Loading...In a lecture I gave recently, I was talking about “forgeries” in the name of Peter, Jesus’ disciple — that is, books that *claimed* to be written by Peter but certainly were not. They were written by Christians living later who *said* they were Peter — possibly in order to get more readers for their books!
There is a big question about the canonical books of 1 and 2 Peter. The vast majority of critical scholars (i.e. those who make their historical judgments apart from questions of what they would personally like to believe about the Bible religiously) agree that 2 Peter was not written by Peter; whoever wrote it, it certainly was not the author of 1 Peter. A lot of scholars, including me, somewhat forcefully, also argue that Peter could not have written 1 Peter either. But that’s a topic for other posts (which I’ve made in the past).
In my lecture I mentioned three others, that no one disagrees about: the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Letter of Peter to James. (There were yet others, but these are the ones I mentioned). Readers of the blog have heard about the first two (do a word search for them if you’re interested). The third is not well known, outside of scholarly circles. But it’s both interesting and important.
In the New Testament book of Acts, Peter and the apostle Paul are shown to be in complete agreement on virtually everything, most especially on whether gentiles who convert to faith in Christ need to follow the Jewish law. For Acts, the answer is a resounding NO and both apostles see eye to eye on the matter. When Paul talks about the issue, it’s pretty clear he has a more nuanced, or rather quite different, view of the matter, as can be seen in his discussion of a major, public, knock-down drag-out argument he had with Peter about whether a Jewish apostle could even eat a meal with gentile followers of Jesus. Peter said no; Paul said absolutely. Fall-out time.
The forged work I’m talking about deals with the issue of the relationship of the two apostles — in a letter allegedly from Peter himself. The letter is found as one of the opening documents for the Pseudo-Clementine writings.
This gets a little complicated.
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A bit unrelated, but I’ve been curious to ask regarding Paul and 1 Cor 15:5 when he writes that Jesus appeared the “the twelve” after his resurrection, surely Paul would have known about Judas’ betrayal and suicide, no?
Ah, I’ve written about that. EITHER Paul didn’t know the tradition about Judas’s betrayal (he doesn’t mention it anywhere else) OR the term “the Twelve” was a technical term used to refer to Jesus’ closest disciples, even if there weren’t twelve of them (Just as the Big Ten football conference actually has fourteen members!)
Well, 14 is a pretty big 10.
Ha! Maybe that’s what they now mean….
Do scholars generally go with the Galatians’ view of Peter that he was somewhat sympathetic to Paul’s gospel but was afraid of crossing James who would not budge from the centrality of Jewish law in defining the relationship of people to god? Do you think that Jesus’ view was likely the same as James’ view on Jewish law?
Yes, I think that’s the general view. And I don’t think it’s possible to say what JEsus’ view of the matter would have been, since he was not around at a time when anyone was saying that a person could be right with God by believing in his death and resurrection without keeping the law.
I’ve been mulling over something. In Matthew Jesus says that the Law is still valid, but alters the interpretation of it in several instances. Presumably these were the instances where Matthew thought the existing interpretations were flawed. Can we take from this that if Matthew does not mention a passage of the Law he is broadly ok with the existing interpretation? Not absolutely certain, of course, but fairly certain?
I’d say that he never nullifies the teaching of the Law, but goes to its heart and draws out the deeper implications; in that case he’s not “altering” the law. Any interpretation, of course, gives something to a text not in the text itself. But no one can alter the text’s interpretation of itself because texts don’t interpret themselves. Readers intepret texts.
Great, but that’s not my main question. When Matthew is silent on a passage of the Law, does that mean he agrees with common practice at the time? Presumably if he though there was a deeper implication he’d say so.
Matthew never mentions the prohibition of mixed fabrics – can we from that say that he was ok with common practice regarding mixed fabrics at the time?
I’d say we don’t know. For one thing, there was probabyl no one common practice. For another, Matthew is only talking about things he wants to talk about: he’s not giving us a compendium of everything he thinks; so if he doesn’t say anything about it, we don’t know what he thought.
