by John Graham

Created on: July 10, 2008

St. Peter (32 67) 1st Pope

Peter (whose original name was Symeon) and his brother Andrew were fishermen living in Capharnaum on the banks of Lake Genesareth. He had a profitable business with his own boat. He was married, had children and his wife's mother lived with them. He was relatively well off.

Like many other Jews, Symeon was attracted to the preacher of whom he had heard and he made an effort to meet him personally. Eventually, he and his brother talked to Yeshua bin Yosef (now known as Jesus Christ) for a day and were convinced by him. They became his followers.

Later Yeshua recruited Symeon to work closely with him in his evangelism even though Symeon occasionally went back to fish to support his family. Still later, it is said that Yeshua renamed Symeon, Cephas, which when translated into Latin is Petrus hence Peter.

Yeshua had gathered around him some like-minded friends. They were all manual workers and they all suffered under the yoke of the Roman-led Jewish Herod. Taxes were high and the collections went to Herod's court and to Rome. Nothing much came back to the people. However, Yeshua had the idea that the people didn't deserve to be cared for until they corrected their ways so he set about making them better people which was the reason for his preaching. Cephas agreed with that mission and was soon a recognized a leader of those who followed Yeshua his disciples.

Yeshua began to rely on him and even, once, used his boat as a dais to preach to the people who had come to hear him along the shore of Lake Genesareth.

Cephas was a faithful friend right until at the end when Yeshua had been condemned. Then Cephas denied him telling Herod that he didn't know him. That, as the Catholic Encyclopedia puts it, was due quite naturally, to "fear and cowardice." Cephas was human.

After Yeshua was crucified, Cephas came out of the closet and began to relay Yeshua's message across the land. Of course, most of those who heard the message thought, Well, I have better things to do with my time, but a few were convinced and the number of followers increased. The number of groups of those converted to Yeshua's ideas grew as Cephas preached around Palestine, Judea and as far north as Antioch in Syria, 300 miles from Jerusalem. He also took a tour along the coast through Lydda, Joppa and Caesarea.

The Bible attributes miracles to Cephas throughout his travels as they did to Yeshua but this is more a matter of advertising his greatness in the written word of a century or

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