Matthew 16 -- An atypical linguistics question (serious linguists only please)

[Huiou_Theou]

PCMaster,

To be complete, let me add that there is an “exception” to the “feminine” rule for collectives, since the plural neuter is nothing more than the feminine collective recycled. (or vice versa depending on the theory of the day.) Not that this matters for Matthew 16:18.

I am not a Hebrew/Aramaic/Syriac/etc. scholar, so PC Master – which passages are you referring to in the Septuagint – and which Hebrew text are you referring to ? eg. the late Masoretic text or what?

There are dozens of references to rocks in the KJV – usually λιθ-οι (lithos/lithoi) are meant by that and it is difficult for me to grasp the point of your statement without a few examples.

 

[ltravis]

Each of those books shows clear signs of being translated from Aramaic. Luke himself was a native Aramaic speaker and His work is so filled with semitic figures of speech that to say “Greek Original” is to “embrace insanity”. Tertius, one of the Scribes used by Paul even signed his name to the Romans.

Would you like examples from each of those books? Just the extensive Poetry found in Aramaic Luke, but not in the Greek, should clue you in to which came first.

Metal1633, you brought up the subject of the Peshitta and I think you are active on aramaicnt.com, so you might take interest in this companion Peshitta thread I opened to discuss these exact issues as presented over there. Your (name removed by moderator)ut could be a quite helpful as I bet you have have exposure to the issues before…

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=163982

 

[Huiou_Theou]

Hmmm… Perhaps this is a much better answer.
I did an exhaustive search, and I actually found a single exception in the Septuagint – a masculine stone.

If the word in question has the root petr- then in the Septuagint texts I have checked it is one of:

πετρα
πετραν
πετρας
πετρινας ( Joshua 5:2-3, + some disputed passages in Joshua – but all feminine anyway)
πετραις
πετραι ( Judith 6:15 )
πετρων
λεωπετριαν ( I’m not totally sure, but I’ll check this later.)

The exception is:
πετρους – 2Maccabees ~1:16 — This is MASCULINE.
Plural stones used for warfare again. So this is the plural of petros.

There is another masculine in the Septuagint which is made into a compound word – a stone used as a warfare projectile.
This uses the masculine ending.

Job 41:20, Wisdom 5:22 πετρο-βολ-ος /ον /ου

so, when the Greeks didn’t have a perfect match, they might make a compound word to solve the issue. That means I really don’t buy the translation failure argument – they simply would have described the stone in more detail if needed.

One errata:
The ν I mentioned is not nu movable – it is just the accusative case – I wasn’t thinking when I wrote that! Going too fast.

 

[metal1633]

Metal1633, you brought up the subject of the Peshitta and I think you are active on aramaicnt.com, so you might take interest in this companion Peshitta thread I opened to discuss these exact issues as presented over there. Your (name removed by moderator)ut could be a quite helpful as I bet you have have exposure to the issues before…

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=163982

I recently got back on this board. I was amazed that this thread was still active and that PCMaster was still proposing his Shu’a theory. I got your PM and went and looked over the thread and just cringed at all the mis-information being put forward as “Fact”. I just did not know where to start. I might jump in there.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

A Latin witness:
I notice in the Codex fuldensis Gospel, which can be traced back to about AD 220 at the latest, we find:
Et ego dico tibi, quia tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram ædificabo eclesiam meam, et portæ inferi non prævalebunt adversus eam.

Petrus is male second declension, nominative singular,
while,
pertram is female first declension, accusative singular.
Thus we have Latin doing exactly what the Greek does.

It seems the argument that you cannot give a female name to a man is valid, but this does not prevent the giving of a male name to a female, cf Venus is 2nd Decl. male nominative.

Just a thought . . . . .

 

[PC_Master]

Huiou Theou> I appreciate the detailed information you have provided. It’s far more than what anyone else here who claims to know the facts has given. Unfortunately, I am not a linguist, and as such, some of what you’ve given is a little over my head.

If you don’t mind, could you please try to answer a couple of straightforward questions for me in relatively simple terms?

1. I am aware that the claim is that petros is necessary as to avoid giving Simon a feminine name. Is this valid (required) in Greek?
2. If the original words were kepha and kepha (or keepa, keph, whatever) respectively, to what other Greek words could they validly be translated except for petra? Would lithos actually be a valid translation, given the meaning of kepha? (Thus far, it seems unlikely to me.)
3. If the word shu’a (or perhaps the Hebrew word most likely to be its root – sela’) appears in a passage, how would it best be translated into Greek? Would it not be as petra? Or is there some reason this is incorrect?

Regarding the passages I mentioned…

Admittedly, getting all of the cross reference info together is much harder than I originally anticipated, because the concordance for the Septuagint that I have available doesn’t exactly work correctly. However, let’s start with an obvious verse…
1Sa 14:4:

And between the passages, by which Jonathan sought to go over unto the Philistines’ garrison, there was a sharp rock on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side: and the name of the one was Bozez, and the name of the other Seneh.

In the Hebrew, the words “sharp rock” are represented by the word sela’. This is referring to a huge rock, not something smaller like a keph. This word, in the Septuagint, is translated as “πετρας”, which is as I understand (remember, I’m not really a linguist), a form of the word petra. My software lists the word form as being N-GSF, if that helps (the N is noun, obviously, but I have no clue as to the rest – but maybe you do).

Now, I admit it is only theory that sela’ and shu’a are closely related, but surely, sela’ was survived into Aramaic by some word. This word, just like sela’, would be legitimately translated as petra in Greek. This is the point I have been trying to make – words other than keph can be translated as petra, so you cannot simply assume that keph was used in both places!

There are other passages which use various words for rock, translated in various ways, which I will try to provide at a later date if what I’ve given thus far is unclear.

metal1633> Aside from your claim of Peshitta primacy, which I do not agree with, and the majority of scholars seem not to either, what textual evidence is there that kepha is the word that was used in Matthew 16:18? The only reason we even know that Simon’s nickname was kepha is because it’s translitterated as Cephas elsewhere in scripture.

Voco> Can you be a little more clear on exactly how this impacts Matthew 16:18? Is it just the petros/petra gender issue? Or is there something more that I’m not seeing?

 

[Huiou_Theou]

Voco,

Now, for the first time I’ll look at the actual Greek for Matthew 16:18 – up till now I have been strictly working with the protestant apologetic argument with an out of context word πετρα, and a few counter examples to that apologetic.

There is something odd though about the Latin accusative, the Greek is slightly different in that is has the dative case. (My Latin is very weak.).

Here’s the Greek fragment from Matthew 16:18.
αυτη τη πετρα

eg: ’ this the rock ’

Notice the DEFINITE article before rock? τη – that makes things clearer, meaning that we are dealing with a dative case rather than a nominative (a subject).

And, here are a few other passages with the exact same construction:
Joshua 5:11, 1Sam17:46, Matthew 12:45. Matthew 26:34, Acts 16:12, 2Cori8:19, etc.

They mostly look collective in nature as well, referring to a specific instance of a collective noun. For example DAY is collective, but “this day” referrs to a specific one of the collective noun Day.

Does matthew 12:45 use a singular noun for ‘this generation’ in Latin?

 

[Huiou_Theou]

PCMaster, I am happy to explain anything I say in more detail, and to show which points are important in Greek.

1. I have never seen a man given a name with a feminine ending in true Greek. But:

Two examples:
Cephas, and Sissera both end with the feminine sound in Greek.
So, Peter’s Aramaic name would have sounded feminine to Greek ears. These words are copied into the Greek in a letter by letter copy of the other language with the nearest sound equivalent in Greek. But that’s a cheap ‘yes’, because these are not proper Greek words, and carry no meaning to a Greek speaker.

That does amplify the possibilites why Petros was not used twice though in Matthew 16:18 – to explain his Aramaic sounding name – Sissera was mocked in the Greek severely – and made to look feminine, babylike, by the very text itself. So, the feminine ending probably added to the insult…

But Peter, if spoken of as an element from the collective, might have a reason for that ‘a’ ending…

1. Lithos is a bizarre word which defies the dictionary often. It is where we get Lithography because it was easy to carve, apparently. But, again, the Greeks can add adjectives to base words in order to clarify meaning.

For example: ‘Oras’ means a raised deserted place in Greek – which could mean anything from a low platform to a high mountain. But, the Greeks could (and did occasionally) add ‘high’ to clarify that a mountain was being spoken of when necessary.

They could have said ‘divine rock’ τη πετρα τη διος, or some similar construction to refer to God or Jesus exclusively (the example is hypothetical only).

I don’t know if lithos could apply or not and would have to study it more first to answer the question more definitively.

1. I don’t know the nuances of Shua, etc. and would need to understand these to make proper translations into Greek.

---

On the LXX passage, I will have to answer in a post to follow as I need to leave right now.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Voco,

Now, for the first time I’ll look at the actual Greek for Matthew 16:18 – up till now I have been strictly working with the protestant apologetic argument with an out of context word πετρα, and a few counter examples to that apologetic.

There is something odd though about the Latin accusative, the Greek is slightly different in that is has the dative case. (My Latin is very weak.).

Hi, Huiou Theou,
I too was surprised to find accusative ‘petram’, I had expected ablative. Further, I was surprised to see ‘petram’ asociated with ‘Petrus’. Mind you, no latin dictionary, paper or virtual, that I know of, lists either ‘petrus’ or ‘petra’ as Latin words, though they could have been ‘Street Latin’, by infection from Greek, through slaves and teachers. If Latin is the key, then there is a concious pun here, where Peter is deprecating himself as ‘petro’, or ‘yokel’.
The key to the accusative is in the preposition ‘super’. It can take the ablative case, or the accusative. The preposition ‘in’ can do the same. In the latter case, with ablative, ‘in’ should be read as ‘within’, whereas with accusative, it should be read as ‘into’. So the ablative enshrines a position, whereas the accusative implies movement towards. Thus the emphasis is upon the act of building upon the stone, rather than the stone being used as a foundation.

Here’s the Greek fragment from Matthew 16:18.
αυτη τη πετρα

eg: ’ this the rock ’

Notice the DEFINITE article before rock? τη – that makes things clearer, meaning that we are dealing with a dative case rather than a nominative (a subject).

And, here are a few other passages with the exact same construction:
Joshua 5:11, 1Sam17:46, Matthew 12:45. Matthew 26:34, Acts 16:12, 2Cori8:19, etc.

They mostly look collective in nature as well, referring to a specific instance of a collective noun. For example DAY is collective, but “this day” referrs to a specific one of the collective noun Day.

Does matthew 12:45 use a singular noun for ‘this generation’ in Latin?

So shall it be also to this wicked generation.
sic erit et generationi huic pessimae

‘huic’ = ‘this’: singular, masc, fem, or neuter, dative.
‘pessimae’ = ‘worst’, ie ‘most bad or evil’, singular, fem. dative.
‘generationi’ = ‘generation’: I cannot find detailed reference to this noun in my dictionary, however, from both ‘huic’ and ‘pessimae’, it must be: singular, feminine, and dative.

So it shall be also to this most evil generation.
My translation.

 

[Huiou_Theou]

Voco,

That makes really good sense after thinking about it, but why did you originally expect ablative? Is it because prepositions are somehow selective in Latin to the cases that they take?

I am wondering this because in Greek the ablative case did not survive, and is typically emulated by a prepositional phrase + use of the genitive. eg: -->out<-- of the house.
My only experience with ablative is for items being separated.

The dative in Greek is broader in that it specifies either an object of importance, or a location. (The most common uses…)

It is commonly equivalent to the locative, which I understand died in Latin.

So, the rock is an indirect object (item of importance/location) referring to the building of a house (οικο - δομησω), of mine (μου) AKA (την εκκλησιαν) the assembly.

So the sense of the Greek is that a house will be built (similar to “the house of David”), and this house is explicitly a people – which refers back to the Sinai covenant where the assembly is brought into being by Moses. Traditionally, we say church – but the word itself refers to living people, since the priestly leadership of Sinai were called out (εκ-κλεσι-αν).

And this people requires a rock of importance, which is ONE rock of a larger collective.

The verb οικοδομη-σω would indicate a future building, indicative. So the action is not yet underway, but is a future plan (indicitive active). If I try to interpret the second rock as Jesus himself, I would be forced to admit that Jesus was just one rock among equals. Does the Latin support the future building, rather than presently underway action?

 

[Huiou_Theou]

In the Hebrew, the words “sharp rock” are represented by the word sela’. This is referring to a huge rock, not something smaller like a keph. This word, in the Septuagint, is translated as “πετρας”, which is as I understand (remember, I’m not really a linguist), a form of the word petra. My software lists the word form as being N-GSF, if that helps (the N is noun, obviously, but I have no clue as to the rest – but maybe you do).

I don’t know the Hebrew and Aramaic variants, but a HUGE rock could be coined as – μακροπετρ… or as two words πετρ… μακρ… Where the ellipsis are filled in with the appropriate grammar case, and the second word is adjectival in nature.

In the passage mentioned:
Since the author saw fit to supply transliterated names for the rocks – the same effect was achieved by allowing the reader to know these hard (jagged tooth like) rocks had specific Hebrew names.

There are five general cases to know for biblical Greek nouns.
Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative
Vocative

There are three genders Masculine Feminine Neither/Neuter.

And since we don’t have Homeric Greek and friends around,
Singular and Plural.

So that enigmatic classification N-GSF is probably:
Noun – Genitive Singular Feminine.

Genitive (of generation), has to do with ownership/relationship.
Treat it as having an extra “of” prepended to the word – “of rock.”
That should generally make sense, and sometimes it will suggest that it is really a possesive – for example “hand of me” becomes “hand of mine” or “my hand”. etc.

 

[Huiou_Theou]

PCMaster,
Sorry, I didn’t actually answer the question: the answer is yes.

πετρ-ας is rock with a two letter suffix called an inflection. Those last two letters change to give the case -N-G-D-A and the gender M-F and the number S-P.

In a much earlier post I listed the endings alone for masculine and feminine, which allows you to decode the rock noun. (I ignored the neuter case since we don’t see it for Rock). They were listed in order of nominative-genitive-dative-accusative, with a singular, then plural list.
So 8 feminine endings – almost all of them (save 1) have the ‘α’ sound in them, which is why the feminine class is called the ‘α’ declension. (eg. declension crudely defined is gender…)

there is a long form of the same vowel ‘η’ which is also feminine. It is generally pronounced ‘E’ as in Eat, but I have read articles arguing reasonably well that it was originally long ‘A’ as in Ate. Since there is no tape recorder… pick your poison, E is more mainstream.

 

[Huiou_Theou]

and to top it off I said “neuter case”, which is ambiguous.
Neuter declension… Neuter declension… arrrrgh…

So sorry, these big words for things that are simple once you get used to them, but so esoteric otherwise!

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Voco,

That makes really good sense after thinking about it, but why did you originally expect ablative? Is it because prepositions are somehow selective in Latin to the cases that they take?

I was thinking that the stone is to be used as the foundation, which infers ablative, but thinking again of ‘in’, which is ‘into’, or ‘within’ for accusative and ablative respectively, then likewise ‘super’ should be ‘on to’ or ‘upon’ respectively. The accusative, implying movement towards while ablative, existance within.

I am wondering this because in Greek the ablative case did not survive, and is typically emulated by a prepositional phrase + use of the genitive. eg: -->out<-- of the house.
My only experience with ablative is for items being separated.

The ablative case is quite uncommon in English, being limited now to a couple of cases where it refers to the material used in construction, namely: ‘wooden’, and ‘leathern’. In Latin it has a much wider meaning, but latterly, it became confused with dative.
My dictionary gives:
place, motion from place, time when something happenned, material used in making, how something is done, with verbs of requirement ie ‘need’, surnames - Cicero is ablative of Cicerus.

The dative in Greek is broader in that it specifies either an object of importance, or a location. (The most common uses…)

It is commonly equivalent to the locative, which I understand died in Latin.

So, the rock is an indirect object (item of importance/location) referring to the building of a house (οικο - δομησω), of mine (μου) AKA (την εκκλησιαν) the assembly.

So the sense of the Greek is that a house will be built (similar to “the house of David”), and this house is explicitly a people – which refers back to the Sinai covenant where the assembly is brought into being by Moses. Traditionally, we say church – but the word itself refers to living people, since the priestly leadership of Sinai were called out (εκ-κλεσι-αν).

And this people requires a rock of importance, which is ONE rock of a larger collective.

The verb οικοδομη-σω would indicate a future building, indicative. So the action is not yet underway, but is a future plan (indicitive active). If I try to interpret the second rock as Jesus himself, I would be forced to admit that Jesus was just one rock among equals. Does the Latin support the future building, rather than presently underway action?

In as much as the accusative is prefered to the ablative, the sense of ‘movement towards’, or ‘intent’ supports future action, and the verb ‘aedificabo’ is definitely future tense: ‘I will build’.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Hi, Huiou Theou,
I too was surprised to find accusative ‘petram’, I had expected ablative. Further, I was surprised to see ‘petram’ asociated with ‘Petrus’. Mind you, no latin dictionary, paper or virtual, that I know of, lists either ‘petrus’ or ‘petra’ as Latin words, though they could have been ‘Street Latin’, by infection from Greek, through slaves and teachers. If Latin is the key, then there is a concious pun here, where Peter is deprecating himself as ‘petro’, or ‘yokel’.
The key to the accusative is in the preposition ‘super’. It can take the ablative case, or the accusative. The preposition ‘in’ can do the same. In the latter case, with ablative, ‘in’ should be read as ‘within’, whereas with accusative, it should be read as ‘into’. So the ablative enshrines a position, whereas the accusative implies movement towards. Thus the emphasis is upon the act of building upon the stone, rather than the stone being used as a foundation.

