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“UPON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH”
Of transcendent importance as the sole basis of the Church's most presumptuous False Pretense—its Divine founding by Jesus Christ—this Peter-Rock imposture, the most notorious, and in its evil consequences the most far-reaching and fatal of them all, will now be exposed to its deserved infamy and destruction. 174
Upon a forged, and forced, Greek Pun put into the mouth of the Jewish Aramaic-speaking Jesus, speaking to Aramaic peasants, the Church of Christ is falsely founded. “The proof that Christ constituted St. Peter the head of His Church is found in the two famous Petrine texts, Matt. xvi, 17-19, and John xxi, 15-19.” (CE. xii, 261.) The text in John is that about “Feed my Lambs”; but this forgery is not of present interest. The more notorious “proof” is Matthew's forged punning passage: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,” etc.
It may first be noticed, that “Matthew” is the only one of the three “Synoptic” gospelers to record this “famous Petrine text.” And he records this pun as made in Greek, by Jesus—just before his crucifixion, under very exceptional circumstances, and upon the inspiration of a “special divine revelation” then and there first made by God to Peter, as below to be noted. But in this, “Matthew” is flatly contradicted by “John,” who ascribes this as an Aramaic pun by Jesus in the very first remark that he made to Peter, upon his being introduced by his brother Andrew, on the self-same day of the baptism of Jesus; when “Andrew first findeth his brother Simon ... and brought him to Jesus”; whereupon, “when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.” (John i, 42.) Thus was Simon Barjona nick-named “Cephas—Rock” by Jesus on the very first day of the public appearance and mission both of Jesus and of Peter, and not a year or more later, towards the close of the career of Jesus! So the famous Petrine Pun, if ever made by Jesus—as it was not—was made in the Aramaic speech spoken by these Galilean peasants; the Greek Father who forged the “Gospel according to John” had to attach the translation into Greek of the Aramaic “Cephas,” into “Petros, a stone,” for the benefit of his Greek readers.
After this first explosion of the famous Greek “Rock” pun on which the Church is founded, and as the matter is of highest consequence, let us expose the “Matthew” forgery of the whole “Petrine text” by arraying the three Synoptics in sequence in the order of their composition and evolution from simple to complex fabrication:
Mark (viii, 27-38).
“And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am?“And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. “And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ.
“And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.
“And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
“And he spak that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 175
“But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.”Luke (ix, 18-22).
“And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him; and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am?Matthew (xvi, 13-22).“They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again.
“He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God.
“And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing.
“Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day.”
“When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?Let it be noted, in passing, that all three of the Synoptists expressly aver in the above narration, as elsewhere in their texts, that Jesus positively declared and predicted, that he should be put to death, and after three days rise again: distinctly, his Resurrection from the dead. All three on this important point are liars, if John be believed; for after the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, and the discovery on the third day of his empty grave by the 176 Magdalene, which she immediately reported to Peter and John, they ran doubting to the grave, looked in, and “saw, and believed”; and John positively avers: “For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.” (John xx, 9.) But this inspired assertion contains a grave anachronism: for “as yet” there was, of course, no “scripture” about the death and resurrection at all, nor for well over a century afterwards, as in this chapter is proven.“And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
“He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
“And I say 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. [Here about the Keys, and “binding and loosing”].
“Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.
“From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.
“Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.
“But he turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me. Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”
Let us examine for a moment into the context of this “famous Petrine text” and into its antecedents, in order to get the “stage setting of this dramatic climacteric Pun of such vast and serious consequences unto this day.
The original simple narrative is told in the earlier writer, “Mark,” and copied almost verbatim into “Luke.” There Jesus is reported to have put a sort of conundrum to the Twelve, “saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am?” The answer showed a very superstitious belief in reincarnations or “second comings” of dead persons to earth; for “they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets, or Jeremias,” to fuse the somewhat disparate replies. Jesus himself shared this reincarnation superstition, for he had positively asserted that John the Baptist was Elijah redivivus: “This is Elias, which was for to come,” (Matt. xi, 14; xvii, 11-13); though John, being questioned about it, “Art thou Elias?” contradicted the Christ, “and he saith, I am not.” (John i, 20, 21.)
