Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (119 page)

The Apocalypse of Peter is noteworthy as the first surviving account of a guided tour of the realms of the damned (
chs. 3
–12, Ethiopic) and the blessed (
chs. 13
–
16
; the Greek reverses the sequence). The beginning of the narrative sounds very much like the opening of the famous apocalyptic discourse of Mark 13 and its Synoptic parallels: “And when he was seated on the Mount of Olives, his own came unto him, and we entreated and implored him severally and besought him saying unto him, ‘Make known unto us what are the signs of thy parousia and of the end of the world.’”

The bulk of the narrative, then, recounts in graphic detail and some voyeuristic glee the fates awaiting souls in the age to come. The account concludes with an alternative version of the transfiguration, in which Peter volunteers to build “three tabernacles,” one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah; a voice comes from heaven affirming that Christ is the beloved Son, and then a great cloud comes to take away all three of them.

Bauckham in particular has argued that the narrative is not to be seen as a variation on the apocalyptic discourse of the Synoptics but as a postresurrection narrative.
¹²²
If he were right, the work would present the final words of the resurrected Jesus to his followers and could be seen as a kind of counterforgery to the Gnostic revelation dialogues. In this it would be much like the Epistula Apostolorum, as here—contrary to the Gnostic counterparts—the real physical experiences of the afterlife are quite emphatically in the flesh. But the account, as we will see, is anti-Gnostic wherever one places it in the story of Jesus, and it is very hard indeed to deny that the opening sets the stage for an alternative description of the small apocalypse of Mark 13 and its parallels. Moreover, the conclusion is not an ascension narrative, as Bauckham is forced to argue, but contains all the elements
of the transfiguration scene (Peter’s presence; Moses and Elijah; the voice from heaven; the cloud).

In any event, the “tour” (real or imagined) that Christ gives Peter of the respective realms of the dead focuses on the tactile experiences of the afterlife. Most attention has been paid to the horrific punishments meted out to sinners. Five times in the account the author stresses that each one will be treated “according to his deeds” performed while living. Nowhere is the point more emphatic than at the outset, where Christ proclaims:

Recompense shall be given to each according to his work. As for the elect who have done good, they will come to me and will not see death by devouring fire. But the evil creatures, the sinners and the hypocrites will stand in the depths of the darkness that passes not away, and their punishment is the fire, and angels bring forward their sins and prepare for them a place wherein they shall be punished for ever, each according to his offence. (
ch. 6
)

What has struck scholars most is that many of the punishments of hell work on the principle of the lex talionis. This is not simply a Jewish notion, as István Czachesz points out by recalling the clever line in Aelius Theon’s
Progymnasmata
: “Didymon the flute player, on being convicted of adultery, was hanged by his namesake.”
¹²³
But as also widely noted, not all of the punishments described in the book are “kind for kind.” In the helpful taxonomy of Bauckham, four of the twenty-one torments are specifically body part for body part; and six others could be construed this way. Others, however, replicate common human punishments made eternal (whips, burnings); others reflect what happens typically to exposed human corpses (being eaten by birds); and yet others have traditional associations with the Jewish place of punishment, Gehenna (darkness, fire).
¹²⁴
In any event, the punishments are individualized for different kinds of sin; they are as a whole meant to vindicate God’s justice; they are retributive, not reformatory (too late for all that!); and they are eternal—a fact stressed eleven times in the older form of the Ethiopic, though edited out in the Greek, possibly because the editor had an alternative understanding of eschatological realities. This final point is worth stressing. In the Ethiopic version the punishments describe what will be; in the Greek they are what is occurring in the present. One cannot help but suspect that the de-apocalypticized version represents a transformation generated by the failure of the end to materialize, or at least the heightened sense that it probably never would materialize in the way formerly anticipated.

