Question 2.18

2.18 After your ordination as a priest, did you leave immediately for Rome to finish your studies?

ROBERT CARDINAL SARAH

Inasmuch as Archbishop Tchidimbo approved of my desire to study Scripture, first I had to get a degree in dogmatic theology. So I arrived in Rome in September 1969 to enroll in the Gregorian University.

Instruction was in Latin. At the same time I took courses in Hebrew, biblical Greek, and Aramaic at the Pontificium Institutum Biblicum. These courses were marvelous because they gave me the opportunity to have more direct access to the Word of God and to the Church Fathers who wrote commentaries on it.

I stayed in Rome until 1974, with a side trip of one year in Jerusalem.

Archbishop Tchidimbo had sent two other seminarians to Rome at the same time as me, André Mamadouba Camara and Jérôme Téa, as well as two Guinean novices, Marie-Renée Boiro and Eugénie Kadouna. He was anxious for us to get a solid human, intellectual, and spiritual formation there. This is the last letter he wrote to us on December 14, 1970, ten days before his arrest and imprisonment: “I have so little free time that I will not be able to send Christmas greetings to you individually this year; be so kind as to excuse me. But I am sure you will be able to discover in these lines the deepest of my sentiments for each of you, with regard to your formation for effective ministry in this dear country of Guinea. My concern for the formation of each one of you personally is a problem that haunts me every day; I know you are helping me to resolve this problem by the generous efforts that you make daily to acquire all you are capable of assimilating, both intellectually and spiritually; and for that I am infinitely grateful to you. May 1971 be a year of still greater effort for the sake of the Church of Guinea; these are my most ardent wishes for each of you. May the Child in the Manger receive these wishes and grant them in the near future. I know that I can count on your prayers; mine are with you daily, along with the affection that I have for each of you.”

This letter-testament accompanied me throughout my studies in Rome. However, while I was preparing to write my doctoral thesis in biblical exegesis on the subject of “Isaiah, Chapters 9-11, in Light of Northwestern Semitic Linguistics:

Ugaritic, Phoenecian, and Punic” under the direction of my professor, Father Mitchell Dahood, Father Louis Barry, who had become the apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Conakry, asked me to return to Guinea because of the shortage of priests.

The objective of my research was to propose a new critical examination of certain textual difficulties in the Masoretic text of the Book of Isaiah, in terms of Ugaritic literature and Phoenecian and Punic inscriptions. In order to elucidate difficult texts, the methodology of modern exegesis insists on syntactic, lexicographic, and stylistic considerations offered by comparative studies of Northwestern Semitic literature. I want to emphasize how valuable Father Dahood’s method was. He succeeded in convincing a large part of the scholarly community that the copyists of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament were scrupulously faithful to the original text, at least in its consonantal form.

Today, certainly it is important for us to show that same respect and fidelity to the Word of God, so as not to manipulate it to fit historical, political, or ideological circumstances, for the purpose of pleasing men and acquiring a reputation as a scholar or avant-garde theologian. … As Saint Paul says, “We are not like so many [who] practice cunning or. . . tamper with God’s word” (cf. 2 Cor 2:17; 4:2). This scrupulous concern about respecting the Word of God and its application in our lives reminds me of an exhortation by Johannes Albrecht Bengel (1687-1752), a Protestant theologian who tried to summarize the care that we must give to the Sacred Scriptures: “Te totum applica ad textum, rem totam applica ad te” (Apply yourself entirely to the text, and apply everything it says to yourself).

The true servant of the Bible, the true theologian, is the one who exemplifies each day, by his life and by his actions, the words of the Psalmist: “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. … I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your ordinances, for you have taught me” (Ps 119:97, 99-102).