In Galatians 2 Paul describes a serious blow up that he had with “Cephas” over the relationship of Jews and Gentiles in the church. Major conflict. Possibly never resolved. Throughout history this event has usually been cited to show that Paul and Peter had very different views of things.
But what if the Cephas Paul attacked was not Peter but someone else?
A couple of weeks ago I gave a webinar on “Cephas and Peter” for members of the Biblical Studies Academy (my for-profit business that produces on-line courses, etc., not connected with the blog). I had written an academic article with that title many years ago, some time back in the Pleistocene age, arguing that contrary to what everyone thinks and says, they may not have been the same person. That there were two people with that name, not just one (despite what John 1:42 explicitly states).
It was a rather, uh, controversial issue and I had to look up the details of a number of the arguments I used; in doing so I remembered I had posted on the topic on the blog years ago, looked up the (four) posts, and decided that it might be fun and interesting to post on the issue again.
The article itself can be found in “Cephas and Peter,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 109 (1990) pp. 463-74. As you will see, it is written at a more academic level than usual blog posts. But I don’t think there’s much that’s difficult to understand, just some stilted language and a few references to ancient Christian writings that most people would have had zero reason to have ever heard of. But on an interesting issue!
(The only necessary background is that in the New Testament, Jesus gives his closest follower Simon the nickname “Peter” which in Aramaic is “Cephas,” and so it is almost always assumed that if an author mentions Cephas he is referring to Simon Peter. But is that right?)
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Could it be that later writers were uncomfortable with Paul and Peter being at odds with each other so a tradition of Cephas not being Peter came into being to counter that possibility? Is there any evidence to support or oppose this idea?
Yup! I’ll talk about that in a later post.
Two questions: First, Isn’t it possible that these scant pieces of evidence reflect that some early church officials weren’t knowledgeable about Aramaic and simply made a “bad guess” about who Cephas was? Certainly, when you consider that Cephas would not be a traditional Jewish name, and given that Paul says: “Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any **other** apostle except James the Lord’s brother.” It seems to me that the evidence points toward Cephas being an obscure nickname, and Cephas being an apostle.
And, second, what’s your opinion now? Do you think Cephas and Peter are the same person?
I’ll be getting to that in a later post!!
This was definitely not a rabbit hole i was expecting to find today! Very interesting!
To what extent did Paul’s letters or theology influence what the Gospels say?
It’s hard to say. Matthew appears to be reacting *against* Pauls theology (that keeping the law has no bearing on savlation); Mark has many similarlities to it (atonement); Luke, for whom Paul his the chief hero in Acts, appears not to know it very well (he removes atonement from his account). On the surface John seems similar to Paul (emphasis on belief) but when you look at it closely they are very different (for Paul “belief” in Jesus is not belief that he came from heaven to take people back up to God. The other problem — even bigger – is that even if an author appears to embrace or dismiss or change Paul’s theology, that’s not at all evidence that they had read the seven letters of Paul that we still happen to have today. They may not have even known the theology they accept or opposed came from Paul — many of these views were widely held.
Within the context of Christian theology, Is it orthodox and/or reasonable to think of the Holy Spirit and the only begotten son of God as hypostases of the Father? This makes a lot of sense to me.
No, in traditional theology Father, Son, and Spirt are distinct “persons.” The Son and the Spirit are not manifestations of another person (the Father) or of characteristics of that person.
only in the Bible
It seems to me that the early church would want to promote the idea that Peter and Cephas were two different persons to cover up the embarrassment that Paul had condemned and corrected Peter (Cephas) while he was in Antioch (Galatians 2:11). It is possible Paul used both versions of Simon Peter’s name (Petros – Greek and Cephas – Aramaic) in his letter to the Galatians so they would know those two names were actually the same person. (The Greek speaking gentiles in Galatia may have heard of “Cephas” but didn’t know that was the Aramaic translation of Peter.) It’s interesting that some early Christian authors discounted the statement in John 1:42 when the author of the Gospel of John does the same type of statement about Thomas and his Greek name Didymus in John 21:2 and no one (that I know of) claims that Thomas and Didymus are two different persons.
In John 1:42 Jesus says, “you shall be called Cephas” but then the author keeps calling him “Simon Peter” not “Simon Cephas.” Is it possible that the author was simply pointing out the similar translations for Cephas and Peter and uses “Simon Peter” precisely to distinguish him from the other disciple known as “Cephas?”
Don’t think so, since he never refers to a close disciples Cephas again. Once he tells his Greek readers that Cephas is Peter, hd just sticks with the Greek name.
Not about identity, but I always thought it interesting the apostles disagreeing over doctrine or policy. The Bible says they were guided by the holy spirit. So how was the holy spirit giving apostles conflicting guidance? Maybe argument for cephas not an apostle could help, but Paul’s accounts sound like he was disagreeing with more than one person.
Is “Silvanus” and “Silas” the same person? Is (John) Mark actually two individuals? Is “Saul of Tarsus” the same person as the Apostle Paul? (That last question was asked on the Quora platform.) Paul wrote in Koine Greek, but when he conversed with Simon Bar Jonah, they conversed in Aramaic.
I was a young adult before I figured out that the Mexican holiday “Cinco de Mayo” was actually May 5th.
The man who was born as Simon, son-of-Jonah was given the nickname, “the Rock”, by Jesus. Centuries before Christians called Jesus “the Rock of my salvation”, Jesus identified the brother of Andrew as “the Rock”. Trials are coming, Cephas. Be strong and let the others draw from your strength.
Yes, in the NT Silvanus and Silas are the same person. And Saul and Paul are the same.