Apocalypse of Peter

For the similarly titled Nag Hammadi text, see GnosticApocalypse of Peter.

The Apocalypse of Peter (or Revelation of Peter) isan early Christian text of the 2nd century and an exam-ple of apocalyptic literature with Hellenistic overtones.It is not in the Bible today, but is mentioned in theMuratorian fragment, the oldest surviving list of NewTestament books, as no longer being allowed to be readin church. The text is extant in two incomplete ver-sions of a lost Greek original, one Koine Greek,[1] andan Ethiopic version,[2] which diverge considerably. TheGreek manuscript was unknown until it was discoveredduring excavations directed by Sylvain Grébaut duringthe 1886–87 season in a desert necropolis at Akhmimin Upper Egypt. The fragment consisted of parchmentleaves of the Greek version that had been carefully de-posited in the grave of a Christian monk of the 8th or 9thcentury. The manuscript is in the Egyptian Museum inCairo. The Ethiopic version was discovered in 1910.Before that, the work had been known only through copi-ous quotes in early Christian writings. In addition, somecommon lost source had been necessary to account forclosely parallel passages in such apocalyptic Christian lit-erature as the Apocalypse of Esdras, the Apocalypse ofPaul, and the Passion of Saint Perpetua.

1 Dating

The terminus post quem—the point after which we knowthe Apocalypse of Peter must have been written—is re-vealed by its use of 4 Esdras, which was written about100 AD; it is used in Chapter 3 of the Apocalypse.[3] Theintellectually simple Apocalypse of Peter, with its Hel-lenistic Greek overtones, belongs to the same genre asthe Clementine literature that was popular in Alexandria.Like the Clementine literature, the Apocalypse of Peterwas written for a popular audience and had a wide read-ership. The Muratorian fragment, the earliest existing listof canonical sacredwritings of theNewTestament, whichis assigned on internal evidence to the last quarter of the2nd century (c. 175–200), gives a list of works read in theChristian churches that is similar to the modern acceptedcanon; however, it also includes the Apocalypse of Peter.The Muratorian fragment states: “the Apocalypses alsoof John and Peter only do we receive, which some amongus would not have read in church.” (It is interesting thatthe existence of other Apocalypses is implied, for several

early apocryphal ones are known: see Apocalyptic liter-ature.) Scholar Oscar Skarsaune makes a case for datingthe composition to the Bar Kochba revolt (132–136).[4]

2 Content

The Apocalypse of Peter is framed as a discourse ofthe Risen Christ to his faithful, offering a vision first ofheaven, and then of hell, granted to Peter. In the form ofa nekyia[5] it goes into elaborate detail about the punish-ment in hell for each type of crime, later to be depictedby Hieronymus Bosch, and the pleasures given in heavenfor each virtue.In heaven, in the vision,

• People have pure milky white skin, curly hair, andare generally beautiful

• The earth blooms with everlasting flowers and spices

• People wear shiny clothes made of light, like the an-gels

• Everyone sings in choral prayer

The punishments in the vision each closely correspond tothe past sinful actions in a version of the Jewish notion ofan eye for an eye, that the punishment may fit the crime.[6]Some of the punishments in hell according to the visioninclude:

• Blasphemers are hanged by the tongue.

• Women who “adorn” themselves for the purpose ofadultery, are hung by the hair over a bubbling mire.The men that had adulterous relationships with themare hung by their feet, with their heads in the mire,next to them.

• Murderers and those that give consent to murder areset in a pit of creeping things that torment them.

• Men who take on the role of women in a sexual way,and lesbians, are “driven” up a great cliff by punish-ing angels, and are “cast off” to the bottom. Thenthey are forced up it, over and over again, cease-lessly, to their doom.

• Women who have abortions are set in a lake formedfrom the blood and gore from all the other punish-ments, up to their necks. They are also tormented

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2 4 THE RU'YA BUTRUS

by the spirits of their unborn children, who shoot a“flash of fire” into their eyes. (Those unborn chil-dren are “delivered to a care-taking” angel by whomthey are educated, and “made to grow up.”)

• Those who lend money and demand “usury uponusury” stand up to their knees in a lake of foul matterand blood.

“The Revelation of Peter shows remarkablekinship in ideas with the Second Epistle of Pe-ter. It also presents notable parallels to theSibylline Oracles[7] while its influence has beenconjectured, almost with certainty, in the Actsof Perpetua and the visions narrated in the Actsof Thomas and the History of Barlaam and Jos-aphat. It certainly was one of the sources fromwhich the writer of the Vision of Paul drew.And directly or indirectly it may be regardedas the parent of all the mediaeval visions of theother world.”[8]

TheGospel parables of the budding fig tree and the barrenfig tree, partly selected from the parousia of Matthew24,[9] appear only in the Ethiopic version (ch. 2). Thetwo parables are joined, and the setting “in the summer”has been transferred to “the end of the world”, in a de-tailed allegory in which the tree becomes Israel and theflourishing shoots Jews who have adopted Jesus as Mes-siah and achieve martyrdom.There is also a section which explains that in the end Godwill save all sinners from their plight in Hell:

“My Father will give unto them all the life, theglory, and the kingdom that passeth not away,... It is because of them that have believed inme that I am come. It is also because of themthat have believed in me, that, at their word, Ishall have pity on men... "

Thus, sinners will finally be saved by the prayers of thosein heaven. Peter then orders his son Clement not to speakof this revelation since God had told Peter to keep it se-cret:

[and God said]"... thou must not tell thatwhich thou hearest unto the sinners lest theytransgress the more, and sin.”

3 Career of the Apocalypse of Pe-ter

Clement of Alexandria appears to have considered theApocalypse of Peter to be holy scripture. Eusebius,Historia Ecclesiae (VI.14.1), describes a lost work

of Clement’s, the Hypotyposes (Outlines), that gave“abridged accounts of all the canonical Scriptures, noteven omitting those that are disputed, I mean the bookof Jude and the other general epistles. Also the Epistleof Barnabas and that called the Revelation of Peter.”[10]So the work must have existed in the first half of the 2ndcentury, which is also the commonly accepted date of thecanonic Second Epistle of Peter.[11] Although the numer-ous references to it attest to its being once in wide circula-tion, the Apocalypse of Peter was ultimately not acceptedinto the Christian canon.

4 The Ru'ya Butrus

There are more than 100manuscripts of an Arabic Chris-tian work entitled the Ru'ya Butrus, which is Arabic forthe 'Vision' or 'Apocalypse' of Peter.[12] Additionally, ascatalogues of Ethiopic manuscripts continue to be com-piled by William MacComber and others, the number ofEthiopic manuscripts of this same work continue to grow.It is critical to note that this work is of colossal size andpost-conciliar provenance, and therefore in any of its re-censions it has minimal intertextuality with the Apoca-lypse of Peter, which is known in Greek texts. Furthercomplicating matters, many of the manuscripts for eitherwork are styled as a “Testament of Our Lord” or “Tes-tament of Our Savior”. Further, the southern-tradition,or Ethiopic, manuscripts style themselves “Books of theRolls”, in eight supposed manuscript-rolls.In the first half of the 20th century, Sylvain Grebautpublished a French translation, without Ethiopic text, ofthis monumental work.[13] A little later, Alfons Minganapublished a photomechanical version and English transla-tion of one of the monumental manuscripts in the seriesWoodbrooke Studies. At the time, he lamented that hewas unable to collate his manuscript with the translationpublished by Grebaut. That collation, together with col-lation to some manuscripts of the same name from theVatican Library, later surfaced in a paper delivered at aconference in the 1990s of the Association pour l'Etudesdes Apocryphes Chretiennes. There seem to be two dif-ferent “mega-recensions”, and the most likely explana-tion is that one recension is associated with the Syriac-speaking traditions, and that the other is associated withthe Coptic and Ethiopic/Ge'ez traditions. The “northern”or Syriac-speaking communities frequently produced themanuscripts entirely or partly in karshuni, which is Ara-bic written in a modified Syriac script.Each “mega-recension” contains a major post-conciliarapocalypse that refers to the later Roman and Byzan-tine emperors, and each contains a major apocalypse thatrefers to the Arab caliphs. Of even further interest is thatsome manuscripts, such as the Vatican Arabo manuscriptused in the aforementioned collation, contains no lessthan three presentations of the same minor apocalypse,about the size of the existing Apocalypse of John, having

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a great deal of thematic overlap, yet quite distinct textu-ally.Textual overlaps exist between the material common tocertain Messianic-apocalyptic material in the Minganaand Grebaut manuscripts, and material published by Is-mail Poonawalla.[14] The manuscripts having the “Bookof the Rolls” structure generally contain a recension ofthe well-known “Treasure Grotto” text. The plenarymanuscripts also generally contain an “Acts of Clement”work that roughly corresponds to the narrative or “epit-ome” story of Clement of Rome, known to specialists inpseudo-Clementine literature. Finally, some of the ple-nary manuscripts also contain “apostolic church order”literature; a collation of that has also been presented ata conference of the Association pour l'Etudes des Apoc-ryphes Chretiennes.Collations of these manuscripts can be daunting, becausea plenary manuscript in Arabic or Ethiopic/ Ge'ez is typ-ically about 400 pages long, and in a translation into anymodern European language, such a manuscript will cometo about 800 pages.Overall, it may be said of either recension that the texthas grown over time, and tended to accrete smaller works.There is every possibility that the older portions that arein common to all of the major manuscripts will turn out tohave recensions in other languages, such as Syriac, Cop-tic, Church Armenian, or Old Church Slavonic. Work onthis unusual body of medieval near eastern Christianity isstill very much in its infancy.

5 Notes

[1] The Greek Akhmim text was printed by A. Lods,“L'evangile et l'apocalypse de Pierre”, Mémoires publiéspar les membres de la mission archéologique au Caire, 9,M.U. Bouriant, ed. (1892:2142-46); the Greek fragmentswere published by M.R. James, “A new text of the Apoc-alypse of Peter II”, JTS 12 (1910/11:367-68).

