The Gospel of Peter is a retelling of Jesus’ passion narrative. It was lost for a long time. It is claimed to be written by the Apostle Peter, the favourite disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, the one who denied Jesus 3 times before the event of the crucifixion – according to the bible. Peter supposedly was the first bishop of Rome and Antioch, and the first pope of the roman/orthodox church. Scholars doubt this happened, from what we know, is that Christianity was spread by Paul, the former Saul and tax collector before he converted to Christianity – the true founder of this belief. He even mentioned in the Epistle to the Galatians that he had a dispute with Peter because of theological differences. Considering that Peter has grown up in Jewish tradition and was a simple fisherman who was most likely circumcised and literal as a huge majority at this time couldn’t read or write because an education system was lacking for the majority of the population. This was a privilege of the rich and powerful. It seems unlikely that a simple guy would be a leader of a church in Rom but it is even more unlikely that he wrote a Gospel of the many Epistle in his name. At this time authors did claim that their work was a reference to an authority to make their story more believable.
In contrast to the Gospel of Thomas which speaks about the wisdom of Jesus and doesn’t have extraordinary events in it or the Gospel of Judas which has a different take on the portrait of Judas Iscariot, the Gospel of Peter fills a gap in the desires of Christians who wanted to know how Jesus escaped death.
Gospel of Peter PDF
We don’t have the whole Gospel of Peter, the beginning and the end of the script are missing, and that’s why we can’t know how long the Gospel originally was. What we have you can download as a PDF. Hope you will enjoy it!
Who wrote the Gospel of Peter?
Although the Gospel is ending with the words: I Peter. Scholars do think it wasn’t written by the disciple of Jesus, Peter.
The Gospel of Peter was written from the perspective of the disciple Simon who was later renamed, Peter. Peter means little rock in Greek or Cephas which means little Rock in Aramaic. The language of the Jewish people at this time. We don’t know who wrote the Gospel of Peter. Different scholars have various options about when and who wrote the Gospels or Epistles in general.
We know about the Gospel of Peter before Its discovery
Yes, we only knew about its existence from early Christian writers. Eusebius is telling us that there was a bishop called Serapion of Antioch. Eusebius is quoting a text from Serapion where Serapion writes to a church and says: when I was among you, you asked me if it was okay to read the Gospel of Peter in your church and I said it was fine, since then I have gotten home and got a copy of this Gospel for myself. I have received it from a special branch of Christians. I have looked through it, and it contains excellent teachings and stories of Jesus, but have checked through it, and it contains excellent teachings and stories of Jesus, but some passages support a docetic Christology.
Docetism comes from the Greek word decao meaning to seem or appear. It is a label to name another group. Serapion want to label the other Christian group as heretics because it didn’t fit his understanding of Jesus’ body which he thought is bad. Orthodox Christianity labelled any Christian group as docetic who didn’t exactly follow everything they believed Jesus did. For example, if another Christian group didn’t believe Jesus came from a virgin.
Serapion discouraged his flock and other Christian nominations to read the Gospel of Peter as it could lead them away from in their eyes true Christian nomination. Because of these letters the early church further used to communicate what was going on in their dominion, we know about the Gospel of Peter.
When was the Gospel of Peter typed?
We know that the Gospel of Peter was compiled most likely around 160-200 AD. This is the consent of most scholars as it has many similarities with the New Testament Gospels, but some disagree like John Dominic Crossan. He thinks that the origin of the text could go back even further than the Gospels in the New Testament, and it could surpass them, but most scholars would disagree.
How was the Gospel of Peter found?
A French archaeologist going with the name of Urbain Bouriant found in an Egyptian Christian monk’s grave – in 1884 – an old papyrus document written in the Coptic language, near the Egyptian city of Akhmim. It was the first Gospel outside the New Testament that we have rediscovered. This important script dates back to the 8-9 century AD. It is incredible that the Gospel of Peter was circulating at this time.
We found some second-century fragments of the Gospel of Peter were discovered in Oxarincus, Egypt but they hardly decipherable, and they don’t give us more information than we already had.
Gospel of Peter and the resurrection account
The Gospel of Peter is the only Gospel which speaks about the event and what would have happened at the resurrection at Jesus’ tomb in great detail. This story is remarkable and will come with a surprise. So hold on…
This is unique to this document. The resurrection in the Gospel of Peter is fascinating at the same time. I believe that if you take this fake seriously you would shake your head and quickly define it as rubbish, but you should not judge straight away. In the Bible, there are many events which are maybe not as exaggerated as his tale but walking on water, raising the dead and making water into wine is not something we can observe daily.
Gospel of Peter the Walking, talking cross
What is very fascinating about this fictional work is, especially sections 36-42. Jesus’ tomb was guarded by two Roman soldiers, and they saw two young male beings descending from heaven. The stone which closed the sepulchre was rolling away, and the grave opened. The two unidentified characters (probably angels) enter the last destination of Jesus’ body. After a while, three men came out of the crypt and the head of the two angels stretched to heaven but the led-out one extended even further. After them, the cross followed and a voice from heaven asked: Have you made a declaration to the ones which are dead? And the cross said: YES.
