The True Lost Gospel of Peter
Perhaps you've heard of "other gospels," other books about Jesus' life that didn't make it into the Bible. Two Gnostic accounts from the second-century are attributed to Peter: one which is called the Gospel of Peter and focuses on the last days of Jesus, and the other is called the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which was written to call the early church foolish. Why would these writings be attributed to Peter? Simple: Peter was one of Jesus' closest friends, and a leader of the Disciples. If information came from Peter, it must be accurate. But as Bart Ehrman, famous agnostic New Testament scholar says, the Gospels from the Bible are significantly better sources then any others:
"The oldest and best sources we have for knowing about the life of Jesus... are the four Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is not simply the view of Christian historians who have a high opinion of the New Testament and its historical worth; it is the view of all serious historians of antiquity of every kind, from committed evangelical Christians to hard-core atheists. This view is not, in other words, a biased perspective of only a few naive wishful thinkers; it is the conclusion that has been reached by every one of the hundreds (thousands, even) of scholars who work on the problem of establishing what really happened in the life of the historical Jesus" (1)
Of course, another claim Ehrman makes is none of the Gospels are eyewitness accounts (and so none certainly belong to Peter!). But that claim is false. Why? Because of an abundance of evidence supporting that Mark reported everything he learned from Peter, which became the canonical Gospel of Mark. This Gospel I call the "true lost Gospel of Peter" because it is not common knowledge today that the report belongs to Peter, and that it does is highly significant.
J. Warner Wallace was an atheist cold-case homicide detective who converted to Christianity after studying the evidence. He used his detective, eye-witness studying mind to break down the Gospels and recorded a lot of evidence supporting the claim that Mark was the scribe of Peter. All six pieces of information go to his book Cold-Case Christianity.
The early church claimed that the Gospel of Mark was Peter's eyewitness recollections recorded by Mark. Papias, a bishop of Hierapolis in the second century, wrote: "Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ."
1. Mark "bookends Peter." This means Peter is the first disciple identified in the text (Mark 1:16) and the last disciple mentioned (Mark 16:7). Scholars have noticed this type of "bookending" in other ancient texts where a document is attributed to a specific eyewitness.
2. Mark mentions Peter twenty-six times in his short account, where Matthew mentioned Peter only three more times in his much longer Gospel.
3. Mark never used the term "Simon Peter," but used "Simon" and "Peter" interchangeably. Simon was the most popular male name in Palestine during the time of Mark, but he never bothered to distinguish Peter from many other Simons. Compare this to John, as he referred to Peter more formally as "Simon Peter" seventeen times.
4. Mark hid many of Peter's embarrassments. These foolish choices of Peter would be very embarrassing for the early church as Peter was the leading disciple and so were not invented later. Mark omits Peter being "of little faith" and sinking into the sea (Matthew 14:22-33) and Peter's doubt in Jesus' wisdom and claim "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!" (Luke 5:1-11). Mark's gospel can often keep out Peter's name and just attribute embarrassments to "the disciples."
5. Mark identifies people and places as Peter would. Mark alone used the phrase "Simon and his companions" when they went looking for Jesus (Mark 1:35-37). Mark identifies Peter as the one to draw Jesus' attention to the withered fig tree (compare Matthew 21:18-19 with Mark 11:20-21). Mark alone identified the specific disciples who asked Jesus about the destruction of the temple (compare Matthew 24:1-3 with Mark 13:1-4). Matthew told us that Jesus returned to Galilee and "came and settled in Capernaum," but Mark said that the people there heard that he had "come home." Mark said this despite everyone knew Jesus had been raised in Nazareth. But of course, Mark alone tells us that Capernaum was actually Peter's hometown and that Peter's mother lived there (Mark 1:21, 29-31).
6. Peter's preaching style consistently seems to omit details of Jesus's private life (Acts 1:21-22 and Acts 10:37-41 for example). Peter limited his description to Jesus's public life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Mark also followed this rough outline, omitting the birth narrative and other details of Jesus's private life that are found in Luke's and Matthew's Gospels.
The question now is: did the early church make this up? Did they do all this work to attribute a Gospel to Peter?
