Resurrection in the Gospel According to Peter
(avg. read time: 4–8 mins.)
In continuing my series on resurrection in early Christian texts beyond the NT, I will first address apocryphal works that resemble the genres of the NT and/or have been attributed to people from the NT, then I will expand the scope to other apocryphal works. Unlike the Apostolic Fathers, not every text will have something pertinent to our focus, but I will address those that do. I should also mention that I am not yet planning to write anything on the texts found at Nag Hammadi, which tend to be linked with Gnostics, at any point in the near future (I currently have entries in this series planned up to early 2027). They raise their own issues, and if my planned volume on the early church materializes, they would have their own chapter or section anyway.
The first entry this year is dedicated to the Gospel according to Peter. This is a fragmentary Gospel text missing both its beginning (as it currently begins mid-sentence) and its end. Only one manuscript is universally agreed to be a manuscript of this Gospel, that being one found in Akhmim in Egypt, while other much less well-preserved manuscripts have sometimes been linked with it without much justification. The manuscript is from the eighth or ninth century, but the original text is often dated to the second century, sometimes in the second half of the century (though occasional arguments have placed it in the first century).
The extant text begins in the later part of Jesus’s trial in the midst of an expanded scene of Pontius Pilate washing his hands. It ends with the stated intention of Peter, Andrew, and others to return to the sea to fish, which presumably would have led up to a version of the scene from John 21 or something else like it. While there are interesting elements in the narrative prior to the resurrection of Jesus, they do not directly concern our focus here, so we will skip over them. Also, because there is not really room for implicit references to resurrection, our typical structure for this series will not work here. As such, I simply comment on elements as they appear in the course of the narrative.
Prior to the proper narration of the resurrected Jesus and subsequent events, we have a parallel of Matt 27:62–66 (8.28–33). Unlike in that text, though, the reference to resurrection does not come from remembering a prediction of Jesus. Rather, the scribes, Pharisees, and elders are worried about the signs that accompanied Jesus’s death, and they ask for a guard to be set at his tomb, lest his disciples steal his body and declare that he is “risen from the dead” (ἐκ νεκρῶν ἀνέστη). As with other times we have seen this prepositional phrase, this signifies Jesus’s separation from the dead via his resurrection.
The narrator shows some of his later framing for this story by referring to the first day of the week as “the Lord’s day” (9.35; 12.50). This is a designation that other second-century texts, including ones we have reviewed already, gave to Sunday because it was on that day that the Lord arose from the dead (Did. 14; Barn. 15:8–9; Ign. Magn. 9:1; Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 67). Of course, the precedent for this designation was established in the NT era (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2; Rev 1:10), but it is interesting that none of the canonical Gospels describe this day in this fashion while this Gospel does.
More significant differences emerge in that not only are there witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection at the tomb—whereas the Gospels only record testimony to his empty tomb and subsequent appearances—but these witnesses are decidedly not people who were already followers of Jesus. These include soldiers guarding the tomb, their leading centurion, and the elders who are there for some undisclosed reason. Of course, if one wants to get technical about it, since so many scholars make much ado about the fact that the Gospels do not narrate Jesus’s resurrection as such, even here there is not an actual description of the moment of resurrection. It is simply a story of the more immediate aftermath than any of the canonical Gospels offer.
While Matthew’s account of the guards at the tomb (28:11–15) has some ambiguity about whether the guards are Roman soldiers or Jewish guards, and this is a point that has been debated, the Gospel according to Peter makes clear that the soldiers were Roman (cf. also 8.28–33). This is further affirmed by their reporting to Pilate after the fact (11.43–49). In this case, it is Pilate who agrees that his guards should keep quiet, rather than the Jewish leaders bribing the guards to help spread a false story. Moreover, Pilate is presented as being more pious in his reflection on the matter (consistently with the rest of the text) than the Jewish opponents as presented in Matthew or the other Gospels.
