latisha1903:
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[christiancourier.com/penpoints/peterRock.htm](http://www.christiancourier.com/penpoints/peterRock.htm)
Frankly, I suspect that most links cited on this forum go unread. If you can’t make the arguments on your own, few people are going to take the time to read every linked referenced in a thread. It’s prohibited by the amount of time it takes. Additionally, the post you put the link in didn’t say anything about this article being a response to the Aramaic argument. Were we supposed to guess? I have read every word you have written carefully as well, but will fully admit that I haven’t read every article you linked as I simply don’t have the time to do so.
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In any event, I did read this and have the following comments.
*** 1**.** It does not matter that many Protestant scholars (e.g., Alford, Bloomfield, Cullman, Carson, etc.) identify the “rock” as Peter. The issue is, what does the actual evidence indicate? In addition, it is one thing to suggest that Peter was the rock (mistakenly, I believe); it is quite another to argue that papal authority necessarily results from that alleged identification. For example, Bloomfield, who is cited by Conway (p. 148) in this regard, says “this cannot be supposed to give Peter any supremacy over the rest of the apostles (p. 79; see also Mundle, pp. 384ff).***
It does not matter that many Protestant scholars identify the “rock” as Peter? Wow! Cullman, Carson, N.T. Wright, these are widely recognized as the heavy weights of Protestant biblical scholarship, and it doesn’t matter what they have concluded. I must assume they made the conclusions on the evidence (as Jackson says he did), as I find it highly unlikely they accepted it because Catholcis do.
He is right in one thing. Peter being the Rock doesn’t lead to the papacy. But that is not the issue at hand. The issue is whether Peter is the Rock in the statement, nothing more. To bring the Papacy in at this point is dishonest. He would have been more honest to say, ‘Hey, you know what. Peter probably was the rock, but I still don’t accept the Papacy because x, y and z.’
*** 2. It is an assumption that Jesus spoke Aramaic on this occasion. Certainly that is the most likely possibility, but the truth is, as Robert Gundry has shown, most Palestineans of the first century were tri-lingual, speaking Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek (pp. 404-408). So we cannot be positive what dialect Jesus spoke on this occasion.
Be that as it may, when the Lord changed Simon’s name to Peter, he employed a Hellenized form of the term that is masculine in gender, kephas (see Jn. 1:42). T.H. Robinson conceded that while there is only one word in Aramaic (and it is feminine), when a man’s name is used, it can take a masculine form (p. 141; see also Foster, p. 715).
** * He admits that Christ probably did speak Aramaic, and the gospels otherwise show this. On the cross in MT 27:46 Christ cries out ‘
Eli, Eli, la’ma sabach-tha’ni?’ This is known to be Aramaic and is an untranslated version of the Lords words preserved by MT. Likewise, John 1:42 says…He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, “
So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” Here we have the Aramaic name being clearly preserved for us. Jesus actually names him Cephas, not Peter, so we know the name was not given in Greek. Sorry, but Mr. Jackson simply overlooked this.
** …Continued…**
