In Matthew’s
parallel section of this week’s Gospel reading we find Jesus changing Peter’s
name from Simon. In response to Simon’s
(ie Peter) answer the Jesus the Christ, the son of the living God Jesus tells
Peter that he is indeed blessed and on the Rock of Peter that His Church will
be built (Matt 16:16-18). Here’s a short
exchange on how to defend the Catholic position that Jesus made Peter the first
Pope on that day...
For a layman,
I suppose I was reasonably well informed about my faith—at least I never
doubted it or ceased to practice it—but my own reading had not equipped me for
verbal duels.
Then, one
day, I came across a nugget of information that sent a shock wave through the
next missionary who rang the bell and that proved to me that becoming skilled
in apologetics isn’t really all that difficult. Here’s what happened.
When I
answered the door, the lone missionary introduced himself as a Seventh-day
Adventist. He asked if he could "share" with me some insights from
the Bible. I told him to go ahead.
He flipped
from one page to another, quoting this verse and that, trying to demonstrate
the errors of the Church of Rome and the manifest truth of his own
denomination’s position.
Some of the
verses I had encountered before. I wasn’t entirely illiterate with respect to
the Bible, but many verses were new to me. Whether familiar or not, the verses
elicited no response from me, because I didn’t know enough about the Bible to
respond effectively.
Finally the
missionary got to Matthew 16:18: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will
build my Church."
"Hold it
right there!" I said. "I know that verse. That’s where Jesus
appointed Simon the earthly head of the Church. That’s where he appointed him
the first pope." I paused and smiled broadly, knowing what the missionary
would say in response.
I knew he
usually didn’t get any defense of the Catholic position at all as he went door
to door, but sometimes a Catholic would speak up as I had. He had a reply, and
I knew what it would be, and I was ready for it.
"I
understand your thinking," he said, "but you Catholics misunderstand
this verse because you don’t know any Greek. That’s the trouble with your
Church and with your scholars. You people don’t know the language in which the
New Testament was written. To understand Matthew 16:18, we have to get behind
the English to the Greek."
"Is that
so?" I said, leading him on. I pretended to be ignorant of the trap being
laid for me.
"Yes,"
he said. "In Greek, the word for rock is petra, which means a
large, massive stone. The word used for Simon’s new name is different; it’s Petros,
which means a little stone, a pebble."
In reality,
what the missionary was telling me at this point was false. As Greek
scholars—even non-Catholic ones—admit, the words petros and petra
were synonyms in first century Greek. They meant "small stone" and
"large rock" in some ancient Greek poetry, centuries before the time
of Christ, but that distinction had disappeared from the language by the time
Matthew’s Gospel was rendered in Greek. The difference in meaning can only be
found in Attic Greek, but the New Testament was written in Koine Greek—an
entirely different dialect. In Koine Greek, both petros andpetra simply
meant "rock." If Jesus had wanted to call Simon a small stone,
the Greek lithos would have been used. The missionary’s argument didn’t
work and showed a faulty knowledge of Greek. (For an Evangelical Protestant
Greek scholar’s admission of this, see D. A. Carson, The Expositor’s Bible
Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984], Frank E. Gaebelein, ed.,
8:368).
"You
Catholics," the missionary continued, "because you don’t know Greek,
imagine that Jesus was equating Simon and the rock. Actually, of course, it was
just the opposite. He was contrasting them. On the one side, the rock on which
the Church would be built, Jesus himself; on the other, this mere pebble. Jesus
was really saying that he himself would be the foundation, and he was
emphasizing that Simon wasn’t remotely qualified to be it."
"Case
closed," he thought.
It was the
missionary’s turn to pause and smile broadly. He had followed the training he
had been given. He had been told that a rare Catholic might have heard of
Matthew 16:18 and might argue that it proved the establishment of the papacy.
He knew what he was supposed to say to prove otherwise, and he had said it.
"Well,"
I replied, beginning to use that nugget of information I had come across,
"I agree with you that we must get behind the English to the Greek."
He smiled some more and nodded. "But I’m sure you’ll agree with me that we
must get behind the Greek to the Aramaic."
"The
what?" he asked.
"The
Aramaic," I said. "As you know, Aramaic was the language Jesus and
the apostles and all the Jews in Palestine spoke. It was the common language of
the place."
"I
thought Greek was."
"No,"
I answered. "Many, if not most of them, knew Greek, of course, because
Greek was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean world. It was the
language of culture and commerce; and most of the books of the New Testament
were written in it, because they were written not just for Christians in
Palestine but also for Christians in places such as Rome, Alexandria, and
Antioch, places where Aramaic wasn’t the spoken language.
"I say
most of the New Testament was written in Greek, but not all. Many hold that
Matthew was written in Aramaic—we know this from records kept by Eusebius of
Caesarea—but it was translated into Greek early on, perhaps by Matthew himself.
In any case the Aramaic original is lost (as are all the originals of the New
Testament books), so all we have today is the Greek."
I stopped for
a moment and looked at the missionary. He seemed a bit uncomfortable, perhaps
doubting that I was a Catholic because I seemed to know what I was talking
about. I continued.
"We know
that Jesus spoke Aramaic because some of his words are preserved for us in the
Gospels. Look at Matthew 27:46, where he says from the cross, ‘Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani?’ That isn’t Greek; it’s Aramaic, and it means, ‘My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?’
"What’s
more," I said, "in Paul’s epistles—four times in Galatians and four
times in 1 Corinthians—we have the Aramaic form of Simon’s new name preserved
for us. In our English Bibles it comes out as Cephas. That isn’t Greek.
That’s a transliteration of the Aramaic word Kepha (rendered as Kephas
in its Hellenistic form).
"And
what does Kepha mean? It means a rock, the same as petra. (It
doesn’t mean a little stone or a pebble. What Jesus said to Simon in Matthew
16:18 was this: ‘You are Kepha, and on thiskepha I will build my
Church.’
"When
you understand what the Aramaic says, you see that Jesus was equating Simon and
the rock; he wasn’t contrasting them. We see this vividly in some modern
English translations, which render the verse this way: ‘You are Rock, and upon
this rock I will build my church.’ In French one word, pierre, has
always been used both for Simon’s new name and for the rock."
God Bless
Nathan