After hearing the disciples report what others said about him, who he was, Jesus then “saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. And he charged them that they should tell no man of him” (Mk. viii, 27-30; Lk. ix, 18-22). There was certainly nothing novel or unexpected in this alleged reply of Peter; it was exactly the proclaimed mission of Jesus as the “promised Messiah,” as the precedent texts of “Mark” verify. On the day of his baptism by John, before all the people, “the heavens opened ... And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son” (i, 2); what the devils cried out in the synagogue, “I know thee who thou art, the Holy one of God” (i, 24) just what all the devils unanimously proclaimed before the disciples and all hearers, “And unclean spirits, when they saw him. ... cried, saying, Thou art the son of God” (iii, 2); just what the possessed man with the legion of devils cried out before all the disciples, “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God” (v, 7);—all as recorded by “Mark” prior to the above reply by Peter. So, naturally, Peter's “confession” caused no surprise; it was the expected thing: so Jesus made no remark on hearing it, except the peculiar injunction that “they should tell no man”—what all men and devils already knew by much-repeated hearsay. So Jesus at once proceeded to speak of his coming persecution, death, and resurrection; “And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men” (Mk. viii, 31-33). The identical story in its same simple form, minus the Satan colloquy, is told also in Luke (ix, 18-22). This is the round, unvarnished tale of the first Greek 177 Father “gospel” writers, a century after the reputed conversation, and long before the “primacy of Peter” idea dawned as a “good thing” upon the Fathers of the Church. There is not a word about “church” in the passage, nor in the entire “gospel according to Mark,” nor in Luke, nor in even the much later “John.”
The later Church Father who wrote up the original of the “gospel according to Matthew,” copied Mark's story substantially verbatim, Mark's verses 27-33, being nearly word for word reproduced in Matthew's 13-16, 20-24 of chapter xvi; the only material verbal difference being in Peter's answer, in verse 16, where Peter's words are expanded: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God,”—obviously padded in by the “interpolator” of verses 17-19, which we now examine.
As the years since “Mark” rolled by, the zeal of the Fathers to exalt Peter increased; we have seen many admitted forgeries of documents having that purpose in view. So it was, obviously, a new forging Father who took a manuscript of “Matthew,” and turning to the above verses copied from “Mark,” added in, or made a new manuscript copy containing, the notable forgery of verses 17-19. There, onto the commonplace and unnoticed reply of Peter, “Thou art the Christ,” the pious interpolator tacked on:
“the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 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. And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. xvi, 16b-19.)It is impossible that the original writer of “Matthew” should have written those remarkable and preposterous verses, in which Jesus is made to take Peter's commonplace announcement, “Thou art the Christ,” as a “special revelation from heaven” to Peter and a great secret mystery here first “revealed”;—this matter of common notoriety and even devil-gossip throughout Israel, as we have seen from “Mark's” numerous Christ-texts; the same is true in Luke. These avowals that Jesus was the Christ are even more numerous and explicit in “Matthew” up to the interpolation. That Jesus was “Christ” is the identical disclosure and announcement, which had been declared by Gabriel to Mary; by a dream to the suspicious Joseph; by wicked Herod, who “demanded of them where Christ should be born” (ii, 4); by the voice from heaven proclaiming to the world, “This is my beloved Son” (iii, 17); that was declared by the Devil in the wilderness, “If thou be the Son of God” (iv, 6); that the Legion of Devils cried aloud, “What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of God” (viii, 29); that Jesus himself avowed of himself time and again, “All things are delivered unto me by my Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (xi, 25-27) that all the crew of Peter's fishing-boat acclaimed when they “worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God” (xiv, 33). ‘Just two chapters earlier in Matthew, is the fable of Jesus 178 and Peter “walking on the water,” as “foretold” by the Sibyls; when Peter began to sink, he was rescued and dragged aboard the little fishing boat by Jesus;—“and they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the son of God.” (Mt. xiv, 29-33.) So that Peter's wonderful information was no novelty and special divine revelation, to himself, but was the common credulity and gossip of the whole crew of fishermen, devils and Palestinian peasantry. And long before, on the very next day after his baptism by John, and before Peter was “called” or even found, and when his brother Andrew went and found him to bring him to Jesus, Andrew declared to Peter. “We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ”! (John i, 41.) And, on the next day Nathaniel said to Jesus: “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel”! (John i, 49.) Peter's wonderful “special revelation” and confession thus lose an originality and are without merit of the great “reward” which CE. (xii, 261) says Jesus bestowed upon him for this pretended original and inspired discovery, as we shall in due order notice.
That Jesus Christ never spoke the words of those forged verses, that they are a late Church forgery, is beyond any intelligent or honest denial. The first mention of them in “patristic literature,” and that only a reference to the “keys,” is this scant line of Father Tertullian, in a little tract called Scorpiace or “The Scorpion's Sting,” written about 211 A.D., in which he says: “For, though you think heaven is still shut, remember that the Lord left to Peter and through him to the Church, the keys of it.” (Scorpiace, x; ANF. iii, 643.) That Jesus did not use the words of those verses, interpolated into a paragraph of [omitted - RW] from “Mark,” and repeated in their original form by “Luke,”' is thus conclusive from “internal” evidences; the later and embroidered form is a visible interpolation and forgery. That this is true, is demonstrated, moreover, by the inherent impossibility of the thing itself.
