Knife

I was reading through "The Popes and Their Church" by Joseph McCabe. In Section I: The History of the Roman Church, Chapter I: The origin of the Papacy, I read the folowing paragraph...

In the Gospels Peter has a remarkable position. Christ is represented as saying to him (Matthew xvi, 18): "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock [πετρα] I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." This poor little pun on Peter's name was obviously not made by Christ. The word "church" had no meaning at all in the days of Christ and Peter. A Galilean fisherman would have asked in astonishment what this mysterious thing was which was to be built upon him. There was no such word in Aramaic. Christ would have had to say "synagogue"; and he hated synagogues. The pun belongs to a later date. There came a time when Peter and Paul quarrelled, as Paul tells us, and there was a party of Peter and a party of Paul; and some zealous Petrist, possibly of the Roman Church, got that passage interpolated into the Gospel. That crude little pun has changed the course of history and made the life-work of Christ a mockery.

Is McCabe correct about the word "church"? If so, when did the word "church" start to have meaning?

The Evil One

Some thoughts following a quick flick through my etymology dicitionary:

"Church" derives from the Greek "kuriakon", which means "of the Lord", i.e. "house of the Lord" and only later came to have the meaning of English "church".

But the Greek word in that verse is, if I'm not mistaken, "ekklesias", which originally meant "assembly" and was later used also to mean "church".

Now, exactly when the specialised meanings of "church" meaning the worldwide body of all Christans became attached to these two words is an interesting question.

If "ekklesia" was only an assembly in the general sense when Matt wrote, then it would seem odd to talk about building one - surely the metaphor only works because churches are both buildings and worldwide-brotherhoods. Which implies that, when Matt wrote, the word must have already acquired some of its Christian-specific sense, at least for Christians.

The other complicating factor is that there was already a Jewish link between the Greek word "ekklesia" and religion becasue of "ecclesiastes" (speaker to an assembly) being used to translate the Hebrew word for "preacher" in the title of the OT book.

Hmm. So in short, I've no answers, but it's an interesting question.

mountainman

When it began to be spelt "basilica".
Early fourth century CE, no earlier.

The earliest christian churches found to-date,
with the exception of the "house-church"
claimed to be "christian" at Dura-Europa,
are Constantine's many basilicas.

Ray Moscow

As far as I know, there is no textual data that indicates this to be a later interpolation into earlier verions of "Matthew".

However, since there is no parallel in Mark or (as far as we know) Q, and the whole theme just runs counter to G. Thomas, and (as mentioned) since it looks so anachronistic, I've always supposed that "Matthew" made it up to bolster the pro-Petrine elements of his audience.

Huon

Afred Loisy's most famous observation was that ‘Jesus came preaching the Kingdom, and what arrived was the Church’ (1902).

Chili

The insight of Peter is the rock whereupon the Church would be built and it is true that nobody has a copyright to that. This insight is the summit of truth that draws all men to its own and therefore all roads lead to Rome where the key to the kingdom already has our name on it when we get there.

Clouseau

Certainly, the course of history was changed in a profound way, but this was more by climate change and force majeure than by intellectual persuasion and the use of a gospel text, genuine or not. It may be supposed today that Roman Catholicism is the most unbelievable caricature of the church, that cannot deceive very many readers of the NT, but it must be remembered that the vernacular NT is the relatively recent achievement of courageous people who risked their lives to allow ordinary people to read it. And when those people did, they very quickly realised that they had been duped. Indeed, popes were informed by scholars of their illegitimacy, that no apostle had been greater than another, that the Bible alone deserved unconditional assent, as long ago as the early 14th century, almost as soon as the first glimmerings of the Renaissance dawn appeared. But it was nevertheless the edge of the sword that was to prevail for over a century thereafter in maintaining the political ascendancy of the papacy. The same type of 'persuasion' had been used to establish the imperial 'church' in the first place, not bishops ardently taking round a Bible opened at Matthew. If some imperial lackey interfered with Matthew's gospel, his work went largely without advantage at the time. It is questionable whether Mt 16:18 has actually convinced anyone carrying political or spiritual influence at any time.

McCabe is incorrect, whatever word Jesus used, and there were several possible. Jesus did not disapprove of synagogues at all, however they were named. He took advantage of them personally, they being a fine democratic expression in Israel in line with OT principles. The synagogue was the means for a mere carpenter to have a say, a means that was to become totally unavailable in the imperial 'church', and indeed in most denominations today, controlled in detail as they are at local level by a single person. (It is a solemn thought for denominations that Jesus today would not have the freedom to operate as he did in Judaea.)

But Jesus may not have spoken in Aramaic, but in Greek. He was a Galilean addressing Galileans, all but one of them. The lingua franca of Galilee was Greek koine, a language of which the exception, the Judaean Judas Iscariot, the group’s purse holder, would have had at least a working knowledge. If so, the word he used was ekklesia, a word in use in connexion with Athenian democracy for 500 years previously. This was not a democracy as we know it, but it was certainly not the model envisaged for his puppet church by Constantine, either. The ekklesia was the assembly gathered to discuss and decide on a range of Greek policies, a notion that no Roman emperor would or could have had any time for at all.

But ekklesia was certainly a word also used by Jewish translators of their Scriptures into Greek (the LXX), some hundreds of years before Jesus. It was used to render the Hebrew qahal, which again meant ‘assembly’, in this case the assembly of Israelites, particularly their assembly before they chose, against the will of their deity, to have a king. In those days, Israel was a democratic theocracy, or perhaps a theocratic democracy, though, in those days, without the special motivation that inspired the church of the apostles, called by those men the action of the Holy Spirit.

So not only was the word ekklesia, as found throughout the New Testament, not just in Mt 16:18, well known. Its use all but precluded any suggestion of a human leader, because it had marked associations of democracy, with or without the special role of a deity. This is the meaning that the disciples in Caesarea Philippi would have best understood by ‘my church’, the assembly of Jesus. The last thing they would have considered was that Simon ‘the stone’ Bar-Jona was to be their leader, a ‘monarch’; a role forbidden to the Israelites, and even more so to the saints, who were themselves each given full autonomy and equal 'voting rights' in the ekklesia. The whole point of the Christ was to make external law obsolete. The Christ was not going to give his disciples more of the same, and if the disciples did not know much, they knew that much. The keys that Simon were to obtain were the same keys that all disciples were to obtain, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, renewing the mind of the individual saint.

Not only was a human leader a notion foreign to orthodox Judaism, it was, in this case, blasphemy. Jesus referred to himself and/or to faith in himself, when saying, “You are ‘rock’, and on this Rock I will build my assembly.” The disciples well knew such sayings as this:

‘”You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me?
No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.”’ Is 44:8 NIV

Like all the others, Simon was ‘peter’ only when he had faith, and Matthew showed that immediately after, Jesus calling him ‘Satan’ for lack of faith. The two appellations, ‘rock’ and ‘Satan’ go together, to illustrate a universal and very important spiritual principle, one that has been occluded for centuries by the base political construction that was put on Matthew 16:18.

Amedeo

The pun was certainly made by Greek writers, not by Jesus.

In Gospels, Peter is called Simon Cephas, and "cephas" is translated into the Greek Petros, the masculine form of Petra [= rock, stone]. I have not read the Greek text, but I am sure its has something like this, "Your are Petros, and on this Petra I'll build my church."

Speaking literally of constructing, the word Ekklesia takes on the meaning of church-building, but what is the real ekklesia (assembly) that is meant to be "built" [regardless of who uttered or wrote the sentence]?

Look at the "last supper." Jesus speaks of a new covenant. He equates himself to Abraham, who made a covenant with God -- a covenant between a PEOPLE and GOD. So. "ekklesia" refers to the new PEOPLE of God, a new Israel.

And now it becomes clear that all the words and sentences that refer to a new Covenant or to a Church [Assembly/People of God] are scriptural contributions made by the Greek writers and refer to the Christian Church which was disconnected from Israel (after 70 A.D.) The original Gentile Christians were RECRUITS into Judaism, for Jesus never established a new religion, never established a new covenant or a new people: the Jesus of the larger parts of the Gospels was a messhiah TO ISRAEL [the people of God]. The quoted sentence, the last supper scene, and some other points, give the impression that Jesus stopped being an Israelite and headed the new Church.

Look at the Catholic Church tradition [before the Schism]: The Church was the People of Jesus Christ, independent of Israel. The Catholika [all-encompassing] Ekklesia stands in contradistiction to the Restricted Ekklesia (namely Israel). The Catholic one embraces in principle all humans [saved by Paul's Jesus, not the Jesus who came to save Israel before judgement day].

What new Covenant is the scriptural Jesus talking about? It was not even Paul that invented the idea of a new Covenant, for he said that the new recruits (into Judaism) did not have to undergo circumcision [in order to be subscribers to the Covenant], for circumcision is of the heart.

Back to the last supper: there is something radically new in the Judaism of Jesus: Eat, this is my body...; drink, this is my blood. Do you know who this Jesus is? He is the resurrected Dionysus, whose blood was wine and whose body (raw flesh) was ceremonially eaten. (Look up Dionysus the god-man; homophagia; etc.) The Christian rite of the Eucharist, based on the evangelical last supper, is the re-enactment of a Dionysian rite, which was a rite of immortality. By ASSIMILATING the body and blood of Dionysus, one becomes like Dionysus -- immortal [or recurring on every spring-time]. The Greek Eleusinian rites were originally rites of immortality for women: by re-enacting the life of Kore -- hence theater --, they became like Kore, Demeter's daughter [or the young Demeter that is reborn every spring]. These are some of the most ancient human rites of immortality. (Demeter was the goddess of grain vegetation, and bread cakes were ceremonially used. In the Greek and Latin rites of the eucharist, bread is used instead of actual raw meat, .... just as it happened in the Last Supper.)

Surely no Gospel was written before 70 A.D. A Gospel is the compilation of many traditional episodes or tales concerning Jesus PLUS what the Greek writers contributed out of Greek traditions and while the Church of Christ had been actually formed.

Amedeo

There are views to the effect that some some Gospels were written before 70 A.D. When some people find that a written sentence has some resemblance to a fact, they believe that it is a statement or a prophesy of the fact. (This author illustrates the fallacy -- typical of Amenrican pseudo-Christian preachers -- of those who quote or think out of context.)
Search: Dating Early Christian Gospels (Journal of Christian Studies)

For instance:

Matt.22:7 is part of the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, about an enraged king who sent his army and burnt their city.


Luke 19:43 is in the context of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Jesus saw the city and wept over it: the day will come when your enemy will surround you and dash you to the ground, "because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you." This is a generic foretelling of divine punishment for blindness to God's coming -- whether his own or his heavely Father. Such an indictment prophesy is not even a prophesy "after the fact", because the Temple was not destroyed to avenge God. (The theologization of events is typical of the myth-making mind, which always explains natural and social events as occurring on account of divine intervention.)

Nostradamus "prophesies" are similarly likened to some events, after they occur, while those prophesies contain no proper names, place names, "how" names, and, most importantly, DATES.

The contention that Luke, rather than Jesus, made a "prophesy after the fact"
implies that the Gospel makes false reports about Jesus. (The unthinking Christian author of the article did not realize that he was declaring that the Bible is errant!)