Were Peter & Cephas Two Different People?
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I noticed there were some signals in the New Testament indicating to me that Peter and Cephas were two different people. Before I started exploring the idea, I decided to see if anybody else had thought the same thing and, to my surprise, some people did! This includes Bart Ehrman, who wrote an article some years back titled “Cephas and Peter: Distinct Figures?” as well as some blog posts on the topic. Since the publication of the article, he has walked back his enthusiasm for the idea in his last post regarding the topic (that I know of).
“It’s possible. Most scholars think it’s improbable. OK, highly improbable. Me? I’m not sure, either way.”
Ehrman, Bart D. "Finally: Cephas and Peter – What do I Really Think?" The Bart Ehrman Blog, 1 Oct. 2014, ehrmanblog.org/finally-cephas-and-peter-what-do-i-really-think/.
In this post, I want to propose a theory that addresses two of the strongest objections he highlights, which includes making sense of Matthew 16:18, where Jesus talks about building his church on a rock (spoiler alert: both Catholics and Protestants are wrong).
So, were Peter and Cephas two different people? Like most difficult questions, the answer is yes and no. And understanding that answer may require a bit of a paradigm shift for many of you. Let's start with Ehrman's biggest objection, the one that makes him question whether the theory is true or not.
“It is this. Very simply: Cephas/Peter was (virtually) not a name or nickname until Jesus gave it to his disciple Simon. How likely is it that in early Christianity there would be TWO people with the same previously unknown nickname, one in Aramaic speaking circles and the other in Greek?”
Ehrman, Bart D. "Finally: Cephas and Peter – What do I Really Think?" The Bart Ehrman Blog, 1 Oct. 2014, ehrmanblog.org/finally-cephas-and-peter-what-do-i-really-think/.
The answer, of course, is that it's not likely, there’s no getting around it. But we need to make a distinction between what the Bible wants us to believe and what was actually the case.
To begin, it will help to change the question slightly. Instead of asking, “Were Peter and Cephas two different people?” the question we should ask is: Were Simon and Cephas/Peter two different people? Or alternatively: Was Simon’s nickname really Peter, or was that an invention of the biblical author?
Who Was Peter/Cephas?
This is where the big paradigm shift happens. If you thought the idea of Peter and Cephas being two different people was wild, hold onto your hats. But bear with me, because it will help us make sense of Matthew 16:18.
We start by asking a question: if Simon’s nickname wasn’t really Peter, then who the hell was Cephas?
We need to reconstruct who the real Cephas/Peter was by looking at what the New Testament emphasizes, the propaganda techniques it uses, and the glitches and ambiguities (think Matthew 16:18).
In my previous post, I explored the hypothesis that Peter wasn't originally a disciple of Jesus at all, but was actually an independent, rival messianic figure whose distinct movement was later absorbed and subordinated by the authors of the New Testament.
Rather than reading the canonical texts as pure histories, I looked past their smoothed-over narratives to show how books like Mark, John, Acts, and Matthew actually function as defensive polemics designed to neutralize Peter's autonomous authority.
I break down how the authors used strategic literary framing to systematically dismantle a "Peter-as-Messiah" movement, whether by having Peter explicitly abdicate his status by declaring Jesus as the Christ, forcing him to flatly deny his own divinity to crowds, depicting his independent efforts on the sea as absolute failures without divine intervention, or even cleverly reframing a literal historical disconnection from Jesus as a tragic, human lapse of courage.
Ultimately, I argue that these passages represent a masterclass in literary assimilation, acting as heavy-handed editorial stitches designed to sew Peter's powerful independent legacy and following directly into the fabric of the Jesus tradition.
A Consolidation of Messianic Groups
Biblical authors weren’t just trying to assimilate the followers of Peter/Cephas but also those of John the Baptist (see Acts 18-19). I’ve also started laying the groundwork to show that Paul also had his own messianic group that was separate from Jesus with my videos “Was the Apostle Paul the Mysterious Revolutionary Known as ‘The Egyptian’?”, “Did The Apostle Paul Reach Spain? Or Did He Die At Sea?” and exploring the “Authenticity of the Pauline Epistles”.
