I copied the following from the book Forgery in Christianity by Joseph Wheless ISBN 1-56459-225-1 purchased it at amazon.com but you can download this book for free at http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_wheless/index.shtml . I especially liked his book Is it Gods Word, which you can also buy or download at the same places.
I almost fell out of my chair when I realized that the verses that the Jehovahs Pharisees corporation uses to keep people in line are spurious. The first one deals with teaching and baptizing in Mathew, and the others with disfellowshipping if one does not snitch. They can be found on chapter V pp. 215-218. on the book, but in the downloadable internet version it starts on p. 179 and ends on p. 182 you can specifically read the chapter 5 by going to http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_wheless/forgery_in_christianity/chapter_5.html
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 organizational ecclesia" or "Church," to preach his exclusively Jewish 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 consideration which tells against the genuineness of . 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. ...
"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 employment of the word ecclesia by Jesus as the 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: ..
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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 '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.
As you can see, Jehovah's Pharisees should preach only to other Jehovah's Pharisees, and quit snitching and disfellowshipping.
Edited by - faraon on 14 June 2002 20:7:6 Edited by - faraon on 14 June 2002 20:10:5Edited by - faraon on 14 June 2002 20:16:37