Saint Peter: The Fisherman Apostle Beside Paul

Simon Peter stands beside Paul at the head of the earliest Christian movement, and the two are remembered together: the feast the Church keeps on 29 June is the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the middle day around which St Paul Global Week is built. Yet where Paul is the apostle to the gentile world and the author of letters, Peter is the fisherman of Galilee who led the Jerusalem community and the mission to his fellow Jews. This entry looks at Peter through the lens of Paul and Tarsus: how the two apostles met, worked, and once sharply clashed, and where history gives way to tradition. Claims are labelled (Scripture) for the New Testament text, (Tradition) for later Christian tradition, and (Scholarship) for modern historical reconstruction; dates are given as ranges.

One man, three names

He was born Simon (or Symeon), a fisherman of Bethsaida and Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. The Gospels record that Jesus gave him a new name: "Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is interpreted Peter" (John 1:42, Douay-Rheims). (Scripture) *Cephas* is the Aramaic word for "rock," and *Peter* (Greek *Petros*) is its translation; the two are the same name in two languages. Paul, writing in Greek, most often calls him by the Aramaic form Cephas (as in 1 Corinthians and Galatians), while the Gospels and Acts prefer Peter — worth noting when reading the sources side by side. The saying on which the later Catholic understanding of the papacy rests belongs to this naming: "Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). (Scripture) The theological weight afterward attached to that verse is a matter of church tradition and interpretation, and different Christian communions read it differently; it is not something a neutral historical reference can adjudicate. (Tradition)

Dates and era

No year of birth or death is recorded for Peter. He was active as a disciple and then apostle from about AD 30, the beginning of the movement after Jesus, and tradition places his death in Rome in the mid-to-late 60s, commonly bracketed c. AD 64–68 under the emperor Nero. (Scholarship / Tradition) His public life therefore overlaps Paul's almost exactly, and their paths cross at several decisive moments.

Fisherman, apostle, leader of the Twelve

The Gospels present Peter as the first-called and foremost of Jesus' twelve apostles. Summoned from his nets — "Come ye after me, and I will make you to be fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19) — he becomes the group's spokesman, confesses Jesus as "Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16), denies him three times on the night of the arrest, and is restored afterward. (Scripture) In the Acts of the Apostles he is the leading voice of the Jerusalem church through the first twelve chapters: he preaches at Pentecost (Acts 2), speaks and is arrested before the authorities, and is imprisoned and delivered (Acts 12). This is the Peter that Paul, newly converted and still little known, would have encountered.

Meeting Paul: three years after Damascus

Paul's own letters — first-order evidence for his life — record his earliest contact with Peter. After his conversion near Damascus and a period in Arabia, Paul went up to Jerusalem: "then, after three years, I went to Jerusalem to see Peter, and I tarried with him fifteen days" (Galatians 1:18). (Scripture) This fortnight, around AD 36–39, is the first documented meeting of the two men who would shape the new faith more than any others. Paul adds that, besides Peter, he saw only "James the brother of the Lord" (Galatians 1:19). The surrounding chronology is set out in the companion reference on the Apostle Paul.

A division of labour — and a clash at Antioch

At the Council of Jerusalem (c. AD 48–50), which weighed whether gentile converts had to be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses, Peter and Paul appear on the same side. Paul reports that the leaders recognised "that to me was committed the gospel of the uncircumcision, as to Peter was that of the circumcision" (Galatians 2:7), and that "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" (Galatians 2:9). (Scripture) The two apostles thus agreed a division of labour: Peter to the Jewish mission, Paul to the gentile.

That agreement did not prevent friction. Paul records opposing Peter openly at Antioch: "But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed" (Galatians 2:11). (Scripture) The issue was table-fellowship: Peter had eaten freely with gentile believers until "some came from James," after which "he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them who were of the circumcision" (Galatians 2:12). Because this account comes from Paul's own hand, the episode is among the best-attested moments of tension in the early church — and a reminder that its leaders were fallible men working out an unprecedented question. (Scholarship) We hear only Paul's side; how Peter understood the exchange, or whether the two reconciled, the sources do not say.

Peter and the gentile question

Acts gives Peter his own part in opening the faith to gentiles, before and alongside Paul. In the account of the Roman centurion Cornelius, Peter declares, "In very deed I perceive, that God is not a respecter of persons. But in every nation, he that feareth him, and worketh justice, is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:34–35). (Scripture) At the Jerusalem Council he argues the same case: "God made choice among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel, and believe" (Acts 15:7). (Scripture) The picture that emerges from Acts and Paul's letters together is of two apostles reaching, sometimes uneasily, the same conviction that the gospel was for all nations — the conviction that made Paul's mission from Antioch and Tarsus possible. A further thread links the two circles: Silas, also called Silvanus, was Paul's partner on the second missionary journey and is later named as a helper to Peter (1 Peter 5:12). (Scripture)

One New Testament passage has Peter commend Paul directly — the second letter attributed to Peter speaks of "our most dear brother Paul" and "all his epistles" (2 Peter 3:15–16). (Scripture) It should be flagged, however, that many scholars regard 2 Peter as written after Peter's lifetime by a later hand, so this warm notice is uncertain testimony to the two men's actual relationship. (Scholarship)

History versus tradition

What can be said with confidence rests on Paul's own letters and the narrative of Acts: Peter's leadership of the Jerusalem church, his role at the Council, and the confrontation at Antioch are historically secure. (Scholarship) Much of what is popularly "known" about Peter, however, belongs to tradition rather than the New Testament text, which never narrates his death.

Early and consistent tradition holds that Peter was martyred in Rome under Nero, in the same persecution associated with Paul's death. The letter known as 1 Clement (c. AD 95–96), the earliest witness, sets the sufferings of Peter and Paul side by side; the early-fourth-century historian Eusebius, citing earlier writers, places both martyrdoms at Rome under Nero. (Tradition) The further detail that Peter was crucified head-downward, judging himself unworthy to die as his Lord had, and that he lies buried beneath what is now the basilica on the Vatican hill, comes from later sources — notably the apocryphal *Acts of Peter* — and is tradition, not established fact. (Tradition)

Modern scholarship generally accepts a Roman martyrdom under Nero as probable, given the early and multiple attestation, while treating the manner of death and the burial site as traditional and the exact year (c. AD 64–68) as uncertain. (Scholarship) For how these source texts are weighed, see our reference on the Acts of the Apostles.

Why Peter belongs in a reference centred on Paul

Peter and Paul are the two apostles the Church has always named together. They represent the two great streams of the earliest mission — to Jew and to gentile — that met, argued, and were reconciled in the story Acts and the letters tell. It is fitting, then, that the feast kept on 29 June honours them jointly as the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul.

That feast day sits at the centre of St Paul Global Week, a faith-tourism gathering on 28–30 June 2027 in Tarsus and Mersin, organised by Funny Tourism, in the Apostle Paul's birthplace. Visitors who wish to understand the wider story can explore the programme, learn why Tarsus matters and where Tarsus is, and — for church and community leaders bringing a group — read about the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme. To meet the neighbouring figures around Paul, see the entries on Barnabas and Timothy.