There is much more to be said in favour of the view that Justin Martyr (c. 150) was acquainted with the Petrine Gospel, as a comparison of the following passages with the Fragment will show. ‘The Spirit of prophecy foretold . the con- spiracy which was formed against Christ by Herod, the king of the Jews, and the Jews themselves, and Pilate who was your governor among them, with his soldiers’ (Apol. i. 40). ‘And, as the prophet spoke, they tormented him, and set him on the judgment-seat, and said, Judge us’ (Apol. i, 35). ‘Those who crucified him garments among themselves, each casting lots for what he chose to have, and receiving according to the decision of the lot’ (Dialogue with Trypho, 97). The words and sentences in italics are the most important parallels to the Petrine Gospel in Justin’s writings, and the most striking of these is the statement that Jesus, not Pilate (ef. Jn 19}%), sat on the judgment-seat. But Justin’s account bears a closer resemblance to John’s than to the longer narrative in the Petrine F ragment ; if there be dependence, Justin’s seems to be primary. This conclusion is confirmed by a fact to which Dr. Salmon calls attention, viz., that Justin — who, cx hypothesi, believed this Gospel to be Peter’s, and therefore a document of paramount autho. rity—‘in every case where the account in this Gospel differs from that in the canonical, and where we have the means of jud ging which Justin prefers, follows the latter without hesitation’? (Introd. to NT, Appendix, p. 587).
The Epistle of Barnabas (vii. 3-5) resembles this Gospel in representing Jesus as drinking gall mingled with vinegar, and in its description of the fasting and mourning that followed the Crucifixion, Dr. Swete thinks that it may ‘not improbably have come into the hands of the party from which the Petrine Gospel emanated,’ He is also of opinion that the resemblances between the Sibylline Oracles (bk. 8) and the Petrine Fragment are ‘for the most part superficial.’
v. CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES. —Serapion, who first mentions ‘ the so-called Gospel of Peter,’ states that it was used by the Docete ; after reading it through, he pronounced it orthodox in general, but condemned it on account of its hetero- dox additions. Is this judgment as to the character and tendencies of the Petrine Gospel sustained by the knowledge gained of its contents from the discovery of the Akhmim Fragment?
Docetism in the 2nd cent. had various forms. Ignatius combated a Docetic heresy which Light- foot describes as ‘ J udaic,’ for it combined a denial of the reality of Christ’s passion with a tendency towards Judaizing. But the author of the Petrine Fragment does not doubt that Christ had a true body, and he manifests an anti- Judaic spirit in his endeavour to fasten on the Jews the responsi- bility for the crucifixion of Jesus. Irenzeus de- scribes an Ophite system, which more nearly resembles the teaching of this Gospel; but Swete points out that, according to that system, the Jhrist withdrew from Jesus before the Crucifixion, whereas the Petrine Gospel ‘regards the hicher nature of the Lord as remaining with Him on the Cross up to the moment of His death? (op. cit. xxxix. f.). Hippolytus (Philos. viii. 8, x. 12) refers to a Gnostic sect, which bore the name of Docete, although they taught that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, and hada true body. On the ground that Serapion could not have spoken so favourably of a work which denied the reality of Christ's body, McGiffert identifies the Docetw, who used
arted his’
the Petrine Gospel, with this Gnostic sect, whose speculations added to true doctrine (Eusebius, Church History [McGiffert’s tr.], p. 258, n. 8). There are, however, points of contact between the Petrine Fragment and the comments of Valen- tinian writers who accepted the facts of the Gospel history, but made it the vehicle of Gnostic teach- ing. Dr. Swete inclines to the belief that the Petrine writer, though not himself a Valentinian, ‘felt the influence of the Valentinian school.” It is not necessary to decide between the claims of these different types of Gnostic Docetism to see that a writer of either of these schools would be likely to produce just such a Gospel as Serapion describes. Moreover, his judgment as to its character and tendency is fully sustained by the contents of the Akhmim Fragment, which has many features in common with the canonical Gospels, and yet has many additions to the Evangelic tradition, some being obviously unorthodox. The amplifications of the Gospel history, which clearly reveal a Docetic purpose, are: the statement that the Lord was silent on the Cross ‘as though having no pain’ (sec. 4); the ery, ‘My power, my power, thou hast forsaken me,’ followed by the description of His death as an dvd\nyis: ‘and when he had said it, he was taken up’ (sec. 5). The conclusion arrived at implies that Eusebius too severely condemns this CGaapels it compares favourably with the other Gospels assigned by him to the ‘heretical’ category, though it is not free from Docetic tendencies which characterized some forms of early Gnosticism.
vi. DATE AND PLACE OF ORIGIN.—From Sera- pion’s evidence the terminus ad quem for the date of this Gospel cannot be placed later than A.D. 170. The fixing of the terminus a quo depends upon the decision arrived at in the foregoing discussions. Critics who, like Harnack, hold that Justin used the Gospel, assign its composition to the beginning of the 2nd century. The opposite conclusion im- plies A.D. 130-150 as the probable date ; in Swete’s opinion, it cannot be placed earlier than A.D. 150. There is no evidence of the circulation of this Gospel in the West ; a probable inference from the places of residence of the writers who were familiar with it is that it was a Syrian Gospel.