Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (91 page)

The discovery of the Akhmim fragment of the Gospel of Peter by a French archaeological team in the 1886–87 season caused a wide stir, and raised a number of immediate questions. The first was whether this fragment was part of the Gospel known to Serapion. Generally scholars thought the answer was yes. But this raised the question of the alleged docetism of the text, with some scholars finding traces of a docetic Christology in the comment that when crucified, Jesus “was silent as if he felt no pain” (v. 10), in his cry from the cross “My power, O power, you have left me” (v. 19), in the note that he was then “taken up” (while his body was still obviously on the cross; v. 19), and in the very un-humanlike appearance of his body, tall as a mountain, after the resurrection (v. 40). In the resurgence of interest in the Gospel in more recent decades, however, some scholars have argued that a docetic view was more often being read into the text rather than out of it, and that as a consequence there is no compelling reason to see this book as the one known to Serapion.
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In response it might be pointed out that Serapion indicated that parts of the Gospel were perfectly orthodox and others could be read heretically, and that is certainly true of the fragment that we have. Finally, scholars were obsessed with the relation of this Gospel to the canonical four: Did it use them? Was it independent of them? Or, as in the famous but rather uninfluential
proposal of J. D. Crossan, was the Gospel based on an earlier account, the Cross Gospel, a now-lost source of the canonical versions that is better represented in Peter than in any of them?
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All of these concerns are fueled more by an interest in seeing how the Gospel relates to external factors (Serapion, docetism, the canonical Gospels) than by a concern with what we find within the Gospel itself. Two features of the Gospel are significant for my present purposes: it makes a clear, but false, authorial claim; and its narrative is driven, in no small measure, by a polemical agenda of showing that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus.

No one doubts that the account is forged. Whereas most of the narrative is given in the third person, things change in vv. 26–27:

But I and my companions were grieving and went into hiding, wounded in heart. For we were being sought out by them as if we were evildoers who wanted to burn the Temple. While these things were happening, we fasted and sat mourning and weeping, night and day, until the Sabbath.
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The author, then, was allegedly one of the disciples. It is at the very end that we learn which one he is: “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 …” (v. 60). And that is where the text breaks off, in the middle of a sentence. We are fortunate that it did not break off a verse earlier: we would never have known which of the Twelve this author was claiming to be.

With very few exceptions most scholars date the account to sometime in the (early) second century.
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Most important for our purposes, unlike the anonymous earlier Gospels that came to be included in the canon, this one is written by an author making a false self-identification. It is a forgery in the name of Simon Peter.

One of the Gospel of Peter’s distinctive emphases is evident at the outset of the surviving fragment: “… but none of the Jews washed his hands, nor did Herod or any of his judges.
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Since they did not wish to wash, Pilate stood up. Then King
Herod ordered the Lord to be taken away and said to them, ‘Do everything that I ordered you to do to him.’”

The fragment begins in the middle of the scene of the hand-washing at Jesus’ trial. Pilate is not explicitly said to have washed his hands, but that is clearly what has happened in the preceding lines that are now lost. Unlike the Matthean parallel, however, here the emphasis is on what “the Jews”—Herod, the Jewish king, and his Jewish judges—specifically refuse to do. They are the ones, not Pilate, responsible for Jesus’ death. Indeed, in the next line we learn that it is the Jewish king Herod, not the Roman governor, who orders Jesus’ execution.

It is not just the Jewish leaders (King Herod and his judges) who are maligned for their role in the crucifixion: “none of the Jews” washed his hands. The emphasis continues throughout the account. Herod delivers Jesus “over to the people”
for punishment (v. 5), and they, the Jewish people, are the ones who mock and then crucify him:

Those who took the Lord began pushing him about, running up to him and saying, “Let us drag around the Son of God, since we have authority over him.” They clothed him in purple and sat him on the judgment seat, saying, “Give a righteous judgment, O King of Israel!” One of them brought a crown made of thorns and placed it on the Lord’s head. Others standing there were spitting in his face; some slapped his cheeks; others were beating him with a reed; and some began to flog him, saying, “This is how we should honor the Son of God.” They brought forward two evildoers and crucified the Lord between them. (vv. 6–10)

The author is not hesitant to lambaste the Jews for what they have done: “Thus they brought all things to fulfillment and completed all their sins on their heads” (v. 17). Later they realize just how evilly they have behaved and foresee the divinely ordained punishment. Jerusalem will now be destroyed by God as a result: “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).

But this does not stop them from doing yet more mischief. The disciples of Jesus are forced to go into hiding because the Jews are trying to track them down “as if we were evildoers who wanted to burn the Temple” (v. 26). Too late do the Jewish people realize that they have put an innocent man to death: after the clear signs given at his death, they bemoan what they have done, although they are not said to repent: “If such great signs happened when he died, you can see how righteous he was!” (v. 28). Then the Jewish leaders accompany the Roman guards to watch the tomb, and with them observe Jesus raised from the dead, and go in to tell Pilate:

Greatly agitated, they said, “He actually was the Son of God.” Pilate replied, “I am clean of the blood of the Son of God; you decided to do this.” Then everyone approached him to ask and urge him to order the centurion and the
soldiers to say nothing about what they had seen. “For it is better,” they said, “for us to incur a great sin before God than to fall into the hands of the Jewish people and be stoned.” And so Pilate ordered the centurion and the soldiers not to say a word. (vv. 45–49)

Rather than convert, they arrange a cover-up. And at the end they are still to be feared, as the women going to the tomb realize: “Now Mary Magdalene, a disciple of the Lord, had been afraid of the Jews, since they were inflamed with anger” (v. 50).

One feature of the text worth noting is that even though the Jewish leaders and the Jewish people are so obviously painted as the culprits in the death of Jesus and its aftermath, the disciples of Jesus are themselves concerned to keep the Jewish Law, rigorously. And so they appear to observe the Sabbath day (v. 27) and to have kept the feast of unleavened bread (v. 58). Why, in an anti-Jewish text, are Jesus’ followers portrayed as pious Jews?

One might suspect that this is a case of historical verisimilitude. But it is also possible that Jesus’ followers are to be understood to be the “true” Jews, the ones who really do perform God’s will, as opposed to those who call themselves Jews but are opposed to it. This possibility relates to some of the ironies embedded in the narrative, which call to mind those highlighted in another anti-Jewish account, the Gospel of John. The most obvious irony in the Gospel of Peter’s crucifixion scene is the fear, expressed twice, that Jesus’ body needs to be removed from the cross before the Sabbath, so as not to violate the Jewish Law. For this account, Jews who have just killed the messiah of God are concerned not to break the Law. This is reminiscent of the irony of the Fourth Gospel, where at Jesus’ trial the Jewish leaders refuse to enter the Praetorium because they want to be ritually pure in order to eat the Passover meal that evening (John 18:28), not realizing that it is precisely the Passover Lamb they are about to slay in their execution of Jesus.

Other ironies abound in the Gospel of Peter’s brief narrative. The Jewish people who revile Jesus think they have authority over him, not realizing that he is the Lord (v. 6); they mockingly call him the King of Israel and demand a judgment, when in fact they will be judged for what they have done to him (vv. 7, 25); they crown him, slap him, beat him, and flog him, since that is their way of honoring the Son of God, who will return the favor when it comes time to destroy Jerusalem (v. 25). All these ironies heighten the heinous behavior not just of the Jewish leaders but also of the Jewish
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What then is the function of the anti-Judaism in the text? Some scholars have argued that the attacks are directed against the Jewish leaders but not the Jewish people. And so J. D. Crossan can argue that “The Gospel of Peter is … more ‘anti-Jewish’ with regard to the authorities than any of the canonical gospels but also more ‘pro-Jewish’ with regard to the
people
than any of them.”
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But it is extremely
difficult to see how this can be read out of a text that accuses the Jewish people of crucifying Jesus. Denker similarly sees the account as pinning the blame for the cover-up of the resurrection on the Jewish leaders (that part is true) in order to win Jews over to the Christian message,
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a view similar to A. Kirk’s that the blame on the Jewish leaders would lead Jewish people to reject them in favor of the church.
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Neither of these views can explain why the Jews as a people are so harshly treated in the text. T. Nicklas argues that the author wanted to stress that Jews were fulfilling Scripture in their rejection of Jesus, but that once they realize what their leaders have done in hiding the message of the resurrection, they would be more inclined to convert.
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J. Verheyden critiques all these views, and argues that the Gospel of Peter is not promoting any particular agenda when it portrays the Jews as guilty in the death of Jesus. The author instead is simply recounting, unreflectively, the traditions about Jesus’ death as they have come down to him. Had he wanted to pin significant blame on the Jews, he would have been more explicit in his denunciation, rather than stating Jewish involvement in a rather banal and matter-of-fact manner. In Verheyden’s view, the author of the Gospel of Peter

has no great design or theologically profound message to offer. His agenda is far more modest. He tells a story that was known to all, and he does this in a way that appeals to an audience that was probably as little concerned with doctrine as it was eager for being confirmed in its opinions and prejudices about those who it was convinced had murdered Jesus.
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In my view this is taking the matter too far. As seen above, the account is permeated with anti-Jewish comments from beginning to end. The Roman governor Pilate is exculpated for the death of Jesus; it is the Jews who are responsible. And not just the Jewish leaders, but the Jewish people. Even if this is simply how the author “knows” the story—Verheyden’s view—he has learned it as it has been passed through a virulently anti-Jewish matrix, far more virulent than even what we find in the New Testament. The Jews killed Jesus, and God will now destroy Jerusalem in punishment. And even though Jews realize with horror what they have done and the fate that now is to befall them, not one of them repents.

To return to our question, how are we to account for such vitriol against the Jews? Why need we look any farther than the rising tension with and hatred of Jews among (some) Christians of the second century? This was a century that saw the appearance of the epistle of Barnabas with its audacious claim that Jews
have always misunderstood their own religion and that the Old Testament is a Christian, not a Jewish, book; a century that saw the rise of the Christian
adversus Ioudaeos
literature with such authors as Justin and, soon thereafter, Tertullian; a century that saw the most heinous charges of deicide leveled against the Jews in the Paschal Homily of Melito. And we will see similar charges to those leveled against Jews in the Gospel of Peter in yet other passion narratives of still later times, when we come to the Pilate literature.