The Gospel According to Peter: A Study

by Walter Richard Cassels

Now the author of the Peter Gospel has been at work on the passage; he wishes to make the cross talk, and not only talk, but answer back; accordingly, he introduces a question: “Hast thou preached to them that are asleep?” and the response is heard from the cross, “Yea.” As far as I can suspect, the first speaker is Christ, the Stone; and the answer comes from the Cross, the Wood. It is then the Cross that has descended into Hades. But perhaps this is pressing the writer's words a little too far.[132]

Is it not also pressing the writer's thoughts a little too far to suggest such trains of childish interpretation as the origin of all his characteristic representations? Mr. Harris, by way of bringing the charge nearer to Peter, says that the passage of Habakkuk “is quoted by Barnabas, though no doubt from a corrupted text, with a positive assertion that the Cross is here intimated by the prophet.”[133] This is not so. The passage in Barnabas (xii.) reads: “He defineth concerning the Cross in another prophet, who saith: ‘And when shall these things be accomplished? saith the Lord. Whensoever a tree shall be bended and stand upright, and whensoever blood shall drop from a tree.’ Again thou art taught concerning the cross and him that was to be crucified.” This is not a quotation from Habakkuk, [pg 121] but from 4 Esdras v. 5. This is, however, not of much importance. It is of greater moment to observe that Mr. Harris, in applying this test, is only able to “suspect” that, in this episode in Peter, the speaker who asks the question is Christ the “stone,” and the answer from the cross, the “wood;” but as the first “speaker” is a voice “out of the heavens,” it is difficult to connect it with “Christ the Stone,” to whom the question is actually addressed. According to this, he puts the question to himself. Such exegesis, applied to almost any conceivable statement, might prove almost any conceivable hypothesis.

The next instance requires us to turn to a passage in Amos (viii. 9-10, LXX): “And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that the sun shall set at midday, ... and I will turn your feasts into wailing and all your songs to lamentation, and I will lay sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; and I will set him as the wailing for the beloved, and those that are with him as a day of grief.” With it, we are told, must be taken the parallel verse in which Zechariah (xiv. 6, 7) predicts a day in which “there shall be no light, but cold and frost ... but towards evening there shall be light.” This was one of the proofs with early Christians of the events which happened at the crucifixion, and St. Cyprian, for instance, quotes it. It is also quoted in the sixth Homily of the Persian Father Aphrahat against the Jews. “The Gospel of Peter did not apparently possess the gnosis in such a highly evolved form as this,” but works on the same lines. Mr. Harris then quotes passages from the fragment, which we shall give after him, with his inserted comments, but as he does not mark the intervals which occur between them, we shall take the liberty of inserting [pg 122] the verses from which they are taken between brackets.

15. It was mid-day and darkness over all the land of Judaea.... 22. then the sun shone out, and it was found to be the ninth hour [at evening time it shall be light]; 23. and the Jews rejoiced.... 25. and the Jews began to wail [I will turn your feasts into mourning].... 26. We also were fasting and sitting down (i.e.sitting on the ground in sackcloth[134]); [I will lay sackcloth on all loins]. 50. Mary Magdalene had not done at the tomb as women are wont to do over their dead beloveds, so she took her friends with her to wail [I will set him as the Wailing for the Beloved].

The writer is, therefore, drawing on the details of prophecy, as suggested by the current testimonies against the Jews, and most likely on a written gnosis involving these testimonies. That he veils his sources simply shows that he is not one of the first brood of anti-Jewish preachers. If he had been early, he would not have been artificial or occult.[135]

Now, as before, Mr. Harris uses the eccentricities of a gnosis which he does not prove to have existed at the time the fragment may have been written and, for instance, he quotes St. Cyprian, who wrote in the second half of the third century, and the Persian Father Aphrahat, also a writer long after the Gospel of Peter was composed, and his remark that the writer “did not apparently possess the gnosis in so highly evolved a form” as Aphrahat, is not so much an admission in his favour as to prepare the reader to be content with inferior evidence. The test, however, quite as much applies to our Gospels as to the Gospel of Peter. In the previous working, of which the fragment says nothing, those who pass “wag their heads” and rail, in each of the Synoptics, in a jubilant way. The first Synoptic says (xxvii. 45 f.) “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth [pg 123] hour.” The centurion and those who were watching “feared exceedingly.” In Mark (xv. 33) there also “was darkness over the whole earth until the ninth hour,” but in Luke (xxiii. 44 f.) the resemblance is still more marked. The darkness comes over the whole earth from the sixth until the ninth hour, “the sun's light failing.” (48) “And all the multitudes that came together to this sight, when they beheld the things that were done, returned smiting their breasts.” In the fourth Gospel (xx. 11), Mary goes to the tomb weeping. We shall have more to say regarding the Gospels presently, but here we need only remark that, whether in exactly the same way or not, the “highly evolved prophetic gnosis” has certainly done its work in all of them. In this respect, the Gospel of Peter merely takes its place with the rest.

There is only one other instance to be noticed here. It refers to some of the details which the writer of the fragment introduces into the mockery which precedes the crucifixion. Some of the mockers “prick” Jesus with a reed; others spat on his eyes. This, Mr. Harris says, is connected with a view early taken regarding a change of Jewish feasts. In the Epistle of Barnabas, there is the best exposition of the doctrine that the Feast should be turned into mourning and the Passover at which Jesus suffered should be treated as if it had been the Day of Atonement. In Barnabas, the ritual of the great day is discussed in detail, and the rules of procedure for the Priests and the People, apparently taken, Mr. Harris thinks, from a Greek handbook, prove a variety of local usage such as would not have been suspected from the Scripture, read apart from the rest of the literature of the time. The “unwashed inwards” of one goat, offered at the fast for all sins, are to be eaten by the priests alone, with vinegar, while the [pg 124] people fast and wail in sackcloth and ashes. This goat is one of two over which lot is cast on the Day of Atonement; the other is the scape-goat, Azazel, which, according to Barnabas, was to be treated with contumely, and sent away into the wilderness: “All of you spit on him, and prick him, and put the scarlet wool on his head,” &c. Now the two goats both represent Christ, according to Barnabas, “who twists these written regulations into prophecies of the first and second Advents, and of the details of the Passion.”

The mention of vinegar to be eaten with the bitter portion of the goat, suggested the words of the Psalm: “Gall for my meat and vinegar for my drink;” the command to spit on the goat and prick (or pierce) him [which ill-usage, by the way, the Talmud admits to have been the practice of the Alexandrian Jews], is interpreted by Barnabas to be a type or a prophecy of Christ “set at naught and pierced and spat on.” Is there any trace of the gnosis of the two goats in Peter? If we may judge from the conjunction of the words in the account of the Mockery, there is a decided trace: “Others stood and spat on his eyes ... others pricked him with a reed;” it is Christ as the goat Azazel.

Mr. Harris quotes “an almost contemporary Sibyllist,” “They shall prick his side with a reed, according to their law;” and he continues: “If the Sybillist is quoting Peter, he is also interpreting him, and his interpretation is, they shall prick him, as is done to the goat Azazel.”

To make Peter responsible for the ideas or interpretations of the Sybillist is a little hard. However, let us examine this matter. It is to be observed that the only innovation in Peter, regarding the spitting, is the expression that they “spat upon his eyes” instead of simply “upon him,” or “in his face,” as in the Gospels; but upon this nothing turns. The point is not even mentioned; so it may be dismissed. Regarding the reed, Peter says they “pierced” him with it, instead of “smote him” with it. Let us leave the “piercing” aside [pg 125] for the moment. In all other respects, the contumely is the same in the Gospels. Before the high priest, in Matthew and Mark (Matt. xxvi. 67, Mark xiv. 65), they spit in his face and buffet him, and smite him with the palms of their hands; and in Luke (xxii. 63 f.) they mock and beat him and revile him. It is curious that, according to the second Synoptist, all this was foretold, for he makes Jesus say (x. 33 f.): “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and the scribes: and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him unto the Gentiles: and they shall mock him, and shall spit upon him, and shall scourge him, and shall kill him, and after three days he shall rise again.” After the trial before Pilate, in Mark (xv. 17 ff.), they put on him a purple robe, and the crown of thorns on his head, and a reed in his hand, and spit upon him, and take the reed and smite him on the head. In Peter, likewise, they clothe him in purple, put on his head the crown of thorns, spit upon his eyes, smite him on the cheeks, and pierce him with a reed.