Saint Peter (born Simon bar Jonah; – AD 64/68), also known as Peter the Apostle, Simon Peter, or Cephas, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and one of the first leaders of the early Christian Church. He appears repeatedly and prominently in all four New Testament gospels, as well as the Acts of the Apostles. Catholic and Orthodox tradition treats Peter as the first bishop of Rome – or pope – and also as the first bishop of Antioch. According to Christian tradition, Peter was crucified upside down in Rome under Emperor Nero.
The ancient Christian churches venerate Peter as a major saint and the founder of the Church of Antioch and the Church of Rome, but they differ in their attitudes regarding the authority of his successors. According to Catholic teaching, Jesus promised Peter a special position in the church. In the New Testament, the name "Simon Peter" is found 19 times. He is the brother of Andrew, and they both were fishermen. The Gospel of Mark, in particular, is traditionally thought to show the influence of Peter's preaching and eyewitness accounts. He is also mentioned as Peter or Cephas in Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Galatians. The New Testament also includes two general epistles, First Peter and Second Peter, which are traditionally attributed to him, but modern scholarship generally rejects the Petrine authorship of both.Dale Martin 2009 (lecture). . Yale University. Accessed 22 July 2013. Lecture 24 (transcript) .
Outside of the New Testament, several apocryphal books were later attributed to him, in particular the Acts of Peter, Gospel of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, Apocalypse of Peter, and Judgment of Peter, although scholars believe these works to be pseudepigrapha.Thomas Patrick Halton, On Illustrious Men , v. 100, CUA Press, 1999, pp. 5–7 ."The Early Church Fathers" , Chapter 1, New Advent.
Although the New Testament does not explicitly identify Peter as the first bishop of Rome or detail his journey there, early Church Fathers and historians, including Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, and Eusebius attest that Peter spent his closing years in Rome, and along with Paul founded the Church in Rome and conferred the episcopal office upon Linus. These accounts also maintain that Peter was martyred in Rome, traditionally on Vatican Hill during Nero's reign. The late second-century writer Caius further testified that the monuments of Peter were located at the Vatican.
Names and etymologies
The New Testament presents Peter's original name as Simon (; in Greek). In only two passages,, his name is instead spelled "Simeon" ( in Greek). The variation possibly reflects "the well-known custom among Jews at the time of giving the name of a famous patriarch or personage of the Old Testament to a male child [i.e., Simeon], along with a similar-sounding Greek/Roman name [in this case, Simon]".
He was later given by Jesus the name Cephas (John Hayes, Who was who in the Bible, Thomas Nelson, 1999, p. 70: "CEPHAS [SEE fuhs]".), from the Aramaic . In translations of the Bible from the original Greek, his name is maintained as Cephas in nine occurrences in the New Testament, whereas in the vast majority of mentions (156 occurrences in the New Testament), he is called , a masculinized form derived from the root of (petra), adapted to serve as a masculine proper name.
The precise meaning of the Aramaic word is disputed, some saying that the usual meaning is "rock" or "crag", others saying that it means rather "stone" and, particularly in its application by Jesus to Simon, like a "jewel", but most scholars agree that as a proper name, it denotes a rough or tough character. Both meanings, "stone" (jewel or hewn stone) and "rock", are indicated in dictionaries of Aramaic and Syriac.
Catholic theologian Rudolf Pesch argues that the Aramaic word would mean "precious stone" to designate a distinguished person.Rudolf Pesch: Simon Petrus. Geschichte und geschichtliche Bedeutung des ersten Jüngers Jesu Christi. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1980, S. 25–34. This cannot be sufficiently proven from Aramaic, however, since the use of the Aramaic root as a personal name has not been proven, and there are hardly any known examples of the word being used to mean "precious stone".John P. Meier - Petrine Ministry in the New Testament and in the Early Patristic Traditions. In: James F. Puglisi et al.: How Can the Petrine Ministry be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church? Cambridge 2010, S. 17 f.
The combined name (Símon Pétros, Simon Peter) appears 19 times in the New Testament. In some Syriac documents, he is called, in English translation, Simon Cephas.The Teaching of Simon Cephas in the City of Rome; The Diatessaron
Biographical information
Sources The sources used to reconstruct the life of Peter can be divided in three groups:
the New Testament writings, such as the Pauline Epistles (where Paul the Apostle calls him "Cephas" and "Peter"), the Petrine Epistles (traditionally attributed to him, but their authorship is disputed), the Canonical Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles; the New Testament apocrypha attributed to him, such as the Gospel of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Peter and Andrew, the Acts of Peter and the Twelve, the Acts of Peter and Paul, the Letter of Peter to Philip, the Letter of Peter to James the Just, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter. Scholars agree that these are late pseudepigrapha with little historical value, though they may contain some historical kernel; the writing of the Apostolic Fathers and the Church Fathers, such as Papias of Hierapolis, Pope Clement I, Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch and Ireneus.
In the New Testament, he is among the first of the disciples called during Jesus' ministry. Peter became the first listed apostle ordained by Jesus in the early Church."Peter, St" by F. L. Cross, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, 2005.
Accounts
Peter was a Jewish fisherman born in Bethsaida. He was named Simon, the son of a man named Jonah or John. The three Synoptic Gospels recount how Peter's mother-in-law was healed by Jesus at their home in Capernaum; these passages depict Peter as being married or widowed. First Corinthians 9:5 has also been taken to imply that he was married.
In the synoptic gospels, Peter (then Simon) was a fisherman along with his brother Andrew and the sons of Zebedee, James and John. The Gospel of John also depicts Peter fishing, even after the resurrection of Jesus, in the story of the catch of 153 fish. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus called Simon and his brother Andrew to be "fishers of men".
In the Confession of Peter, he proclaims Jesus to be the Christ (Jewish Messiah), as described in the three synoptic gospels. It is there, in the area of Caesarea Philippi, that he receives from Jesus the name Cephas (Aramaic ), or Peter (Greek ).
In Luke, Simon Peter owns the boat that Jesus uses to preach to the multitudes who are pressing on him at the shore of Lake Gennesaret. Jesus then amazes Simon and his companions, James and John (Andrew is not mentioned) by telling them to lower their nets, whereupon they catch a huge number of fish. Immediately after this, they follow him.
The Gospel of John gives a comparable account of "The First Disciples". In John, the readers are told that it was two disciples of John the Baptist (Andrew and an unnamed disciple) who heard John the Baptist announce Jesus as the "Lamb of God" and then followed Jesus. Andrew then goes to his brother Simon, saying, "We have found the Messiah", and then brings Simon to Jesus, who immediately names him as "Cephas".
Three of the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and John – recount the story of Jesus walking on water. Matthew additionally describes Peter walking on water for a moment but beginning to sink when his faith wavers.
At the beginning of the Last Supper, Jesus washed his disciples' feet. Peter initially refused to let Jesus wash his feet, but when Jesus told him: "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me", Peter replied: "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head". The washing of feet is often repeated in the service of worship on Maundy Thursday by some Christian denominations.
The three synoptic gospels all mention that, when Jesus was arrested, one of his companions cut off the ear of a servant of the High Priest of Israel. The Gospel of John also includes this event and names Peter as the swordsman and Malchus as the victim. Luke adds that Jesus touched the ear and miraculously healed it. This healing of the servant's ear is the last of the 37 miracles attributed to Jesus in the Bible.
Simon Peter was twice arraigned, along with John, before the Sanhedrin and directly defied them. Peter took a missionary journey to Lydda, Joppa, and Caesarea. At Joppa, Peter had a vision given to him from God which allowed the eating of previously unclean animals, leading the early believers to the decision to evangelise the Gentiles. Simon Peter applied the message of the vision on clean animals to the gentiles and follows his meeting with Cornelius the Centurion by claiming that "God shows no partiality".
According to the Acts of the Apostles, Peter and John were sent from Jerusalem to Samaria. Peter/Cephas is mentioned briefly in the opening chapter of one of the Pauline epistles, Epistle to the Galatians, which mentions a trip by Paul the Apostle to Jerusalem where he meets Peter. Peter features again in Galatians, fourteen years later, when Paul (now with Barnabas and Titus) returned to Jerusalem. When Peter came to Antioch, Paul opposed Peter to his face "because he [Peter] was in the wrong".
Acts 12 narrates how Peter, who was in Jerusalem, was imprisoned by Herod Agrippa (reigned AD 42–44) but was rescued by an angel. After his liberation (see Liberation of Peter) Peter left Jerusalem to go to "another place". Concerning Peter's subsequent activity there is no further connected information from the extant sources, although there are short notices of certain individual episodes of his later life.
Peter's wife
The synoptic gospels mention that Peter had a mother-in-law at the time he joined Jesus and that Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law.Luke 4:38-40 However, the gospels give no information about his wife. Clement of Alexandria claimed that Peter's wife was executed for her faith by the Roman authorities but he did not specify any date or location.Stromata, book 7, ch. 11. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (eds.), Ante-Nicene Christian Library - Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to AD 325, vol. 12, p. 451 Another opinion states that Peter's wife was no longer alive at the time he met Jesus, so he was a widower.
First leader of the early Church
The Gospels and Acts portray Peter as the most prominent apostle, though he denied Jesus three times during the events of the crucifixion. According to the Christian tradition, Peter was the first disciple to whom Jesus appeared, balancing Peter's denial and restoring his position. Peter is regarded as the first leader of the early Church, though he was soon eclipsed in this leadership by James the Just, "the brother of the Lord". Because Peter was the first to whom Jesus appeared, the leadership of Peter forms the basis of the Apostolic succession and the institutional power of orthodoxy, as the heirs of Peter, and he is described as "the rock" on which the church will be built.
Position among the apostles