So shall it be also to this wicked generation.
sic erit et generationi huic pessimae

‘huic’ = ‘this’: singular, masc, fem, or neuter, dative.
‘pessimae’ = ‘worst’, ie ‘most bad or evil’, singular, fem. dative.
‘generationi’ = ‘generation’: I cannot find detailed reference to this noun in my dictionary, however, from both ‘huic’ and ‘pessimae’, it must be: singular, feminine, and dative.

So it shall be also to this most evil generation.
My translation.

ps. I find that the third declension, group III consonant stems, exemplar: ‘ratio’, ‘rationis’, seems a good model for ‘generationi’, and the declension gives ‘rationi’ : singular, masc or fem, dative, so that seems to confirm my guess based on the pronoun, and adjective.
Namely, singular, feminine, dative.

 

[PC_Master]

I don’t know the Hebrew and Aramaic variants, but a HUGE rock could be coined as – μακροπετρ… or as two words πετρ… μακρ… Where the ellipsis are filled in with the appropriate grammar case, and the second word is adjectival in nature.

In the passage mentioned:
Since the author saw fit to supply transliterated names for the rocks – the same effect was achieved by allowing the reader to know these hard (jagged tooth like) rocks had specific Hebrew names.

I’m a bit confused here, but it sounds like you’re saying that petra in and of itself does not refer to a particular size of rock, and that the translators had to supply further information in some form to clarify the size of the rocks. Is this accurate?

Overall, would you say it’s reasonable to translate the word sela’ (if the meaning of the word remains similar in other Hebrew uses) as the Greek petra?

Are there any other words, besides lithos and petra, in Greek which could be used to say “rock” or “stone” in some way?

Basically, I’m just trying to find out which of the various translational theories are completely invalid, and which ones might be valid, and which ones are likely to actually be valid. Any opinions or thoughts you have on the topic would be appreciated.

 

[Jerry-Jet]

Jesus built the church on Peter–anyone can read the Bible and tell you so!

It takes anti-intelligence to claim that He didn’t!

Selective literalists are just self intepretors–the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with the lies that come out of their mouths!

People who want to believe whatever they want to believe don’t even know what the truth is.

For such people 1500 years of the whole world stating a fact isn’t good enough for them.

Since it isn’t–what’s the point in discussing the issue with them?

It’s not like they’re going to say–Yes! I can see how Christ’s Church was right for 1500 years!

If they’ve already disbelieved 1500 years of testimony the chances are 1500% that their aim in the discussion has nothing to do with what is true anyway–if you really want to believe whatever you want to believe nothing will change your mind.

That’s called a completely narrow mind.

Clay can be molded. That kind of mind–just like a rock–can’t!

 

[Huiou_Theou]

PCMaster,

That would be correct in an absolutist view of the language.
If something can mean more than one thing – a clarifier is required.

But not every scriptural text is a lawyers document with precision specifiers. The authors of the text can assume something about their original readers – a context so to speak. The problem is that with time, that context has been lost or neglected.

There are examples of petr-os and petr-a (M+F) BOTH which are large immobile rocks, and small hand-held ones in ancient Greek literature.

I have shown an example even in the Septuagint of Petra being a hand-held size when spoken of in terms of a rock circumcision knife. (An adjective makes it a knife).

I have to stop now, and won’t be able to continue the thread for some time. God bless you in your journey.

 

[PC_Master]

Thanks for the info! I look forward to anything you would be willing to contribute in the future.

Basically, the conclusion I draw is that we cannot assume, one way or another, that petra is representing specifically either keph or sela’ (or their Aramaic equivalents). It could be either one because of the lack of an adjective to explain it better. The only reason we can assume petros is Kepha is because of other Biblical uses explaining the translation that happened in that specific (the name of Simon) instance.

 

[metal1633]

The only reason we can assume petros is Kepha is…

We do NOT assume Petros is Kepha. We KNOW. All textual evidence shows 0p0k in Matt 16.
Let me repeat. ALL textual evidence.

Someone let me know it the Aramaic fonts displays correctly. They look fine on my end but then again I have them installed.