THE GOSPEL OF PETER AND THE NT CANON The Early Church Fathers rejected the gospel of Peter on grounds

that it express ed heretical attitudes which reflected Docetic and Gnostic influences. The basis of this inference lay in the fact that the gospel did not unequivocally assert the physical death and bodily resurrection of Jesus. One result of this rejectio n was the century-lomg loss and disappearance of the gospel, but after a fragmen t of the gospel was discovered in Egypt in 1884 the scholars have engaged in hea ted controveries over it. Those who have recently discussed the gospel in books and articles, notably Raym ond Brown,Ron Cameron, J. D. Crossan, Helmut Koestler and F. F. Bruce, differ si gnificantly and widely on the question of whether the writer of the gospel influ enced, or was influenced by, the canonical gospels. Estimates of the time of the gospel's composition range from the second half of the first century to the sec ond half of the second. In Ron Cameron's opinion useful criteria for assessing w hen the gospel was written include measuring the stress the evangelists placed o n OT sources and prophecies, the greater this stress the earlier the time of the gospel's composition, and verbal clues provided by certain words such as kyrie ,"the Lord," which at some later stage replaced the name of Jesus. Peter's gospe l would then include both early and late elements according to such indications. The reference to "the Lord's Day" points to a development that emerged in the s econd century as a token of the demotion of the Jewish Sabbath and its replaceme nt by Sunday as the day of the Resurrection. We encounter this term in the Book of Revelation where it does not appear to evince the same polemical force.The ex oneratation of Pllate as the one responsible for the death of Jesus points to a desire to place the sole guilt for the execution on Herod Antipas and "the Jews, " which seems to indicate that the gospel was composed when hostility between Je wish and Gentile Christians was reaching its height, that is to say, during and after the revolt led by Bar Kochbar. The gospel might still echo tendencies that arose in the first century when there had been disputes between various schools of belief among the followers of Jesus. Perhaps the most fruitful approach to u nderstand the relationship between the gospel of Peter and the canonical gospels is to admit its essentially dialogic nature. The gospel of Peter contains an account of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of J esus that shares something in common with the accounts of the canonical gospels but diverges from them quite radically. As in the Gospel of Luke, the King Herod Antipas portrayed in Peter's gospel played a role in the proceedings against Je sus that led to the Crucifixion. However, according to the gospel of Peter Herod led these proceedings while Pilate took little or no part in them. The gospel of Peter echoes Matthew and Mark in quoting the final words of Jesus dying on the Cross with the words "My Power, you have forsaken me." In the gospe ls of Matthew and Mark the dying Jesus alludes to the opening verse of Psalm 22 in line with the trend within the early Christian fellowship to base its claims on the authority of the Hebrew scriptures, and the term "my power" is one place removed from such original terms of reference. The gospel agrees with Matthew th at the Jewish and Roman authorites placed guards at the tomb of Jesus, and with Mark, that Mary Magdalene and other women came to the tomb, found it empty and w ere told by an angelic youth that Jesus had risen from the tomb, after which the women were so petrified that they were unable to recount this even. While Mark' s angel told the women that Jesus would await the disciples in Galilee, Peter's angel reported that Jesus would return "whence he had come." Did the angel mean Galilee or Heaven? This statement may well be deliberately ambiguous. In Peter's gospel there is no reference to the appearances of Jesus on Easter Su nday and the following Sunday and therefore it does not correspond to accounts i

n the gospels of Luke, John and Mark (after chapter 16, verse 8 until verse 20, that is to say, in the passage suspected of being inserted by an editor so as to accord with Luke's or John's version of events), for the author claiming to be Peter reports that the disciples kept themselves hidden in Jerusalem until the s even-day Passover festival was over. It breaks off at the point where Peter and some fellow disciples decide to go fishing, which seems to indicate some connect ion to the end of John's Gospel The parallels between accounts given by Matthew , Mark (up to chapter 16, verse 8) and that of Peter are close enough for us to assume that "Peter" was acquaint ed with the text or the drift of the text of Matthew's and Mark's gospels, or, l ess probably, vice versa. In the gospel of Peter the risen Jesus and two angels appear to the guards posted to keep watch at the tomb but not simultaneously to the women who came to anoint the body of Jesus. In Matthew's gospel the guards a nd the women at the tomb witness the descent of an angel who opens the tomb and declares that Jesus has risen. In the same gospel the women meet Jesus on their way from the tomb to the place where the disciples were located. In Peter's gosp el Mary Magdalen and her female companions encounter an angelic youth seated in the tomb and he announces to them that Jesus has risen, which seems to accord wi th the account in Mark's gospel. Let us consider certain anomies we discover in the message of the gospelof Peter . The writer of the gospel claims to be Peter, the leader of those early Christi ans who maintained close contact with their Jewish roots and culture, yet the Pe ter we meet as the author of the gospel bearing his name adopts a decidedly anta gonistic attitude to the Jews as the people solely responsible for the death of Christ. "Peter" and Luke accord Herod Agrippa a leading or significant role in t he trial of Jesus but if "Peter" was familiar with Luke's gospel, why should he make no room for reporting the appearances of Jesus to his disciples on Easter S unday? There are two explanations to consider. Either "Peter" did not know of Lu ke's account of events after the Resurrection or he chose to ignore it because o f its emphasis on the physical nature of the body of Christ after the Resurrecti on, an emphasis what was not in keeping with an alternative understanding of Chr ist's crucificion, death and resurrection. If, on the other hand, Luke knew of t he teachings presented in the gospel of Peter or by antecedant sources, it is po ssible that the accounts of events on Easter Sunday and the following Sunday in the gospels of Luke and John constitute a reaction to claims that Jesus only app eared to die on the Cross and did not return to life in a physical body. Inciden tly this is the view presented in the Koran. On the basis of my observations I venture to draw certain conclusions. The gospe l of Peter was written at some time in the first half of the second century but it captures something of the mood that must have prevailed in the early years of Christianity, its sense of rapture and the immanent return and vindication of C hrist and the shaming of his Jewish adversaries, even those living at the time o f the Cruciifixion. The feeling I mean is palpable in the image of Christ's asce nt to Heaven at the moment of Resurrection as a towering figure accompanied at e ither side by two giant angels. Even his enemies and persecutors must acknowledg e his victory. One could argue that the description of the Resurrection in the g ospel of Peter is in some ways more logical and plausible than the descriptions in the canonical gospels. According to the gospel of Peter those who were presen t at the tomb at the exact point in time when Jesus rose from the dead saw Jesus himself. The fear of the women who came to anoint Jesus is adequately explained . According to the Acts of the Apostles Jesus remained on the earth for forty days after the Resurrection and so it took only ten more days of waiting before the Holy Spirit was given to the followers of Jesus at the festival of Pentecost. Th

us the Church secured two further days in the emergant Church year based on the traditional Jewish annual calendar. The expection of the imminent Rapture of bel ievers and the return of Christ was giving way to the needs of an established ch urch order for which certain aspects of the Jewish tradition provided a useful m odel, meaning that the extreme anti-Judaism of the Gnostics and Marcion with the ir rejection of the OT canon and with their concept of a cruel and fierce Jewish deity had to be thrown overboard. The questions surrounding Marcion's version o f Luke's gospel reveal a similarity with those surrounding the relationship betw een the canonical gospels and the gospel of Peter. In Marcion's version of Luke there is no account of the nativity of Jesus and hence of the punctilious observ ance by Joseph by Mary of the Jewish rites of purification and circumcision. Did he banish the nativity story from his version of the gospel or was the nativity story added to the original gospel in order to refute the position adopted by M arcion? Thus the debate continues. At least we should eschew simplistic arguments of the kind that on the one hand suggest that the writers of the canonical gospels cop ied parts of the gospel of Peter or, on the other, that the unity of NT canon ha d been firmly established and recognized despite the difficulty of reconciling a nd harmonizing the four gospels before the writer of the gospel of Peter manipul ated material found in them to meet his own ends. The mystery of the emergence o f the gospels whether canonical or not and will probably remain even if the rest of the gospel of Peter should be in discovered in a remote cave in a desert are a somewhere in the Middle East.