The anti-Jewish tendency of the Gospel of Peter (hereafter abbreviated as GP) is well known.Footnote 1 The extant fragment begins with the report that none of the Jews, ‘neither Herod nor one of his judges’, washed his hands. By contrast the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, does wash his hands, thus symbolically absolving himself of blood-guilt for Jesus’ death (cf. 11.46). This guilt accrues instead to the Jewish ‘king’, Herod, his ‘judges’ and his nation. Pilate and the Romans, then, are exculpated, whereas Herod and the Jews are vilified. Pilate does not even condemn Jesus formally to death, as in the canonical Gospels; that role is fulfilled by Herod (1.2), who then hands Jesus over to ‘the people’, that is, the Jewish populace of Jerusalem – not to the Romans, as in the canonical Gospels. ‘The people’ then drag Jesus to the place of execution, mock his royal pretensions, torment him in various ways and finally crucify him, casting lots for his garments (2.5-4.12) – here again playing the callous and sadistic role the canonical Gospels ascribe to the Romans.
Elsewhere the Gospel of Peter alternates between subtle and open critique of the Jews. Subtle critique is expressed by the motif of the darkness that covers the land as Jesus hangs on the cross. While this feature is found in the Synoptics (Mark 15.33 pars.), the Gospel of Peter connects it thematically with the Jews (οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι) by specifying that the darkness ‘held fast all Judea’ (τὴν Ἰουδαίαν, 5.15). The Gospel of Peter also enhances the canonical Gospels’ account of the tormenting drink offered to the crucified Jesus by Jewish bystanders (5.16):Footnote 2 only in the Gospel of Peter is this drink followed by the editorial comment, ‘And they fulfilled and completed the sins on their own head’ (5.17). The negative characterisation continues in the Empty Tomb narrative, where, echoing the Gospel of John (7.13; 19.38; 20.19), Mary Magdalene and her companions are reluctant to go to the tomb openly because of their fear of ‘the Jews’ (12.50, 52).
According to Tobias Nicklas, these features obstruct identification with the Jewish characters in the story; the Gospel of Peter, therefore, was probably not intended to inspire Jews to repent and convert to Christianity.Footnote 3 Claudio Moreschini and Enrico Norelli, similarly, assert that the anti-Judaism of the Gospel of Peter ‘reflète une situation de polémique tendue entre chrétiens et Juifs, dont le présupposé est une prise de conscience claire de leur séparation et de leur opposition réciproques’.Footnote 4
This is a strong case, but I demur from it. As Nicklas himself recognises, ‘the Jews’ are not a univocally anti-Christian group throughout the Gospel of Peter.Footnote 5 After Jesus’ death, the leaders remain bitterly opposed to him and seek to thwart proclamation of his resurrection (which they have observed!), but the people repent of their role in his crucifixion and become a sympathetic collective character. This division, in my opinion, mirrors the author's perception of contemporary reality and hope for the future: the Jewish leaders in his environment are hostile to the messianic movement, but the people are sympathetic, and the author hopes they will end up becoming Christian.
This reading is in line with the view, which has been put forward from time to time since Jürgen Denker's 1975 dissertation, that the Gospel of Peter was composed for a Jewish Christian audience.Footnote 6 This modern view is supported by the ancient testimony of Theodoret of Antioch, the fifth-century bishop of the Syrian city of Cyrrhus, who says that members of the Jewish Christian sect of the Nazarenes ‘honor Christ as a righteous man and use the Gospel according to Peter’.Footnote 7
Such a Jewish Christian setting would account both for the Gospel's pro-Jewish aspects (which reflect the author's ties of sympathy with and hope for his ancestral people) and for its anti-Jewish aspects (which reflect the opposition of the Jewish leadership in his area to Christian claims). As Alan Kirk puts it, the Gospel ‘rationalizes the limited Jewish response to the Christian proclamation (“their leaders keep them in ignorance of the truth of the resurrection”) while at the same time [it] makes a case to Jews as to why they should leave the synagogue and join the church (“your leaders are untrustworthy and are deceiving you”)’.Footnote 8 I intend to anchor this insight in a concrete reconstruction of the Gospel's context.
1. The Narrative Dynamics of the Picture of the Jews in the Gospel of Peter
In my opinion, the scholar who has analysed the ambiguity of GP's picture of the Jews most searchingly is John Dominic Crossan, who emphasises the sharp division between the depiction of Jewish characters in the first and second halves of the preserved fragment.Footnote 9 In the first half, the people and its leaders are united in their opposition to Jesus. It may be Herod's ‘judges’ who join him in refusing to wash their hands of Jesus’ blood (1.1), but it is ‘the people’ (ὁ λαός) to whom he delivers Jesus (2.5). The latter mock Jesus as the ‘King of Israel’ and ‘Son of God’, push him, strip him of his garments, spit and jab at him, slap him (3.6-9), and finally crucify him (4.10), thus ‘fulfill[ing] all things and complet[ing] the sins on their head’ (5.17).
