XI: “When once men recognize, both in private and public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace, and harmony.”

The first paragraph of the preliminary chapter sets the tone for the remainder of the book: “A Christian state is one in which laws and administration, as well as the organized activities and general outlook of the citizens, are in accordance with Christian principles. These principles, insofar as they are applicable to social and public life, are practically identical with the dictates of natural law.” To me this says one thing—a Christian state must operate in accordance with the Golden Rule.

The author notes that Bishop Von Ketteler of Mainz (1811–1877) and Fr. A. Taperelli, S.J. (1783–1862) of Rome are responsible for much of modern Catholic social teaching. These two men are associated with the foundation of the science of Catholic sociology and the Catholic movements to which it has given birth. The writings of these two giants were the driving inspiration for the great encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII, according to Cahill.

The author meticulously traces Western society from its pagan roots in the early Roman Empire, to the developing Christian influence in the fifth century, then into the Middle Ages, which saw the spread of monasticism and the social regeneration of the barbarians. I was particularly impressed with two chapters: One discusses the social results of Protestantism, the other takes a hard look at liberalism.

A review is supposed to cover the high points of a book. I must apologize: What I have told you about is contained in the first 130 pages, and the last 500 pages defy condensation. Cahill covers topics that have impact on us all: the family; husband and wife; parents and children; duties and rights regarding oneself; justice, both legal and distributive; social status of women; charity; patriotism.

Don’t be deterred by the book’s length and complexity. It covers the spectrum of society, yet flows with precise continuity. Not light reading, it is a magnificent scholarly work and is finely detailed. While what it says is entirely applicable to contemporary society, The Framework of a Christian Statereceived its Nihil Obstat and Imprimi Potest in 1932, long before most of the social encyclicals appeared. Still, as I said, no matter how things appear to change, they effectively remain the same. 
— Gene Rohling 

The Framework of a Christian State 
By E. Cahill, S.J.
Roman Catholic Books 
701 pages
$49.95



Light unto Israel

 

One of my passions is learning about other cultures. Another is learning about the Bible. Several years ago I combined the two by asking Old Testament scholar Fr. Mitch Pacwa to recommend a book about the culture of ancient Israel—not the tidbits you can pick up from a book on the manners and customs of Bible lands, but a thorough, well-researched survey of Hebrew culture. He recommended Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions by Fr. Roland de Vaux. At the time, it was out of print, so I had to go to extra effort and expense to get a copy. It was worth it. The book is a treasure trove of information about biblical culture, and it opened up a new dimension to my reading of the Old Testament.

De Vaux was the right man to pen this book. He spent years researching and teaching at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem. He was one of the key men working on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Before his death in 1971, he was one of the great figures of Ancient Near East scholarship. When one of the most important Dead Sea Scrolls was finally released a few years ago, Biblical Archaeology Review acclaimed de Vaux as an archaeological detective parallel to Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon.

Ancient Israel begins with a discussion of the nomadic lifestyle’s impact on a society. This sets the stage for the rest of the book, since Israel developed from a semi-nomadic group of shepherds—and, after the culture was settled, many echoes of their former lifestyle remained. Even after the Israelites were living in houses, they continued to speak of them as tents. “Disbanded soldiers return ‘every man to his own tent’ (1 Sam. 4:10, 2 Sam. 18:17). ‘To your tents, Israel,’ was the cry of revolt under David (2 Sam. 20:1) and after the death of Solomon (1 Kings 12:16). . . . Again, to express ‘leaving early in the morning,’ a verb is often used which means ‘to load the beasts of burden’ (Jgs. 19:9, 1 Sam. 17:20, etc.); nomads use the word to say ‘striking camp at dawn.’ These expressions continued in use long after Israel had settled in Canaan, when their ideal was to live a quiet life ‘every man under his vine and his fig-tree.’”

De Vaux sheds light on the prominence of genealogies in the Old Testament. Often boring to modern readers, these were vitally important to nomads because the principal organization of society was familial rather than political. In order to know how to deal with someone, you needed to know how you were related. This need to express human relationships in terms of family was so strong that the equivalent of obtaining citizenship in a group was being “adopted” into it. Without adoption into the tribe, one could not be a member of it.

This led to a practice of “posthumous adoption,” whereby a newcomer would be enrolled in the family tree, with his legal lineage ascribed to a clan leader who may have been long dead. This is similar to our own practice of adoption, where an adopted child is regarded as legally the son of his adoptive parents—and is listed that way in genealogical records. In the nomadic version, the legal adoption simply takes place at a greater distance in generations.

