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8 unusual facts about Gospel of Peter


Crucifixion darkness

The Gospel of Peter, probably from the second century, expands on the canonical gospel accounts of the passion narrative in creative ways.

Gospel of Peter

Raymond E. Brown and others find that the author may have been acquainted with the synoptic gospels and even with the Gospel of John; Brown (The Death of the Messiah) even suggests that the author's source in the canonical gospels was transmitted orally, through readings in the churches, i.e. that the text is based on what the author remembers about the other gospels, together with his own embellishments.

J. Rendel Harris

Included among the topics on which he wrote are: the Apology of Aristides (1891), the Didache, Philo, the Diatessaron, the Christian Apologists, Acts of Perpetua, The Odes and Psalms of Solomon (1906), the Gospel of Peter, and other Western and Syriac texts, and numerous works on biblical manuscripts.

John 20:1

Brown thus thinks that the Gospel of Peter's story that she came simply to mourn is more likely.

Matthew 27:65-66

The non-canonical Gospel of Peter adds far more information stating that the tomb was closed with seven wax seals.

Matthew 28:11

The apocryphal Gospel of Peter has a version of this scene, but there the guards to report to Pilate.

Rhosus

Towards 200 AD, Serapion of Antioch composed a treatise on the Gospel of Peter for the faithful of Rhosus who had become heterodox on account of that book.

Stolen body hypothesis

In favor of the existence of the guards being historical, however, Craig notes that the non-canonical Gospel of Peter also includes a story of guards being placed at the tomb, yet one that is quite different, suggesting that the guards are less likely to have been invented entirely by Matthew.


Synoptic Gospels

Furthermore, some theories try to explain the relation of the synoptic gospels to John; to non-canonical gospels such as Thomas, Peter, and Egerton; to the Didache; and to lost documents such as the Hebrew logia mentioned by Papias, the Jewish-Christian gospels, and the Gospel of Marcion.


see also