The Akhmim Fragment (aka 'The Gospel of Peter')

[patrick457]

To go back on topic.

The narration switches briefly into the first person, the first of two in our surviving text. Based on the other instance of first-person narration, we know that the implied narrator is Peter. Such authorial self-references are a common cliche in many an apocryphal early Christian literature: the canonical gospels, by contrast, are known for being anonymous works - ironically, such is their way of giving an air of authority to their work (in the same way that an anonymous encyclopedia article can be perceived as being more ‘authoritative’ than a book with a known author). In contradistinction to later Christian literature (of which this work is one), they do not name their authors (Luke-Acts is addressed to Theophilus, but the author nowhere gives his name in the text). Only in the later gospels (like Luke or John) do we see some signs of an authorial presence, but even there such instances are still rather controlled.

The scene shows the disciples in hiding because they fear that they are being sought by the Jews for plotting to set fire to the Jerusalem Temple. While hidden, they fast, mourn and weep until the Sabbath. The closest canonical parallel to this enigmatic charge may be the accusation that Jesus threatened to destroy the Temple (Matthew 26:61; Mark 14:58; John 2:19). The “fear of the Jews” motif may derive from John’s gospel (particularly 19:38; 20:19).

 

[patrick457]

Now the scribes and Pharisees and elders gathered together with one another, having heard that all the people were grumbling and beating their breasts, saying, “If by his death these great signs have happened, see how righteous he was.” The elders were frightened and came to Pilate, begging him and saying, “Hand us over a soldier that we might guard his tomb for three days, lest his disciples, having come, steal him, and the people suppose that he rose from the dead, and do us evil.” Now Pilate handed over to them Petronius the centurion with soldiers to guard the burial-place, and elders and scribes went with them to the tomb, and having rolled a great stone with the centurion and the soldiers, all those who were there placed it upon the entrance of the tomb. And they fixed seven seals, and having set up a tent there they kept guard. Now early at the dawn of the Sabbath, a crowd came from Jerusalem and the surrounding region to see that the tomb had been sealed.

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We now see a split between the Jewish authorities and laypeople. The common people, moved by the megista sēmeia “great signs,” now proclaim Jesus’ righteousness. (The closest synoptic parallel to this is Luke 23:48, where the onlookers who witnessed Jesus die return home beating their breasts in mourning.) This confession is in stark contrast to their earlier taunt for Jesus to “judge righteously.” The one who judges righteously has brought judgment on the Jews, and it is only after destruction has come upon them that they acknowledge Him as the righteous one of God.

In the common folks’ statement, the connection is clear between the “great signs” and Jesus’ death, which those signs accompanied. Judgment has progressed from the onset of darkness, to the torn veil and the earthquake, and reached its culmination in the eventual fall of Jerusalem. This has led to an awareness of some Jews that they had committed a great sin in crucifying Jesus. This final sign is not only an indicator of judgment; it also confirms the identity of the crucified one, a function similar to that of the signs in the canonical parallels. The author again seems to present an ideal situation for contemporary Jews: believe in Jesus, confess Him as righteous and acknowledge the signs God has given you, both in the events at the death of Jesus and in those that took place forty years later.

The authorities are alarmed by this display of regret and repentance by the people and ask Pilate for soldiers to guard the tomb (cf. Matthew 27:62-66). Unlike in Matthew’s account, where “the chief priests and the Pharisees” approach Pilate, here it is “the scribes and Pharisees and elders” who do so. Unlike in Matthew, where they are explicitly said to go to Pilate “the next day, that is, after the day of Preparation,” the inference here is that they visit him around late afternoon of the same day (Friday). While Pilate is exonerated of any guilt here in this work, he is still not the crypto-Christian “Saint Pilate” of whom later Christians would write. The indication here in our gospel is that Jesus’ execution was religiously, not politically, motivated. Pilate is present because he is firmly entrenched in the tradition as the leading political authority associated with the trial of Jesus, even if he doesn’t really do anything. Though he does not condemn Jesus to deat, he is not entirely on the side of Christians. For example, he is called “brother” by Herod, the leader of the Jews and the one responsible for Jesus’ death, and he supports the Jews in their request for a guard at the tomb. Furthermore, Pilate would later be complicit with the Jews in their move to suppress the news of the resurrection.

Unlike in Matthew’s version, where it is ambiguous as to whether the soldiers are Roman or Jewish (mainly due to the unclear nature of Pilate’s reply in 27:65), here it is inferred that the guards are Roman. The curious thing here is that the centurion is given a name, even if a quite stock one (this was a rather common name for the period in which this work was written): Petronius. In both GP and Matthew the Jewish leaders accompany the guards to the tomb;

