Source for Petros/petra differentiation not in Koine Greek

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St_Francis

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Phil Vaz wrote: (C) The slight distinction in meaning for the Greek words for Rock (petros, petra) was largely confined to poetry before the time of Jesus and therefore has no special importance;
(forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=8700&highlight=greek+translation+rock)

And Karl Keating in one of his articles on this site wrote that the differentiation between petra=rock and petros=rock existed in Attic Greek but not in Koine Greek.

Well, I wrote that on a Protestant site and they wanted a citation for it and I have not been able to find one. If anyone could give me one for that that an anti-Catholic Protestant would accept (I guess it might take Martin Luther or someone like that…) I would appreciate it!

PS If anyone has right off the the bat something about this: John Henry wrote: Some of the Church Fathers make reference to Matthew’s gospel having been originally written in aramaic, subsequently translated into greek. I am also interested in reading about that but have no clue as to where to start looking.

Thanks very much!
 
According to Jesus, Peter and the Keys and Jimmy Akin, you can find the citation from The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 8, p. 368. D.A. Carson wrote that particular article in the commentary.

It would be best to carefully examine that particular commentary first hand before submitting it as evidence. Your local Christian university library is likely to have it.
 
And about the supposed original Matthew in Aramaic, the following is *attributed *to Papias (2nd century). We can’t be entirely sure if he really wrote this though:
“Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.”
When he writes “Hebrew” does he mean Aramaic or Hebrew? When he writes “oracles” is he referring specifically to The Gospel According to Matthew or to something else?

Because of these questions, I’m hesistant to employ the “Early Church Fathers testifed that Matthew was originally written in Aramaic” line of argument. And from what I understand, the few Fathers who mentioned that Matthew was originally written in the language of the Hebrews ultimately got their idea from Papias. We just don’t know enough about what’s being written of here.

On the other hand, Claude Tresmontant translated the Greek Matthew into Hebrew and found it to be so elegant as though it had originally been written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek. You can read more about it in “Contemporary Catholic Biblical Scholarship: Certitudes or Hypotheses? A Commentary.”
 
My Stongs Greek Lexicon says:
Petra = a rock or large stone.
Petros = a rock or stone.
Lithos = a small stone.
 
Thanks very Vincent and Todd! I didn’t remember reading that in the book you recommended, and I haven’t unpacked it (from our move), but I hadn’t heard that argument when I read it, so it probably just passed on by!

And I had heard that about the translation into Hebrew, but from Catholic radio, so I was unable to begin to figure out how to find out more about it.

Thanks Again!
 
Again I can’t help pointing out that many of the people that bang the drum for a Scripture so perspicacious it excludes the need for an authoritative Church, suddenly need twenty pages of pointy-headed academic wrangling over one word when they get to this passage. :rolleyes:

Scott
 
Scott, you are so right! May I borrow that idea?

Anyway, hopefully Vincent will read this because before when I read this, I was just taking a break from a huge task, and when I re-read it, I saw the part that said to read the commentary before using it. Aaahhhhh, the local public library is an hour away, I have no idea where there’d be a Christian college! So, can I just take your word for it? Does it pretty much come right out and say so?

Maybe I will run across that book soon and see if any of those are Protestant.

Thanks very much!
 
St. Francis, I’ll do you a favor.

There’s a Baptist U about five minutes away from where I am. I’ll go and take a look. I did that before and I remember reading it in there, but I want to be really, really sure— doublechecking is important, remember CBS? 😉

I’ll be back in about an hour.
 
Yup. Vol. 8, p. 368:“Although it is true that *petros * and *petra * can mean ‘stone’ and ‘rock’ respectively in earlier Greek, the distinction is largely confined to poetry.”
No superscripted th’s in this one. 😉

It’s too bad Dr. Carson doesn’t give evidence for his assertion, though. We just have to take his word for it.
 
Hi, all.

I compiled the following because of a discussion on another set of messageboards. I had to defend that St. Matthew did indeed write his account in Greek. With my permission, use the following whenever you must.
“Matthew wrote his Gospel in Greek”

from renealegre.net/NT/matthew/intro.htm
It is believed by a formidable number of critics that this Gospel was originally written in what is loosely called Hebrew, but more correctly Aramaic, or Syro-Chaldaic, the native tongue of the country at the time of our Lord; and that the Greek Matthew which we now possess is a translation of that work, either by the Evangelist himself or some unknown hand.

