Loading...Each week just now I’m talking about one of the apocryphal texts that I have assigned to my graduate seminar this semester on early Christian apocrypha. This week we took on one of my all-time favorites, the Gospel of Peter. I’ve mentioned it on the blog before, but it’s been a while. I’ve been writing about it in the book I’m working on, and I’m particularly struck by how enigmatic and fascinating it is.
Unfortunately, we have only a fragment of the book, which begins smack dab in the middle of an episode and ends, literally, in the middle of a sentence. To show why that in itself so tantalizing, let me first say a bit about what the Gospel is (at least that part of it we still have!).
The Gospel of Peter comes from one of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries of Christian texts in the nineteenth century. In the winter season of 1886-87, a French archaeological team headed by M. Grébant was digging in Akhmîm in Upper Egypt, in a portion of a cemetery that contained graves ranging from the eighth to the twelfth centuries CE. They uncovered the grave of a person they took to be a Christian monk, who had been buried with a book. Among other things, the book contained a fragmentary copy of a Gospel written in the name of Peter.
It is a parchment manuscript (P. Cair. 10759) of sixty-six pages, averaging 13 x 16 cm, containing a small anthology of four texts in Greek, all of them fragmentary (the manuscript itself is not fragmentary; the works copied into it are incomplete): the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, First Enoch, and the Martrydom of St. Julian. The first page is adorned with a cross; the second page starts, at the top, frustratingly, in the middle of a sentence (or at least an episode): “…but none of the Jews washed his hands, nor did Herod or any of his judges. Since they did not wish to wash, Pilate stood up.”
Whoa! That’s where it *starts*. Obviously …
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You said that the Gospel of Peter is about the trial, death, and resurrection of Jesus in multiple places. Isn’t it possible that there was much more to that book, since we just know that there’s something missing, not how much?
Yes indeed. See today’s post! I simply was referring to the Gospel of Peter that we now *have* (the fragment of it)
Hey Dr. Ehrman, great article! This question is sort of unrelated but I was wondering why John uses the present tense (like in John 5:2 about how there is a pool in Jerusalem) if it was presumably written after the destruction of Jerusalem? Also what are your thoughts on 4Q246 in the Qumran manuscript and is the wording of the ‘Son of God’ something exclusive to this manuscript or is this present in other manuscripts? Thanks for your time.
I think it shows that this story was probably told either by someone living before 70. But that wouldnb’t have to mean the writer of John was writing before 70. It means that the story he heard was circulating before then. Or it could mean that the author of John wrote the story that way himself and simply didn’t know much about what happened to the pool in the destruction (whether it too was destroyed iwth other parts of the city).
Dr. Ehrman,
I read that scholars are unsure if this is the same Gospel of Peter known to the early church fathers. Would you agree with this or are you convinced it is the same one?
Thanks, Jay
I think it is the same one, but it’s debated.
Dr. Ehrman,
Do you think the Gospel of Peter offers us anything new or different as far as historical value, or was it simply written too late?
About the historical Jesus? No, nothing reliable that we don’t have already. But it is extremely valuable historically for what it tells us about how Christians were understanding Jesus and developing their views (including about Jews) in the second century.
“Levi, the son of Alphaeus, whom the Lord…had called Matthew”?
Ha!
Interesting wish! I have often wished for the discovery of the complete Papias.
Oh boy, me too.
Dr. Ehrman, I request a blog entry discussing about Gospel of Barnabas, which is known to have some factual errors in it.
I’m afraid it was forged many centuries after my expertise, so I have never worked on it seriously.
“Have you preached to those who are asleep?” reminds me of 1 Peter 3:19. Is there any reason – style, vocabulary, content, etc. – to think that the Gospel of Peter and the letters 1 and 2 Peter are related in any way?
Yup, also 1 Peter 4:6. There does indeed appear to be some kind of connection.
Readers of this blog might have an interest in “Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?” which is a debate with Dr, Ehrman on one side of the issue. .