All in all, GP provides an even stronger apologetic proof for the security of the tomb than what we find in Matthew, thereby attempting to dispel the notions that the disciples could have taken the body. The author rewrites Matthew to cover all the bases: the Jewish leaders go to Pilate immediately after Joseph buries Jesus (unlike in Matthew, where the inference is that the tomb was left unguarded from Friday evening until Saturday morning), “the elders and scribes” along with the Roman guards then set a blocking stone over the tomb’s entrance (unlike in the canonical gospels, where Joseph of Arimathea is the one who does so), place seven seals on it (making even the slightest hint of a tampering with the tomb detectable), the Jewish leaders set up camp with the soldiers (making it certain that they would be there to witness the event), Peter and the disciples are explicitly said to be busy hiding and mourning at the same time the Jewish authorities come to the tomb (providing them with a legitimate alibi), and a crowd shows up the next day to see the tomb (making the fact that it was properly sealed and guarded publicly known). Matthew’s version, by contrast, fails to say that the tomb was opened and checked before it was sealed, thus leaving the possibility that the disciples had removed the body and replaced the stone Friday night after Joseph’s departure. Joseph’s act of rolling the stone over the tomb itself can be considered suspicious.

 

[patrick457]

But during the night (the dawning of the Lord’s Day), as the soldiers were keeping guard two by two every watch, there was a great voice from the heaven, and they saw the heavens open up, and two men coming down having much light and approaching the burial-place. Now the stone which had been cast against the entrance, having rolled away on its own, made way in part, and the burial-place was opened and both the young men entered in. When therefore the soldiers saw, they awakened the centurion and the elders (because they were also there, keeping guard), and, while reporting what they had seen, again they see three men coming out of the tomb, and the two supporting one, and a cross following them; and of the two the head reached as far as heaven, but that of the one being led out by the hand by them surpassing the heavens. And they were hearing a voice from the heavens, saying, “Have you preached to those who are sleeping?” and obedience was heard from the cross: “Yes.”



We now get to the most fantastic/bizarre (and most-commented upon) part of the Gospel of Peter. Once again we see the author providing another apologetic for the empty tomb: he takes note of the guards diligently keeping guard at their post “two by two every watch.” Contrast this again to Matthew’s account, which again is unclear at this point: we are not told of what the guards were doing - the little we are told of their activities does not bring to mind images of excellence in the execution of guard duties. This makes the canonical account again open to the charge that the guards were so incompetent that they could not notice (or prevent) any attempted grave robbery.

The author notably gives himself away when he calls what the canonical gospels call “the first day of the week” (literally the “first of [the] sabbaths”) the Kyriakē, “Lord’s [Day].” For the early Christians, the day of Jesus’ resurrection was so important so as to be on par with (and later, totally replacing) the Jewish Sabbath. The earliest Christian documents to use the expression “Lord’s Day” are Revelation 1:10, the Didache (14.1), and Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the Magnesians (9:1), from the final decades of the 1st to the early 2nd century.

After a great sound from heaven is heard, the stone rolls out by itself (!), and two men surrounded by a bright light come down out of the sky and enter the tomb to escort Jesus out. The Resurrection is no secret here: the soldiers and the Jewish leaders witness the event with their own eyes. (Yet another attempt at apologetics on the author’s part.) The trio emerge out of the tomb, assuming enormously gigantic proportions - “the heads of the two reached as far as heaven, but that of the one being led out by the hand by them surpassed the heavens.” Such polymorphic transformations are not an uncommon trope in early Christian texts which reflect Christologically on the post-resurrection significance of Jesus. Building up on the canonical accounts where the risen Jesus is implied to be able to hide His identity from those who see Him (cf. Luke 24:16; John 20:14), and where He can materialize in a locked room (John 20:19), some later apocryphal literature like the Acts of Peter (21) or the Acts of John (88-89) have Jesus appearing to His disciples in a variety of forms ranging from that of a child to an adolescent to an old man. (The Gospel of Judas has the pre-Easter Jesus already being capable of appearing to His disciples as a kid: “Often he did not appear to his disciples as himself, but he was found among them as a child.”) He can also sometimes be described as being able to change His size at will (cf. Acts of John 91, where He appears as a small man). It is thus suggested that the enlarged figures from the tomb need to be understood against the wider background of the phenomenon of early Christian reflection on the Christological significance of the risen Christ that depicted His polymorphic characteristic.

 

[patrick457]

As the angels and Jesus exit the tomb, they are followed by a ‘walking’ cross (!). A heavenly voice then asks, “Have you preached to those who are sleeping?” (A reference to the belief which will later be enshrined in the Apostles’ Creed: “He descended into hell;” cf. 1 Peter 3:19-20; 4:6.) To which the cross (!) answers emphatically in the affirmative. No attempts for realism here: the author indulges in fanciful, supernatural details.

The ‘walking, talking cross’ is something that fascinates many scholars. As the text stands, the figure of the cross is very odd; it just appears without any warning into the narrative. One could argue that it couldn’t refer to the literal wooden cross Jesus was crucified in (at least the text doesn’t speak of the cross being buried with Jesus). What is more, is that a voice from it answers the heavenly voice’s question, while we may expect an answer from one of the three figures. The reason for this is debated. Some believe that this is a ‘sanitized’ version of the docetic distinction between the human Jesus and the divine Christ: it is the divine Christ on the cross (note that the text doesn’t directly say that the cross spoke, but that “obedience was heard” from it) who speaks, while the figure assisted by the angels is the still-weak human Jesus. In this reading, the two beings have not yet been reunited as one as they had been before the death on the cross. Others see the ‘talking’ cross as being symbolic of the death of Jesus as part of a cosmic plan - that even the cross ‘knows’ what is happening. Another possibility suggested is that the ‘cross’ here is is actually a cross-like formation - a procession, if you will - of the resurrected saints whom Jesus had redeemed.