When I think of this question, I primarily view it as being ad-hoc (that is, creating a theory to fit the evidence rather then letting the evidence speak for itself). Peter was long gone by the second century, when the Gnostic gospels were written, so he couldn't deny its authenticity. But the Gospel of Mark was written as late as the 50s, because the book of Acts was written no later then AD 62, so Luke was earlier, so Mark which was used by Luke, was earlier (more on that in a later post). People could know whether or not it went back to Peter, But then, if this Gospel was being falsely used to prove that Peter said these things, why is it called the Gospel of Mark?The name Mark was attached to manuscripts dating back to the second century, and he wasn't even a major figure in the church! If someone was wishing to invent a Gospel of Peter, call it the Gospel of Peter. Saying Mark wrote it would just be confusing if someone was trying to convince others of incredibly important testimony.
One argument a skeptic could make is that Mark records when Jesus said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan!" This is an embarrassing thing to say to Peter. But, that event doesn't do away with the abundance of evidence for Mark trying to stick to Peter's testimony, and as a matter of fact, Mark writing this down makes perfect sense if his primary mission is to keep an accurate record of Jesus' life, over making Peter look good. Still, even so this is true, the most edited and least embarrassing version comes from his Gospel (compare Mark 8;:31-33 with Matthew 16:21-23).
Finally, J.P. Moreland, a leading Christian apologist, has recorded a list of 16 unlikely inventions in Mark as collected by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd. This is good evidence that no one was making up stuff when it comes to Mark's Gospel:
1. Bart Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine (Oxford University Press: New York, NY. 2004), 102-103.
2. J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels (David C. Cook: Colorado Springs, CO. 2013), 93-96.
3. J.P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul (NavPress: Colorado Springs, CO. 2012), 208.
"The oldest and best sources we have for knowing about the life of Jesus... are the four Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is not simply the view of Christian historians who have a high opinion of the New Testament and its historical worth; it is the view of all serious historians of antiquity of every kind, from committed evangelical Christians to hard-core atheists. This view is not, in other words, a biased perspective of only a few naive wishful thinkers; it is the conclusion that has been reached by every one of the hundreds (thousands, even) of scholars who work on the problem of establishing what really happened in the life of the historical Jesus" (1)
Of course, another claim Ehrman makes is none of the Gospels are eyewitness accounts (and so none certainly belong to Peter!). But that claim is false. Why? Because of an abundance of evidence supporting that Mark reported everything he learned from Peter, which became the canonical Gospel of Mark. This Gospel I call the "true lost Gospel of Peter" because it is not common knowledge today that the report belongs to Peter, and that it does is highly significant.
J. Warner Wallace was an atheist cold-case homicide detective who converted to Christianity after studying the evidence. He used his detective, eye-witness studying mind to break down the Gospels and recorded a lot of evidence supporting the claim that Mark was the scribe of Peter. All six pieces of information go to his book Cold-Case Christianity.
The early church claimed that the Gospel of Mark was Peter's eyewitness recollections recorded by Mark. Papias, a bishop of Hierapolis in the second century, wrote: "Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ."
1. Mark "bookends Peter." This means Peter is the first disciple identified in the text (Mark 1:16) and the last disciple mentioned (Mark 16:7). Scholars have noticed this type of "bookending" in other ancient texts where a document is attributed to a specific eyewitness.
2. Mark mentions Peter twenty-six times in his short account, where Matthew mentioned Peter only three more times in his much longer Gospel.
3. Mark never used the term "Simon Peter," but used "Simon" and "Peter" interchangeably. Simon was the most popular male name in Palestine during the time of Mark, but he never bothered to distinguish Peter from many other Simons. Compare this to John, as he referred to Peter more formally as "Simon Peter" seventeen times.
4. Mark hid many of Peter's embarrassments. These foolish choices of Peter would be very embarrassing for the early church as Peter was the leading disciple and so were not invented later. Mark omits Peter being "of little faith" and sinking into the sea (Matthew 14:22-33) and Peter's doubt in Jesus' wisdom and claim "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!" (Luke 5:1-11). Mark's gospel can often keep out Peter's name and just attribute embarrassments to "the disciples."
