Was 'Cephas' a Third Century Invention Deliberately Injected into the Pauline Corpus?

I don't want to get too far away from my original point of figuring out the context of Clement's statement in To Theodore that Mark wrote 'an account of the Lord's doing' for Peter in Rome. I have noted over and over again here that this 'account' is nowhere described as a 'gospel' or even a 'gospel of Mark' for that matter. The context of To Theodore makes the kerygma of Peter which Clement references elsewhere in his writings the most likely candidate for this text.

Of course I have both sides of the debate over the authenticity of the Mar Saba document against me on this one. Even those in favor of authenticity want this 'account' that Mark wrote for Peter to be the canonical gospel of Mark. Why that is I really don't know. I guess when you become a professor you suddenly have to worry about 'what people will say' if you start questioning all our inherited assumptions.

There simply is no evidence to suggest that Clement ever accepted a 'second gospel of Mark' in addition to his longer, Alexandrian Gospel of Mark ('longer' not merely from the evidence of To Theodore but also from Quis Dives Salvetur).

Clement did write in a climate where he knew that 'Cephas' was taken to be the Aramaic form of the name Peter. I have demonstrated this before.

In Book Four of the Stromata he writes "It is a different matter, then, which is expressed by the apostle: "Have we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as the rest of the apostles, as the brethren of the Lord and Cephas? But we have not used this power." [Strom. iv.15]

Then in Book Three he makes explicit that he thought that Peter and Philip were the only married disciples of Jesus - "or do they also scorn the apostles? Peter and Philip had children, and Philip gave his daughters in marriage. Even Paul did not hesitate in one letter to address his consort. The only reason why he did not take her about with him was that it would have been an inconvenience for his ministry. Accordingly he says in a letter: "Have we not a right to take about with us a wife that is a sister like the other apostles?" But the latter, in accordance with their particular ministry, devoted themselves to preaching without any distraction, and took their wives with them not as women with whom they had marriage relations, but as sisters, that they might be their fellow-ministers in dealing with housewives."[Stromata iii.52,53]

And again in Book Seven "They say, accordingly, that the blessed Peter, on seeing his wife led to death, rejoiced on account of her call and conveyance home, and called very encouragingly and comfortingly, addressing her by name, "Remember thou the Lord." Such was the marriage of the blessed and their perfect disposition towards those dearest to them. Thus also the apostle says, "that he who marries should be as though he married not," and deem his marriage free of inordinate affection, and inseparable from love to the Lord; to which the true husband exhorted his wife to cling on her departure out of this life to the Lord." [ibid vii.11]

It is now utterly impossible to hold that Clement wrote the Hypotyposeis. The manner in which he cites Cephas and Peter as being married necessarily implies he at least knew that Cephas was Peter according to 'orthodox' teaching.

Photius was clearly right when he says that Clement did not write the Hypotyposeis. Photius actually says in his summary of the Stromata that it "is in some parts unsound, but not like the Outlines, some of whose statements it refutes." In my mind I have just found one of those contradictions to which Photius' alludes. Photius' language suggests there must have been many more. We just don't have access to the original text of this disputed text.

Clement believed that it was at least 'orthodox' (i.e. at least according to Rome) to accept that when Paul pointed to Cephas as a married apostle he meant Peter. And this is exactly the way any sane person would read the reference. As I have shown elsewhere, the Hypotyposeis is likely a Clementine forgery.

Now I am also certain that Clement had a version of this Letter to the Corinthians which was called the Letter to the Alexandrians which DID NOT reference Cephas. But that is a side issue and one which takes us away from our original report.

The point is that when Eusebius (Hist, 1.12.2) says that the author of the Hypotyposeis 'knew' that Cephas and Peter were too different individuals we have to acknowledge that (a) there is a clear contradiction with what Clement writes in the Stromata (i.e. where Cephas is identified as Peter) and (b) there must have been an Alexandrian tradition which DID NOT identify Peter as Cephas. While this sounds a little convoluted, it will become quite apparent when we cite Eusebius' exact words again:

They say that Sosthenes also, who wrote to the Corinthians with Paul, was one of them. This is the account of Clement in the fifth book of his Hypotyposes, in which he also says that Cephas was one of the seventy disciples, a man who bore the same name as the apostle Peter, and the one concerning whom Paul says, “When Cephas came to Antioch I withstood him to his face.”