But a change in the people's attitude immediately occurs. The turning point comes with their observation of the great signs that accompany Jesus’ death: the darkness at noon (μεσημβϱία) over Judea (5.15), the splitting of the Temple curtain (5.20), the earthquake when Jesus’ body is laid out (6.21) and the return of the sun after the darkness (6.22). All of these seem to be in view in 8.28, where the people – here even joined by the leaders – beat their breasts and say that these prodigies show that Jesus was supremely righteous.Footnote 10 This link between darkness and mourning has an Old Testament intertext, Amos 8.9–10, in which ‘that day’ of the Lord's judgement (cf. GP 7.25: ‘The judgment has approached’) includes darkness at noon (μεσημβϱία) and sudden mourning as for a deceased son. This intertext, if deliberately invoked here, itself points towards the possibility of a changed attitude, because the son in the LXX is described as ‘beloved’ (ἀγαπητός).Footnote 11 Verse 7.25, which begins with a disjunctive τότε (‘then’), might at first suggest that the result is general repentance, including both leaders and people, but this hope is dashed in 8.29, where we are told that the leaders fear the people's repentant reaction to the signs.
From this point on, a division between the leaders and the people begins to emerge. In 8.30, the leaders express their anxiety that, if Jesus’ body is stolen, the people may ‘accept that he is risen from the dead, and do us wrong’. They therefore persuade Pilate to appoint a guard to secure the tomb, and the elders and scribes accompany the guard to the burial place to make sure the job is done right (8.31–2). These hostile witnesses are distinguished from the sympathetic crowd that comes from Jerusalem on Saturday morning to see the sealed tomb (9.34). The elders (but apparently not the sympathetic crowd) are still present on Saturday night when Jesus is resurrected, an event they witness (11.45–57). They react to this greatest of miracles, however, not with faith and conversion but with heightened fear that the people may turn against them. This leads to their conspiracy to suppress the truth of the resurrection, ‘for … it is better for us to owe the debt of the greatest sin in the sight of God than to fall into the hands of the people of the Jews (τοῦ λαοῦ τῶν Ἰουδαίων) and be stoned’ (11.48, trans. Brown alt.).
Crossan comments on this locution:
That is a strange phrase, ‘the people of the Jews’. For this author there are two Jewish groups: first, the authorities, including several groups, also called simply ‘the Jews’; and ‘the people’ or ‘the people of the Jews’.Footnote 12
Indeed, the referent of the term ‘the Jews’ fluctuates oddly throughout the document. At the very beginning (1.1) and near the end (12.50, 52) it refers to the hostile leaders, but by 2.5 the people have become associated with the leaders’ hostility, so that, when we read in 6.23 that ‘the Jews rejoiced’ that the sun had returned, and that they turned Jesus’ corpse over to Joseph, we are probably meant to understand the term to include both leaders and people. But two verses later, in 7.25, ‘the Jews’ seem to be distinguished from the elders and priests, and therefore to denote the sympathetic populace. This could also be the meaning in 11.48, where the leaders fear falling into the hands of ‘the people of the Jews’ (ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς χεῖϱας τοῦ λαοῦ τῶν Ἰουδαίων), taking τῶν Ἰουδαίων as an epexegetical genitive: the common people are the true Jewish nation. It is perhaps more likely, however, that the genitive is partitive, denoting the non-elite part of the nation. In any case, ‘the Jews’ in the Gospel of Peter are sometimes the leaders, sometimes the people, and sometimes both combined, and while the term is usually hostile, it is not always so. This fluidity in denotation perhaps suggests a fluidity in conception: it is not clear in the author's environment who speaks for ‘the Jews’, the hostile leaders or the sympathetic people.
The death of Jesus, then, marks a caesura in the narrative, and the leaders and people respond to this event in increasingly divergent ways – the people with repentance, the leaders with conspiratorial deceit. This split leads to tension between the two groups – the people murmuring against the leaders, the leaders fearing the people (8.28–30) – fearing especially that, if the secret of Jesus’ divine sonship were to leak out, the people would turn against them (11.48).
What did this split lead to in the lost end of the narrative, and what are the implications of that for the Sitz im Leben of the Gospel? Nicklas cautiously suggests that the people's retrospective sorrow at their murder of Jesus might leave the door open for future repentance, but he finally decides this is unlikely because of the negative characterisation of the Ἰουδαῖοι.Footnote 13 As we have just seen, however, the image of the Ἰουδαῖοι in the work is inconsistent, and not always negative, and the author's wrath is directed primarily at the leaders rather than the people.
Crossan is more attuned to the shifting narrative dynamics of the Jewish characters, laying great stress on the positive portrayal of the people in the second half of the fragment. Arguing against Raymond Brown, who characterises the Gospel of Peter as more anti-Jewish than any canonical Gospel, Crossan points out that this is true only of the first half of the fragment. In the second half, however,
the Jewish authorities are supremely guilty – much more so than in any canonical account – because they have actually witnessed the resurrection itself; but … the ‘people of the Jews’ are so repentant that their own leaders dare not tell them the truth of the resurrection which they themselves have just seen … If only, as it were, the Jewish people had been told the truth by the Jewish authorities, they would all have become Christian! That, of course, is simply a dream, but it is one from earlier rather than later in the night of Jewish and Christian relations.Footnote 14
Crossan, then, sees the GP portrait of ‘first the responsibility, then the repentance, but finally the inculpable ignorance of “the people of the Jews”’Footnote 15 as a sign that the Gospel of Peter – or, rather, its putative source, the Cross GospelFootnote 16 – comes from an earlier epoch than the canonical Gospels.
Crossan's formulation, ‘first responsibility, then repentance, then inculpable ignorance’, is an important insight into the narrative dynamics of the story. However, his argument that this sort of portrayal could only have occurred at a very early stage of Christian history seems to assume that, after that earliest period, a vibrant Jewish Christianity hopeful of winning the battle for Jewish hearts and minds no longer existed. But this is to buy into Adolf Harnack's tendentious opinion that an anti-Jewish Gentile Christianity quickly (and, in Harnack's view, fittingly) eclipsed Jewish Christianity and Judaism in general.Footnote 17 I hope to show, rather, that the Gospel of Peter fits well into a context where that generalisation did not apply, namely, second-century Syria.
Syria in the second century and third centuries was a place where Jewish Christians were still very much a factor to be reckoned with and still cherished a lively hope for the conversion of their fellow Jews. The author of the Gospel of Peter, I will argue, shared that hope.
2. The Setting of the Gospel of Peter
The basic textual witness for the Gospel of Peter is P.Cair. 10759, which was discovered by French archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Akhmîm in Upper Egypt in 1886–7. The beginning and end (and therefore the title) of this Greek parchment fragment, which is probably to be dated to the late sixth century, are missing. What is left is narrated in the first person by Peter and describes the trial, crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, breaking off at the beginning of a resurrection appearance on the Sea of Galilee to the implied author, his brother Andrew and Levi son of Alphaeus.Footnote 18
Despite the late Egyptian provenance of this manuscript, the consensus of scholarship is that the original text comes from mid second-century Syria.Footnote 19 This localisation depends partly on the reference in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History (6.12.2–6) to a work by Serapion, the bishop of Syrian Antioch at the end of the second century, entitled Concerning the So-Called Gospel of Peter.Footnote 20 Serapion recounts that he first allowed ‘the Gospel put forward … in the name of Peter’ to be read by the Christian community in the Syrian city of Rhossus, but later came to reject it because it was being used by the disciples of a certain Marcianus to support their docetism. The Akhmîm fragment is probably not docetic,Footnote 21 but it is easy to see how some of its passages (for example, 4.10 and 5.19) might be taken as such. Serapion's report about the Gospel of Peter, therefore, establishes a plausible link between the Akhmîm fragment and a late second-century Syrian figure, and it thus makes a mid second-century Syrian setting for the text plausible. Also supporting a mid second-century dating (though not a Syrian setting) are the parallels between GP 2.3–5a and P.Oxy. 2949, which has been dated on palaeographical grounds to the late second or early third century.Footnote 22
Links with other texts written in Syriac or that can plausibly be connected with Christians in the Roman province of Syria also help establish an early Syrian provenance for the Gospel of Peter. The most prominent of these is the Didascalia Apostolorum (hereafter abbreviated as DA), an early third-century Syrian text originally composed in Greek, of which fragments exist, but which is fully preserved only in a Syriac translation of the mid-fourth to early-sixth century. The author himself appears to be a Christian of Jewish birth (see especially DA 19.5.5.3/172.11–14/190.14–18 and 26.6.17.16/230.11–14/248.6–8),Footnote 23 although he strenuously opposes the attraction of some in his community to the ‘Second Legislation’, the ritual Law supposedly imposed on the Jews to punish them for the sin of the Golden Calf. Despite his antagonism to the ritual Law, the author's Jewish background comes to the fore in the glowing terms in which he elsewhere speaks of ‘the Law’ and in his positive uses of the term ‘the people’ for the Jews.Footnote 24
Already near the close of the nineteenth century Harnack registered a striking correspondence between this work and the Gospel of Peter: in both Pilate's handwashing is contrasted with Herod's condemnation of Jesus to death (GP 1.1–2; DA 21.5.19.4–5/199.16–21/214.23–215.4). The latter feature occurs in none of the canonical Gospels; indeed, at the only point in the canonical passion narratives where Herod appears (Luke 23.6–15), he ends up declaring Jesus innocent. Harnack concluded, mostly on the basis of this overlap, that ‘das Didascalia-Evangelium das Petrusev. ist’.Footnote 25
Since Harnack, scholars have discerned further links between the Gospel of Peter and the Didascalia, for example, the overlap between GP 9.35–42; 11.45 (Jesus’ resurrection on Saturday night) and DA 21.5.14.14/190.19–191.2/207.20–1,Footnote 26 as well as between GP 14.60 (the apparent post-resurrectional appearance of Jesus to Levi) and DA 21.5.14.14/191.2–4/207.21–2.Footnote 27 More significantly for our purposes, both documents imply that Peter and the other disciples fasted and mourned for Jesus in the terrible hours between his passion and his resurrection (GP 7.26–7; DA 21.5.13/188.20–1/206.3–5; 21.5.19.2/199.8–9/214.16–17).Footnote 28 The motif of the disciples’ sadness during and after Jesus’ passion is found occasionally in the canonical Gospels (Mark 14.72 pars.; Luke 24.17; cf. Mark 16.10), but it is never connected with fasting, as it is in both the Gospel of Peter and the Didascalia.Footnote 29
