V

VWe may now consider whether there is any indication of the use of this Gospel according to Peter by the author of the“Epistle of Barnabas.”The Epistle is variously dated betweena.d.70-132, apologists leaning towards the earlier date. The shortness of the fragment recovered, of course, diminishes greatly the probability of finding any trace of its use in so comparatively brief a work as this Epistle, but some indications may be pointed out. The fragment states that, being anxious lest the sun should set whilst he was still living and the law regarding one put to death be transgressed,“one of them said:‘Give him to drink gall with vinegar,’and having mixed they gave him to drink (Ποτίσατε αὐτὸν χολὴν μετὰ ὄξους; καὶ κεράσαντες ἐπότισαν).52... Over all these things, however, we were fasting (ἐπὶ δὲ τούτοις πᾶσιν ἐνηστεύομεν)53... the whole people ... beat their breasts (ὁ λαὸς ἅπας ... κόπτεται τὰ στήθη).”54This representation not only differs from the canonical Gospels in“gall with vinegar”being given to drink, but in the view that it was not given to relieve thirst, but as a potion to hasten death,55and there follow various statements regarding fasting[pg 033]and mourning. Now in Barnabas precisely the same representation is made. The Epistle says:But also when crucified, he had vinegar and gall given him to drink (ἀλλὰ καὶ σταυρωθεὶς ἐποτίζετο ὄξει καὶ χολῇ). Hear how, on this matter, the priests of the temple have revealed. Seeing that there is a commandment in Scripture:“Whosoever shall not observe the fast shall surely die,”the Lord commanded, because he was in his own person about to offer the vessel of his spirit for our sins ...“Since ye are to give me, who am to offer my flesh for the sins of my new people, gall with vinegar to drink, eat ye alone, while the people fasts and wails.... (μέλλετε ποτίζειν χολὴν μετὰ ὄξους ... τοῦ λαοῦ νηστεύοντος καὶ κοπτομένου).”56There are three suppositions as the possible explanation of this similarity: (1) that the author of the Epistle derived his statement from the Gospel; (2) that the author of the Gospel derived it from the Epistle, or (3) that both drew it from a third and earlier source. Assigning as we do the later date to the Epistle of Barnabas, the first of these hypotheses seems to us the most natural and the correct one, although, of course, it is impossible to prove that both did not derive it from another source. The second explanation we must definitely reject, both because we consider that priority of date lies with the fragment, and because it does not seem probable that the representation originated in the Epistle. To admit this would be to suppose that the author first fabricated the statement that Jesus was[pg 034]given gall and vinegar to hasten death, and then proceeded immediately to explain the circumstance by means of the elaborate gnosis with which the Epistle is filled. It is quite undeniable that the whole narrative of the Gospels grew out of the suggestions of supposed prophetic passages in the Old Testament, but the author of the Epistle introduces the statement upon which his explanation is based, with a simplicity which seems to exclude the idea of its being his own fabrication:“But also, when crucified, he had vinegar and gall given him to drink.”There is not the ring here of a statement advanced for the first time, but if we suppose that the author had read it in such a work as the Gospel according to Peter, it would be quite natural. It is not to be understood that we doubt that the account in the fragment, or in our Gospels, was suggested by passages in the Old Testament, but simply that we do not believe that the representation originated in this Epistle, in immediate connection with the elaborate explanation given. A tradition, gradually influenced by such prophetic and other considerations, may have been embodied by the author of the Gospel in his narrative, and then the writer of the Epistle may have seized upon it and enlarged upon its typical signification, but it is not probable that he originated it himself.[pg 035]VIWe do not propose to enter here upon an inquiry whether there is any evidence within our short fragment that the Gospel according to Peter was used by other early writers. The slight traces which alone we could hope to find, and which several able critics do find,57cannot be decisive of anything, and whilst there may be a faint literary interest in pursuing such researches, they need not detain us here. A short consideration may, however, be given to Tatian. Some critics, impressed apparently with the idea that no early Gospels can possibly be otherwise than dependent on our canonical works, yet having to explain the continuous divergence from the canonical narratives, advance the suggestion, that the writer of the Gospel according to Peter may have derived all the points which the fragment contains, in common with one or more of the canonical Gospels, from a Harmony of our Gospels. Now, the only Harmony of the second century which, they think, has survived is the so-called“Diatessaron”of Tatian. Of course, they find that the“Diatessaron”“might have furnished the writer of the fragment with all the incidents which he shares with any of the Four Gospels.”Dr. Swete continues:“The order in Peter is not always the same as it seems to have been[pg 036]in Tatian, but differences of order may be disregarded in our inquiry, since they are equally embarrassing if we assume that the writer had recourse to the Gospels as separate books.”58Not content with the conclusion that the Gospels, narrating the very same history, might have furnished the incidents which they have in common, Dr. Swete proceeds“to compare the‘Diatessaron’with our fragment, with the view of ascertaining whether Tatian would have provided the Petrine writer with the words which he seems to have adopted from the Four Gospels.”59This is not the place to discuss again the identity of the supposed“Diatessaron,”but it will be sufficient to point out that we have it only in an Arabic version, published and translated by Ciasca, and a translation of the supposed Armenian version of the Commentary upon it, ascribed to Ephraem, which again Moesinger, who edited the Latin version published in 1876, declares to be itself translated from the Syriac. In these varied transformations of the text, anything like verbal accuracy must be regarded as totally lost. The object in making the versions was not, of course, critical fidelity, and variations from canonical texts would, no doubt, often or always be regarded as accidental and to be corrected. Such translations can never, in textual criticism, be accepted as sufficient representations of the original. The process, however, by which Dr. Swete proceeds to ascertain whether the author of the fragment derives from Tatian thewordswhich he seems to have adopted from the Four Gospels, is to place side by side with the Petrine narrative, in certain crucial passages, the corresponding portions of the“Diatessaron,”approximately represented in Greek, and[pg 037]he selects the accounts of the mockery, the three hours, the burial, and the visit of the women to the tomb. He thus explains his system:“The plan adopted has been to substitute for Ciasca's translation of the Arabic Tatian the corresponding portions of the canonical Gospels. The text has been determined by a comparison of Ciasca's Latin with Moesinger'sEvangelii Concordantis Expositio, and the Curetonian Syriac of Luke xxiii., xxiv. It claims, of course, only to be an approximate and provisional representation of the text of the original work.”60However impartial Dr. Swete may have tried to be—and without doubt he did endeavour to be so—such a test is vitiated and rendered useless by the antecedent manipulation of the texts. The result at which he arrives is:“This comparison does not justify the conclusion that the writer of our fragment was limited to the use of the‘Diatessaron’”—the exact contents of which, in