peter...rock...Cephas

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If Jesus was not calling Peter the Rock in MT 16:18, then why do the other apostles call him the rock (Cephas) throughout the NT?

Jn 1:42, Mk 3:16, 1 Corinthians 1:12; 1 Corinthians 3:22; 1 Corinthians 9:5; 1 Corinthians 15:5; Galatians 1:18; Galatians 2:9; Galatians 2:11; Galatians 2:14*
 
It would have been best had St. Jerome printed Kephas or Cephas or Rock and not used the Greek Petros or Peter.

He however, couldn’t have predicted the reformation of the reformation of the Reformation.
 
Barbkw said:
It would have been best had St. Jerome printed Kephas or Cephas or Rock and not used the Greek Petros or Peter.

He however, couldn’t have predicted the reformation of the reformation of the Reformation.
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I wonder what the world would be like if that had happened? 🙂
 
Ha… a world without the protestant reformation… an apologist can dream… 🙂
I suppose apologists would be focusing mostly on non-Christian religions, if there was no reformation like event…

evidence, I can’t answer your question… as I believe that Jesus was calling Simon bar Jonah Peter and that Peter=Petros=Cephas=Kephas=Simon bar Jonah!!!
 
evidence,
  1. Given your verse-cites, I am sure you know that Peter’s given name was Simon (with bar-Jona(h) often added to denote he was the son of a father named Jona(h)).
  2. When Andrew, Simon’s brother, took Simon to meet Jesus, Jesus immediately renamed Simon “Kepha”. Based on every study of ancient Hebrew/Aramaic I have read, this is the FIRST instance where someone is named “Kepha”.
  3. As Jesus was likely speaking Aramaic to his Apostles when he first met them, Jesus would have called Simon “Kepha” - “Kepha” means “rock”.
  4. Cephas is the ancient Syriac name for “rock”. Syriac Peshitta is a language that was very close to Aramaic, and might have been used interchangeably with “Kepha”.
  5. As the most common language spoken in Palestine by all peoples at the time of Christ and his Apostles was Greek, the word “petros” would have been used to refer to Simon’s new name, as “petros” is the Greek word for “rock”. Protestants often try to “make hay” out of the difference between “petros” and “petras”, but that is only because they do not understand the masculine/feminine differences in the Greek language, with “petros” being the masculine form, and “petras” being the feminine form. Although most renowned protestant scholars now acknowledge that Christ did, in fact, rename Simon, some fundamentalists with an anti-Catholic agenda argue that “petros” means “large stone” and referred to Christ, whereas “petras” means “little stone” and referred to Simon. This, quite frankly, is nonsense.
  6. The Latin version of Simon’s new name is “Petrus”.
  7. “Peter” is the english equivalent of all of the above names.
  8. As far as why Jerome did what he did, he was relying on the Septuagint (initially) as per Pope Damasus I’s commission. The Septuagint was the only OT text that had the deuterocanonical books in it, whereas the Hebrew bible did not. So we assume that during his work, Jerome simply used the Greek words “petros” and “petras”, maintaining the word-for-word “copying”, but also rendering the words in their proper grammatical sense.
In sum:

Kepha: Aramaic
Cephas: Syriac
Petros/petras: Greek
Petrus: Latin
Peter: English

In other languages (as I am Italian by birth, but was adopted by a Cajun father and Sicilian mother), the French would be “Pierre” and the Italian would be “Pietro”.
 
How do we know that the others did not use his nick name of “rocky” in everyday conversation?

informal vs formal address.
 
Big,

If your question is a serious one, then my answer to it is: we don’t.

I have not read the entire bible from cover to cover, but I have read a large part of it. I am not aware of anyone having a nickname in today’s sense of the word.
 
Thank you for your responses…I find that the biblical and historical evidence for the papacy and church authority is overwhelming (see these other threads for examples)

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=5673448#post5673448

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=376082

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=379303

It goes to show how we all read scripture and history through the lense of our own experience and what we want to be true…

There are many verses that we have heard 1000 times, and think we understand, but don’t. For me, this happened recently with Lk 14:33, Mt 23:11, Rm 6:5 and Phil 2:3…all verses that I know will take me years to live in truth…with God’s grace.
So, my prayer is that we all learn to read scripture without putting our own meaning into the text, but are docile to the spirit’s promptings… Rm 12:2

Peace in Christ!
 
Big_Dummy said:
How do we know that the others did not use his nick name of “rocky” in everyday conversation?

informal vs formal address.
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I was once a Bible study where we were told this very thing. That calling someone a “rock” meant they were stubborn. I suppose, as always, different scholars interpret things differently… Come to think of it, there is a whole other interpretation of that passage that doesn’t depend on the “rock” argument but on the translation of another word. I’ll try to get time tomorrow to look it up and post it.
 
I can’t believe that my Catholic friends aren’t making hay out of this. The name Kepha in Aramaic means not only a stone, but one that has been dressed and is ready to use in building. If you will recall, in the OT the requirement was for altars to built out of natural stones, not ones that had been dressed.
 
Oldtimer,

I admit I have never heard that before regarding the entymology of “kepha”.

But don’t you think that naming Simon “Kepha” upon first meeting him would have been a bit premature? I don’t think Simon was ready until after he had denied Christ, saw the risen Christ, and received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Just a thought . . .

I am not questioning your veracity in what you say - could you supply a reference? As I said, I have never heard that description before.
 
“Be it known to you, my lord, that Simon [Peter], who, for the sake of the true faith, and the most sure foundation of his doctrine, was set apart to be the foundation of the Church, and for this end was by Jesus himself, with his truthful mouth, named Peter” (Letter of Clement to James 2 [A.D. 221]).
-The Letter of Clement to James

“Look at [Peter], the great foundation of the Church, that most solid of rocks, upon whom Christ built the Church [Matt. 16:18]. And what does our Lord say to him? ‘Oh you of little faith,’ he says, ‘why do you doubt?’ [Matt. 14:31]” (Homilies on Exodus 5:4 [A.D. 248]).
-Origen

“[Christ] made answer: ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church. . . .’ Could he not, then, strengthen the faith of the man to whom, acting on his own authority, he gave the kingdom, whom he called the rock, thereby declaring him to be the foundation of the Church [Matt. 16:18]?” (The Faith 4:5 [A.D. 379]).
-Ambrose of Milan

“Simon Cephas answered and said, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah: flesh and blood has not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee also, that you are Cephas, and on this rock I will build my Church; and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it” (The Diatesseron 23 [A.D. 170]).
-Tatian the Syrian

“Was anything withheld from the knowledge of Peter, who is called ‘the rock on which the Church would be built’ [Matt. 16:18] with the power of ‘loosing and binding in heaven and on earth’ [Matt. 16:19]?” (Demurrer Against the Heretics 22 [A.D. 200]).
-Tertullian
 
Salvatore123 said:
Oldtimer,

I admit I have never heard that before regarding the entymology of “kepha”.

But don’t you think that naming Simon “Kepha” upon first meeting him would have been a bit premature? I don’t think Simon was ready until after he had denied Christ, saw the risen Christ, and received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
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Simon may not have been “ready” at that point, but Jesus knew the stuff of which Peter was made.

John 2:25
He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.
 
Here’s another viewpoint about the translation: Matthew 16:18 where the interpretation is about the word “build” and that it also means “enlighten.” Here’s the premise:
But what all the interpreters are not doing is questioning any other words in the text. The presumption is: Jesus is building something, a church. Yet, He may not have been saying that at all. He may have been saying the opposite.
Click to expand...
 
Salvatore, I have not been ignoring you. Between senility and a lot of other things going on, I have not had a chance to research my notes on Matthew. I changed computers after I taught Matthew and just today got back to my writings on the subject. I found where I made the statement in writing about chapter 16, but did not cite the source of the information. I looked at the materials I generally used: The Gospel of Matthew in the Sacra Pagina series and the New Interpreters Bible. I did not find a citation in either of those. There is an excellent article by Jimmy Akin, from a Catholic perspective.
In sum, I have to apologize for my sloppy scholarship on this issue.

BTW. Big Dummy, Danniel Harrington SJ, the author of The Gospel of Matthew and editor of the Sacra Pagina series considers Peter to be a nickname. Certainly, it is a nickname in the sense that he was not given the name by his parents, but by Jesus, who differentiated Peter/Cephas/Kepha from his given name in Matthew 16:17 by using the formal address of Peter’s name in Aramaic.

And Randy, I don’t think Dusty would fit, especially after that little stroll on the Sea of Galilee.
 
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