There are also links between the Gospel of Peter and a Jewish Christian source of the Pseudoclementine Recognitions that most scholars trace back to second- or third-century Syria (Rec 1.27–71 or 1.33–71). The source was originally in Greek, which has been lost except for small fragments. Most of the narrative, including our passage, is available only in translations made in the fourth and fifth centuries into Syriac and Latin respectively.Footnote 30 Most of the parallels to the Gospel of Peter are found in the Syriac version of Rec 1.41.1–4, and they include the disturbance of the people at the sun going dark and the tearing of the Temple veil (GP 5.15; 7.25; 8.28), and the split between the people and their leaders (GP 7.28–31; 11.43–8). Furthermore, as Robert Van Voorst has noted, in both the Gospel of Peter (8.28–30) and Rec 1.41.4, the effect of the portents on the common people continues after Jesus’ death, leading to a change of heart – a feature, again, not present in the canonical Gospels.Footnote 31 The next section of the Recognitions (1.42.3), as well as GP 6.22, moreover, inform us that the sun reappeared after the supernatural darkness that foreshadowed, so to speak, Jesus’ death. Jones concedes that ‘[t]his … is a natural thing for the sun to do’ but rightly emphasises that only the Gospel of Peter, the Recognitions and Ephrem, who seems to be dependent on the Recognitions, mention it.Footnote 32
Both the second/third-century Syrian Jewish Christian source found in the Pseudoclementine Recognitions, then, and the third-century Syrian Jewish Christian work, the Didascalia, have significant overlaps with the Gospel of Peter, and it seems probable that both used the Gospel of Peter as a source.
3. The Judgement of Jerusalem
These are mostly thematic overlaps, but one important set of vocabulary parallels ties the Gospel of Peter to Recognitions 1.41, the Didascalia, and other early Christian literature, almost all of it from Syria, which is either Jewish Christian in origin or strongly influenced by Jewish Chrisitianity. This is the reference in GP 7.25 to the people of Jerusalem bemoaning their sin of killing Jesus, which will lead to the destruction of their city. The most striking parallelsFootnote 33 may be seen in the following display of texts and the accompanying Table 1.
Gospel of Peter 7.25
τότε οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ οἱ πϱεσβύτεϱοι καὶ οἱ ἱεϱεῖς, γνόντες οἷον κακὸν ἑαυτοῖς ἐποίησαν, ἤϱξαντο κόπτεσθαι καὶ λέγειν· “Οὐαὶ ταῖς ἁμαϱτίαις ἡμῶν· ἤγγισεν ἡ κϱίσις καὶ τὸ τέλος Ἰεϱουσαλήμ.”
Then the Jews and the elders and the priests, having come to know how much wrong they had done themselves, began to beat themselves and say, ‘Woe to our sins. The judgment has approached and the end of Jerusalem.’
Ephrem, Commentary on the Diatessaron 20.28Footnote 34
Վայ էր, վայ էր մեզ….Որդի էր սա աստուծոյ….Եկեալ հասեալ են,…աւասիկ դատաստանք աւերածոյն Երուսաղէմի:
Woe was it, woe was it to us … This was the son of God …They have come, they have arrived … Behold, the judgments of the desolation of Jerusalem!
Pseudoclementine Recognitions 1.41.3 Syriac
And the curtain of the Temple was split, for it was wailing as if in mourning over the future destruction of the place.Footnote 35
Didascalia Apostolorum 21 (5.14.24/193.2–5/209.18–21)
On account of them [ = the Jews], thus, and for the judgement and the destruction of the place, we are required to fast and to mourn, that we may rejoice and be glad in the world to come …
The Teaching of Addai f. 18a (Howard, pp. 55–7)
For behold, unless they had known that he was the Son of God, the ones who crucified him would not have proclaimed the desolation of their city – also, they would not have laid sorrows upon themselves. (trans. Howard, alt.)
Luke 23.48, MS G (Codex Sangermanensis)
et omnis turba eorum, qui simul aderant ad spectaculum istud, et videbant quae fiebant, percutientes pectora sua revertebantur dicentes, vae vobis [ = nobis] quae facta sunt hodie propter peccata nostra. appropinquavit enim desolatio Ierusalem.
And the whole crowd of them, who had come together at that spectacle, and had seen the things that had happened, returned home beating their breasts and saying, ‘Woe to us for the things that have happened today on account of our sins. For the desolation of Jerusalem has come near.’
As can be seen from Table 1, all of these passages link mourning by or for the Jews with the destruction of Jerusalem or the Temple. This link probably originated as an attempt to explain why the Jerusalemites in Luke 23.48 beat their breasts as they return home; the answer (the coming destruction of Jerusalem) is suggested by the connection between this passage and Luke 23.27–31, where Jesus responds with a threat of judgement to the breast-beating ‘daughters of Jerusalem’. A binomial reference to ‘the judgement and the destruction of Jerusalem’ (or ‘the place’) occurs in the Gospel of Peter, the Diatessaron and the Didascalia, and a reference to ‘the destruction of the place’ in the Recognitions and the Didascalia. The Gospel of Peter, the Diatessaron and Addai, moreover, share the motif that Jesus’ killers knew he was the Son of God.
Table 1. Jewish Mourning over the Coming Judgement of Jerusalem and the Temple in Ancient Christian Literature.