its original shape, be it noted, Dr. Swete, a few lines further on, admits that we do not know,“so that it would be unsafe to draw any negative inference”from certain exceptions.On the whole we may perhaps claim to have established a strong presumption that the Petrine writer employed a Harmony which, in its general selection of extracts, and in some of its minuter arrangements, very nearly resembled the Harmony of Tatian. This is not equivalent to saying that he used Tatian, because there is some reason to think that there may have been a Harmony or Harmonies earlier than Tatian.... Thus the relation of the Petrine writer to Tatian remains for the present an open question; but enough has been said to render such a relation probable, if further inquiries should lead us to place the Gospel of Peter after the publication of the“Diatessaron.”61It must frankly be asserted that the whole of this comparison with Tatian, and the views so curiously expressed regarding the result, are the outcome of a[pg 038]preconceived idea that the Petrine author compiled his Gospel mainly from the canonical. The divergencies being so great, however, and the actual contradictions so strong, it becomes necessary to account for them in some way, and the theory of the use of a Harmony is advanced to see whether it may not overcome some of the difficulties. It would have been more to the purpose to have inquired whether the so-called“Diatessaron”did not make use of the Gospel according to Peter, amongst others.In connection with this it may be well to refer to some remarkable observations of Professor J. Rendel Harris regarding the relation of the Gospel according to Peter and Tatian's Harmony. When the fragment was first discovered, he was naturally struck by its great importance.“The Gospel of Peter, even in the imperfect form in which it has come down to us, is the breaking of a new seal, the opening of a fresh door,”he said,“to those who are engaged in the problems presented by Biblical and Patristic criticism,”62and he very rightly proceeded to try to find out“whether Peter has used Tatian, or Tatian Peter, or whether both of them are working upon common sources.”63He first refers to“a curious addition to the story of the Crucifixion, which can be shown, with a very high probability, to have once stood in the Harmony of Tatian.”The most interesting and instructive part of the reference is that Mr. Harris had made and published, some years before the discovery of the fragment before us, certain notes on the Harmony of Tatian, in which he had employed“the method of combination of passages in different writers who were known to have used the Harmony, or different texts which were suspected of having borrowed[pg 039]from it, to show that in the account of the Crucifixion there stood a passage something like the following:“They beat their breasts and said, Woe unto us, for the things which are done to-day for our sins; for the desolation of Jerusalem hath drawn nigh.”64It is unnecessary here to quote the way Mr. Harris arrived at this passage, which he frankly states, but at once go on to compare it with our fragment. He sums up:Now the reader will be interested to see that the missing sentence which I restored to Tatian's text has turned up in the Gospel of Peter, for we read that:“The Jews and the elders and the priests, when they saw what an evil deed they had done to themselves, began to beat their breasts and to say, Woe to our sins, for the judgment and the end of Jerusalem is at hand.”Did the false Peter take this from Tatian, or was it the other way? or did both of them use some uncanonical writing or tradition?65“There is nothing in what follows in the Arabic Harmony,”Mr. Harris points out,“which suggests an allusion to the desolation of the city, or an imprecation upon, or lamentation over, themselves.”66Very few will feel any doubt that this is taken from our Gospel according to Peter, or possibly—for of course there is no absolute proof—from the tradition which the writer of that Gospel also used, and not by the writer from the Harmony; and it may be suggested that the omission of this and similar passages from versions[pg 040]of the Harmony may have been influenced by the fact that, not forming part of our Gospels, and not agreeing with the preconceived theory of a Harmony of our four Gospels, such passages were excluded as interpolations.Another instance given by Mr. Harris is the statement in the fragment:“Then the sun shone out, and it was found to be the ninth hour,”which he compares with the language of“Tatian's”commentator:“Three hours the sun was darkened, and afterwards it shone out again.”67And further:Another case of parallelism is in the speech of the angel to Mary:“He is not here, for he is risen, and has gone away to the place from whence he was sent.”At first sight this looks like a wilful expansion on the part of the writer of the Gospel; but on a reference to the Persian father Aphrahat, who is more than suspected of having used the text of Tatian, we find the words,“And the angels said to Mary, He is risen, and gone away to him that sent him,”which is very nearly in coincidence with the text of the false Peter.68Neither of these passages is found in the actual text of“Tatian.”Finally, we may quote the other instance pointed out by Mr. Harris:The Docetic quotation from the Psalm“My Power, my Power, hast thou forsaken me?”is peculiar in this respect, that the second possessive pronoun is wanting, so that we ought to translate it“Power, my Power ...”Now, it is curious that Tatian's text had a similar peculiarity, for Ephrem gives it as“God, my God,”and the Arabic Harmony asYaiil, Yaiili, where the added suffix belongs to the possessive pronoun. This is a remarkable coincidence, and makes one suspect that Tatian had“Power, my Power”in his text, and that it has been corrected away. And it is significant that Ephrem in commenting on the passage, says:“The divinity did not so far depart from the humanity as to be cut off from it, but only[pg 041]as regards thepowerof the divinity, which was hidden both from the Slain and the slayers.”This looks very suspicious that Ephrem found something in his text of Tatian differing from the words“God, my God.”69Mr. Harris reserves his final judgment on this relation between Tatian and the Gospel according to Peter; but as in a later article70he is not unwilling to allow the date ofa.d.130 to be assigned to the fragment, it is scarcely to be decided as Peter quoting Tatian. Mr. Harris throughout these passages, however, states the case in a most impartial manner, and the reader must form his own opinion.We may, before leaving“Tatian,”point out another instance of agreement to which Mr. Harris does not allude. In the Commentary there is the following passage:“Et dederunt ei bibere acetum et fel.Acetum ei porrexerunt, pro felle autem magna ejus miseratio amaritudinem gentium dulcem fecit.”71It will be remembered that this agrees with the representation of the fragment that they gave Jesus“vinegar and gall”to drink.All these instances may, indeed, throw a new light upon theDiapentein the text of Victor, which has so exercised apologists, and lead to the opinion that Tatian's Harmony was not composed out of four Gospels, but out of five. If it be agreed, as it is by a majority of critics, that Justin made use of the Gospel of Peter, the probability that his pupil Tatian likewise possessed the same work, and used it for his Harmony, is immensely increased.