“I’d say that he never nullifies the teaching of the Law, but goes to its heart and draws out the deeper implications; in that case he’s not “altering” the law”
In Matthew 15:3-4,Jesus was referring to the Pharisaic tradition of setting aside money rather than caring for one’s parents. He rebukes their actions specifically because they violate a command (i.e. the command to put children to death who curse their parents) from the Torah. If Jesus himself didn’t believe this law should be enforced, he would be no different than the Pharisees who relaxed the commands of God.
It appears to me that Jesus wanted the command to be done, how come in one place it is about drawing out deeper implications, but in this place , the command must be carried out? In this stance, where the Pharisees drawing out deeper implications?
I think I was mainly talking about the Antitheses, but yes there are other problems! In this case JEsus is pointing out that one law / directive from God can sometimes come in conflict with another, and then a choice has to be made, and he insists, as everywhere, that the preference goes to helping those in need rather than fulfilling religious obligations. See what I mean? (He’s not saying not to give what is due for religious obligations; he’s objecting to doing it if it brings harm to others)
did jesus think that a jew who cursed his parents should be put to death
‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’
‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’[b] then that person need not honor the father.
if a religious obligation is to put to death a child who brings harm to his parents, then does jesus agree that the pharisee should be obligated to carry out such a command?
I doubt it. Even later rabbis admitted it never really happened. And Jesus was precisely *opposed* to harming others in the name of the law.
“Even later rabbis admitted it never really happened.”
can we trust the later rabbis apologetic and reinterpretation of the texts to tell us what was going on in jesus’ time?
‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’
and why do they break the command for the sake of reinterpretation ?
and how do we understand what “harm” meant to these guys? did not jesus know that when moses stoned to death the sabbath breaker, it was not about harming, but about punishment for breaking yhwhs laws?
35 Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” 36 So, as the Lord commanded Moses, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died.
how we are to understand what harm is? any harm? even disciplinary punishment ? only the harm one pick and chooses?
No, I certainly don’t use the rabbis for historical information about what was happening centuries earlier. I’m just saying that the law is so implausible that most thinking people over time have suspected it was not actually enforced. It certainly may have been. But I dont’ think Jesus was ever in favor of it, if what we do know about him is true….
Is there any way to judge whether this letter, while likely a forgery, may still represent the actual views of Peter? In other words, could this letter have been created by someone from “the school of Peter” so to speak?
I’m afraid there’s no way really to know, since we don’t have Peter to interview or any of his writings to read.
It certainly was written by someone who *thought* he stood in Peter’s school. And so were all the other writings claiming to be written by Peter that had nearly opposite views!
Fascinating Bart; and a real puzzle as to why two ‘forged’ letters from Peter (this one and 2 Peter) should express widely different evaluations of Paul.
Are they part of the same narrative, in the sense that these perspective are co-existing; or might the one forgery be rather later than the other? And if so, which?
Paul’s letters don’t seem to demonstrate any lasting friction with the leadership of the church in Jerusalem; notably at Romans 15: 25-27 he commends the ‘saints in Jerusalem’ for their willingness to share their spiritual gifts with the Gentiles. Whatever ructions may have been behind the falling out between Paul and Peter recorded in Galatians, Paul gives the impression that these are now resolved (or rather had returned to the resolution that had been previously agreed).
So might there have been two factions in Jerusalem; one, that of James (and likely Peter) on good terms with Paul and accepting his offers of Gentile support; and a dissenting one, rejecting this support and the whole ‘Gentile mission’?
Or maybe the ‘letter of Peter to James’ is a rather later text; a response rather to the growing anti-Semitism amongst Christians of the later 2nd century?