This puts 1 Corinthians 1:12 in a new light:
Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, “I am with Paul,” or “I am with Apollos,” or “I am with Cephas,” or “I am with Christ.”
These weren’t just factions in the Church, they were separate and independent groups!
Who would want to consolidate all of the Jewish messianic groups, pacify them and integrate them with the Gentiles? My guess is the Romans, but the Biblical authors themselves were likely Jewish (think Josephus).
Simon, Simon, Simon!
So, if Peter was never a disciple of Jesus, how does one make him a disciple without having to fabricate a history with Jesus from scratch? The solution of the biblical authors was to give someone who was a disciple of Jesus the nickname of “Peter”. That disciple was Simon, son of Jonah.
This type of merging of identities isn’t unique to Simon and Peter. In a previous post, I wrote about how the identities of Jacob and Israel were combined, as well as those of Zion and Jerusalem. I suspect the identities of Saul and Paul were combined as well. Biblical authors would often use parallelisms to equate two things that were not originally the same. A similar tactic is used in the Gospels by placing both the names Simon and Peter in the same scene.
Interestingly, there are a lot of Simons in the Gospels and Acts. Granted, it was a very popular name at the time (it wouldn’t be good propaganda if it wasn’t plausible), but it still seems over-represented to me. This may be because there were narratives about Simon that the biblical authors didn’t want to associate with Peter/Cephas. So, they simply claimed it was a different Simon:
Simon the Zealot (the Cananaean)
Simon, the brother of Jesus
Simon the Leper (or Pharisee)
Simon of Cyrene
Simon Iscariot
Simon Magus (the Sorcerer)
Simon the Tanner
Simeon (of the Temple)
Simeon Niger
That’s a lot of Simons!
Building His Church on What(or Who)?
Finally, we can now take a look at Matthew 16:17-19:
And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona (Son of Jonah), because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
Modern readers are often stuck trying to reconcile two different Greek words: Petros (stone) and petra (rock), but this assumes the text we have today is exactly the way it was initially intended. If we treat the passage as a literary invention that blends Aramaic with Greek, a much more specific, and perhaps more controversial, reading emerges. The linguistic "glitch" in the Greek version might actually be the footprint of an earlier, more straightforward identification that was later obscured. Here is Ehrman approaching it from the Aramaic angle:
And here’s a further complication. If Jesus renamed Peter “Rock” he would have done so in his native language, Aramaic, not Greek. And Aramaic does not have two similar sounding words for “rock.” So Jesus would have said “You are Cephas, and upon this cephas I will build my church.” Only when the tradition got translated into Greek were two different words used (where the feminine Petra could not used as the name of a man).
Ehrman, Bart D. "Finally: Cephas and Peter – What do I Really Think?" The Bart Ehrman Blog, 1 Oct. 2014, ehrmanblog.org/finally-cephas-and-peter-what-do-i-really-think/.
Ehrman gets really close here to what I think was intended. The only change I would make would be to capitalize the 2nd instance of “cephas” as well. So it would read:
“You are Cephas, and upon this Cephas I will build my church.”
The emphasis here is on the “this” and “my” and not on either instance of “Cephas” (or “Petros” or “petra”). It is “this Cephas”. Which Cephas? Simon, son of Jonah. And “my church”. Who’s Church? Jesus’ church, not Peter’s/Cephas’ church.
But Jesus never actually spoke these words in Aramaic or Greek (or any other language). It was an invention of the Biblical author. So I suspect the original text said:
“You are Petros, and upon this Cephas I will build my church.”
But a later scribe, not realizing what was originally intended, changed the “Cephas” to “petra” and we’ve known it as “rock” ever since.
Matthew 16-17-19 is doing the same thing as John 1:42:
He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John (Jonah); you shall be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).
Matthew and John are both equating all 3 names, but since the original context of Matthew was obscured, we had lost that sense of it.
So it turns out that this passage does refer to Peter and not Peter’s confession (congrats Catholics!). However, it’s not to the exclusion of everyone else but a combining of two people: Peter/Cephas and Simon, son of Jonah.
To Recap:
Were Peter & Cephas two different people? No
Was “Peter” really Simon’s nickname? No
Were Peter/Cephas and Simon two different people? Yes
Did the Biblical authors want you to think they were the same person? Yes!