Transcript

So much, Marcus!

It's great to be here.

Everybody having a great time?

Yes, amen!

I've got to tell you though that it's a little daunting to follow Steve Ray.

He was fantastic, huh?

And to follow him on the question of the papacy is even more daunting.

So I have to be honest with you and confess that it was with some trepidation that I saw that I was right after Steve Ray on the question of the papacy and right before lunch—talk about caught between a rock and a hard place here!

So I'm going to do my best.

You never want to stand between an audience and their lunch.

I'm going to do my best to keep to time and also not to simply repeat what Steve had to say.

What I want to do in this talk this morning, which is entitled Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Papacy, is expand on what Steve had to say to you this morning and go into a little more depth with regard to ancient Jewish tradition that illuminates the person of the Holy Father—the papacy—and the Jewish roots from Jewish tradition as to why the early Christians would have accepted Peter as the first pope, as he comes to be known.

Essentially, that’s the question I want to begin with—that’s the historical problem I want to pose.

I want to pose a problem and then offer a solution—actually, I want to pose two problems and then pose a solution to them by looking at Jewish tradition.

The first problem is this: How is it that the first Christians, who are all Jewish Christians, right?

Think about that for just a minute.

Mary, Peter, James, John—these are all Jews who accepted Jesus as Messiah.

How is it that these first Jewish Christians came so quickly and so universally to accept the authority of Peter over the Church?

That’s an interesting question, right?

Don’t you think there would have been a little more wrangling about exactly who was the leader in the absence of Christ?

For example, Kenneth Howell mentioned last night the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem in Acts chapter 15, when they were having this enormous debate over whether circumcision was necessary for salvation.

Remember that?

And many of the Christians, some of whom were Pharisees, were arguing, “Look, if you’re going to be saved, you have to be circumcised.”

And sometimes we Christians forget that they had a pretty good case for their position, right?

I mean, they could quote chapter and verse from the Law of God in the Old Testament that says any person who is not circumcised is cut off from the people of God.

So they could make a very good biblical case for their position.

And yet when Peter got up at the Council of Jerusalem and said, “It's through my mouth that the Holy Spirit has spoken, and I tell you that a person is saved by grace, right?

Through faith, and that circumcision is not necessary for salvation,” what was the response of the Christians at the council?

Did they say, “Who died and made you pope?”

Of course, to which Peter could have responded, “Well, Jesus!

Jesus Christ, of course!

He died and made me pope.”

That was my opening joke, so just to let you know it’s out of the way.

Was that their response?

No! Acts 15 says all the assembly kept silence, right?

Because they recognized that Peter had authority—supreme authority—over the Church on earth.

The second problem that I want to ask you is a little more in-depth, and I want to build on Steve's talk by highlighting this emphasis, and it’s this: Why is it, even if the early Christians saw Peter as an authority, that they not only saw him as a kind of royal steward or royal authority, but they saw him as a priest?

Why is the pope a priestly figure?

Has anybody ever thought about that question?

Can you find the apostles being called priests in the New Testament?

No! Do you see Jesus ever saying, “I institute a new priesthood, and you are priests?”

No! That word is not used.

And yet, very early on in the apostolic period, it's recognized that the apostles and their successors are priestly figures, and in particular, the chief of the apostles, Peter, and his successors are like the acting high priests over the Church on earth, while Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

Where do we Catholics get this idea that the pope is not only the supreme authority but that he’s a supreme priestly authority?

Well, I'm going to suggest to you this morning that it's from the Jewish tradition.

It’s that if we actually read the text of the Gospels through Jewish eyes and look at them through Jewish tradition, we're going to see why those Jewish Christians accepted it.

It’s precisely because they knew the traditions, they knew the customs, they knew the beliefs of the rabbis and the priests and the Temple, and they saw the New Covenant that Christ was instituting and the Church that he was building on Peter through Jewish eyes, and they recognized him as the priestly overseer of the house of God and the first pope.

All right, so that’s my goal this morning.

Now, before I do that though, let’s just begin with a brief prayer, just to get ourselves focused and our minds and our hearts focused on Christ.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, I thank you for the gift of this day.

I thank you for all of these brothers and sisters in Christ who have gathered together to study your word and to study the gift of authority that you have given us in Peter and his successors.

I pray, Lord, that you would pour out the grace of the Holy Spirit upon us this morning to open our minds and our hearts to the truth that you would have us take away from this talk.

And I ask all this through Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

All right, if you look at your handout, take it out.

We’re going to dive in and try to answer these questions that I’ve posed for you.

Well, before I do that, I want to give you just a brief catechesis—a little Jewish CCD—here on some of the texts I’m going to be drawing from.

If you want to study ancient Jewish tradition and use it to illuminate the Bible, there are many different texts that you can read, and these are the kind of things that scholars look at in depth.

Especially when, for example, I was studying at the University of Notre Dame getting my doctorate, we had to read these documents in detail, and I just wanted to introduce them to you because I’m going to be drawing from them.

I’m going to be focusing on ancient Jewish tradition.

We’re going to look at the Bible a little bit in terms of the Old Testament, like Isaiah 22 that Steve mentioned earlier this morning, but primarily I want to look at these Jewish traditions.

Now, ancient Jewish literature can be categorized into a number of different groups, but there are four main bodies of literature that are important for us as Catholics to be familiar with if we’re going to study the Gospels through Jewish eyes.

The first one is a book called the Mishnah.

The Mishnah was a collection of ancient Jewish traditions of the rabbis from the first to the third centuries A.D. It was compiled by Rabbi Judah the Prince around 200 A.D. and it's kind of similar to what we might find either in our Code of Canon Law or the Catechism of the Catholic Church, right?

A compendium of the binding traditions that the rabbis believed about sacred scripture.

They didn’t see it as equal to scripture, but they saw it as the light through which scripture should be read.

The second body of literature is known as the Babylonian Talmud.

This is about a 30-volume collection of all of the beliefs of the rabbis from the first through the fifth centuries A.D. It’s kind of like our Catholic Church Fathers.

Has anybody ever studied the Church Fathers?

Has anybody done any reading in the Church Fathers?

Yeah, okay, we’ve got a few people here.

You know, when you look at the early Church, it’s not as if we have one or two or three writings from the early Church Fathers.

We have dozens and dozens and dozens of volumes—thousands of pages of writings from the 1st, the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th centuries of all of the bishops of the early churches at Antioch, at Jerusalem, at Rome—all these various bishops who were successors of the apostles.

We have their writings; we know what they believed.

Well, the Jews had the same thing.

Their rabbis would collect their traditions, and these were written down in the Babylonian Talmud.

So if you ever want to get a copy of that, it’s only about $750 for the full set.

It took me 10 years to get my wife to allow me to get it!

I mean, until I decided to get it.

Okay, so the Talmud—we’ll be looking at some of those traditions as well.

The third group of Jewish writings is called the Midrash Rabbah.

That means the Great Commentary, and this was an ancient rabbinic commentary on books of the Bible.

It would be something similar to what we have as Catholics—has anybody ever bought the Navarre Bible or maybe the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible?

That’s what the Midrash was like.

It was where the rabbis collected not their disputes about different laws, but their actual commentary on scripture, so we can know how they interpreted passages in the Old Testament.

And then finally, number four, there were the Aramaic Targums.

These were ancient Jewish translations and adaptations of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic—the language of the Jewish people.

Remember, Steve mentioned that earlier this morning—that the common people spoke the language of Aramaic.

So in the synagogue, whenever the scripture would be read in Hebrew, there would also be a translation read to the people in Aramaic called the Targum, right?

This is kind of like our Catholic lectionary.

When we get up and hear the Word of God read in Mass, is it in the original Hebrew?

No! Is it in the original Greek?

No! It’s the New American Bible; it’s an English translation.

Now, that’s how the Aramaic Targums function—they function as a kind of lectionary, with one exception.

The Aramaic Targums would actually not just translate; they would also interpret and expand, and kind of add certain elements from the Jewish tradition that would clarify what was being said in the original Hebrew.

Now, as a scholar, what we do is we spend time looking at all these books and documents that other people don’t necessarily have the time to read, and then try to bring them to bear on the Bible so that we can see it and interpret it in its ancient Jewish context.

So what I’m going to share with you this morning are some of these texts and traditions from ancient rabbinic Judaism about Matthew 16, the passage that we’ve been looking at over the course of the morning.

Now, I know you all read it, but let’s just read it again—look at it a little more closely—and we’re going to try to see it through Jewish eyes this morning.

I know you know the passage, but it’s always good to read God’s Word one more time, especially when it’s lunchtime.

All right, we all know the story: Jesus, Peter, and the keys of the kingdom.

Jesus answered, “Simon, blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, which means son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades”—notice that in Greek, it’s Hades—“shall not prevail against it.

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Matthew 16:13-19. This is, of course, the foundational text for our Catholic belief in the authority of Peter and his successors.

And as Steve showed so well, each of these images is rooted in first-century Judaism and culture.

But what I want to do is look at the rabbinic teachings and rabbinic traditions as well as the priestly dimensions of what Jesus is doing here in terms of Peter’s office.

So in order to bring out this rabbinic context, this Jewish context, and to highlight Peter’s priestly identity, we’re going to look at four images: first, the image of the rock or foundation stone; second, the keys of the kingdom; third, the power to bind and loose; and then fourth, the priestly prime minister from the book of Isaiah that Jesus is alluding to.

Now, because Steve already covered some of this, we can go through it selectively, highlighting certain elements.

But let’s begin with the foundation stone in ancient Jewish tradition in the rabbinic writings.

Now, as Steve mentioned in his talk about Caesarea Philippi, at the pagan temple of Caesarea Philippi, you found many parallels with the Temple in Jerusalem.

One of those parallels was this giant rock, this giant stone.

It’s true that in many ancient Jewish temples, you would have a kind of central stone, a pillar or a rock, around which the temple was built.

But what the rabbis tell us is that not only was this true of the pagan temple in Caesarea Philippi, it was also true of the Jerusalem temple as well.

In the Jerusalem temple, there was something that the rabbis called the Even Shetiyah.

The Even Shetiyah—you can throw that out at a cocktail party and sound really smart, right?

The Even Shetiyah was the stone of foundation, the foundation stone.

It was a large slab stone in the very center of the temple, in fact, in the Holy of Holies itself, upon which rested the Ark of the Covenant.

And the rabbis had some interesting traditions about this rock upon which the temple was built.

Look at the first one here.

This one is a description from the Mishnah telling us about how the high priest would go into the temple, into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, and that when he went into the Holy of Holies, there he would see not just where the Ark would have been, but the foundation stone upon which the whole temple was built.