De Vaux explains: “Individuals . . . can be adopted into a tribe either by adoption into a family (as often happens with freed slaves) or through acceptance by the sheik or the elders. But even here the principle [of adoption] is safeguarded, for the newcomer is attached ‘in name and in blood’ to the tribe; this means that he acknowledges the tribe’s ancestor as his own, that he will marry within the tribe and raise up his family inside it. The Arabs say that he is ‘genealogized.’”

We can see this process in Scripture, and it explains things which otherwise might be exploited as examples of the Bible “contradicting” itself. For instance, Caleb—one of the two faithful spies at the time of the Exodus—was born a non-Jew. He was a Kenizzite, the son of a man named Jephunneh (Num. 32:12). But he was adopted and given a portion in the tribe of Judah (Josh. 15:13, 1 Macc. 2:56) and is later described, adoptively, as the son of Hezron (1 Chron. 2:18), the son of Perez (1 Chron. 2:5), the son of Judah (1 Chron. 2:4).

If he didn’t know how a person was adopted into a tribe, someone could attack Scripture and say, “Here in Numbers, it says that Caleb was the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, but in 1 Chronicles, it says he is the son of Hezron of the tribe of Judah. These passages contradict each other, so which is right?” They are both right. Numbers tells us Caleb’s biological lineage and 1 Chronicles tells us the adoptive lineage he was given when he joined the tribe of Judah. There is no contradiction. That kind of useful information about Hebrew society, which demystifies otherwise perplexing issues in the Old Testament, is what de Vaux’s book is all about.

After the brief discussion of nomadism, Ancient Israel methodically proceeds through the social institutions of Hebrew society, under four major headings.

The first major section of the book deals with family institutions and covers marriage, the position of women, children, inheritance, and death and funeral customs.

The second major section deals with civil institutions and covers different occupations and social classes, slaves, the state, the king and the royal household, finance and public works, justice, the economy, and even Hebrew concepts of time and measurement. Contained in the discussion of the royal household are two positions that foreshadow things in the Christian age. The chief steward of the house of David foreshadows the role of the pope, the chief steward of the house of the New David (Jesus), and the king’s mother, known as the gebirah or Great Lady of the house, foreshadows the role of Mary, the Queen Mother of Christ’s kingdom.

De Vaux does not draw out these parallels, but they are explored on tapes by Scott Hahn and by me (“The Keeper of the Keys” and “The Shocking Truth About Marian Doctrine” are available from Catholic Answers), and it is useful to have a scholarly discussion of the original offices.

The third major section deals with military institutions and covers the army, fortified cities and siege warfare, armaments, war, and the idea of the holy war.

The final major section deals with Israel’s religious institutions and covers Hebrew worship sites, the Temple, the centralization of the national cult at Jerusalem, the priesthood and the Levites, altars and sacrifices, prayer, rites of purification, desecration and consecration, and the Hebrew liturgical calendar with its many feasts.

The book has extensive back matter, including along bibliography divided by topic, as well as extensive subject, proper name, and Scripture indices. The Scripture index alone has 4,000 Bible passages indexed, making it possible to look up the cultural.aspects of an enormous number of verses.

Readers should be aware that de Vaux does, at times, employ higher critical ideas that they may not share, but these are a small part of the work (no more than one finds in some of the Pope’s writings), and de Vaux is not using them to undermine Scripture.

Originally written in 1957, a decade and a half after Pius XII stated that Vatican I had solemnly defined the unrestricted inerrancy of Scripture (Divino Afflante Spiritu), Ancient Israel in no way tries to attack the authority of Sacred Scripture. De Vaux’s purpose is always to illuminate, not to undermine, the sacred page—a refreshing change from the faithless commentaries and Bible handbooks being written today. As a result, the reader can look past higher critical methods he disagrees with. The book is worth having simply for the wealth of information it provides. It will add new depth to one’s reading of the Old Testament.

Ancient Israel has remained a standard reference work on Hebrew culture since it was first written, which testifies to its quality. One regularly sees it cited in the footnotes of works written today.

Not long ago I was standing in the ancient history section of a bookstore—a Protestant one, actually—and I looked down and saw a volume titled Ancient Israel. Examining it, I was overjoyed to discover that it was a paperback reprint of de Vaux’s book. After years of being out of print, it is now readily available again. I was also pleased to see who has reprinted it—the Protestant publishing house Eerdmans—and that it is being carried in Protestant bookstores. This says something about how useful the book is. Evangelical publishers and bookstores don’t very often carry Bible study works by deceased French Catholic priests. This one is something special. 
— James Akin 

On the Trail of Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions 
By Roland De Vaux, O.P.
Eerdmans 
616 pages
$30.00

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