Apocalypse of Peter
Part of a series on |
New Testament apocrypha |
---|
Christianity portal |
The Apocalypse of Peter, also called the Revelation of Peter, is an
The work's author is unknown, although it is purportedly written by the disciple
Manuscript history
Before 1886, the Apocalypse of Peter had been known only through quotations and references in early Christian writings. In addition, some common lost source had been necessary to account for closely parallel passages in such apocalyptic Christian literature as the
A fragmented
From 1907–1910, a large set of documents of
In general, most scholars believe that the Ethiopic versions we have today are closer to the original manuscript, while the Greek manuscript discovered at Akhmim is a later and edited version.[6][8] This is for a number of reasons: the Akhmim version is shorter, while the Ethiopic matches the claimed line count from the Stichometry of Nicephorus; patristic references and quotes seem to match the Ethiopic version better; the Ethiopic matches better with the Rainer and Bodleian Greek fragments; and the Akhmim version seems to be attempting to integrate the Apocalypse with the Gospel of Peter (also in the Akhmim manuscript), which would naturally result in revisions.[9][4][10]
Date of authorship
The Apocalypse of Peter seems to have been written between 100 AD and 150 AD. The
The Muratorian fragment is the earliest existing list of canonical sacred writings of what would eventually be called the New Testament. The fragment is generally dated to the last quarter of the 2nd century (c. 175–200). It gives a list of works read in the Christian churches that is similar to the modern accepted canon; however, it also includes the Apocalypse of Peter. The Muratorian fragment states: "the Apocalypses also of John and Peter only do we receive, though some amongst us will not have this latter read in the Church." (The existence of other, non "received" Apocalypses is implied, and several early pieces of apocalyptic literature are known.) The scholar Richard Bauckham make a case for more precisely dating the composition to the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136), and the author to being a Jewish Christian in the general region affected by the revolt.[note 1]
Content
The Apocalypse of Peter is framed as a discourse of the Risen Christ to his faithful. In the Ethiopic version, a vision of hell granted to Peter is discussed followed by a vision of heaven; in the Akhmim fragment, the order is reversed. In the form of a Greek katabasis or nekyia, it goes into elaborate detail about the punishment in hell for each type of crime, as well as briefly sketching the nature of heaven.
In the opening, the disciples ask for signs of the
The punishments in the vision closely correspond to the past sinful actions, usually with a correspondence between the body part that sinned and the body part that is tortured.[18] It is a loose version of the Jewish notion of an eye for an eye, that the punishment may fit the crime.[19][20] The phrase "each according to his deed" appears five times in the Ethiopic version to explain the punishments.[21] Many of the punishments are overseen by Ezrael the Angel of Wrath (most likely the angel Azrael, although it is possibly a corrupt reference to the angel Sariel); the angel Uriel is also involved as well, largely in the process of resurrecting the dead into their new bodies.[22] Punishments in hell according to the vision include:
- Blasphemers are hanged by the tongue.
- Those who deny justice are set in a pit of fire.
- Women who adorn themselves for the purpose of adultery are hung by their hair over a bubbling mire. The men who had adulterous relationships with them are hung by their genitals next to them.
- Murderers and their allies are tormented by venomous creatures and numberless worms.
- Women who aborted their children are in a pit of excrement up to their throats, and their children shoot a "flash of fire" into their eyes.
- Mothers who committed infanticide have their breast milk congeal into flesh-devouring animals that torment both parents. (Their dead children are delivered to a care-taking angel called Temlakos.)
- Persecutors and betrayers of the righteous have half their body set on fire, are cast into a dark pit, and their entrails are eaten by a worm that never sleeps.
- Those who slander and doubt God's righteousness gnaw their tongues, are tormented with hot iron, and have their eyes burnt.
- Liars whose lies caused the death of martyrs have their lips cut off, with fire in their body and entrails.
- Rich people who neglected the poor are clothed in filthy rags and pierced by fiery stones.
- Those who lend money and demand "usury upon usury" stand up to their knees in a lake of foul matter and blood.
- Men who take on the role of women in a sexual way, and lesbians, fall from the precipice of a great cliff repeatedly.
- Makers of idols are either scourged with fire whips (Ethiopic) or they beat each other with fire rods (Akhmim).
- Those who forsook God's Commandments and heeded demons burn in flames.
- Those who do not honor their parents fall into a stream of fire repeatedly.
- Those who do not heed the counsel of their elders are attacked by flesh-devouring birds.
- Women who had premarital sex have their flesh torn to pieces.
- Disobedient slaves gnaw their tongues eternally.
- Those who give alms hypocritically are rendered blind and deaf, and fall upon coals of fire.
- Sorcerers are hung on a wheel of fire.[16][18]
The vision of heaven is shorter than the depiction of hell, and described more fully in the Akhmim version. In heaven, people have pure milky white skin, curly hair, and are generally beautiful. The earth blooms with everlasting flowers and spices. People wear shiny clothes made of light, like the angels. Everyone sings in choral prayer.[23]
In the Ethiopic version, the account closes with an account of the Ascension of Jesus on the mountain from chapters 15–17. As the Akhmim version moved the Apocalypse earlier, to when Jesus was still alive, it is not in the Akhmim version.
Prayers for those in hell
One theological issue of note appears only in the version of the text in the 3rd century Rainer Fragment, the earliest fragment of the text. Its chapter 14 describes the salvation of condemned sinners for whom the righteous pray:[24]
Then I will grant to my called and elect ones whomsoever they request from me, out of the punishment. And I will give them [i.e. those for whom the elect pray] a fine baptism in salvation from Acherousian lake which is, they say, in the Elysian field, a portion of righteousness with my holy ones.[24]
While not found in later manuscripts, this reading was likely original to the text, as it agrees with a quotation in the Sibylline Oracles:[24]
To these pious ones imperishable God, the universal ruler, will also give another thing. Whenever they ask the imperishable God to save men from the raging fire and deathless gnashing he will grant it, and he will do this. For he will pick them out again from the undying fire and set them elsewhere and send them on account of his own people to another eternal life with the immortals in the Elysian plain where he has the long waves of the deep perennial Acherusian lake.
— Sibylline Oracles, Book 2, 330–338[25]
Other 2nd century parallel passages possibly influenced by this are found in the
The passage also makes literary sense, as it is a follow-up to a passage in Chapter 3 where Jesus initially rebukes Peter who expresses horror at the suffering in hell; Richard Bauckham suggests that this is because it must be the victims who were harmed that request mercy, not Peter. While not directly endorsing
The Ethiopic manuscript maintains a version of the passage, but it differs in that it is the elect and righteous who receive baptism and salvation in the
Predecessors
Much of the original scholarship on the Apocalypse was on determining its predecessor influences. The first studies generally emphasized its roots in
The Apocalypse of Peter seems to quote from Ezekiel 37, the story of the Valley of Dry Bones. During its rendition of the ascension of Jesus, it also quotes from Psalm 24, which was considered as a messianic psalm foretelling the coming of Jesus and Christianity in the early church. The psalm is given a cosmological interpretation as a prophecy of Jesus's entry into heaven.[32]
The post-mortem baptism in the Acherousian lake was likely influenced by the Jewish cultural practice of washing the dead before the corpse is buried, a practice shared by early Christians. There was a linkage or analogy between cleansing the soul on death as well as cleaning the body, as the Apocalypse of Peter passage essentially combines the two.[28]
Contemporary work
The opening setting of the resurrected Jesus giving further insights to the Apostles, usually on a mountain, followed by an account of Jesus's ascension, appears to have been a popular setting in 2nd century Christian works. The genre is sometimes called a "dialogue Gospel", and is seen in works such as the
The Apocalypse of Peter also fits into the same genre as Clementine literature that was popular in Alexandria, stories that usually involved Peter and Clement of Rome having adventures, revelations, and dialogues together, despite Clement himself not appearing directly in the Apocalypse of Peter. The Ethiopic manuscripts found by Grébaut that included the Apocalypse of Peter were mixed in with other Ethiopic Clementine literature, which usually featured Peter prominently.[33]
Among work that was eventually canonized in the New Testament, the Apocalypse of Peter shows a close resemblance in ideas with the epistle
Later influence
The Apocalypse of Peter is the earliest surviving account of a detailed depiction of heaven and hell in a Christian context. Its depictions appear to have been quite influential to later works, although how much of this is due to the Apocalypse of Peter itself and how much due to lost similar literature is unclear.[9][30]
The Sibylline Oracles, popular among Roman Christians, seems to directly quote the Apocalypse of Peter.[36] Macarius Magnes's Apocriticus, a 3rd-century Christian apologetic work, features "a pagan philosopher" who quotes the Apocalypse of Peter, albeit in an attempt to disprove Christianity. The visions narrated in the Acts of Thomas, a 3rd century work, also appear to quote or reference the Apocalypse of Peter.[37][note 2] The bishop Methodius of Olympus appears to positively quote the Apocalypse of Peter in the 4th century, although it is uncertain whether he regarded it as scripture.[37]
The Apocalypse of Peter is one of the earliest examples of a Christian-Jewish katabasis, a genre of explicit depictions of heaven and hell. Later works inspired by it include the Apocalypse of Thomas in the 2nd–4th century, and more importantly, the Apocalypse of Paul in the 4th century.[6] One notable tweak that the Apocalypse of Paul makes is describing personal judgments to bliss or torment that happen immediately after death, rather than the Apocalypse of Peter being a vision of a future destiny that will take place after the Second Coming of Jesus.[37][39] Despite a lack of official approval, the Apocalypse of Paul would go on to be popular and influential for centuries, possibly due to its popularity among the medieval monks that copied and preserved manuscripts in the turbulent centuries following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Most famously, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy would become extremely popular and celebrated in the 14th century and beyond.[6] Directly or indirectly, the Apocalypse of Peter was the parent and grandparent of these influential visions of the afterlife.
Literary merits
19th and 20th century scholars consider the work rather intellectually simple and naive; dramatic and gripping, but not necessarily a coherent story. Still, the Apocalypse of Peter was popular and seemed to have a wide audience in its time.[31] M. R. James remarked that his impression was that educated Christians of the later Roman period "realized it was a gross and vulgar book" which might have partially explained a lack of elite enthusiasm for canonizing it later.[40]
Debate over canonicity
The Apocalypse of Peter was ultimately not included in the
One hypothesis for why the Apocalypse of Peter failed to gain enough support to be canonized is that its view on the afterlife was too close to endorsing
Notes
- ^ Bauckham's argument supporting composition by a Jewish-Christian author in Palestine during the Bar Kochba revolt is that the text speaks of a single false messiah who has not yet been exposed as false. The reference to the false messiah as a "liar" may be a Hebrew pun turning Bar Kochba's original name, Bar Kosiba, into Bar Koziba, "son of the lie". More generally, the writer seems to write from a position of persecution, condemning those who caused the deaths of martyrs by their lies, and Bar Kochba is reputed to have punished and killed Christians. Scholars who have found Bauckham's argument convincing include Oskar Skarsaune, although this suggestion is not accepted by all.[13][11][14][9]
- ^ This opinion is not unanimous; Martha Himmelfarb argues that both the Acts of Thomas and the Apocalypse of Peter are drawing on the same early Jewish traditions to explain the similarities.[38]
References
- ^
- The Greek Akhmim text was printed originally in:
- Bouriant, Urbain (1892). "Fragments du texte grec du livre d'Enoch et de quelques écrits attribués à Saint Pierre". Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéologique au Caire. IX.1 (in French). pp. 142–147.
- Photographs are published in:
- Lods, Adolphe (1893). "L'Evangile et l'Apocalypse de Pierre". In Leroux, Ernest (ed.). Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéologique au Caire. IX.3 (in French). pp. 224–228, plates II–VI.
- ^ ISBN 90-429-1375-4.
- ^ The Ethiopic text, with a French translation, was published in:
Grébaut, Sylvain (1910). "Littérature éthiopienne pseudo-Clémentine". Revue de l'Orient Chrétien (in French). 15: 198–214, 307–323, 425–439. - ^ a b Bauckham 1998, pp. 162–163
- JSTOR 23948939.
It is possible that where there is no logical correspondence, the punishment has come from the Orphic tradition and has simply been clumsily attached to a vice by a Jewish redactor.
James, Montague Rhodes (1924). . Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 506 – via Wikisource. [scan ]
Bibliography
- ISBN 9781589832886.
- Beck, Eric J. (2019). Frey, Jörg (ed.). Justice and Mercy in the Apocalypse of Peter: A New Translation and Analysis of the Purpose of the Text. WUNT 427. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-159030-6.
- ISBN 90-429-1375-4.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link - Buchholz, Dennis D. (1988). Your Eyes Will Be Opened: A Study of the Greek (Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation series 97. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
- ISBN 978-0-300-25700-7.
- Maier, Daniel C.; Frey, Jörg; Kraus, Thomas J., eds. (2024). The Apocalypse of Peter in Context (PDF). Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 21. Peeters. ISBN 978-90-429-5208-9.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link
Further reading
Modern English translations of the Apocalypse of Peter can be found in:
- Beck, Eric J. (2019). Frey, Jörg (ed.). Justice and Mercy in the Apocalypse of Peter: A New Translation and Analysis of the Purpose of the Text. WUNT 427. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. pp. 66–73. ISBN 978-3-16-159030-6.
- Elliott, James Keith (1993). The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford University Press. pp. 593–615. ISBN 0-19-826182-9.
- Gardiner, Eileen (1989). Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante. New York: Italica Press. pp. 1–12. ISBN 9780934977142.
External links
- The full text of Apocalypse of Peter at Wikisource, translation by M. R. James in the 1924 book The Apocryphal New Testament, with quotation from Sibylline Oracles as well
- The Apocalypse of Peter (Greek Akhmim Fragment Text) transcribed by Mark Goodacre from E. Klostermann's edition (HTML, Word, PDF)
- "Apocalypse of Peter", overview and bibliography by Cambry Pardee. NASSCAL: e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha.
- Bibliography of works on the Apocalypse of Peter, by Eileen Gardiner