For Advent: Where in the New Testament are "priests" mentioned?

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[Salvation]

Where in the New Testament are "priests" mentioned?

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Full Question

The New Testament mentions three categories of Church leaders: bishops, presbyters, and deacons. So how can the Catholic Church justify its office of "priest"? The New Testament writers seem to understand "bishop" and "presbyter" to be synonymous terms for the same office (Acts 20:17-38).

 

Answer

The English word "priest" is derived from the Greek word presbuteros, which is commonly rendered into Bible English as "elder" or "presbyter." The ministry of Catholic priests is that of the presbyters mentioned in the New Testament (Acts 15:6, 23). The Bible says little about the duties of presbyters, but it does reveal they functioned in a priestly capacity.

They were ordained by the laying on of hands (1 Tm 4:14, 5:22), they preached and taught the flock (1 Tm 5:17), and they administered sacraments (Jas 5:13-15). These are the essential functions of the priestly office, so wherever the various forms of presbuteros appear--except, of course, in instances which pertain to the Jewish elders (Mt 21:23, Acts 4:23)--the word may rightly be translated as "priest" instead of "elder" or "presbyter."

Episcopos arises from two words, epi (over) and skopeo (to see), and it means literally "an overseer": We translate it as "bishop." The King James Version renders the office of overseer, episkopen, as "bishopric" (Acts 1:20). The role of the episcopos is not clearly defined in the New Testament, but by the beginning of the second century it had obtained a fixed meaning. There is early evidence of this refinement in ecclesiastical nomenclature in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch (d. A.D. 107), who wrote at length of the authority of bishops as distinct from presbyters and deacons (Epistle to the Magnesians 6:1, 13:1-2; Epistle to the Trallians 2:1-3; Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 8:1-2).

The New Testament tendency to use episcopos and presbuteros interchangeably is similar to the contemporary Protestant use of the term "minister" to denote various offices, both ordained and unordained (senior minister, music minister, youth minister). Similarly, the term diakonos is rendered both as "deacon" and as "minister" in the Bible, yet in Protestant churches the office of deacon is clearly distinguished from and subordinate to the office of minister.

In Acts 20:17-38 the same men are called presbyteroi (v. 17) and episcopoi (v. 28). Presbuteroi is used in a technical sense to identify their office of ordained leadership. Episcopoi is used in a non-technical sense to describe the type of ministry they exercised. This is how the Revised Standard Version renders the verses: "And from Miletus he [Paul] . . . called for the elders [presbuteroi]of the church. And when they came to him, he said to them . . . 'Take heed to yourselves and all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you guardians [episcopoi], to feed the church of the Lord.'"

In other passages it's clear that although men called presbuteroi ruled over individual congregations (parishes), the apostles ordained certain men, giving them authority over multiple congregations (dioceses), each with its own presbyters. These were endowed with the power to ordain additional presbyters as needed to shepherd the flock and carry on the work of the gospel. Titus and Timothy were two of those early episcopoi and clearly were above the office of presbuteros. They had the authority to select, ordain, and govern other presbyters, as is evidenced by Paul's instructions: "This is why I left you in Crete . . . that you might appoint elders in every town as I directed you" (Ti 1:5; cf. 1 Tm 5:17-22).

[redleghunter]

Where in the New Testament are "priests" mentioned?

Only where you see the Jewish Temple and when they gather to falsely condemn our Lord Jesus Christ.

Other than that, no apostle uses 'priest' in any language to describe NT church positions.

[redleghunter]

Since priest = presbuteros there are indeed priests in the New Testament church.

No, that is not correct:

This however:

presbuteros: elder

Original Word: πρεσβύτερος, α, ον

Part of Speech: Adjective

Transliteration: presbuteros

Phonetic Spelling: (pres-boo'-ter-os)

Short Definition: elder

Definition: elder, usually used as subst.; an elder, a member of the Sanhedrin, an elder of a Christian assembly.

[redleghunter]

Your error is to insist that priest can only mean a sacrificial officer, i.e. hiereus.

No sir, the error is your own I am sad to say. Look at the Levites and their duties. Especially those in the tent of meeting of the tabernacle and later the Temple.

The One Sacrifice for sin is done. Jesus is our High Priest. As Peter said, "...You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (1 Pet. 2:5)

So that's all of us, not a separate class of clergy.

[daniel1212]

They were ordained by the laying on of hands (1 Tm 4:14, 5:22), they preached and taught the flock (1 Tm 5:17), and they administered sacraments (Jas 5:13-15). These are the essential functions of the priestly office, so wherever the various forms of presbuteros appear--except, of course, in instances which pertain to the Jewish elders (Mt 21:23, Acts 4:23)--the word may rightly be translated as "priest" instead of "elder" or "presbyter."