[snip]

But how stand the facts as to our Greek Gospel? We have not a title of historical evidence that it is a translation, either by Matthew himself or anyone else. All antiquity refers to it as the work of Matthew the publican and apostle, just as the other Gospels are ascribed to their respective authors. This Greek Gospel was from the first received by the Church as an integral part of the one quadriform Gospel.

And…

from encyc.home.att.net/M/matthew_gospel.htm
One thing which seems certain is that whatever this Hebrew (Aramaic) document may have been, it was not an original form from which the present Greek Gospel of Matthew was translated, either by the apostle himself, or by somebody else, as was maintained by Bengel, Thiersch, and other scholars. Indeed, the Greek Matthew throughout bears the impress of being not a translation at all, but as having been originally written in Greek, and as being less Hebraistic in the form of thought than some other New Testament writings, e.g. the Apocalypse. It is generally not difficult to discover when a Greek book of this period is a translation from the Hebrew or Aramaic. That our Matthew was written originally in Greek appears, among other things, from the way in which it makes use of the Old Testament, sometimes following the Septuagint, sometimes going back to the Hebrew. Particularly instructive passages in this regard are 12:18-21 and 13:14, 15, in which the rendering of the Alexandrian translation would have served the purposes of the evangelist, but he yet follows more closely the original text, although he adopts the Septuagint wherever this seemed to suit better than the Hebrew (compare Keil’s Commentary on Matthew, loc. cit.)
 
The external evidences to which appeal is made in favor of the use of an original Hebrew or Aramaic. Matthew in the primitive church are more than elusive. Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiastica, V, 10) mentions as a report (legetai) that Pantaenus, about the year 170 AD, found among the Jewish Christians, probably of South Arabia, a Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, left there by Bartholomew; and Jerome, while in the Syrian Berea, had occasion to examine such a work, which he found in use among the Nazarenes, and which at first he regarded as a composition of the apostle Matthew, but afterward declared not to be such, and then identified with the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Evangelium secundum or juxta Hebraeos) also called the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, or of the Nazarenes, current among the Nazarenes and Ebionites (De Vir. Illustr., iii; Contra Pelag., iii. 2; Commentary on Mt 12:13, etc.; see GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS). For this reason the references by Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius to the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew are by many scholars regarded as referring to this Hebrew Gospel which the Jewish Christians employed, and which they thought to be the work of the evangelist (compare for fuller details See Hauck-Herzog, Realencyklopadie fur protestantische Theologie und Kirche, XII, article “Matthaeus der Apostel”). Just what the original Hebrew. Mathew was to which Papias refers (assuming it to have had a real existence) must, with our present available means, remain an unsolved riddle, as also the possible connection between the Greek and Hebrew texts. Attempts like those of Zahn, in his Kommentar on Matthew, to explain readings of the Greek text through an inaccurate understanding of the imaginary Hebrew original are arbitrary and unreliable. There remains, of course, the possibility that the apostle himself, or someone under his care (thus Godet), produced a Greek recension of an earlier Aramaic work. And…

from bible.org/docs/soapbox/matotl.htm
The earliest statement that Matthew wrote something is by Papias: “Instead [of writing in Greek], Matthew arranged the oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and each man interpreted them as he was able.”3 We have already discussed some of the possibilities of what Papias referred to in this statement.4 It may be helpful, in this place, to outline the general views: (1) “the oracles” (taV logiva) = the Gospel of Matthew; (2) “the oracles” = a sayings source (like Q); (3) Papias is not speaking about the Hebrew dialect, but he uses dialevkto" to mean “literary fashion”; thus, Matthew arranged his Gospel along Jewish-Christian lines; (4) Papias was wrong.
 
Although it is quite impossible to decide conclusively what Papias meant since we are wholly dependent on Eusebius for any excerpts from this early second century writer, some general considerations are in order: (1) Papias probably was not referring to the Gospel, since we have no trace of it in Hebrew or Aramaic until the medieval ages (all of which are clearly translations of the Greek, at least as far as most scholars are concerned). This view, therefore, is shipwrecked on early textual evidence. Further, Matthew does not show strong evidence of being translation Greek. (2) Some have suggested therefore (as an expedient to salvage the first view) that Papias was referring to Matthew’s literary method, rather than linguistics, but such is by no means a natural interpretation of dialevkto". (3) Although Papias could have been wrong—and he was a man of meager intelligence (according to Eusebius)!—he is sufficiently early and well-connected with apostolic Christianity that he ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. (4) The best option, in our view, is that Papias was referring to a sayings source which Matthew wrote. If so, then Matthew in all probability incorporated this source into his gospel, after rearranging it.5 As we suggested in our section on the Synoptic Problem, this sayings source may well have constituted a portion of Q.6 In any event, the great probability is that Papias is referring to the apostle Matthew as an author of material on the life of Jesus. Whether this is proto-Matthew, Q, or Matthew, Matthean authorship of the first gospel is either directly or indirectly supported by the statement.