[pg 042]VIIWe shall not attempt to fix any even approximate date to the Gospel according to Peter, although we shall presently have to consider its relation to our canonical Gospels in a way which will at least assign it a position in time relative to them. Harnack, in the preface to the second edition of his article on the fragment, suspends his judgment on its relation to our Gospels, and will not even undertake a sufficient examination of this important question, so long as there remains a hope of still recovering more of the Gospel. It is devoutly to be hoped that the Cemetery of Akhmîm may still give us more of this and other important early works; but there is no reason why we should not, even now, endeavour to derive what information we can from this instalment, and the worst—or the best—which can happen is that future acquisitions may enable us to correct the errors—or confirm the conclusions—of the present. So long as we confine ourselves to the legitimate inferences to be drawn from the actual fragment before us, we cannot go far wrong.It is frequently possible to assign well-defined limits within which early works, whose authors are unknown, must have been composed, when a more precise date cannot with certainty be fixed. Direct references to the writing, or its use, by writers the period of whose literary work is known, may enable us to affirm that it was written at least before their time; and sometimes[pg 043]certain allusions or quotations in the work itself may, on the other hand, show that it must have been composed after a certain date; and thus limits, more or less narrow, become certain, within which its production must lie. The Gospel according to Peter, as we might expect, contains none of the allusions or quotations to which we refer, and we are therefore reduced to the one indication of age—reference to, or the use of it by, early writers, leaving the approximate date to which it may be set back wholly to conjecture. As we have already remarked above, the question whether it is dependent on, or independent of, our canonical Gospels has yet to be considered; but there is too much difference of opinion regarding the date of these Gospels themselves to render this more than a relative indication. So far, the opinions of critics assign the Gospel according to Peter to dates ranging from a period antecedent to our Gospels, in their present form, to about the middle of the second century.72The indications of style and phraseology given by the fragment have of course to be taken into account, and it may be well, before proceeding further, to examine certain peculiarities which have been pointed out by writers who assert that the composition is decidedly later than our canonical Gospels.73The writer never speaks of“Jesus”simply, but always as[pg 044]“the Lord”(ὁ κύριος). He likewise refers to him as the“Saviour”(σωτήρ) in one place, and several times as“a Son of God”(υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ). Now, with regard to these expressions, they are in constant use throughout the New Testament writings, in the Gospels themselves, as well as in the Epistles of Paul and the Epistles popularly ascribed to him. For instance, ὁ κύριος: Matt. xxi. 3, xxviii. 6;74Mark xvi. 19;75Luke vii. 13, x. 1, xi. 39, xii. 42, xiii. 15, xvii. 5, 6, xviii. 6, xix. 8, 31, 34, xxii. 61, xxiv. 3, 34; John vi. 23, xi. 2, xiii. 13, 14, xx. 2, 13, 18, 20, 28, xxi. 7, 12. It is unnecessary to point out passages in the Acts and Epistles, for“the Lord,”“the Lord Jesus,”or“the Lord Jesus Christ,”is everywhere used, and indeed no other form, it may be said, is adopted.“A Son of God”(υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ) is constantly used in the Gospels and Acts. A few instances may be given: Matt. viii. 29, xiv. 33, xvi. 16, xxvi. 63, xxvii. 40, 43, 54; Mark i. 1, iii. 11, v. 7, xv. 39; Luke i. 35, ix. 41, viii. 28, xxii. 70; John i. 34, 49, v. 25, x. 36, xi. 4, 27, xix. 7, xx. 31; Acts ix. 20. Of course, in the Epistles the expression is of frequent occurrence, as for instance, Rom. i. 4, 9, v. 10; 1 Cor. i. 9; 2 Cor. i. 19; Gal. ii. 20, and elsewhere. It is not necessary to show that“Saviour”is used, but the following may be pointed out: Luke ii. 11; John iv. 42; Acts v. 31, xiii. 23; and it more frequently occurs in the Epistles. All of these expressions are commonly employed in early Christian literature, such as the“Didache,”Ignatian Epistles, Clement of Rome, Polycarp,“Pastor”of Hermas, and the“Apology”of Aristides.The principal phrase upon which weight is laid by those who assign to the Gospel according to Peter,[pg 045]from this fragment, a later date than our canonical works, is the use of ἡ κυριακή without ἡμέρα to designate“the Lord's day”—Sunday; Dr. Swete calls it“the most decisive indication of the relatively late composition of our fragment.”76After giving some instances of a similar expression, he states the case as follows:The name was therefore familiar amongst Eastern Greek-speaking Christians from the end of the first century. But Peter not only uses it freely, but seems to be unconscious that he is guilty of an anachronism when he imports this exclusively Christian term into the Gospel history. Ἡ κυριακή has so completely supplanted Ἡ μία τῶν σαββάτων, that it is twice used to describe the first Easter Day, in a document which usually manifests precision in such matters.77It is not quite clear what Dr. Swete means when he says that Peter“uses it freely,”but it would indeed be singular if he seemed to be conscious that he was guilty of an anachronism in making use of this or any word. The question, in fact, is whether it is an anachronism or not, and that it is so is very far from proved by any arguments yet brought forward. In the Apocalypse, i. 10, we have the use of the term“the Lord's day”(ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα),a.d.68-69. In the“Didache,”which Dr. Lightfoot assigns to the first or the beginning of the second century, we meet with κυριακὴ κυρίου; and in the Ignatian Epistles, which those who believe in them date“in the early years of the second century,”there is in one place78κατὰ κυριακήν. So far from its being surprising that there should not be more authority for such an expression, however, it seems almost more remarkable that we should have any parallels at all, when we remember how few early writings are extant, and how few of these actually refer to the day thus designated. The Epistles, for this reason, may be set aside in a body, for they give no testimony either way,[pg 046]with the exception of 1 Cor. xvi. 2, where“the first day of the week”is referred to. The three Synoptics, following each other, and a common tradition, use ἡ μία τῶν σαββάτων each once, and the fourth Gospel has the same phrase twice, and the Acts once; but this use of another expression does not—in the face of the use of ἡ κυριακή in this fragment, and of ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα, in the Apocalypse—at all show that, at the same period, the latter phrase was not also current, though it may not have supplanted“the first day of the week.”The fact that Melito of Sardis,“about the middle of the second century,”wrote a treatise περὶ κυριακῆς shows how general that expression had become; and even Dr. Swete, as we have seen above, recognises that it was“familiar amongst Eastern Greek-speaking Christians from the end of the first century.”There is nothing whatever to warrant the conclusion that its use at the time when our Gospels were written would have been an anachronism, but the fact that a different expression happened to be used in a few writings. The author of the fragment employs the phrase twice only, and it is thoroughly consistent with his impressive style throughout the episode, that he should apply to the time when these astounding events are said to have taken place the appropriate term, already suggested by the author of the Apocalypse, of“the Lord's day,”instead of“the first day of the week.”There is nothing more difficult, as is proved every day in our time, than to fix the precise date at which words or expressions first came into use, and especially—in the absence of voluminous literature opposing the presumption—the denial of antiquity to a work, on the ground of its employing an expression supposed only to have come into general use a few years later than its otherwise probable date, is both rash and unjustifiable.[pg 047]