Look at this quote here: “On the Day of Atonement, the high priest went through the sanctuary until he came to the space between the two veils or two curtains separating the temple from the Holy of Holies.

When he reached the Ark, he would put the fire pan between the two bars.”

What’s the fire pan?

It’s a censer.

The priest, when he would go in to perform the rite of the Day of Atonement, always had a censer filled with incense and smoke.

Does that sound familiar, Catholics?

Seen any priests swinging censers around as they ascend to the altar?

Where do you Catholics get that stuff from?

Is that pagan religion?

No, no.

It’s from ancient Judaism; it’s from the Old Testament, Leviticus chapter 16. So when the priest would enter into that Holy of Holies once a year, he would bring the fire pan with him, and he would heap up the incense on the coals.

This is a high mass, right?

Not a low mass; this is a solemn mass, and the whole place would be filled with smoke.

He came out, by the way, he went in, and in the outer space, he would pray a short prayer, but he did not prolong his prayer lest he put Israel in terror.

Pause there: What does that mean?

Well, they all knew that if the high priest went into the Holy of Holies and he was in ritual defilement, he would die there.

So the priest did not want to stay too long in the Holy of Holies because the people outside might start to get nervous that he had died in the process of offering the liturgy.

In fact, the rabbis had a tradition that when the high priest would go in on the Day of Atonement, they would tie a rope around his ankle just in case he died.

Because if he died in the Holy of Holies, who’s going to go in to get him out?

So they would drag his body out by the rope if he died in the process of offering the liturgy.

Okay, this is dangerous to be a high priest, right?

This is serious business.

So he would say a short prayer so that he wouldn’t make the people afraid.

But look what the Mishnah says next: “After the Ark was taken away, a stone remained there from the time of the early prophets, and it was called Shetiyah.

It was higher than the ground by three fingerbreadths, and on this he used to put”—and it doesn’t say what he put; it just says, “on this he used to put” in the Hebrew.

Now, what is that describing?

Well, this is a very interesting thing that sometimes Christians aren’t familiar with.

Most Christians know about the Ark of the Covenant, and the reason most Christians know about the Ark of the Covenant is because we’ve all seen Indiana Jones, right?

And Raiders of the Lost Ark.

You may all remember the golden box with this cherub on the top of it.

But what most people don’t realize is that in the Temple, the Ark would be placed on this foundation stone, but what the Mishnah tells us is that...

At the time of the Babylonian exile, what happened to the Ark?

It disappeared, right?

Jeremiah took it, 2 Maccabees tells us, and hid it in Mount Nebo, and the Ark was to remain hidden until the Messiah came and the glory cloud came down from heaven again once more.

So from that time, the 6th century before Christ all the way to Jesus’ day, whenever the high priest would go into the Temple to offer the blood of the sacrifice of the Day of Atonement, guess what was missing?

The Ark!

So if you’re the high priest and you’re going to go in on the Day of Atonement and offer the blood, where do you put the blood?

Isn’t it supposed to go on the Ark?

Well, the Jewish tradition said that what the high priest would do in the absence of the Ark is place it on the foundation stone, because that was the center; it was the pillar upon which the whole Temple was built.

So this was a very significant stone.

In fact, the rabbis believed that the same stone that was in the Temple of Jerusalem, the foundation stone, was the very stone that Abraham had offered Isaac on—that he had built the altar in Genesis chapter 22. Very significant stone.

So what does this mean then for our understanding of Matthew 16? Oh, well, there’s one more tradition.

In the second tradition, we also find that not only was the stone at the center of the Temple, in the Holy of Holies, the rabbis also saw— they had a tradition that the whole world had stemmed from this one stone.

They said this in the next quote: “It was called Shetiyah, or foundation.”

Atanah, which was a rabbinic authority, taught it was called that because from it the world was founded.

We were taught in accord with the view that the world was started or created from Zion.

In other words, Jerusalem, the rabbis thought, was the center of the earth; it was the first thing that God made in creation.

Rabbi Isaac the Smith said that the Holy One, blessed be He, cast a what into the ocean?

A stone!

A stone from which the world was then founded, as it was said: “Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened?

Or who laid the cornerstone thereof?”

But the sages said the world was created from Zion, as it is said, “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.”

That's in the Babylonian Talmud.

So if we look at those two traditions, what are they showing us?

Why would Jesus tell Peter, “You are the rock, and on this rock I will do what?

Build my Church”? How would that have sounded to Jewish ears?

Well, what it would have signified is that Jesus was not just building the Church upon Peter; what he’s building upon Peter is essentially a new Temple, right?

A new place where God's people would come to worship, a new Temple of a new covenant.

And this is even heightened more powerfully when you think about what Steve said about Caesarea Philippi, because what Caesarea Philippi is, is a kind of anti-Temple, right?

An anti-place of worship, an anti-stone.

But Christ is going to build on Peter a new Temple, a new stone, a new foundation stone, which will be the Church.

Now let me ask you a question: If Peter is a foundation stone in the Holy of Holies, if he’s like the Even Shetiyah, do you already begin to see the priestly context?

Who was it that was able to go into the Holy of Holies and put the blood on the Even Shetiyah?

The high priest and the high priest alone.

So there’s a connection between the foundation stone of the Temple and not just any priest, but the high priest.

Let’s keep going.

