Sheshbazzar

From Paul's perspective, the mission of conveying the Gospel message to the Gentiles was committed to him and his companions, while to James, Peter (Cephas) and John and their companions, was committed the task of conveying the Gospel to "the circumcision", that is to the Jewish nation.
The idea that "Peter" aka "Cephas" the Apostle with an agreed to and specifically designated mission to those of "the circumcision", would abandon Jerusalem, the center of "the circumcision" and of Jewish religious polity, to live in Rome seems quite absurd.
It would be about as incongruous and absurd as having the Archbishop of The Greek Orthodox Church permanently relocate himself, and the Church's world headquarters to an office in Washington D.C.

aa5874

Which Peter are you refering to? Cephas/Peter or Peter/Cephas. It would appear that there are two Peters in Galation or the NT, based on Eusebius in Church History.

Chili

That would never be but from Jerusalem to Rome was an improvement or the difference between Cephas and Peter would not be.

Cephas leads the Jews into the promised land where the go around merrily for 40 years and still die while Peter leads the gentiles to heaven in 40 months and never die.

The difference here is parting of the water instead of walking on the water to get into the promised land.

Minimalist

Because it does not say what you hope it will say, regardless of historicity. We see this all the time with theists. Whenever their writings make no sense or are demonstrably wrong they instantly switch gears and claim that 'god' is now speaking in code.

Chili

. . . and that water of course is the celestial sea which better be rock solid to convert heaven and earth into the New heaven and New earth where this sea is no longer

2-J

Those who resort too quickly to the application of the principle 'theists switch gears and claim that 'god' is now speaking in code' are being as dogmatic as those whose excesses necessitated the principle in the first place.

The overall picture from the sources I presented is that Peter was martyred, and martyred in Rome (in fact in the case of the quote you disputed, there seems to be a strong argument that it does refer to martyrdom, based on the Greek). We may question that conclusion on other grounds. I do find Solo's suggestion that it's often easy to tamper with history very interesting, for example. But this isn't a case of texts being twisted to say something they don't. We have to look at the wider picture if we want to question Peter having made it to Rome.

For the record I am not a theist, much less a christian, much less a catholic (isn't a sin to deny it if you are? I hope this constitutes enough proof then).

Minimalist

You're in the UK so perhaps you haven't had a lot of experience with fundies but they can (and do) insist that the bible is the literal word of god. When caught in something embarassing (stoning people who work on the Sabbath) or wrong ( the two versions of the ark story) they instantly switch gears and claim that THEY know when the bible is metaphorical and when it is literal and we should simply take their word for it.

I truly doubt that such knowledge is rampant in the trailer parks of the bible belt.

A catholic priest in an interview one time observed that the bible is like a person: You can torture it to make it say whatever you want it to say. Which is what I think you have done with the item under discussion.

Ben C Smith

Ben.

Doug Shaver

Nice catch, Ben.

aa5874

All your sources are apologetic and are uncorroborated by any external non-apologetic sources. It is hardly prudent to make any findings on one-sided and biased information.

You have not resolved any pertinent problems with regards to the very existence of Peter/Cephas; where did he live, when was he actually in Rome, how did he die and at what time?

All you have done, in effect, is to believe the aplolgetics since no other information is available about Peter/Cephas. But, you have ignored the fact that the apologetics' position with respect to the history of Peter/Cephas is filled with ambiguity, errors and inconsistencies.

Let us examine some of the apologetics' information about Peter/Cephas.

Eusebius in 'Church History' claimed that Peter/Cephas had a disciple named Mark who wrote gMark while Philo of Alexandria was still alive. This would signify that gMark was written about or before the middle of the 1st century, now it is widely accepted by scholars that gMark was written at around 70 CE or later.

Now, with this disagreement in chronology between Eusebius and scholars, there is also the problem of veracity of the information about Peter/Cephas. It is widely agreed among scholars that gMark was a main source for gMatthew, Luke and to a lesser extent, gJohn, and taking this into consideration, it would mean that the information about Peter/Cephas by the authors of Gospels were just merely copied and was not gathered independently.

So, gMark's Peter/Cephas, with respect to the NT, can be considered as the master from which all other copies of Peter/Cephas were made. We, now need to acquire some information about the disciple of Peter/Cephas called Mark by Eusebius.

"Church History"bk2.16 by Eusebius This entire passage from Eusebius appears to be fiction or completely erroneous. Philo in all his extant writings NEVER mentioned Mark, the teachings of Mark, the Christians converted through Mark, any Churches built by Mark, or the Gospel of Mark.

Eusebius continues in Church History 2.17 Again, the information from Eusebius appear to be fiction or completely erroneous, all the extant writings of Philo do NOT contain any information about Peter/Cephas at all, anywhere, the preachings of Peter/Cephas in any city, or that Philo ever met Peter/Cephas in any country.

The extant writings of Philo do NOT mention the virgin birth, the baptism, the miracles, the teachings, the raising of the dead, the transfiguration, the trial, the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, the thousands of followers or the doctrines of Jesus.

Philo has ZERO on Mark, Peter, Jesus and followers of Jesus, yet Eusebius claimed erroneously that Philo was a witness to Mark and Peter.

I cannot tell you if Peter/Cephas was NEVER in Rome, but all I read about him/them, from Eusebius, author of "Church History" appear to be FICTION.