And when they had known the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship: that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision:
Cornelius a Lapide
Cephas . Clement of Alexandria (Euseb. Hist Eccl. ii. 12) and Dorotheus (in Synopsi) thought that that Cephas was not the Apostle Peter, but one of the seventy disciples. But the Church neither knows nor commemorates any other Cephas save S. Peter. The words, who seemed to be pillars , show that an Apostle is meant, and, therefore, Peter. Accordingly, in verse 14, S. Paul opposes himself to Peter, as being a sort of primate over James and John. In Syriac, spoken at Antioch of Syria, the same person would be called Cephas who by the Greeks was called Peter. So the man styled Cephas here is in verse 7 Peter. k That we should go unto the heathen , and they unto the circumcision. So Christ is called, in Rom. xv. 8, a minister of the circumcision, inasmuch as He was promised and given to the Jews as the firstfruits of the world. Accordingly, the Apostles at first confined their labours to these circumcised Jews. THE REBUKING OF PETER 243
Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.