Can anybody give me an example (or proof) that petros and petra were synonyms in Jesus’s day for Koine Greek, but not for Attic Greek 100s of years before Jesus? A website may be helpful too.
In Matthew 27:46 Jesus says from the cross, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ This is Aramaic for ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’. If Matthew was origionally written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek, why would he have added this? Couldn’t this be used by non-Christians showing a (Greek) deviation from the (Aramaic)origional text?
Can anybody give me an example (or proof) that petros and petra were synonyms in Jesus’s day for Koine Greek, but not for Attic Greek 100s of years before Jesus? A website may be helpful too.
In Matthew 27:46 Jesus says from the cross, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ This is Aramaic for ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’. If Matthew was origionally written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek, why would he have added this? Couldn’t this be used by non-Christians showing a (Greek) deviation from the (Aramaic)origional text?
As for the 2nd question, when Matthew wrote it in Aramaic he obviously just wrote “Eli, Eli, lama sabach-thani?” without the translation of it. But when he or whoever translated it into Greek they felt the need to give his exact Aramaic words. There are many places in the NT where Hebrew and Aramaic words are used and then the meaning of it in Greek. There is no threat of the “gotcha” here from non-Christians. The only real debate it causes is with those who believe in the Aramaic only NT. As for me I do believe that the authors of the NT wrote their accounts more than once and in more than one language, which explains many of our variant readings.
As for the 1st question, I think there are a number of examples, and ancient Bible versions being one. Many of the ancient versions are translations from the Greek, some of the Aramaic versions being that. The Aramaic Pehsitta has Kepa for both petra and petros, or it could very well be that the Peshitta has what Matthew actually wrote and the Greek being a translation of it, and the Greek having to provide the gender differences. Either way both prove the point.
The Greek Fathers of the Church who spoke the language would have pointed out that there was a difference between the words, but actually the proof goes the other way. Nowhere among them do they ever make a point that petros and petra are different in meaning.
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