A Quick Note on Balaam

I think that the development of Balaam the petur (interpreter) into a 'magician' in BOTH the rabbinic and Samaritan traditions of the early second century is a result of unacknowledged Christian influences. Most scholars think in terms of Jesus being originally likened to Balaam and the later rabbinic reports certainly reflect this. But I think the presence of the title petur makes Simon also called a magician a more likely possibility.

I can't see how Jesus was identified as a pitur unless it was owing to his prophesy about the destruction of the temple. But even here the fact that a disciple named Simon is identified with a parallel title makes it seem more likely that the Balaam connection was originally made with the disciple.

Of course Caruso's comments have also got me thinking - why do we have to imagine that Simon called pitur in an Aramaic or Hebrew gospel first became translated into Greek as 'Petros'? Why couldn't it have been rendered in the Greek gospel translations as something else in Alexandria and then into Latin as Peter from that original form and then Petros developed out of the Peter = Cephas argument which came from Rome in the middle of the third century?

I don't think we can take anything for granted about early Christianity especially when the name Peter was of such significance to the arguments for Roman primacy.a