Even though the Apocalypse of Peter engages in rather obvious attacks on certain immoral activities and the people who engage in them, it does not level its assault on any groups of heretics or false teachers (in contrast, as we will see, to the Apocalypse of Paul)—or of nonbelievers (e.g., Jews, apart from the possible reference to Bar Kochba). The explicit polemic involves sins, primarily of the flesh. Still, that in itself may be significant in view of the theological debates of the early and middle second century. It is striking and well worth noting that what is emphasized here, in the name of Peter, is the physical fate of humans, in the flesh. They experience either brutal torment or eternal ecstasy. The book in other words, may well function polemically in emphasizing precisely a doctrine that, at the time of its composition, was in wide dispute among various Christian groups, not in the manner of, say, 3 Corinthians, which addresses the issue of the flesh head on as a polemical issue, but by emphasizing the importance of flesh through the words of Christ himself, delivered to his disciples, especially Peter. A number of discussions of the book miss this forest for the trees, not realizing that the flesh is one of the book’s ultimate concerns.

The stress on the flesh is clear in the opening eschatological discourse, where Christ emphasizes that on the “day of God” there will be “the decision of the judgment of God” when all people will be gathered before the Father, who will command hell to open up and give up everyone in it. Then, most notably “the beasts and the fowls shall he command to give back all flesh that they have devoured, since he desires that men should appear (again); for nothing perishes for God” (
ch. 4
). This, then, is “the resurrection of the dead on the day of judgment”—a raising of all flesh to face judgment in the flesh.

The fleshly character of suffering is particularly evident in what Czachesz has called the “grotesque body,” the all-too physical “combination of the ludicrous and fearful” in the detailed torments of the damned.
¹²⁵
So too with the godly ecstasies narrated in
chapter 16
, experienced in a beautiful garden with sweet fragrances, to satisfy the bodily senses. It might also be noted that, at the end, it is precisely “men in the flesh” who come to welcome Christ into heaven (ch. 17).

The forger establishes his false identity at the outset, first as one of Jesus’ disciples (“we entreated and implored him severally,”
ch. 1
) and then more concretely as the head disciple himself (“I, Peter, answered and said unto him,”
ch. 2
). The authorial pretense is maintained throughout the narrative, although to some extent it is more pronounced in the later Greek version, where the visions of the damned are narrated in the first person rather than the third (e.g., “I saw another place …” Greek ch. 21, and so on). At the end as well, we have, in both versions, first-person
narrative, spoken by Peter: “I approached God Jesus Christ and said to him …” (ch. 16).

A key question that is rarely asked and even more rarely answered in scholarship on the text involves precisely the pseudepigraphic claim. Why does the author feign to be Peter, in particular? In his discussion of
Petrine Controversies
Terence Smith raises the question and never answers it.
¹²⁶
Bauckham suggests that it is because Peter is the principal disciple and important in Matthew, the author’s favorite Gospel. But that too does not get us very far.

It may be more useful to consider the stress the author places on the physicality of the afterlife, where rewards and punishments will be in the flesh. Peter, as we have seen, was sometimes associated with an alternative eschatology, in which the flesh was belittled. Docetic understandings of Christ, and thus denigrations of the importance of the flesh generally, can be found in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, the letter of Peter to Philip, and—as read, at least, by Serapion and his associates, whether or not this was the authorial “intention”—in the Gospel of Peter. This author responds by stressing the opposite perspective and authorizing his view by appeal, again, to Peter himself. The flesh matters, and will continue to matter into the afterlife.

It is interesting to consider the connections between the two Apocalypses of Peter in this regard, one of them devaluing the flesh and the other emphasizing it. It may be pushing the matter too far to claim that one of them was written in response to the other. They are, after all, dealing with different subject matters. But if nothing else their similarities and differences do highlight the varying interpretations of the flesh attributed to the chief apostle by forgers antagonistic to one another’s views. Both the docetic Coptic Apocalypse of Peter and this proto-orthodox version involve revelations of Christ directly to Peter, that is, visionary experiences that Christ mediates; both take place near the end of Jesus’ life; both reveal what cannot be perceived by the normal processes of human observation; both are concerned with spiritual blindness; both see the need to differentiate between truth and error; both have ultimate, eschatological implications to their views of the flesh.

