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BobCatholic
Guest
Jesus is the cornerstone. Peter is one of the Twelve Apostles, who are the foundation stones.
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kkollwitz
Guest
Yes. I’d like it better if Peter were referred to in English as stone rather than rock.
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LilyM
Guest
It’s one of those things with personal names that derive from different languages.
The name ‘John’ means ‘gracious gift of God’.
There are many names in different languages with the same meaning - Giovanni, Jean, Juan, Ian, Jan, Sean, Ivan, Johan and so on. We don’t literally translate any of those names, and quite often use names that we think are nice-sounding that do not derive from our own language let alone being a literal translation of the words in our own language.
I as a native English speaker may want to call my child John. I will then call him John, not ‘Gracious-gift-of-God’.
Alternatively, my family being of Eastern European extraction, I may call him Ivan, the equivalent in our family language (although I don’t speak it) in honour of my heritage. Again, I wouldn’t call him the literal translation of ‘gracious gift of God’ in that language.
Or if I happen to marry someone with a typically Gaelic surname (say McAlister or something) then I may instead decide on Sean which marries well with the surname. And I’m equally sure the literal translation of ‘gracious gift of God’ in Gaelic is something other than ‘Sean’.
And so on.
The name ‘John’ means ‘gracious gift of God’.
There are many names in different languages with the same meaning - Giovanni, Jean, Juan, Ian, Jan, Sean, Ivan, Johan and so on. We don’t literally translate any of those names, and quite often use names that we think are nice-sounding that do not derive from our own language let alone being a literal translation of the words in our own language.
I as a native English speaker may want to call my child John. I will then call him John, not ‘Gracious-gift-of-God’.
Alternatively, my family being of Eastern European extraction, I may call him Ivan, the equivalent in our family language (although I don’t speak it) in honour of my heritage. Again, I wouldn’t call him the literal translation of ‘gracious gift of God’ in that language.
Or if I happen to marry someone with a typically Gaelic surname (say McAlister or something) then I may instead decide on Sean which marries well with the surname. And I’m equally sure the literal translation of ‘gracious gift of God’ in Gaelic is something other than ‘Sean’.
And so on.
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patrick457
Guest
(Linguistic joke. Again.) How about Godsieve (gods + gife) or Theodore or Deodatus?
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LilyM
Guest
Or Dieudonne (means ‘God-given’ in French), the middle name of Louis XIV of France? Not as popular as the ol’ Jean, of course.(Linguistic joke. Again.) How about Godsieve (gods + gife) or Theodore or Deodatus?
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patrick457
Guest
Or Diodono/Deodono.
About Godsieve: I intended to make a ‘modernized’ form of OE Godes ġife ‘God’s gift’. Godes ġife > *Godseve (?), which could be theoretically further corrupted into various forms: *Godseff, *Goodsieve, *Godsieve or *Godsave, or even *Gussave, *Gosseve, or something like that. (Not to be confused with this surname.) If we Latinize it as something like *Godesivus, we’ll have further variants!
For the record, the name Godġifu did exist in OE, albeit as a feminine one (i.e. Lady Godiva), which became Godeve/Goodeve in Middle English. (The g in ġifu ‘gift’ and ġift ‘dowry’ is a ‘soft’ palatal g, yielding /ˈjivu/ and /jɪft/ respectively. The reason why we now pronounce gift with a hard g is due to the influence of Old Norse gipt ‘gift’, whence comes our modern word. These words ultimately come from Proto-Germanc *giftiz.)
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patrick457
Guest
To add to what you wrote:
We can see some interesting uses of the Aramaic word כיפא kēfa’ in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Job Targum found in Cave 11 in Qumran (11QtgJob aka 11Q10, cols. 32.1; 33.9, cf. Job 39:1, 28), for example, kēfa’ is used to translate the Hebrew word סֶ֣לַע sel[sup]a[/sup]‘ (‘rock’, ‘crag’, ‘cliff’, ‘mountain’). The word also shows up in the Aramaic fragments of the book of Enoch found in Cave 4. For instance, 4QEn[sup]e[/sup] aka 4Q206, frg. 5, col. 3.19 reads: [w‘mr s]lq lr‘š k]p ḥd rm “[and the sheep: climbed to the sum[mit of] a certain high [cr]ag.” (cf. 1 Enoch 89:29 “And that sheep ascended to the summit of that lofty rock, and the Lord of the sheep sent it to them.”) 4QEn[sup]c[/sup] aka 4Q204 (frg. 4.3) has *tnyn‘ wslq lr‘š kp‘ dn “climbed up [again for] a second time to the summit of that crag.” (cf. 1 Enoch 89:32 “Then that sheep who conducted them went away, and ascended the top of the rock.”) Lastly, 4QEn[sup]a[/sup] aka 4Q201, col. 2.18: [wlm]drk ‘l ‘prh w‘]l [kp]yh l‘ tškḥwn mn ḥmth] “and you are not able to tread upon the dirt or upon the [roc]ks/stones on account [of the heat]” (cf. 1 Enoch 4 “And you seek shade and shelter by reason of the heat of the sun, and the earth also burns with growing heat, and so you cannot tread on the earth, or on a rock by reason of its heat.”) We can see that the word kēfa’ has quite a broad meaning depending on the context, as the 1 Enoch example shows: it could mean a huge mass of rock, a “crag” that is part of a mountainous or hilly region upon which one could climb on to small “rocks/stones” one could step over.
