Forged (9 page)

It does not take a lot of thought to realize who the enemy is whom “Peter” is opposing. It is someone who preaches to the Gentiles, insists on a gospel apart from the Jewish law (a “lawless doctrine”), and claims that Peter himself subscribes to that view (see Gal. 2). Without naming him, this author is talking about Paul.

Here we have a view of Peter and Paul very much at odds with what we find in some of the writings of the New Testament.
¹³
In the history of the early church found in the book of Acts, for example, Peter and Paul see eye to eye, they agree on every major point, they stand arm in arm in the mission to spread the gospel, and most important, they wholeheartedly concur that Gentiles do not need to be Jews to be followers of Jesus (see Acts 10–11; 15). This is not the case, however, for the author of the
Epistle of Peter.
Here there is a clear split between Peter, Jesus's closest disciple, and Paul, an interloper who has misinterpreted Peter. Paul has misrepresented the gospel.

This, then, is an author who saw Paul as the enemy and his “lawless and absurd” doctrine as heresy. For this author, Paul not only disagreed with Peter; he was wrong. And on what authority does the author claim this? On the authority of Peter himself. The author forged the letter in Peter's name in order to make his point.

T
HE
A
POCALYPSE OF
P
ETER

I will not be talking at length in this book about how we got our twenty-seven books of the New Testament, that is, how the canon was formed and how some writings came to be included and others
left out. Plenty of other books describe this process at length.
¹⁴
I can say, though, that there were some writings that were a “close call,” that nearly made it in but did not, just as there were others that nearly were left out, but finally made it in. One of the books that nearly made it in is called the
Apocalypse of Peter.
¹⁵

From authors such as Eusebius, we know that there were Christian communities as late as the fourth century who thought that the
Apocalypse of Peter
should be included in the canon, either in place of the Apocalypse of John (i.e., the book of Revelation), which obviously ended up being included, or alongside it.
¹⁶
The
Apocalypse of Peter
is very different from the Apocalypse of John, however. Both books are apocalypses, in which an author is given a secret revelation about the divine, heavenly mysteries that can make sense of the mundane, earthly realities. In the New Testament Apocalypse of John, these mysteries have to do with the future course of history to be unfurled on earth, as has been decided already in heaven. In the noncanonical
Apocalypse of Peter,
these mysteries have to do with the fate of souls in life after death. This book describes a personal tour that Peter is given of the realms of the blessed and of the damned.

Most readers are familiar with the idea of a tour of heaven and hell from Dante's
Divine Comedy
. Dante did not invent the idea, however. He stood in a long line of Christian authors who used the motif of a tour of the afterlife in order to make whatever important points they wanted to stress about life here on earth. Our earliest example of this kind of writing is the
Apocalypse of Peter.

Here again we knew about the book for centuries before it was available. As it turns out, it was another of the four texts found in the sixty-six-page book uncovered by archaeologists near Akhmim, Egypt, in 1886–87. Since then an Ethiopic version has been found, which gives an even fuller account.

The narrative begins with Peter and the disciples talking with Jesus on the Mount of Olives (see Mark 13). They ask Jesus about what will happen when the world comes to an end, and he provides them with a brief account. But then the discussion shifts to a descrip
tion, given in some graphic detail, of what happens to souls after they die, either in the place of torment or the place of eternal bliss. As sometimes happens in these personal tours of heaven and hell, the description of the realms of the blessed is a bit stereotyped and brief. There are, after all, only so many ways you can describe eternal, ecstatic joy. It's
fantastic
! What more can one say? The realms of the damned, however, are a different matter altogether. Anyone with any creativity and imagination can invent lurid and detailed descriptions of the torments of sinners.

In Peter's vision, a number of the damned are tortured in ways that befit their characteristic sins, so that the punishment fits the crime. Those who have blasphemed against the ways of God, for example—that is, sinned by what they've said—are hanged by their tongues over eternal flames. Women who have braided their hair in order to make themselves attractive to men so as to seduce them are hanged by their hair over eternal flames. The men they seduced are hanged by a
different
body part over the flames. In this case, the men cry out, as you might imagine, “We didn't know it would come to
this
!”