After Papias, Irenaeus wrote: “Now Matthew published also a book of the Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel in Rome and founding the Church.”7 It is obvious that Irenaeus got the gist of this information from Papias (since he was acquainted with his work), though he does add two interesting points: (1) the audience of Matthew’s work was the Jews (or Jewish Christians); (2) the time when this work was written was during Peter and Paul’s tenure in Rome. In light of Irenaeus’ dependence on Papias (as well as his interpretation of his statement), this part of the tradition does not receive an independent testimony.8 But Irenaeus adds the interesting point that the time when Matthew wrote this was when Peter and Paul were in Rome. This may be no more than a guess, for other information in the statement seems false.9 On the other hand, since Peter and Paul were not in Rome together until the early 60s, this may well help us to fix a date for Matthew’s Gospel, provided that this tradition has other corroborative evidence.

Still later, Origen assumed that Matthew penned his Gospel originally in Hebrew. However, Origen adds nothing to what Papias has said, and may well have assumed that Papias was speaking about the Gospel rather than a sayings source. After Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, Augustine and others echoed the opinion of Matthean authorship.
 
The early external testimony is universal on two points: (1) Matthew wrote something related to the life of Jesus Christ; and (2) Matthew wrote in a Semitic tongue. Little, if any, independent testimony exists however for the supposition that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew/Aramaic. Nevertheless, the attachment of the name of Matthew to the first gospel may well indicate that it ultimately goes back to him, even if completed by a later compiler.

Added to this explicit testimony are the quotations of Matthew’s Gospel in the early patristic writers. It is quoted as early as 110 CE (by Ignatius), with a steady stream of patristic citations afterward. In fact, Matthew’s Gospel was quoted (and copied) far more often than either Mark or Luke. From earliest times, then, it was treated as canonical and authoritative on the life of Jesus Christ, regardless of authorship.

[snip]

There are relatively few Semitic traces in Matthew, though one might note the heavy use of tovte (89 times), as compared with Mark (6) and Luke (15), perhaps harking back to the Hebrew za.12 Beyond this, there is the occasional asyndeton13 (a mark of Aramaic influence), use of the indefinite plural (1:23; 7:16), etc. Although Matthew’s Greek is less Semitic than Mark’s, it does betray traces of Semitisms at times—even where none exists in the Markan parallel. If Matthew did write this gospel, one might not expect many Semitisms since Matthew was a tax-collector and would therefore have to be conversant in Greek as well as Hebrew/Aramaic. But the fact of some Semitisms suggests either that the writer was a Jew or that his sources were Semitic. Yet, some of these are so much a part of the fabric of his gospel (e.g., tovte) that it is more reasonable to suppose that the author was himself a Jew.

And…

from ccel.org/j/jfb/jfb/JFB40.htm Moved by these considerations, some advocates of a Hebrew original have adopted the theory of a double original; the external testimony, they think, requiring us to believe in a Hebrew original, while internal evidence is decisive in favor of the originality of the Greek. This theory is espoused by GUERICKS, OLSHAUSEN, THIERSCH, TOWNSON, TREGELLES, &c. But, besides that this looks too like an artificial theory, invented to solve a difficulty, it is utterly void of historical support. There is not a vestige of testimony to support it in Christian antiquity. This ought to be decisive against it.

It remains, then, that our Greek Matthew is the original of that Gospel, and that no other original ever existed. It is greatly to the credit of Dean ALFORD, that after maintaining, in the first edition of his Greek Testament the theory of a Hebrew original, he thus expresses himself in the second and subsequent editions: “On the whole, then, I find myself constrained to abandon the view maintained in my first edition, and to adopt that of a Greek original.”
 
Scott Waddell:
Again I can’t help pointing out that many of the people that bang the drum for a Scripture so perspicacious it excludes the need for an authoritative Church, suddenly need twenty pages of pointy-headed academic wrangling over one word when they get to this passage. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
This is especially relevant to the “Scripture is perspicacious” prooftext: 2 Tim. 3:16-17. 😉
 
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