Sorry, I know I said I would be retiring from the thread, but I have to reply to this one little bit.
Jesus didn’t speak Greek, but Aramaic. Matthew 16:18 would thus go as follows: “Thou art Kepha, and upon this Kepha I will build my Church.”
So why does the Greek render the first Kepha as Petros and the second as petra, instead of using the same word for both?
Because petra is of the feminine gender, and you wouldn’t give a feminine name to a man; hence, the masculine gender of the term petra was used for Peter’s name.
Have a blessed day!
'Conver5ts' to Catholicism are merely taking a sideways step on the broad road toward the wide gate of damnation. Jesus did not establish an org (organization), He proclaimed a new covenant of the simplest fashion with the Greatest Holy Promise, even using bread and wine for a Remembrance of how and by what means this new covenant is sealed.
Someone converting to an org is not exhibiting faith in the Promise of God to apply His Grace when one believes on the One Whom God has sent for our salvation. They are placing faith in an org to bring them through the 'striving for salvation'. THAT is faithing in an org, not faithing in God's Holy Spirit. And catholiciism is designed by a brilliant demon to continually drag the soul back into rituals and blasphemies which serve only to mock God by declaring violation to the laws against eating human flesh and drinking human blood as righteousness on display. The org is crushing souls into the compactor of hell's delivery.
Catholiciism gets exposed at FR on these threads and thankfully the vagaries of the org are shown for what they are, the workings of anything but God's Promise. Catholiciism is designed to feed the deep and pernicious pride of self, as the adherents are encouraged to follow the sacramental path delivered by the priesthood to the laity who are required to remain clueless and attentive to the rituals which serve pride of self.
This statement is false, and the Gospels of the New Testament say so, as does Paul in his epistles (1 Cor. 11:24,25) and in his account to Like (Acts 9:4-6,11-12).
John 1:42 in the AV English translation is as follows (Jesus exact words in red, John's in black):
"And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, 'Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas', which is by interpretation, 'A stone'."
Likewise, in Jerome's Latin Vulgate translation, it is:
et adduxit eum ad Iesum intuitus autem eum Iesus dixit tu es Simon filius Iohanna tu vocaberis Cephas quod interpretatur Petrus
But in the Textus Receptus, not itself a translation, it is:
και ηγαγεν αυτον προς τον ιησουν εμβλεψας δε αυτω ο ιησους ειπεν συ ει σιμων ο υιος ιωνα συ κληθηση κηφας ο ερμηνευεται πετρος.
In the Greek, speaking the common language to his disciples, Jesus spoke both Koine and Chaldean in this literal exact quote of what He said. Nevertheless, the diminutive name he gave Simon is masculine in whatever language you want it. In Aramaic, it is:
Strong's Number H3710
כּף
kêph
Brown, Driver, Briggs' DB Definition:
כּ1) rock, hollow of a rock
Part of Speech: noun masculine
A Related Word by BDB/Strong’s Number: from H3721
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Strong's Number G2786
Κηφᾶς
Kēphas
kay-fas'
Strong's Definition:
Of Chaldee origin (compare [H3710]); the Rock; Cephas
(that is, Kepha), surname of Peter: - Cephas.
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Strong's NumberG2786
Κηφᾶς
Kēphas
Thayer Definition:
Cephas = "stone"
1) another name for the apostle Peter
Part of Speech: noun proper masculine
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So why does the Greek render the first Kepha as Petros and the second as petra, instead of using the same word for both?
Your suggestion is also impudent, for you seek to change both the original Scripture and its import by grammatically changing the meaning of what Jesus said to Simon Bar Jonah in month Sivan of A. D. 32, when He had given him the sobriquet Kephas/Petros at Bethabara, about two and a half years earlier.
Since then, He and the companions had been calling him "Peter" or "Cephas" all along. Your Matthew 16:18 passage described the interchange with Jesus and His disciples as they were standing on the huge rock escarpment at Caesarea. The passage is translated in "The Gospels: A Precise Translation" by Fred Wittman:
15 He says to them,
But yourselves, Whom are you& saying that I am?
16 Then Simon Peter answered and said,
You yourself are continuously The Christ, The Son of The Absolutely Living God.
17 And Jesus answered and said to him,
You$ are continuously a blessed one, Simon Bar Jonah; because flesh and blood
did not reveal this to you, but My Father, namely The One In The Heavens.
18 Now I myself also say to you$,
"You$ yourself are Peter and upon this rock ledge I will build my church. And Hell's gates shall not prevail against it.
19 And I will give to you$ the keys to the Kingdom of the Heavens. And what thing ever you$ bind upon the Earth shall be a bound thing in The Heavens. And what thing ever you$ loose upon the Earth shall be a loosed thing in The Heavens."
Note: $ = singular & = plural
========
Because petra is of the feminine gender, and you wouldn’t give a feminine name to a man; hence, the masculine gender of the term petra was used for Peter’s name.
No, my FRiend. Would Jesus be so imprecise as to fool us? NO! Koine is a very precise language, much more so than English, and he used it exactly so that only a determined miscreant would misinterpret it to sustain his own non-Biblical narrative.
Now, what is going on here is that Jesus is establishing for all time, first with His students, a grasp of His eternal role; that is, what His relationship to them is, and what his relationship in The Godhead is. That is what they are to learn, to believe, to teach, and to preach about Him and His rock-like stability, going forward.
"And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10:4 AV).
The inspired words put into Simon's heart and mouth by God are:
"You yourself are continuously The Christ, The Son of The Absolutely Living God."
That is the immovable, unchangeable, foundational proclamation that is to be the entire trust of His organization that He is in the process of creating. This deliberately came from Above. It is not a human imagination by which Jesus the Messiah's status is announced, but it is rather a spiritual message honoring Him from another man's lips. It is this word of acknowledgement and praise by which Jesus' reputation must be proclaimed. It is necessarily a Scripturally authorized and required commendation:
"Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips" (Prov. 27:2AV).
But of far greater import, it is the confession of an unreservedly trusting heart that marks the salvation of a soul from hellfire:
"And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God" (Acts 8:37 AV).
The durability of Peter's statement of a spiritual truth is compared by Jesus to the miles-long rock outcropping upon which they are standing, which in the Koine Greek is the feminine noun, πετρα, petra in the nominative singular feminine. It is NOT πετροσ, petros, which no Koine-literate reader or hearer would ever be confused by what Jesus is saying.
But, just in case, He takes the trouble to say in the presence of everyone, "You, Simon Bar Jonah, are obdurate, hard to teach, strong, non-compliant, domineering, hasty, and (at times) perfidious. That is why I've gotten everyone to call you "Rocky" because of the conflict in characteristics. That's not the view I want the public to think of My Church. It has to be stable and regal, not inscrutable and unreliable.
Make no mistake: what you said is genuine, solid truth, but it didn't just occur to you out of your creativity; nor much less, out of obsequiousness. It was given to you by My Father, and you're the perfect one to say it, because it is indeed unlikely, far from the captain-of-the-ship figure you would like to project on the rest of my disciples, that you would be the one to say it.
So what I'm going to say is in a little figurative-literal metaphor, like the story I explained to y'all back last year in Adar when we were up on the mountain, about a man who ought to build his house on a stratum of geological granite so the it will survive any storm. That was a parable, too, and so is this. I'm building My Church on Myself as The Rock and on My everlasting never-failing reputation as the Only Begotten Son of God Whose Promises are true and eternal, reliable to the death and beyond, to seek and save the lost sheep of Israel.
Now, don't y'all forget that. I'm going to give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, the earthly charge of screening applicants to the visible church on earth to everyone of my spiritual disciples--and even to you, "Peter", even to you, as slow a disciple as you are.
But remember, anything you want to make a rule about, just make sure that it is a rule that has already been approved and put in place in The Heavens, OK?"
Have you got this, US? You wanted Jesus to say,
"Thou art Kepha, and upon this Kepha I will build my Church",
didn't you? To make the Scripture fit your impertinent, wrong narrative, eh?
Well, I'm not buying it, though you might get some people logically and spiritually disadvantaged. If I find one of your "converts," I'll be helping him/her see reality and able to distinguish between metaphors and concrete (oops!) unyielding rock-solid reality.
And it would have been Kephas (masculine), not Kepha.
Scripture was written in Greek.
Interpretation cannot be made on alleged texts or language which may have been spoken.
That’s really grasping at straws to build a case.
I'd just bet that if Augustine was around; he could explain this to you.