5. Mark identifies people and places as Peter would. Mark alone used the phrase "Simon and his companions" when they went looking for Jesus (Mark 1:35-37). Mark identifies Peter as the one to draw Jesus' attention to the withered fig tree (compare Matthew 21:18-19 with Mark 11:20-21). Mark alone identified the specific disciples who asked Jesus about the destruction of the temple (compare Matthew 24:1-3 with Mark 13:1-4). Matthew told us that Jesus returned to Galilee and "came and settled in Capernaum," but Mark said that the people there heard that he had "come home." Mark said this despite everyone knew Jesus had been raised in Nazareth. But of course, Mark alone tells us that Capernaum was actually Peter's hometown and that Peter's mother lived there (Mark 1:21, 29-31).
6. Peter's preaching style consistently seems to omit details of Jesus's private life (Acts 1:21-22 and Acts 10:37-41 for example). Peter limited his description to Jesus's public life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Mark also followed this rough outline, omitting the birth narrative and other details of Jesus's private life that are found in Luke's and Matthew's Gospels.
The question now is: did the early church make this up? Did they do all this work to attribute a Gospel to Peter?
When I think of this question, I primarily view it as being ad-hoc (that is, creating a theory to fit the evidence rather then letting the evidence speak for itself). Peter was long gone by the second century, when the Gnostic gospels were written, so he couldn't deny its authenticity. But the Gospel of Mark was written as late as the 50s, because the book of Acts was written no later then AD 62, so Luke was earlier, so Mark which was used by Luke, was earlier (more on that in a later post). People could know whether or not it went back to Peter, But then, if this Gospel was being falsely used to prove that Peter said these things, why is it called the Gospel of Mark?The name Mark was attached to manuscripts dating back to the second century, and he wasn't even a major figure in the church! If someone was wishing to invent a Gospel of Peter, call it the Gospel of Peter. Saying Mark wrote it would just be confusing if someone was trying to convince others of incredibly important testimony.
One argument a skeptic could make is that Mark records when Jesus said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan!" This is an embarrassing thing to say to Peter. But, that event doesn't do away with the abundance of evidence for Mark trying to stick to Peter's testimony, and as a matter of fact, Mark writing this down makes perfect sense if his primary mission is to keep an accurate record of Jesus' life, over making Peter look good. Still, even so this is true, the most edited and least embarrassing version comes from his Gospel (compare Mark 8;:31-33 with Matthew 16:21-23).
Finally, J.P. Moreland, a leading Christian apologist, has recorded a list of 16 unlikely inventions in Mark as collected by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd. This is good evidence that no one was making up stuff when it comes to Mark's Gospel:
- Jesus’ own family questioned His sanity (3:21); Jesus could not perform many miracles in His own town (6:5); Jesus was rejected by people in His hometown (6:3); some thought Jesus was in collusion with, and even possessed by, the Devil (3:22, 30); Jesus at times seemed to rely on common medicinal techniques (7:33; 8:23); Jesus’ healings were not always instantaneous (8:22-25); Jesus’ disciples were not always able to exorcise demons (9:18), and Jesus’ own exorcisms were not always instantaneously successful (5:8); Jesus seemingly suggested He was not “good” (10:18); Jesus associated with people of ill repute (2:14-160; Jesus was sometimes rude to people (7:27); Jesus seemed to disregard Jewish laws, customs, and cleanliness codes (2:23-25); Jesus often spoke and acted in culturally “shameful” ways (3:31-35); Jesus cursed a fig tree for not having any fruit when He was hungry, even though it was not even the season for bearing fruit (11:13-14); the disciples who were to form the foundation of the new community consistently seemed dull, obstinate, and eventually cowardly (8:32-33; 10:35-37; 14:37-40, 50).
These reasons are why I believe that the Gospel of Mark, probably the earliest Gospel written, is the important eyewitness testimony of one of Jesus' closest friends.
So the next time you get your hands on the Bible, maybe open it up to the unidentified true lost Gospel of Peter, and read about the life of Jesus Christ. It's pretty amazing, and accurate, too.
Works Cited:
1. Bart Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine (Oxford University Press: New York, NY. 2004), 102-103.
2. J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels (David C. Cook: Colorado Springs, CO. 2013), 93-96.
3. J.P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul (NavPress: Colorado Springs, CO. 2012), 208.
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