CEPHAS, A BINDER, AND NOT A ROCK.
(Vol. ix., p. 368.)
I hope you will allow me to give a few reasons for dissenting from Mr. Margoliouth. I will promise to spare your space and avoid controversy.
1. The Hebrew word Caphis is only to be found in Hab. ii. 11. Hence it has been regarded as of somewhat uncertain signification. However, by comparison with the Syrian verb
כפס
(c'phas), we infer that it may denote that which grasps, gathers, or holds together; it is therefore not synonymous with δέω, which is to bind, and is used in Matt. xvi. 19.
2. Proper names from the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, are generally written in Greek, with the terminations of that language, as e. g. Jesus, John, James, Thomas, Judas, &c., and these terminations are added to the radical letters of the name, which are all retained. It is easy to see that Caphis would become Caphisus, while Cepho (Syriac for rock) would become Cephas, just as Ehudo (Syriac, Jude) becomes Judas.
3. Still less likely would the name Caphis be to lose a radical in its transfer to the Syriac, where Cephos is represented by Cepho, without s.
4. The paronomasia exhibited in the Latin, "Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram," also appears both in the Greek and the Syriac.
5. The difference of gender between the words Petrus and petra, moreover, is preserved in the Syriac and appears in the Greek.
6. The figure of binding and loosing (v. 19.) is one which was common to the three languages, Greek, Chaldee, and Syriac, in all of which it denotes "to remit or retain" sins, "to confirm or abolish" a law, &c.
7. The occurrence of this figure in ch. xviii. 18., where the reference is not special to Peter, but general to all the apostles. (Compare John xx. 23.)
8. The Syriac uniformly translates the name Peter by Cepho (i. e. Cephas), except once or twice in Peter's epistles. This at least indicates their view of its meaning.
On the whole I see no reason to suppose that Cephas means anything but stone; certainly there is much less reason for the proposed signification of binder.
In John i. 42., the clause which explains the name Cephas is absent from the Syriac version in accordance with the regular and necessary practice of the translators to avoid tautology: "Thou shalt be called Stone; which is by interpretation Stone!" (See the Journal of Sacred Literature for January last, p. 457., for several examples of this.) There is here surely sufficient reason to account for the omission of this clause, which, it
appears, is supported by universal MS. authority, as well as by that of the other versions.
B. H. C.
The paronomasia of Kipho (=Rock) was made in the Syro-Chaldaic tongue, the vernacular language of our Lord and his disciples. The apostle John, writing in Greek (i. 43.), explains the meaning of Kipho (Κηφᾶς) by the usual Greek phrase ὅ ἑρμηνεύεται Πέτρος, which phrase was necessarily omitted in the Syriac version, where this word Kipho was significant, in the original sense, as used by our Lord, and therefore needed no such hermeneutic explanation. Had our Lord spoken in Greek, and had the name Κηφᾶς been idem sonans with
כפיס
(Hab. ii. 11.)—which, however, is not the case,—some slender support might have been thereby afforded to Mr. Margoliouth's argument; but as he admits that our Lord did not speak in the Greek tongue, such argument falls to the ground as void of all probability.
T. J. Buckton.
Lichfield.