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The Disciple Of Jesus By Simon Peter

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Simon Peter is undoubtedly the best-known disciple of Jesus. But how well known is he, really? Everyone knows his name, Simon, and his nickname, allegedly given by Jesus himself,
Cephas, which in the first century was not a name at all but a noun meaning “rock.” This at least was his nickname in Aramaic – the language that both Jesus and Simon spoke. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for rock is petra, where we get his more commonly known name, Peter. The name Simon Peter, then, literally means “Simon the Rock.” Given
Simon’s impetuous and unfailingly fickle character during Jesus’ lifetime, one almost wonders if
Jesus was being ironic.
But back to the previous question: how well do we know Peter from our surviving sources? It is much to be regretted that there isn’t anything like a full biography of him written by any of his peers, even though a number of ancient accounts narrate what he allegedly said and did, both during Jesus’ lifetime and afterward. In his book, The New Testament: A Historical
Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, Bart D. Ehrman stated, “ One of the difficulties confronting historians is knowing which of these accounts, if any of them, can be trusted as historically accurate and which were colored by the legendary impulses prevalent among
Christian storytellers of the first several centuries.” Ehrman believes “the problem involves not only the legends found outside the canonical writings of the New Testament

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