medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The passage in Mt. 16 is not necessarily the "origin" of Cephas/Petrus's naming--at what point Jesus gave Simon bar Jonah the name Cephas/Kephas is not recorded--the account of the choosing of the apostles in one of the Gospels (if memory serves) refers to him by both names, but that, of course, could reflect common knowledge from later in Peter's career, not a renaming at the point of being chosen an apostle. Nor does the passage in Mt. 16 imply that Jesus derived Peter's name from rock. It simply involves a play on words, whether a play on words that was the first instance of this wordplay or one that went back an earlier renaming of Simon because of personal qualities or some other unknown reason.
Femine grammatical gender is is not the same thing as personal human gender so even if the Mt. 16 passage is the originating incident of the wordplay, it is foolish for any supposed male chauvinist to be offended by the feminine gender of petra/cepha and equally foolish for anyone to make some kind of feminist point of honor out of it.
Dennis Martin
>>> [log in to unmask] 03/10/05 8:50 AM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Eliana Corbari wrote:
>
> Since some members find it very difficult to accept that Peter derives
> from a fem. noun, and that the feminine version of the name is
> actually its original, I will address some of the points raised:
>
> 1) The Gospel passage (Mt. 16:18) where Peter is named by Jesus
> reads as follows:
> From Aramaic "You are KE'PHA' (a stone) and upon this KE'PHA' (a
> stone) I will build my church."
> In Aramaic KE'PHA' is a fem. noun, in both cases. Which begs the
> question: is it significant that Jesus named Peter with a feminine
> noun?
>
> From Greek: "You are PETROS (a stone) and upon this PETRA (a rock) I
> will build my church."
> In Greek Petros is masc. and petra is fem.
This is all very well, but as we don't have the Gospels in Aramaic, we are
not much further forward.
> 2) Petra is a feminine name currently given to women in Germany
> and the Netherlands (among other countries).
>
> 3) Petronella, has it has already been point out, it a feminine
> *diminutive*. Moreover there is evidence of a Saint Petronella from a
> mosaic in one of the Roman catacombs. Also, she was the daughter of
> Saint Peter according to Domenico Cavalca, OP (fourteenth-century).
No, it was was pointed out that it was a diminutive of the Roman gens nomen
"Petronius" (fem. Petronia). "Why?" is a good question, as diminutives seem
to be usually formed from the cognomen, e.g. Drusilla and Agrippina. For
some reason, women didn't seem to have a praenomen. "Gens" is feminine, by
the way.
John Briggs
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