If we read the account carefully the author of the Hypotyposeis is clearly trying to 'smooth over' the implications Gal 2:11f which reads in our canonical text:

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before the coming of some from James he used to eat with the gentiles; but when they came, he began withdrawing and separating himself, being afraid of those from the circumcision; and [even] the remaining Judeans joined him in hypocrisy, so that Barnabas consorted in their hypocrisy too. But when I saw that they were not walking upright with the truth of the gospel, I told Cephas in front of everybody: “If you, being a Judean, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how are you compelling the gentiles to Judaize

I will not get into all the scholarship which has tried to disentangle why the Pauline epistles reference both 'Cephas' and 'Peter' side by side but the only answer that makes sense is that the original letters were deliberately tampered with to leave open ambiguity as to the identity of the Apostle's enemy who he ultimately 'condemned' in some forum (Antioch is cited but I am not even sure if this was the original place).

Regardless of all these distractions, the real Clement of Alexandria thought that the Cephas that 'Paul' writes about was Peter. Otherwise one would have expected him to have clarified in his earlier statement about Peter being married AND REFERRED TO AS CEPHAS in the Letter to the Corinthians that there was another Cephas which he does not say (indeed it is crazy to think for a minute that Paul is referring to two different Cephas' in his writings!).

Indeed if we look at all the earliest references to Galatians 2:11 - 17 the name 'Cephas' is never referenced by ANY Patristic writer. As such, the fact that the author of the Hypotyposeis KNOWS that Cephas is referenced here might well finally prove that he came from a period after 250 CE and help identify the text as the Hypotyposeis originally written by Theognostus of Alexandria who was active in this period.

First the list of witnesses to Gal 2:11 - 17

Clementine Homily XVII - If you were not opposed to me, you would not accuse me, and revile the truth proclaimed by me, in order that I may not be believed when I state what I myself have heard with my own ears from the Lord, as if I were evidently a person that was condemned and in bad repute.

The speaker here is Simon Peter. There is no indication that the text ever identified Simon as Cephas.

Irenaeus Against Heresies Book III - But they themselves, while knowing the same God, continued in the ancient observances; so that even Peter, fearing also lest he might incur their reproof, although formerly eating with the Gentiles, because of the vision, and of the Spirit who had rested upon them, yet, when certain persons came from James, withdrew himself, and did not eat with them. And Paul said that Barnabas likewise did the same thing.

Irenaeus strangely NEVER references Peter as being called 'Cephas' even when our surviving texts use that title. I think this is because Irenaeus' copies of the scriptures simply read 'Peter.'

Tertullian Against Marcion Book V

Paul, however, censures Peter for not walking straightforwardly according to the truth of the gospel. No doubt he blames him; but it was solely because of his inconsistency in the matter of "eating,"

The case of Tertullian is a little more complicated. He clearly has a canon which references 'Cephas' in the Pauline epistles - cf "You have it in what he has said already: All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things
present or things to come." His copy of Matthew now has Matt 16:18 added. Nevertheless it is clear that Tertullian identifies Peter as the figure condemned by Paul:

But, you object, he censures Peter for not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel. Yes, he does censure him, yet not for anything more than inconsistency in his taking
of food: for this he varied according to various kinds of company, through fear of those who were of the circumcision, not because of any perverse view of deity: on that matter he would have withstood any others to their face, when for the smaller matter of incon-
sistent converse he did not spare even Peter. [AM 5:3]

The same is true for Origen who clearly either has a text which reads 'Peter' where ours read 'Cephas' or takes it as implicit that Cephas is Peter when he writes:

Moreover, in the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul states that Peter, still from fear of the Jews, ceased upon the arrival of James to eat with the Gentiles, and "separated himself from them, fearing them that were of the circumcision; [Origen Against Celsus Book II]

The point is that we have every reason to believe that by the time of Eusebius there was a conscious effort to develop Cephas and Peter into two separate individuals. I don't know if I can buy into Ehrman's claims that the idea of Cephas and Peter being two different individuals dates back to the early second century.