[2] The Ethiopic text, with a French translation, was publishedby S. Grébaut, Littérature éthiopienne pseudo-Clémentine”,Revue de l'Orient Chrétien, new series, 15 (1910), 198–214, 307–23.

[3] For the date of the Ethiopic version, see C. Mauer in E.Henecke, E. Schneemelcher and R. Wilson, New Testa-ment Apocrypha (Philadelphia/Westminster) 1964.

[4] Oscar Skarsaune (2012). Jewish Believers in Jesus. Hen-drickson Publishers. pp. 386–388. ISBN 978-1-56563-763-4. Skarsaune argues for a composition by a Jewish-Christian author in Israel during the Bar Kochba revolt.The text speaks of a single false messiah who has not yetbeen exposed as false. The reference to the false messiahas a “liar” may be a Hebrew pun turning Bar Kochba’soriginal name, Bar Kosiba, into Bar Koziba, “son of thelie”.

[5] The Apocalypse of Peter was presented as a nekyia, orjourney through the abode of the dead, by A. Dieterich,Nekyia (1893, reprinted Stuttgart, 1969); Dieterich, whohad only the Akhmim Greek text, postulated a generalOrphic cultural context in the attention focused on thehouse of the dead.

[6] Pointed out in detail by David Fiensy, “Lex Talionis in the'Apocalypse of Peter'", The Harvard Theological Review76.2 (April 1983:255–258), who remarks “It is possiblethat where there is no logical correspondence, the punish-ment has come from the Orphic tradition and has simplybeen clumsily attached to a vice by a Jewish redactor.” (p.257).

[7] Specifically Sibylline Oracles ii., 225ff.

[8] Roberts-Donaldson introduction.

[9] The canonic New Testament context of this image is dis-cussed under Figs in the Bible; Richard Bauckham, “TheTwo Fig Tree Parables in the Apocalypse of Peter”, Jour-nal of Biblical Literature 104.2 (June 1985:269–287),shows correspondences with wording of the Matthean textthat does not appear in the parallel passages in the synopticgospels of Mark and Luke.

[10] Clement 41.1–2 48.1 correspond with the Ethiopian textM. R. James in introduction to Translation and Introduc-tion to Apocalypse of Peter. The Apocryphal New Testa-ment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924)

[11] Perrin, Norman The New Testament: An Introduction, p.262

[12] These may be found in Georg Grag, Die ArabischeChristliche Schriftsteller, in the Vatican series Studi e Testi.

[13] Grebaut [title]

[14] Poonawalla, “Shi'ite Apocalyptic” in M. Eliade, ed., En-cyclopedia of World Religions

6 Further reading• Eileen Gardiner, Visions of Heaven and Hell BeforeDante (New York: Italica Press, 1989), pp. 1–12,provides an English translation of the Ethiopic text.

7 External links• Development of the Canon of the new testament:Apocalypse of Peter

• M. R. James’ 1924 introduction

• Bibliography on the Apocalypse of Peter.

4 8 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

8 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

8.1 Text• Apocalypse of Peter Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse%20of%20Peter?oldid=634859542 Contributors: DopefishJustin,Ihcoyc, Emperorbma, Charles Matthews, Wetman, Acegikmo1, David Gerard, Dave6, Naufana, Quadell, Gary D, Arensb, Rich Farm-brough, Number 0, Nard the Bard, Furius, Ignocrates, Summer Song, Sesmith, -Ril-, Koavf, Tommy Kronkvist, Eubot, Darkhorse82,Elmer Clark, Kazuba, Theelf29, Badagnani, Emersoni, Wolfling, Nlu, Show no mercy, SmackBot, Paladinltd, Unyoyega, Hmains, Christhe speller, Jprg1966, Chlewbot, Clinkophonist, Pwjb, Andrew Dalby, JoshuaZ, CmdrObot, Rwflammang, Cydebot, Pdar, Rocket000,A.J.Chesswas, Funnypretty, Knotwork, Everettattebury, Lord Seth, Awwiki, JMyrleFuller, Geekdiva, TXiKiBoT, AlleborgoBot, Rober-toreggi, PbBot, Vanished user ewfisn2348tui2f8n2fio2utjfeoi210r39jf, PipepBot, Leadwind, Egardiner0, El bot de la dieta, Catalographer,Biblioq, Yoman82, Editor2020, A ntv, Hatsoff, Addbot, Yobot, AnomieBOT, Testus, Xqbot, Eugene-elgato, Surv1v4l1st, RjwilmsiBot, Inictu oculi, EmausBot, Lipsio, Couch on his Head and Smiling, Joefromrandb, Helpful Pixie Bot, PhnomPencil, JohnChrysostom, BattyBot,Tahc, Þatrick, Ian Suttle (Satoru-kun), JudeccaXIII and Anonymous: 41

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