Since all of these documents are either Jewish Christian (the Pseudoclementines and the Didascalia) or influenced by Jewish Christianity (Codex Sangermanensis,Footnote 36 the Teaching of AddaiFootnote 37 and the DiatessaronFootnote 38), and since all except Codex Sangermanensis come from Syria,Footnote 39 they strengthen the case that the Gospel of Peter proceeds from a Syrian ambience strongly influenced by Jewish Christianity. It is particularly striking that the Gospel of Peter's closest parallel is with the Diatessaron, which was probably composed in Syria in the third quarter of the second century, and seems to be in touch with Jewish Christian Gospels. Between the two of them the Gospel of Peter's version seems to be earlier, since it has a single woe as opposed to two and an anomalous singular verb as opposed to the Diatessaron's smoother plural.Footnote 40
4. Redemptive Mourning at Jesus’ Death and Fasting for the Jews
Of course, saying that the Gospel of Peter comes out of an ambience influenced by early Syrian Jewish Christianity is not identical with saying that the work itself is Jewish Christian or sympathetic to Jews; Ephrem and Aphrahat provide excellent counter-examples.Footnote 41 So we must delve further into the Gospel's picture of the Jews mourning, beating their breasts, bewailing the wrong they have done and proclaiming Jesus’ innocence in the moments immediately following his death (7.25–8.28). Do these actions represent the hopeless regret of those who have waited too long to repent, and know they can only anticipate merciless judgement (cf. Matt 24.30; Heb 12.16–17; Rev 1.7)? Or are they the productive sorrow of those who intuit that their great sins may yet become the arena for God to display the overwhelming power of his forgiveness (cf. 1 Kings 21.27–9; Hos 5.15–6.1; 14.1–8; Jonah 3.5–10; 1 Tim 1.15–16)?Footnote 42 Is the scene, in other words, expressive of Jewish self-damnation or Jewish conversion? Philip Augustin, in his monograph on the Jews in the Gospel of Peter, argues that the former is the case: the repentance of the Jews has come too late, since they have already ‘completed the sins on their own head’ (GP 5.17) by crucifying, mocking and killing Jesus.Footnote 43
I argue, to the contrary, that, for the author of the Gospel of Peter, the people's repentance is not ‘too little, too late’. They have committed a great sin in killing Jesus, and for this they will suffer the judgement of their capital's destruction, as they themselves recognise (7.25). But the doors of repentance remain open to them, and their self-accusation marks the beginning of their entrance. This reading of GP 7.25 resembles the description given of the Jewish Christian Gospel of the Nazarenes by the ninth-century monk Haimo of Auxerre, who says that it portrays myriads of Jews converting to belief in Jesus at the time of his crucifixion.Footnote 44 It is instructive to recall that Theodoret of Cyrrhus says that the Nazarenes use the Gospel of Peter (above, p. 475).
This penitential interpretation of GP 7.25 gains credence from the fact that it and the reference to the Jews bemoaning Jesus’ death in 8.28 frame the reference in 7.26–7 to the disciples mourning and fasting between Good Friday and Jesus’ resurrection on Saturday night. As we have seen above, this unusual reference to apostolic fasting is a link with Didascalia 21, which describes the disciples fasting ‘when our Saviour suffered’ (5.13/188.20–1/206.3–5) or ‘when our Lord suffered, for a testimony of the three days’ (5.19.2/199.8–9/214.16–17) – that is, during the period that began with Jesus’ passion and ended with his night-time resurrection.
In the Didascalia, then, an apostolic fast on Good Friday and Holy Saturday grounds the church's practice of fasting during that period, and several scholars have argued that the apostolic fast in the Gospel of Peter reflects a similar liturgical practice.Footnote 45 As Clemens Leonhard puts it, ‘Such an addition – or even contradiction – to the narrative of the Bible should serve some polemic end – for example to support a Christian festival of Unleavened Bread by giving it an apostolic pedigree.’Footnote 46 The Didascalia refers to this sort of paschal fasting six timesFootnote 47 and portrays it as intended not only to commemorate Jesus’ suffering but also to give a spiritual boost to the church's intercession for the Jews, who fell into the gravest of sins when they crucified Jesus during the paschal season but can still be redeemed. In one passage, for example, the author, speaking in the person of the apostles, exhorts his audience to fast on Good Friday and Holy Saturday and then recounts:
Indeed, in this way did we also fast, when our Lord suffered, for a testimony of the three days. And we were keeping vigil and praying and interceding for [that is, to avert] the loss of the people 
, because they went astray and did not confess our Savior. Thus do you also pray that the Lord may not remember their guilt against them unto the end because of the perfidy which they treacherously brought against our Lord, but might grant them a place for repentance and conversion, and forgiveness of their wickedness. (DA 21.5.18.2–5.19.3/198.19–199.15/214.16–22, trans. Vööbus, alt.)
Here the Jews’ ‘perfidy which they treacherously brought against our Lord’ – a statement that would be very much at home in the Gospel of Peter – is not forgotten. But instead of being the cause of their eternal loss and damnation, as usually happens in Adversus Iudaeos literature,Footnote 48 here it becomes a spur to fasting and prayer that God ‘might grant them a place for repentance and conversion’.