THE “CHURCH” FOUNDED ON THE “ROCK”
First of all, in proof that Jesus Christ never made this Pun, did not establish any Christian Church—nor even a Jewish reformed synagogue!,—are his own alleged positive statements to be quoted in refutation of the other forged “missionary” passage in Matthew: “Go ye into all the world, and teach all nations.” The avowed mission of Jesus, as we have seen from his reputed words, was exclusively to his fellow Jews: “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”; and he expressly commanded his disciples not to preach to the Gentiles, nor even to the near-Jewish Samaritans. He proclaimed the immediate end of the world, and his quick second coming to establish the exclusively Jewish Kingdom of Heaven, even before all the Jews of little Palestine could be warned of the event—that “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” It is impossible, therefore, that Jesus could have so flagrantly contradicted the basic principles of his exclusive mission as the Jewish promised Messiah, and could have commanded the institution of a permanent and perpetual religious organization an ecclesia” or “Church,” to preach his exclusively Jewish 179 Messianic doctrines to all nations of the earth, which was to perish within that generation. This is a conclusive proof of the later “interpolation” or forgery of this punning passage.
On this point says EB.:
“It would be a great mistake to suppose that Jesus himself founded a new religious community” (c. 3103).—“A further consideration which tells against the genuineness of Mt. xvi, 18b, is the occurrence in it of the word ecclesia. It has been seen to be impossible to maintain that Jesus founded any distinct religious community. ...Indeed, as said by a contemporary wit, the truth is that “Jesus Christ did not found the Church—he is its Foundling. His parent, the Jewish church, abandoned the child; the Roman church took it in, adopted it, and gave his mother a certificate of good character.” (The Truth Seeker, 10/23/26.)“As for the word itself, it occurs elsewhere in the Gospels only in Mt. xviii, 17. There, however, it denotes simply the Jewish local community to which every one belongs; for what is said relates not to the future but to the present, in which a Christian ecclesia cannot, of course, be thought of.” (c. 3105) ... “It is impossible to regard as historical the employment of the word ecclesia by Jesus as the designation of the Christian community.” (EB. iii, 3103, 3105, 3117.)
Jesus spoke Aramaic, a dialect of the ancient and “dead” Hebrew. The true name of the fisherman “Prince of the Apostles,” just repudiated by Jesus as “Satan,” was Shimeon, or in its Greek form, Simon, who was later “surnamed Peter.” He attained somehow the Aramaic nickname Kepha, or in its Greek form, Cephas, meaning a rock; this evidently furnished to the Greek punster the cue for his play on words: “Thou art Petro, [Greek, petros, a rock; cf. Eng. petrify, petroleum, etc.), and upon this petros [rock] I will build my ecclesia [church].” Jesus could not have made this Greek play on words; neither Peter nor any of the other “ignorant and unlearned” Jewish peasant disciples could have understood it. Much less could Jesus have said, or the apostles have understood, this other Greek word “ecclesia,” even had it been possible for Jesus, facing the immediate end of the world—proclaimed by himself—to have dreamed of founding any permanent religious sect. There was nothing like ecclesia known to the Jews; it was a technical Greek term designating the free political assemblies of the Greek republics. This is illustrated by one sentence from the Greek Father Origen, about 245 A.D., when the Church had taken over the Greek political term ecclesia to denote its own religious organization. Says Origen, using the word in both its old meaning and in its new Christian adaptation: “For the Church [ecclesia] of God, e.q., which is at Athens; ... Whereas the assembly [ecclesia] of the Athenians,” etc. (Origen, Contra Celsum, iii, 20; ANF. iv, 476.) The Greek Fathers who, a century later, founded the Church among the Pagan Greek-speaking Gentiles, adopted the Greek word ecclesia for their organizations because the word was familiar for popular assemblies, and because the translators of the Septuagint 180 had used ecclesia as the nearest Greek term for the translation of the two Hebrew words qahal and edah used in the Old Testament for the “congregation” or “assembly” of all Israel at the tent of meeting.
These Hebrew words (qahal, edah) had also a more general use, as signifying any sort of gathering or crowd, religious or secular. Thus “sinners shall not stand in the congregation [Heb. edah] of the righteous” (Ps. i, 5); or of a mob of wicked ones: “I have hated the congregation [Heb. qahal] of evil doers” (Ps. xxvi, 5); and even of the great assemblage of the dead: “The man that—[etc.], shall remain in the congregation [Heb. qahal] of the dead” (Prov. xxi, 16); all these various senses being rendered “ecclesia” in the Greek Septuagint translation.