Turn to page 2 in “The Keys of the Kingdom” in Jewish tradition.

For the sake of time, we’re not going to be able to look at all these passages in detail, but I just want to highlight some of the priestly and Temple connections.

As Steve pointed out in Isaiah chapter 22, the keys of the kingdom are a sign of royal authority.

They were given to the prime minister over the Kingdom of David, who was kind of like a second-in-command only to the king himself.

But as the Jewish tradition shows us, these keys were not simply a sign of royal authority; they were a sign of priestly authority.

It was the priests who had the Temple keys.

You can see this in a couple of cases.

First of all, the first two quotes here are from Josephus and the Mishnah, and what these tell us is that in the time of Jesus, in the first century A.D., there were actual keys to the Temple.

And they weren't just kept by anybody; they were kept by the Jewish priests.

If you look here for just a second at Josephus, the first quote says, For although there be four courses of the priests and every one of them has about 5,000 men in them, yet they do officiate on certain days only.

This is kind of like Father getting Monday off, right?

Okay, that’s the idea.

They would only officiate on certain days, and when those days are over, other priests succeed in the performance of their sacrifices, and they assemble together at midday.

And how do you know when your priestly time has come to offer sacrifice?

What do you get?

You receive the keys of the Temple.

Notice that!

So the giving of the keys is not just a symbol of any kind of authority; it’s the priestly authority to do what?

Offer sacrifice.

So when Jesus gives Peter the keys, what is he saying?

“Okay, now Peter, you’re going to go and you’re going to get some bulls and you’re going to get some goats, and you’re going to go out in Jerusalem and offer sacrifice.”

What sacrifice is Peter going to be offering?

Not the sacrifice of bulls and goats, but the sacrificial offering of the Eucharist, right?

That’s what he’s going to be doing as priest in the new covenant, which will not be the blood of animals and goats, but the holy and living blood of Christ.

And again, notice this next tradition from the Mishnah.

Guess where they kept the keys of the Temple?

In a rock!

This is unbelievable when you look at this.

When you think about what Jesus is doing in Matthew 16, it says there was a place there in the Temple whereon lay a slab of marble in which was fixed a ring and a chain on which hung the keys.

And when the time was come to lock up the Temple, the priest would lift up the slab by the ring and take the keys from the chain.

The priest would lock the gates from the inside while a Levite slept outside.

And when he had finished locking the gates, he put back the keys on the chain and the slab in its place, put his mattress over it, and went to sleep for the night.

Interesting, huh?

So if you’re the priest and you get the keys, where do you sleep?

On the rock!

Okay, that sounds good.

This is no Sealy Posturpedic mattress here, right?

This is some serious penance.

But again, notice the connection: for a Jew, the keys would not have just connoted the Temple; they would have connoted the priesthood, right?

And the priestly liturgy.

All right, now keep going because these keys weren’t just given to any priest.

There was a particular priest who had them, and his name was the Sagan Hakohanim.

I don’t have this on the outline, but it’s spelled Sagan (S-E-G-A-N) Hakohanim (H-A-K-O-H-A-N-I-M). Sagan Hakohanim.

And in Hebrew, what that means is the prefect of the priests.

Does that sound familiar?

The prefect, right?

He’s like the high priest over all the other priests, who is the captain of the Temple.

And in Josephus, again, who’s a first-century Jewish historian, he tells us that before the Temple was destroyed, a sign took place in which the gates of the Temple in Jerusalem swung open of their own accord, miraculously.

And as soon as this happened and the gates swung open one night, guess who they went running to find?

The Sagan Hakohanim, the prefect of the priests, the captain of the Temple.

And why did they go run to find this chief priest among all the other priests?

Because he had the keys.

Look at this: Josephus tells us that also before the Jews rebelled and before those commotions which preceded the war, “the eastern gate of the inner court of the Temple, which was of brass and vastly heavy and had been with difficulty shut by 20 men—it took 20 men to close the gates—and rested upon a basis armed with iron, this gate was seen to be opened of its own accord by itself about the sixth hour of the night.”

Now those who kept watching the Temple came running to the captain of the Temple.

In Greek, it’s called the captain of the Temple; in Hebrew, that’s the prefect of the priests, the Sagan Hakohanim.

They told him about it, and he then came up from there and, not without great difficulty, was able to shut the gate again.

This also appeared to the common people to be a happy sign, as if God did thereby open the gate of happiness.

But the men of learning, meaning the scribes, understood the miracle—that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord and that the gate was opened for what?

The advantage of their enemies.

In other words, once you got the keys to a city and you opened the gate, that means you can just plunder it.

And sure enough, we know that in 70 A.D., what happens to the Jerusalem Temple?

The Romans break down the gates and they just burn the whole Temple to the ground.

So this is a priestly image; it’s a Temple image that is the symbolism.

So do you think Jesus knew this when he’s speaking to Peter in Matthew 16? Do you think when he said, “You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it”? Do you think he knew about the keys and the gates and the Temple?

Well, I suspect he did, right?

Because Jesus, although obviously he’s the divine Son of God, is also himself a first-century what?

Jew.

He’s a rabbi; he knows the traditions, and he’s setting up Peter as the new captain of a new Temple and giving him the new keys to a new kingdom.

Now, the final point I would take from this page here is a fascinating story because it reveals to us that even though the rabbis saw the keys of the kingdom as a sign of priestly authority, they also recognized that this priestly authority could come to an end.

