We are often told that “infallibility” (i.e., God protects an authority from error when it permanently settles a matter on faith and morals) is foreign to Jewish ears, making Catholic beliefs about the Church’s infallibility appear later and self-serving. However, there were clearly precursors to the idea of infallibility within ancient Judaism.
The most obvious example is the priesthood, especially the high priest. John 11:49-52 reports the following about how the Jewish leaders reacted to Christ raising Lazarus from the dead:
But one of them, Ca′iaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
Although Caiaphas opposed Christ, God nonetheless gave him the power to prophesy—not “on his own,” but, John reminds us, because he was “high priest that year.” Notice that Caiaphas’s deficient character did not prevent God from using him to be his instrument. This simply sounds like Catholicism: infallibility does not mean impeccability.
The idea that the high priest was a privileged recipient of prophecy is corroborated in ancient Jewish sources. Raymond Brown notes that
the principle of unconscious prophecy was accepted in Judaism (examples in StB, II, p. 546). In particular, the gift of prophecy was associated with the high priesthood. Josephus (Ant. XI.viii.4;#327) tells how the high priest Jaddua received an enlightenment that Alexander the Great would spare Jerusalem. Even high priests whose lives were far from perfect had the privilege—for example, Hyrcanus (Ant. XIII.x.7;#299). Therefore, John’s outlook on the powers of Caiaphas was very much at home in 1st-century Judaism.
Although Brown is Catholic, his point is recognized across the board by eminent Protestant scholars like D.A. Carson and Craig Keener.
Carson writes, “Caiaphas spoke as a prophet, partly by virtue of the fact that he was the high priest, partly by virtue of the fact that it was ‘that [fateful] year’ when Jesus was to die.” Keener’s comments on this passage also accord with Brown: “Josephus, who was a priest and claimed to be a prophet, regarded the Jewish priesthood as particularly prophetically endowed; whether or not John regards the priesthood as prophetically endowed, he believed that God could arrange for them to speak truth.” Moreover, we should remember that Josephus, a priest himself, famously related that he gave a prophecy to save his own life and continued prophesying afterward.
Even Gentile sources saw how much the Jews revered their high priest. The Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily (80-20 B.C.) gives this remarkable description: “They call this man the high priest, and believe that he acts as a messenger to them of God’s commandments. It is he, we are told, who in their assemblies and other gatherings announces what is ordained, and the Jews are so docile in such matters that straightway they fall to the ground and do reverence to the high priest when he expounds the commandments to them.”
What is the payoff of this evidence?
Even though Josephus thought the age of great prophets had ended and possibly that the Hebrew scriptures were complete, he and other ancient Jews held that God continued to assist a special group (the priests) and especially one man (the high priest) to rule over the Jewish people. The Jewish people were not left to just interpret the Torah for themselves, but were given living authorities above them who were divinely empowered to govern the community.
If other ancient Jews thought the biblical canon was closed and that God was still protecting the priestly class, then that simply sounds more like Catholicism again: the canon is closed today, but God is still protecting a special class (bishops and especially the bishop of Rome) to govern his people.
It is actually the Protestant idea that is strange to Jewish ears: the canon is closed, and no one is divinely and hierarchically privileged to expound Scripture and rule God’s people. This is not to say that Protestants don’t have hierarchies in their churches, but they do not consider their superiors to be divinely authorized and protected as the Jews did of their priests in communion with the high priest, as Catholics do of their bishops in communion with the pope.