We may now consider whether there is any indication of the use of this Gospel according to Peter by the author of the“Epistle of Barnabas.”The Epistle is variously dated betweena.d.70-132, apologists leaning towards the earlier date. The shortness of the fragment recovered, of course, diminishes greatly the probability of finding any trace of its use in so comparatively brief a work as this Epistle, but some indications may be pointed out. The fragment states that, being anxious lest the sun should set whilst he was still living and the law regarding one put to death be transgressed,“one of them said:‘Give him to drink gall with vinegar,’and having mixed they gave him to drink (Ποτίσατε αὐτὸν χολὴν μετὰ ὄξους; καὶ κεράσαντες ἐπότισαν).52... Over all these things, however, we were fasting (ἐπὶ δὲ τούτοις πᾶσιν ἐνηστεύομεν)53... the whole people ... beat their breasts (ὁ λαὸς ἅπας ... κόπτεται τὰ στήθη).”54This representation not only differs from the canonical Gospels in“gall with vinegar”being given to drink, but in the view that it was not given to relieve thirst, but as a potion to hasten death,55and there follow various statements regarding fasting[pg 033]and mourning. Now in Barnabas precisely the same representation is made. The Epistle says:

But also when crucified, he had vinegar and gall given him to drink (ἀλλὰ καὶ σταυρωθεὶς ἐποτίζετο ὄξει καὶ χολῇ). Hear how, on this matter, the priests of the temple have revealed. Seeing that there is a commandment in Scripture:“Whosoever shall not observe the fast shall surely die,”the Lord commanded, because he was in his own person about to offer the vessel of his spirit for our sins ...“Since ye are to give me, who am to offer my flesh for the sins of my new people, gall with vinegar to drink, eat ye alone, while the people fasts and wails.... (μέλλετε ποτίζειν χολὴν μετὰ ὄξους ... τοῦ λαοῦ νηστεύοντος καὶ κοπτομένου).”56

