Despite both his recent attacks of sciatica and the obvious security and health concerns involved with such a trip, papal confidants have recently commented that Pope Francis remains adamant about trying to visit Iraq in early March. Of course, inter-religious dialogue and intercultural exchange will lie at the heart of this visit if it comes to pass, as Christians make up a small (and shrinking) minority of the residents there. But the church’s commitment to respectful dialogue with and rigorous study of the ancient Near East is nothing new.
Fans of Indiana Jones may remember the stunning valley temple carved into the side of a mountain, which was filmed in the desert city of Petra, Jordan. This remarkable site was once the capital of the Nabatean empire, a mysterious nomadic people made immensely wealthy by the production, transportation, and trade of frankincense and myrrh. After roughly 200 years of archeological study by Western scholars, there are still countless unanswered historical questions about Near East, Arabian, and Bedouin cultures, both before and after the spread of Islam in the area, as well as about their relationships and conflicts with Europe over the centuries.
Some of the most groundbreaking work in this field of study was initiated by two Dominican priests, Antonin Jaussen and Raphael Savignac. Starting in 1907, these two men made many difficult journeys throughout the Arab world to map and study the archeological and religious significance of cultures that had long been misunderstood and vilified by the West. As Professor of Classical Antiquity David Graf from the University of Miami has put it “Jaussen and Savignac’s pioneering expedition to northern Arabia remains not only a scholarly landmark, but is still fundamental for any current research of the archeological and epigraphic remains of the region.” Their detailed photography, drawings, and translations of cultural sites, tombs, and inscriptions are still used by experts today, especially regarding monuments where vandals or tourists have since defaced the original landscape, whether intentionally or not.
The Dominicans’ work served as one of foundational achievements of the still nascent L’École Biblique et Archéologique Française (EBAF), founded by theologian Marie-Joseph Lagrange in Jerusalem. Its related publication the Revue Biblique, inaugurated in 1890, is still one of the preeminent scholarly journals in the world. The black and white photographs of Jaussen, Savignac, and Lagrange in the billowing robes of the Order of Preachers still prove fascinating to generations of young researchers interested in the intersection of ancient and contemporary cultures, from the scorching sands of the Arabian Peninsula to the icy fjords of Scandinavia, and beyond.
As in so many other fields of study, many modern specialists in archeology, ethnology, and other related studies see no conflict between this immersion in cultures very different from their own and a firm faith in the Christian scriptures. Rather, inspired by Pope Pius XII’s 1943 document Divino Afflante Spiritu, some Catholics may feel such study brings them closer to the formative early voices of our ancestors in the faith, knowing more intimately through these exchanges the “ancient authors, as well as their manner and art of reasoning, narrating, and writing.” In doing so, they “render a conspicuous service to the Christian cause if they devote themselves with all due diligence and application to the exploration and investigation of the monuments of antiquity and contribute, according to their abilities, to the solution of questions hitherto obscure.
For all human knowledge, even the nonsacred, has indeed its own proper dignity and excellence, being a finite participation of the infinite knowledge of God, but it acquires a new and higher dignity and, as it were, a consecration, when it is employed to cast a brighter light upon the things of God” (DAS, 40-41).
Of course, the motivating principles and methodologies of religious faith, and of the natural and social sciences are separate and distinct. But a love for either one ought not to preclude a curious and open-minded investigator from a fully immersive experience of the other.
Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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