More recently, Mark Goodacre has suggested that the surviving text is actually corrupt at this point: he suggests that a scribe had misread a certain nomine sacrum (abbreviations of several frequently occurring divine names or titles in Scripture, like “God” or “Lord” or “Jesus” or “Christ”). He proposes that the text originally said staurothenta “the crucified One” at this point, but the copyist had somehow mistook it for stauros “cross.” So what we have here is not three figures and a supernatural cross, but three figures, one of whom is “the crucified One,” Jesus, who answers to the heavenly voice.

 

[brb3]

Clearly a ‘doctored’ …self-serving account to support a splinter group’s beliefs.

Also…
RE: Roman Guards account in the Gospels …guards were killed if caught sleeping or if task assigned to them was not accomplished. No guard would of trusted the task of sealing tomb to Joseph or Apostles. They would of personally verified presence of body within, and resealed tomb —if necessary, before settling in for guard duties.

Thus, the claim of ancient & modern skeptics, that Jesus’ body was stolen, is w/o merit.

 

[patrick457]

They therefore sought together with one another to go away and disclose these to Pilate. And while they were still reasoning there appeared again the heavens, having opened up, and a person coming down and going into the tomb. Having seen these, those around the centurion hastened to Pilate at night, having left the burial-place which they were guarding, and reported all that they had seen, greatly agonized and saying, “Truly, he was God’s son!” Pilate answered and said, “I am clean of the blood of the son of God; but you have decided this.” They all, having come forward, begged and urged him to command the centurion and the soldiers to say nothing of what they had seen. “For it is better,” they said, “for us to incur the greatest sin before God than to fall into the hands of the Judaean people and be stoned.” Pilate therefore commanded the centurion and the soldiers to say nothing.

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Upon seeing another being go into the tomb (cf. Matthew 28:2-4), everyone who kept watch at Jesus’ tomb rush back to Pilate to report. (Again we see the author alter some details here: in Matthew the guards are said to “have trembled and [become] like dead men” at the sight of the angel. Once more our author presents the guards as being more capable of their task, in order to shoot down the argument that the guards were incompetent, and ergo, that Jesus’ disciples took advantage of this to steal His body.) The author transposes two statements which occur earlier in the canonical gospels: the witnesses’ confession of Jesus (cf. the centurion’s confession which occurs right after Jesus’ death; Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47) is juxtaposed with Pilate’s declaration of innocence (Matthew 27:24). Which is an interesting rewriting: during their report to Pilate the guards are theologically keen enough to know that the resurrection indicates that Jesus is the Son of God. All in all, the Gospel of Peter’s resurrection account is apologetics in narrative form. It seems that the resurrection functions primarily in our text as a way to bring outsiders into the faith: the resurrection basically confirms who Jesus is.

In reply, Pilate asserts his innocence “over the blood of the Son of God.” Again, by reiterating what is implicit in the opening verses of GP, the author lets the Romans off the hook, holding the Jews alone responsible. By affirming the title “son of God,” the Petrine Pilate displays a greater awareness of the identity of Jesus than does Matthew’s Pilate or that of the other NT accounts. The trend to exonerate Pilate in early Christian apologetics finds a representative in our author, who washes the governor clean of the guilt of innocent blood and transforms him into one making the Christian profession of Jesus as the Son of God.

This of course segues into a request to seal the lips of the guards. In Matthew 28:11-15, where “the chief priests” pay the soldiers to keep quiet (this actually contributes to the ambiguity of whether the guards in the canonical account are Jewish or Roman - if they were Roman soldiers, why are they reporting to the Jewish authorities?); here Pilate himself commands the soldiers to do so (rather understandably since they are explicitly said to have been Roman here). Pilate may know who Jesus is, but he is not yet “Saint Pilate the Christian” of still later popular Christian literature.

The importance of the resurrection in GP may be further indicated by the statement of the Jewish leaders before Pilate. “It is better for us to incur the greatest sin before God than to fall into the hands of the Judaean people and be stoned.” The Akhmim account leaves a worse impression of the Jews than Matthew’s: at least in Matthew they did not witness the actual resurrection itself. Here they are deliberately trying to suppress the truth - even at the risk of committing a great sin - which they themselves had witnessed. It shows them as almost believing in the resurrection (note that they do not deny that it happened) but then covering it up in order to save their own skins. Rather than convert (which is what the author’s ideal situation is), they simply attempt to hide the event. In their last official act in this gospel, the Jewish leaders seem weak, almost pitiable.