This intercession scenario is even more dramatically expressed in another Didascalia passage that speaks of fasting, mourning and praying for the Jews:
On this account know, our [Christian] brothers, that our fast which we fast in the pascha, that you are to fast, is because our [Jewish] brothers have not obeyed. Indeed, even though they hate you, yet ought we to call them brothers, because it is written for us in Isaiah thus: ‘Call them brothers, those who hate and reject you, that the name of the Lord may be glorified’ [Isa 66.5]. On account of them, thus, and for the judgement and destruction of the place, we are required to fast and mourn, that we may rejoice and be glad in the world to come … It is required of us thus to have pity on them, and to believe and to fast and pray for them. (DA 21.5.14.23–15.1/192.21–193.11/209.13–27 trans. Vööbus, alt.)
This passage is related to the Gospel of Peter not only by the motif of paschal fasting but also, as we have seen, by the notice that this fasting is a sign of mourning ‘for the judgement and destruction of the place’. Jerusalem and its Temple, then, will be destroyed; their fate was sealed by the Jews’ murder of Jesus.Footnote 49 But that is not the author's last word. Rather, the grievous woes that the Jews consequently suffered are meant to inspire the audience ‘to have pity on them, and to believe and to fast and to pray for them’ 
. The belief spoken of here is surely the belief that the Jews can still be saved.
In fact, they not only can be saved – they will be saved. For the author believes that the paschal fast observed in his community will have the desired effect, despite the fact that up to this point ‘our brothers’, who ‘hate and reject’ the Christians, ‘have not obeyed’ the glorious message of the gospel. In spite of that, they remain ‘our brothers’ 
, a term that the Jewish Christian author uses in the same sentence for his fellow Christians. The two sets of brothers remain mysteriously intertwined, despite the enmity that the Jewish ‘brothers’ presently manifest for the Christian ones. No matter, because God's commitment to Jewish salvation will trump the present Jewish rejection of the gospel message and the Christians. In the view of the author of the Didascalia, then, hatred and rejection will not be the Jews’ final response to the offer of the gospel. If his Christian brothers will fast and pray for their Jewish brothers – as the apostles themselves did – believing that those brothers will come around, they will come around, becoming brothers not just in flesh but also in Spirit.
A similar practice of liturgical fasting for the Jews is attested in other Syrian texts from the early Christian centuries; these texts, like the Gospel of Peter, all seem to be related to the Didascalia in one way or another. The late fourth-century church father Epiphanius, for example, in his Panarion (Refutation of All Heresies), refers to a contemporary Quartodeciman sect called the Audians, who come from SyriaFootnote 50 and support their position by reference to a work called the Diataxis (Ordinance) of the Apostles. This seems to be an early version of chapter 21 of the Didascalia (Teaching) of the Apostles,Footnote 51 and thus probably goes back to the second century. In one passage (Pan. 70.11.3), the Diataxis parallels the Didascalia (cf. DA 21.5.12.5/188.11–12/205.16–17; 21.5.17/196.18–19/211.25–7; 21.5.20.9/201.17–20/217.16–19; 21.5.20.10/202.3–4/218.6–7) in calling for a paschal fast synchronised with the Jews’ paschal banqueting:Footnote 52
When they feast, you yourselves, by fasting, should mourn for them (ὑμεῖς νηστεύοντες ὑπὲϱ αὐτῶν πενθεῖτε), for they crucified Christ on the day of the feast. And when they mourn on the Day of Unleavened Bread and eat with bitter herbs, you should feast. (trans. Williams, alt.)
This is germane for our purposes because it implies both opposition to the Jews and intercession on their behalf. On the one hand, as in the Gospel of Peter and the Didascalia, the Jews are identified as the crucifiers of Jesus, and Christian rites are sharply distinguished from Jewish ones: when they feast, you should mourn, and vice versa. This reverse synchronicity seems to be generally characteristic of the Quartodeciman movement and those (like the Didascalia's author) influenced by it; Gerard Rouwhorst therefore refers to the Quartodeciman paschal celebration as ‘une sorte de anti-Pâque’.Footnote 53
But this anti-Jewish attitude is tempered in the Diataxis as in the Didascalia by identification with the Jews. For there is also a positive synchronicity here, in that the Christian rite is coordinated with the Jewish one; an earlier passage from the Diataxis, for example, calls Christians to ‘celebrate when your brothers of the circumcision do (ποιεῖτε ὅταν οἱ ἀδελφοὶ ὑμῶν οἱ ἐκ πεϱιτομῆς); celebrate at the same time with them (μετ’ αὐτῶν ἅμα ποιεῖτε)’ (Pan. 70.10.2).Footnote 54 Importantly, moreover, the Diataxis passage quoted in Pan. 70.11.3 calls upon Christians to fast not only simultaneously with but also on behalf of the Jews (ὑπὲϱ αὐτῶν). Similarly, a late fourth-century Syrian text, the Apostolic Constitutions, which uses the Didascalia and seems to have a Quartodeciman provenance,Footnote 55 exhorts Christians to devote ‘the holy week of Passover’ to mourning over the Jews (πενθεῖν αὐτούς), lamenting their perdition (ὀδύϱεσθαι … ἐπὶ τῇ ἀπωλείᾳ αὐτῶν, 5.15), and fasting and praying for those who are perishing (νηστεύοντες … πϱοσευχόμενοι … πεϱὶ τῶν ἀπολλυμένων, 5.13). Fasting and prayer for the Jews during the Passover season, then, seems in the early centuries ce to have been widespread in Syrian circles related to the Didascalia, and these rites co-existed with blaming the Jews for Jesus’ death. The author of the Gospel of Peter may have seen things in a similarly ambivalent way.Footnote 56 It is noteworthy, in this regard, that all of the evidence about a paschal fast for the Jews comes from Syrian Quartodeciman circles (Diataxis, Apostolic Constitutions) or from a Syrian circle influenced by Quartodecimanism (the Didascalia). This is relevant because the Gospel of Peter also seems to come from a Syrian Quartodeciman environment.Footnote 57
5. The Gospel and the Apocalypse of Peter
So far I have shown that a positive interpretation of the Gospel of Peter's attitude towards the Jews is in line with the narrative arc of the Gospel and with philo-Judaic attitudes current in the Syrian environment, especially in circles related (as the Gospel of Peter is) to the Didascalia. I have also shown that some of those in such circles who fasted and prayed during the paschal season (as Peter and the other apostles do in the Gospel of Peter) did so to move God to inspire Jewish conversion to Christianity. One other building block of the argument remains to be put in place: the link of the Gospel of Peter with the Apocalypse of Peter.
The Apocalypse of Peter is a second-century Greek work that is bound next to the Gospel of Peter in the Akhmîm codex and inscribed in the same careful documentary hand, in distinction from the other works in the codex.Footnote 58 On the basis of this common treatment and some striking vocabulary and conceptual overlaps,Footnote 59 several scholars have argued convincingly that the two works once formed a unity.Footnote 60 It is also likely, however, that the Apocalypse of Peter had a separate existence before being incorporated into the Gospel, and it continued to circulate independently after its incorporation into the Gospel of Peter; indeed, references to the Apocalypse are more numerous than references to the Gospel.Footnote 61 This would make the Apocalypse of Peter like the so-called ‘Little Apocalypse’ of Mark 13, which many scholars think had a separate existence before being incorporated into the Second Gospel.Footnote 62 Another argument for the priority of the Apocalypse to the Gospel relates to the Ethiopic version of the Apocalypse, which is longer and apparently more primitive than the Akhmîm version, even though the manuscripts are later.Footnote 63 The most important plus of this version is chapter 2, which conflates and explains the two fig tree parables from the canonical Gospels (Mark 13.28–9 pars.; Luke 13.6–9) in a revealing way:Footnote 64
1[Jesus said:] ‘But as for you, learn from the parable of the fig tree: as soon as its shoots have come forth and its branches become tender, then will be the end of the world.’
2I, Peter, answered him and said to him, ‘Interpret the fig tree for me – how can we understand, 3since day by day the fig tree sprouts, and every year it produces figs for its owners? [But] what the parable of the fig tree [means], we do not know.’
4The teacher answered me and said to me, ‘Do you not know that the fig tree is the house of Israel? 5It is like [this]: a man planted a fig tree in his garden, and it did not produce fruit, [even though] he sought its fruit for many years. When he found none he said to the gardener, “Uproot this fig tree, lest our land become useless to us.” 6The gardener said to his master, “Send us to weed it and hoe the dried earth beneath it and irrigate it with water. If it does not produce fruit, then we shall root it out from the garden and plant another in its place.”
7’Do you not understand that the fig tree is the house of Israel? And indeed I told you [that] when its branches at last become tender, a false Messiah will come; 8and he will claim for himself, “I am the Christ who has come into the world.” But when they have seen his evil deeds, they will turn away; 9they will not believe him who is called “the glory of our fathers” – [our fathers] who crucified him who was Christ from the beginning, and [in so doing] greatly erred. 10But this liar is not the Christ. When they reject him, he will make war with the sword, and there will be many martyrs.
11’Then, therefore, the branches of the fig tree – that is, the house of Israel alone – will have sprouted; many will be martyrs at his hand. Many will die and become martyrs. 12For Enoch and Elijah will be sent to make them understand that this is the deceiver who is to come into the world to do signs and wonders in order to deceive. 13For this reason those who die at his hand will be martyrs, and will be numbered with the good and righteous martyrs who have pleased God with their lives.'
Richard Bauckham has argued, convincingly in my view, that the ‘Liar’ here is Simon Bar Kochba, the leader of the abortive Jewish revolt against the Romans in 132–5 ce, who is called ‘the Son of the Liar’ in rabbinic sources and who, according to Justin Martyr (1 Apol. 31.6), persecuted and killed Christians when they rejected his messianic claims.Footnote 65 On the basis of this identification, Bauckham concludes that the Apocalypse of Peter was written by and for Palestinian Jewish Christians during the Bar Kochba Revolt, which would give the Apocalypse about fifteen or twenty years of independent existence before being incorporated into the Gospel of Peter around mid-century.
The relationship of the Gospel to the Apocalypse of Peter, and the priority of the Ethiopic version of the latter, are important for our purposes because the Ethiopic text of the Apocalypse is an amazingly philo-Judaic text. This is true despite the fact that the fig tree parable here retains and even magnifies the warning element found in Luke 13.6–9: if the fig tree does not bear fruit in short order, it will be uprooted and replaced by another tree. This replacement motif is similar to the one in another Synoptic parable, that of the vineyard, especially as interpreted by Matthew (21.43). In Matthew, however, the replacement of the original plant is not (as in Luke 13.6–9) merely a threat but (at least for Matthew's audience) a fait accompli.Footnote 66
Quite the opposite, however, seems to be implied by the Ethiopic version of the Apocalypse of Peter: instead of being uprooted, the original fig tree, which is thrice decoded as ‘the house of Israel’, will be restored to God's good graces. As Bauckham puts it, ‘The Jewish Christian author of the Apocalypse of Peter … unlike the “Matthean” churches … remains loyal to the national hope of his people and continues to hope for a large-scale conversion of the Jews to Jesus Christ.’ Although the parable itself, in probable dependence on Matt 21.33–43, speaks of uprooting the fig tree (= Israel) and planting another tree (= the church) in its place, this is not how the author of the Apocalypse interprets it.Footnote 67 Rather, as Bauckham puts it:
He regards Israel's opportunity to bear fruit as still open and expects her to bear fruit in the near future, as the last sign of the approaching parousia. Had he been rewriting the parable from the point of view of his own interpretation of it, he would surely have ended with the gardener's expressing hope that the tree would bear fruit.Footnote 68
The Apocalypse of Peter, then, removes the ambiguity found in the Lukan parable: ‘the keeper of the garden’ will not labour in vain. Rather, the Israel-tree's shoot will burst forth and its branches will sprout, and that will be the sign of the end of the world (vv. 1, 8, 11). The Israel-tree will not be replaced by another tree, because the fig tree is the house of Israel alone (ቤተ፡ እስራኤል፡ ባሕቲቱ, v. 11). Although many Jews will be deluded by the lies of the false messiah Bar Kochba, in the end Elijah and Enoch will return to restore the true form of their ancient faith (v. 12) – that is, the one that recognises Jesus as the true Messiah and the culmination of Jewish history.
The Ethiopic version of Apocalypse of Peter 2, therefore, is one of the most powerful of the infrequent expressions of hope for Israel in the early church. It is not surprising, then, to hear the church historian Sozomen report that, as late as the fifth century, this apocalypse was ‘still being read in some of the churches of Palestine on the day of preparation, when the whole people fasts reverently (εὐλαβῶς ἅπας ὁ λαὸς νηστεύει) in memory of the passion of the Savior’ (ἐπὶ ἀναμνήσει τοῦ σωτηρίου πάθους, Hist. eccl. 7.19.9).Footnote 69 As we have seen, in neighbouring Syria a paschal fast ‘in memory of the passion of the Savior’ was often a fast for the Jews as well.Footnote 70 Sozomen's account of Palestinian Christians reading the Apocalpyse of Peter during this paschal fast dovetails perfectly with the hopeful message of the Ethiopic version of that work.
6. The Lost Ending of the Gospel of Peter
But why does this philo-Judaic passage appear only in the Ethiopic, not in the Akhmîm Greek, version of the Apocalypse of Peter? Peter van Minnen has argued that the Akhmîm scribe had an anti-Jewish slant, and that he deliberately excised such pro-Jewish elements. Indeed, Van Minnen goes further, asserting that this scribe subjected both the Apocalypse and the Gospel of Peter to an anti-Jewish redaction.Footnote 71
In my opinion, this theory may shed light on the missing end of the Gospel. The latter terminates at the bottom of a page with an incomplete sentence, which apparently went on to describe a resurrection appearance: ‘And there was with us Levi of Alphaeus whom the Lord …’ This must be where the Akhmîm scribe intended his manuscript to end, since this half-sentence is followed by an ornamental border and two blank pages. Presumably, if the scribe had more text he wanted to copy, he would have omitted the border and continued onto the next page. Why did he not do so?
The usual explanation has been that the Vorlage of the Gospel was defective, but Van Minnen points out that both the manuscript of the Gospel and the manuscript of the Apocalypse begin with a proper sentence, and the Apocalypse ends with one. He therefore considers the hypothesis of a defective Vorlage unlikely.Footnote 72 I would add that it is prima facie implausible that the Vorlage ended precisely where the Akhmîm scribe's space ran out, especially since the letters at the bottom of the last page show signs neither of crowding nor of expansion.
I believe that the argument of this essay provides a plausible explanation for this deliberately interrupted ending: as the scribe cut from the Apocalypse a passage that was hopeful about the future of the Jews, so he excised from the Gospel its philo-Judaic ending. In that ending, Jesus appeared to Peter and the other apostles on the Sea of Galilee and commissioned them to return to their people to continue the work, which he had begun on the cross, of separating them from their recalcitrant and deceitful leaders, and thereby converting them to faith in the one they had crucified. The concluding missionary appeal of the Gospel, then, had the same message as the missionary speeches to Jews in Acts 2–3: ‘You killed him … but God raised him up … therefore repent’ (see Acts 2.23–4, 36–9; 3.14–21). Here Jewish blood-guilt for Jesus’ death does not preclude Jewish repentance but motivates it.