There are three suppositions as the possible explanation of this similarity: (1) that the author of the Epistle derived his statement from the Gospel; (2) that the author of the Gospel derived it from the Epistle, or (3) that both drew it from a third and earlier source. Assigning as we do the later date to the Epistle of Barnabas, the first of these hypotheses seems to us the most natural and the correct one, although, of course, it is impossible to prove that both did not derive it from another source. The second explanation we must definitely reject, both because we consider that priority of date lies with the fragment, and because it does not seem probable that the representation originated in the Epistle. To admit this would be to suppose that the author first fabricated the statement that Jesus was[pg 034]given gall and vinegar to hasten death, and then proceeded immediately to explain the circumstance by means of the elaborate gnosis with which the Epistle is filled. It is quite undeniable that the whole narrative of the Gospels grew out of the suggestions of supposed prophetic passages in the Old Testament, but the author of the Epistle introduces the statement upon which his explanation is based, with a simplicity which seems to exclude the idea of its being his own fabrication:“But also, when crucified, he had vinegar and gall given him to drink.”There is not the ring here of a statement advanced for the first time, but if we suppose that the author had read it in such a work as the Gospel according to Peter, it would be quite natural. It is not to be understood that we doubt that the account in the fragment, or in our Gospels, was suggested by passages in the Old Testament, but simply that we do not believe that the representation originated in this Epistle, in immediate connection with the elaborate explanation given. A tradition, gradually influenced by such prophetic and other considerations, may have been embodied by the author of the Gospel in his narrative, and then the writer of the Epistle may have seized upon it and enlarged upon its typical signification, but it is not probable that he originated it himself.

