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Cephas and Peter in the Epistle to the Galatians
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Extract
In his note ‘Simon, Cephas, Peter’ in this Review (January, 1921, pp. 95–97), Professor Kirsopp Lake, calling attention to the existence of early evidence that in some quarters Cephas was thought to be a different person from Peter, wonders why “Christian tradition has so completely lost sight of these doubts, which were clearly present in various forms to Clement of Alexandria and to the still earlier writer of the Epistola Apostolorum.”
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1921
References
1 The list of the Apostles given in the Epistola Apostolorum and in the Kirchen-Ordnung is certainly curious. It is fair to say, however, that almost all the traditional lists found in various periods and various places present very strange combinations. The main tendency was to preserve the number Twelve, but at the same time to include in the Twelve Paul and the Evangelists. In the iconographic tradition of the sixth century (Theodoricus' Mausoleum) the list is as follows: Peter, Paul, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Thomas, Simeon, and the same list although in different order appears in the Ἑρμηνεία τῶν Ζωγράϕων which was for centuries the source book of painters and artists. See G. de Jerphanion, Quels sont les douze Apôtres dans l'Iconographie chrétienne? in Recherches de Science Religieuse, Sept.-Dec., 1920, pp. 358–367.
2 A play on “Didymus the Blind.”
3 The writings which go under the name of Oecumenius have rather the character of an anthology compiled in a casual form.
4 In the Synaxarium Constantinopolitanum the commemoration of Cephas is assigned to December 8 together with other disciples (Propylaeum ad Acta SS. Novembris Synax. Eccl. Cplitanae, opera et studio H. Delehaye. Bruxellis, 1902, col. 290). In the Menaea edited in Venice in 1592, the commemoration is found March 30 (Ib. col. 574).
5 On the importance given by the early Protestants to the incident of Antioch, see Holl, K., ‘Der Streit zwischen Petrus und Paulus zu Antiochien in seiner Bedeutung für Luthers innere Entwicklung,’ Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, xxxviii (1919), pp. 23–40.Google Scholar
6 Jean Hardouin, Jesuit, was the editor of the “Conciliorum Collectio Regia Maxima” (Paris, 1715–25). His “Commentarius in Novum Testamentum” was published after his death. The appendix “Petrus Vindicatus” is divided into 20 chapters, dealing with the exegetical and the historical sides of the question. The fifth chapter assumes that if we grant that Cephas was Peter, we must conclude that Peter was guilty of heresy: “Immunem ab hereseos labe Petrum non fuisse, si reprehensus ipse a Paulo est.” The sixth goes even so far as to affirm that all faith in Scripture would be upset if we admit the identity of Cephas and Peter: “Periclitari ac mutare ipsam sacrorum literarum fidem videri si Petrum a Paulo fuisse reprehensus damus.” This excess of zeal led to the condemnation of the Commentarius, which was put on the Index. Hardouin was incensed by the fact that not only Protestant historians (like the Centuriatores Magdeburgenses) but also Jansenist writers (like P. Quesnel, La Discipline de l'Eglise i, 224–229) put great stress on the incident of Antioch as giving evidence that Peter's (and therefore the Pope's) decisions were far from being unimpeachable. He shows no less irritation against the Greek editions of the New Testament, which like that published in Holland in 1638, for the reading Κηϕᾶν in Gal. 2,11–14, substituted Πέτρον,. which reading, he says, “habetur a Graecis (schismaticis) pro authentica.”