The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

by Bart D. Ehrman

  No one today thinks that Jesus' disciple Peter wrote the book. To that extent, Serapion was right. He had discovered a forgery.

  The Discovery of the Gospel of Peter

  The text was forgotten for centuries, known only from Eusebius's brief account. That changed dramatically during an archaeological excavation conducted by a French team operating out of Cairo, digging in upper Egypt in the town of Akhmim during the winter season of 1886-87. Under the direction of M. Grebant, the team uncovered the tomb of a monk in the Christian section of the town's cemetery. The tomb could date anywhere from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. What was of greatest significance, however, was not the tomb itself but what was in it, along with the monk. The monk had been buried with a manuscript.

  The manuscript probably dates to the seventh or eighth century, and it is reasonable to assume that it was the cherished property of the monk. It is an intriguing document. Sixty-six pages in length, written on parchment, it contains fragmentary remains of several apocryphal texts, not all of them Christian but all of them significant. The first text, on pp. 2-10 (p. 1 contains only the drawing of a cross), is a portion of the Gospel of Peter, about which I will be speaking momentarily. Next, on pp. 13-19, sewn into the book upside down (accidentally, one would suppose), is a fragmentary copy of the Apocalypse of Peter, an intriguing account, now known more fully from an ancient Ethiopic translation, in which Peter is shown the glorious afterlives of the saints and the eternal torments of the sinners. Then there are two passages taken from the Jewish apocryphal book known as Enoch, which is an account, known more fully from other sources, of a revelation supposedly delivered to Enoch, the famous figure from the Hebrew Bible who did not die but was taken alive up to heaven (Gen. 5:21-24). Finally there is a fragmentary text of the Acts of Saint Julian.

  This was a remarkable find, not least for its silent and completely unexpected testimony in microcosm of Christian unity and diversity, tolerance and intolerance. Tolerance: Here was a medieval monk buried with proscribed books, an array of texts, both Jewish and Christian, both orthodox and heretical. And yet intolerance: The manuscript contains the Apocalypse of Peter, whose author condemns to the fires of hell everyone who disagrees with his view of how to behave (including women who braid their hair to make themselves attractive, anyone who disobeys their parents, and bankers who lend money out at interest); and the Gospel of Peter, which is intolerant of Jews—who are portrayed as ignominious and responsible for the death of Jesus—and was itself condemned to oblivion by intolerant Christian leaders who objected to its theological views.

  The Gospel of Peter

  It is regrettable that the manuscript presents only a fragment of the Gospel of Peter. Not that the document in the monk's tomb is itself fragmentary: It is complete. But the first line of the Gospel text begins (after the opening decorative) in midsentence and also ends, prior to two blank pages, in midsentence. Whoever copied this Gospel in the seventh or eighth century, then, had before him only a fragment, which he transcribed into this small anthology along with other fragmentary texts available to him.

  The surviving fragment of the Gospel contains an account of Jesus' trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. It is impossible to know whether the book originally contained more than that—whether, for example, it was a "complete" Gospel like those of the New Testament, which begin with either Jesus' baptism (Mark and John) or his birth (Matthew and Luke), and contain accounts of his sayings and deeds, along with a narrative of his passion and resurrection. Scholars typically assume that the Gospel of Peter originally contained more than the passion and resurrection narratives that survive in the Akhmim fragment, that it was a fuller account like the New Testament Gospels—that is, that it contained stories from Jesus' public ministry as well. This is because several tiny fragments of Jesus' sayings have been discovered elsewhere in Egypt which may also have derived from the Gospel. These other fragments contain conversations between Jesus and Peter recorded in the first person—conversations not found in the fragment of the Gospel discovered in the monk's tomb."

  In any event, the Gospel fragment as we have it begins with the following words:

  . . . but none of the Jews washed his hands, nor did Herod or any of his judges. Since they did not wish to wash, Pilate stood up.

  It is a significant beginning for two reasons. It shows that, just before the fragment begins, the Gospel contained an account of Pilate washing his hands— a story found, among our New Testament Gospels, only in Matthew 27:24. Yet it displays a marked difference from the account in Matthew, which says not a word about anyone refusing to wash their hands. Thus in the Gospel of Peter, Herod, the "king of the Jews," and his Jewish judges, unlike the Roman governor Pilate, refuse to declare themselves innocent of Jesus' blood. This intimates an important aspect of the rest of the account. For here it is not the Romans who are responsible for Jesus' death. It is the Jews. This fragmentary Gospel is far more virulently anti-Jewish than any of those that made it into the New Testament.

  The intimation of an anti-Jewish slant is confirmed in the very next verse:

  Then King Herod ordered the Lord to be taken away and said to them, "Do everything that I ordered you to do to him."

  Here it is the Jewish king, not the Roman governor, who orders Jesus' death.

  The narrative continues with the request of Joseph (of Arimathea) for Jesus' body, the mockery of Jesus, and his crucifixion. These accounts are both like and unlike what we read in the canonical Gospels. For example, in v. 10, Jesus is said to be crucified between two criminals, as in the other Gospels, but here we find the unusual statement that "he was silent, as if he had no pain." This last statement could well be taken in a docetic way: Perhaps Jesus appeared to have no pain because he did not have any (whether the author meant it to be taken that way or not is another matter). Some scholars have seen this as supporting evidence that this fragment is from the "heretical" Gospel known to Serapion. Further confirmation may come several verses later. When Jesus is about to die, he utters his "cry of dereliction" in words similar to, but not identical with, those found in Mark's account. Here he says, "My power, O power, you have left me" (v. 19; cf. Mark 15:34); he is then said to be "taken up," even though his body remains on the cross. Is Jesus here bemoaning the departure of the divine Christ from him prior to his death, the view, as we have seen, of some docetic Christians?

  There is another interesting feature in this Gospel's account of Jesus' crucifixion. As in the Gospel of Luke, only one of the two criminals has something disparaging to say. He says it, however, not to Jesus but to the soldiers crucifying him. He tells them that he and the other criminal have deserved their punishment. But he asks, "This one, the Savior of the people, what wrong has he done you?" (v. 14). Angered by the rebuke, the soldiers order that "his legs not be broken, so that he would die in torment."

  After Jesus dies, the account continues by describing his burial and then, in the first person, the distress of the disciples: "We fasted and sat mourning and weeping, night and day, until the Sabbath" (v. 27). As in Matthew's Gospel, the Jewish leaders ask Pilate for soldiers to guard the tomb (see Matt. 27:62-66). This Gospel, however, provides more elaborate detail. The centurion in charge is named Petronius, who along with a number of soldiers rolls a huge stone in front of the tomb and seals it with seven seals. They then pitch their tent and stand guard (vv. 29-33).

  Then comes perhaps the most striking passage of the narrative, an actual account of Jesus' resurrection and emergence from the tomb, found in none of our other early Gospels. A crowd has come from Jerusalem and the surrounding area to see the tomb. During the night hours, they hear a great noise and see the heavens open up; two men descend in great splendor. The stone before the tomb rolls away of its own accord, and the two men enter. The soldiers standing guard awaken the centurion, who comes out to see the incredible spectacle. From the tomb there emerge three men; the heads of two of them reach up to the sky. They are supporting the third, whose head reache
s up beyond the skies. Behind them emerges a cross. A voice then speaks from heaven: "Have you preached to those who are asleep?" The cross replies, "Yes" (vv. 41.2).

  The soldiers run to Pilate and tell him all that has happened. The Jewish leaders beg him to keep the story quiet, for fear that they will be stoned, once the Jewish people realize what they have done in putting Jesus to death. Pilate commands the soldiers to silence, but only after reminding the Jewish leaders that Jesus' crucifixion was indeed their fault, not his (vv. 45-49). The next day at dawn, not knowing what has happened, Mary Magdalene goes with several women companions to the tomb to provide a more adequate burial for Jesus' body. But the tomb is empty, save for a heavenly visitor who tells her that the Lord has risen and gone. The manuscript then ends in the middle of a story that apparently described Jesus' appearance to some of his disciples (perhaps similar to that found in John 21:1-14): "But I, Simon Peter, and Andrew, my brother, took our nets and went off to the sea; and with us was Levi, the son of Alphaeus, whom the Lord . . ." (v. 60). Here the manuscript breaks off.

  It is this ending which shows that the author is trying to pass himself off as Jesus' own disciple. The good Christians of Rhossus notwithstanding, modern scholars have not been much fooled. This account was probably written after the canonical Gospels, long after Peter had died.

  Before giving reasons for thinking so, I should give a brief word of background. Most scholars think that Mark is our earliest surviving account of Jesus' life, written somewhere around 65 or 70 ce; that Matthew and Luke were produced ten or fifteen years later, possibly 80-85 ce; and that John was the last of the canonical accounts, written near the end of the first century, around 90 or 95 ce. The earliest traditions of Peter's death, however, indicate that he was executed during the persecution of Christians under the emperor Nero, around 64 ce.

  The author of the Gospel of Peter may have utilized the Gospels of the New Testament for his own accounts, but it is rather difficult to know for certain. There are not, for example, extensive word-for-word agreements between his account and any of the canonical four, and apart from evidence of this sort, it is difficult to establish that one author used another for a source. It may just as well be that this author, like our New Testament authors, had heard numerous stories about Jesus' life and death and recorded them in his own fashion, adding his own touches. In this case, the touches involve some intriguing legendary accretions—especially about the giant resurrected Jesus and the walking cross that speaks to the skies.

  The Gospel of Peter and Traditions about Pontius Pilate

  One of the reasons for thinking that the Gospel of Peter was written after our canonical accounts (and therefore long after Peter's death) involves the treatment of "the Jews" in his narrative. The kind of heightened anti-Judaism here corresponds with views that were developing in Christian circles in the second century, a period in which Christian anti-Judaism began to assert itself with particular vigor. One by-product of this increased animosity is that Christians began to exonerate Pilate for Jesus' death and to blame Jews—all Jews—more and more.

  It is an illuminating exercise to trace the treatment of Pilate through our surviving Gospels. The more he is excused, the more the Jews are blamed. Our earliest account, Mark, shows Pilate and the Jewish people reaching a kind of agreement to have Jesus crucified. Pilate then orders it, and Jesus is taken off immediately to his death (Mark 15:1-15). In Matthew's Gospel, written somewhat later, Pilate is warned by his wife, who has had a bad dream, not to be involved in the affair; Pilate then shows that he wants nothing to do with Jesus' death by washing his hands of the business. "I am innocent of this man's blood. See to it yourselves," he declares. The Jewish crowd then responds, "His blood be on us and our children" (Matt. 27:25), a response doomed to wreak havoc in the hands of Christian persecutors of Jews throughout the Middle Ages. But it is also completely consonant with views developing in early Christianity: If Pilate is innocent, then the Jews are themselves responsible for killing their own messiah (Matt. 27:11-26).

  In Luke's Gospel, written about the same time as Matthew, Pilate declares Jesus innocent three times, to no avail, and tries to arrange for King Herod, in town for the Passover Feast, to do the dirty work for him. But again it is to no avail. With little way out, Pilate yields to the demands of the Jewish leaders and orders Jesus crucified (Luke 23:1-15). In John's Gospel, the final canonical account to be written, Pilate again declares Jesus innocent three times, and then finally, when his hand is forced, turns Jesus over—not, however, to the Roman soldiers but to the Jewish people. Jesus is then crucified (John 18:28-19:16).

  So too in the somewhat later Gospel of Peter, where the Jewish culpability is heightened even further and Pilate takes a back seat both to the Jewish king Herod and to the Jewish people. It is Herod who orders the execution and the Jewish people who take full responsibility for what they have done: "Then the Jews, the elders, and the priests realized how much evil they had done to themselves and began beating their breasts, saying, 'Woe to us because of our sins. The judgment and the end of Jerusalem are near'" (v. 25). It is worth noting that it was in the second and third centuries that Christians began blaming the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies in 70 ce on the Jews themselves, not for a foolish uprising against the power of Rome but for killing Christ, whose death was avenged by the destruction of the city and the slaughter of its inhabitants.

  The traditions about Pilate's innocence did not stop there. Some years later, around 200 ce, the proto-orthodox Christian apologist (i.e., intellectual defender of the faith), heresiologist (i.e., exposer of heresies), and moralist Tertullian mentions a legendary report that Pontius Pilate had sent a letter to the Roman emperor Tiberius, indicating that this one who had been crucified was shown by his miraculous deeds to have been divine. Tiberius, Tertullian indicates, was completely convinced, and brought a motion to the Roman Senate to have Jesus declared a god. The Senate proved recalcitrant, however, so that even though the emperor acknowledged Christ's divinity, he was not allotted a place in the Roman pantheon (Tertullian, Apology ). Pilate, however, was said to have converted after Jesus' resurrection and become a Christian. This is all stuff of legend, of course, borne out by no non-Christian source.

  An entire literature surrounding Pilate eventually emerged within Christian circles, including other versions of the letter that he reportedly sent to the emperor, and several later, lengthier accounts of how the emperor reacted when he learned that one of his governors had executed the Son of God. According to a medieval legend, called the "Surrender of Pilate" (Paradosis Pilati), the emperor recalled Pilate to Rome and put him on trial: "By daring to do an evil deed you have destroyed the whole world!" Pilate responds, as one might expect: "Almighty King, I am innocent of these things; it is the multitude of the Jews who are reckless and guilty." Even so, the emperor orders Pilate's execution. Before placing his head on the chopping block, however, Pilate, now a devout Christian, prays that Christ not blame him for yielding in ignorance to the machinations of the Jews. A voice then comes from heaven: "All generations and families of the Gentiles shall call you blessed . . . and you yourself shall appear as my witness at my second coming" (v. 10).

  In some parts of the church the exoneration of Pilate went even further. In the Coptic (Egyptian) church, his death came to be seen as that of a Christian martyr; in one of history's most remarkable metamorphoses, he eventually came to be regarded there as a Christian saint.

  All this has brought us a long way from the Gospel of Peter. But already we can see the trajectory: Pilate is exonerated to implicate the Jews, as those who killed their own Messiah.

  The Popularity of the Gospel of Peter

  We have seen a number of intriguing features of the Gospel of Peter: its similarity to the New Testament Gospel accounts of Jesus' death, its legendary accretions, its virulent anti-Judaism, its potentially docetic character, its suppression by the proto-orthodox bishop Serapion, its importance for the Christians of R
hossus. But was it used only in Rhossus? Was the Gospel of Peter merely a local production, forged on the site, with limited impact on the rest of Christendom? It was virtually unknown, after all, down through the ages until French archaeologists happened to find it in a monk's tomb.

  Nevertheless, there are indications that the Gospel of Peter was widely popular in the early church, arguably at least as popular as one of the Gospels that did make it into the New Testament, the Gospel of Mark. It is worth observing that the Gospel of Mark itself is hardly ever cited in the early centuries of Christianity, even within the writings of the proto-orthodox. Possibly this is because as the shortest of the four Gospels that came to be included in the New Testament it was not read as much as the others. As readers have long noticed, nearly all the stories found in Mark are found also in Matthew and/or Luke. For this reason Mark eventually came to be seen as a condensed edition of Matthew, a kind of Reader's Digest version. Possibly it was not read as much as the others, since their fuller accounts could give its story and much more.

  The archaeological finds of early Christian manuscripts bear out the conclusion that the Gospel of Mark was not widely read. Over the past hundred years or so, numerous fragmentary copies of ancient Christian writings have turned up, principally in the sands of Egypt, where the consistently dry climate makes preservation possible over the centuries. The earliest manuscripts of the early Christian literature were written, as was most literature, pagan, Jewish, and Christian, on writing material manufactured from papyrus, a reed that grows on the banks of the Nile and that can be made into a very nice writing surface resembling coarse paper. Since the 1880s, thirty manuscripts of the New Testament Gospels have been discovered that date from the second and third centuries. Most of them contain only one or the other of the Gospels, as these books were originally circulated separately, not as a collection. Of these thirty (fragmentary) Gospel manuscripts, only one contains the Gospel of Mark.