Yes the Apostle refers to Peter and Cephas and in Galatians 2.6-9, Paul mentions both, Cephas and Peter, but there is no indication that two different individuals are under discussion.

Lake points out that Peter receives only two mentions in the Corpus Paulinus while Cephas is named eight times (Peter: Gal. 2.7, 8; Cephas: 1 Cor. 1.12; 3.22; 9.5; 15.5; Gal. 1.18; 2.9, 11, 14). Yes this is true.

Lake says of our passage in Galatians, “To call the same man by two names in the same sentence is, to say the least, a curious device.” Yes but there is no compelling evidence that this alteration of the Pauline corpus happened prior to the third century.

Ehrman notes that the Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus, a document from the 9th century contains a list supposed to derive from Irenaeus which lists Cephas as “the fourth of the seventy” and says that he was stoned to death in Antioch. Again this does not prove the identification of Cephas dates from before the third century.

Ehrman sums up the ancient evidence, “from the early second century on, a number of sources maintain that Cephas and Peter were two different persons. Some of these sources claim that both belonged to the Twelve, others place Peter among the Twelve and Cephas among the seventy, yet others leave the matter unresolved.” Yes but where is the evidence of an 'early second century witness'? Ehrman's cites Clement as one of his second century witnesses but again he has ignored the overwhelming evidence (including Photius and those of his school) who said that the Hypotyposeis was not by Clement).

I will argue that it makes far greater sense to assume that by the third century an effort was underway to identify the name 'Peter' as deriving from the Greek petra via 'kefa' (Cephas). I think that this reshaping of the canon happened organically. It wasn't planned as some kind of active conspiracy. It was rather developed over three generations (the time from 180 - 250 CE) in order to edify the Roman Church. At the same time however, Rome was not the only Christian center to produce MS of canonical texts and it seems that Alexandrian sources (the author of the Hypotyposeis, Eusebius) represent another tradition which formed the idea that Cephas and Peter were two different people based on the (Arian?) Alexandrian canon.

The bottom line is that it is impossible to PROVE how and why the existing texts of Paul have references to both 'Peter' and 'Cephas.' The obvious answer however is that it has something to do with textual variants and a rather ad boc effort to introduce the idea that the name Peter goes back to 'Cephas' (something which no Aramaic speaker would ever contend.

I happen to believe then that there was a Simon called 'Peter' (pitur) but that Cephas was introduced later as a distraction from the implications (i.e. Balaam, Simon Magus) of that title.

Indeed look again at what is written in the Hypotyposeis about the development of Mark's gospel in Rome. Not only does Theognostus attempt to advance Irenaeus' position that this gospel Mark wrote for Peter was canonical Mark. He does so with an unconscious reference to 'Simon Magus' - undoubtedly because, as I have already noted, the Gospel of Peter was undoubtedly connected with this Simon as 'interpreter' (pitur):

So, then, through the visit of the divine word to them, the power of Simon was extinguished, and immediately was destroyed along with the man himself. And such a ray of godliness shone forth on the minds of Peter's hearers, that they were not satisfied with the once hearing or with the unwritten teaching of the divine proclamation, but with all manner of entreaties importuned Mark, to whom the Gospel is ascribed, he being the companion of Peter, that he would leave in writing a record of the teaching which had been delivered to them verbally; and did not let the man alone till they prevailed upon him; and so to them we owe the Scripture called the Gospel by Mark. On learning what had been done, through the revelation of the Spirit, it is said that the apostle was delighted with the enthusiasm of the men, and sanctioned the composition for reading in the Churches. Clemens gives the narrative in the sixth book of the Hypotyposes.

Whoever wrote the Hypotyposeis (I think it was Theognostus) he developed his arguments in such a way that he seems to 'correct' old opinions about the gospel Mark wrote. All of which clearly points to the idea that Clement's To Theodore is a real text. There is clearly something more to the 'gospel that Mark wrote for Peter' than what the orthodox authorities allow us to see ...