Then he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John; you will be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter). (John 1:43)The Bible says that "Peter" is a translation of "Cephas." That is good enough for me.
Here's the deal. The exact language Jesus spoke in any given circumstance is unknown except for where the text directly identifies it. Given His close proximity to the multicultural nexus of Cesarea, it is possible He spoke in Greek, Latin, Hebrew AND Aramaic at various times and circumstances.…
So without an actual Aramaic text, no one knows of Jesus said this in Aramaic, Hebrew or Greek. Therefore, anyone confidently proclaiming they know with certainty that anything was said in Aramaic in Matthew 16:18 is talking through their hat. Sorry about that.
No doubt that Jesus and others knew Greek as well as Aramaic. But what language would they have used with one another? In my church there are many Mexicans. Being in the United States most know at least some English. But when they speak to one another, even those who are completely fluent in English, they use Spanish. When Jesus and his apostles speak with one another there can be no doubt that they would have used their native language, Aramaic.
But even if here, in a private conversation away from the crowds, they were for some reason have used Greek we know from John 1 that "Peter" is only a translation of "Kepha" (rock) and would not have thus had the meaning of only a small pebble. Additionally, this distinction between "petros" and "petra" is only valid for Attic Greek, not for the Koine Greek that they would have used. Attic Greek was replaced by Koine Greek in the 3rd century BC. In Koine Greek there is no distinction between these two forms of the word. If our Lord had wished to make this distinction instead of calling Peter "Petros" he would have called him "Lithos." So even in the Koine Greek the argument of Protestants does not work.
But even if for the sake of argument we grant the unprovable assumption this was said in Aramaic, there is still good reason to accept a distinction in the two terms. This is because even in Aramaic there were other terms for Rock than Kepha that may well have occupied the second slot, and there is evidence from the Syriac that this is exactly how those early translators perceived the situation, using, not Kepha, but Tnra (another Aramaic word for stone) in the second slot, to preserve the distinction. Two. Different. Words.
As you pointed out, the Syriac versions of the Gospels are later translations from the Greek. I do not know which Syriac versions of the Gospel have the Kepha/Tnra distinction but in the Peshitta version, which is considered the standard Syriac version of the Bible, "Kepha" is used in both instances.
But instead, Matthew introduces the demonstrative pronoun "this" (ταύτῃ), jarring the listener out of the address to Peter, and signaling a new, 3rd person referent.
Incorrect, grammatically "this" would refer to the closest mentioning of "rock" which is "you are Rock."
Matthew 7:24-25 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: (25) And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.Notice there is NO mention of Peter here. Just the rock of believing in Jesus, which, by the rule of first mention, becomes the governing definition of "foundation rock" for the remainder of the book.
a) Petros is a proper name in it's own right. It is therefore NOT semantically the same as simply saying "rock." Augustine is right on this. It has much more the effect of saying "Rocky," not "The Rock." The presence of that difference is sufficient to suggest the likelihood of a word play. If there is no word play, the use of the same word twice is just a meaningless redundancy. If there is a word play, the difference between the two is being intentionally used to express some higher level thought, and that drives one to look to the context for the most suitable, not necessarily the closest, antecedent.4. The Occam's Razor problem. Why go the long way around? Up to about 1870, there were, within Catholicism itself, five significant strands of belief about the identity of the Rock in Matthew 16:18. That could have all been avoided, very cleanly, if Jesus had simply said "You are Peter, and upon you I will build my Ecclesia." If Jesus' intent was to continue to address Peter as the Rock upon which the Ecclesia will be built, then there would be no need for the second mention of Rock, nor any reason to shift to talking in the third person to someone standing right in front of Him. It's all excess baggage.
b) A demonstrative adjective can come to rest on a more remote antecedent if that object is more in line with the framework of reference. We see this in law all the time. It's handled under what is called the canon of last antecedent, which reads like this:
A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers to the nearest reasonable antecedentNote that the rule is framed as a general principle, not an absolute, and that it allows passing over unreasonable antecedents to get to reasonable ones. For example, consider the antecedent in this statement (borrowed from this article):
"Victims depend on jurors to understand their motives."Who is represented by the "their" there? Now, we can see what the speaker is saying, but not by strict appeal to the rule of last antecedent. Instead, we have to invoke knowledge about each of the respective objects and figure it out from their relationships. We know what a victim is, what a juror is, and what a motive is. We can infer that jurors' motives are not what a victim wants the juror to understand, so we deduce the victim's own motives are the thing desired to be understood, and therefore the victims are the proper antecedent. But that antecedent is remote. There are intermediate nouns to which it could possibly apply. Yet by the power of context we are able to discern the best of those choices.
In Matthew 16, the best antecedent, the best foundation for the Ecclesia, isn't Rocky. It's the Rock he has been named after, who has just been identified as the Messiah, and whose divine teaching has already in this same text been presented as the solid rock that will endure the tests of the storm, and whom both Peter and Paul will later identify, multiple times, as the foundation stone for all believers.
c) Furthermore, Jesus' switch from direct to indirect address gives us warrant to look past Peter for an antecedent more compatible with a third person indirect address. The demonstrative pronoun "this rock" is not a proper form for addressing Peter, and it is clear from the preceding clause that is what Jesus is doing, addressing Peter. The normal pattern is that whenever a speaker starts out in second person address, they don't switch to indirect address midstream, unless they are speaking of something different. There must have been a good reason for Jesus to shift from talking to Peter to talking about The Rock, and it would be consistent with the aforementioned word play, that Jesus is here deliberately signaling He wants us to look past the man Peter, to see the Rock on which Peter is standing, because it is that Rock, not fallible man, Who will be the foundation of the Ecclesia, which foundation, and the living temple built upon it, will remain secure, no matter what storms assault it, nor what powers of Hell fight against it.
Mark 8:27-30 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? (28) And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. (29) And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. (30) And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.6. As a close corollary to the Markan omission, we see that when Peter does get the chance to speak of a founding rock, he directs the reader to Jesus, and not himself:
1 Peter 2:6-8 Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. (7) Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, (8) And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.Conclusion: