Toto

Cephas is Aramaic for rock, not Greek.

Ben C Smith

(I suspect spin is quite aware of all of this... and much more.)

Ben.

aa5874

Thanks for the claification.

neilgodfrey

Can you point me to the patristic evidence or is it too diverse?

Thanks
Neil

neilgodfrey

I keep coming across examples of this, but I would also like to read something that discusses it in some detail and also lists examples.

Anyone able to help off the top of head?

Thanks again,
Neil

Malachi151

My view on this issue is basically made clear in my article on the Gospel of Mark, though not directly:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...ospel_mark.htm

I think that regardless of reality, the author of Mark was associating Peter with Cephas. The author of Mark's Peter is essentially a fictional character, as are every character in his story, including Pilate. Pilate was a real person in reality, but the narrative that includes him, and everyone else, in GMark is completely made up.

I view the Gospel as not just unreliable, but completely fabricated, and thus absolutely false.

How possibly could "John" be true and be correct on this matter?

If we start with Mark, which is fabricated, and John then builds on this fabricated story, plus fabricates its own "miraculous signs" narrative as well, what possible to claim to "accuracy" can be had?

We see this tendency throughout all of early Christian writing.

I would argue that this is no different from all of the later "apocryphal" stories and martyrdom stories.

What these people were doing was simply picking up on characters and then inventing narratives for them, no differently really than what these same people did for the Greek and Roman gods.

We see constant evidence of total confusion and mixing up on names and characters in the early Christian writings.

"James" is a classic example. We have the "James" of the letters of Paul, a "James, the brother of the Lord", and a "James the Just", all of whom were probably names based on the same person, a James who was a real leader of a Judean church, who was later confused as being a literal brother of Jesus, about whom various conflicting narratives were written, all of them probably false.

I don't think that anyone other than Paul actually knew one single thing about any of these people. The whole business is story telling and invention.

"John" is another perfect example. The things that people like Irenaeus said about "John" can only show that despite claiming to have some good knowledge of who John was, he actually had no clue at all either who John was or who wrote any of the works he attributed to John.

Ben C Smith

The OP asked what Doherty thinks of Peter (Cephas), not what I think of him, or spin, or Malachi, or aa__. Earl himself is probably busy right now, and he visits this board only in spurts, so let me presume to attempt an answer on his behalf.

1. I think Earl accepts the identity of Cephas and Peter. I say this at least partly because in the Spotlight on Jerusalem section of his supplementary article number 7 he seems to call the Cephas who saw the risen Lord (in 1 Corinthians 15) Peter, and he writes of the circle in Jerusalem around Peter and James at the time of Paul, when it is Cephas and James around whom a Jerusalem circle seems to be centered in the Pauline epistles.

2. Earl of course does not believe that Peter (Cephas) was ever an actual follower of an historical Jesus, precisely because he does not believe there ever was an historical Jesus to follow. In that same supplementary article he writes of the epistles:

Where lacking, they were assigned authors, usually drawn from the body of legendary apostles now envisioned as having been followers of an earthly Jesus, such as Peter, John, James and Jude.

Notice he says that now these apostles were being envisioned as having followed an earthly Jesus. He also calls the apostles legendary, but that does not mean he thinks they did not exist (that is not exactly what legendary means, at any rate). I think what Earl means is that the bulk of their careers was invented to fit into the idea of serving an earthly personage (instead of the heavenly Lord they had actually served). This would mean that Peter (Cephas) as Paul refers to him is basically historical, while Peter (Cephas) as Mark (et alii) refers to him would be basically nonhistorical, the result of the accumulation of legendary material around the historical apostle.

Hope this helps, and that I have accurately summarized his views (with which I am not always in agreement, to say the least).

Ben.

Duke Leto

My hope was to get an idea WHY Cephas/Peter was incorporated as a character in the Gospel narrative. The central thesis of Earl's Midrashic Mark is that the author wrote nothing casually.

We know that John the Baptist was real and that Earl addressed him, but there is no explicit "Theory of Cephas" and I'm concerned that there needs to be one because he seems to be a straw for historicists to cling to.

Ted Hoffman

Duke,
It would be really helpful to read a critical review of the Jesus Puzzle from you as a historian. Will you be writing a review of it - we are particularly interested in its weak points.

Ben C Smith

But there are so many.... Where would one begin?

Ben.