Cephas (Of Galatians) Was Not St. Peter, According To 18th Century Jesuit Theologian Fr. Francesco Zaccaria, S.J.

Francesco Antonio Zaccaria (born 1714) was a Jesuit theologian and historian. He was ordained a priest at Rome in 1740 and died in 1795. He was the author of many works. Pope Pius VI appointed him professor of Church History at the Sapienza and director of the Accademia de'Nobili Ecclesiastici. In his dissertation about the rebuke of Cephas by St. Paul (Zaccaria, Dissertazione su Cefa ripreso da S. Paolo: Diss. varie. I, 195; Roma 1780), which was written in Italian, Zaccaria favors the position that the Cephas whom St. Paul rebuked in Galatians 2 was not St. Peter but a different person with the same Aramaic name. We have a detailed video on this matter. It presents the overwhelming biblical evidence in support of this position (see below). Contrary to what some people might have you believe, a number of theologians during Zaccaria’s period held the same view, i.e. that the Cephas rebuked by St. Paul was not St. Peter. That is the true position. Here are some quotes from Zaccaria’s work. …