Transcript

So we're gonna move on now and talk about priesthood in the gospels.

A lot of Christians in America do not believe that in the new covenant order, there is a place for a priesthood.

What I and other Catholic Bible scholars would argue though is that we can see Jesus setting up a priestly order in his, during his earthly ministry, appointing the apostles essentially as royal priests in a sacred kingdom that he is setting up on Earth, a sacred kingdom that we know of as the church.

So let's jump right into this.

Um, our Lord himself is obviously a descendant of David, but we need to recall that David exercised a priesthood during his earthly career, and there are indications in the Old Testament that this priestly status was passed onto his successors, his heirs.

So, in Matthew 1:1, we read, The Book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, and there are numerous examples all through the gospels of Jesus being linked to his ancestor, David, most notably the Davidic genealogy in Matthew 1 and another Davidic genealogy in Luke 3. Just as an aside, I believe that the genealogy in Matthew 1 is through Saint Joseph and the genealogy in Luke 3 is through the Blessed Mother.

That's a little bit complicated and I can't get into that discussion right now, but that's what I would, uh, suggest is the way to reconcile the differences between those two genealogies, but both clearly go back to David.

Now, when we look at David, we see him doing priestly things during his lifetime.

In 2 Samuel 6:14, we read that David was girded with a linen ephod.

This was like a chasuble or an alb.

It was a garment that was associated with the priesthood and their liturgical ministry.

So laymen were not supposed to wear an ephod.

It was very, uh, inappropriate, uh, only appropriate for a priest.

So David and all the House of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord and set it inside the tent that David had pitched for it, so that's also a priestly act to care for the ark and to, uh, set up the tent, uh, or the housing where the ark was kept.

Uh, that was something that was the responsibility of the priests and the Levites.

And then David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.

That's another priestly act, the offering of sacrifice.

And when David had finished, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord.

That is an action that was only authorized for the priests.

Only the priests had the authority to bless people authoritatively using God's holy name.

So here, David is doing all thi- all sorts of things that were reserved for the priesthood.

Why does David get away with this when, by contrast, uh, Saul, um, uh, back in, um, uh, 1 Samuel 13, um, offers sacrifice when the priest prophet Samuel is not present, and Saul gets in I'm sorry, that's actually, uh, 2 Samuel 15.

Uh, Paul gets a lot of, in a lot of trouble for doing that, for acting like a priest when he's not authorized to do so.

He's just the king.

Now, here, David is king, and he's performing all these priestly actions, and he's not getting in trouble for it.

Well, the answer to this is really found in the previous chapter.

In 2 Samuel 5, we read that David conquered the City of Jerusalem and became its king.

Well, when David sits on the throne of the City of Jerusalem, by doing so, he enters into a succession of the kings of Jerusalem that goes back to Melchizedek, that great figure in Genesis 14.

Melchizedek, according to Jewish understanding, was the founding king of the City of Salem, which later became known as Jeru- salem, and Melchizedek, the founding king, was also a priest.

And so these duties and these prerogatives of being a royal priest were passed onto Melchizedek's successors.

Those successors did not necessarily need to be biological descendants any more than the successors of Peter need to be his biological descendants.

I was talking to a Protestant pastor once, or, uh, a few years after my conversion, and I asked him, Well, you know, you like some things about the Catholic Church.

Haven't you ever thought of converting?

And he said to me, Well, I've thought about it, but I just can't buy the idea that all the popes are the descendants of Peter.

Like, Well, I can't buy that either.

That seems completely ridiculous to me, you know?

But it's interesting.

There's all these, uh, misconceptions that people have about Catholic belief that never arise until you press people.

Then you find out that people are believing that we think that all the, all the popes are, you know, biological descendants of Saint Peter.

Uh, clearly that's not the case.

Um, you don't have to be to be the successor of Peter.

Well, you don't have a, have to be a biological descendant of Melchizedek to be Melchizedek's successor.

This is reflective in the Psalms.

Psalm 110:4 says, You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

That's a statement addressed to the Davidic king that is David and his sons.

They are priests after the order of Melchizedek because their kingship goes back to this sacred founder of the City of David.That's why, for example, in 2 Samuel 8:18, if you read in the Hebrew, it says David's sons were priests.

Most English translations just render something like officers, but that's not the Hebrew word.

The Hebrew word is kohanim.

It means priests.

Uh, this is reflecting the Mel- Melchizedekian priesthood that, um, that David enjoyed and was also conveyed to his, uh, successors.

Now, we see Jesus doing priestly things in the Gospel's.

For example, in Matthew 12, he's, uh, performing an action which technically was a violation of the Sabbath.

He's, um, threshing out grain in his hands and the apostles are doing so as well on the Sabbath day, and that did not agree with Pharisaic interpretation of the law.

So when challenged by the Pharisees who say, Why are you and your disciples doing that which is not lawful on the Sabbath?

Jesus responds, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?

Interesting.

So Jesus, the son of David, when challenged by the Pharisees, Why are you doing something that's not permitted to lay people?

