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Maurice gilbert, SJ., The Pontifical Biblical Institute: A Century of History (1909-2009) (trans. Leo Arnold; Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2009). Pp. 494 + 24 pp. of photographs. Paper N.P.
This detailed history of the planning, establishment, and record of achievements of the Pontifical Biblical Institute (PBI) not only documents carefully the chronicle of events but actually makes quite an exciting adventure story as well. It is divided into two major parts, the first giving the history of the main Institute in Rome, and the second chronicling the establishment and accomplishments of the daughter foundation in Jerusalem. The first part is nearly twice as long as the second (315 pages versus 160 pages). The book includes important original documents from each period, some of them never before published. Overall, it is a clear and easily read account of the Institute decade by decade. But even more, it is a lucid and critical look at how Catholic biblical studies developed in the twentieth century - and it is not a peaceful, professorial story. Even in relatively quiet decades, there was enough drama to make a novelist happy.
Bom of the dreams of Leo XIU. and the Jesuits in the 1890s, the PBI opened in the heat of the modemist repression of Pius X in 1909. The pope and his advisors may have...