The name of the Roman centurion guarding Jesus is interesting. There was a governor of Syria called Petronius not long after the crucifixion (as well as the famous Petronius, Nero’s arbiter of elegance and another one around the same time – mid 1st century- who was governor of an obscure island called Britannia). Perhaps the author of Peter’s Gospel was inspired by one of these to use that name. I think another strand of tradition named the centurion as Longinus. PS are you able to tell us about the book you are currently working on (mentioned in the post) Dr Ehrman (pretty please)?
It’s about the journeys to heaven and hell in the Christian tradition from the Apocalypse of Peter to the Gospel of Nicodemus, in comparison with Greek, Roman, and Jewish parallels. Unfortunately, it’s written with a scholarly audience in mind, though I’m trying to make it so non-scholars could handle it if they don’t mind it focusing on scholarship rather than making the information broadly entertaining.
is this similar to what you did with Forged and Forgery and Counter forgery? With your last book Heaven and Hell?
Not related to the thesis of Forgery and Counterforgery, except incidentally (a couple of the examples I’m looking at are forged, but I’m not dealing with that issue in the book). And yes, in Heaven and Hell I give a brief summary of one of the accounts in one of the chapters. In the academic book I’m doing now I give a deep analysis on multiple levels.
Is there any way, in the original language (I presume Greek) of the passage, that the phrase “But I, Simon Peter, and Andrew my brother, took our nets…” could not be using an appositive? That is, is there a way that the “I” and the “Simon Peter” are referring to two different people? To illustrate (redundantly) if you were to write “I, Bart Ehrman, and Steven Goldleaf were discussing appositives online” then “I” and “Bart Ehrman” would NOT be referring to two separate people, but to one person speaking in the first person but clarifying his identity by supplying his name. But it could also mean that three people (an unnamed “I,” this person named Bart Ehrman, and this third person named Steven Goldleaf) were having the discussion. Did ancient Greek differ from English in its use of appositive phrases?
Good question, but no, the Greek is pretty clear. The “I” is Simon Peter. (BTW, that *is* the appositional use, I believe)
The resurrection picture is quite grotesque. We have to imagine a Jesus of normal width but stretched in height at least several miles– a very long and thin tube of a person. It wouldn’t even have been recognizable as anything other than a pair of feet with snaky cylinders attached, going up and up and up. Grotesque and ludicrous. Almost a parody. you’ve got to wonder about the mental health of a the author, or perhaps suspect some wild mistranslation, or even the use of mind-altering chemicals!
Not sure why he has to be the same width! My sense is that he’s simply a giant; in antiquity Gods were usually portrayed as humongous.
If the size was all proportionate his big old feet would have squashed a lot of territory. Plus, his mass would have been greater by far than that of a Saturn V moon rocket! It’s still a very bizarre picture! Head above the sky suggests a height of many miles– at least as weird as that giant cube the New Jerusalem is supposed to be. That, by the way, fits into a flat earth, but certainly not the earth as we know it to be. The people who wrote these things had very lively imaginations!
Could it be … “… whom the Lord” loved??
Peter supposed to be illiterate. How can he write this Gospel?
It’s a forgery. Peter could not write.
Thank you Professor Ehrman. By the way, Do you have any plan to write about the history of Christianity from the fourth century down to present time? I realize that you are NOT a theologian, and you have never claimed to be one. That’s why I think a history book of Christianity written by a very reputable historian like you will be helpful for many who are only interested in the history of this religion about Jesus. They want to know how Jesus followers through out history created so many different sects in the worshipping of him?
No, I never will. To be competent to do that I’d have to spend ten years of full-time study. I have other plans for my next ten years!
Not to suggest this is the case with the Gospel of Peter, but has anyone ever considered the idea that a text, particularly these forgeries, may have been deliberately left incomplete? It would lend great interest and mystery, possibly even more validity to the discoverer who can fill in the central idea.
Yes, that definitely happened some times, I’m pretty sure….