Yeah, lots of optoins. Sometimes I think there are forgeries directed against others — I talk about those in my book Forgeries and Counterforgeries (that’s what a “counter” forgery is. I think I made up the term, but I don’t know.) And so, for example, we have a proto-orthodox Apocalypse of Peter and a Coptic Apocalypse of Peter which take completely contrary stands — on the authority of Peter — about the importance of the material world and the human body. I suspectd one was meant to counter the other I would say with respect to the historical Paul that Rom. 15 is not directly connected to whether he has a difference of understanding with some of the Jerusalem leaders. The matter of the collection is really about Paul trying to show that gentiles and Jews are *one* in the body of Christ, and so the collection from the gentile churches to be given to help the impoverished Chrsitains in Jerusalem is meant to demonstrate their solidarity.
Fair point Bart about Paul urging his friends in Rome to see themselves as ‘one in Christ’ with the Christians in Jerusalem. But I still think that rather precludes there being continuing antogonism coming the other way.
Paul is repeatedly warns against what he sees as the ‘false teaching’ that Gentile Christians should adopt the ‘laws of circumcision’; as he also warns equally against those who propose that Jewish Christians (such as himself) should cease to see themselves as bound by those same laws (1 Corinthians 7:20). But after the showdown in Antioch with ‘some of James’, as recounted in Galatians 2, there is no suggestion in Paul’s letters that either brand of ‘false teaching’ is particularly to be located in Jerusalem.
Did Peter have anything to do with the compilation of the canonical Greek gospel of Mark?
The ancient tradition is that Mark was Peter’s interpreter and/or translators. But historically I don’t think that’s at all correct; Peter had nothing to do with the writing of the Gospel.
What are the historical problems with that view?
There’s nothing in the Gospel to connect it to Peter as an author, and lots to suggest that the author was not familiar with Aramaic or knowledgeable about the Gospels. If you do a word search for Who Wrote the Gospels on the blog you’ll find some posts.
” For Acts, the answer is a resounding NO and both apostles see eye to eye on the matter. When Paul talks about the issue, it’s pretty clear he has a more nuanced, or rather quite different, view of the matter, as can be seen in his discussion of a major, public, knock-down drag-out argument he had with Peter about whether a Jewish apostle could even eat a meal with gentile followers of Jesus”
Acts and Paul (in Galatians) both agree that Peter was initially pro gentile inclusion. But Paul says Peter withdrew at Antioch after “the men from James” came (he stops short of blaming James himself), while Acts simply has Peter conveniently drop out of the narrative after the Jerusalem council. Acts’ reticence about talking about Peter’s late career strikes me as suspicious, and makes me think that it’s “resounding NO” to whether Peter and Paul disagreed is actually more qualified than it first appears.
Dr Ehrman. Thank you. I hadn’t heard of this letter (Peter to James) before. Would it be fair to say that it was written from an Ebionite (or similar) perspective? And is there anything in the letter to suggest that the ‘writer’ considered James to be Jesus’ actual brother, bearing in mind later Catholic tradition that he was a cousin or step brother?
YEs, it is from some kind of “Jewish Christian” perspective; sometimes scholars speak in shorthand to call that “Ebionite.” Other scholars find that shorthand to be simplistic and misleading. I’m in both camps, depending on what day of hte week it is.
Do you think Paul’s claim in Galatians 2 that Peter would eat would gentiles in Antioch is probably true?
Absolutely. Otherwise his public condemnation of him would have had zero effect (just the reverse). Peter and hsi supporters could simply say “No I/he didn’t!” Not much of an argument then.
The book of Acts might suggest that Peter and Paul were in agreement on all issues, but I would imagine that Peter and fellow Jews would have been horrified with Paul’s assertion that future disciples should be welcomed into the sect without necessarily having to accept fundamental Jewish ritualistic rites such as circumcision. Jesus had emphasised that being a disciple would be costly, but Paul was offering admission by faith alone, purely asking for a commitment to attempt to be an imitator of God, without paying any mandatory physical price.
Prof,
Do we have accounts of how works like these get ‘discovered’ in the third or fourth century CE?
Did people with their own agenda write or commission new pseudepigraphs, spending what would’ve been a lot of money, and just anonymously deposit such works in a local house church or town library, hoping they’d be picked up by a literate person? Or perhaps stood up during liturgy and announce they found a book written by a famous early Christian?
Given how vigorously the leaders/theologians wrote against dissenting views, did church leaders tolerate pseudepigrapha because they thought these doctrinally orthodox texts were harmless for the laity, or even useful?
We have a few indications of how it would work. I have a full discussion of it in my book Forgery and Counterforery, if you want to take a deeper look. In the Greek and Roman worlds, sometimes forgeries were indeed made for money. But not in Christian circles, since books were not sold but simply distributed and read. Sometimes people forged books to justify a ritual practice, or a belief, or an ethcial point of view, writing in the name of an “authority” would would be listened to. Soemtimes they forged to make someone else look bad (e.g., by forging a letter that took a scandalous point of view in order to smirch someone’s reputation). Sometimes as a joke to see if they could get away with it. All sorts of reasons!
Why would a second century writer, familiar with the canonical gospels enough to quote them, put these words in Peter’s mouth?
To promote his own views. But there is no indication that the author of this letter knew the canonical Gospels. REmember that the “canon” was not a finished product, agreed upon by almost everyone, till much later. And even then we find lots of forgeries claiming alternative perspectives. They still happen, as it turns out….
Bart: “… sometimes scholars speak in shorthand to call that “Ebionite.” Other scholars find that shorthand to be simplistic and misleading. I’m in both camps, depending on what day of hte week it is.”
It is surprising how little attention is afforded to the pseudo-Clementine literature in popular reconstructions of Christian origins. Even your own approach as well seems to strongly favor an early and broad gentile takeover of the ‘Christian’ movement, which I do not contest. But who do you think are the most prominent scholars who focus on the continuing remnants of a more Jewish-oriented counter-balance to gentile Christianity? I’m fascinated by the works of Daniel Boyarin and Peter Schäfer, who trace echoes of Jewish Christianity in the Talmud and even later rabbinic literature. Who else should I be reading for this perspective?
There’s been substantial scholarship on the Pseudo-Clementines over the past 20 years (e.g., Nicole Kelley and most especially Annette Yoshiko Reed). The earlier German attempts to get behind our 4th-5th c. texts of the Homilies and Recognitions to the Urtext were fraught with problems (you probably know the appendix on Jewish Christianty added to Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy; ah, those confident scholars of the 20th c….; and of course the coverage in Hennecke Schneemelcher). Kelley and Reed shift the conversation to what the surviving texts can tell us about htei *own* milieux. Trying to get back from a 4-5th c. text to a 2nd c. Urtext to a 1st c. Jewish Christina context is simply too problematic. In terms of Jewish Christianity, though, I’ve always thought highly of A. F. J. Klijn’s work on the Jewish -Xn Gospels. But there’s been a lot since then. I have to admit I’m not up just now on the most recent stuff.
Do you think this disagreement over eating with Gentiles was really enough to cause a severe rift between Peter and Paul? I just read the meeting in Antioch again and Paul certainly rebukes Peter but I don’t get the impression this made their relationship irredeemable? I wish he had recorded Peter’s response.
They may have kissed and made up, sure. But Paul publicly rebuked him for being a hypocrite, and that’s probably not what the closest disciple to Jesus was accustomed to hearing, especially from someone who had never even met Jesus.
Be interested in how you can prove that Peter’s writings were ‘forgeries.’
Why not just say that Peter, like Jesus, was just a forgery and be done with it?
I don’t understand what you’re asking. Jesus wasn’t a forgery. And if you really want to see how scholars go about demonstrating such things, the best way to go is to read what they say. As you may know, I have a long and detailed argument devoted to the issue in my book Forgery and Counterforgery. If you want to read it and tell me your objections, that might help advance the discussion.
My question is a tangent to this post. I tend to think that Galatians implies that Peter backslid from his original acceptance of Gentile believers and eating with them, but Peter backslid on that issue while under pressure from excessively strict Jewish believers in Christ, and then Peter eventually accepted Paul’s rebuke. Likewise, there was clear tension between Peter and Paul, but they reconciled that tension. And by no means did Peter continue to snub eating with Gentile believers. Does that sound reasonable to you?
It’s the interpretation I had for a long time too. But I became convinced by other scholars and by looking closer and closer at the passage that Peter never backed down (Paul would surely have given some hint of that) and that Paul is still ticked off at him (assuring his readers Peter was acting as a hypocrite).
First, I agree that Paul was majorly pissed at Peter.
Second, if Peter eventually repented, then I disagree that Paul would definitely bother to clarify that Peter had eventually repented.
Third, I see no compelling evidence in church history that suggests Peter never repented of dissing fellowship with uncircumcised believers. Perhaps, he did not yet repent of that as of the writing of Galatians, but Peter continued to stand as a major pillar of the church while I see no evidence that he supported that practice apart from this one letter.
I by no means approach your scholarly background in regards to the first-century church, but do you have a strong argument to refute my third point?
Later traditions definitely show Peter opposed to Paul and his message. This is a theme of the Pseudo-Clementines nad especially the Letter of Peter to James. These are all legendary materials — but all later traditions of the apostles are. What the materials show is that it was certainly thought later by some Christian groups that the two were at odds. And these groups thought Peter was right and Paul was wrong!
I found the material and will eventually dig into it. For example, I found an English translation of Pseudo-Clementine Literature / Epistle of Peter to James. And I have NC Live library ebook access to your “Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend.”
I can imagine that Peter and Paul never completely reconciled on everything, but if I understand you correctly, then I find it hard to believe that Peter became the archbishop of Rome and never stopped dissing fellowship with uncircumcised believers in Christ. Am I correctly understanding you on this?
I don’t know if they ever reconciled, but I’d say that had not done so by the time Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians. I don’t think there is any good evidence that Peter was ever the head of the church of Rome; there’s actually not any good early evidence that he ever was there at all. He is evidently not there when Paul wrote his letter to the church in the early 60s; Paul greets the people in the church that he knows (most of ch. 16) but doesn’t mention Peter.
Wow, no solid historical evidence of Peter in Rome. I find that wild. I can read only so much at a time during my so-called free time, but I will eventually read your book “Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend.”
Anyway, apart from anything supernatural in Acts 10, do you think that Peter likely visited the home of Cornelius the centurion? I do.
Historically? No.
Doesn’t the first few verses of Romans Chapter 1 suggest that Paul held to a combination of adoptionist/exaltation christology?
Seems to suggest that Paul saw Jesus’ earthly existence as essentially meaningless, becoming important only at the moment of his resurrection. That would certainly explain why Paul doesn’t really say anything about the historical Jesus beyond the creed from 1 Corinthians 15:3-8
Yes, if you look up Rom. 1:3-4 on the blog you’ll see that I”ve discussed that explicitly. Very interesting passage.
If Paul was primarily a greek speaking Jew and peter and James spoke Aramaic. How did they communicate when they met?
Translators I suppose.
The importance to Peter, the rock upon which the church would be built, of a disciple who had accompanied them all the time Jesus “went in and out among us” can be seen in Acts 1:21-26, where Peter selects Matthias to replace judas. Though Paul misses this criteria by a wide margin, Peter would welcome almost any advocate of Jesus.
However, aside from circumcision, there were bound to be issues with an advocate who denied the need for compliance with the law, which among many other things, denied the need for works, which was essentially Jesus’ ministry.
Even the issue of circumcision is overly simplified, since non-Jewish slaves of Jews were circumcised, Gen 17:10-14, and Jer 9:25-26 describes Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab all with unshaven temples living in the desert as circumcised.
Though 2 Peter 3:14-16 might not have been written by Peter, it nevertheless is gently critical of Paul’s views, as hard to understand. No, Peter and Paul were not enemies, but persons with the same objective who differed, sometimes fundamentally, about how to go about achieving their objective.