Bible

[Paule]

I thought this was good so I brought it over here.


Who Is the Rock?
One of the points I try to bring out when giving a
seminar is that you can begin to be an effective
apologist right away--you don't have to wait until you
become a theological whiz. Just work with what you
know, even if it's only one fact.
I illustrate this from my own experience, and you can
use this technique the next time you have verses
thrown at you by a "Bible Christian."

Some years ago, before I took a real interest in
reading the Bible, I tried to avoid missionaries who
came to the door. I had been burned too often. Why
open the door, or why prolong the conversation (if
they caught me outside the house), when I had nothing
sensible to say?

Sure, I had a Bible. I used it perhaps the way you use
yours today: to catch dust that otherwise would gather
on the top shelf of the bookcase. It was one of those
"family" Bibles, crammed with beautiful color plates
and so heavy that my son didn't outweigh it until he
turned five.

As I said, I had a Bible, but I didn't turn to it
much, so I had little to say about the Bible when
missionaries cornered me. I didn't know what verses to
refer to to explain the Catholic position.

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 desultory reading didn't equip
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.


Not much to say
Some of the verses I had come across before--I wasn't
entirely illiterate with respect to the Bible--but
many 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 the New Testament was written in. 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 had at one time meant
"small stone" and "large rock" in some ancient Greek
poetry, centuries before the time of Christ, but that
distinction was long gone by the time Matthew's Gospel
was rendered in Greek. The missionary's argument
didn't work, and showed a faulty knowledge of Greek as
well as a lack of understanding of the etymologies of
petros and petra. (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., vol. 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 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. Matthew's Gospel was written by him in
Aramaic or Hebrew--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/Hebrew 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.


Aramaic in the New Testament
"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 (also rendered as Kephas).

"And what does Kepha mean? It means a large, massive
stone, the same as petra. (It doesn't mean a little
stone or a pebble--the Aramaic word for that is evna.)
What Jesus said to Simon in Matthew 16:18 was this:
'You are Kepha, and on this kepha 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 give 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."

For a few moments the missionary seemed stumped. It
was obvious he had never heard such a rejoinder. His
brow was knit in thought as he tried to come up with a
counter. Then it occurred to him.

"Wait a second," he said. If kepha means the same as
petra, why don't we read in the Greek, 'You are Petra,
and on this petra I will build my Church'? Why, for
Simon's new name, does Matthew use a Greek word,
Petros, which means something quite different from
petra?"

"Because he had no choice," I said. "Greek and Aramaic
have different grammatical structures. In Aramaic you
can use kepha in both places in Matthew 16:18. In
Greek you encounter a problem arising from the fact
that nouns take differing gender endings.

"You have masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. The
Greek word petra is feminine. You can use it in the
second half of Matthew 16:18 without any trouble. But
you can't use it as Simon's new name, because you
can't give a man a feminine name--at least back then
you couldn't. You have to change the ending of the
noun to make it masculine. When you do that, you get
Petros, which was an already-existing word meaning
rock.

"I admit that's an imperfect rendering of the Aramaic;
you lose part of the play on words. (In English, where
we have 'Peter' and 'rock,' you lose all of it.) But
that's the best you can do in Greek.

"Besides, if Matthew wanted to say that Simon was a
small stone, he would have used the common Greek word
for small stone, lithos. We would expect Matthew 16:18
to read, 'You are Lithos, and on this petra I will
build my church.' But it doesn't read that way
precisely because Matthew was trying to convey the
play on words shown so clearly in the Aramaic."


My turn to pause
I stopped and smiled. The missionary smiled back
uncomfortably, but said nothing. We exchanged smiles
for about thirty seconds. Then he looked at his watch,
noticed how time had flown, and excused himself. I
never saw him again.
So what came of this encounter? Two things--one for
me, one for him.

I began to develop a sense of confidence. I began to
see that I could defend my faith if I engaged in a
little homework. The more homework, the better the
defense.

I realized that any literate Catholic--including
you--could do the same. You don't have to suspect your
faith might be untrue when you can't come up with an
answer to a pointed question.

Once you develop a sense of confidence, you can say to
yourself, "I may not know the answer to that, but I
know I could find the answer if I hit the books. The
answer is there, if only I spend the time to look for
it."

And what about the missionary? Did he go away with
anything? I think so. I think he went away with a
doubt regarding his understanding (or lack of
understanding) of Catholics and the Catholic faith. I
hope his doubt has since matured into a sense that
maybe, just maybe, Catholics have something to say on
behalf of their religion and that he should look more
carefully into the faith he once so confidently
opposed.



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Last modified May 25, 199