 

[patrick457]

Once again, a slight digression. As I’ve earlier noted, while the historical fact is that Jesus was executed by a conjunction of Jewish and Roman authority (with the Romans performing the actual execution), there was an admittedly very common trend in early Christianity to emphasize Jewish responsibility in Jesus’ death (observable here, and in some other authors like St. Justin Martyr, Melito of Sardis, the Epistle of Barnabas, St. Irenaeus, and Tertullian), oftentimes using hostile rhetoric. (Let’s be honest here: in a post-Holocaust world, many would find it hard to read this type of language without wincing.) The Christian focus on Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus was a means of maintaining clear boundaries between themselves and those people and groups that had come to be understood as ‘outsiders’, which is what non-believing Jews were perceived to be.

The origins of Christianity’s earliest accusations of guilt against fellow Jews for Jesus’ death may very well have proliferated in the earliest years of the movement through the traditional Jewish pattern of calling Israel for its disobedience and/or the rejection of its prophets (e.g. Nehemiah 9:26; 2 Chronicles 36:14-169. Because of the devotion displayed by Christians towards Christ, it is natural that they would view His rejection - upon which a huge importance was laid - as being the foremost of Israel’s sins. To reject the nation’s alleged messiah, or to be involved in any manner in the events leading to His death, is to invite a demand of repentance from the followers of that messiah. We can already see the pattern of assigning Jewish guilt for Jesus’ death and linking it to a call of repentance in the earliest Christian speeches and letters (Acts 2:22-38; 3:12-26; 4:8-22; 5:29-32; 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16). It is at least plausible - if not probable - that this context of early Christian preaching to fellow Jews provided the earliest social situations in which Jewish culpability for Jesus’ execution was emphasized and increasingly became a point of bitterness between Jews devoted to Jesus and other Jewish groups.

While increasing blame was placed on the Jews, the Romans were increasingly whitewashed. While the earliest tradition included Roman and Jewish cooperation in the death of Jesus, in subsequent tradition history Christians would emphasize the role of each party to varying degrees: if 100% of the guilt must be assigned, some accounts tended to divide it evenly while others appeared to be much closer to total guilt/innocence. In the latter scenario it was nearly always in the direction of Jewish guilt/Roman innocence.

Pilate’s role as the one who condemns Jesus generally diminishes in later Christian sources. The idea is that the more the state persecuted Christians, the more generous becomes the description of Pilate as a witness to Jesus’ innocence. This trend has a precedent, ironically enough, in Jewish apologetics: Philo appealed to Caligula and reminded him of the many privileges that previous emperors had granted to Jews, in response to measures the emperor was about to enforce that were offensive to Jewish sensibilities. The funny thing is, the positive portrayal of Pilate ends in the 4th century, coincidentally with the arrival of Constantine and the recognition of Christianity as a legal religion. The Edict of Milan made it so that Christians no longer needed an ally in the form of a Roman official. Constantine and his successors were living, breathing emperors whose stature overshadowed that of a long-dead governor.

It is not just that Christians needed an ally in the form of a Roman official, but it was also significant for them to not have an enemy in the form of a Roman official. There was an inherent scepticism surrounding new religious movements in the Greco-Roman world in which Christianity developed, so that novel sects could expect to face severe scrutiny from political authorities. Christianity was at first considered to be a Jewish sect and thus originally more or less enjoyed the toleration that Judaism enjoyed in the Roman period. However, Christianity and (Rabbinic) Judaism were legally recognized to be distinct religions by the emperor Nerva around 96-98 in a decree granting Christians an exemption from paying the Fiscus Iudaicus, the annual tax imposed upon the Jews in the wake of the Jewish War of AD 66-70 in exchange for freedom to practice their religion.

A side effect of this is that Christians could no longer invoke Judaism’s long-standing tolerated status because they were legally no longer Jews: they were now illegal “atheists” practicing a superstitio who were left to their own devices to negotiate their own alternatives to participating in Imperial cult. In his letters to Trajan (reigned 98-117), Pliny assumed that Christians are not Jews because they do not pay the tax. It was around that time that the charges against Christians changed from “tax evaders” who concealed their origin (directed at Jewish Christians) and “living a Jewish life improfessi” (directed at gentile Christians; i.e. not publicly acknowledging to be adherents of Judaism, while at the same time practicing ‘Jewish’ customs) to simply “being Christians:” Pliny could execute people simply for confessing Christ.

In other words, due to the fact that Christianity by the 2nd century was already an illegal and suspicious superstitio, and due to it being well-known that the leading figure of Christianity was executed by Roman officials as a criminal (cf. Tacitus, Annals 15.44), Christians of the time understandably sought to downplay this aspect of their group’s origins to appeal to a wider base. This is what we see here in the Akhmim text: a rewriting of the gospels that had been influenced by polemical and apologetic interests related to the parties responsible for the death of Jesus.

