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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
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This Rock
Volume 12, Number 3
 March 2001 
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Aren’t All Images of Jesus False?
Q: In 1 Corinthians 11:14 Paul tells us long hair is degrading to and unnatural for a man. All the pictures of Jesus show him with long hair, so they must be false images.
A: The pictures we have of Christ do not derive from any physical description we have of him in the Bible, because there is none. The basic image comes from a long artistic and iconographic tradition—influenced, among other things, by the Shroud of Turin. However, this tradition does not contradict the Bible.
Part of the problem in discussing hair length is how long is long? We know from archeological materials such as Middle Eastern carvings and Egyptian tomb paintings that Jews wore what we would consider today as long hair and beards. Hair reached down to the shoulders on men. Women wore hair down to the waist.
Paul was telling Corinthian men that wearing hair down to the waist as women did would be effeminate and contrary to what natural law would suggest, especially considering the physical demands of many first-century male occupations. It is easy for us today to assume the length and cut of a Jewish man’s hair in the first century to be as it is for most men today, but that’s a misconception that can result in our misreading Paul.
Q: I’ve been at funerals where the person had not been a practicing Catholic. Some of these people had never been to Church in all the years I knew them. Why does the Church bury these lapsed Catholics?
A: Often it is not clear why a lapsed Catholic has lapsed. The Church wants to fulfill the wish of Christ that all be saved. It is not proper for us to pass judgment on the spiritual state of others, particularly if we have not been with them during their last minutes of life.
Remember that at the last moment the good thief had a change of heart and Christ welcomed him into paradise. The parish priest or hospital chaplain will look for any indication that the individual wished to die on good terms with the Lord. Given that indication, the priest will not withhold any of the spiritual benefits that can be given the deceased and those close to him by a funeral Mass.
Q: I have seen some of your Catholic books that have quoted the Psalms. When I go to look them up in my Bible they don’t say anything close to what you said they did.
A: Different Bibles number the Psalms in different ways. Some split Psalm 9 in two, making it 9 and 10. These same versions also combine Psalms 146 and 147, so the total number of Psalms remains 150. The practical upshot of this is that between psalms 8 and 148 the number may be off by one, depending on what version you’re looking at. Therefore, if you look up a Psalm reference and it doesn’t seem to fit what is being talked about, try looking one psalm earlier or later, and you’ll probably find the right place.
Q: Why do Catholics kneel during their services? This seems unnecessary. Why not just sit still and listen to the preaching of God’s word?
A: If you attend a Catholic Mass you will see the first part of it consists of reading and preaching. We stand for the Gospel, and we sit for the other readings and for the preaching. But the Mass is more than just reading and preaching. The Mass is a sacrifice, and there are times—especially in the last part—when the faithful pray on their knees. Kneeling shows our humility before God, and it is one of the biblical postures of prayer.
In Ephesians 3:14 Paul says, "I kneel before the Father," and in Acts 9:40 Peter "knelt down and prayed." The Catholic habit of kneeling is consistent with Scripture and is another manifestation of the continuity between the Church of the first century and the Catholic Church of today.
Q: Is there a difference between atheists and agnostics, or are they just two names for the same thing?
A: There is definitely a difference between the two. Many people confuse the terms, and some people who are really agnostics mistakenly give themselves the label of atheist.
An agnostic is someone who claims that he does not know whether there is a God or—more broadly—what (if any) religion is true. An atheist, on the other hand, denies that there is a God.
The difference in a nutshell: The agnostic says he doesn’t know if there’s a God, while the atheist says he does know and there isn’t.
Q: When I read the Bible I don’t see much sense in the way the verses are broken up. Some come at the end of sentences and paragraphs, some don’t. Why was the Bible written that way?
A: The Bible was not written that way. The use of verse numbering was something introduced much later, shortly after the invention of printing. The early, handwritten copies of the Bible were written in Greek on papyrus scrolls without the use of punctuation or spacing. In time the codex or book, formed with pages and a spine as we know it today was developed—later still, printing.
As printers worked on producing editions of the Bible, they found it convenient to locate and mark sections of text by putting numbers beside the sections of type. This proved not only an enormous convenience for the printers, but for others who read the Bible. The numbering was not placed with anything other in mind than to help locate sections of text. You might say that it was like having latitude and longitude lines on a map.
By the way, Stephen Langton, a cardinal and archbishop of Canterbury, about 1226, divided the books of the Bible into chapters. The chapters were split into verses in the 1500s, the customary form being done in 1551 by a printer named Robert Etienne, also known as Stephanus.
Q: What is the sin of simony, and does it have anything to do with Simon Peter?
A: The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, "Simony is defined as the buying or selling of spiritual things. . . . It is impossible to appropriate to oneself spiritual goods and behave toward them as their owner or master, for they have their source in God " (2121).
The word simony (pronounced SIH-muh-nee, not SI-mun-ee) does indeed come from the name Simon—Simon Magus (Simon the magician), who had heard the preaching of Philip in Samaria and had accepted baptism.
In Acts 8:9-24 we find the account of this Simon, who offered money to Simon Peter in exchange for the power to perform the sacrament of confirmation by laying hands on people to confer the gift of the Holy Spirit. From Peter came an immediate and sharp rebuke. Ever since, the notion of buying an office of the Church or of buying a spiritual good has been referred to as simony.
Q: A Catholic writer said many of the first English Bibles were in terrible error. Isn’t this a manifestation of Catholic prejudice against the Bible? The Bible is inerrant.
A: The Catholic Church affirms the inerrancy of Scripture, but that doesn’t mean each edition of each translation is free from error. There have been many vernacular editions of the Bible that can only be described as embarrassing. Some were filled with printer’s errors, others with translator’s errors.
In one Bible one of the commandments was printed without the word not. This Bible became known as "the b.asphemous Bible" because it said, "Thou shalt take the Lord’s name in vain." Sometimes translations were odd to the point of misrepresentation. In one, Adam and Eve are described as wearing "breeches" made from fig leaves, but breeches are a fairly modern type of clothing.
Inerrancy does not mean printers and translators are protected from error. (Any writer can tell you that, and he’ll throw in editors too!)
Q: I’m not a Catholic, but my wife is. We’ve decided to have our two children baptized and brought up as Catholics. We’ve been getting instructions from the parish. We were advised to pick a saint’s name for each of the children. Why is that done?
A: You will hear in the Creed, when it is said at Mass, that we believe in the communion of saints. This means we are spiritually united with those who have died and are now in heaven. They can act as intercessors—they have the ability to assist us and pray for us.
By choosing a saint’s name you acknowledge this fact and ask a particular saint to assist you in bringing up the child; the saint becomes the child’s patron and a role model for the child.
Q: So many Protestants I know use the King James Bible. Who was King James, and what authority did he have to produce a Bible?
A: James I reigned as king of England from 1603 to 1625. He was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, and he had been king of Scotland before succeeding to the English throne at the death of Queen Elizabeth I. He was prompted to produce an English Bible because of the poor and tendentious copies being circulated in England. He feared seditious religious and political factions could use these.
His authority was one usurped from the Catholic Church, beginning with his predecessor King Henry VIII. Henry had broken with the Catholic Church and made himself the head of the Church of England. You could say James had no more authority in biblical matters than any head of state, which is none. What authority would a "George W. Bush Bible" have? The true authority and safeguard of Scripture was and has to be the Catholic Church, to which Christ gave his authority.
Q: I recently heard a priest refer to the rosary as a "poor man’s salter." What did he mean?
A: A psalter—not salter—is a book that contains the 150 Psalms. Before printing was invented, books were fabulously expensive. Most of the world was illiterate and poor, and poor men did not own books. Often only monastic communities and churches had books. The book of the Psalms was used for the daily recitation of prayers (something that continues today).
The common folk wanted to pray daily like the monks but had no books to read the psalms from. Not up to memorizing all 150 Psalms, they recited an Our Father or Hail Mary in the place of each psalm.
They strung 150 beads together, one for each psalm, so they could keep count. Other prayers and meditations were added to this beaded string of fifteen decades, until we arrived at the rosary we have today.
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Catholic Answers
