[B-Greek] PETROS as a 1st century common noun?

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Sat Jun 6 04:45:42 EDT 2009


Johnson egrapse
>After looking through the LXX and NT, I wonder what happened to the noun
PETROS. It occurs in some in the LXX, and appears to be virtually synonymous
with the more common PETRA. In the NT, it doesn't appear to be used at all
except as the proper name Peter. It seems to have been replaced by LIQOS.
Did PETROS pass out of existence as a common noun by the first century, and
if so, should we understand the name Peter to be a masculinization of PETRA?>

George mentioned 2xx in Philo.
In addition, with 7 xx in Josephus and 21 in Plutarch one can only say
that PETROS
is less common than LIQOS. In any case, PETROS was still in use in Greek.
In Plutarch a PETROS can be big enough to be lifted by two hands by a bald
old man, though is still to be distinguished from 'bedrock, large rock' petra.

More importantly, PETROS is attested as a name פטרוס a couple times in HEBREW
literature referring to early (2nd century and 2-3 CE) people. Surely
that is of interest,
especially if you assume that the name was not borrowed from the Christians.


blessings
Randall


-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life



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