The Gospel According to Peter: A Study

by Walter Richard Cassels

The immediate object here, of course, is to lay the basis of an indictment against the fragment; but in this clear and excellent statement, a principle is enunciated, the application of which cannot be directed as the writer pleases, but is apt to be as deadly to friends as to foes. Mr. Harris may attempt to satisfy his doubts, in writing with the impartiality of a scholar, as he does, with the reservation that “no history is, in its ultimate analysis, so trustworthy as Christian history,” but he has only to formulate the reasons for such a statement, to recognise their utter inadequacy. In so far as he gives us any glimpse of them here, they are of sad insufficiency. He speaks, a little further on, regarding “the real need of a critical method that can distinguish between statements that are genuine history, and statements that are prophetic reflexes. For this discrimination,” he says, “our main guide is the Canon, which expresses the judgment of the primitive Christian Church upon its literary materials; but I think it will be generally felt that we shall need finer-edged tools than Church customs or decrees in the more difficult parts of the problem; and certainly we must not assume a priori in a critical investigation, that there is no trace of legendary accretion in the Gospel, and no element of genuine fact in what are called the Apocrypha.”[124] Alas! is not the “main guide” a mere blind leader of the blind in regard to “the encroachment of prophetic interpretation upon the historical record”? We have no intention of maintaining here a very different view of the credibility of Christian history, the arguments against which we have elsewhere fully stated, but it is desirable, for reasons which will presently appear, that the fundamental principle of this attack on the Gospel according to Peter should be clearly understood. Mr. [pg 113] Harris goes on to affirm that the measure of this encroachment is, in the first two centuries, one of the best indications of documentary date we possess: “As a test, it will settle the period of many a document, and perhaps the measure of the appeal to prophecy will even determine the chronological order of the Gospels themselves: Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew.”[125] This order will probably surprise a good many readers, and shake the faith they might perhaps be disposed to repose in the test which is supposed to have decided it. Mr. Harris applies the test in various instances to Peter, and we shall briefly examine his results.

It will be remembered that in v. 35 f. whilst the soldiers were keeping watch over the sepulchre, there was a great voice in the heavens, and they saw the heavens opened, and “two men” (δύο ἄνδρας) came down from thence with great light, and approach the tomb, and the stone which had been laid at the door rolled away, and they entered it, but presently they beheld again three men (τρεῖς ἄνδρας) coming out, and the two were supporting or conducting the other by the hand, and the lofty stature of the three is described. Now the “highly evolved prophetic gnosis” by which, according to Mr. Harris, this representation was composed is as follows, though only the main lines of the painful process can be given. In the prayer of Habakkuk (iii. 2), according to the Septuagint, the words which stand in our Bible, “In the midst of the years make known” reads: “In the midst of two lives” (or of two living creatures) “thou shalt be known.” This is referred in two ways: to “Christ's incarnation” and to his “Death and Resurrection.” In the former case the two animals are the ox and the ass at the Nativity. The interpretation in the second case: the [pg 114] “living creatures” are the seraphim, two in number, because in Isaiah (vi. 3) “one called to the other and said:” “and we have only to find a situation in which Christ is seen between two angels, and the prophecy is fulfilled. This situation is made in the Gospel of Peter by Christ rising between two supporting angels.” Mr. Harris endeavours to strengthen this by referring to Cyril of Alexandria's comment on the two living creatures (in the fourth century). Cyril is in doubt whether the two living creatures are the Father and the Holy Spirit, or the Old and New Testament, but recurs to the earlier interpretation that they are the Cherubim. Mr. Harris also cites the Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel on Zechariah iii. 7: “If thou wilt keep the observation of my word, I will raise thee up in the resurrection of the dead, and set thy feet walking between the two cherubim.” Then, as soon as this identification of the two living creatures had been made, it was easy, says Mr. Harris, to pass over to the ninety-ninth Psalm, which Justin[126] affirms to be a prediction of Christ.

A little study of the opening words will show some interesting parallels with Peter. “The Lord hath reigned! Let the people be enraged! Sitting on the Cherubim, let the earth be shaken. The Lord in Zion is great and high above all the people.” Here we have a parallel to the “Jews burning with rage,” and to the enormous stature of the risen Christ, and, perhaps to the quaking of the earth. Nor is it without interest that Justin, having spoken of this great and high Christ, should turn immediately to another Psalm (xix.) where the sun is said to come forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, and to rejoice as a giant to run a race.[127]

In order to be as just as possible, all this has been given in greater detail than perhaps the case deserves. It seems rather a heavy avalanche of conjecture to bring down upon Peter, who simply narrates, without the most distant reference to any prophetic texts; and [pg 115] it is perhaps a little hard that Justin, who in all probability had the Gospel already written and before him, should contribute in this casual way to the author's discomfiture. However, let us see what there is to be said upon the other side. The first general remark that may be made is, that it can scarcely be considered evidence of the later date of Peter to ascribe to him, as the source of this detail, an elaborate twisting of texts through the operation of gnosis, which has not been proved to have existed in this form before the epoch at which he wrote. This is said without any intention of casting doubt on the general operation of supposed prophetic passages on the evolution of Gospel history, but merely as questioning this particular explanation of the mode in which this representation was originally suggested, and more especially for the purpose of adding that, whatever reproach of this kind is cast upon the Gospel according to Peter, must equally be directed against the canonical gospels.

It will be remembered that, in the third Synoptic, “two men in shining apparel” assist at the resurrection, and that in the fourth Gospel Mary sees in the tomb “two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.” Here there is an occasion for applying with equal—or, as we shall presently see, greater—propriety the argument of “highly evolved prophetic gnosis” to the writers, and so explaining their representation. But there is more to be suggested in connection with the matter. In the first and second Synoptics, only one angel assists at the scene, who in the second Synoptic is called “a young man” (νεανίσκος). Now the “two men” of great stature in Peter only go into the tomb and come out again with Jesus; but subsequently the heavens were again opened (v. 44), and a certain man descends and [pg 116] goes into the tomb and remains there, for when the women come (v. 55) they see there “a certain young man” (νεανίσκος) “sitting in the midst of the tomb, beautiful and clad in a shining garment,” who speaks to them as in the two Synoptics, and tells them that “Jesus is gone thither whence he was sent.” This, then, is the angel who appears in Matthew and Mark. We have already mentioned that the two men of v. 36 have been identified by some critics as Moses and Elias. The account of the transfiguration is given in all the Synoptics, though it does not seem to have been known to the author of the fourth Gospel—although “John” was an actor in the scene—but that in the third Synoptic is fuller than the rest (ix. 28 ff). Jesus takes with him Peter and John and James, and goes up into the mountain to pray; and as he prays his countenance was altered, and his raiment becomes white and dazzling; “and behold there talked with him two men (ἄνδρες δύο), which were Moses and Elijah; who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” When Peter and the others were fully awake, “they saw his glory and the two men (δύο ἄνδρας) that stood with him. And it came to pass, as they were parting from him, Peter said unto Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah: not knowing what he said. And while he said these things there came a cloud, and overshadowed them ... and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my son, my chosen: hear ye him.” To this episode Mr. Harris might reasonably apply the test of the “highly evolved prophetic gnosis;” but in any case, the view that the two men of the fragment are intended to represent Moses and Elijah—the law and the prophets—who had so short a time before “spoken of [pg 117] his decease which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem,” and who now came, in stature reaching to the heavens, but less than his which rose above the heavens, and conducted Jesus the Christ forth from the tomb, in which that decease had been fulfilled, is in the highest degree probable. Much more might be said regarding this, but too much time has already been devoted to the point.

The second application of Mr. Harris's test is to the sealing of the stone at the sepulchre with seven seals. The Gospel of Peter simply states that the stone was sealed with seven seals, and Mr. Harris endeavours to find some abstruse meaning in the statement, which is peculiar to the fragment in so far as the number of seals is concerned. Where did Peter get the idea? Mr. Harris says, first from Zechariah iii. 9: “For behold the stone that I have set before Joshua; upon one stone are seven eyes; behold I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts;” and the name Joshua is the Hebrew equivalent of Jesus. A reference is also made by the Fathers of the second century to passages to prove that Christ was the stone (of stumbling to the Jews, but the corner stone to believers). “Justin recognised Christ in the stone cut out without hands, of which Daniel speaks; in the stone which Jacob set for his pillow, and which he anointed with oil; in the stone on which Moses sat in the battle with Amalek,” and the like. “Bearing in mind that there was an early tendency to connect the language of the ‘Branch’ passage with the resurrection, we can see that the interpretation took a second form, viz. to regard the stone before the face of Jesus as a prophecy of the stone which closed the tomb in the evangelic story.” There is evidence, Mr. Harris says, that the seven eyes were early interpreted by Biblical Targumists to mean seven seals.

We need not be surprised, then, that the Peter Gospel speaks of the stone as sealed with seven seals; it is an attempt to throw the story into closer parallelism with Zechariah, no doubt for polemic purposes against the Jews. That he uses the curious word ἐπέχρισαν, which we are obliged, from the exigencies of language, to translate “they smeared” or “plastered” seven seals, but which to the writer meant much the same as if he were to say, “they on-christed seven seals,” is due to the lurking desire to make a parallel with Christ and the stone directly, and with the anointed pillar of Jacob. The stone has a chrism.... But this is not all; in Zechariah (iv. 10) there is a passage, “they shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel,” but in the Septuagint it runs, “they shall see the tin-stone.”How is this to be connected with the “stone before the face of Joshua or Jesus”? The answer is found in the pages of the Peter Gospel: “a great crowd came from Jerusalem and the neighbourhood to see the tomb which had been sealed.” It only remains to identify the stone which they saw with the tin-stone. Symmachus retranslated the Hebrew word for “tin” as if it came from the root which means “to separate or divide,” and in the Gospel of Peter, “the stone which had been laid on the door of the tomb withdrew (or separated) gradually” (ἐπεχώρησε παρὰ μέρος).

“The ‘plummet’ of Zerubbabel,” Mr. Harris triumphantly concludes, “is used by Peter to make history square with prophecy.”[128]

Now again the general remark has to be made that, in order to convict Peter of a late date, Mr. Harris takes all this “highly evolved gnosis” wherever he can find it, without consideration of epochs, and in some parts upon mere personal conjecture. He even confesses that he does not know the date of the translation of Symmachus, which he nevertheless uses as an argument. He observes, himself, that it is “a little awkward” that the stone, which at one time represents Jesus, has to be treated in the same breath as before the face of Jesus. The terribly complicated and involved process, by which it is suggested that the author of the Gospel according to Peter evolved a detail so apparently simple [pg 119] as the sealing of the sepulchre with seven seals, is difficult enough to follow, and must have been still more difficult to invent, but in his anxiety to assign a late date to the fragment, Mr. Harris forgets that, if the number seven is evidence of it, a large part of the New Testament must be moved back with the fragment. The Synoptics are full of it,[129] but it is quite sufficient to point to the Apocalypse, which has this typical number in almost every chapter: the message to the seven churches; the seven spirits before the throne; the seven golden candlesticks; the seven stars; seven lamps of fire burning; seven angels; seven trumpets; seven thunders; the dragon with seven heads, and seven diadems; the seven angels with seven plagues; the woman with seven heads, and so on. The most striking and apposite instance, which Mr. Harris indeed does not pass over, but mentions as having “a curious and suggestive connection” and “every appearance of being ultimately derived from the language of Zechariah,”[130] is the Book which is close sealed with seven seals, and the Lamb standing as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are seven spirits of God, which is found worthy to take the book and open the seals.[131] Instead of giving the author of the fragment, who does not make the slightest claim to it, credit for so extraordinary a feat of synthetic exegesis, is it not more simple and probable that he used the number seven as a mere ordinary symbol of completeness? but if more than this be deemed requisite, and the detail has a deeper mystical sense, he can only be accused of “highly evolved prophetic gnosis,” in company with the author of the [pg 120] Apocalypse and other canonical books, and this still gives him a position in the same epoch with them, more than which, probably, no one demands.

Another instance may be rapidly disposed of. The writer of Peter, Mr. Harris affirms, was not ignorant of the gnosis of the Cross wrought out by the Fathers from the Old Testament, on the “Wood” and the “Tree.” One passage at which they laboured heavily is in Habakkuk ii. 11: “The stone cries out of the wall, and the cross-beam answers back to it.” Mr. Harris proceeds: