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ArchivesHey, Mike C.-objection...
PETER m English, German, Scandinavian, Biblical
Pronounced: PEE-tur
"rock" from Greek petros . In the New Testament the apostle Simon was called Peter by Jesus because he was to be the rock upon which the Christian church was to be built. He became the first pope. This name was also borne by Peter the Great, the czar of Russia who defeated Charles XII of Sweden in the Great Northern War in the 18th century.
Petros means "little stone" i.e. "pebble"; the "rock" Jesus was refering to is "petra" = "rock" i.e. "cliff", "boulder". As a Christian (NOT Catholic; Protestant Christian), I object to your stating as fact the Catholic doctrine. Peter is considered the first pope by many Catholics, but he never claimed anything like that for himself-I bet he'd be shocked to hear Catholic doctrines today. :)
Thanks, Yahalome
Pronounced: PEE-tur
"rock" from Greek petros . In the New Testament the apostle Simon was called Peter by Jesus because he was to be the rock upon which the Christian church was to be built. He became the first pope. This name was also borne by Peter the Great, the czar of Russia who defeated Charles XII of Sweden in the Great Northern War in the 18th century.
Petros means "little stone" i.e. "pebble"; the "rock" Jesus was refering to is "petra" = "rock" i.e. "cliff", "boulder". As a Christian (NOT Catholic; Protestant Christian), I object to your stating as fact the Catholic doctrine. Peter is considered the first pope by many Catholics, but he never claimed anything like that for himself-I bet he'd be shocked to hear Catholic doctrines today. :)
Thanks, Yahalome
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Replies
Hey, Yahalome-correction...
Puns always lose a lot in the translation. Petra actually means *both* rock and stone, but is of feminine gender. So there is no way Christ could have dubbed his disciple "Petra" without making him the subject of ridicule and sophomoric hee-hawing (a la "a male disciple named Sue"). So he called him Petros (of masculine gender) instead, which also means *both* stone and rock (check out *Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon*).
But being a pre-Christian kinda guy, I'd like to point out that Yeshua Ben Panthera was not being all that original or witty for that matter; Homer used the name Petros for warriors in the Iliad (16.734) centuries before Yeshua was born :)
Puns always lose a lot in the translation. Petra actually means *both* rock and stone, but is of feminine gender. So there is no way Christ could have dubbed his disciple "Petra" without making him the subject of ridicule and sophomoric hee-hawing (a la "a male disciple named Sue"). So he called him Petros (of masculine gender) instead, which also means *both* stone and rock (check out *Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon*).
But being a pre-Christian kinda guy, I'd like to point out that Yeshua Ben Panthera was not being all that original or witty for that matter; Homer used the name Petros for warriors in the Iliad (16.734) centuries before Yeshua was born :)
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Good point Pav. Of course Christ was most likely speaking Aramaic when he renamed Simon, so Petros would have been a translation on the part of Greek-speaking disciples, or else the gospel-writers.
I don't think we will ever really know why Simon got his nickname (maybe he collected stones?), but the explanation given in Matthew 16:18 seems pretty clear to me. Even if, as Pavlos and Anneza said, it was just a pun.
I don't think we will ever really know why Simon got his nickname (maybe he collected stones?), but the explanation given in Matthew 16:18 seems pretty clear to me. Even if, as Pavlos and Anneza said, it was just a pun.
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Okay, okay. I do get an occasional email about this, and I must say I'm surprised it's such a touchy subject. I'll change the wording enough to (hopefully) make all Christians happy. For the record, I'm not religious, so this is not a case of me pushing Catholic propaganda.
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There does seem to be too much emotion for the occasion ... I'd always welcomed the petra-petros story as one of the rare examples of a god actually making a pun; with a universe to run, you'd think a sense of humour would be essential. As for non-Catholics not acepting the list of popes - why should they? Who would expect them to? The lists exist, like the lists in the OT of all those unknowns who putatively begat each other and then vanished from history. Like them or not, they're out there, to be peacably ignored by anyone who wants to.
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Well, the way I see it, if Christ made Peter a pope, either he was contradicting many Bible verses, or the modern pope is not anywhere near the same. The Pope is basically worshipped by his followers, but Christ never ever told his disciples/apostles to worship Peter or anyone but God, that is, himself. See Exodus 20:3&5, 22:20, Mark 2:7, Luke 4:8, Revelation 15:4, Acts 14:8-18.
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Let them play. If God minded, presumably he'd take action - human free will has its limits. And nobody, not the threepersons of the trinity appearing in glory in the skies above me, will convince me that the bible doesn't contradict itself repeatedly. Why pick on poor Jesus?
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