Jesus appeals to his ancestor, David, and how David did priestly things, not only David, but also David's disciples, if you will, in the Old Testament.

Then our Lord uses another argument, Have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath day the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?

Okay?

So very interesting.

For justification for doing what he does, Jesus cites the, um, the right that priests in the Old Testament enjoyed to do things that were not permissible to laypeople.

So David, the Melchizedekian priest, is able to eat the bread of the presence, and likewise, um, the priests in the Sabbath are able to work on the Sabbath day without, uh, violating the law.

So what are the implications?

Uh, well, the implications are that Jesus is claiming a priestly, uh, privilege for himself and for his immediate assistants, the disciples.

Um, in order to see that, you have to sort of be reading the Gospel with Jewish eyes.

Now, Pope Benedict XVI saw the implications of Matthew 12 quite clearly, and he wanted to employ Matthew 12 in his first volume of his work Jesus of Nazareth in order to help make the case that there is a place for a new covenant priesthood, which is something that Protestants deny.

But Benedict X- XVI, being a very wise man, knew that if he as pope made the exegetical argument for Matthew 12, everybody in the world would say, You're just saying that because you're the pope, and you're biased, so we don't believe you.

So what does Benedict XVI do?

He does something very clever.

He lets a rabbi make the argument.

So when it comes to interpreting Matthew 12 and Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict quotes one of the most famous American rabbis of the 20th century, Rabbi Jacob Neusner, who is widely regarded as the most prolific rabbi scholar in American 20th century history.

That is to say, the rabbi scholar in Judaism who produced the most books.

I think everybody in Bible scholarship would agree that, uh, Rabbi Jacob Neusner gets that title.

He, he produced something like a thousand books, uh, during his lifetime.

Uh, very, very well known.

E- everybody in, everybody in Jewish academia knows Rabbi Neusner, and, uh, even Christian scholars in biblical scholarship are all aware of him because of his important contributions to scholarship.

But anyway, Rabbi Jacob Neusner wrote a little book that is something of a commentary on the gospels, and when he gets to Matthew 12, Rabbi Neusner says, He, that is to say Jesus, and his disciples may do on the Sabbath what they do because they stand in the place of the priests in the temple.

Rabbi Neusner has this down.

He, he gets what's going on.

Jesus is forming an alternative community to the temple community, and in this community, there's gonna be a new priesthood consisting of himself and his disciples, and, uh, and the community is going to replace the temple.

There is an analogy for this.

Uh, the Essenes thought in this way as well.

The Essenes regarded the temple in Jerusalem as defiled, and so they regarded their community as a substitute for the temple, uh, and they regarded themselves also as a priestly people.

Um, we'll talk a little bit more about that later.

So, uh, we see that in Matthew 12, that Jesus, uh, feels that he has a priestly privilege and it extends to his apostles as well.

We see also these priestly concepts in Matthew 16.18 and 19.

We read there, I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church.

And the powers of death shall not prevail against it.

Literally, the gates of 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.

Aha.

Now, we see that key phrase that we looked at earlier in the scrolls and in the Jewish tradition and from Josephus, binding and loosing.

And now, we know what that means.

Okay?

To bind and loose is to give the authoritative interpretation of God's law for the community.

Binding means forbidding things, loosing means permitting them according to the authoritative interpretation of the law.

This was a privilege or a responsibility given to the priesthood according to Deuteronomy 17, but now Jesus is setting up a new kingdom of Israel, and he's investing Peter with the authority to do this.

Later on in Matthew, we read, Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on Earth shall be loosed in heaven.

He says this to the apostles as a group, okay?

So, this is reflected in Catholic practice by the successor of Peter and the successor of the apostles.

The successor of Peter, of course, is the pope.

And so as Catholics we hold that the pope has the authority to bind and loose, authority passed onto him by succession from Peter.

But we also hold that the apostles as a group have the authority to bind and loose.

This is manifest when the successors of the apostles come together formally in what we call an ecumenical council.

And there, as representatives of the episcopacy from around the world are gathered together as a community representing the, what we call the Apostolic College, that is the, the, the apostles gathered together, they too have the authority to bind and loose.

And so the two voices of infallibility in the Catholic Church are the successor of Peter or the successors of the apostles gathered together.

That is to say, the pope or an ecumenical council.

So really, the governing structure of the Catholic Church is very biblical.

It's based on gospel patterns, essentially, of what we see.

Now, Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels, and so if you're Naturally, if you're converting to Christianity from Judaism, you would be concerned with, Well, who's going to interpret God's law in this new community that I'm joining?

And Matthew allays Jewish fears by relating how Jesus provided for the interpretation of divine law in the w- what we might call the w Israel that Jesus formed on the shoulders of the 12 apostles.

Um, let's go back to the Jewish e- encyclopedia and, um, uh, look a little bit further on what, uh, Rabbi Kohler, uh, tells us about the meaning of binding and loosing in Judaism.

To repeat a little bit, he says, The power of binding and loosing was always claimed by the Pharisees, illegitimately, we would say.

