Gospel of Peter

The surviving fragment of an early passion and resurrection narrative.

Historical English Source Edition

The reader presents the historical English source wording below.

Editor of the Cambridge Texts and Studies

The important fragment of which Mr. J. Armitage Robinson's translation here follows was discovered by the French Archæological Mission, Cairo, in a grave (supposed to be a monk's) in an ancient cemetery at Akhmîm (Panopolis), in Upper Egypt, in 1886. It was published in 1892 under the care of M. Bouriant in vol. ix., fasc. i., of the Memoirs of the French Archæological Mission at Cairo. The same parchment which contained this fragment also contained a fragment of the Revelation of Peter and a fragment of the Book of Enoch in Greek. The parchment codex is assigned to a date between the eighth and the twelfth century.

Before this discovery the following is all that was known of the Gospel of Peter: 1. Serapion, Bishop of Antioch 190-203, writing to the church at Rhossus, says (Eusebius, H. E., vi., 12, 2): "We, brethren, receive Peter and the other Apostles even as Christ; but the writings that go falsely by their names we, in our experience, reject, knowing that such things as these we never received. When I was with you I supposed you all to be attached to the right faith; and so without going through the gospel put forward under Peter's name, I said, If this is all that makes your petty quarrel, [1] why then let it be read.' But now that I have learned from information given me that their mind was lurking in some hole of heresy, I will make a point of coming to you again: so, brethren, expect me speedily. Knowing then, brethren, of what kind of heresy was Marcion--[Here follows a sentence where the text is faulty.]...From others who used this very gospel--I mean from the successors of those who started it, whom we call Docetæ; for most of its ideas are of their school--from them, I say, I borrowed it, and was able to go through it, and to find that most of it belonged to the right teaching of the Saviour, but some things were additions." From this we learn that a Gospel of Peter was in use in the church of Rhossus in the end of the second century, but that controversy had arisen as to its character, which, on a careful examination, Serapion condemned.

2. Origen ( 253 a.d.), in commenting on Matthew x. 17, says: "But, proceeding on the tradition that is recorded in the Gospel according to Peter or in the Book of James, they say that there are certain brothers of Jesus, the sons of Joseph by a former wife, who lived with him before Mary."

3. Eusebius (H. E., iii., 3, 2) says: "As to that work, however, which is ascribed to him, called The Acts,' and The Gospel according to Peter,' and that called The Preaching and the Revelations of Peter,' we know nothing of their being handed down as Catholic writings; since neither among the ancient nor the ecclesiastical writers of our own day has there been one that has appealed to testimony taken from them." And in H. E., iii., 25, 6 sq., he includes the Gospel of Peter among the forged heretical gospels--"those that are adduced by the heretics under the name of the apostles,...of which no one of those writers in the ecclesiastical succession has condescended to make any mention in his works; and, indeed, the character of the style itself is very different from that of the apostles; and the sentiments, and the purport of those things that are advanced in them, deviating as far as possible from sound orthodoxy, evidently proves they are the fictions of heretical men; whence they are not only to be ranked among the spurious writings, but are to be rejected as altogether absurd and impious." It is, however, uncertain whether Eusebius himself was acquainted with the Gospel of Peter.

4. Theodoret ( c. 455), in his Religious History, ii., 2, says that the Nazarenes used "the gospel called according to Peter.'" Later references in Western literature, e.g., Jerome, De vir. ill., i., and the Decretum Gelasianum, condemning the book, are based upon the judgement of Eusebius, and not upon direct knowledge (cf. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristl. Lit., I. Th., p. 11).

This was all that was known of the Gospel of Peter till the publication of the Akhmîm fragment. The latter extends to about 174 stichi, counting 32 words to the stichus. It begins in the middle of the history of the Passion, just after Pilate has washed his hands of all responsibility, and ends in the middle of a sentence, with the departure of the disciples into Galilee at the end of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, exactly a week after the crucifixion, the ostensible author, Peter, and Andrew, his brother, taking their nets and going to the sea; "and there was with us Levi the son of Alphæus, whom the Lord..."

The accompanying Synoptical Table shows where the Petrine narrative agrees with and where it varies from those supplied by the canonical gospels. Of that part of the Passion history which it narrates, it gives an account which follows the main lines of the canonical tradition, but with important variations in detail. Of the events between the burial and the resurrection of our Lord, its account is much more ample and detailed than anything in the canonical tradition.

Harnack (Texte und Untersuchungen, ix., 2, 2d ed., p. 76) gives the following list of new traits contained in the Petrine account of the history of the Passion and burial:

1. Herod was the judge who condemned Jesus, and to him application had to be made for the body.