Do you get an indulgence for this? As true to form, after having just once again clearly refuted a standard RC polemic, which no one countered, another RC proceeds to post an article of the same propaganda. Which results in it being refuted again for all the world to see. Which is good as the propaganda mill that is the source of this article would not allow it.

[daniel1212]

Does presbyter or elder mean priest?

In her effort to conform NT pastors to her erroneous understanding of the Lord's Supper (“Eucharist”), Catholicism came to render presbuteros” as “priests” (which the RC Douay Rheims Bible inconsistently does: Acts 20:17; Titus 1:5), and sometimes “episkopos,” in order to support a distinctive NT sacerdotal priesthood in the church, but which the Holy Spirit never does. For the word which the Holy Spirit distinctively uses for priests*, is “hiereus” or “archiereus.” (Heb. 4:15; 10:11) is never used for NT pastors. Nor do the words presbuteros (senior/elder) or episkopos (superintendent/overseer) - which He does use for NT pastors - mean "priest." Presbuteros or episkopos do not denote a unique sacrificial function, and hiereus (as archiereus=chief priests) is used in distinction to elders in such places as Lk. 22:66; Acts 22:5.

What occurred is that "presbuteros" in Greek (presbyter in Latin) was translated into English as "preost," and then "priest," but which also became the word used for "hierus" ("sacerdos" in Latin), losing the distinction the Holy Spirit made by never distinctively giving NT presbuteros the distinctive title hiereus.

Jewish elders (Hebrew "zaqen") as a body existed before the priesthood of Levitical priests (Hebrew "kohen"), most likely as heads of household or clans, and being an elder did not necessarily make one a Levitical priest (Ex. 3:16,18, 18:12; 19:7; 24:1; Num. 11:6; Dt. 21:2; 22:5-7; 31:9,28; 32:7; Josh. 23:2; 2Chron. 5:4; Lam. 1:9; cf. Mt. 21:13; 26:47) or a high priest, offering both gifts and sacrifices for sins. (Heb. 5:1) While elders exercise could some priestly functions such as praying and laying hands on sacrifices, yet unlike presbuteros and episkopos, elders and priest were not the same in language or in function. Like very young Samuel, one could be a kohen/priest without being an zaqen/elder, and one could be a elder without formally being a priest, whose primary function was to offer expiatory sacrifices for the people. It is also understood that even the Latin word "sacerdos" which corresponds to priest has no morphological or lingual relationship with the Latin word for “presbyter.”

All believers are called to sacrifice (Rm. 12:1; 15:16; Phil. 2:17; 4:18; Heb. 13:15,16; cf. 9:9) and all constitute the only priesthood (hieráteuma) in the NT church, that of all believers, (1Pt. 2:5,9; Re 1:6; 5:10; 20:6). But nowhere at NT pastors distinctively titled hiereus, and the idea of the NT presbuteros being a distintive class titled "hiereus" was a later development, due to imposed functional equivalence, supposing NT presbyteros engaged in a unique sacrificial ministry as their primary function.

Catholic writer Greg Dues in "Catholic Customs & Traditions, a popular guide," states, "Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions."

"When the Eucharist came to be regarded as a sacrifice [after Rome's theology], the role of the bishop took on a priestly dimension. By the third century bishops were considered priests. Presbyters or elders sometimes substituted for the bishop at the Eucharist. By the end of the third century people all over were using the title 'priest' (hierus in Greek and sacerdos in Latin) for whoever presided at the Eucharist." (http://books.google.com/books?id=ajZ_aR-VXn8C&source=gbs_navlinks_s)

And R. J. Grigaitis (O.F.S.) (while yet trying to defend the use of priest), reveals, "The Greek word for this office is ‘?e?e?? (hiereus), which can be literally translated into Latin as sacerdos. First century Christians [such as the inspired writers] felt that their special type of hiereus (sacerdos) was so removed from the original that they gave it a new name, presbuteros (presbyter). Unfortunately, sacerdos didn't evolve into an English word, but the word priest [from old English "preost"] took on its definition." (http://grigaitis.net/weekly/2007/2007-04-27.html)

In response to a query on this issue, the web site of International Standard Version (not my preferred translation) states,

No Greek lexicons or other scholarly sources suggest that "presbyteros" means "priest" instead of "elder". The Greek word is equivalent to the Hebrew ZAQEN, which means "elder", and not priest. You can see the ZAQENIM described in Exodus 18:21-22 using some of the same equivalent Hebrew terms as Paul uses in the GK of 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Note that the ZAQENIM are NOT priests (i.e., from the tribe of Levi) but are rather men of distinctive maturity that qualifies them for ministerial roles among the people.