Josephus says, They became the administrators of all public affairs, who has to loose and to bind.

This does not mean that, as the learned men, they merely decided what, according to the law, was forbidden and allowed, but they possessed the power of tying or untying a thing by the spell of their divine authority.

Okay?

So the Pharisees thought w- they were really infused with a divine charism to do this on behalf of the whole people of Israel.

This power and authority received its ratification and final sanction from the celestial court of justice.

Okay?

This is a Jewish way of thinking.

So the Pharisees thought, The heavenly court has our back, okay?

And will back us up as we make these authoritative pronouncements for the Jewish people.

Now, look at what Kohler says when he gets to commenting on the New Testament.

In this sense, Jesus, when appointing his disciples to be his successors This is how a Jew reads the gospels, okay?

We talk about apostolic succession.

The Jew sees, you know, christological succession.

You know, the authority of Jesus is being placed on the shoulders of the apostles who are going to continue it after Jesus' ascension, right?

Appointing his disciples to be his successors, used the familiar formula, and then quotes Matthew, uh, 18:19, and Matthew 18:18.

By these words, he, Jesus, virtually invested them, the apostles, with the same authority as that which he found belonging to the scribes and Pharisees.

So this, a Jew is all over this, right?

The authority that the Pharisees claimed for themselves, Jesus actually gives to the apostles.

But the question is, did the scribes and Pharisees really have this authority?

Did God give the scribes and Pharisees the authority to interpret for the whole community?

No!

That authority had been given to the Levitical priests according to the great prophet Moses, and the Pharisees usurped it.

And that was something that Jesus and the As- Essenes agreed .

uh, upon.

Both the Essenes and Jesus would have told you the Pharisees did not belong exercising that.

The Essenes would say, No, the priesthood that leads our movement has the authority to bind and loose.

Jesus would be, would say, I am the royal priestly son of David.

I have the authority to do that and I am also giving it to my viceroys, my princes, the apostles, who are going to rule my community after I go back to the Father.

So, as we saw earlier, Deuteronomy 17:8, If any case arises requiring decision between one kind of legal right and another, any case too difficult for you, then you shall go up to the Levitical priests.

You shall consult them.

They shall declare to you the decision.

The man who does not obey the priest shall die.

So, the decision of the priest was as binding as the divine law itself, and violation of the priestly decision carried the same penalty as disobeying God's law, namely death.

Now, I've mentioned before, I believe 5Q13, column 13, verse 7 originally read, You appointed Levi to bind and loose.

This is the Essenes insisting on this authority for Levitical priesthood.

They also emphasize, You must live by the law of the Sons of Zadok, who Ezekiel said should rule over the sacred community.

We see a related passage in John 2:22-23.

When He said this, He breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.' This is parallel to binding and loosing, because the authority to bind and loose, uh, was indistinguishable from the authority to declare sins to be forgiven or retained in the Old Testament.

Why was that?

It's because in the Old Testament, when you committed a sin, you had to go to the priest, confess your sin to the priest while bringing an animal sacrifice, and then the priest would make a decision about whether you had properly performed the necessary ritual according to the law to be forgiven of the sin that you had committed.

And then if the priest gave the green light, then you were considered forgiven.

We see this in Leviticus 5:5 and following.

You have to read the whole passage, but I've exerted it here.

When a man is guilty, he shall confess the sin he has committed.

Confess to whom?

Well, to the priest.

Why do we know it was the priest that he confessed to?

Because the priest had to ensure that the animal that he brought matched the crime that he had committed.

Okay?

'Cause there's different gravity of crimes in the Old Testament.

Certain crimes are very serious and you had to bring a bull.

Other crimes were very light and all you had to bring was a pigeon.

Well, if you've killed somebody and you show up with a pigeon, sorry, we ain't gonna do that.

Come back with a bull and we'll talk.

Okay?

So the priest had to decide, d- you know, did our uh, i- the, the sacrifice that you're bringing to offer, was it commensurate to what you did, the violation you and to make the decision, he had to know what you did.

That's why you had to confess it.

Right?

So, He shall confess the sin he has committed to the priest, we could fill in, and he shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord, and the priest shall make atonement for him for the sin which he has committed.

That means the priest took the animal, offered it on the altar, And then he shall be forgiven.

So the administration of the forgiveness of sins was the responsibility of the priests in the Old Testament.

It was closely bound up with their authority to interpret and to apply the law.

They had to make a decision when somebody came to them, Okay, what does the law say that this man should do?

Is he doing it?

Is he following the proper rituals?

Is he bringing the proper animal?

They have to make a decision.

That's a binding and loosing decision that they have to make, and that is key for the man to be considered to be forgiven of his, uh, sins.

And Jesus is giving that authority to administer the forgiveness of sins to the apostles here in John 20, and I never saw it as a Protestant, and the scales came off my eyes after, um, entering the Catholic Church.

I'm like, Wow, why did I never see that that was what Jesus was doing here?