 

[patrick457]

Now at daybreak of the Lord’s Day Mariam the Magdalene, a disciple of the Lord, fearing on account of the Judaeans since they were burning with wrath, had not done for the tomb of the Lord those which women are accustomed to do for those who had died and were beloved by them. Having taken female friends with her, she came to the tomb where he had been placed, and they were afraid lest the Judaeans should see them, and they were saying, “Even if on that day when he was crucified we could not lament and beat in mourning, yet now at his tomb we will do these. But who will roll away for us the stone that was placed upon the entrance of the tomb, that we, having entered in, might sit by him and do those which are owed; because the stone is great, and we are afraid lest anyone see us. And if we cannot, let us cast at the entrance the things that we bring for his memorial, lament and beat in mourning until we come to our house.”

And having gone away they found the burial-place opened, and drawing near, they stooped down there, and they see there a young man sitting in the middle of the burial-place, handsome and clothed in a very radiant robe, who spoke to them: “Why did you come? Who are you looking for? Not the one who was crucified? He has risen and went away. But if you do not believe, stoop down and see the place where he lay, since he is not [there] – because he has risen and went away there, from where he was sent.” Then the women, frightened, ran away.



We get our first introduction to Mary Magdalene, who takes “her friends” with her to the tomb. This narrative information serves to divulge three purposes: who is Mary Magdalene, why does she go to the tomb, and why now, and not on the day of Jesus’ death. (The vague reference to “her friends” may be an attempt at harmonization, due to the fact that the only one whom the canonical gospels agree went to the tomb was Mary Magdalene: the four show a huge variance in the names of the women who went with her.) It is noted that “the fear of the Jews” (there it is again!) is what prevented her to “[do] for the tomb of the Lord those which women are accustomed to do for those who had died and were beloved by them.” This motif is a dominant theme in GP. Peter and the other male disciples hide themselves because of it; Mary Magdalene could not at first perform the customary rites because the Jews were “burning with wrath.” When she does go with her friends they are still afraid “lest the Jews should see them.”

At this point the account shows the most similarity with Mark’s gospel, apart from the fact that the women apparently do not so much intend to anoint the body as to bring funeral gifts “for his memorial” and to mourn at great length (here we see clear traces of the cult of the dead and of graves in antiquity as a whole). For instance, Mary asks who will roll away the blocking stone for them - only to find it already open (cf. Mark 16:3-4). They see a “young man” (singular) inside the tomb (cf. 16:5; compare with the two “men”/“angels” of Luke 24:4 and John 20:12; and the angel sitting on the stone outside the tomb in Matthew 28:2, 5). The man asks the women three questions - “Why did you come? Who are you looking for? Not the one who was crucified?” - and then tells them that Jesus has risen from the dead (cf. the statements in 16:6-7). After the statement, GP includes the comment that “the women, frightened, ran away.” (cf. 16:8)

The statement “he has risen and went away there, from where he was sent” can be read as indicating that the author viewed the resurrection of Jesus and His ascension as being essentially one event (note earlier that in the resurrection Jesus’ head “surpassed the heavens”). The risen Jesus has already returned to “where he was sent,” although we can infer that He is still able to appear to His disciples (if the final pericope relates a parallel story to John 21). In fact, John also seems telescope Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension back to the Father into one event, anticipating their final outcome - Jesus’ “glorification.” This conflation of the resurrection and the ascension can also be observed in a few other works such as Epistula Apostolorum 51 and possibly also the Epistle of Barnabas 15.9 (“Wherefore also we keep the eighth day for rejoicing, in the which also Jesus rose from the dead, and having been manifested ascended into the heavens”). Codex Bobiensis (5th century) has this interesting variant between Mark 16:3 and 4: “But suddenly at the third hour of the day there was darkness over the whole circle of the earth, and angels descended from the heavens, and as he was rising (?) in the glory of the living God (?), at the same time they ascended with him; and immediately it was light. Then the women went to the tomb…”

 

[thistle]

As I read the other posts, I came to that conclusion and decided to delete my post since it was rather obvious that you already understood this.

The Canon was closed at the Council of Trent.

 

[patrick457]

Now it was the last day of Unleavened Bread, and many were going out, returning to their homes, because the feast had ended; but we, the twelve disciples of the Lord wept and grieved, and each, grieving on account of what had happened, went to his home. But I, Simon Peter, and Andrew my brother, having taken our nets, went away to the sea, and there with us was Levi of Alphaeus, whom the Lord

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This is the final (surviving) part of the text (which breaks off mid-sentence), and the second of two instances of first-person narration in the gospel. The feast of unleavened bread (which lasted for a week) finally ends, and it seems that it is only at this point that the twelve disciples leave the city and return home like the other pilgrims who had come to the feast. Note that the pseudepigraphical author still speaks of “the twelve disciples of the Lord:” is Judas still alive and in their company in this retelling? (cf. the difficult passage in 1 Corinthians 15:5, where St. Paul still speaks of Jesus appearing to “Cephas, then to the twelve.”) A few authors like Hyam Maccoby have latched onto these two texts as evidence that the defection of Judas Iscariot never really took place, but this conclusion is premature. There is also a possibility that the number, if not a simple slip of the mind on the author’s part, is meant to be a symbolic catch-all term influenced by the Pauline usage in 1 Corinthians 15.

In any case, the disciples, still preoccupied with mourning after a whole week, attempt to go back to their former lives. It is unclear whether the author excludes apparitions of the risen Jesus in Jerusalem (is he following Matthew’s and Mark’s lead here for an appearance in the Galilee?), or that he keeps a space open for them but does not mention them explicitly. At least we are told that Peter, along with Andrew and “Levi” - and perhaps other disciples - went to fish in “the sea” (the Sea of Galilee?); this may well have been followed by the account of an apparition either by the shore (cf. John 21) or in the house of Levi (as in the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum).

In the night, therefore, when the first day of the week drew on, he appeared to Mary Magdalene and to Mary the daughter of James; and in the morning of the first day of the week he went in to (the house of) Levi; and then he appeared also to us ourselves. And he said to us, teaching us: “Are you fasting for me these days? Or have I any need that you should afflict yourselves? But it is for your brethren that you have done this; and do the same in these days when you fast, and on the fourth of the week and on the Friday always, as it is written in Zechariah: ‘The fourth fast, and the fifth fast’ (8:19), which is the Friday. For it is not lawful to you to fast on the first of the week, because it is my resurrection; wherefore the first of the week is not counted in the number of the days of the Fast of the Passion, but they are counted from the second day of the week, and are five days. Wherefore, ‘The fourth fast, and the fifth fast, and the seventh fast, and the tenth fast shall be to the house of Israel’ (Zechariah 8:19). Fast then from the second day of the week, six days wholly, until the night after the Sabbath; and it shall be reckoned to you as a week. But ‘the tenth,’—because the beginning of my name is Yod,—wherein was made the inception of the fasts. But (fast) not after the custom of the former People, but according to the new testament which I have appointed you: that you may be fasting for them on the fourth day of the week, because on the fourth of the week they began to destroy their souls, and apprehended me. —For the night after the third of the week belongs to the fourth of the week, as it is written: ‘There was evening and there was morning, one day’ (Genesis 1.5). The evening therefore belongs to the following day: for on the third of the week at evening I ate my Pascha with you, and in the night they apprehended me. —But fast for them also on the Friday, because thereon they crucified me, in the midst of their festival of unleavened bread, as it is said of old in David: ‘In the midst of their festivals they set their signs, and they knew not’ (Psalm 74:4).

“And be constant in fasting during these days always, and especially you who are of the Gentiles. For because the People was not obedient, I delivered them (the Gentiles) from blindness and from the error of idols and received them: that through your fast and theirs who are of the Gentiles, and your service during those days, when you pray and intercede for the error and destruction of the People, your prayer and intercession may be accepted before my Father who is in heaven, as though from one mouth of all the faithful on earth; and (that) all things which they did to me may be forgiven them. For this reason also I have already said to you in the Gospel: ‘Pray for your enemies’ (cf. Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27), and: ‘Blessed are those who mourn’ (Matthew 5:4), over the destruction of those who believe not.”

 

[patrick457]

In fact, GP also shares similarities with the Didascalia Apostolorum. For one, the Didascalia also attributes the crucifixion to Herod and the Jews:

Therefore you shall fast in the days of the Pascha from the tenth, which is the second day of the week; and you shall sustain yourselves with bread and salt and water only, at the ninth hour, until the fifth day of the week. But on the Friday and on the Sabbath fast wholly, and taste nothing. You shall come together and watch and keep vigil all the night with prayers and intercessions, and with reading of the Prophets, and with the Gospel and with Psalms, with fear and trembling and with earnest supplication, until the third hour in the night after the Sabbath; and then break your fasts. For thus did we also fast, when our Lord suffered, for a testimony of the three days; and we were keeping vigil and praying and interceding for the destruction of the People, because that they erred and confessed not our Saviour. So do you also pray that the Lord may not remember their guilt against them to the end for the guile which they used against our Lord, but may grant them a place of repentance and conversion, and forgiveness of their wickedness.

For he who was a heathen and of a foreign people, Pilate the judge, did not consent to their deeds of wickedness, but took water and washed his hands, and said: “I am innocent of the blood of this man” (Matthew 27:24). But the People answered and said: “His blood be upon us, and upon our children” (Matthew 27:25); and Herod commanded that he should be crucified; and our Lord suffered for us on the Friday. Especially incumbent on you therefore is the fast of the Friday and of the Sabbath; and likewise the vigil and watching of the Sabbath, and the reading of the Scriptures, and psalms, and prayer and intercession for them that have sinned, and the expectation and hope of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, until the third hour in the night after the Sabbath. And then offer your oblations; and thereafter eat and make good cheer, and rejoice and be glad, because that the earnest of our resurrection, Christ, is risen. And this shall be a law to you for ever, to the end of the world. For to those who have not believed in our Saviour he is dead, because their hope in him is dead; but to you who believe, our Lord and Saviour is risen, because your hope in him is immortal and living for ever.

Fast then on the Friday, because thereon the People killed themselves in crucifying our Saviour; and on the Sabbath also, because it is the sleep of our Lord; for it is a day which ought especially to be kept with fasting: even as blessed Moses also, the prophet of all (things touching) this matter, commanded. For because he knew by the Holy Spirit and it was commanded him by Almighty God, who knew what the People were to do to His Son and His beloved Jesus Christ,—as even then they denied him in the person of Moses, and said: “Who has appointed you head and judge over us?” (Exodus 2:14)—therefore he bound them beforehand with mourning perpetually, in that he set apart and appointed the Sabbath for them. For they deserved to mourn, because they denied their Life, and laid hands upon their Saviour and delivered him to death. Wherefore, already from that time there was laid upon them a mourning for their destruction.

We can see here in the Didascalia the pattern of emphasizing Jewish guilt for Jesus’ death and then linking it to a call of repentance I have noted earlier.

 

[patrick457]

In Conclusion (Finally! )

What distinguishes the Gospel of Peter from the canonical NT gospels is its massive apologetic and polemic reasoning. This demonstrates that it was a product of a community which had to stake out claims for the uniqueness of Jesus in strikng ways, moving away from the reticence of the gospel narratives toward the realm of the magical and the fantastic.

While there are recent attempts (cf. John Dominic Crossan) to identify and distill from FP the oldest stratum of the passion tradition, on which the canonical gospels too would have based their accounts, these do not stand up to a closer examination of the text. Crossan claims that after removing material dependent on the canonical gospels - which he characterizes as later editorial accretions to the text - the resultant material, which he calls the Cross Gospel, is more primitive than the synoptic gospels and is, in fact, their source. Although, it is argued, this source is preserved in its more pristine form in GP than it is in the heavily edited canonical passion narratives. In other words, he argues that the Cross Gospel was used by the canonical gospels (all of which heavily reworked it), and then later someone drew from the canonical gospels and used them to rework the Cross Gospel, thereby producing our surviving Gospel of Peter. Two arguments against this theory are as follows: first, even within the material that is left in this ‘Cross Gospel’, there appear to be elements that are still dependent on canonical sources and represent a theological development of canonical traditions (cf). the story of the penitent thief, 4.10-14; cf. Luke 23:39-41. Second, the actual preserved text of GP does not seem to have the kind of disjunctions that usually point to such literary seams.

A less nuanced version of the theory that GP contains a more primitive narrative than the canonical gospels is advocated by Paul Mirecki. He claims that the final version of the Gospel of Peter appears to have been in circulation by the middle of the 1st century, presumably prior to the composition of any of the canonical accounts, but there was also an early literary stage which the evangelists drew upon in composing their own narratives. This claim however falls foul of the obvious places where GP is dependent on canonical sources (something which Crossan also admits). Not only is it possible to detect clear parallels between the canonical stories and the Akhmim fragment, but the parallels appear deritative of the canonical gospels, and moreover it contains a number of traits customarily found only at a late stage of tradition history. Many of its theological concerns reflect the known developments of Christian thinking of the 2nd-3rd centuries: the exclusive calling of Jesus as “the Lord,” the transfer of responsibility of His death from Pilate to Herod and the Jews, the intensification of apologetic motifs to such a degree that alleged eyewitnesses of the resurrection are produced, and finally the emphasis on the miraculous and the bizarre like a self-animated stone, giant figures and a walking, talking cross.

This text is no repository of unadulterated historical information concerning the Passion. Instead, it is heavily overlaid with virulent (but for the period, not very exceptional) anti-Judaism, apologetic concerns, and a desire to weave together details from the canonical gospels. This text is no repository of unadulterated historical information concerning the Passion. Instead, it is heavily overlaid with anti-Judaism, apologetic concerns, and a desire to weave together details from the canonical gospels. The author of GP makes the story of Jesus speak to the concerns and needs of the current situations of his audience.

 

[patrick457]

This text is no repository of unadulterated historical information concerning the Passion. Instead, it is heavily overlaid with virulent (but for the period, not very exceptional) anti-Judaism, apologetic concerns, and a desire to weave together details from the canonical gospels. This text is no repository of unadulterated historical information concerning the Passion. Instead, it is heavily overlaid with anti-Judaism, apologetic concerns, and a desire to weave together details from the canonical gospels. The author of GP makes the story of Jesus speak to the concerns and needs of the current situations of his audience.

Whoa, typo!

 

[patrick457]

Clearly a ‘doctored’ …self-serving account to support a splinter group’s beliefs.

Yes, ‘splinter group’ here meaning ‘Christianity’.

Also…
RE: Roman Guards account in the Gospels …guards were killed if caught sleeping or if task assigned to them was not accomplished. No guard would of trusted the task of sealing tomb to Joseph or Apostles. They would of personally verified presence of body within, and resealed tomb —if necessary, before settling in for guard duties.

Thus, the claim of ancient & modern skeptics, that Jesus’ body was stolen, is w/o merit.

You’re getting the hang of it! That’s what the author of GP did: he retold the Jesus story for overt apologetic purposes. GP’s resurrection narrative is purposely written such that it covers up the possible ‘holes’ in the canonical accounts that anti-Christians might latch into, and specifically shoots down the argument that the body of Jesus was stolen.

