Who Is "The Rock"?

by Karl Keating
www.Catholic.com

    One of the points I try to bring out when giving a seminar isthat you can begin to be an effective apologist right now- you dont have towait until you become a theological whiz. Just work with what you know, even ifit's only one fact.

 

    I illustrate this from my own experience, and you can usethis technigue the next time you have verses thrown at you by a "BibleChristian."

 

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

 

    Sure, I had a Bible. I used it perhaps the way you use yourstoday, to catch dust that otherwise would gather on the top shelf of thebookcase. It was one of those "family" Bibles, crammed with beautiful colorplates 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 Ihad little to say about the Bible when missionaries cornered me. I didn't knowwhat verses to refer to to explain the Catholic position.

 

    For a layman I suppose I was reasonably well informed aboutmy faith- at least I never doubted it or ceased to practice it- but mydesultory reading didn't equip me for verbal duels.

 

    Then, one day, I came across a nugget of information thatsent a shockwave through the next missionary who rang the bell and that provedto me that becoming skilled in apologetics isn't really all that difficult.Here's what happened.

    When I answered the door the lone missionary introducedhimself as a Seventh-Day Adventist. He asked if he could "share" with me someinsights from the Bible. I told him to go ahead.

    He flipped from one page to another, quoting this verse andthat, trying to demonstrate the errors of the Church of Rome and the manifesttruth of his own denomination's position.

    Some of the verses I had come across before- I wasn'tentirely illiterate with respect to the Bible- but many were new to me. Whetherfamiliar or not, the verses elicited no response from me because I didn't knowenough about the Bible to respond effectively.

    Finally the missionary got to Matthew16:18: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church."

    "Hold it right there!" I said. "I know that verse. That'swhere Jesus appointed Simon the earthly head of the Church. That's where heappointed him the first Pope." I paused and smiled broadly, knowing what themissionary would say in response.

    I know he usually didn't get any defense of the Catholicposition at all as he went door to door, but sometimes a Catholic would speakup as I had. He had a reply, and I know what it would be, and I was ready forit.

    "I understand your thinking," he said, "but you Catholicsmisunderstand this verse because you don't know any Greek. That's the troublewith your Church. You 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 beignorant 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 forSimon's new name is different- it's Petros ,which means a little stone, a pebble. You Catholics, because you don't knowGreek, imagine that Jesus was equating Simon and the rock. Actually, of course,it was just the oppisite. He was contrasting them. On the one side, the rock onwhich 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 wasemphasizing that Simon wasn't remotely qualified to be it."

    It was the missionary's turn to pause and smile broadly. Hehad followed the training he had been given. He had been told that a rareCatholic might have heard of Matthew 16:18 and might argue that it proved theestablishment of the papacy. He knew what he was supposed to say to proveotherwise, and he said it.

    "Well," I replied, beginning to use that nugget ofinformation I had come across, "I agree with you that we must get behind theEnglish to the Greek." He smiled some more and nodded. "But I'm sure you'llagree 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 languageJesus and the apostles and all the Jews in Palestine spoke. It was commonlanguage of the place."

    "I thought Greek was."

    "No," I answered. "They knew Greek, of course, because Greekwas the lingua franca of the Mediterranean world. It was the language ofculture and commerse, and most of the books of the New Testament were writtenin it because they were written not just for Christians in Palestine, but forChristians in places such as Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, places whereAramaic wasn't the spoken language.

    "I say most of the New Testament was written in Greek, butnot all. Matthew's Gospel was written by him in Aramaic- we know this fromrecords kept by Eusebius of Caesarea- but it was translated into Greek earlyon, perhaps by Matthew himself. In any case the Aramaic original is lost, soall we have is the Greek."

    I stopped for a moment and looked at the missionary. Heseemed a bit unconfortable, perhaps doubting that I was a Catholic because Iseemed to know what I was talking about. I continued.

    "We know that Jesus spoke Aramaic because some of his wordsare preserved for us in the Gospels. Look at Matthew 27:46 ,where he says from the Cross, 'Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani.' That isn't Greek; it's Aramaic, and it means, 'My God, myGod, why have you forsaken me?'

    "What's more," I said, "in Paul's epistles- four times inGalatians and four times in First Corinthians- we have the Aramaic of Simon'snew name preserved for us. In our English Bibles it comes out as Cephas . That isn't Greek. That's a transliteration of the Aramaicword Kepha .

    "And what does Kepha mean?It means a large, massive stone, the same as petra .(Itdoesn'tmean a little stone or a pebble- the Aramaic word for thatis evna .) WhatJesus said to Simon in Matthew 16:18 was this: 'Thou art Kepha , and upon this kepha I will build my church.'

    "When you understand what the Aramaic says, you see thatJesus was equating Simon and the rock; he wasn't contrasting them. We see thisvividly 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 andfor the Rock."

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

    "Wait a secont," he said. If Kepha means the same as petra , why don't we readin the Greek, 'Thou are Petra , and upon this petra Iwill build my church' ? Why, for Simon's new name, doesMatthew use a Greek word, Petros , whichmeans something quite different from petra ?"

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

    "You have masculine, feminine, and neutral nouns. The Greekword petra is feminine. You can use it inthe second half of Matthew 16:18 without any trouble. But you can't use it asSimon's new name, because you can't give a man a feminine name- at least backthen you couldn't. You have to change the ending of the noun to make itmasculine. When you do that, you get petros ,which happened to be an already-existing word meaning pebble.

    "I admit that's an imperfect rendering of the Aramaic; youlose part of the play on words. (In Englis, 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 smallstone, he would have used the common Greek word for small stone, lithos .We would expect Matthew 16:18 to read, 'Thou art Lithos , andupon this petra I will build my church.' But itdoesn't read that way precisely because Matthew was trying to convey the playon words shown so clearly in the Aramaic."

    I stopped and smiled. The missionary smiled back, but saidnothing. We exchanged smiles for about thirty seconds. Then he looked at hiswatch, noted how time had flown, and excused himself. I never saw him again.

    So what came of this encounter? Two things- one for me, onefor him.

    I began to develop a sense of confidence. I began to see thatI 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- coulddo the same. You don't have to suspect your faith might be untrue when youcan't come up with an answer to a pointed question.

    Once you develop a sense of confidence, you can say toyourself, "I may not know the answer to that, but I know I could find theanswer if I hit the books. The answer is there, if only I'd spend the time tolook 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 (orlack of understanding) of the Catholic faith.

    I hope his doubt has since matured into a sense that maybe,just mabey, Catholics have something to say on behalf of their religion andthat he should look more carefully into the faith he once so confidentlyopposed.

from:
Catholic Answers

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