Forged (8 page)

In other verses of this account the Jewish mistreatment of Jesus is intensified. The Jewish authorities crucify Jesus and take him off the cross. The author is quite clear that they are the ones who are at fault: “They brought all things to fulfillment and completed all their sins on their heads” (v. 17). More significant still, the Jewish people realize that what they have done is wrong and that they will be punished for it: “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). This is a reference to the view, found among Christians in the second century and later, that when the Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem in 70
CE
after a Jewish uprising, it was not for political or military reasons, but religious ones. Jerusalem was
destroyed and the Jewish Temple burned to the ground as divine retribution against the Jews for their sinful act of killing God's messiah. Here in the
Gospel of Peter
the Jewish people themselves recognize their guilt and their imminent punishment.

In addition to the anti-Jewish character of this account, there are a number of other interesting legendary features. In the Gospels of the New Testament Jesus is crucified with two others, as happens here. But in this Gospel there is a curious incident. When those who crucify Jesus gamble for his clothes, one of the “evildoers” being crucified with him maligns them: “We have suffered like this for the evil things we did; but this one, the Savior of the people, what wrong has he done you?” The soldiers get angry at the man and order “his legs not be broken, so that he would die in torment” (vv. 14–15).
⁹
The idea is that a crucified man would die more quickly if he could not push up with his legs to relieve the pressure on his lungs and breathe. By
not
breaking the criminal's legs they prolong his torment.

One of the big questions of this Gospel is whether Jesus himself experiences any torment. In v. 11 we are told that Jesus was “silent, as if he had no pain.” Is it possible that this is one of the verses that Serapion found potentially objectionable? That Jesus appeared not to have pain, because in fact he did not have any pain? That his body was a phantasm?

A later verse is equally puzzling. When Jesus is about to die, rather than crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as, say, in the Gospel of Mark (15:34), he instead cries, “My power, O power, you have left me behind!” And then we are told, “When he said this, he was taken up.” Doesn't this sound like the other kind of docetism, the kind where the divine Christ leaves the human Jesus to die alone?
¹⁰

The most striking passage of the Gospel comes at the very end, a passage that provides us with something we never find in the New Testament Gospels: an actual account of the resurrection. As I pointed out in Chapter 1, the canonical Gospels do not narrate the resurrection of Jesus. In their stories, Jesus is crucified, dies, and is buried,
and on the third day the women go to the tomb and find it empty. But there is no story in the Gospels of the New Testament about Jesus coming out of the tomb alive. The
Gospel of Peter,
however, does have such a story.

As happens in the Gospel of Matthew, but in none of the other canonical Gospels, a guard is posted at the tomb of Jesus to make sure that no one comes to steal the body. But unlike in Matthew, in the
Gospel of Peter
a very peculiar sequence of events occurs while the guards are looking on. The heavens open up and two “men” descend, while the stone in front of the tomb rolls aside. The two heavenly men enter the tomb.

Terrified, the soldiers go off to wake the centurion to tell him what has happened. But while they are talking, they look up and see three figures emerge from the tomb. Two of them are so tall that their heads reach up to the sky. The one they are supporting—Jesus obviously—is taller still; his head reaches above the sky. And then, behind them, the cross itself emerges from the tomb. And a voice comes from heaven asking, “Have you preached to those who are asleep?” And the cross replies, “Yes.” So, at the resurrection, we have a giant Jesus and a walking, talking cross.

The narrative is meant, of course, to be highly symbolic. Divine beings are often portrayed as gigantic in ancient texts. Jesus is the tallest since he is the most divine. And the cross is said to have proclaimed its message, the news of the salvation brought to those who are “asleep,” that is, to those who are already dead and waiting for the salvation to come.

The Gospel continues by indicating that the Jewish authorities go to Pilate and urge him to cover up the story by ordering the soldiers not to breathe a word of what they have seen. Then comes an account of the women going to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, only to learn that he has been raised. The disciples are still grieving over what has happened, not knowing yet about the resurrection. Then we have the concluding sentences of the Gospel: “But we, the twelve disciples of the Lord, wept and grieved; and each one returned to his home,
grieving for what had happened. But I, Simon Peter, and my brother Andrew, took our nets and went off to the sea. And with us was Levi, the son of Alphaeus, whom the Lord…(vv. 59–60). And there it ends, right in the middle of a sentence.

The reason the account seems to start in the middle of a thought and definitely ends in the middle of a sentence is that the person who created this book of sixty-six pages—probably in the sixth century—had only a fragmentary account in front of him. It is impossible to say whether the complete
Gospel of Peter
included stories of Jesus's birth, life, ministry, teachings, miracles, and so on before the account of his Passion and resurrection. What is clear, from the final verse, is that this Gospel, unlike the Gospels of the New Testament, is written in the first person. The author claims to be Peter. But there is no way he was Peter. This is an author claiming to be someone he is not. This is a forgery.

The reason Simon Peter could not have written this account is that it almost certainly dates to the second century, at least sixty years after Peter had died. Virtually all scholars agree on this, for compelling reasons. For one thing, the heightened anti-Judaism fits better with the second century, when it became common, for example, for Christians to blame the destruction of Jerusalem on the Jews themselves for killing Jesus. Moreover, there are the highly legendary aspects of the story, such as the robber whose legs were not broken, the giant Jesus, and the talking cross. These too suggest it is a later account. Scholars debate whether the author of this Gospel had access to the stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; there are numerous parallels with one or the other of the Gospels throughout. If he did use them, then he was obviously writing after them, that is, no sooner than the beginning of the second century.

