THE INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH AND APPROACHES THAT USE THE HUMAN SCIENCES

The Pontifical Biblical Commission's document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (IBC) details interpretive methods which the Roman Catholic exegete should use in the study of Biblical texts. This article highlights the IBC's description of methods drawn from the Human Sciences and assesses its conclusions as to the use of methods of sociological, anthropological, and psychological analysis, which have been for some time applied within Catholic biblical exegesis. It concludes with an example of one way that these approaches have been applied by Olivier Bobineau.