Talk:Presbyter

Additional

Should mention something about the marrital status of presbyters throughout history and churches/denominations. Doc 07:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

That's in clerical celibacy. —Preost ^{talk contribs} 00:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

This article appears to have substantial Greek Orthodox POV. I notice that it is almost word for word found in the Orthowiki. It is also not in agreement with articles in other off-line encyclopedias. In particular the conclusion that the term was equivalent to other terms is not verifiable. At best what might be verifiable is that there was a rank progression perhaps from deacon to presbyter to bishop and that a person who was a presbyter might also be a deacon and a person who was a bishop might also be a presbyter and deacon. But the fact that these different offices are clearly mentioned indicates that there was some sort of difference between them. This article ignores that. --Blue Tie 15:50, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree Blue Tie. There is significant room for interpretation of 'presbyter'. If this article is supposed to be complete, I recommend that several major definitions of presbyter be provided. (Gaytan 23:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC))

Respectfully, I must disagree

"In modern usage, it is distinct from bishop and synonymous with priest, pastor, elder, or minister in various Christian denominations". An elder doesn't have to be a minister or a priest in a Presbyterian or Anglican system. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:03, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It is always a great challenge to understand where the sources of confusion are coming from. One reason of paramount importance is that the western churches not until the 15th Century had access to the Koine Greek canonised New Testament, but solely relied on Saint Jerome's Holy Catholic Latin translation until the 16th Century (please check and correct if I'm misinformed..). A history of concepts, etymologies, together with the history of the ideas and their institutions are needed, in addition to proper ability to deschiffer the enigmas of the Holy Scripture. Still the secret teaching, regarding ceremony and theosis among other things, handed down through authentic apostolic succession holds supreme authority. To my humble understanding of such things, being not ordained, nor examined, I've so far found that there is a basic structure in the Body of Christ as explained in the Bible; there are three hierarchies and five services of equal status, apart from the epignost (the perfect christian), all of which relates to the organisation of the holy Church after the pentacostle unleashing of the Holy Spirit: The five services (in addition to the epignost) mentioned in the epistle to the Ephesians are the Apostle, the Prophet, the Euangellion, the Pastor, The Didaskalos (Doctor). These six may be jotted with the four pairs of beautitudes, in order to simile the bridgroom principle of the twelve... The presbyters (the elders/preservators of lineage) is a distinct hierarchy from the bishops (overviewers/caretakers) and the diakons (hospitaliers/breaddealers); These three hierarchies seem to be fairly complementary to each other, in regard of the principle: the lowliest will be the highest and so on. If avoiding any generalisation, the only service explicitly mentioned that in disadvantage for women is the didaskolos, in the epistle to Timothew, who are called in particular for this service. 'Didaskalos' is translated as 'teacher', but in Latin it is rendered Doctor. Peculiarly the title of Doctor of Church ceased to be a service after the synod of Zaragossa in 380 (C.E.), I believe. From then on it was merely given post-humed, e.g. after death. And even more pecularly, from 1970 (or 1990?) given also to women. The Didaskalos may rather be synonym with detective than teacher, or doctor, in rather a progenitor of the process of reveiling, that is Revelation. This is seen from the particular theory holding that there was full equality between the sexes in early christianity, and that the apocalypse not only was perceived in spatiotemporal proximity, but was a process the mathetes actively were a part of, realising it meant entering the level of Magdalene, i. e. conquering seventh grade of the graded path of Saint John and so on... My sources are not esoteric, allthough acknowledgment of esoteric christianity combined with the posibility to retrieve information from a variety of sources, and access to study the bible with the best of tools (i.e. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/). This rather controversial perspective of the church organisation as deployed in the Scripture, are of course not yet ripe for consensus, even if it would be solidly backed by sourcematerials combined with references to the secret teaching of the lineages of apostolic succession. But it serves me well as a backdrop for claiming that priest is derived from elder; and that the hierarchy of elders are a distinct one from that of the Bishops. One source may serve well: http://www.catholicapologetics.org/ap050400.htm... best regards...--Xact (talk) 08:10, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It's All Greek to Me

I don't have the knowledge to do this, but it would be nice if someone could add the Greek characters of "presbyteros". Adam_sk (talk) 06:14, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. The Cat and the Owl (talk) 06:35, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The use of the term Father

The last paragraph of the section Modern Usage could be improved by adding a reference to this page, http://www.catholic.com/library/Call_No_Man_Father.asp specifically the paragraph, "Perhaps the most pointed New Testament reference to the theology of the spiritual fatherhood of priests is Paul’s statement, "I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (1 Cor. 4:14–15)." The Rev. John H Munson (talk) 15:51, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Use of Pastoral Epistles as a Historic Source

There is over whelming evidence that the pastoral epistles are forgeries dating to the mid second century - this was the period is which the authority of bishops was established and the forging of the pastoral epistles was no-doubt part of that process. Why then are these epistles cited here to build up a picture of Timothy and Titus in a role analogous to bishops?72.43.51.62 (talk) 10:53, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I am afraid that there is no such "over-whelming evidence". But rather an assortment of asserted arguments which will appeal to those who deny the inspiration of scripture and, might I add, common sense. For example Clement is found to allude to these around AD 95, Iranaeus around 110, etc. The rough opinion of many (most?) secular 'scholars' is that the Epistle originated from the late 1st century to the early 2nd, I have not seen it suggested for the mid 2nd. The arguments they use to assert this theory however, I find to be rather ridiculous and self-refuting.

