Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I should add that I am open to the possibility that the same three Founders were called Pillars because they were considered from the beginning as the only people who had witnessed already the "presence" of the coming Kingdom.

Hebrew and Aramaic are funny languages. עמוד means both 'to stand' or 'pillar' (= column even the column of a scroll) as well as to baptize or submerge. I wonder whether Simon's understanding of himself as the 'standing one' (= the column) has some connection with him being baptized by Jesus (= Simon Peter). I think also from my days of carrying around that two volume Christian apocrypha book that the Acts of Andrew in Greek (preserved only in fragments) has Andrew refer to himself in the singular as 'the pillar'

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%93

That the Jerusalem temple had four columns - https://books.google.com/books?id=h9qj1 ... ud&f=false