The critic about the interpretation of the walking, talking cross translation
The scholar Ian Mills is arguing that from the only surviving copy of the Gospel of Peter the speaking and preaching cross translation doesn’t make a lot of sense, and sceptical he is very sceptical about this reading. He has good arguments for this. He is referring to his supervisor Mark Godacker, who is pointing out that there could be a mistake in the translation because the script in this part is containing jumbled words. They have to reconstruct what it actually says there. Ian Mills is speculating that the original writer of this copy made a mistake and he/she tried to correct it. Ian is suggesting that the original could mean the crucified one instead of the word cross. This would give the text a different new meaning. It could mean that the voice in heaven was speaking instead to the cross to Jesus personally and not the cross came out and spoke – it was Jesus instead. He is referring to a document called the dura fragment, which is a 3rd-century piece which archaeologists found in the city of Dura Europos (therefore the name of Dura) in this ancient script of the New Testament of the Luke Gospel, it refers to Jesus as the crucified one to give appreciation to the holiness of Jesus for not mentioning his name, like ancient Hebrews have done with the personal name Yahweh (YHWH) by not speaking it out and referring to him as lord or god. Another text which would also fall in line with this interpretation is the Ascension of Isaiah which describes the resurrection of Jesus exactly like this as Ion Mills added.
This reading of the Gospel makes much more sense to me personally instead of a fictional cross-walking and talking. This is one of the examples we can see that scholars although how educated and knowledgeable they are in some aspects there is some disagreement and the consent doesn’t get mean, things are necessarily true. History and science are able to change and correct things if better proof comes up, it may take a while but this is the best method we have at our disposal.
What was the Author’s intent in Compiling the Peter Gospel?
You can see we are dealing here with a fictional work that even the early church fathers found too weird. The story of a walking, talking cross and the two angels whose heads prolonged to the heavens is just unbelievable.
The creator and maybe even redactors (which was quite common for people to add text to something they thought was missing or wrong) of the Gospel of Peter properly found the lack of information in the canonical Gospel disturbing their beliefs. Clearly, the way it was written shows us that compiler of this scripture wanted to make a point, which is that Jesus is a highly ranked entity in the kingdom of God, and he is above the angels of heaven!
The Gospel of Peter has Anti-Judaic teachings
This Gospel can be interpreted to be antisemitic. In this text, it is not the Romans who crucified Jesus it is the Jewish people this is a very antisemitic Gospel. In the script, Pilate gives Jesus to the Jews, and they crucify him, which would historically not have happened. He would have been stoned to death for claiming he is the son of God, for the insult Jesus would have done to them, but I will point a few of them out to illustrate it more clearly:
In section one of the Gospel of Peter, the Jewish people refused to wash their hands in water including King Herod, but Pilate stood up! He washed his hands to demonstrate that he wasn’t supporting the claims against Jesus, also he showed respect. We can see clearly that this is Pro-Roman and Anti-Jewish propaganda.
Now the Gospel starts to illustrate that the Jewish people are mocking Jesus
The Jewish tormentors according to the script, were starting mocking Jesus at the beginning of segment 6 by calling him the son of god – ironically. The creator of the text intended to express, a sarcastic way of mocking Jesus. For the Jesus movement, this embarrassment must have felt shameful. Now the text pushes this further in the parts 7 – 9 with variations of mocking and for the victim with shameful insults.
The Jewish people crucify Jesus according to the Gospel
At the crucifixion event, the Jewish people, not the Roman crucified Jesus and the mocking of him for being the son of God continues.
Differences between the Gospel of Peter and the Canon
In the east of the Roman Empire, the Gospel of Peter was widely spread. It circulates for quite a long time at least until the 8 century AD as found in the Gospel in the 8-century tomb. The canon wasn’t fixed then, and we know about 40 other Gospels from which we know of. It is remarkable that in the Gospel of Peter, Pilate is not the judge of Jesus’ fate, these are the Jewish people.
Interestingly, some doctrinal teachings are different in the Gospel of Peter from the canonical gospel. For example, in the canonical gospel, Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss; in the Gospel of Peter, however, it is an act of deceit. The canonical gospel has an introduction written by an unknown author who presents Jesus as a divine figure who will liberate humanity from the sufferings of this world; in the Gospel of Peter, this introduction is absent and Judas never speaks.
The Cry of Jesus on the cross
When Jesus is hanging on the cross and almost dying. He shouts out almost as if he would be in despair in Mark 15.34: Jesus cries out to his god as the main subject of disappointment, why he has given up on him but in Peter 19 he shouts: My power, my power why have you forsaken me?
The author of the Gospel of Peter could have chosen the words my power instead of god instead for good reasons. We know from the Gnostic belief system that before a spirit dies the powers or the divine spirit is leaving before the physical body is dying. We found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt or better known as the Nag Hammadi library many Gospels or Epistles like the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas which brought us closer to early Gnostic doctrine.
Gospel of Peter Summary
I pointed out earlier that nobody thinks the Gospel of Peter was written by the Apostle Peter. Some scholars think it was written early, but we have no proof of that. It would seem weird that disciple Peter was the witness of Jesus’ resurrection, and he is there at the right time and place, could read and write, and no other Gospel mentions Peter being at the place and time when Jesus was raised from the dead. We clearly can see how the Christian belief split into many views and over time a new story was born. People worship the Gospel of Peter as a real thing and bet their life on it, for them, it was as real as it is now for modern Christians that think Jesus walked on water and performed miracles. We should be careful what we want to believe and ask, challenge ourselves to what we think now is the real deal or just something that gives us comfort. It is fine if the feeling of comfort is helping you out to feel relaxed or is supporting you during a hard time, but we always should seek the truth – and if the truth means I don’t know then this would be the truth at the moment until better evidence appears.
