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Re: Cephas



Bart Ehrman wrote:
>As one of the minority of scholars who has questioned the
>identity of Cephas and Peter, I'm intrigued by Greg Doudna's
>philological argument.  What, I wonder, would this give us
>historically?

I wanted to check out the philology first, but I think there
are significant historical implications if Cephas/Alphaeus can
pass the philological-credibility test.  What it means is
the three "pillars" of the Jerusalem church of Gal 2 known to
Paul may be different from the Galilean disciples of Jesus
portrayed in the Gospels.  Acts says these Galilean disciples
went to Jerusalem and started the Jerusalem Church.  The NT
guild, while on the one hand aware of many reasons to
distrust early Acts' historiography, on the other hand appears
to accept this Luke-Acts construction as historical.  There
is no verification in Paul's letters for this version of origin
of the Jerusalem church.

If Cephas is not Peter, then we need to attempt to define an
independent profile of what can be known about Cephas of
Jerusalem.  But here I run headlong into another vexing problem
for which I solicit help from members of the list: those
maddening textual variants in Galatians for "Peter" and
"Cephas."  So much depends on correct textual readings here.
It is not hard to understand why there are these manuscript
confusions: later copyists, assuming Cephas and Peter were
identical, may have been as puzzled as are we by the two
names and attempted "corrections" to the text.  But how
solid is the mainstream text-critical result that Gal 1:18,
2:9, and 2:11 read "Cephas" and 2:7 and 2:8 read "Peter"?
My Jay S. Green Interlinear NT shows "Peter" for 1:18 and
2:11!

List members who are knowledgeable in text-critical issues,
please advise or educate me here: when choices of 
text-readings have to be made, such as here, how should
one proceed?  Because I don't know better, I default to
the majority text-critical endorsement.  But I am always
troubled by the nagging thought that the majority could
be wrong.  I know in general one goes for the earliest and
best texts, and give preference to harder rather than
easier readings, and so forth.  But what about these
specific Cephas/Peter instances?  Can someone assist in
how to evaluate these specific variants?  

Again, my thanks in advance,

Greg Doudna
Marylhurst College
West Linn, Oregon

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