The distinctions between the two accounts are yet more revealing.

• In the Coptic apocalypse Peter does not understand what he sees and is told that what is perceived by physical sight is not the ultimate reality. In the proto-orthodox apocalypse Peter understands perfectly well what he sees and his vision represents itself as the ultimate reality.

• In the Coptic apocalypse ultimate reality transcends the flesh and resides in the realm of the spirit. In the proto-orthodox version ultimate reality is precisely in the flesh.

• In the Coptic apocalypse the ultimate goal of salvation is to be removed from the body and its sensations; the end comes when the physical body is transcended. In the proto-orthodox version salvation comes in the body and its sensations, and the end comes when the physical body is rewarded or tormented.

• In the Coptic apocalypse the literal teachings of Peter lead to blindness and error. In the proto-orthodox Apocalypse it is the literal teachings of Peter about the literal events of the future that constitute ultimate truth.

• In the Coptic apocalypse the orthodox Christians are condemned for clinging to the name of a dead man. In the proto-orthodox version Jesus is a crucified man whose example should be followed and whose martyrs are counted as pleasing to God.

• In the Coptic apocalypse Jesus tells Peter to be strong; since Jesus will be with him, none of his enemies will prevail against him. In the proto-orthodox apocalypse Jesus sends Peter to his martyrdom: “Leave and go to the city of the west and drink the wine about which I have told you.”
¹²⁷

And so, even though the two “revelations” are about two different matters—Christ’s crucifixion and the fate of the dead—the books are very much at odds with one another at a number of key points. The Coptic version is explicitly countering a set of views that is endorsed by the proto-orthodox version, whose own polemic is much more subtle but recognizable nonetheless. The flesh matters. In Buchholz’s summary, the author “was involved in the debate over the believers’ resurrection bodies. He insists on a very physical, future resurrection for believers.”
¹²⁸
This view is presented specifically in a forgery in the name of Peter, chief of the disciples, and counters writings—including some forgeries—that take, or were believed to take, precisely the opposite perspective, also in the name of Peter, including not only the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter but also the Gospel of Peter and the Letter of Peter to Philip.

Far more influential on the history of Christian thought than the Apocalypse of Peter, though clearly dependent on it for many of its traditions, was the Apocalypse of Paul, which was originally composed in Greek but came to be translated into a number of languages: Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Slavonic, and Ethiopic.
¹²⁹
The work as we have it is dated at the outset: “In the consulate of Theodosius Augustus the Younger and of Cynegius, a certain respected man was
living in Tarsus…”
¹³⁰
Commonly this is taken to indicate that the book was composed, in its final form, around 388
CE
.
¹³¹
But this in fact is merely the terminus ad quem. And so Silverstein has influentially argued for a later date of around 420
CE
and Piovanelli for a slightly earlier one of 395–416
CE
.
¹³²
Most recently Hilhorst agrees with an early-fifth-century date for the existing text, but, along with others, stresses that an earlier iteration of the account, lacking the prologue, appears to be attested at least 150 years earlier, as some form of the account was probably known to Origen. Origen quotes the text in a fragment preserved by the thirteenth-century Syrian author Bar Hebraeus (
Nomocanon
VII, 9); moreover Origen’s Homily 5 on Psalm 36 describes the fate of souls that appears to parallel the Apocalypse of Paul 13ff. Hilhorst’s conclusion is that “some version of the
Apocalypse of Paul
must have existed in the first half of the early third century.”
¹³³

Despite its widespread popularity—down at least to Dante—the work was roundly condemned in orthodox circles, including in the Gelasian Decree. Augustine had nothing good to say about it: