Apocalypse Of Peter 432b6k

Apocalypse of Peter For the similarly titled Nag Hammadi text, see Gnostic early apocryphal ones are known: see Apocalyptic literApocalypse of Peter. ature.) Scholar Oscar Skarsaune makes a case for dating the composition to the Bar Kochba revolt (132–136).[4] The Apocalypse of Peter (or Revelation of Peter) is an early Christian text of the 2nd century and an example of apocalyptic literature with Hellenistic overtones. It is not in the Bible today, but is mentioned in the Muratorian fragment, the oldest surviving list of New Testament books, as no longer being allowed to be read in church. The text is extant in two incomplete versions of a lost Greek original, one Koine Greek,[1] and an Ethiopic version,[2] which diverge considerably. The Greek manuscript was unknown until it was discovered during excavations directed by Sylvain Grébaut during the 1886–87 season in a desert necropolis at Akhmim in Upper Egypt. The fragment consisted of parchment leaves of the Greek version that had been carefully deposited in the grave of a Christian monk of the 8th or 9th century. The manuscript is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The Ethiopic version was discovered in 1910.

2 Content The Apocalypse of Peter is framed as a discourse of the Risen Christ to his faithful, offering a vision first of heaven, and then of hell, granted to Peter. In the form of a nekyia[5] it goes into elaborate detail about the punishment in hell for each type of crime, later to be depicted by Hieronymus Bosch, and the pleasures given in heaven for each virtue. In heaven, in the vision, • People have pure milky white skin, curly hair, and are generally beautiful

• The earth blooms with everlasting flowers and spices Before that, the work had been known only through copi• People wear shiny clothes made of light, like the anous quotes in early Christian writings. In addition, some gels common lost source had been necessary to for closely parallel ages in such apocalyptic Christian lit• Everyone sings in choral prayer erature as the Apocalypse of Esdras, the Apocalypse of Paul, and the ion of Saint Perpetua. The punishments in the vision each closely correspond to the past sinful actions in a version of the Jewish notion of an eye for an eye, that the punishment may fit the crime.[6] Some of the punishments in hell according to the vision 1 Dating include: The terminus post quem—the point after which we know the Apocalypse of Peter must have been written—is revealed by its use of 4 Esdras, which was written about 100 AD; it is used in Chapter 3 of the Apocalypse.[3] The intellectually simple Apocalypse of Peter, with its Hellenistic Greek overtones, belongs to the same genre as the Clementine literature that was popular in Alexandria. Like the Clementine literature, the Apocalypse of Peter was written for a popular audience and had a wide readership. The Muratorian fragment, the earliest existing list of canonical sacred writings of the New Testament, which is assigned on internal evidence to the last quarter of the 2nd century (c. 175–200), gives a list of works read in the Christian churches that is similar to the modern accepted canon; however, it also includes the Apocalypse of Peter. The Muratorian fragment states: “the Apocalypses also of John and Peter only do we receive, which some among us would not have read in church.” (It is interesting that the existence of other Apocalypses is implied, for several

• Blasphemers are hanged by the tongue. • Women who “adorn” themselves for the purpose of adultery, are hung by the hair over a bubbling mire. The men that had adulterous relationships with them are hung by their feet, with their heads in the mire, next to them. • Murderers and those that give consent to murder are set 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 punishing angels, and are “cast off” to the bottom. Then they are forced up it, over and over again, ceaselessly, to their doom. • Women who have abortions are set in a lake formed from the blood and gore from all the other punishments, up to their necks. They are also tormented 1

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THE RU'YA BUTRUS

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

of Clement’s, the Hypotyposes (Outlines), that gave “abridged s of all the canonical Scriptures, not even omitting those that are disputed, I mean the book of Jude and the other general epistles. Also the Epistle of Barnabas and that called the Revelation of Peter.”[10] • Those who lend money and demand “usury upon So the work must have existed in the first half of the 2nd usury” stand up to their knees in a lake of foul matter century, which is also the commonly accepted date of the and blood. canonic Second Epistle of Peter.[11] Although the numerous references to it attest to its being once in wide circula“The Revelation of Peter shows remarkable tion, the Apocalypse of Peter was ultimately not accepted kinship in ideas with the Second Epistle of Peinto the Christian canon. ter. It also presents notable parallels to the Sibylline Oracles[7] while its influence has been conjectured, almost with certainty, in the Acts 4 The Ru'ya Butrus of Perpetua and the visions narrated in the Acts of Thomas and the History of Barlaam and JosThere are more than 100 manuscripts of an Arabic Chrisaphat. It certainly was one of the sources from tian work entitled the Ru'ya Butrus, which is Arabic for which the writer of the Vision of Paul drew. the 'Vision' or 'Apocalypse' of Peter.[12] Additionally, as And directly or indirectly it may be regarded catalogues of Ethiopic manuscripts continue to be comas the parent of all the mediaeval visions of the [8] piled by William MacComber and others, the number of other world.” Ethiopic manuscripts of this same work continue to grow. It is critical to note that this work is of colossal size and The Gospel parables of the budding fig tree and the barren post-conciliar provenance, and therefore in any of its refig tree, partly selected from the parousia of Matthew censions it has minimal intertextuality with the Apoca24,[9] appear only in the Ethiopic version (ch. 2). The lypse of Peter, which is known in Greek texts. Further two parables are ed, and the setting “in the summer” complicating matters, many of the manuscripts for either has been transferred to “the end of the world”, in a dework are styled as a “Testament of Our Lord” or “Testailed allegory in which the tree becomes Israel and the tament of Our Savior”. Further, the southern-tradition, flourishing shoots Jews who have adopted Jesus as Mesor Ethiopic, manuscripts style themselves “Books of the siah and achieve martyrdom. Rolls”, in eight supposed manuscript-rolls. There is also a section which explains that in the end God In the first half of the 20th century, Sylvain Grebaut will save all sinners from their plight in Hell: published a French translation, without Ethiopic text, of this monumental work.[13] A little later, Alfons Mingana “My Father will give unto them all the life, the published a photomechanical version and English translaglory, and the kingdom that eth not away, tion of one of the monumental manuscripts in the series ... It is because of them that have believed in Woodbrooke Studies. At the time, he lamented that he me that I am come. It is also because of them was unable to collate his manuscript with the translation that have believed in me, that, at their word, I published by Grebaut. That collation, together with colshall have pity on men... " lation to some manuscripts of the same name from the Vatican Library, later surfaced in a paper delivered at a Thus, sinners will finally be saved by the prayers of those conference in the 1990s of the Association pour l'Etudes in heaven. Peter then orders his son Clement not to speak des Apocryphes Chretiennes. There seem to be two difof this revelation since God had told Peter to keep it se- ferent “mega-recensions”, and the most likely explanation is that one recension is associated with the Syriaccret: speaking traditions, and that the other is associated with the Coptic and Ethiopic/Ge'ez traditions. The “northern” [and God said]"... thou must not tell that or Syriac-speaking communities frequently produced the which thou hearest unto the sinners lest they manuscripts entirely or partly in karshuni, which is Aratransgress the more, and sin.” bic written in a modified Syriac script. Each “mega-recension” contains a major post-conciliar 3 Career of the Apocalypse of Pe- apocalypse that refers to the later Roman and Byzantine emperors, and each contains a major apocalypse that ter refers to the Arab caliphs. Of even further interest is that some manuscripts, such as the Vatican Arabo manuscript Clement of Alexandria appears to have considered the used in the aforementioned collation, contains no less Apocalypse of Peter to be holy scripture. Eusebius, than three presentations of the same minor apocalypse, Historia Ecclesiae (VI.14.1), describes a lost work about the size of the existing Apocalypse of John, having

3 a great deal of thematic overlap, yet quite distinct textually. Textual overlaps exist between the material common to certain Messianic-apocalyptic material in the Mingana and Grebaut manuscripts, and material published by Ismail Poonawalla.[14] The manuscripts having the “Book of the Rolls” structure generally contain a recension of the well-known “Treasure Grotto” text. The plenary manuscripts also generally contain an “Acts of Clement” work that roughly corresponds to the narrative or “epitome” story of Clement of Rome, known to specialists in pseudo-Clementine literature. Finally, some of the plenary manuscripts also contain “apostolic church order” literature; a collation of that has also been presented at a conference of the Association pour l'Etudes des Apocryphes Chretiennes. Collations of these manuscripts can be daunting, because a plenary manuscript in Arabic or Ethiopic/ Ge'ez is typically about 400 pages long, and in a translation into any modern European language, such a manuscript will come to about 800 pages.

[5] The Apocalypse of Peter was presented as a nekyia, or journey through the abode of the dead, by A. Dieterich, Nekyia (1893, reprinted Stuttgart, 1969); Dieterich, who had only the Akhmim Greek text, postulated a general Orphic cultural context in the attention focused on the house of the dead. [6] Pointed out in detail by David Fiensy, “Lex Talionis in the 'Apocalypse of Peter'", The Harvard Theological Review 76.2 (April 1983:255–258), who remarks “It is possible that where there is no logical correspondence, the punishment has come from the Orphic tradition and has simply been 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 discussed under Figs in the Bible; Richard Bauckham, “The Two Fig Tree Parables in the Apocalypse of Peter”, Journal of Biblical Literature 104.2 (June 1985:269–287), shows correspondences with wording of the Matthean text that does not appear in the parallel ages in the synoptic gospels of Mark and Luke.

Overall, it may be said of either recension that the text has grown over time, and tended to accrete smaller works. [10] Clement 41.1–2 48.1 correspond with the Ethiopian text There is every possibility that the older portions that are M. R. James in introduction to Translation and Introducin common to all of the major manuscripts will turn out to tion to Apocalypse of Peter. The Apocryphal New Testahave recensions in other languages, such as Syriac, Copment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924) tic, Church Armenian, or Old Church Slavonic. Work on [11] Perrin, Norman The New Testament: An Introduction, p. this unusual body of medieval near eastern Christianity is 262 still very much in its infancy.

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

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Notes

[1] The Greek Akhmim text was printed by A. Lods, “L'evangile et l'apocalypse de Pierre”, Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéologique au Caire, 9, M.U. Bouriant, ed. (1892:2142-46); the Greek fragments were published by M.R. James, “A new text of the Apocalypse of Peter II”, JTS 12 (1910/11:367-68). [2] The Ethiopic text, with a French translation, was published by 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 Testament Apocrypha (Philadelphia/Westminster) 1964. [4] Oscar Skarsaune (2012). Jewish Believers in Jesus. Hendrickson Publishers. pp. 386–388. ISBN 978-1-56563763-4. Skarsaune argues for a composition by a JewishChristian author in Israel during the Bar Kochba revolt. The text speaks of a single false messiah who has not yet been exposed as false. The reference to the false messiah as a “liar” may be a Hebrew pun turning Bar Kochba’s original name, Bar Kosiba, into Bar Koziba, “son of the lie”.

[13] Grebaut [title] [14] Poonawalla, “Shi'ite Apocalyptic” in M. Eliade, ed., Encyclopedia of World Religions

6 Further reading • Eileen Gardiner, Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante (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.

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• 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 Farmbrough, 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, Chris the 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, Robertoreggi, PbBot, Vanished 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, In ictu 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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