Therefore the NT equivalent of the ZAQENIM cannot be the Levitical priests. The Greek "presbyteros" (literally, the comparative of the Greek word for "old" and therefore translated as "one who is older") thus describes the character qualities of the "episkopos". The term "elder" would therefore appear to describe the character, while the term "overseer" (for that is the literal rendering of "episkopos") connotes the job description.

To sum up, far from obfuscating the meaning of "presbyteros", our rendering of "elder" most closely associates the original Greek term with its OT counterpart, the ZAQENIM. ...we would also question the fundamental assumption that you bring up in your last observation, i.e., that "the church has always had priests among its ordained clergy". We can find no documentation of that claim. ( http://isvbible.com/catacombs/elders.htm)

The Catholic titular use of hiereus/priest for presbyteros/elder is defended by the use of an etymological fallacy , since "priest" from old English "preost" etymologically is derived from "presbyteros," due to imposed functional equivalence, supposing NT presbyteros engaged in a unique sacrificial ministry as their primary function.

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and evolving changes in form and meaning. over time, however, etymologies are not definitions. The etymological fallacy here is a linguistic misconception, a genetic fallacy that erroneously holds that the present-day meaning of a word or phrase should necessarily be similar to or the same as its original or historical meaning. So that since presbyteros incorrectly became priest from preost, therefore it is erroneously considered to be valid to use the same title for OT priests as for NT pastors, due to imposed functional equivalence, supposing that the presbyters engaged in a unique and primary sacrificial function of turning bread and wine into the physical body and blood of Christ as an expiation for sins, and which is then physically consumed to gain spiritual and eternal life.

But instead of dispensing bread as part of their ordained function, which NT pastors are never described as doing in the life of the church, and instead the primary work of NT pastors is that of prayer and preaching. (Act 6:3,4) "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine." (2 Timothy 4:2)

And which is what is said to "nourish" the souls of believers, and believing it is how the lost obtain life in themselves. (1 Timothy 4:6; Psalms 19:7;Acts 15:7-9)

Thus distinctively identifying Christian clergy with the same distinctive title used for the Jewish sacerdotal clergy (priests) rather than the term the Holy Spirit calls these pastors (presbyters/elders) is unscriptural and functionally unwarranted.

Nor is the church shown making this Catholic eucharist an atonement for sin and the practice around which all else revolves as in Catholicism, and instead the only teaching in Acts and onward (which interprets the gospels) that manifestly describes the supper to any real extent is that of 1 Cor. 11:17-34, and in which the church is the body of Christ, which is to "show (declare, proclaim) the Lord's death" for the church by treating each other as members of that body which in unity with Him, in communally taking part in the "feast of charity," (cf. Jude. 1:12) unselfishly sharing bread and the blood of grapes (preferably) with each other, which Christ supremely showed in purchasing the church with His sinless shed blood. (cf. Acts 20:28)

[Elsie]

Where in the New Testament are "priests" mentioned?,

Lotsa places

[Elsie]

Have we got to the knockdown; dragout stuff yet?

[Iscool]

The Bible says little about the duties of presbyters

The bible says quite a bit actually...It says that a presbyter must have a wife and kids...And that makes the entire piece you posted here not worth the paper it was printed on...

[ealgeone]

Let's get some basics covered.....do we agree on who Jesus is?

You may think I'm kidding. But after the redefining of common words/terms I really wonder.

[Iscool]

Since priest = presbuteros there are indeed priests in the New Testament church.

Of course there are not...There is no place for a priest in the church...

Your priesthood is fashioned (somewhat) after the priesthood of the Temple period...

There is no Temple...There's no need for a temple...There's no need for a priest...

The O.T. priests of the temple provided the sacrifices for the people...They only were allowed into the presence of God...They only were allowed to pass beyond the 'veil'...

The Temple has been destroyed...The veil has been removed...The sacrifices became one Sacrifice for everyone, forever...

The entire congregation now has access to the Mercy Seat without the aide of a priest...Your Catholic religion is not represented anywhere within the pages of the New Testament...

If you people would actually read the scriptures, you would know that...

[ealgeone]

Why would you not want a literal translation of the Word? You minimize errors that way.

[Iscool]

If your understanding is that one must be a father then that would disqualify Paul himself! No, what Paul is stating is that those fathers who are to be chosen must be a good father to one's own children.

We know exactly what Paul is stating because he stated it...A bishop, elder and deacon must be married with a proven record of successfully running his household full of kids...He said what he meant and meant what he said...

You also err in thinking that the ministries of the church are based on Scripture.

So scripture is based on the Catholic religion, which came before the scripture...

Perhaps you ought to read the scriptures to see what they really say about your false religion...You would then know how terribly wrong you are...

[Iscool]

The gospel other than the one he preached, not wrote.

Well then no one has the actual gospel...It was lost likely almost immediately...Do all you guys really believe these fairy tales???

