Wednesday Bible Study: What's in a name?

Today's verse kinda scared me to tackle at first.  I'll explain why in a second.  First, let me give you two versions of it.  You see, this is where, in Mark's Gospel, Jesus appoints the Twelve.  Mark explains that He appointed them, and then explains a bit about what they were to do.  So, if you look in the ESV- and a handful of other versions- v16 repeats the tag line that Mark used in verse 14:

Mar 3:16  He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); 

But if you go to the literal translation (YLT) or the KJV, they drop the add-on:

Mar 3:16  And he put on Simon the name Peter; 

Now, why would this snippet of a verse worry me?  Because many of the commentators take this moment to mention that Simon was NOT given the name Peter when he had his God-given revelation about who Christ was, but according to John 1:42, it was when they FIRST met; and this brings up the whole battle with Catholics over whether Peter was supposed by Jesus' "On this rock" statement to be the first Pope.  A battle which is fruitless because a) you can't make a definitive case JUST from the text there- at least not easily- and b) a Catholic will just plug their ears and go "la-la-la" when you try anyway.  It's a societal and not a salvational question anyway- at its base- and very, very divisive and controversial.  However, God has shown me another way to look at this verse- and maybe by extension prove the point as well.

My thought after meditating on the concept was, "While Jesus goes on in the next verse to give James and John a nickname for the 2 of them, there are only four characters (that I can think of) that God actually renames;  Peter and Paul, and Abraham and Jacob."  And there is a big whopping relation here.  Actually several.

Let's start with our subject, Peter.  His original name is Simon, and he is the only one of the four that ever uses both simultaneously.  (Because while "Simon Peter" has a certain amount of panache, "Saul Paul" sounds like an Annette Funicello record.)  Simon is the same as the OT Simeon or the modern Shimon.  It comes from the fact that Leah named Simeon in honor of God hearing her- thus Simeon/Simon equals "hearing."

But God told me to dig a little deeper in a certain spot- the blessings that Israel/Jacob gave his sons at the end of his life.  Here, you see that Simeon and Levi, because of their violence to the Shechemites, were cursed in their anger to be scattered among their brethren.  How appropriate then that Jesus would give Simon a new name, and a new mission- to GATHER a people to Him.

Simon Peter is comparable to Abram/Abraham in that God STARTED the building of His people with Abraham, just as Christ started the building of His Church with Peter.  Now look at the names.  Abram meant "high father"- which you might say was a glory to the man- while God's new name, Abraham, meant "Father of many nations"- which switches the glory to God.  Peter, likewise, goes from Simon- connected with the shame of the son of Jacob- to "Rock", a building block to God's glory.  And just to graze the Catholic thing, regard:  Abraham was respected by the Jews forever, and still is.  But that respect lies WITH ABRAHAM, and does NOT go on to build a line in which, say, "Jesse, father of David, was the 112th Abraham of the line"- even though Hebrew culture had a bent to do just that sort of thing.  Therefore, I believe that Peter was "the Rock", and not the first of "the Rocks."

And now, let's look at the other pair.  Jacob literally meant "heel grabber", not only describing the birth of himself and Esau, but the way he supplanted Esau from the birthright of Isaac.  So you can't say that it was a very positive naming.  His struggle with God, doing it HIS way and having to have God's will done in him the hard way, gave him the new name of Israel- he who wrestles with God.  And so he and his descendants would do, as he was the one who birthed twelve sons from whom the Twelve Tribes were born.  Note that his father and grandfather only ever had two sons- he did what they COULD NOT.

Now Paul's original name, Saul, means "asked."  Interesting that the original names of Simon and Saul describe our own relationship with God- we need to ask, and we need His hearing.  The name Paul, that Jesus gave him, means "little"- and this is not just a play on his stature.  Where Israel- and the people named for him- were and are prideful and struggle with God at every stop, Paul- and those who follow his teachings- make themselves LITTLE, or submissive, before God.  And just like how Abraham became the starting point, the father, of his people but Jacob got the ball rolling, Peter was the foundation of the Church, but Paul took it on the road and expanded it beyond the wildest dreams of the twelve men selected way back at the beginning of this post.  Peter and Paul HAD to be renamed by Jesus- they were the Abraham and Jacob of the New Testament!

One final thought.  Simon and Saul were Hebrew names.  Peter was the Latin form of the Greek Cephas, and Paul was a Latin derivative of a little used Greek word for "restrained", taken to the Latin as "little".  BOTH men had names changed from the "merely" Hebrew to a mix of Latin and Greek- the world beyond Israel.  Even the language is a symbol that God intended the knowledge of Himself to sweep the Gentile world.