Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Trees of Light writes:

Pillars Identities:
If you have a three pillars setup at the front of a temple in the days of the New Testament, the chief pillar of the three is in the centre.
The Christian sect had the same setup, Peter was the chief pillar, James was on his right and John was on his left — as described by Paul, Gal. 2.9.
To link Peter with James and John outright would be to give opposing forces a target in Peter as the chief Christian sect leader - Christ's deputy, for sect opposition would note in published Christian literature the repetition of Peter, James and John and ascertain that they were sect pillars or leaders.
Hence to make matters obscure to those not 'in the know', Peter is named Cephas, especially in Gal. 2.9.

At the time of the story that the author of Mark was telling, eg Mark 9, 2, the Jewish sect that became known as Christian had yet to be created. So, no Christians at the time Jesus, if historical, were alive. His companions - Simon (wrongly called Peter), James and John - if historical, were fierce Nazarene Jewish nationalists.
At the later time Paul/Saul was writing Galatians (around CE 55), he was starting to set up an alternative Jewish sect in the diaspora, while in Judea he was still accountable to James and other Jewish leaders (who were also definitely not Christians)!
By this time, the Nazarene Jews had been in conflict with Herod Agrippa I who died in CE 44, after killing James the brother of John with the sword and driving Simon (leader of a fundamentalist Jewish ekklesia) into exile, Acts 12, 2 and Acts 12, 17.
Thus the pillars cited in Galatians were not the same persons, but significant Jewish leaders with whom Paul/Saul had to contend.
Not Simon (wrongly called Simon Peter), not there at this time. Nor James, the brother of John, dead.
I suggest possibly just two pillars, but in any case, one was James the Just. The other may have been Jonathan.

Peter C, unless and until you explicitly address the scholarship by the several relevant publications on the relevant names--by Tal Ilan and others--it may be hard to assess the probability or plausibility of some of your claims.

In response to my comments on the obfuscation between Cephas and Petros, Mr MacSon observed:
* or, a Markan author simply decided to rename the Pauline 'Kephas' as Simon [Peter] and as Simon
This is offered as an alternative suggestion to my contention that:
An author of Mark decided that Kephas must have been transliterated from כפא meaning ‘stone’, failing to recognise that it could equally have come from the similar-sounding קפא, representing the title of the High Priest.
He also decided that the references to Kephas provided evidence of what he already believed to be the case, that Paul was involved with the Simon who featured in Mark’s own source narrative.

Mr MacSon is making a good point. There are often many routes by which a particular reading could have come about. So, what I'm always arguing for is not what is 'true' but what I suggest is more probable on the evidence.

S

tephanGoranson wrote:
Peter C, unless and until you explicitly address the scholarship by the several relevant publications on the relevant names--by Tal Ilan and others--it may be hard to assess the probability or plausibility of some of your claims.

I'm (among other things) advancing a case, which I have not seen anywhere else, that on the balance of probability Paul/Saul was interacting with members of the High Priest Joseph's family, that the Greek transliteration Kephas in Galatians and I Corinthians derived from this family's title and that a misunderstanding by an author of Mark turned this into a nickname (in Greek) for his character Simon. We all have ranges of overlapping references/sources, and if you have some that you think add to or detract from my arguments, please do feel free to pitch in. For a lot of textual analysis, it is possible by careful examination to see how something works without always referencing one's way to a conclusion! Here surely is the place for ideas, rather than a fully-fledged thesis for every post.

PeterC wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2024 10:45 am
Paul cites the title or nickname Kephas eight times; in each case the forename, which should have accompanied it, is (now) missing.

If Kephas (Κηϕας, which is represented in Greek as a transliteration), derived from the Aramaic word כיפא (with the yodh as vowel carrier) meaning stone, then it must be wondered why Paul failed to write the word in Greek, ie as Petros, as he does with virtually all of the rest of his material.

My view is that Paul could only write Kephas (Κηϕας) in transliteration because it derives from a title, not a nickname, which doesn't - and more pertinently didn't - have a generally recognised meaning (although several people, including Rollston, have subsequently offered up their speculations!) That title is the Aramaic word קיפא, with yodh as a mater lectionis, or קפא. Both versions are found carved on ossuaries in the tomb believed with some degree of probability to be that of the High Priest Joseph and members of his family.

• Thanks!

PeterC wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2024 10:45 am
It is important to recognise that in Aramaic the words for stone and the title differed in sound and so also in spelling, with alternatively a kaph and a qoph at the beginning (reading from righ to left), but that the Greek language didn't encompass the same subtle differences in sound, and so only had the letter kappa to represent the letters kaph and qoph and the sounds these represented: similar but, in actuality, distinct. Thus, what a Greek speaker read, and then wrote in transliteration for words that were actually different, was the same.

This is why both words came to be represented the same way, with the only difference being in the vowels chosen for the gaps that written Hebrew and Aramaic left to be filled in (hence Κηϕας and Καιϕας). It is why an early author of Mark saw Κηϕας in Galatians and 1 Corinthians, thought it referred to the word for stone, thought therefore that it was in context a nickname, and, since I believe the forenames that were in Paul's two letters have subsequently been redacted, may well have seen the name as Simon Kephas - and transferred this name as Simon Petros, in his narrative in Greek. This is what I suggest is the best explanation, on the balance of probability. And because it leads to an overall understanding that is coherent, shorn of ragged edges, unexplained details and otherwise weird coincidences.

It is also important to recognise that Petros and Simon Petros appear out of the blue in Mark and the other gospels. There is no prior evidence for the name Petros at the time that Paul was writing and in recent Jewish history, prior to this. There was a mistake; it was later recognised, disregarded and covered by redactions because the fictional 'Simon Peter', evolved from a possibly real character Simon, had become too doctrinally important.

• Cheers.

I may be mistaken, but the burden of proof for your proposal, PeterC, is on you.
You claimed (above, in part) that your proposal "....leads to an overall understanding that is coherent, shorn of ragged edges, unexplained details and otherwise weird coincidences."

I'm not yet persuaded that that is true.

You invoke the, here seemingly-popular, deus ex machina of convenient redaction.
You stipulate who was and who was not multilingual.
You multiply entities, unnecessarily.
You offer a transliteration misunderstanding as possible, but then probable.
You downplay debates about relevant-or-not ossuaries and a relevant-or-not family tomb.
You conjure up otherwise unattested consultations between a reputed Pharisee and a reputed Sadducee--or scion or scions thereof.
You side-step seriously engaging, so far, with what may be the best available publication and analysis of contemporary Jewish names, that of the four volumes by Tal Ilan.

Stephan Goranson writes:
I may be mistaken, but the burden of proof for your proposal, PeterC, is on you.
You claimed (above, in part) that your proposal "....leads to an overall understanding that is coherent, shorn of ragged edges, unexplained details and otherwise weird coincidences."

I'm not yet persuaded that that is true.

You invoke the, here seemingly-popular, deus ex machina of convenient redaction.
You stipulate who was and who was not multilingual.
You multiply entities, unnecessarily.
You offer a transliteration misunderstanding as possible, but then probable.
You downplay debates about relevant-or-not ossuaries and a relevant-or-not family tomb.
You conjure up otherwise unattested consultations between a reputed Pharisee and a reputed Sadducee--or scion or scions thereof.
You side-step seriously engaging, so far, with what may be the best available publication and analysis of contemporary Jewish names, that of the four volumes by Tal Ilan.

I welcome Stephan’s contribution.
My approach is to look at all the evidence, including context, to see which one of maybe several competing explanations is more probable. All will be possible, though with varying degrees of likelihood. I am with Richard Carrier on this.
The argument, that an author of Mark misunderstood and so mistranslated a word transliterated from Aramaic to Greek eliminates a number of improbable coincidences, and helps towards clearing up many other points (such as the opaque and clunky wording of Galatians 1, 18-19). But I owe no favours, and argue that Carrier is wedded to an unsubstantiated theory on this one and has got it wrong. See ‘God’s Wrath and the Brother of the Lord’, on my website.
The approach I take means that I am not attached to whatever explanation emerges, on balance, to be more probable. It is just that, more probable, not necessarily ‘the truth’, and it is only on the evidence thus far.
In this forum, it wouldn’t be right to repeat a book or long article. But to critique properly any reference back to these, or a summary, it is necessary to go back to the original researched work. In ‘Simon Peter and Cephas- two characters and one fiction’, I look at the respective cases of Bart Ehrmann and Dale Allison and come down in favour of two individuals, rather than one, originating in different contexts and with different characteristics and roles.
This is on my website. There is also a lot more in ‘Who Was Cephas?’. Message me for a copy.
The ‘consultations’ (interactions) between Paul/Saul and Jewish figures (yes, I would agree probably Sadducees) is attested by Paul himself and in the narrative of Acts.
Paul was given to claim in Acts to be able to speak in the Hebrew tongue, as well as in Greek.
I am with those who conclude that the tomb with the ossuary inscribed ‘Joseph bar Kaiphas’ is that of the High Priest Joseph and his family.
On balance, I think I clarify by actually reducing the number of entities (I can elaborate) arising from a limited bank of material.
As for the ‘deus ex machina of convenient redaction’, I would argue that it is through this and other types of manipulation that texts have evolved. Thus (for example), Matthew is an edited version of Mark, with material cut and other material embellished or added. See ‘The primacy of Mark’ and, ‘Nazarene of Nazareth’ in The Invention of Jesus. (I don’t alas have spare copies!). If we didn’t have the earlier version (Mark), retrieved from the waste paper bin, this then would have been the gospel and we might well have been arguing here whether or not the ‘brood of vipers’ passage originated, later in the process, as an invention of an editor hostile to Jews. It was, as we can now see. That editor was what we define as the author of Matthew.
I know it’s the balance of probability thing again. But people just didn’t have titles or nicknames without forenames and Paul/Saul would have known the forenames of the people with whom he was dealing. So, he didn’t go up to see Cephas in Jerusalem but ‘Someone’ Cephas and it was also ‘Someone Cephas’ or ‘Someone else’ Cephas who entered into a confrontation with him at Antioch.
One explanation is that the forenames were once there but have been eliminated or elided in subsequent editing. And there was, I have argued, good reason why this may have happened. This is not proof, nor even a high probability of being the case, just what I see as the best explanation in the circumstances.
Tal Ilan is a resource, which I have used, just like Rahmani’s ‘A catalogue of Jewish ossuaries’ which I have also used in evaluating the epigraphic evidence. Please tell me if you think I have offended against a principle or established proposition in either of these.
More on Rahmani, the Miriam ossuary, and the two titles that James appeared to have, if anyone is interested.

PeterC, above, in part:
"....More on Rahmani, the Miriam ossuary, and the two titles that James appeared to have, if anyone is interested."

Go on, then.

Stephen Goranson writes:
Go on then.

I'll do my best!
Two titles:
(a) As a family name or title, Klopas/Kleopas occurs infrequently.
Hegesippus, as quoted by Eusebius, described the successor to James, as overseer (episkopos) in Jerusalem, as Simeon the son of Klopas.
The Papias fragment identifies ‘Mary the wife of Cleophas or Alphaeus as also ‘mother of James the bishop and apostle and of Simon, Thaddeus and one Joseph’.
John 19, 25 read correctly has, ‘But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, Mary the wife of Klopas, and his mother’s sister and Mary Magdalene.
There is also a Kleopas who meets with Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24, 18).
Epiphanius, following Hegesippus, records Simon son of Kleopas as having witnessed the stoning of James.
I have argued that a group of brothers described by Mark as ‘James and Joses and Judas and Simon’ were either borrowed entirely or overlapped considerably with a prominent Jewish family, with a title, which is represented in the references above as Klopas/Kleophas. Like other gospel writers, Mark worked his source material hard; it appears that three of the borrowed brothers may double, in his apostles’ list, as ‘James the [son] of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus and Simon the Cananean (zealot)’.
James, prominent as a Jewish leader in the second Part of Acts, featuring in references in Galatians and also performing, presumably as deputy, the duties of High Priest on the Day of Atonement (according to Hegesippus quoted by Eusebius), could not – I have also argued – at the same time have been a brother to the rebel Jesus (hence in part the argument for borrowing).
The title Klopas/Kleophas would have been represented in Aramaic as קלופא, with waw as a vowel carrier for ‘o’ and peh taken optionally as either pi or phi in transliterating into Greek.
A point to note is that the variation Alphaeus may have arisen through a mistake in copying, with the Greek letter alpha substituted for the similar-looking kappa.
(b) The title Kaiphas, represented (short form) in Aramaic as קיפא is attributed to Joseph, High Priest from CE 18-36, with a family tomb that has likely been identified, referenced twice by Josephus, married into the family of Ananus, referenced also in gospels.
Josephus did not deal much in characters he considered minor and there are no clear references to other family members. But it is likely that there were others with the same title in the early part of first century CE, eg brothers, sons and nephews of Joseph.
One possible family member, Yeshua, is identified in an inscription on an ossuary, taken by tomb robbers, which reads:
Miriam daughter of Yeshua, son of Kaiphas, priests of Maaziah (one of the twelve priestly courses reputed to have been instituted by King David) from Beth Imri (possible birthplace).
It has been suggested that this ossuary came from another tomb belonging to the Caiphas family, though it seems more likely that Miriam would have been interred in her husband’s family tomb and that the connection to the prestigious Kaiphas family was regarded as sufficiently important to be acknowledged.
There are references to Kephas (קיפא, without vowels and same as Kaiphas in Aramaic) in two of letters attributed to Paul/Saul, Galatians and I Corinthians. (Paul liked to and did move in high circles). I have argued that this is evidence of members of the Kaiphas family that Paul interacted with, as opposed to an individual or individuals exploding on to the scene with the unexplained nickname ‘stone’, which is כיפא and not קיפא but which transliterates in the same way into Greek. That’s because one Greek letter kappa represents both qoph and kaph.
I have also argued that the forenames, which would have been there with the nickname or title קיפא in Paul’s letters and which must therefore have been either masked or edited out, were possibly James and Simon. See two instances examined in Who Was Cephas?, pp 80-81, and a third in God’s ‘Wrath and the Brother of the Lord’.
However, even disregarding the material in Paul’s letters, there is still evidence of two prominent priestly families existing at the same time in Jerusalem in the first century CE, each with the rare attribute of a title and with titles that are very similar. An unlikely coincidence.
Epigraphic evidence and Rahmani
I’ve looked at the best high-resolution photographs I could find of the Miriam ossuary inscription, photographs of the Joseph tomb inscriptions and all the evidence that can be found in Rahmani.
These are my preliminary conclusions (it’s worthy of a project by someone).
The letter yodh is more often a vowel carrier than a consonant. It is a consonant at the beginning of a word and much more likely to be a vowel-carrier within a word. It is often represented as a small superscript. But, within a word and acting as vowel-carrier, it can be represented by a vertical line.
On ossuary 8 from the Joseph tomb which has ‘Miriam berat Shimon’, the yodh in Miriam is represented by a single vertical line. However, in the Miriam ossuary, the third letter yodh in Miriam is represented by a small superscript. So, there is some variation. Further on, in the word Kaiphas, the vowel-carrying yodh is represented by a long vertical line.
Trouble is, looking at the evidence provided by Rahmani, lamadh (the tallest letter in the Hebrew/Aramaic abjad), can also be represented by a vertical line. Lamadh started out as a pictograph, representing a hooked shepherd’s staff, but gradually became more vertical over time.
So, is the name of the priest, grandfather of Miriam, instead of Kaiphas, our character represented in the gospels and elsewhere as Klopas? I don’t think so. That’s because lamadh usually begins well above the other letters, whereas the vertical line in Kaiphas begins level with the top of other letters.
The fine distinctions, however, point to how the apparent coincidence of priestly families may have come about. There was just one family with the title Kaiphas. Somewhere along the line, a yodh was misidentified as a similar-looking lamadh and so Klopas/Kleophas originated. At some point also, the yodh as vowel carrier was misinterpreted as a consonant and so the variation Kaiaphas arose.

Where I have drawn conclusions, I am arguing best fit, covers the evidences, coherent: therefore more probable.

I suggest I may be reducing rather than iincreasing entitities, which can be just as much a fault!

PeterC wrote: ↑Sat Jul 13, 2024 3:09 am The Papias fragment identifies ‘Mary the wife of Cleophas or Alphaeus as also ‘mother of James the bishop and apostle and of Simon, Thaddeus and one Joseph’.

That fragment is probably from Papias the Lombard (lexicographer, fl. 1040s–1060s). Therefore, not that relevant, IMO.

PeterC wrote: ↑Sat Jul 13, 2024 3:09 am John 19, 25 read correctly has, ‘But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, Mary the wife of Klopas, and his mother’s sister and Mary Magdalene.

John 19, 25 has a different order of these women so how could your reading be correct?

PeterC wrote: ↑Sat Jul 13, 2024 3:09 am James, prominent as a Jewish leader in the second Part of Acts, featuring in references in Galatians and also performing, presumably as deputy, the duties of High Priest on the Day of Atonement (according to Hegesippus quoted by Eusebius), could not – I have also argued – at the same time have been a brother to the rebel Jesus (hence in part the argument for borrowing).

Why could not?