Now for the the Septuagint. In Job 30:6, for instance, חֹרֵ֖י וְכֵפִֽים ḥōrê…ḵēfîm (“holes…of the rocks”) is translated as τρῶγλαι πετρῶν trōglai petrōn; in Jeremiah 4:29, וּבַכֵּפִ֖ים עָל֑וּ ûḇakēfîm ‘ālû “they climb among rocks” is rendered as ἐπὶ τὰς πέτρας ἀνέβησαν tas petras anebesan. Also Sirach 40:15: “The branch of violence shall not be unpunished, for the root of the godless is on the tooth of a rock/crag.” (Hebrew: אֶל שֵׁ֑ן סֶ֣לַע ‘el šēn sel[sup]a[/sup]‘; Greek: ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτόμου πέτρας ep’ akrotomou petras “sharp-point of a rock”)
As I mentioned on another thread, I recommend reading Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmyer’s To Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies, especially the chapter “Aramaic Kepha’ and Peter’s Name in the New Testament” (the chapter is also found in Text and Interpretation: Studies in the New Testament Presented to Matthew Black, BTW), as well as Saint Peter: The Underestimated Apostle by Martin Hengel and Thomas Trapp and The Remembered Peter in Ancient Reception and Modern Debate by Markus Bockmuehl for some discussion about Peter’s name/s (especially Cephas). Bockmuehl summarizes the present academic situation rather nicely:
Peter’s Aramaic name Kēfa’ has been the subject of far more extensive discussion, partly because its ecclesiological significance was for a long time deeply contested between Catholic and Protestant interpreters. The blossoming of ecumenical dialogue and of Roman Catholic biblical studies since Vatican II has meant that the confessional wind has for some time been more conducive to genuine progress and consensus. The exegetical dividing lines no longer fall among predictably denominational lines. The meaning of the Aramaic term כיפא as “rock” or “crag” has been reasonably demonstrated in the Targums and Dead Sea Scrolls, although the implications are still ignored by some recent commentators who deny that kēfa’ could be something one builds upon. This is not of course to say that all the difficulties have been removed. One of the major disagreements concerns the authenticity of Jesus’ saying about Peter as the Rock in Matt 16.18; on this matter the major multi-volume commentaries of the last decade continued to reach opposing conclusions. Another abiding problem is the significance of the wordplay employed in that verse.
The clincher is that Kepha is not attested as a non-Christian personal name in Hebrew or Aramaic sources from the Second Temple or rabbinic periods. We do have a sole surviving pre-Christian instance of kēfa’ apparently being used as a proper name in a 5th century BC Aramaic text from Elephantine in Egypt. Fr. Fitzmyer compares this instance of kēfa’ with the Hebrew Ṣur (“rock”) which is repeatedly attested in the Old Testament. However, as Bockmuehl argues, “it remains the case that nearly half a millennium of history and culture separates Elephantine from first-century Palestine, where the evidence suggests that Cephas was not current as a name.” Contra Fitzmeyer, Bockmuehl proposes that
The term Cephas would have remained perfectly intelligible in Jewish circles throughout the rabbinic period, so that the name Šim’ōn Kēfa’ could still be readily understood and interpreted in the later legends of the Toledot Yeshu. In the absence of evidence for Cephas as a Jewish name, however, this remains as Peter’s most distinctive epithet – his nickname rather than a proper name. Somewhat contrary to Fitzmyer’s inquiry, it seems likely to have been of interest precisely because it was not a familiar personal name. It is this that characterized him in the Aramaic-speaking churches of Judaea, and which ironically survived even Paul’s move into the Gentile world.*
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