Peter & Andrew

SYMEON PETER
petros. This rule is not, however, quite without exception: A single Greek
Old Testament book, 2 Maccabees, offers two instances of petros referring
to thrown stones (2 Macc 1:16 and 4:41). So it is possible to argue that
petros means a small stone which is movable and unstable. Whether this
was what Jesus meant by the term is not clear as the distinction is not rigid
in Koine Greek. In Isaiah 8:14 in the Septuagint, and again in Romans
9:33 and 1 Peter 2:8, we have “a stone (lithos) that will make men
stumble and a rock (petra) that will make them fall.” In general the NT
translations prefer the translation 'stone' for Petros
“So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Kephas (which
means Petros)” (John 1:42).
In due course of Christianity this name became popular inthe Christian
world in various spellings. In England the Normans introduced it in the Old
French form Piers, which was gradually replaced by the spelling Peter
starting in the 15th century.
Simon Peter was probably first called Kepha (in Aramaic ), then Kephas
(in Greek ), and finally Petros (again in Greek). Adding the final “s” or
sigma for the Grecized form Kephas was to convert the female form
Kepha to a Masculin form Kephas In the same way, Greek petra is
feminine (first declension), and so was convertedd into Petros to make it
masculine."
STRONGS NT 2786: Κεφας Chaldean ‏,ּכֵיפָא a rock, Cephas equivalent to
Πέτρος Petros
However in the Old Testament the worlds tsûr and sela‘ are,
metaphorically applied exclusively to God alone and particularly in Psalms
and Isaiah. Thus the “Rock” came to denote a divine title refrerred as
“the Rock,” “our Rock,” “my Rock,” “the Rock of Israel,” “the Rock of your
refuge,” etc. (e.g., Deut 32:4,15-18,31; 2 Sam 22:2,32,47; Psa 18:2,31,46;
Isa 17:10). As a result most protestants would translate Peter as "the
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