From Eliyahu
Do you want to be deceived? If
not, be careful about the
meaning of words. Any
politician, if candid, can tell
you that changing the framing
and meanings of important words
can sway millions to accept word
distortions as truth. We see
that in the media all the time.
Marketers and advertisers can
tell you the same thing. You
will likely get ads pushed at
you today that use word
deception to get you to buy
things you don’t actually need
or want. They wouldn’t be paying
the big bucks for manipulative
advertising if this were not the
case.
Yet, word distortion is nothing
new. Religionists have used
words in this way for centuries,
and even millennia. As an
example, let’s pick a word right
out of your Bible translation
that has been used to deceive
generations. That word is
“church.” Here is the same verse
using the word “church” in two
historic Bible translations:
And I say to thee: That thou art
Peter; and upon this rock I will
build my church, and the gates
of hell shall not prevail
against it. (Matthew 16:18
Douay-Rheims Version, 1st
edition released in 1582 AD)
And I say also unto thee, That
thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church; and
the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it. (Matthew
16:18 King James Version, 1st
edition released in 1611 AD)
As you can plainly see, these
two different translations are
virtually identical. The
Catholic Douay-Rheims Version
pre-dated the Protestant King
James Version (KJV) by 29 years,
so Douay-Rheims was not copying
the KJV - but could it have been
the other way around? Consider
this quote:
“But while the King James
translators rejected some
specific translations in the
Douay, they emulated others. It
is commonly acknowledged that,
in preparing the KJV, the
translators made use of the
Douay New Testament and adopted
many of its readings in
preference to those of other
English editions. The KJV in
many places thus bears a Douay
“slant” absent from prior
translations. Both the Douay and
the KJV served as virtually the
only Bible many English speakers
used for centuries…” (Catholic.com)
In any event, it remains clear
that the word “church” was used
first by Catholic translators
for the Greek word “ekklesia”. A
little further on I’m going to
prove to you why using the word
“church” for “ekklesia” is not
only a poor translation - it is,
in fact, a distortion. First
though, here’s a direct
doctrinal statement from Vatican
I (1870), which formally defined
papal primacy based on Matthew
16:18:
“We therefore teach and declare
that, according to the testimony
of the Gospel, the primacy of
jurisdiction over the whole
Church of God was immediately
and directly promised to the
blessed Apostle Peter and
conferred on him by Christ the
Lord. For it was to Simon alone,
to whom He had already said:
‘Thou shalt be called Cephas,’
that the Lord, after his
confession, said: ‘Thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will
build my Church, and the gates
of hell shall not prevail
against it.’” (Pastor Aeternus,
Vatican Council I, 1870)
The claim is that Peter was
given “jurisdiction over the
whole Church.” “Jurisdiction”
means “the authority of a
sovereign power to govern or
legislate.” This word therefore
defines the “whole Church” as a
religious institution to be
governed - but is that the
meaning of the actual Greek word
“ekklesia” used in the verse?
What should define the word
“ekklesia” anyway?
It makes sense that the Bible
then in use in the 1st
century by Greek-speaking early
believers should naturally
define the word. What I’m saying
is, they were already reading
this word in their existing
Bibles, so they would naturally
use the word in the same way in
what is called today “The New
Testament” or “The Greek
Scriptures”. By the first
century, the LXX was THE Bible
of Greek-speaking Jews and so
was the most frequently used
version of the then-existing
Bible by the early believers.
The Greek word “ekklesia“ -
commonly translated as
“assembly” or “congregation” -
appears prominently in the
Septuagint (LXX), the Greek
translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures produced between the
3rd and 2nd centuries BC. As
noted above, this is the Bible
used by Greek-speaking Jews and
other believers. In this
translation, “ekklesia” is used
77 times, most often to render
the Hebrew word “qahal”, which
denotes the gathered people of
Israel before God. This
consistent usage demonstrates
that the concept of “ekklesia”
was firmly rooted in the idea of
the covenant community of
Israel, not a building or
institution.
