Your post is must uncharitable
Jesus renamed Simon bar-Jonah for a purpose. The literalness of the play on words–a linguistic pun–is made clear. A pun is a pun because of the literalness of the play on words. This was precisely what Jesus was saying. “You are Rocky and on this rock I will build my church.” His intent becomes clear when we examine the Aramaic in which language Jesus addressed Peter.
.Note that the word for Peter, ke’pha’, is the same word for rock. The words are equated: Peter is the rock.
The core of the meaning appears to rest in the two words for a “rock.” If Matthew recorded that Christ used the same word both for (1) the proper name of Peter and (2) the foundation on which Christ says he will build the church, then an interpretation follows that the foundation of the church is Peter.
Because the Word of God as recorded in Matthew had to be intelligible in its literalness for all people including the more simple people of the early centuries of the Church, a more involved interpretation demanding extensive hermeneutics and linguistic acumen would be unwarranted. Ultimately, when there are differing interpretations, the principle question then becomes, “by what authority is the truth appealed.”
The last line and paragraph is what makes the point. The Problem is we do not know 100% that Jesus DID speak Aramaic here. It stands to reason because of the Greek manuscripts that he did not only at this moment. This was the point that both Padrej and I had been trying to hammer home. To say there were NO Greek speakers around (as jmcrea believes) would be ludicrous as Phillip would certainly have been one. Greek was the language of commerce of the day and if you wanted to be successful in ANY business you needed to know the language so it would stand to reason that Peter and Andrew being fisherman would know the language as well. Matthew being a Tax collector would probably know the language. The point is there were enough disciples around that spoke the language to make those words relevant.
In the first part of the article cited it uses the Greek that Matthew uses. This is unique to Matthew and the Catholic church uses this to establish the Primacy of Peter. it would not have the bite that it does IF it was written in Aramaic as the words are basically the same. Peter in his epistles, goes on to use these same words of “Petra” and “Petros.” When he speaks of the church being made up of “living stones” he uses the words “petra” indicated that he understood that Christ was using words that were NOT Aramaic. **Peter in his epistles did not use “Cephas” or “Kepha” in these areas, he mirrored what was in the Matthew passage, **so it is far likelier that Jesus DID speak Greek at THAT moment. When you look at the Matthew passage and its mirror passages in Peter’s Epistles the wording is almost identical, while other places Peter is given his Aramaic name, by this was CAN conclude that Jesus DID speak Greek to Peter at that point.
I hope this makes it clearer. These were the points that Padrej and I were both trying to drive home. When you study the original Greek you must also take the passages and study them as part of the whole to get their deeper meaning. When you look at 1 Peter 2 in the light of the Matthew passage they mirror one another. They do not have the Aramaic wording that lingers in other areas. This makes the argument to Jesus speaking Greek in Matthew 16 all the stronger.
Neither Padrej or I disagree with anyone that Jesus spoke Aramaic, our point was,
because of the wording here, he spoke Greek. Because of this people went ballistic claiming that no Greek speakers were around when we know that several of the Disciples could speak the language as proven by other Gospels and church tradition. They claimed Matthew was
only written to Greeks when the book
clearly had a Jewish audience as proven by a Catholic apologetics site and yet we are the ones getting called out as being uncharitable and making comments on this thread unbecoming of a priest of the Catholic church. Nobody has EVER been able to answer the question that if Matthew’s Gospel was supposedly written in Aramaic first why does it have so strong of a Greek influence only in this one area of Matthew 16? The answer lies in that the Aramaic text would have used Greek also. Nobody has ever answered this question as long as I have ever been on this thread or others similar when this subject comes up. But yet they will argue took and nail that Jesus was not a Greek speaker. Can you tell me where the charity is in that??? Correct me if I am wrong but if Jesus being both Divine AND Human, if He could speak one human language it stands to reason that He could communicate in all. For some odd reason we have a hard time grasping this.
Kindly tell me adrift the answer to all this as you have brought forth the “uncharitable” lines again. Or in light of all this that I have just put forth are you going to accuse me of conduct unbecoming a Priest of the Catholic Church also?