S
SHW
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Thank you for the link.
Excerpts from the above quoted article is the following:
"Fr. Pujolâs thesis is reinforced by such observations as the following:
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* Whether the dispute at Antioch between Paul and Cephas occurred before or after the Council of Jerusalem, it was chronologically impossible that Peter could have been there at either time.
* The assumption that Peter and Cephas were the same person is dependent upon the Antioch incident occurring after the Council of Jerusalem (with Peter strangely subverting the Council's decree for which he was largely instrumental in obtaining). The fact is that the Antioch incident must have taken place before the Council of Jerusalem at a time, however, when Peter could not have been present in Antioch.
* If the "New American Bible" (NAB) is correct in stating that the James of Gal. 2:9 â "James and Cephas and John" â could not have been the Apostle James the Less, why jump equally to the conclusion that the Cephas in the passage was the Apostle Peter, or that "John" was the Apostle? Moreover, "reputed to be pillars" is a strange expression to apply to Apostles whose role as foundations of the Church was indisputable. The expression rather smacks of irony as applied by Paul to his three Judaizing opponents.
* The word-order of personages (in I Cor. 1:11-13 and 3:21) further militates against Cephas' identification with Peter whose primacy as first and chief of the Apostles would ordinarily have received due recognition.
* Both I Cor. 9:15 and I Cor 15:5 are better interpreted as viewing "Cephas" as someone distinct from the Apostles.
* The common opinion identifying Peter and Cephas has been based on the supposition that the name Cephas was borne by only one person in history, Simon Peter. The name Kepa (Kephas or Cephas) was surely more common than has been thought. Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmeyer has noted an ancient non-Palestinian Aramaic legal document (dated c. 416 B.C.) which witnesses to the existence of "Aqab, son of Kepa" (See his "To Advance the Gospel", Crossroad, N.Y., 1981).
* Lastly, as Fr. Pujol has insisted, the "vulgar confusion" of Cephas with Peter was fostered by a faulty reading of Scripture resulting from the error of early Greek and Latin copyists who substituted Petros for Cephas and Cephas for Petros in various passages in Galatians."
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"The word Cephas appears only 9 (8?) times in the entire New Testament; and 8 (7?) of those are in St. Paul's letters (Galatians and I Corinthians). The sole exception is in St. John's Gospel (1:42) where it is immediately translated for the reader's benefit, to "Petros" â since "Cephas" would not have conveyed Simon's designation as Rock to the Greek-speaking audience to whom John's written Gospel is addressed. It should be observed that the name "Cephas" which St. Paul uses 4 times in I Corinthians and 4 (3?) times in Galatians is not a translation of the name "Rock" which Our Lord conferred on Simon â that name in Aramaic is Kepa and "Cephas" is a transliteration â not a translation â into phonetically adaptable Greek. A Greek reader â in the absence of translation â would have no reason to think that "Cephas" means "Petros" â which is, of course, the Greek translation of Kepa.
We see in St. John's Gospel, therefore, that the meaning of the title (or office) which Our Lord conferred on Simon had to be translated if it were to retain its significance. Thus, if a person's given name in Aramaic were Kepa it would be transliterated into "Cephas" for Greek-speaking Christians, â which is just what we find in St. Paul's letters. But, if the title of his office, in Aramaic, were Kepa (so that it is the title's meaning which is important) that title must be translated to "Petros", just what we find in St. John's Gospel."I agree with Fr. Pujolâs and Mr. Hartâs scholarship as being valid arguments for two different names for two different men.