And that the way you knew when the priestly authority was coming to an end was by the fact that the keys were given to somebody else.

Look at this tradition that the rabbis said: they actually described the fact that when the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed, there was a miraculous event that accompanied it in which the priests took the keys of the kingdom and threw them up into heaven.

Look what it says here: “Our rabbis have taught.”

You can find this tradition everywhere; it’s in all the ancient rabbinic writings, but these are just two examples.

“Our rabbis have taught when the first Temple was about to be destroyed, bands upon bands of young priests with the keys of the Temple in their hands assembled and mounted the roof of the Temple and exclaimed, ‘Master of the Universe!’”

Wow, pretty significant, huh?

I mean, a pretty powerful image!

You can see the second tradition gives you the same story.

What did Jeconiah do?

He collected all the keys of the Temple and ascended to the very roof, and he said, “Lord of the Universe, seeing that we have hitherto not proved worthy—what?

Stewards.”

See that image?

That’s going to appear in Isaiah 22: “Faithful custodians for thee.”

“From now on and thenceforth, behold, the keys are thine; they’re yours.”

And the two rabbis differ as to what happened.

One rabbi said a kind of fiery hand descended and took them from him, and the other said that as he threw them upward, they did not come down anymore.

This is from Leviticus Rabbah, the commentary on the book of Leviticus.

So again, if you’re a Jewish Christian, if you’re one of the apostles and you know about these traditions, when Jesus hands Peter the keys—when he says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom”—of earth?

No, the kingdom of heaven!

What is he doing?

Does he even have to say the word “priest”? Does he even have to say the word “high priest” or “captain of the Temple”? No! Because everything is contained in the image of the keys.

You see what’s going on here?

And again, Peter is not just going to be the steward of the earthly Jerusalem Temple because Jesus knows full well that 40 years after his crucifixion, that earthly Temple will be thrown down and there will be not one stone left upon another, as he says in Mark chapter 13, verses 1 through 2. But the keys that he’s giving to Peter are authority for entry into the supernatural Kingdom of Heaven.

He’s going to be the one who has the kind of priestly authority to open and shut, as we’ll see in a minute.

But these keys are not only just going to be for defense; they’re going to be for offense as well.

Because what is not going to prevail against Peter and the Church and the keys?

The gates—not of Jerusalem, not of Caesarea Maritima, but the gates of hell.

That’s right, the gates of the underworld.

In other words, Peter is not just a priest; he’s a warrior.

And with his priestly army of the apostles and all their successors, they’re going to plunder Hades.

It’s kind of like the parable of the strong man.

Everybody remember the parable of the strong man that Jesus tells in the Gospels?

He says you can’t enter into a strong man’s house and take his goods unless you first do what?

You bind the strong man.

And then, once you’ve bound the strong man, then the thief can enter his house and steal all of his stuff.

Now, sometimes when we hear that parable, we think that the thief is like Satan, or the strong man is Jesus, because it seems like the positive image would be Jesus and the negative image of the thief would be Satan.

But it’s, in fact, the reverse.

Who’s the thief?

Jesus!

Who’s the strong man?

Satan.

And Jesus is entering into his house to take back all his stuff.

And what is the stuff that Satan has stolen?

The souls of all mankind, right?

And so Jesus is giving the same kind of power here to Peter.

He’s going to plunder the city of Hades.

The gates of Hades have nothing on the Kingdom of Heaven.

All right, on to page three.

What about the image of binding and loosing?

What about this image?

You’ve got to admit it’s kind of a strange one, right?

Sometimes when Catholics, especially if we get into discussions with our non-Catholic brothers and sisters about Matthew 16, we can tend to get so overly focused on the rock—you know, the whole thing about Petros and Petra and the debate that Steve mentioned earlier—that we can forget about the ending of the passage where he says, “Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven.”

What does this image of binding and loosing mean?

How would a first-century Jew have understood it?

Well, once again, this is common language of the rabbis.

It’s the language of authority, and you can see this in a couple of places.

First, there’s a quote here from Josephus where he talks about the Pharisees and their authority, and guess what words he used to describe their authority?

Binding and loosing.

Josephus says this—in the first century: “The Pharisees, a body of Jews with the reputation of excelling the rest of their nation in the observance of religion and as exact exponents of the law,”—so they’re interpreters of the Bible—“became at length the real administrators of the state, at liberty to banish and recall, to loose in Greek, luo, and to bind in Greek, deō, whom they would.

In short, the enjoyments of royal what?

Authority were theirs.”

This is from Josephus' The Jewish War, even though Alexander was the queen at the time.

So again, it’s not just the keys that symbolize authority; it’s also the power to bind and loose.

And this is precisely what is given to Peter in Matthew chapter 16. He’s being given the same authority to interpret the scripture that the priests, scribes, and Pharisees had in the first century A.D. And if you have any doubts about this at all, I would encourage you to compare what Jesus says to Peter in Matthew chapter 16 and what Jesus says about the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 23. Now, as you know, especially if you’ve been going to daily Mass lately, Jesus doesn’t have a lot of nice things to say about the Pharisees, does he?

Remember last week we were going through the passages in Luke where Jesus was just blasting the Pharisees day after day—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

All the readings from the Gospels last week were all about the problems with the Pharisees.

It was a bad week to be a Pharisee last week!

Well, the parallel passage to that in Matthew's Gospel is in Matthew chapter 23. But what I want you to notice is something striking, and it’s when Jesus commands the apostles that during his earthly ministry, how are they to respond to the authority of the Pharisees?

They are to obey it.

Look at this: it’s one of the most striking texts in the Gospels, and I want you to see the language he used.

I've put it here in two columns for you on the handout.

Let’s start with the first column on the left.

This is all from Matthew chapter 23, describing the scribes and Pharisees.

Jesus says this: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat,” and the Greek word there is cathedra or cathédra.

“Therefore, do whatever they tell you and keep it.”

Oh, I’m sorry, is that the wrong translation?

What does he say?

“They sit on Moses' cathedra, so you do and keep whatever they tell you because they have authority.”

That’s amazing, people!

That’s one of the most shocking verses in the Gospel—that Jesus can tell his apostles, even though he’s the divine Son of God, to tell them when the authorities, the scribes and Pharisees, when they sit on Moses' seat and they pronounce an authoritative teaching, guess what you have to do?

You have to keep it!

Why?

Because they have Moses' authority; they sit on Moses' seat.

Now, he goes on to say, “Don’t do what they do because they don’t practice what they preach.”

Remember that?

He says don’t imitate them because they teach the right thing, but do they follow it?

No! And that’s why he blasts them—because they’re hypocrites.

But he commands his disciples to follow them.

Now, a lot of people have noticed that image of the cathedra there because it’s going to be the image we use for the authority of the pope when he speaks ex cathedra, right?

Where do you Catholics get that?

Well, we just made it up in the Middle Ages.

No! It’s straight from the New Testament!

But look at the next couple of lines because Jesus goes on to say a couple of other things in Matthew 23 when he’s talking about the Pharisees.

Point number two: he says they bind heavy burdens on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.

And then point number three: he says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you key shut”—most translations have “you lock”—but it’s the actual word “key” as a verb.

“You key shut the kingdom of heaven against people.”

As he says in Luke's Gospel, he says, “You yourselves don’t go in, but you keep others out.”

So notice, what are the three reasons the apostles have to obey the teachings of the Pharisees and the scribes?

It’s because number one, they sit on the seat; number two, they have the power to bind; and number three, they have the keys—they lock shut or they open.

Notice he says “the kingdom of heaven.”

How do they do that?

Through their interpretation of scripture—their authoritative interpretation of the law.

So look at the next column.

Then when Jesus says these words to Peter, what is he setting him up as?

A priestly authority, a spiritual authority whose authority you can accept whenever you agree with it?

Is that the idea?

Can you pick and choose?

No! Think about this for a minute: if you couldn’t pick and choose...

From the teachings of those who sat on the authority of the seat of Moses in the Old Covenant, how much less can you pick and choose from the teachings of the one who sits on the cathedra that Christ himself established?

Think about that; it’s a serious, serious issue.

So if you look at points number two and three, as we’ve already seen earlier this morning, Jesus says to Peter, “Whatever you bind” in Greek, “desēs,” “on earth will be bound” (in Greek, “deō”) “in heaven.”

That’s the same Greek word that Jesus uses to describe the Pharisees' teaching authority in Matthew 23. And then again, point number three, Jesus says to Peter, “I give to you,” singular, as Steve so correctly pointed out, “I give to you, Peter, the keys” (in Greek, “kleidas”) “of the kingdom of heaven.”

That’s the same words that Jesus uses to describe the Pharisees' authority in Matthew 23. Do you think that’s a coincidence?

No! So if you go back up to point number one, when we as Catholics say that the pope sits on the seat, the cathedra, the “cathēdras” of Peter whenever he teaches authoritatively, where are we getting that image?

Where are we getting that language?

It’s from our Lord’s own lips and it’s from ancient Jewish tradition.

Now, if you have any doubts about this and you think I’m just pulling your leg or I'm engaged in some kind of Catholic idiosyncratic reading here, I’ll just give you one quote.

This is a quote from a modern Protestant commentary on Matthew 16. It is the most scholarly and exhaustive commentary on the Gospel of Matthew written in the 20th century by W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, both not Catholics, but Protestant scholars.

And after they finished analyzing Matthew 16 in light of Jewish tradition, this is their conclusion about Matthew 16. They say this: “The major opinion of modern exegetes or interpreters is that Peter, as a sort of supreme rabbi or prime minister of the kingdom, is in Matthew 16 given what?

Teaching authority!

Given the power to declare what is permitted”—compare the rabbinic term “sharakh”—“and what is not permitted”—compare the rabbinic term for binding.

“Peter can decide by doctrinal decision what Christians must and must not do.”

This is the traditional Roman Catholic understanding, with the proviso that Peter had what?

Successors.

See, that’s the one point they don’t agree with.

They don’t accept the idea of a successor, which is rather convenient because then you don’t have to follow the teaching of the popes after that.

But these two Protestant scholars are admitting, “Look, Jesus is setting Peter up as supreme rabbi, chief teacher, and he’s giving him a spiritual authority which means that all Christians have to accept his doctrines.”

This interpretation of binding and loosing in terms of teaching authority seems to us to be what?

Correct!

Peter is the authoritative teacher without peers; he’s second only to Christ himself.

That’s a pretty striking commentary from non-Catholics, is it not?