The guards at the tomb see the two angels coming down from heaven to the tomb, and they see them accompany a third person out of the tomb (9.36–10.42). As in the Gospel according to Mark (16:5) and the Gospel according to Luke (24:4), the angels are referred to as men (cf. Gen 19; 32:24–30; Josh 5:13–15; Judg 6:11–24; 13; Dan 10; Zech 1:8–15; 2:1–3; Acts 12:15) and “young men” at that (cf. 13.55; Tob 5:5–10; 2 Macc 3:26, 33; Acts 1:10; Josephus, Ant. 5.277; Herm. Vis. 3.1.6, 8; 3.2.5; 3.4.1), and they are described as wearing bright clothing (Dan 10:6; 2 Macc 11:8; LAE 9:1; 4Q547 frag 1, 5; Acts 1:10; 2 Cor 11:14; Rev 4:4; 19:14). What is more, they are presented as giants with heads reaching the sky, while Jesus himself is presented as even taller (10.39–40). While the canonical Gospels describe the resurrected Jesus in terms that suggest transformation of his body so that it has “transphysical” properties (besides entries on resurrection in the Gospels, see here), and this is implicit in Paul’s description of the resurrected body in 1 Cor 15 (see here and here), the description here is unlike anything we find of the resurrected Jesus in the NT.
But that is not the end of it. Not only does giant Jesus emerge from the tomb with his angelic companions, but the cross also follows him out (10.41–42). Yes, the implication is that the cross was buried with him, although this is nowhere explicitly narrated. A further additional pair of details is that a voice from heaven speaks to the cross as it comes out with the three others, and the cross actually speaks in reply.
The voice asks if the cross has proclaimed to those who sleep, and the cross replies that it has. This is, of course, referring to the dead, as we have seen on many occasions now how the dead are described as those who sleep. They are those still awaiting the resurrection. This is not quite a reference to the “harrowing of hell” as such (especially since this text peculiarly attributes that proclamation to the cross), but it is at least in line with that tradition.
After an interlude of the soldiers reporting to Pilate, this Gospel then provides its version of Mary Magdalene and other women arriving at the tomb. And here I draw from a study I did previously on the synoptic accounts of the empty tomb as a point of comparison. The dialogue from Mary and the other women is more expansive than what we see in Mark 16:3 (12.52–54), but there is a core of it that is remarkably similar to the question they ask in Mark (12.53). The same applies to the description of what the women see in the tomb (13.55), as the text is closer to Mark (16:5) than it is to any of the other Synoptics or than any of the Synoptics are to Mark. However, where the Synoptics (especially Matthew and Mark) are closest in resemblance in their accounts of the empty tomb, the Gospel according to Peter diverges the most in reporting what the angel said (13.56). There is repetition of Jesus having “risen and gone” (ἀνέστη καὶ ἀπῆλθεν), but the second statement expands on this by saying he has risen and gone to the place whence he was sent. The account of the women then ends after this statement with the women fleeing in fear from the tomb (13.57). This is a truncated equivalent of Mark 16:8, but it lacks the commission element present in both Matthew and Mark with the women being instructed to announce the resurrection. Even in Luke, where the instruction is not recorded, the women go out to tell the other disciples. But here, there is no such report.
Although I do think that this text was composed in the second half of the second century, I do not think so because of a particular theory of textual dependence of Peter on the canonical Gospels. That is not to say there was no dependence of the author of Peter on these Gospels, but I do not think it was a matter of him having the texts at hand and doing a mix of copying and redacting (as I do not think was the case for the Synoptics either, as I have noted on multiple occasions). And if there can be such peculiarly concentrated verbal similarities without textual dependence of this variety, I think the same can be said for the Synoptic Gospels.
Finally, as I said, the story ends with an incomplete episode of Peter, Andrew, and other disciples (including Levi, son of Alphaeus) going to the sea to fish. Unlike the presumptive equivalent of the anticipated scene in John 21, though, there is no indication that there has been any other appearance to the disciples at this point. In fact, the disciples are still in mourning, and we have seen no change to their condition since it was first reported earlier in the story (7.26–27; 14.58–59).