Thus no established and permanent organization of disciples of the Christ is implied by the term ecclesia, even if Jesus could have used the Aramaic equivalent of that Greek term; at most it would have only meant the small group of Jews which might adopt the “Kingdom of Heaven” watchword and watchfully wait until the speedy end of the world and the expected quick consummation of the proclaimed Kingdom,—not yet come to be, these 2000 years.
This only possible meaning is made indisputable by the one other instance of the use of the Greek word ecclesia attributed to Jesus,—and that also by the myth-mongering “Matthew.” Here Jesus is made to lay down some rules for settling the incessant discords among his peasant believers in the Kingdom: “Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee ... tell it to the church [ecclesia] but if he neglect to hear the ecclesial let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican” (Matt. xviii, 15-17);—that is, kick him like a dog out of your holy company and exclude him from share in the coming Kingdom. There was, of course, no organized Christian “Church” in the lifetime of Jesus; he could only have meant—(if he said it), that disputes were to be referred to the others of the little band of Kingdom-watchers, who should drop the “trespasser” out of their holy group if he proved recalcitrant and insisted upon the right of his opinion or action. But Jesus never said even this; it is a forged later companion-piece to the “Rock and Keys” forgery, as is proven by the following verse 18—(a repetition of xvi, 19)—regarding the “binding and loosing” powers given to itself by the later forging Church when it assumed this preposterous prerogative of domination.
The “On this Rock” forgery of Matt. xvi, says Reinach, “is obviously an interpolation, made at a period when a church, separated from the synagogue, already existed. In the parallel passages in Mark (vii, 27, 32) and in Luke (ix, 18-22), there is not a word of the primacy of Peter, a detail which Mark, the disciple of Peter, could hardly have omitted if he had known of it. The interpolation is posterior to the compilation of Luke's gospel.” (Orpheus, pp. 224-225.)
As aptly said by Dr. McCabe; “It [the word ecclesia] had no meaning whatever as a religious institution until decades after the death of Jesus Christ. In the year 30 A.D. no one on earth would have known what Jesus meant if he had said that he was going to 181 ‘found' an ecclesia or church, and that the powers of darkness would not prevail against it, and so on. It would sound like the talk of the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.” (The Story of Religious Controversy, p. 294.) Indeed, it may be remarked, it is the “powers of darkness” of mind which have so far prevailed to perpetuate this fraud; the powers of the light of reason are hastening to its final overthrow.
“PETER-ROCK-CHURCH” DENIED AB SILIENCIO
“Luke” was not present when this monumental pronouncement of the “Rock and Keys” was allegedly made; Peter may have forgotten to tell him of it, or “Luke” may have forgotten that Peter told him. And Peter may have forgotten to tell of it and of his peerless “primacy” to his own “companion” and “interpreter” Mark, or Mark may have forgotten that Peter told him, and thus have failed to record so momentous an event. But John, the “Beloved Disciple” was right there, with Matthew, himself, one of the speakers and hearers in the historic colloquy,—and John totally ignores it. The silence of all three discredits and repudiates it. Moreover, and most significantly, Peter himself, in his two alleged Epistles, has not a word of his tremendous dignity and importance conferred on him by his Master; never once does he describe himself in the pride of priestly humility, “Peter, Servant of the servants of God,” or “Prince of Apostles: or even “Bishop of the Church which sojourns at Rome,” or any such to distinguish himself from the common herd of peasant apostles. Peter must have been very modest, even more so than his “Successors.”
Furthermore, the official “Acts of the Apostles” never once notes this divinely commissioned “primacy” of Peter; and every other book of the New Testament utterly ignores it. Paul is said to have written a sententious “Epistle to the Romans,” and to have written two or three Epistles from Rome, where Peter is supposed to have been, enthroned as divine Vicar of God and Head of the Church Universal; and yet never a word of this tremendous fact; Paul did not know it, or ignores it. The “Epistles of Paul,” fourteen of them, and the “Acts,” are replete with defiances of Paul to Peter,—“I withstood him to his face”; and in all the disputes between them, over matters of the faith and the fortunes of the new “Church,” not a single one of the Apostles rises in his place and suggests that Peter is Prince and Primate, and that Peter's view of the matters was ex-cathedra the voice of God, and he, having spoken, the matter was settled. Paul, in all his Epistles, never gives a suspicion that he had ever heard, even from Peter, of the latter's superior authority.
Thus the admitted principal, if not only “proof” which the Church urges for its Divine and “Petrine” foundation is found to be—like every other Church muniment and credential, a clerical forgery, a priestly imposture. We shall glance at some other like examples of the Christian art of “Scripture” falsification. 182
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