VIWe do not propose to enter here upon an inquiry whether there is any evidence within our short fragment that the Gospel according to Peter was used by other early writers. The slight traces which alone we could hope to find, and which several able critics do find,57cannot be decisive of anything, and whilst there may be a faint literary interest in pursuing such researches, they need not detain us here. A short consideration may, however, be given to Tatian. Some critics, impressed apparently with the idea that no early Gospels can possibly be otherwise than dependent on our canonical works, yet having to explain the continuous divergence from the canonical narratives, advance the suggestion, that the writer of the Gospel according to Peter may have derived all the points which the fragment contains, in common with one or more of the canonical Gospels, from a Harmony of our Gospels. Now, the only Harmony of the second century which, they think, has survived is the so-called“Diatessaron”of Tatian. Of course, they find that the“Diatessaron”“might have furnished the writer of the fragment with all the incidents which he shares with any of the Four Gospels.”Dr. Swete continues:“The order in Peter is not always the same as it seems to have been[pg 036]in Tatian, but differences of order may be disregarded in our inquiry, since they are equally embarrassing if we assume that the writer had recourse to the Gospels as separate books.”58Not content with the conclusion that the Gospels, narrating the very same history, might have furnished the incidents which they have in common, Dr. Swete proceeds“to compare the‘Diatessaron’with our fragment, with the view of ascertaining whether Tatian would have provided the Petrine writer with the words which he seems to have adopted from the Four Gospels.”59This is not the place to discuss again the identity of the supposed“Diatessaron,”but it will be sufficient to point out that we have it only in an Arabic version, published and translated by Ciasca, and a translation of the supposed Armenian version of the Commentary upon it, ascribed to Ephraem, which again Moesinger, who edited the Latin version published in 1876, declares to be itself translated from the Syriac. In these varied transformations of the text, anything like verbal accuracy must be regarded as totally lost. The object in making the versions was not, of course, critical fidelity, and variations from canonical texts would, no doubt, often or always be regarded as accidental and to be corrected. Such translations can never, in textual criticism, be accepted as sufficient representations of the original. The process, however, by which Dr. Swete proceeds to ascertain whether the author of the fragment derives from Tatian thewordswhich he seems to have adopted from the Four Gospels, is to place side by side with the Petrine narrative, in certain crucial passages, the corresponding portions of the“Diatessaron,”approximately represented in Greek, and[pg 037]he selects the accounts of the mockery, the three hours, the burial, and the visit of the women to the tomb. He thus explains his system:“The plan adopted has been to substitute for Ciasca's translation of the Arabic Tatian the corresponding portions of the canonical Gospels. The text has been determined by a comparison of Ciasca's Latin with Moesinger'sEvangelii Concordantis Expositio, and the Curetonian Syriac of Luke xxiii., xxiv. It claims, of course, only to be an approximate and provisional representation of the text of the original work.”60However impartial Dr. Swete may have tried to be—and without doubt he did endeavour to be so—such a test is vitiated and rendered useless by the antecedent manipulation of the texts. The result at which he arrives is:“This comparison does not justify the conclusion that the writer of our fragment was limited to the use of the‘Diatessaron’”—the exact contents of which, in its original shape, be it noted, Dr. Swete, a few lines further on, admits that we do not know,“so that it would be unsafe to draw any negative inference”from certain exceptions.On the whole we may perhaps claim to have established a strong presumption that the Petrine writer employed a Harmony which, in its general selection of extracts, and in some of its minuter arrangements, very nearly resembled the Harmony of Tatian. This is not equivalent to saying that he used Tatian, because there is some reason to think that there may have been a Harmony or Harmonies earlier than Tatian.... Thus the relation of the Petrine writer to Tatian remains for the present an open question; but enough has been said to render such a relation probable, if further inquiries should lead us to place the Gospel of Peter after the publication of the“Diatessaron.”61It must frankly be asserted that the whole of this comparison with Tatian, and the views so curiously expressed regarding the result, are the outcome of a[pg 038]preconceived idea that the Petrine author compiled his Gospel mainly from the canonical. The divergencies being so great, however, and the actual contradictions so strong, it becomes necessary to account for them in some way, and the theory of the use of a Harmony is advanced to see whether it may not overcome some of the difficulties. It would have been more to the purpose to have inquired whether the so-called“Diatessaron”did not make use of the Gospel according to Peter, amongst others.In connection with this it may be well to refer to some remarkable observations of Professor J. Rendel Harris regarding the relation of the Gospel according to Peter and Tatian's Harmony. When the fragment was first discovered, he was naturally struck by its great importance.“The Gospel of Peter, even in the imperfect form in which it has come down to us, is the breaking of a new seal, the opening of a fresh door,”he said,“to those who are engaged in the problems presented by Biblical and Patristic criticism,”62and he very rightly proceeded to try to find out“whether Peter has used Tatian, or Tatian Peter, or whether both of them are working upon common sources.”63He first refers to“a curious addition to the story of the Crucifixion, which can be shown, with a very high probability, to have once stood in the Harmony of Tatian.”The most interesting and instructive part of the reference is that Mr. Harris had made and published, some years before the discovery of the fragment before us, certain notes on the Harmony of Tatian, in which he had employed“the method of combination of passages in different writers who were known to have used the Harmony, or different texts which were suspected of having borrowed[pg 039]from it, to show that in the account of the Crucifixion there stood a passage something like the following:“They beat their breasts and said, Woe unto us, for the things which are done to-day for our sins; for the desolation of Jerusalem hath drawn nigh.”64It is unnecessary here to quote the way Mr. Harris arrived at this passage, which he frankly states, but at once go on to compare it with our fragment. He sums up:Now the reader will be interested to see that the missing sentence which I restored to Tatian's text has turned up in the Gospel of Peter, for we read that:“The Jews and the elders and the priests, when they saw what an evil deed they had done to themselves, began to beat their breasts and to say, Woe to our sins, for the judgment and the end of Jerusalem is at hand.”Did the false Peter take this from Tatian, or was it the other way? or did both of them use some uncanonical writing or tradition?65“There is nothing in what follows in the Arabic Harmony,”Mr. Harris points out,“which suggests an allusion to the desolation of the city, or an imprecation upon, or lamentation over, themselves.”66Very few will feel any doubt that this is taken from our Gospel according to Peter, or possibly—for of course there is no absolute proof—from the tradition which the writer of that Gospel also used, and not by the writer from the Harmony; and it may be suggested that the omission of this and similar passages from versions[pg 040]of the Harmony may have been influenced by the fact that, not forming part of our Gospels, and not agreeing with the preconceived theory of a Harmony of our four Gospels, such passages were excluded as interpolations.Another instance given by Mr. Harris is the statement in the fragment:“Then the sun shone out, and it was found to be the ninth hour,”which he compares with the language of“Tatian's”commentator:“Three hours the sun was darkened, and afterwards it shone out again.”67And further:Another case of parallelism is in the speech of the angel to Mary:“He is not here, for he is risen, and has gone away to the place from whence he was sent.”At first sight this looks like a wilful expansion on the part of the writer of the Gospel; but on a reference to the Persian father Aphrahat, who is more than suspected of having used the text of Tatian, we find the words,“And the angels said to Mary, He is risen, and gone away to him that sent him,”which is very nearly in coincidence with the text of the false Peter.68Neither of these passages is found in the actual text of“Tatian.”Finally, we may quote the other instance pointed out by Mr. Harris:The Docetic quotation from the Psalm“My Power, my Power, hast thou forsaken me?”is peculiar in this respect, that the second possessive pronoun is wanting, so that we ought to translate it“Power, my Power ...”Now, it is curious that Tatian's text had a similar peculiarity, for Ephrem gives it as“God, my God,”and the Arabic Harmony asYaiil, Yaiili, where the added suffix belongs to the possessive pronoun. This is a remarkable coincidence, and makes one suspect that Tatian had“Power, my Power”in his text, and that it has been corrected away. And it is significant that Ephrem in commenting on the passage, says:“The divinity did not so far depart from the humanity as to be cut off from it, but only[pg 041]as regards thepowerof the divinity, which was hidden both from the Slain and the slayers.”This looks very suspicious that Ephrem found something in his text of Tatian differing from the words“God, my God.”69Mr. Harris reserves his final judgment on this relation between Tatian and the Gospel according to Peter; but as in a later article70he is not unwilling to allow the date ofa.d.130 to be assigned to the fragment, it is scarcely to be decided as Peter quoting Tatian. Mr. Harris throughout these passages, however, states the case in a most impartial manner, and the reader must form his own opinion.We may, before leaving“Tatian,”point out another instance of agreement to which Mr. Harris does not allude. In the Commentary there is the following passage:“Et dederunt ei bibere acetum et fel.Acetum ei porrexerunt, pro felle autem magna ejus miseratio amaritudinem gentium dulcem fecit.”71It will be remembered that this agrees with the representation of the fragment that they gave Jesus“vinegar and gall”to drink.All these instances may, indeed, throw a new light upon theDiapentein the text of Victor, which has so exercised apologists, and lead to the opinion that Tatian's Harmony was not composed out of four Gospels, but out of five. If it be agreed, as it is by a majority of critics, that Justin made use of the Gospel of Peter, the probability that his pupil Tatian likewise possessed the same work, and used it for his Harmony, is immensely increased.

We do not propose to enter here upon an inquiry whether there is any evidence within our short fragment that the Gospel according to Peter was used by other early writers. The slight traces which alone we could hope to find, and which several able critics do find,57cannot be decisive of anything, and whilst there may be a faint literary interest in pursuing such researches, they need not detain us here. A short consideration may, however, be given to Tatian. Some critics, impressed apparently with the idea that no early Gospels can possibly be otherwise than dependent on our canonical works, yet having to explain the continuous divergence from the canonical narratives, advance the suggestion, that the writer of the Gospel according to Peter may have derived all the points which the fragment contains, in common with one or more of the canonical Gospels, from a Harmony of our Gospels. Now, the only Harmony of the second century which, they think, has survived is the so-called“Diatessaron”of Tatian. Of course, they find that the“Diatessaron”“might have furnished the writer of the fragment with all the incidents which he shares with any of the Four Gospels.”Dr. Swete continues:“The order in Peter is not always the same as it seems to have been[pg 036]in Tatian, but differences of order may be disregarded in our inquiry, since they are equally embarrassing if we assume that the writer had recourse to the Gospels as separate books.”58

Not content with the conclusion that the Gospels, narrating the very same history, might have furnished the incidents which they have in common, Dr. Swete proceeds“to compare the‘Diatessaron’with our fragment, with the view of ascertaining whether Tatian would have provided the Petrine writer with the words which he seems to have adopted from the Four Gospels.”59

This is not the place to discuss again the identity of the supposed“Diatessaron,”but it will be sufficient to point out that we have it only in an Arabic version, published and translated by Ciasca, and a translation of the supposed Armenian version of the Commentary upon it, ascribed to Ephraem, which again Moesinger, who edited the Latin version published in 1876, declares to be itself translated from the Syriac. In these varied transformations of the text, anything like verbal accuracy must be regarded as totally lost. The object in making the versions was not, of course, critical fidelity, and variations from canonical texts would, no doubt, often or always be regarded as accidental and to be corrected. Such translations can never, in textual criticism, be accepted as sufficient representations of the original. The process, however, by which Dr. Swete proceeds to ascertain whether the author of the fragment derives from Tatian thewordswhich he seems to have adopted from the Four Gospels, is to place side by side with the Petrine narrative, in certain crucial passages, the corresponding portions of the“Diatessaron,”approximately represented in Greek, and[pg 037]he selects the accounts of the mockery, the three hours, the burial, and the visit of the women to the tomb. He thus explains his system:“The plan adopted has been to substitute for Ciasca's translation of the Arabic Tatian the corresponding portions of the canonical Gospels. The text has been determined by a comparison of Ciasca's Latin with Moesinger'sEvangelii Concordantis Expositio, and the Curetonian Syriac of Luke xxiii., xxiv. It claims, of course, only to be an approximate and provisional representation of the text of the original work.”60However impartial Dr. Swete may have tried to be—and without doubt he did endeavour to be so—such a test is vitiated and rendered useless by the antecedent manipulation of the texts. The result at which he arrives is:“This comparison does not justify the conclusion that the writer of our fragment was limited to the use of the‘Diatessaron’”—the exact contents of which, in its original shape, be it noted, Dr. Swete, a few lines further on, admits that we do not know,“so that it would be unsafe to draw any negative inference”from certain exceptions.

On the whole we may perhaps claim to have established a strong presumption that the Petrine writer employed a Harmony which, in its general selection of extracts, and in some of its minuter arrangements, very nearly resembled the Harmony of Tatian. This is not equivalent to saying that he used Tatian, because there is some reason to think that there may have been a Harmony or Harmonies earlier than Tatian.... Thus the relation of the Petrine writer to Tatian remains for the present an open question; but enough has been said to render such a relation probable, if further inquiries should lead us to place the Gospel of Peter after the publication of the“Diatessaron.”61

It must frankly be asserted that the whole of this comparison with Tatian, and the views so curiously expressed regarding the result, are the outcome of a[pg 038]preconceived idea that the Petrine author compiled his Gospel mainly from the canonical. The divergencies being so great, however, and the actual contradictions so strong, it becomes necessary to account for them in some way, and the theory of the use of a Harmony is advanced to see whether it may not overcome some of the difficulties. It would have been more to the purpose to have inquired whether the so-called“Diatessaron”did not make use of the Gospel according to Peter, amongst others.

In connection with this it may be well to refer to some remarkable observations of Professor J. Rendel Harris regarding the relation of the Gospel according to Peter and Tatian's Harmony. When the fragment was first discovered, he was naturally struck by its great importance.“The Gospel of Peter, even in the imperfect form in which it has come down to us, is the breaking of a new seal, the opening of a fresh door,”he said,“to those who are engaged in the problems presented by Biblical and Patristic criticism,”62and he very rightly proceeded to try to find out“whether Peter has used Tatian, or Tatian Peter, or whether both of them are working upon common sources.”63He first refers to“a curious addition to the story of the Crucifixion, which can be shown, with a very high probability, to have once stood in the Harmony of Tatian.”The most interesting and instructive part of the reference is that Mr. Harris had made and published, some years before the discovery of the fragment before us, certain notes on the Harmony of Tatian, in which he had employed“the method of combination of passages in different writers who were known to have used the Harmony, or different texts which were suspected of having borrowed[pg 039]from it, to show that in the account of the Crucifixion there stood a passage something like the following:

“They beat their breasts and said, Woe unto us, for the things which are done to-day for our sins; for the desolation of Jerusalem hath drawn nigh.”64

It is unnecessary here to quote the way Mr. Harris arrived at this passage, which he frankly states, but at once go on to compare it with our fragment. He sums up:

Now the reader will be interested to see that the missing sentence which I restored to Tatian's text has turned up in the Gospel of Peter, for we read that:“The Jews and the elders and the priests, when they saw what an evil deed they had done to themselves, began to beat their breasts and to say, Woe to our sins, for the judgment and the end of Jerusalem is at hand.”Did the false Peter take this from Tatian, or was it the other way? or did both of them use some uncanonical writing or tradition?65

“There is nothing in what follows in the Arabic Harmony,”Mr. Harris points out,“which suggests an allusion to the desolation of the city, or an imprecation upon, or lamentation over, themselves.”66

Very few will feel any doubt that this is taken from our Gospel according to Peter, or possibly—for of course there is no absolute proof—from the tradition which the writer of that Gospel also used, and not by the writer from the Harmony; and it may be suggested that the omission of this and similar passages from versions[pg 040]of the Harmony may have been influenced by the fact that, not forming part of our Gospels, and not agreeing with the preconceived theory of a Harmony of our four Gospels, such passages were excluded as interpolations.

