The Apocryphal Gospels_A Very Short Introduction

by Paul Foster

  Contents

  The text of the Gospel of Peter begins, as it ends, in the middle of a broken sentence. Modern scholars have divided it into 14 chapters (with a further subdivision into 60 verses). This helpfully enables the discussion of individual scenes. The first partially preserved scene would appear to follow on from a detail found only in Matthew’s Gospel – the moment when Pilate famously washes his hands and declares ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood’ (Matt. 27.24). The first surviving line of the text of the Gospel of Peter states ‘but of the Jews no one washed the hands, nor Herod, nor one of his judges. And when they were not willing to wash, Pilate rose up’ (Gos. Pet. 1.1). This expansion of the canonical tradition presents the behaviour of the Jewish authority figures as being in contrast with that of Pilate, who rises up in protest against the miscarriage of justice that he is viewing. Next Joseph enters the scene. Although he is not named explicitly as the Joseph of Arimithea known from the accounts of Matthew, Luke, and John, there can be little doubt that the same figure is intended, since he undertakes the same task of requesting the body of Jesus from Pilate. However, unlike the sequence of the canonical narratives, this request is made prior to the crucifixion rather than afterwards.

  Presumably this is primarily a stylistic alteration which makes space for the additional details the author of the Gospel of Peter introduces to the post-crucifixion storyline. In chapter 3, a description of the pre-crucifixion mockery takes place. Not only is this more brutal than that of the canonical gospels, but it is carried out by the Jewish mob acting at the behest of Herod Antipas rather than by Roman soldiers acting in accordance with Pilate’s orders. Thus a controlled Roman execution is transformed into a brutal act of mob violence. This is carried out under the direction of Herod Antipas. The effect is to shift the blame away from the Romans and to implicate ‘Jews’ more fully in the crucifixion of Jesus.

  Chapter 4 commences the crucifixion scene proper. Interestingly, the title on the cross is not ‘This is the King of the Jews’ (Luke 23.58), but is subtly altered to ‘This is the King of Israel’ (Gos. Pet. 4.11). Whereas the term ‘Jew’ had become pejorative, early Christians wished to claim the heritage of historic Israel as their own. The same tendency was found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, where the supposed author describes himself as ‘Thomas the Israelite’ (Inf. Gos. Thom. 1.1). This section of the Gospel of Peter also shows its dependence on Luke’s account by retelling the story of the penitent thief, which among the canonical gospels only occurs in Luke. However, the Gospel of Peter piously deletes the reference to one of the two criminals reviling Jesus. Thus a more reverential attitude towards protecting the status of Jesus is to be detected. In the ensuing description of the crucifixion, accompanying miracles become more fabulous and the apocalyptic portents are more vivid. The darkness that descends is coupled with a description of people stumbling around with lamps. The earthquake which occurs at the point of Jesus’ death, recorded in Matt. 27.51, takes place in the Gospel of Peter precisely at the moment when the sacred body of Jesus is taken down and laid on the ground. The earth itself convulses upon coming into contact with this corpse. No thoroughgoing docetic theology would view the dead shell of the divine Logos in such reverential terms.

  The remainder of the account relates post-crucifixion events. Bemused and trembling onlookers, cowering disciples, and devious Jewish officials pepper the narrative. The story of the guard at the tomb is greatly developed in comparison to the version in Matthew’s account. Contrasting with that shorter version, in the Gospel of Peter the Jewish authorities anticipate the possibility of the disciples stealing the body prior to the resurrection. Proactive action is taken. Pilate is approached for a detachment of guards to secure the site. A huge stone is rolled in place to block the entrance, seven seals are affixed, and a tent is pitched so that round-the-clock surveillance can take place. The extraordinary anticipatory security is obviously a mythical feature of this story, which simultaneously rebuts claims that the disciples could have snatched the body while also showing that only divine intervention would be able to breach such defences. The emphasis placed on these features reveals that the text had the apologetic purpose to nullify the suggestion that disciples came to an unguarded tomb, took the body, and consequently created a resurrection myth. Thus, the Gospel of Peter tells the story in such a way as to undercut such an argument.

