Greek analysis of Mathew 16:18
the greek text of mathiew 16:18 is as follows: κἀγὼ δέ σοι λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς· which translates to Thou art peter and upon this rock I will build my church.
A common objection to the papacy is the big rock little rock theory. this theory is based off of the fact that the greak uses two words for rock in the sentence. “Thou art petros and upon this petra I will build my church”. in ancient greek these two forms or rock had different meaning, Petro being a small rock and Petra being a big rock. however in koine greek there is no distinction, the difference is only in gender which is neccessary since peter is a man and the regular word for rock is feminine. if a distinction was inteded the word lithos which means large rock would have been used instead of petra.
in addition jesus and his disciples spoke aramaic and not greek, and Ss. Papias and Irenaeus said that the gospel was originally written in this launguage. in aramaic there is only one word for rock which is kepha. we know that peter was called this as this is what paul calls peter in his epistles. this means that peter was not called a little rock as the word in aramiac is evna which peter is never described as. this means that the 2 words for stone are the same in the passage
this brings our more clear translation to “Thou art rock and upon this rock I will build my church”
next we have to identify who the rock is.
we will begin with the beginning of the sentence. we know that the object of the sentence is Simon as Mathew 16:17 identifies him as the object.
Jesus then uses the pronoun σὺ which translates to “you”. “σύ” (su) is the second-person singular pronoun, meaning “you” in the singular form. Its plural counterpart is “ὑμεῖς” (humeis), which translates to “you” in the plural form.
This brings our more clear translation to this “Thou (addressing only peter) are the rock(simon-peter), and upon this rock I will build my church”
next we will examine the next part of the text
greek mathiew 16:19 “δώσω σοι τὰς κλεῖδας τῆς βασιλείας τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν δήσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν λύσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς.”
this translates to “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
lets look at who is being refered to with the word “you”. again this version of “you” is singular. this brings the clearer translation to “I will give you (peter) the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”