The Gospel of Peter

The Gospel of Peter: Early Church Fathers and the Early Church

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What makes this text so compelling is not merely its attribution to the Apostle Peter (almost certainly pseudepigraphical), but its distinctive narrative of Christ's Passion and Resurrection. Here we encounter guards who witness Christ emerging from the tomb accompanied by two luminous figures, while a cross follows behind them. We read of Roman officials and Jewish elders acknowledging the divinity of Jesus even as they conspire to suppress evidence of His resurrection. Such vivid imagery, absent from our canonical accounts, opens a window into the spiritual imagination of certain Christian communities in the second century.

Yet Bishop Serapion of Antioch, upon examining this very gospel around 190 AD, concluded that while most of it accorded with "the true teaching of the Savior," certain passages reflected docetic tendencies that denied the full humanity of Christ. This led him to prohibit its usage in the churches under his authority. His judgment, alongside similar assessments by Origen and Eusebius, contributed to the text's eventual exclusion from the New Testament canon.

In this volume, Father Lombard presents not only a thorough analysis of the text itself but also a careful examination of patristic responses to it. Through this dual focus, readers gain insight into both the content of this non-canonical gospel and the process by which the early Church discerned which writings faithfully transmitted apostolic teaching.
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Excerpts from the foreword by:

Father Thomas Augustine Barrett, S.J.

Pontifical Biblical Institute

Rome, Italy

Easter Sunday, 2024