Every
Christian denomination affirms of every believer in Jesus to direct access to
God, but the denominations themselves have trouble conceiving it correctly.
Catholic and Orthodox churches criticize other Christian denominations for
supposedly making clergy even of their laities, while the latter have accused
the former of denying the right to direct access to God to theirs, just because
of the confusion over a simple word: priest.
Christians
have translated the Hebrew-Aramaic-Greek Bible into different languages,
including English. The word priest
comes from the Greek masculine comparative adjective presbuteros, which means “older”. However, English translators of
the Bible have used the word to translate not only presbuteros, but also the Hebrew word kohen and its Greek counterpart hiereus,
both of which denote a permanent attendant of a deity, since they can find no
other better word to translate both. Sacerd,
the Anglo-Saxon transliteration of the Latin word sacerdos, has all but disappeared in usage.
As
a result, non-Catholic and non-Orthodox Christians have thought that there
should no distinction between the clergy and the laity, since they think that
all believers have direct access to God. Catholic and Orthodox Christians have
the fair share of the blame for overemphasis on clerical ministry at the
expense of lay ministry. The right way to perceive Christian ministry is this:
every believer has the right to direct access to God, but not all believers can
join the clergy.
How
can Christians rectify such a problem? They should start to translate more
accurately. In ancient Israel, kohanim
as representatives of God sprinkled blood on the altar, tore the sacrifices,
and burned the pieces. The author would suggest the use of the word “officiant”
to translate both kohen and hiereus, leaving “priest” as the only
translation of presbuteros.
Words
and their denotations do matter, and they change because of how people use
them, but they must not sully the actual message of the Bible.
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