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To: metmom
What Jesus said in Matthew 16:18 was: "You are Kepha, and upon this kepha I will build my Church."

Some scholars have suggested an Aramaic background to Jesus’ saying. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Professor Emeritus of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and one of the world’s most distinguished New Testament scholars, suggests that Jesus employed an Aramaic wordplay (Kepha-kepha) in his response to Peter’s declaration.[3] However, Fitzmyer acknowledges a difficulty: he wonders why the Matthean Jesus did not say, “On this petros I will build….”[4]

[4] Substituting the Greek masculine petros for the Greek feminine petra, the reading of all Greek manuscripts. See Fitzmyer, ibid., pp. 130-131: “The problem that confronts one is to explain why there is in the Matthean passage a translation of the Aramaic substratum, which is claimed to have the same word kepha twice, by two Greek words, πέτρος and πέτρα… If the underlying Aramaic of Matt. xvi.18 had kepha twice, then we should expect σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ τούτῳ τῷ πέτρῳ οἰκοδομήσω….” Cf. Fitzmyer’s recent comments in response to a magazine reader’s letter (“Queries & Comments,”Biblical Archaeology Review 19.3 [1993], 70). For Fitzmyer’s Aramaic reconstruction to be correct, the Greek text should read, “on this petros I will build….”

[5] The word כֵּפָא (kepha). The only difference between Kepha and kepha in Fitzmyer’s reconstruction is the capitalization of the former. This distinction, however, does not exist in Aramaic, since in Aramaic there are no capital letters. - http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2718/

248 posted on 05/02/2015 5:10:09 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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To: daniel1212
Some scholars have suggested an Aramaic background to Jesus’ saying.

Which is not the same as evidence.

254 posted on 05/02/2015 5:54:56 PM PDT by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
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