What it shows you is that modern biblical scholarship, for all of its faults and foibles, given its attention to history and to Judaism and to the first-century context, is coming to recognize, after 400 years of debates between Protestants and Catholics, that when you look at these New Testament texts in their Jewish context, guess what?

The Catholic Church got it right!

The Catholic Church has interpreted this text correctly, with the one exception about Peter having successors.

So let’s turn to page four.

As Steve mentioned earlier this morning in his talk, and I would highly encourage you to get his book, Upon This Rock, where he discusses Matthew 16 in great detail—like 350 pages of detail—it’s a wonderful, wonderful exegesis of that text, looking at the Church Fathers and Judaism and the Old Testament.

It’s remarkable.

But as he mentioned this morning, if you want to understand Jesus’ words, there’s one main text in the Old Testament that’s actually in the Bible that he’s alluding to, and that’s Isaiah chapter 22. In fact, in the Catholic lectionary, whenever we read Matthew 16 for the Sunday reading, guess what the Old Testament reading is?

Isaiah 22! It’s almost as if the Church knows this stuff and has kind of put it together so we can see it.

It’s remarkable!

Anyway, if you look at Isaiah 22 closely, what it is describing are all the same images that Jesus uses in Matthew 16—the keys, the binding and loosing—but what it’s talking about is this prime minister of the Davidic Kingdom, this man who was second in rank only to the king himself.

Now, Steve pointed that out this morning, and I just want to confirm that and agree.

But I want to add one little aspect to it, and it’s this: that the prime minister in Isaiah 22 who’s given the power to open and shut and given the keys is not just a royal figure; he is a priestly figure as well, and this is important.

Let’s reread that passage and look at it for just a second as we wrap up and come to a close.

This is the story of two prime ministers—a bad one, Shebna, and then a good one, Eliakim, who’s going to take his place.

Notice who is going to succeed him.

And God says this to Isaiah: “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the house” (al-bayit). He’s the one who oversees the house.

I wonder what house he’s talking about?

What house could he mean?

The Brady Bunch house?

What house is this?

In Jewish lingo, in the Jewish language and culture, what did they refer to the Temple as?

The house!

Remember, Jesus says, “Stop making my Father’s house a house of trade!”

Exactly!

So if he’s over the house, he’s over the Temple.

So go to the steward, Shebna, who is over the house, and say to him, “What have you to do here, and why have you hewn a tomb for yourself?”

In other words, Shebna has been a bad boy!

“Behold, the Lord will hurl you away violently, O you strong man.

He will seize firm hold on you and whirl you round and round and throw you like a ball into a wide land, and there you shall die.

I will thrust you from your office.”

Highlight that: the prime minister had an office!

“And you will be cast down from your station.”

“And in that day, I will call Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe and I will bind your belt on him and I will commit your authority to his hand.”

And he shall be a—oh wait, I’m sorry, that’s the Italian; the Hebrew there is “ab.”

But what do we say in Italian?

He is “papa,” father!

Where did we get the word pope from?

That Italian word, right?

The Holy Father!

So this prime minister is a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.

“I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David.

He shall open...”

“None shall shut; he shall shut, and none shall open.

And I will fasten him like a peg in a sure place.

He will become a throne of honor to his father’s house, and they will hang upon him the whole weight—Pay attention!

Look at this—they will hang upon him, the prime minister, the whole weight of his father’s house, the offspring of every issue, every small vessel, from the cups to the flagons.”

What?

What’s he talking about?

The prime minister is in charge of Tupperware?

I mean, what’s he doing here?

What cups and what flagons are they talking about?

The golden flagons that they would offer the sacrifices in—where?

In the Temple!

And who had the authority to do that?

Not just kings but priests!

And notice, he’s set over all of it, so he’s like a high priestly prime minister.

Because remember, David wasn’t just a king, was he?

He was a priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

So his second in rank is not just a royal prime minister; he is also a priestly prime minister.

Now, if Jesus is alluding to this passage in Isaiah 22, and he’s giving Peter all of the same authority, then that means that Peter’s not just a royal figure, is he?

He’s also the priestly overseer of the house of God—the priestly overseer of the new Temple of God.

And if you have any doubt about this, let me just show you this one thing.

Recently, my friend Michael Barber and I, who are best friends—he’s a professor at John Paul the Great Catholic University—we were reading through the Aramaic Targums because, you know, that’s what nerds—I mean, scholars—that’s what we do.

And we found this ancient Jewish Targum.

Remember, the Targum was like a translation and commentary on the Old Testament that they would make.

We found this ancient Aramaic commentary on Isaiah 22, and look at how the rabbis interpreted Isaiah 22. They added a few things to the description.

Let’s look at what they are.

I mean, it’s kind of a repeat, but look at the passage again with certain additions—I’ve italicized them in the handouts.

“Thus says the Lord God of hosts: Come to the guardian, to Shevna, who was appointed over the house, and you will say to them, ‘What have you to do here and why do you act this way, that you have prepared a place for yourself?’

He has prepared his place on the height and set his residence in the what?

In the rock!”

The priestly overseer of Isaiah 22—where does he hang out?

Where does he live?

Where is his pad?

In the rock!

Coincidence, Catholics?

I don’t think so!

I don’t think so!

I think Jesus knows exactly what he’s doing in Matthew 16. “So behold, the Lord casts you out to a place a mighty man has cast out, and shame will cover you.

He will take away from you the turban and encircle you with enemies in an encircling wall.”

What’s the turban?

When we see the word turban, we think about, say, an Arab person wearing a turban, like a Muslim.

But the Greek word for turban that’s translated into Aramaic is mitre.

Anybody ever heard of a mitre?

The mitre was what was worn by the chief priests in the Temple.

In fact, Josephus tells us that over the years, the mitre got taller and taller and taller.

Anybody seen any guys with big hats lately?

Right?

The bishops!

Josephus actually tells us that one high priest was so proud of his mitre in the first century that it was seven feet tall!

Now that’s a big hat!

That high priest was obviously from Texas, all right?

It's like a 50-gallon hat!

Anyway, but notice: so Eliakim, the steward—what's he getting?

He’s getting a high priestly mitre.

But let’s keep going.

So he says Shebna is going to be cast out because he didn’t guard the glory of the master’s house.

And in the middle, “I will thrust you from your place; throw you down from your ministry.”

And it will come to pass in that time, “I will exalt my servant Eliakim, son of Hilkiah.

I will clothe him with your robe and gird him with your”—anybody know any priests who wear cinctures or a sash?

Where did we get this sash thing from?

It’s from Judaism!

And guess who was the only person who wore the priestly sash?

The high priest!

This Eliakim is taking a priestly role.

So he says, “I will place your authority in his hand; he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the house of Judah.”

And “I will place the key”—not of the kingdom—but look: “the key of the what?

The sanctuary!”

So it’s a Temple image.

“I will place the key of the sanctuary and the authority of the house of David in his hand.

He will open; none shall shut; he will shut; none shall open.

And I will appoint him a faithful officer, ministering in an enduring place.

And all the glorious ones of his father’s house will rely on him—the sons and the sons’ sons, from the princes to the juniors, from the priests wearing the ephod to the sons of the Levites holding their harp.”

The Aramaic Targum on Isaiah chapter 22. So look: how did the ancient Jewish commentators interpret the overseer, the prime minister from Isaiah 22 that Jesus is alluding to?

They saw him as a high priestly steward over the Temple.

So what does this tell us about Peter, the first pope?

He’s not just a royal figure; he’s a priestly figure.

And Christ will ascend into heaven as the eternal high priest, offering the eternal sacrifice in the heavenly Temple.

But on earth, who’s going to be his steward?

Who watches over the earthly house of God?

Who becomes the foundation stone of the new Temple?

Who’s going to guard the house?

Who’s going to take care of the liturgy?

Has the pope been saying anything about the liturgy lately?

Where does Pope Benedict get off making rulings about the liturgy?

Well, last time I checked, he’s the priestly overseer; he’s the chief liturgical authority in the whole Church, right?

So if you don’t like what he has to say, that’s your problem, right?

Because whatever he binds is bound in heaven, and whatever he looses is loosed in heaven.

Why?

Because he has supernatural power—of his own power?

No! Because Christ gave him “exousia”—Christ gave him authority!

And it ain’t just royal authority, my friends; it’s priestly authority.

And that’s why we Catholics have a ministerial priesthood that was instituted by Jesus Christ himself.

And let us thank God for our priests!

Give him a hand right now!

It’s a year for the priest.

It’s a year for the priest!

Thank God for our priests!

Thank you, Father, for your gift of yourself!

And at the top of that priestly hierarchy stands who?

Pope Benedict XVI—the successor to the high priestly overseer that Jesus Christ himself established on Peter in the first century A.D. Now I’ll wrap up in closing here.

You might say, “Wow, Dr. Petrie, that’s really cool stuff!

But I don’t have time to read the Mishnah and the Targums and the Babylonian Talmud.

I can’t even afford the Talmud; $750! What am I supposed to do?”

Well, you could, you know, come to my classes and take some classes with me, or you could buy some of the CD sets I have outside.

I’ll tell you about it in just a second, on the Jewish roots of the Mass or the Jewish roots of the Canon.

But you could also just read the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church—see those little green books?

They contain all the Church's official teachings on matters of faith and morals.

In paragraph 553, I'll end with this: the Catechism has this to say about Matthew 16. It’s almost like it heard my lecture!

The Catechism says, “Not just Peter; Jesus entrusted a specific authority to Peter: ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.’

The power of the keys designates authority to govern what?

The house of God, which is the Church.

The power to bind and loose connotes the authority to absolve sins, to pronounce doctrinal judgments, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church.

Jesus entrusted this authority to the Church through the ministry of the apostles and, in particular, through the ministry of Peter, the only one to whom he specifically entrusted the keys of the kingdom.”

This is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 553. And so in closing, I just want to say to you that we Catholics need to be proud of our Jewish roots.

We need to be proud of the Jewish tradition, and we need to recognize that one of the reasons that the early Jews converted in droves to the Christian faith is because of their Jewish roots.

They saw the Scriptures through Jewish eyes, and they recognized that this whole structure of a kingdom—with a king, and a high priestly overseer, and a priesthood, and a temple, and the sacrifices—all those things were not developed by God in order to be smashed and thrown into the trash when the New Covenant came, but to be fulfilled in Christ, to be fulfilled in Peter and the apostles, and to be fulfilled ultimately in the Catholic Church, which he established as a gift to us.

So that when we go to the Mass, when we hear the teachings of the Church, we can trust that the very authority by which the pope teaches and makes decisions is the authority given to him by Jesus Christ himself.

And so we give him thanks as we say, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Amen.”

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.