The Gospel according to Peter.

        The feeling that Jesus, being divine, could not have suffered a humiliating and agonizing death such as the gospels described led many Christians early in the second century to resort to the view that he only seemed to suffer but actually took refuge in another form, leaving his material body at the mercy of his executioners. This startling doctrine, as we have seen, was particularly opposed and condemned in the letters of Ignatius and the Gospel and Letters of John, which insist that Jesus Christ did indeed come in the flesh, that is, in human form (I John 4:2; II John 7).

        On the other side, there arose the idea of writing a gospel to tell the story, at least of Jesus' passion, from the Docetic point of view. Probably in Syria, between A.D. mo and 140, some Docetist produced such a book, assuming the great name of Peter and writing it in the first person: “I, Simon Peter, and Andrew my brother, took our nets and went off to the sea,” as the one fragment of the book that has come down to us reads in its last lines.

        Fifty years ago all that we knew of this book was gathered from the brief mentions of it in the writings of Serapion, Origen, Eusebius, and Theodoret. But in 1886, a fragment of it was discovered by a French expedition in a tomb at Akhmim, in Upper Egypt, and in 1892 it was published, along with a Greek mathematical papyrus, which in the eyes of the discoverers rather overshadowed it. But English and German scholars were not slow in discovering its extraordinary importance, for here at last was a veritable fragment of this long-lost gospel. It was written upon five leaves of a little parchment book, which contained also a portion of the Apocalypse of Peter and the first thirty-two chapters of the Book of Enoch, the first appearance of that work in Greek in modern times.

        The fragment of the Gospel of Peter began abruptly with the handwashing incident at the trial of Jesus, continued with an account of the crucifixion and the resurrection, and broke off as Peter and some other disciples were setting out on a fishing expedition, evidently the one recorded in the epilogue of John. The use of every one of the canonical gospels, including John 21, is unmistakable. Their accounts are often heightened by slight touches, chiefly to enhance the guilt of the Jews, but there is little new material.

        Jesus, while being crucified, held his peace as though he felt no pain, and on the cross he cries, “My power, my power, you have forsaken me,” and is taken up.[13] After the entombment, two figures descend from heaven in the night and open the tomb and bring Jesus out. While their heads reach to heaven, his head overpasses the heavens, and across follows them. The cross declares that Jesus has “preached to them that sleep” — an allusion to the Descent into Hades, reflected in Ephesians and I Peter.

        It is possible that the Oxyrhynchus gospel fragment 1224, a badly broken papyrus from the fourth century, refers to this gospel, which probably emphasized those portions of the gospel story in which Peter was conspicuous, such as his great confession of Jesus as Christ, his denial of him, and his conversation with him on the seashore (John 21:15-20) on the eve of which the Akhmim fragment breaks off. The Oxyrhynchus fragment is too small, however, for this guess to be confirmed.

        Justin, who was converted at Ephesus about A.D. 135, and wrote his Apology at Rome, soon after 150, may have known the Gospel of Peter, for he occasionally uses its phraseology. But Serapion, who became bishop of Antioch toward the end of the second century (A.D. 191), is the first Christian writer to mention it by name. He had heard of its currency in the church at Rhossus, nearby, and took occasion to examine it. He wrote a letter about it, probably to that church, admitting that it contained much that was in accord with the accepted gospels, but pointing out the heretical character of some of its contents. He recognized it as a work of the Docetists. His letter is unfortunately lost, but an important part of it is quoted in Eusebius' Church History (vi. 12).

        Although Serapion's great Egyptian contemporary, Clement of Alexandria, makes no mention of the Gospel of Peter, Origen, in the first half of the third century, refers to it, along with the Book of James, as supporting the idea that Jesus' brothers were the sons of Joseph not by Mary but by a former wife (On Matthew I3:55). Eusebius, early in the fourth century (A.D- 326), mentions the Gospel of Peter and records Serapion's investigation of it, but it is doubtful whether he actually knew the book himself. He classes it among the books cited by the schismatics in the name of the apostles (Church History iii. 25. 6) and says that no church writer has made use of it. Still later, Theodoret, a Mesopotamian bishop early in the fifth century, refers to the Gospel according to Peter as being used by the Jewish sect of the Nazaraeans, or Nazarenes, but he does not seem to have known the book himself.

        When the Akhmim parchment that preserves the fragment (174 lines) of its text was written, the gospel was already disappearing; the little manuscript is complete as it stands and was evidently copied from a fragment. The manuscript has been variously dated, but closer study of its hand shows it is probably not later than the fourth century. It was almost the only apocryphal gospel written pseudonymously in the first person in the name of an apostle, and one of the few that were produced to present sectarian views in gospel form.