Not every Bible passage is clear, and one that has perplexed many is the subject of a recovered sermon from St Augustine of Hippo, recently identified after lying in the diocesan library of Pelpin, in Pomerania, Poland.
A researcher examining a medieval codex in the library in 2024 enlisted specialist Augustine experts from the University of Würzburg and the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Corpus of Latin Ecclesiastical Writings in Vienna, who have identified the sermons as Augustine’s after two years’ work, first reported by Spain’s ACI Prensa, a conservative Catholic news service.
“Several centuries lie between Augustine and this 12th-century scribe, so it is easy to imagine that errors occurred during transmission. Nevertheless, we have a very good text, and with a few critical corrections, we can largely reconstruct what St. Augustine said,” Christian Tornau, a professor of classical philology (Latin studies) at the University of Würzburg explained.
The two sermons centre on one of the most complex episodes in the Old Testament: King Saul’s consultation with the medium or “witch” of Endor, recounted in Chapter 28 of the First Book of Samuel, EWTN an English-language Catholic news service, reports.
Terrified at the sight of the Philistine army, and with Samuel the prophet now dead, Saul disguises himself and seeks out the witch of Endor.
“Then the woman asked, ‘Whom shall I bring up for you?’ ‘Bring up Samuel,’ he said. When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said to Saul, ‘Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!’
“The king said to her, ‘Don’t be afraid. What do you see?’ The woman said, ‘I see a ghostly figure coming up out of the earth.’ ‘What does he look like?’ he asked.
“’An old man wearing a robe is coming up,’ she said. Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground.
“Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?’
“’I am in great distress,’ Saul said. ‘The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has departed from me. He no longer answers me, either by prophets or by dreams. So I have called on you to tell me what to do.’
Was it really Samuel? Or an evil spirit? Augustine is flexible according to Professor Tornau and EWTN. “’In the new sermons, St. Augustine discusses both possibilities along with their advantages and drawbacks and concludes that both are acceptable because neither contradicts the Christian faith,’ the professor noted.
“For Tornau, this stance reflects a distinctive trait of the bishop of Hippo. ‘This openness to divergent interpretations of Scripture is characteristic of Augustine in general,’ he observed.
But in the sermons, Augustine goes further.
“The most notable element of the new sermons is the idea that Saul, after hearing Samuel’s prophecy, could have repented and been redeemed,” Tornau noted.
Image: One of the Auigistine sermons: Image Credit Pelplin Diocesan Library