  In a story full of miraculous interference and written for those who knew the outline of the canonical accounts, the events of the resurrection are not unanticipated. However, they have certainly become more fantastic. Trembling soldiers, descending angels, a self-animated stone, enlarged bodies, and a walking and talking cross – liberties are definitely taken with the more primitive form of the story. Yet this probably illustrates the attitudes of those who used the canonical texts to teach such traditions. The text was a resource for theological reflection, not a fixed and invariable entity – at least for the author of the Gospel of Peter, and he certainly was not alone in this attitude. Other texts from this period exhibit a similar tendency.

  The last sections of the text conclude with a declaration from Pilate that he is ‘clean from the blood of the Son of God’ (Gos. Pet. 11.46). This proclamation of innocence not only absolves Pilate, but has the purpose of shifting the blood-guilt for the death of Jesus squarely onto the Jewish people. However, out of fear of the crowds, the leaders reason that ‘it is better for us to make ourselves guilty of the greatest sin before God than to fall into the hands of the people of the Jews and be stoned’ (Gos. Pet. 11.48). While such tendencies are understandable historically as Christians sought to define their own identity in what was at times bitter opposition to Jewish rivals, the consequences of such a ‘blame-game’ theology have resulted in some of the most reprehensible acts of anti-Jewish persecution by Christians. Obviously the Gospel of Peter is not solely or even primarily responsible for this. It does, however, represent an early expression of the anti-Jewish attitude which was to flower into the bitter fruit of medieval pogroms against Jews, and even might have shaped the thinking that could have led to supposed Christians turning a blind-eye or even worse during the events of the 20th-century Holocaust.

  The narrative continues before it breaks off with a number of post-resurrection events. The story from Mark’s Gospel of the visit of the women to the tomb is followed in fairly close detail – although there are embellishments. The narrative ends with the beginnings of a story in which Simon Peter and Andrew are fishing beside the sea, perplexed and uncertain what to do after Jesus’ death. Here it appears that a story similar to that contained in the final chapter of John’s Gospel will be recounted. Yet, unless somebody unearths another manuscript of this fascinating text, this may remain a supposition – admittedly a highly plausible one, but a supposition nonetheless.

  The ongoing value of the Gospel of Peter

  Despite the outlandish miracles it contains, in many ways the Gospel of Peter is one of the more approachable non-canonical gospels to read. It covers a familiar story, admittedly in an embellished and expanded manner, but it does not rely on coded language or speculative cosmologies like some of the gospel texts found at Nag Hammadi. It has multiple purposes. Gap-filling is a primary aim: that is, telling the Jesus story in a way that supplies missing details or removes difficulties in the storyline of the canonical writings in order to produce a more internally consistent account.

  Some recent scholars working on this text have claimed that it preserves a form of the Passion narrative which is in fact earlier than the form contained in the canonical gospels. The more sophisticated version of this theory was advanced by J. D. Crossan, who suggested that the Gospel of Peter as it survives has embedded within it an early Passion narrative source, which Crossan dubs ‘the Cross Gospel’. After removing material that is regarded as dependent on the canonical accounts, such as the visit of the women to the tomb which occurs towards the end of the Gospel of Peter (12.50–13.57) and is seen as dependent on Mark
(16.1–8), the resultant material is viewed as more primitive than the synoptic gospels and as being a source used by them. Two factors tell against this theory. First, even within the material that is left in the hypothetical ‘Cross Gospel’, there appear to be elements that are still dependent on canonical sources, such as the story of the thief on the cross (Gos. Pet. 4.10–14; cf. Luke 23.39–43). Second, the actual preserved text of the Gospel of Peter does not appear to have the kind of disjunctions that usually point to such literary seams. In other words, there is little within the text to support the type of source theory suggested by Crossan.