Scholars also debate whether this is the
Gospel of Peter
that was known to Serapion. In part the debate has been over whether this is really a docetic account, as the Gospel described by Serapion evidently was, at least in his eyes. Some scholars have their doubts. When it says that Jesus was silent on the cross “as if” he felt no pain,
that isn't really the same thing, it is often argued, as saying that he did
not
feel pain. And to say that “he was taken up” may not mean that the Christ had left Jesus. Jesus still has a miraculous body and divine power at the resurrection, for example. So the phrase about being taken up may simply be a euphemism for “he died.”

My own view is that the Gospel would not need to be actually docetic in order to be the Gospel mentioned by Serapion. Serapion admitted that most of the Gospel was perfectly orthodox, but he found some “additions” that were troubling and that could be used by docetic Christians. And certainly this Gospel fits that bill. It is by and large perfectly acceptable from an orthodox perspective, but several verses might easily lend themselves to a docetic reading. This would include the major account of Jesus emerging from the tomb, where he looks as if he has anything
but
a real body that has just suffered the agonies of crucifixion!

Whether or not this is Serapion's Gospel, it is certainly
a Gospel of Peter.
It claims its authority in the name of Jesus's closest disciple, in part, no doubt, to make its incredible and anti-Jewish narratives seem completely credible. But Peter didn't write it. This is a forgery in the name of Peter. And it's not the only one.
¹¹

T
HE
E
PISTLE OF
P
ETER

Many scholars have thought of the early Christian church as seriously divided. On one side were the Jewish followers of Jesus, such as his brother James, who was the head of the church in Jerusalem, and the disciple Peter. On the other side were people like the apostle Paul, who focused on converting Gentiles (non-Jews). In this modern schema, James and Peter are often thought to have been more “true” to Jesus's original message, that it was the God of Israel who had brought salvation to those who kept his teachings, as found in the Jewish law. For these early Christians, Jesus was the Jewish messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish law. Naturally, to be a follower of this Jewish savior, a person
had to be Jewish. Gentiles were, of course, welcomed into the community with open arms, but only if they converted to Judaism. For men that meant getting circumcised, and for both men and women it meant observing the Sabbath, keeping kosher, and following the other Jewish laws.

Paul, in this understanding, taught something quite different, that believing in the death and resurrection of Christ was the only way to have a right standing before God. Moreover, this salvation applied equally to Jews and Gentiles, so that one did not have to be a Jew to be a follower of Jesus. For Paul, according to this view, the law had passed away; Jews could keep it if they chose (and as a Jew he himself kept it), but Gentiles were not supposed to keep it. This was the national law for Israel, and it had nothing to do with salvation. Only Jesus's death and resurrection could bring salvation. Through Paul, then, the church largely filled up with Gentiles who did not see themselves as Jewish and who worshiped the God of Israel without following his law.

It is not necessary here for me to evaluate this common understanding of the relationship of Paul to the apostles before him, particularly James and Peter. But I do want to say that this idea that there was a split between their views is not just a modern notion. It goes way back to earliest Christianity. Historically speaking, it is true that Paul established churches made up of Gentiles and that he insisted that these converts not keep the Jewish law. This is a case he makes quite strenuously, for example, in the (orthonymous) letter to the Galatians. For Paul, any Gentile who tried to keep the law completely misunderstood that salvation comes from Christ's death alone, to be received by faith. Keeping the law was worse than irrelevant; it was an admission that Christ's death was insufficient for salvation (see 2:15–16, 21).

Other Christians did indeed disagree. Many of them were Paul's opponents in his various churches. Later, in the second Christian century, there continued to be groups of Jewish Christians who insisted that the law certainly had to be followed by anyone who wanted to
belong to God's people. God had given the law, and he never changed his mind. This was the law that told people how to live, it was the law that Jesus himself taught and fulfilled, and it was the law that was to be followed,
especially
by followers of Christ.

This split in the early church between the (now) minority of Jewish Christians and the dominant majority of Gentiles can be seen nowhere more clearly than in a writing forged in Peter's name called the
Epistula Petri,
or the
Epistle of Peter
.
¹²
This book is not to be confused with 1 Peter or 2 Peter in the New Testament. It was written later, years after the New Testament writings had been completed.

The
Epistle of Peter
is found as a kind of introduction to group of writings that scholars call the
Pseudo-Clementines.
As implied by its scholarly name, this group of writings falsely claims (hence “Pseudo”) to be written by Clement, who, as we saw earlier, was widely thought to have been the fourth bishop of Rome (or pope), appointed to his position by none other than Peter. The
Pseudo-Clementines
have a highly complicated literary history. For over a century scholars have strenuously debated what sources the books used, how the various writings are related to each other, and other technical questions. But the basic character of the writings is clear. These are accounts of the travels and adventures of Clement, especially as he converts to Christianity through Peter's preaching and then journeys with Peter as the apostle spreads the gospel, gives speeches, and performs miracles. These include miracle contests with the archheretic Simon the Magician, whom we saw earlier. The
Acts of Peter
may have been one of the sources for these stories.

The Clementine books clearly were not written by the historical Clement, but long after his death, even though they are (allegedly) narrated by him in the first person. They are, therefore, forged. In one set of these writings the adventures of Clement are prefaced by the
Epistle of Peter,
a letter supposedly written by Peter to the brother of Jesus, James, head of the church in Jerusalem. The letter instructs James not to allow Peter's writings to be handed over to just anyone, because they might be misinterpreted or altered, but only to a select
group of trustworthy people. The author, “Peter,” attacks Christians who interpret his message as saying that the Jewish law is no longer in force. That is completely false, says the author, for Jesus himself had indicated that “not one jot or tittle will pass away from the law” and that it would be eternally valid (see Matt. 5:17–20). According to this letter, one of Peter's opponents in particular has led “the Gentiles” to reject Peter's “lawful preaching” and, instead, to prefer “a lawless and absurd doctrine of the man who is my enemy.”