[dangus]

Wow, you know the thing is it doesn’t matter whether Jesus spoke in Hebrew or Aramaic (for the purposes of this discussion). The difference is almost like the difference between King James English and modern spoken English. The point is that Jesus called Simon, “Cephas.”

When Jesus quoted the scripture, he used Hebrew. I don’t think anyone said otherwise. When Jesus spoke otherwise, he probably usually spoke in the common language of the people, which would have been Aramaic. It’s even possible he knew Latin or Greek. (I recall some scholarly debate over whether “The Passion of the Christ” was reasonable when it depicted Jesus answering Pilate in Latin.) But again: the point is that Simon’s new name was Cephas, and Cephas does not possibly imply a smaller stone.

[magisterium]

Amen! it comes down to keph/keph in Hebrew, or kepha/kepha in Aramaic. Either way, the word is the same twice in Matthew 16:18. The Greek distinction of petros/petra is due to the fact that petra is a feminine noun, and could not be used as a man's name without modification to make it a masculine noun. The distinction, therefore, of "little stone"/"giant rock" is artificial on two grounds: it does not show up in the original language Jesus spoke when conferring the name change on Simon, AND the form of Koine Greek used in the First Century no longer made such a distinction between petros and petra anyway.