Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Peter Kirby wrote:Yeah I am just posting from my phone while still in the middle of a big move up to the Bay Area. I am not surprised if my first suggestion didn't make a lot of sense.

No problem. Have a safe move.

John2,

A while back I considered the possibility that the Simon/Peter, James & John of early Christian fame (the characters from the gospels, not Paul) were a different trio than the equally famous Cephas, James & John of Paul. However, their fame belonged to two independent groups of people, and in fact these two groups were not aware of each other and may have lived at somewhat different periods of time.

Basically, and yes this is related to my "I'll grant you it is 'original,' but it just has to be plain wrong" POV about Paul having to do with a band of gentile god-fearers, which constituted one group, with the other group being the remnants of those gentile followers of Jesus of Nazareth. No need to run away screaming ... yet

Paul, for the sake of legitimizing the acceptance of faithful gentiles as part of the Judaic family, approached some priests who were active at organizing the activities of "apostles", who were tasked with collecting free-will gifts and other gifts for the glory of, and to fund the activities of temple, from the Judeans of the diaspora. Paul felt that if he could get some of the more "progressive" priests to accept free-will offerings of these faithful gentiles *as if* they were Judeans by circumcision, then he would feel he had finally won his case. He made a deal with priests named Cephas, another named Jacob (James), and a third named John, all of which were extremely common names.

The other group, who I call early Christians, also had three central figures as sources for tradition. One being Simon/Peter, representing the political-theological side of Jesus' teachings about the ideal ruler of the people. A second represented the traditions of Jesus' family, who were very probably much more conservative than Jesus himself, but probably maintaining some sort of claim of royal descent, in the person of Jacob (James) the Just, his brother. Finally, there was a John, maybe the author of the Revelation that bears his name, or perhaps the member of this board who recently blueprinted the engine of his new sports car. Oh wait, he's not that John. Whoever these three were, they were *not* the ones with whom Paul had his pow-wow with, not being too concerned at that time with diaspora Judaism and faithful gentiles who did not convert by circumcision.

It was still to come, over a couple decades, that the "Jesus people" developed theological constructs about their founder to the point of seeing him as divine and acting out a symbolic atonement sacrifice as assumed in the canonical Gospels, and in the process renounced their conversions and came to believe that *they* were the *true* descendants of Abraham. This group knew nothing of Paul, although Paul did have a shared interest in the significance of being a "descendant" of Abraham. Their circumcision, they believed, was in their "heart." For Paul's buddies, it had nothing to do at all with circumcision, but faith in God fulfilling his promise of a fruitful land to Abraham's "spiritual" descendants.

Only many decades later did these two movements came into contact and the Jesus people reached out to the Paulites. One or more of them revised some letters of Paul' they managed to et their hands on, to bring them "up to date." Once this was accepted, and the two groups began to merge, their traditions about their founders merged too. Simon/Peter became connected to Cephas, James the brother of Jesus became the priest James, and John, well, he just became John.

So, in the late 1st or early second centuries, there was a marriage of three pairs of men. Now that *IS* very progressive! Here's your chance, RUN!!!

DCH

John2 wrote:

Ben wrote:If this reconstruction is correct, then Paul went to visit Cephas (1.18, assuming for the sake of argument that this is part of the original text) in Jerusalem, and then went again to visit the three pillars: James, Cephas, and John. Later, however, in Antioch, he had a run-in with a different person, named Peter.

If Cephas and Peter are two different people, it would be easier for me to imagine Peter waffling and being rebuked by Paul than the pillar Cephas, especially when one of the other three pillars (James) sent people to check on the situation in Antioch. Would a pillar really ever "live like a Gentile and not like a Jew," as Paul says in 2:14? That seems weird, now that I think about it.

Ben C. Smith wrote:

John2 wrote:Ben wrote:

If this reconstruction is correct, then Paul went to visit Cephas (1.18, assuming for the sake of argument that this is part of the original text) in Jerusalem, and then went again to visit the three pillars: James, Cephas, and John. Later, however, in Antioch, he had a run-in with a different person, named Peter.

If Cephas and Peter are two different people, it would be easier for me to imagine Peter waffling and being rebuked by Paul than the pillar Cephas, especially when one of the other three pillars (James) sent people to check on the situation in Antioch. Would a pillar really ever "live like a Gentile and not like a Jew," as Paul says in 2:14? That seems weird, now that I think about it.

That does seem a bit weird, now that you mention it. I mean, weird things sometimes happen in history, but it is worth noticing it in this case, where the text is suspect and we are not sure what is going on.

IMHO Paul just means that Peter/Cephas is prepared to have table fellowship with Gentiles without insisting on strict rules of ritual purity. (I.E. I don't think Paul meant that Peter/Cephas was prepared to eat pork.)

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle wrote:IMHO Paul just means that Peter/Cephas is prepared to have table fellowship with Gentiles without insisting on strict rules of ritual purity. (I.E. I don't think Paul meant that Peter/Cephas was prepared to eat pork.)

Yes, I get that, but is it not quite a step to eschew ritual purity?

I still have not seen your argument for this. The word for a rock/stone/pebble is כפא, with a kaph. The Caiaphas inscription has קפא or קיפא, with a qoph.

But the Hebrew כ, a kaph, is pronounced "k". So כפא is close phonetically of Κηφᾶς. But the transliteration to English is misleading: it should be Kephas, not Cephas.
And "Kephas" is not the same name than "Caiaphas": the first letter (although sounding the same) can be different.

Κηφᾶς If Cephas (Κηφᾶς) means "rock" (basically "Rocky" as a name), then an initial kaph got transliterated as an initial kappa. How often does that happen?

And if Paul learned of the nickname from Aramaic illiterate Galilean speakers orally (with a strong local accent!), he could have easily transliterated what he heard by "Κηφᾶς". Then later, "Mark" was told by others that "Κηφᾶς" means "stone" in Aramaic and changed "Κηφᾶς" by "Petros", which of course his Greek speaking audience would know it means "rock".

Does not an initial kaph usually get transliterated as an initial chi, as with כבר getting rendered as Χοβαρ in Ezekiel 1.1? I know spin has spun off quite a few examples of initial kaph becoming chi (doubtless because of the aspiration native to initial stops/plosives), and I am interested in examples to the contrary, of initial kaph becoming kappa. Do you have some? If not, then it would look very much like Κηφᾶς should derive from קיפא, correct?

Maybe Paul did not consult what spin did. Or Paul did not want to use a chi, because that would not render the pronunciation of what he heard.

Cordially, Bernard

Bernard Muller wrote:

I still have not seen your argument for this. The word for a rock/stone/pebble is כפא, with a kaph. The Caiaphas inscription has קפא or קיפא, with a qoph.

But the Hebrew כ, a kaph, is pronounced "k". So כפא is close phonetically of Κηφᾶς.

It should be a doddle, then, to show me what I am looking for.

But the transliteration to English is misleading: it should be Kephas, not Cephas.

It is not really misleading; it is Latinized, like most Greek names transmitted into English (Pericles, for example, as opposed to Perikles).

And "Kephas" is not the same name than "Caiaphas": the first letter (although sounding the same) can be different.

I agree. Cephas/Kephas (starting with a kaph) is not necessarily the same name as Caiaphas (starting with a qoph). The Greek Κηφᾶς can easily be traced back to Caiaphas and its qoph; I can show you lots of names with an initial ק that receive an initial kappa; the question is how easy it is to trace Κηφᾶς back to Cephas and its kaph.

If the linguistics are as easy as you say, then you should be able to produce a fair number of examples of this, I should think. I am not even asserting their nonexistence. I am asking.

And if Paul learned of the nickname from Aramaic illiterate Galilean speakers orally (with a strong local accent!), he could have easily transliterated what he heard by "Κηφᾶς".

Okay, show me an example of this happening.

One of the things my Classics professors stressed, both for Latin and for Greek, is that we do not really know exactly how ancient people pronounced their letters and words; we have to deduce their pronunciation from several factors, including how those words were transliterated into other languages, how they were used in poetry, and how they were described (rarely) by native speakers trying to make a point. So I am not simply going to believe you, Bernard, when you tell me that a thick Galilean accent would lead a Hellenistic Jew to render a kaph with a kappa; I want to see ancient evidence of this happening.

Ben.

Bernard Muller wrote:And if Paul learned of the nickname from Aramaic illiterate Galilean speakers orally (with a strong local accent!), he could have easily transliterated what he heard by "Κηφᾶς". Then later, "Mark" was told by others that "Κηφᾶς" means "stone" in Aramaic and changed "Κηφᾶς" by "Petros", which of course his Greek speaking audience would know it means "rock".

If this is your preferred sequence of events, then I am not sure what you are objecting to in matching Κηφᾶς to Caiaphas/name instead of to Kephas/rock. If Paul was simply transcribing a name, why could it not be Caiaphas? Why can Mark not be the one who misheard, mispronounced, and was then told that Kephas means rock?

So I am not simply going to believe you, Bernard, when you tell me that a thick Galilean accent would lead a Hellenistic Jew to render a kaph with a kappa; I want to see ancient evidence of this happening.

The problem is that, probably, the Aramaic nickname was never written in its original language for Paul to read (assuming he knew to read Aramaic!). So Paul would have never see a kath. The only thing which could be done was to transliterate in Greek what was heard, not read.

Cordially, Bernard

Bernard Muller wrote:

I still have not seen your argument for this. The word for a rock/stone/pebble is כפא, with a kaph. The Caiaphas inscription has קפא or קיפא, with a qoph.

But the Hebrew כ, a kaph, is pronounced "k". So כפא is close phonetically of Κηφᾶς.

This is just not so. Simplistic claims of pronunciation don't refect how the Greek transliterators heard and rendered the Hebrew Kaf. Look at how the initial Kaf is transliterated:


I'm too lazy to gather and post the rest. There are a few examples in which Hebrew names starting with Kaf end up kappa in Greek:


The first two of these are not transliterations. Carmel already carries Greek nominal suffixes indicating that the name was current in Greek (unlike other names ostensibly from Hebrew) and Caphtor as Kappadokia is a straightforward substitution. I don't know the story behind Chepirah/Kephira, but a lone example does not influence the clear trend that a Kaf was transliterated as a chi.

Those Hebrew names that end up in English (and Greek) as a velar plosive begin with a Qof, as in Cain (Gen 4:1). We expect Kaf to be transliterated as chi and Qof as kappa. The claim that Cephas comes from Kepa has no linguistic basis.

There is a general trend with the Hebrew unvoiced plosives, Pe, Taw and Kaf. You might think they would be simply "p", "t" and "k", but in Greek they generally ended up as phi, theta and chi. We don't have any evidence for how the Hebrew letters were pronounced other than the way they were transliterated. Hebrew unvoiced plosives were most frequently represented as fricatives in Greek, while the more emphatic consonants were rendered as plosives, Qof and Tet.

Bernard Muller wrote:And "Kephas" is not the same name than "Caiaphas": the first letter (although sounding the same) can be different.

You need evidence and you have none for this claim. The name Caiaphas has been preserved in a tomb from Jerusalem: QYP', for which Khfas is a good transliteration.

Κηφᾶς If Cephas (Κηφᾶς) means "rock" (basically "Rocky" as a name), then an initial kaph got transliterated as an initial kappa. How often does that happen?

That Cephas means "rock" has no evidence for it before the christian claim.

Bernard Muller wrote:And if Paul learned of the nickname from Aramaic illiterate Galilean speakers orally (with a strong local accent!), he could have easily transliterated what he heard by "Κηφᾶς". Then later, "Mark" was told by others that "Κηφᾶς" means "stone" in Aramaic and changed "Κηφᾶς" by "Petros", which of course his Greek speaking audience would know it means "rock".

This all seems to be conjecture. The one thing we know is that Cephas from Kepa is unlikely on linguistic grounds. Post hoc claims have no relevance, so there is no useful counterevidence other than the tendentious claims of orthodox christian writers who support Petrine priority.

Bernard Muller wrote:

Does not an initial kaph usually get transliterated as an initial chi, as with כבר getting rendered as Χοβαρ in Ezekiel 1.1? I know spin has spun off quite a few examples of initial kaph becoming chi (doubtless because of the aspiration native to initial stops/plosives), and I am interested in examples to the contrary, of initial kaph becoming kappa. Do you have some? If not, then it would look very much like Κηφᾶς should derive from קיפא, correct?

Maybe Paul did not consult what spin did. Or Paul did not want to use a chi, because that would not render the pronunciation of what he heard.

More conjecture....

(Well, Paul could have consulted me.)

Bernard Muller wrote:

So I am not simply going to believe you, Bernard, when you tell me that a thick Galilean accent would lead a Hellenistic Jew to render a kaph with a kappa; I want to see ancient evidence of this happening.

The problem is that, probably, the Aramaic nickname was never written in its original language for Paul to read (assuming he knew to read Aramaic!). So Paul would have never see a kath. The only thing which could be done was to transliterate in Greek what was heard, not read.

Transliteration is based on the sound the scribe heard when the reader enunciated/dictated the words in the text. The scribe didn't read the text and then translate it. The process was about hearing. The reader spoke the name. Would he have pronounced it differently from the way casual speakers would have said it?