[CynicalBear]

>>do we agree on who Jesus is?<<

I can assure you that the Jesus of scripture would never condone the bowing down to statues done by Catholics.

[ealgeone]

You also err in thinking that the ministries of the church are based on Scripture.

You have got to seriously be kidding?!

So instead of basing the work of the church on the Word, catholics base it on mad-made ideas. Sounds cultish to me.

[daniel1212]

Since priest = presbuteros there are indeed priests in the New Testament church.

Since the distinctive word for OT sacerdotal clergy, “hiereus" - which NT presbuteros (senior/elder) never were titled - wrongly became "priest," there is indeed no class of clergy properly distinctively titled "priests.

"Priest" could be used if it kept the distinction btwn presbuteros and hiereus, which sacerd and preost orignallyl did, but in English it does not. Taking hiereus which is distinctively used for a distinctive class of OT clergy and translating it into a word used for both hiereus and presbuteros is the problem. The KJV correctly uses "elder" for presbuteros as that is what it originally meant.

One could take another word distinctively used for one office and translated it into a term which is then used for two offices but which the original languages used distinctive words for, and then claim they both had the same title. And which done due to imposed functional equivalence. But that would be something more fitting for a cult.

[daniel1212]

You also err in thinking that the ministries of the church are based on Scripture. No, the offices of episcopoi, presbuteroi and deaconoi were established prior to the completion of the New Testament and are not derived from it. This is a major misunderstanding of those who would advance sola scriptura. These offices were established by the authority of the church herself, an authority attested to by the Scriptures and which continues to exist.

Wrong: The church did not begin based upon its own authority, which is a major misunderstanding of those who would advance sola ecclesia, but which common people following an itinerant Preacher and preachers who established their Truth claims upon scriptural substantiation in word and in power.. (Mt. 22:23-45; Lk. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:36,39; Acts 2:14-35; 4:33; 5:12; 15:6-21;17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23; Rm. 15:19; 2Cor. 12:12, etc.)

While both men and writings of God are what they are regardless of the affirmation of men, yet they were established as being of God due to their heavenly qualities and affirmation.

God first provided express Divine revelation in a very limited extent to a few souls, manifesting His leaders as being of God via supernatural attestation and virtue. Thus men heeded Moses (if inconsistently). But as written, it is abundantly evidenced that Scripture became the transcendent supreme standard for obedience and testing and establishing truth claims as the wholly Divinely inspired and assured, Word of God.

And which testifies (Lk. 24:27,44, etc.) to conflative complimentary writings of God being recognized and established as being so (essentially due to their unique and enduring heavenly qualities and attestation), and thus in principal they materially provide for a canon of Scripture (as well as for reason, the church, etc.)

Some of what was written was first expressed in oral tradition, and God today can provide private revelation (which most every SS preacher hopes for during the offering), but all is subject to testing by the assured word of God, the Scriptures, which tell is, "prove all things."

Scripture alone is the supreme standard, and sufficient in its formal (limited) and material aspects, and upon the weight of scriptural substantiation the believer can have strong assurance.

In contrast, RCs presume a novel assuredly infallible magisterium is essential to correctly determine what is of God, words and men, and it is upon the basis of this presumed assured veracity that the faithful RC has his assurance. Thus RCs are discouraged from objectively searching the Scripture in order to ascertain the veracity of what is preached, For to do so would be to doubt the claims of Rome to be the assuredly infallible magisterium.

[daniel1212]

Have we got to the knockdown; dragout stuff yet?

Extra innings.

[WVKayaker]

What a load of bovine excrement, AGAIN.- WVK

Great response from a Christian!Petro

Actually, it is the ONLY response possible when confronted with such ridiculous claims. Christians recognize bovine excrement, and it surely is presented in your postings!!!

I do trust the Word of God. That is why I am a Catholic. ...

Hahahahahahahahaaaaaaa! At least I got a good laugh from something you post! You are Catholic because you are blind to the Words from God!

Paul says it well.. in 2 Corinthians 4: 1 Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2 Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. ...

and 2 Corinthians 6: 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. ...

[Petrosius]

Definition: elder, usually used as subst.; an elder, a member of the Sanhedrin, an elder of a Christian assembly.

Your definition is deficient since it leaves out: "a ministerial office of the church which continues to this day. In Latin, presbyter; in English, priest."

Let us leave aside for the moment the English term "priest." The Catholic presbyter is the same office as that mentioned in the New Testament. By whatever name you call him, the pastor of your local Catholic church is a presbyter. Returning to the English term by which he is known, in English this became preost/priest and was known as such centuries before the term became conflated with the sacrificial office of hiereus. Since the the common name for this office has never changed the use of the term priest cannot not be objected to as a legitimate translation of presbuteros.