Gorit Maqueda

You've really made my day, boy :rolling: :rolling:

spin

The above post has just reminded me that I hadn't sent my response to ynquirer's last message on the subject. There was one of those server glitches when I tried back then. But....
When your corpus is so small, you have no way or means to anything with any seriousness. Read that again, "the corpus is too small". Many words are hapax legomena from which you can't draw any conclusions because of the size of the corpus: you just don't have a big enough sample to say anything meaningful in the matter.

Fine. I merely cited some information from a dictionary.

Why conjecture how the particular writer came to know his stuff?? You can't check whatever hypothesis you choose.

Oh please, stop with these vain speculations. They will not help us. Who knows what our Roman Mark knew other than what was written in the text?

Arguments from silence need to be more elaborate and convincing.

Non sequiturs will not help you nor will obduracy over your errors.

OK, I'll be happy with a procurator in charge of a province before the time of Claudius. (But think about it a moment, if the procurator didn't have the right to make legal declarations, how could he be a governor?)

In short you don't have any tangible evidence, but you're willing to believe.

The term hasn't been used actively in philological circles for anything over the last decades except for Genesius.

This hasn't communicated enough for me to get any significance from it.

However, talk of dageshes is anachronistic.

Not exactly. They a witnesses to a tradition or family of traditions. We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that there were at least three dialects of Hebrew and two of Aramaic. This means that there could have been several different forms for the one word. It is therefore rather hard for you to depend on the relationship between them, when you don't know what that relationship was. Your guesses about "Septuaginters" won't change this fact.

What makes you think the Masoretes used the LXX, when the text had long been repudiated and their ancestors favoured other translations such as Theodotion or Aquila?

If I understand your argument here, it is tantamount to saying that the Greek, whichever version, was used by the Masoretes for pronunciation purposes. The layers of conjecture here is the most interesting thing about your proposition.

("aspirated")

At best you have some retrojection by the Masoretes if you could show that they actually used the Greek.

Then you admit that it is a foreign word, foreign from what parts if not from the Greek region??

Pretty wild conjecture to cover the fudging. And funny that you bleed overgeneralisation, when I pointed to examples where the KAF didn't become chi.

Don't be ridiculous. You must work on the morphemic level.

Funny that.

I don't need to. You don't listen to argument, so I just tried a little authority. I didn't hold my breath that that would have any effect either.

And how do you imagine that must change the matter? If a morpheme starts with a consonant, then a prefix won't change the fact.

So if it has a dagesh then it's the plosive? And the KAF in KTYM in Gen 10:4 has a dagesh so it's kitioi in Greek. And the KAF in KTYM in Eze 27:6 has a dagesh so it's xettiin. Have I got this right? Carmel, KRML with dagesh in Jos 12:22 is xermel, in 1 Sam 15:12 with dagesh is kermel. You've noted the small numbers of differences, which follows my indication that we are dealing with a small corpus. Perhaps you are just kidding yourself trying to force the relation you want to be there. You'll note that KPYM in Job 30:6 has no dagesh, so if it were transliterated according to your idea it should be xhpam, shouldn't it? But perhaps the dagesh has another purpose.

That's basically what I said, so I agree. However, I don't think it is otherwise dependent on the dagesh.

That's not how I perceive your progress. I thought it was Newton's third law.

It follows the norms of Greek transliteration.

As the word is in the plural, it doesn't imply the sort of thing that petra normally does. You can be among KPYM, which suggests that we dealing with smaller things. Of course if what is plural is of things unmovable, then the plural is understandable.

I did appreciate the digression. But didn't the comparison between rock and sand (Mt 7:24,26) work for you in order to understand what the text is actually talking about and what petra means?

No, don't do that. I'll withdraw the reference to kapu which was only a citation from BDB and if it means nothing to you, I don't have the resources to follow it up and it doesn't impact on what you were asked to comment on. Therefore, please go ahead and work on it, reproduced here for your convenience:

For this conjectured etymology, you'd have to show evidence of how the original language changed to reflect the changes you propose from earlier Semitic form kabadu to the form when it was supposed to have been borrowed into Hebrew. What other words evince the changes that you speculate upon here?

I'm happy to analyse your data. Please go ahead.

Sorry I don't understand your notation. Try the IPA (international phonetic alphabet), or at least a subset of the notation.

That's a bit hard to conclude when dealing with a verb and we don't have that many examples. What's the fundamental difference in pronunciation between Ex 9:7 YKBD (a variation on "be heavy") and Job 14:21 YKBDW (a variation on "be honoured")?

