“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18
Matthew 16:18-19 is a text with an interesting exegesis because it leads to many heavily debated topics such as the role of Peter, church authority, and apostolic succession. The heart of this exegesis will be the interpretation of the Greek words Πέτρος- petros for Peter and πέτρα- petra for Rock which is crucial in deciding whether Jesus is building his church on Peter, Peter’s confession of faith, or Jesus himself.
Although it is true that petros and petra can mean ‘stone’ and ‘rock’ respectively in earlier Greek, the distinction between them is simply because of an attempt to preserve the wordplay. Carson maintains that if Matthew wanted to say no more than that Peter was the stone while Jesus was the rock, then the more common word to use would have been lithos which denotes a “stone” of almost any size and no wordplay would have existed.1
There are two points which can be given as the logical explanation for a direct identification between Peter (petros) and the rock (petra) in this wordplay. The first point is that Jesus specifically referred to Simon as Peter, the name he had previously given the apostle, in verse 18, though Jesus referred to him as Simon, son of Jonah in verse 17. The second explanation is that the petros- petra wordplay is used intentionally and singularly in this verse from the New Testament. The reason for using two separate words is that since the word πέτρα is feminine in Greek and has a feminine ending (-α), Matthew chose a less commonly Greek word which has a masculine ending (-ος) for Peter: Πέτρος.2
This whole passage contains semitic structures, such as ‘gates of Hades’, ‘flesh and blood’ and ‘bind and loose,’ constituting impressive evidence that these verses originated in a setting where Aramaic was a native tongue. This would lend credence to the arguments that Jesus probably spoke to his disciples in both Aramaic and Greek.
Before explaining the Aramaic interpretation to resolve the Greek wordplay debate on petros and petra for rock, it is important to note that the Greek petros-Πέτρος is used to clarify Kepha Κηφᾶς in John 1:42. Thus, the identification that the masculine noun petros used for Peter and the feminine noun petra for rock are the same is linked to Aramaic tradition where the same form of the Aramaic word, Κηφᾶς-kepha, is used for both Peter and the rock. This shows that the formal and material identity of both words are identical.3 The demonstrative adjective ‘tautē-this’ in the phrase epi tautē tē petra (‘upon this rock’) is more likely specifying Peter, due to the immediate grammatical proximity to the accompanying noun ‘rock.4
The strong evidence in both Greek and Aramaic language confirm that Peter is the rock upon which the Church of Christ will be built.
1D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in vol. 8 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (MI: Zondervan, 1984), 368–369.
2Oscar Cullman, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr: A Historical and Theological Study (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1958), 19.
3Gerhard Friedrich, edM and Geoffrey W. Bromley, trans. and ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. VI, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), 98-99.
4 Robert A. Sungenis, letter to authors, 7 November 1995, 2
Catholic Karate 