  A less nuanced version of this theory is presented by Paul Mirecki. He claims that the entire Gospel of Peter pre-dates the material in the canonical accounts: ‘The Gospel of Peter (¼ Gos. Pet.) was a narrative gospel of the synoptic type which circulated in the mid-1st century under the authority of the name Peter. An earlier form of the gospel probably served as one of the major sources for the canonical gospels.’ This claim falls foul of the obvious places where the Gospel of Peter is dependent on canonical sources which were written after the mid-1st century. Not only is it possible to detect clear parallels between the canonical stories and the version contained in the text discovered at Akhmîm, but the parallels in the Gospel of Peter appear derivative of the canonical gospels, and moreover its theological concerns reflect the known developments of Christian thinking traceable to the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

  Therefore, this text is no repository of unadulterated historical information concerning the crucifixion of Jesus. Instead, it is heavily overlaid with anti-Jewish sentiment, apologetic concerns, and a desire to weave together details from the canonical gospels. Its does attest to the way in which later generations of early Christians handled the Jesus tradition as transmitted in the canonical gospels, and it shows how those traditions could be tailored to address the theological concerns of the period in which the text was formed. Like a thoughtful contemporary preacher, the author of the Gospel of Peter makes the story of Jesus speak to the concerns and needs of the current situation of his early Christian audience.

  Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840

  The unbelievably rich troves of papyrus manuscripts discovered at Oxyrhynchus and the highly significant fragments of the Gospel of Thomas have already been mentioned, but a number of other important fragmentary texts were also discovered. For illustrative purposes only, one example will be discussed here. Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 (P.Oxy. 840) records an otherwise unattested story of Jesus that supposedly stems from the period of Jesus’ ministry on an occasion when he visited the Jerusalem temple. Because of its brevity, the full text of this fragment can be provided:

  Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840

  ‘ … earlier, before doing wrong, he slyly reasons everything out. Be careful that you do not end up suffering the same fate as them. For the evil-doers of humanity receive retribution not only among the living, but they will also undergo punishment and much torture later.’

  Taking them along, he went into the place of purification itself and wandered around in the temple. Then a certain high priest of the Pharisees named Levi came toward them and said to the saviour, ‘Who permitted you to wander in this place of purification and to see these holy vessels, even though you have not bathed, and the feet of your disciples have not been washed? And now that you have defiled it, you walk around in this pure area of the temple where only a person who has bathed and changed his clothes can walk, and even such a person does not dare to look upon these holy vessels.’ Standing nearby with his disciples, the saviour replied, ‘Since you are here in the temple too, are you clean?’

  The Pharisee said to him, ‘I am clean for I bathed in the pool of David. I went down into the pool by one set of stairs and came back out by another. Then I put on white clothes and they were clean. And then I came and looked at these holy vessels.’

  Replying to him, the saviour said, ‘Woe to blind people who do not see! You have washed in the gushing waters that dogs and pigs are thrown into day and night. And when you washed yourself, you scrubbed the outer layer of skin, the layer of skin that prostitutes and flute-girls anoint and wash and scrub when they put on make up to become the desire of the men. But inside they are filled with scorpions and all unrighteousness. But my disciples and I, whom you say have not washed, we have washed in waters of eternal life that come from the God of heaven. But woe to those …’

  This fragmentary text is written front to back on a single vellum leaf, of unusually small size. The dimensions are approximately 7.4 by 8.8 centimetres. There has been ongoing debate about whether this is a leaf from a longer miniature codex, or whether the leaf was an amulet worn by its owner to ward off evil. It contains two partial preserved stories. The end of the first story is brief and no context can be determined. It comprises an apocalyptic judgment saying directed against ‘evil-doers of humanity’. This saying, presumably spoken by Jesus, exhorts his hearers to guard themselves against suffering the samefateasthe evil-doers.Littlemorecanbesaidaboutthisfirststory.

  The second is much more fully preserved and comprises context, narrative, and dialogue. Set within the precincts of the Jerusalem temple, Jesus and his disciples are engaged in a debate with the high priest about purity requirements. The charge levelled against Jesus and his companions is that they have transgressed the holiness of ‘the place of purification’ and viewed the ‘holy vessels’ without undergoing the prerequisite ablutions. Jesus’ reply affirms the facts of the high priest’s charge, but denies the implications drawn from it. Reversing the accusation, Jesus asks the high priest if he is clean. The response given by the high priest is a standard recitation of the formal steps taken to ensure purity. Jesus attacks this perspective on two levels. First, he states the very water in which the high priest washed was itself polluted since it had been contaminated by the uncleanness of dogs and pigs. Whether this is meant to be understood literally, or whether ‘dogs and pigs’ is a metaphor for unclean people, is uncertain. Second, the lustrations undertaken by the high priest are criticized for dealing only with superficial exterior purification. By contrast, Jesus calls for an internal purification, whereby one is cleansed with the metaphorical waters of eternal life. Such controversy stories are evidenced within the canonical gospels, although in this case it must be admitted that the likelihood of a chance encounter between Jesus and a high priest seems remote. Moreover, no high priest by the name of Levi is known from other sources for the entire time from the Persian period down to the destruction of the temple in AD 70.

  Observations such as the last one raise a number of potential difficulties encountered in this text. The location of ‘the place of purification’ and the location of the ‘holy vessels’ have been hotly debated. It has been questioned whether the latter, which may denote the candelabrum, the altar of incense, and table of showbread, could ever be viewed by people who were not members of the priestly caste. It has been suggested recently that historically this is not an insurmountable problem since, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, during certain special times of the year the restrictions on viewing the vessels were temporarily suspended, and the curtain of the tabernacle was rolled back so that the people could view the interior. An even greater problem has been that there is no evidence of a requirement for visitors to the temple to completely immerse in a bath prior to entry. Such difficulties have led to other approaches to this text.

  Alternatively, it has been suggested that this story does not reflect actual historical practices in the Jerusalem temple, but rather it fits better into ancient Christian disputes about the validity of water baptism. If this is correct, then the text stems from an ecclesial controversy of the 2nd or 3rd centuries and does not provide a window onto actual events in the life of Jesus during the 1st century. A third mediating option is to take the text as historizing, but not historical. By this it is meant that while the text may claim to report actual events from the life of Jesus, it is creatively written at some significantly later
time and consequently might contain historical anachronisms. From this perspective, the text may, or may not, be addressing baptismal controversies.

  Names or titles applied to Jesus can be revealing about the possible authorship and readers of such texts. Throughout this brief fragment, Jesus is described as ‘the saviour’ and no other title or name is used for him. Although used widely in early Christianity, the title ‘saviour’ is also prominent in texts like the Gospel of Philip. By noting such links, it has been suggested that the text has been written from a ‘Gnostic’ perspective to counter either Jewish–Christian baptist movements or mainstream Christian promotion of baptism as the only necessary entrance rite. While such theories do draw upon the link that existed in some texts that use the title ‘saviour’ and also see baptism as only the basic entrance ritual, they do not explain the fact that P.Oxy. 840 is not laden with the type of cosmological reflections that are so often characteristic of Gnostic texts.

  P.Oxy. 840 is a fascinating but often overlooked text. The main incident it relates does have the same kind of ‘feel’ as many of the canonical controversy stories. However, there does seem to be an inordinate number of historically anachronistic details. This leads to the suspicion that the author was trying to imitate the style and genre of the controversies story, and while largely successful, left traces of historically implausible details that reveal that this narrative was created in a period somewhat later than the life of Jesus, and is not drawn from an historical source but rather reflects the author’s imaginative invention. What could the purpose of the story be? Perhaps it does relate to an internal Christian baptismal controversy. This is not totally obvious, especially as the primary interlocutor is a Pharisaic priest and not a fellow disciple. It is more likely that the text reflects the larger Christian agenda of polemicizing against Judaism. The key accusation is that strict observance of the Jewish law results only in superficial purity and not in the more important internal cleansing of one’s being. While such a critique of formulaic Torah observance can be found within Judaism itself – especially in the writings of the prophets – this charge seems to have been appropriated by Christians as a ready-made way of critiquing the Jewish faith.