Your fundamental mistake is to imagine that 'episkopos' (Bishop) refers to an hierarchical overseer of lowlier preachers or pastors, or even 'priests'. This is the model of the Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches, but cannot be interpolated upon the scripture with any authority. The bishop is the overseer over a local church of God's children, His sheep, not an overseer specifically of other preachers. The evolution of an episcopal system of church government is not established at all by scripture, but by human nature. As certain bishops in urban contexts would come to achieve a status of leadership or authority over others, their position of informal and de-facto authority by way of personal loyalty, persuasion, and admiration, eventually became one of enforced hierarchical authority. Due in part I suppose, to the necessity of holding bishops/elders/pastors accountable for their doctrine and practice and to the slow relegation of scripture to a secondary status, and also perhaps due to the loss of, or scarcity of scriptures.

Now that is a theory I advance there, I would not dogmatically hold to all points as do the liberals with their wild, zany and iconoclastic assertions. But I do think that this makes a great deal more common sense than to suggest that some shadowy figure started writing 20-60 years after the Apostle Paul's death, mentioning by name certain people, places and events which it would seem would be familiar to the Apostle, writing in like fashion to the Apostle and addressing his letters to a certain 'Timothy', who would probably have been alive and prominent at the time and could refute such false aspersions to Pauline authorship. What was this shadowy figure's motivations? Who did he send these letters to? Would they have accepted them while knowing of the Apostle's martyrdom many years previous?

These questions are rarely posed to these 'scholars', who operate in a vacuum, agreeing with themselves and among themselves. They have been slowly drawing back the ridiculousness and absurdity of their claims ever since the first German theologians came up with their approach and theories in the late 18th century, supposing that much of the New Testament was not written until the 3rd century or later. Archaeology, amongst other things has, over time, proved these snakes and vipers to be the heretical wresters that the orthodox believers and scholars have always known them to be. It is only a matter of time that, should the Lord tarry, more evidence from archaeology and history will pop up to prove the secular 'consensus' on the Pastoral Epistles false. After which they will undoubtedly simply assert the most extreme version of the theory they believe that they can muster, hindered as they are by the new evidence. And if unable to do that, to simply move on and provoke controversy and doubt in some other area of theology, as they always have.LikkerdySplit (talk) 11:50, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Synonym

The claim that episkopos and presbuteros were synonyms in the Bible is very far from undisputed -- and along demonational lines. Goldfritha (talk) 02:35, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

In New Testament Greek there is clear distinction between the two words episkopos and presbyteros. The term 'presbyter' [Greek πρεσβύτερος, presbyteros: "elder"] in the New Testament refers to the maturity of the person appointed, and the term 'overseer/bishop' [Greek ἐπίσκοπος, epískopos, 'epi' + 'scope', i.e. 'over-seer'] refers to his duties. Presbyteros has the distinction of meaning simply an older man, or, as is more often the case in the New Testament, a person appointed as an 'official' 'older man' in the Christian congregation, one who was respected and could lead with the maturity of age and experience; whereas episcopos conveys the sense of loving watchful care, as a shepherd would care for his flock. "For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." ~1 Pet 2:25 KJV. If Bishop is synonymous with Elder, then this scripture could incontrovertibly be translated "For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Elder of your souls." - but no translation have ever translated it in this way. On this basis the comment in the lead paragraph of the article that these two terms presbyteros/episcopos are often not clearly distinguished from each other in the new Testament should be removed.--Observer6 (talk) 18:17, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

The verse in 1 Peter is usually translated overseer or guardian in modern English translations, not bishop. Rmhermen (talk) 19:56, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Exactly! So thanks for removing inaccurate assertion from lead parag. --Observer6 (talk) 21:11, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Dead Bible citation links

In this article, as in many other similar articles, the hyperlinks for the scriptures are dead links. (At least, on my PC they are!) If this is a universal problem, is there any form of standard and reliable links that could be used to replace the current ineffective ones? If so, might there even be a WikiBot that could make this correction throughout the whole of WikiPedia?--Observer6 (talk) 18:27, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

The problem is a broken bot and has been discussed here: [1]. Rmhermen (talk) 18:53, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Lead parag: 'presbyter referring to ordinary elders and episkopos referring exclusively to the office of bishop.' ???

Would it be appropriate to say that episcopos refers exclusively to the office of bishop, ('bishop' being a word which has its own connotations) when we see that episcopos in the New Testament is usually translated overseer or guardian? So maybe 'bishop' should be removed from that sentence in the lead paragraph, and overseer or another suitable word used, rather than bishop? --Observer6 (talk) 21:37, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

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Redundant Article?

This article is on the exact same subject as Elder (Christianity). Elder is a translation while presbyter is a transliteration of the exact same term. Both articles are focused on the christian concept.

Should they be merged? Dirkwillems (talk) 23:49, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Merge Proposal

I propose merging Presbyter into Elder_(Christianity). The two articles overlap making one WP:REDUNDANT. These articles have the exact same subject with the exact same scope. The two titles are merely forms of the same term. I would have have Presbyter redirect to Elder_(Christianity) but modify the lead to say something like this:

an Elder, also known as a Presbyter (from the Greek term πρεσβύτερος, presbyteros) is an office in a Christian church. The exact roles and requirements can vary by Christian denomination."

The translated English term Elder should be preferred as the title over the transliterated term Presbyter. Dirkwillems (talk) 17:43, 8 October 2024 (UTC)