The overarching message of this book is quite clear and not altogether subtle: if you want to enjoy the amazing blessings of paradise and avoid the horrific torments of hell, don't sin! This message conveys a reliable and incontrovertible truth: those who fail to follow God's will face eternal torture. How do we know? Because someone who has observed the realms of the damned has told us, Jesus's right-hand man, Peter himself. In order to get his point across, the author writes in the first person—not in his own name, but in the name of the chief disciple. Here again we have a forgery in the name of Peter.

“Petrine” Writings in the New Testament

T
HE BOOKS
I
HAVE
talked about here at some length—the
Acts of Peter,
the
Gospel of Peter,
the
Pseudo-Clementine Writings,
the
Epistle of Peter,
the
Apocalypse of Peter
—are not the only fabrications
about
Peter
and forgeries allegedly written
by
Peter from the early church. There were others: other “Acts” of Peter, a collection called the “Preaching” of Peter, two other apocalypses of Peter. And these are just the ones that we still have today. No one knows how many once existed. Producing books in the name of Peter was a virtual cottage industry in the early church.

Is it possible, in light of this extensive use of Peter's name to authorize others' views, that any forgeries in the name of Peter made it into the New Testament? As it turns out, two books bear Peter's name there as well, the letters of 1 Peter and 2 Peter. Both claim to be written by Peter, but there are solid reasons for thinking that Peter did not write either one.

1 P
ETER

The book of 1 Peter is allegedly written by “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,” to Christians whom he calls “exiles” in five provinces in the western part of what is now Turkey.
¹⁷
There is no doubt that the author is claiming to be Jesus's closest disciple, Peter. “Peter” was not a personal name before Peter was given it as a nickname by Jesus himself. According to the Gospels, this disciple's real name was Simon. But Jesus indicated that he would be the “rock” (Greek
petros
) on whom the church would be founded. So he called him “Rocky,” or “Peter” (see Matt. 16:13–18).
¹⁸
So far as we know, there were no other persons named Peter until later times when Christians started naming their children after the great apostle. So the author of 1 Peter is certainly claiming to be “that” Peter. This is borne out by his comment in 5:1, that he was personally a “witness of the sufferings of Christ.”
¹⁹

This matter of suffering is the key theme of the book. In fact, the word “suffering” occurs more often in this short five-chapter letter than in any other book of the entire New Testament, including the Gospels, which are much, much longer. The author assumes that his readers themselves are undergoing persecution and that they will be
experiencing yet more in the future. “Now for a little while,” he tells them, they “have had to suffer various trials.” But that is all to the good, because through being “tested” their faith will be refined and become “more precious than gold that is…tested by fire” (1:6–7). They should not therefore be “surprised at the fiery ordeal that is coming…, as if something strange were happening,” but they are to “rejoice,” because they “share in the sufferings of Christ” (4:12–13).

Scholars have long debated what kind of suffering the author has in mind. The older view was that the author was dealing with official state persecutions, such as happened when the emperor Nero imprisoned and then executed Christians in the city of Rome in 64
CE
, blaming them for starting the horrible fire that destroyed much of the city, a fire that his own arsonists may have set. But over the past twenty years or so scholars have begun to stress that the book of 1 Peter never says much about “official” persecution, where Christians are arrested, put on trial for their faith, and martyred. Instead, the opposition seems to come from former friends and neighbors who do not understand or appreciate the Christians' new lifestyle, which is removed from the joyful celebrations of pagan religions (4:1–5). That is to say, Christians stopped attending pagan festivals to form their own secret societies, and pagans became upset, suspicious, and hateful, leading to local opposition to Christians that could at times turn nasty.

If this is the case, it makes sense that the author stresses to his readers that it is important for them to be obedient to the government and governing officials (2:13–15), to show good conduct among outsiders (2:12), to be devoted slaves, wives, and husbands (2:18–3:7), to do nothing to warrant any opposition, but to suffer only for doing what is right (2:20). A good deal of the exhortation and encouragement to his readers is based on a sophisticated interpretation of key passages in the Old Testament, quoted, of course, in Greek, the so-called Septuagint (the legendary origins of which are described in the forged
Letter of Aristeas
discussed in Chapter 1), as can be seen, for example, in 1:24–25; 2:3, 6–9, 22, 24–25; 3:10–12.

The author ends his exhortation to be steadfast in the face of adversity by indicating that he has written his letter “through Silvanus, a faithful brother” (i.e., a true Christian) and by sending greetings from “she who is in Babylon, who is also chosen” (5:13). Scholars have long realized what this last bit means. Babylon was the city that was seen as the ultimate enemy of God among Jews, since it was Babylon that had defeated Judah and destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple in the sixth century
BCE
. By the end of the first century, Christians and Jews had started using the word “Babylon” as a code word for the city that was the enemy of God in their own day, the city of Rome, which also destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple, in the year 70 (see, e.g., Rev. 14:8; 17:5). The author, then, is claiming to be writing from the city of Rome. This makes sense, given the later traditions that associated Peter with the city of Rome, in fact as its first bishop—the first pope.

But tradition also indicates that Peter was martyred in Rome under Nero in 64
CE
. Would it make sense that he would be calling Rome “Babylon” before the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70? By the time that catastrophe hit, Peter was long dead. As it turns out there are other, very good grounds for thinking that Peter did not actually write this book. It was written by someone
claiming
to be Peter. Before explaining some of those grounds, we should first look at the second letter in the New Testament written in Peter's name.

2 P
ETER

There is less debate among scholars of the New Testament about the authorship of 2 Peter than for any of the other books sometimes considered forgeries. Whoever wrote 2 Peter, it was not Simon Peter.
²⁰
The author certainly
claims
to be Peter, even more explicitly than in the case of 1 Peter. He introduces himself as “Simeon Peter,
²¹
a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ.” But more than that, he claims personally to have been present at the “transfiguration” scene narrated in the Gospels, where Jesus was transformed before the eyes of
his disciples Peter, James, and John and began speaking with Moses and Elijah, before a voice came from heaven saying, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” (see Matt. 17:1–8). The author insists that he himself was there to hear these words, brought to him by the “voice…of the majestic glory” (1:17). The author wants there to be no doubt: he is Peter.

His chief concern is that there are false teachers in the community who have twisted the true message of the gospel. Most of chapter 2 is devoted to maligning these persons, without ever explaining what, exactly, they teach. This highly vituperative attack calls their teachings “destructive heresies” and says that they, the opponents, are licentious, greedy, and exploitative. The author indicates that they will suffer like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and like the inhabitants of the entire world in the days of Noah. That is to say, they too will be destroyed. He calls them ignorant and says they are “blots and blemishes, reveling in their dissipation, carousing.” He says they have eyes that are “full of adultery, unslakable for sin.” And on and on.

This assault on his opponents, the “false prophets,” contains numerous verbal similarities to what can be found in the New Testament book of Jude. The parallels are so numerous that scholars are virtually unified in thinking that the author has taken Jude's message and simply edited it a bit to incorporate it into his book.

In addition to the false teachers, “scoffers” have appeared who mock the Christian view that Jesus is soon to return from heaven in judgment on the earth. If he was supposed to come soon, say these skeptics, why hasn't he come? A lot of time has passed, and everything goes on just the same as before! The author replies that these unbelievers are ignorant and deceived, having forgotten that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day” (3:8). In other words, even if Jesus waits another three thousand years, he still is coming “soon.” Jesus has in fact delayed returning simply to give people a chance to repent before the coming destruction. Paul himself, the author tells us, taught such things in “all his
letters, which the ignorant and unstable people twist, as they do with all the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (3:16).