Oration : Prof. Serafin M. Zarb O.P. (1899-1976) and the history of the formation of the Canon of Sacred Scripture according to St Augustine

Abstract

Prof. Serafin M. Zarb was the first Maltese to obtain a doctorate in Sacred Scripture [SSD] with a dissertation entitled De Canone et Textu Sacrorum Librorum in Operibus S. Augustini1 [= The Canon and the Text of the Sacred Books in the Writings of St. Augustine] which he submitted in 1938 to the Pontifical Commission De Re Biblica. Zarb specialized in biblical studies at the École Biblique in Jerusalem between 1923 and 1925. At the time, the École Biblique was going through a very difficult period as its founder, Père Marie-Joseph Lagrange, was accused of being a modernist when he applied the historical-critical method to biblical studies. It was felt that this method severely undermined the divine origin and authority of Sacred Scripture.2 In the circumstances Père Lagrange felt he had to leave the administration of the École in the hands of Fr Alfons Azzopardi O.P. [1861-1919] from 1894 to 1902. In 1912 he left Jerusalem for a year. He left for good because of ill-health in 1935 and died in 1938 at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, France. In the meantime the storm about the historical-critical method was abating and the method was approved in 1943 by Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu.