Thou Art Peter

The explanation for the papacy is not something that just Protestants ignore, but Orthodox do it as well. The reason that is ignored in both churches ten to be to the misunderstanding of who is Peter. However for the Orthodox, it can add that is due to their belief that all Patriarchs are equal, yet, this is not the truth. First let’s analyze the name of Simon Bar-Jonah. He, a simple fisherman, received the name of Peter by Christ. What does Peter mean? It means rock, as it comes from the Aramaic word ‘Kepa’.

The majority of individuals who oppose to the Papacy then will argue that Matthew was written in Greek and that Peter is called Petros in it, not Petra…well, the problems that are raised with this are that one in Koine Greek the words Petros and Petra are interchangeable, a small pebble is rather called as lithios on Koine Greek. The difference between Petros and Petra arises in Attic Greek but not Koine Greek. Second, Matthew was not originally written in Greek, the historical evidence suggests it was in fact written in Aramaic, as the common Jewish people (farmers, carpenters, etc) did not speak Greek. Early Christians, in fact, mentioned that Matthew was written in Aramaic, for example, St. Papias said, “"Matthew compiled the sayings [of the Lord] in the Aramaic language, and everyone translated them as well as he could". I also will add that Chapter 16 of the Gospel of Matthew describes a conversation between Jesus and his Apostles. The Apostles (the initial 12) were not teachers of the law, nor generals of the army of Israel, they were mostly common fishermen, so it is natural that Jesus spoke to them in their native language. The final point should be that Paul himself tends to refer to Peter as Kepha in his letters as seen in 1Coritnhians 1:12 and Galatians 1:18. The only reason the majority of the New Testament was written in Greek, it was because Greek was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean nations, and the Apostles wanted (especially the books of Acts) to be available to all Christians, so they will not start schisms