Peter

Simon, son of Jonah (Mat.16.17), was a Galilean fisherman from Bethsaida who had moved to Capernaum and was working a family boat with his brother Andrew and the sons of Zebedee when Jesus called them all from the lake (Mar.1.16–20, Luk.5.10). Jesus renamed him Cephas in Aramaic, Petros in Greek — “rock.” He was the first-named of the Twelve in every list, the spokesman in the boat at Caesarea Philippi (“you are the Christ, the son of the living God,” Mat.16.16), and the disciple who walked on water, was rebuked as “satan,” swore he would never deny Jesus, and denied him three times before the cock crew. After the resurrection he was singled out for restoration on the shore of the lake (Joh.21.15–19), preached the first Christian sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2), opened the gospel to the gentiles at Cornelius’s house in Caesarea (Acts 10), and led the Jerusalem council’s decision that gentiles need not be circumcised (Acts 15). His later movements are obscure: Antioch (Gal.2.11), Corinth (1Co.1.12), Babylon — perhaps literal, perhaps a cipher for Rome — from which 1 Peter is sent (1Pe.5.13). Early church tradition, beginning with 1 Clement and Tertullian, places his martyrdom at Rome under Nero, c. AD 64–67, traditionally by crucifixion upside down.