 

[patrick457]

Aside from the Akhmim text, what seems to be a fragment of the same work dating from the late 2nd-early 3rd century was apparently found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (P. Oxy. 2949), showing at least that the work was already known in Egypt by that time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t add much to our understanding of the work - mainly because the surviving text - a variant of that found in Akhmim (specifically, GP 2.3-5a: “Now there was Joseph the friend of Pilate and the Lord there…”) - is very fragmented.

http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/3658/2949r.jpg

(Fragment 1)

…] τ …]
…]
…] ναι …]
…]
… the] friend of P*l[ate]
… υς] that he c[o]mm[an]ded
… com]ing to Pilat[e]
… bo]dy to the burial-place
… to Herod?] request[ed]
…] ηναι sayin[g]
… α]ἰτήσα
…] him …]
…] that α …]

(Fragment 2)

μου …]
Pi[late …]
someone (?) …]
μεν …]

For anyone who likes a little more in-depth on the matter I recommend Thomas A. Wayment’s “A Reexamination of the Text of P.Oxy. 2949” in the Journal of Biblical Literature, volume 128, no. 2 (Summer 2009, p. 375-382).*

 

[patrick457]

To close this all off, I should note something about the versification of GP (something I’ve never provided but can be seen in online versions of the text). The way the text is divided is rather odd, in that it is cited by chapter and verse, yet the sixty verses continue from start to finish across the fourteen chapters. They do not go back to verse 1 at each chapter. So what you have is:

1:1 But of the Judaeans none washed the hands, neither Herod nor any one of his judges. And since they would not wash Pilate rose up, 2 and then Herod the king orders that the Lord be taken away, speaking to them, “What I ordered you to do to him, do.”

2:3 Now there was Joseph the friend of Pilate and the Lord there, and knowing they were about to crucify him, he came to Pilate and requested the body of the Lord for burial, 4 and Pilate, having sent to Herod, requested his body. 5 And Herod said, “Brother Pilate, even if nobody had requested him, we would have buried him since also Sabbath is dawning, because it is written in the Law: ‘The sun must not set on one who has been murdered.’” And he handed him over to the people before the first of Unleavened Bread, their feast.

And so on and so forth.

The reason for this quirky detail is due to the fact that the Anglican clergyman and scholar J. Armitage Robinson (1858-1933) gave a lecture a mere three days after the text was first seen at Cambridge University in which he asserted that this newly-discovered gospel was dependent upon the four canonical gospels. At the same time as Robinson, another scholar, Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) was pressing the position that the GP conflated both canonical and noncanonical traditions. Robinson divided the document into fourteen mini-chapters while Harnack, independent of Robinson, divided it into sixty verses. While early editions usually followed one or the other, the standard referencing system now consists of citing Robinson’s chapter reference along with Harnack’s verse number. (Yet another person, Henry Barclay Swete, divided the text into twelve chapters, but his versification method has since fallen by the wayside.)

 

[brb3]

Yes, ‘splinter group’ here meaning ‘Christianity’.

You’re getting the hang of it! That’s what the author of GP did: he retold the Jesus story for overt apologetic purposes. GP’s resurrection narrative is purposely written such that it covers up the possible ‘holes’ in the canonical accounts that anti-Christians might latch into, and specifically shoots down the argument that the body of Jesus was stolen.

Exactly, -----thats why the Gospel of Peter is not the authentic Apostle Peter’s work …but, a treasure trove for skeptics to hyperventilate over. //// meaning JD Crossan, et al.

 

[patrick457]

Exactly, -----thats why the Gospel of Peter is not the authentic Apostle Peter’s work …but, a treasure trove for skeptics to hyperventilate over. //// meaning JD Crossan, et al.

Where did anyone say that GP was actually written by Peter?

 

[patrick457]

Exactly, -----thats why the Gospel of Peter is not the authentic Apostle Peter’s work …but, a treasure trove for skeptics to hyperventilate over. //// meaning JD Crossan, et al.

I’ll think you’ll find that everything is a treasure trove for skeptics to hyperventilate over.

I’m thinking of doing something on the Acts of Pilate next. Hey, it’s Lent. But then again, the amount of differences between the various textual versions of that work (unlike GP, the Acts of Pilate/the Gospel of Nicodemus was popular enough that it continued to be copied even during the Middle Ages) is kinda discouraging.

 

[brb3]

I’ll think you’ll find that everything is a treasure trove for skeptics to hyperventilate over.

I’m thinking of doing something on the Acts of Pilate next. Hey, it’s Lent. But then again, the amount of differences between the various textual versions of that work (unlike GP, the Acts of Pilate/the Gospel of Nicodemus was popular enough that it continued to be copied even during the Middle Ages) is kinda discouraging.

Cuz fiction will travel halfway round the globe B4 the truth gets its boots on. Human nature is fallen, and retained by every generation…misery loving company.
Also, we love the sensational stuff. Like Malachy’s Prophesy…which u must admit is very interesting…!!! PETER THE ROMAN ??? In 1 month we may know.