I'd put the statement in the subjunctive, because there seems no way of finding out.

Rubbish. You're the only one who has problems with different pronunciations of the same name.

I have already shown that there can be forms with an indicated mater lectionis, others with the vowel omitted. That is sufficient to deal with the two forms.

I've already shown that you can have some who treat a YOD as a consonant while others treat the same YOD as a mater lectionis.


spin

spin

This rewrite dates someone.

"Her name was Magill and she called herself Lil, but ev'ryone knew her as Nancy."


nips

davidianwalker

Simon (Hebrew) = Cephas (Aramaic) = Peter (Greek)

" Thou art Simon, the son of John,-
Thou shalt be called Cephas;
which is to be translated Peter."
John 1:42

spin

I guess it didn't dawn that there might have been a it more in this discussion than a trite rehearsal of John 1:42.


spin

ynquirer

In the mid-first century, more or less at the same time as Simon/Cephas/Peter, there was a Roman whose name was Gaius; starting from a given moment, until his death, he was called Caesar. History knows him as Caligula.

ynquirer

That’s basically true. To it, however, I’d like to add a few concluding remarks.

The notion that Simon, Cephas and Peter were one and the same person is supported by John 1:42. Nevertheless, nowhere else in the NT, but in Paul, does the name “Cephas” appear. That’s is intriguing, to say the least. The gospel of John was written decades, perhaps even a hundred years after the Pauline epistles. It is unlikely that the writer of the Fourth Gospel had direct knowledge of what the name Cephas meant, provided that no mention of it occurred in between. My own opinion is that the writer of John 1:42 just made a guess, and a reasonable one on linguistic grounds. In principle, however, the guess might be wrong.

spin has contended for the theory that Cephas could possibly be the same name as Caiaphas rather than “rock,” so Greek “Petros.” Caiaphas rather than Peter? I must confess that the possibility stroke me as implausible. Foremost, it lacks support from Josephus, who always says “Caiaphas,” never “Cephas.” Yet, the issue must be examined as objectively as possible. Could it possibly happen that Cephas was an older name, which had fallen in disuse at the time Josephus wrote, the gospels following in this issue Josephus’ lead?

Against all textual evidence, spin’s theory has the support of archeological evidence. An ossuary of the first century, recently discovered, had two tombs, which now are in a museum in Jerusalem. One of the tombs has the name QP) carved in. The other has two names: QP), as in the first tomb, and another one, QYP), which undoubtedly is “Caiaphas.” The proximity of both inscriptions in the same tomb quite strongly suggests that we have two different spellings of the same name. This is the sole support spin can call for - yet, it is a fairly strong one. All the more so since a succession in time of the tombs is suggested by there being QYP) in one tomb while QP) in both tombs: the one with both names appears to be newer than the other, so that QP) would be the older spelling, in disuse at the time the second tomb was made, the double carving in the latter being perhaps explained by a desire to connect the name that Josephus and the gospels used with the name then in disuse, but in use a few decades before, when Paul wrote the epistles.

Against this theory, I’ve argued two-fold. My first argument has been that QP) and QYP) are not different spellings of the same name, but a full name [QYP)] and its abbreviation [QP)]. The Caiaphas family was a Sudducee and a friend to the Romans; a Romanized family, to some extent. Accordingly, they would have adopted Roman fashion not in detriment of the Mosaic law, such as abbreviating stone-carved inscriptions. This argument is plausible, but it entirely lacks parallel evidence from similar inscriptions.

I’ve further argued on linguistic grounds. In this the thread has produced more heat than light. All in all, I haven’t afforded as much evidence as to say that it was impossible for a first-century Jewish family to have their name spelled in two different ways, within a few decades. It is possible, as I now see the issue, though more expert opinion ought to be checked to have a thorough assessment.

A possibility is not a necessity, though. Part of the heat of the thread was produced by spin’s insistence in saying that Cephas could not possibly be Greek transliterated for a Hebraic word, KP, that means “stone,” “rock,” etc. His main argument is that only Hebraic QOF transliterates as Greek kappa, while KAF always transliterates as Greek chi. In this, he has stretched the evidence too far. In the present and another thread I have produced several names beginning with KAF usually transliterated as kappa, notably KPTR - which is not a Greek name, but a Hebraic primitive root that means “sprout,” so that it denoted a land that the Hebrews, for some reason, thought of as full of sprouts, and which the Greeks called Cappadocia. Another interesting example is KPR-NXWM, which in Greek transliterates into Kafarnaoum, that is, Capernaum. Therefore, in the first century is was entirely possible for an initial KAF to be transliterated as Greek kappa. If that be so, Cephas could possibly be a nickname meaning “rock,” as given to a religious leader by his coreligionists.

I still think that the authority of John 1:42 is great - the writer was much closer than we to the moment Paul made use of Cephas. Also, lack of support by Josephus is weighty. All that renders the hypothesis that Cephas is Caiaphas too bold. Yet, opinions like this encourage research and, whether or not true, always bring with them new knowledge through discussion and search of evidence. The hypothesis deserves an opportunity to be checked by high scholarship.

IMHO.

spin

Why? Is it because you think that there was only ever one person called QYP)?

This is not an argument, as it has no evidence to back it up. It is a conjecture.

This seems to suggest that you think there was only ever one person named Caiaphas. Why would you think that?

All you've done is said that you don't like the more likely transliteration of QYP) to khfas than K)P) to khfas, arguing as so many do here that the least attested possibility, in this case KAF -> kappa rather than QOF -> kappa, is the right one.

Unlikeliness on two counts makes doubly unlikely.

Where did you dig this out of?? What is the form of the root?

Imaginative at least.

(You can't conclude that based on some writers' and translators' erroneous rationalisations.

So, at best you might have 3% examples for KAF to kappa. Of these I have explained some as being names that the Greeks recognized as already having Greek forms.

Why, because he renders Caiaphas as you like it? Paul doesn't equate Cephas to Peter, unless you want to take Gal 2:7-8 as really being written by Paul and unaccountably throwing in Peter's name just to let the reader know he's talking about the gospel figure.

What renders the Hebrew of what is rendered one way in Greek, ie Caiaphas, as Cephas too bold is "post-production". I have no theory that the name QYP) has anything to do with the high priest.

I do think though that the Peter - Cephas connection is post hoc. From a name of the period it gets reformulated as an epithet which renders the Pauline Cephas [QYP)] as the person referred to as Peter.

One needs to be suspicious of figures who have many names. It's usually a sign of conflation.


spin

Nazaroo

It pays to double-check claims by other 'scholars"...

While the claim about Peter in Galatians turns out to be true (according to the critical UBS Greek text the places in the English KJV are really Cephas, not Peter), the claim regarding the Gospels is false.

John refers to Cephas in John 1:42.

So the either/or dichotomy between the Gospels and Paul doesn't hold up in either direction in the texts as we have them.

That is, Paul uses both terms, and so do the Gospels as a group.

The explanation that John is 'late' relative to the other Gospels was the theory 50-100 years ago. But more realistic appraisals of the internal evidence suggest that even if the final edition of John was 'late', what was added to that final edition was simply the last chapter 21, and some minor edits.

It is unlikely that 'Cephas' in 1:42 is a later addition to the Gospel. It occurs in the first half of the Gospel, what is commonly acknowledged as the 'book of Signs' (chapters 1-12). Although the internal evidence demarking the two halves is weak, all accounts hold the first half as the earliest part of the Gospel, representing very early, primitive material incorporated into the later Gospel, i.e. its 'source' material, mostly eye-witness accounts.

The early stories of the 'call' of the first disciples appears to be among the earliest of layers of historical material.

The gist of it is that the Gospels use both terms for the Peter/Cephas character, and so does Paul. There are no actual textual variants or MSS support for any variants that would substantiate Peter/Cephas being of different 'time layers'. It is likely that the 'layer' effect is just a result of the two languages, Aram./Heb. and Greek.

jakejonesiv

Thanks!

My mistake not Barnikol's. And a minor one at that. GJohn cannot be used to determine useage in the Pauline epistles.

I will amend my statement to say,

Aside from Gal. 2:7-8, Peter (Petros) is never mentioned in the Pauline epistles. In all other cases a certain Cephas (Kephas) is mentioned.

Since Gal. 2:7-8 is a likely interpolation *, this leaves zero references to Peter in the Pauline material.

In the synoptics, we have Peter and never Cephas.

*William O. Walker, Jr., "Galatians 2:7b-8 as a Non-Pauline Interpolation," CBQ65 (2003): 568-87.

Ernst Barnikol, Der nitchtpauline Urspung des des Parallelisms der Apostel Petrus und Paulus (Galater 2.7-8), Forshungen zur Entstehung des Urchristentums, des Nueun Testaments und der Kirche (Keil: Muhlau, 1931).

Jake Jones IV