Another instance given by Mr. Harris is the statement in the fragment:“Then the sun shone out, and it was found to be the ninth hour,”which he compares with the language of“Tatian's”commentator:“Three hours the sun was darkened, and afterwards it shone out again.”67And further:

Another case of parallelism is in the speech of the angel to Mary:“He is not here, for he is risen, and has gone away to the place from whence he was sent.”At first sight this looks like a wilful expansion on the part of the writer of the Gospel; but on a reference to the Persian father Aphrahat, who is more than suspected of having used the text of Tatian, we find the words,“And the angels said to Mary, He is risen, and gone away to him that sent him,”which is very nearly in coincidence with the text of the false Peter.68

Neither of these passages is found in the actual text of“Tatian.”Finally, we may quote the other instance pointed out by Mr. Harris:

The Docetic quotation from the Psalm“My Power, my Power, hast thou forsaken me?”is peculiar in this respect, that the second possessive pronoun is wanting, so that we ought to translate it“Power, my Power ...”Now, it is curious that Tatian's text had a similar peculiarity, for Ephrem gives it as“God, my God,”and the Arabic Harmony asYaiil, Yaiili, where the added suffix belongs to the possessive pronoun. This is a remarkable coincidence, and makes one suspect that Tatian had“Power, my Power”in his text, and that it has been corrected away. And it is significant that Ephrem in commenting on the passage, says:“The divinity did not so far depart from the humanity as to be cut off from it, but only[pg 041]as regards thepowerof the divinity, which was hidden both from the Slain and the slayers.”This looks very suspicious that Ephrem found something in his text of Tatian differing from the words“God, my God.”69

Mr. Harris reserves his final judgment on this relation between Tatian and the Gospel according to Peter; but as in a later article70he is not unwilling to allow the date ofa.d.130 to be assigned to the fragment, it is scarcely to be decided as Peter quoting Tatian. Mr. Harris throughout these passages, however, states the case in a most impartial manner, and the reader must form his own opinion.

We may, before leaving“Tatian,”point out another instance of agreement to which Mr. Harris does not allude. In the Commentary there is the following passage:“Et dederunt ei bibere acetum et fel.Acetum ei porrexerunt, pro felle autem magna ejus miseratio amaritudinem gentium dulcem fecit.”71It will be remembered that this agrees with the representation of the fragment that they gave Jesus“vinegar and gall”to drink.

All these instances may, indeed, throw a new light upon theDiapentein the text of Victor, which has so exercised apologists, and lead to the opinion that Tatian's Harmony was not composed out of four Gospels, but out of five. If it be agreed, as it is by a majority of critics, that Justin made use of the Gospel of Peter, the probability that his pupil Tatian likewise possessed the same work, and used it for his Harmony, is immensely increased.

VIIWe shall not attempt to fix any even approximate date to the Gospel according to Peter, although we shall presently have to consider its relation to our canonical Gospels in a way which will at least assign it a position in time relative to them. Harnack, in the preface to the second edition of his article on the fragment, suspends his judgment on its relation to our Gospels, and will not even undertake a sufficient examination of this important question, so long as there remains a hope of still recovering more of the Gospel. It is devoutly to be hoped that the Cemetery of Akhmîm may still give us more of this and other important early works; but there is no reason why we should not, even now, endeavour to derive what information we can from this instalment, and the worst—or the best—which can happen is that future acquisitions may enable us to correct the errors—or confirm the conclusions—of the present. So long as we confine ourselves to the legitimate inferences to be drawn from the actual fragment before us, we cannot go far wrong.It is frequently possible to assign well-defined limits within which early works, whose authors are unknown, must have been composed, when a more precise date cannot with certainty be fixed. Direct references to the writing, or its use, by writers the period of whose literary work is known, may enable us to affirm that it was written at least before their time; and sometimes[pg 043]certain allusions or quotations in the work itself may, on the other hand, show that it must have been composed after a certain date; and thus limits, more or less narrow, become certain, within which its production must lie. The Gospel according to Peter, as we might expect, contains none of the allusions or quotations to which we refer, and we are therefore reduced to the one indication of age—reference to, or the use of it by, early writers, leaving the approximate date to which it may be set back wholly to conjecture. As we have already remarked above, the question whether it is dependent on, or independent of, our canonical Gospels has yet to be considered; but there is too much difference of opinion regarding the date of these Gospels themselves to render this more than a relative indication. So far, the opinions of critics assign the Gospel according to Peter to dates ranging from a period antecedent to our Gospels, in their present form, to about the middle of the second century.72The indications of style and phraseology given by the fragment have of course to be taken into account, and it may be well, before proceeding further, to examine certain peculiarities which have been pointed out by writers who assert that the composition is decidedly later than our canonical Gospels.73The writer never speaks of“Jesus”simply, but always as[pg 044]“the Lord”(ὁ κύριος). He likewise refers to him as the“Saviour”(σωτήρ) in one place, and several times as“a Son of God”(υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ). Now, with regard to these expressions, they are in constant use throughout the New Testament writings, in the Gospels themselves, as well as in the Epistles of Paul and the Epistles popularly ascribed to him. For instance, ὁ κύριος: Matt. xxi. 3, xxviii. 6;74Mark xvi. 19;75Luke vii. 13, x. 1, xi. 39, xii. 42, xiii. 15, xvii. 5, 6, xviii. 6, xix. 8, 31, 34, xxii. 61, xxiv. 3, 34; John vi. 23, xi. 2, xiii. 13, 14, xx. 2, 13, 18, 20, 28, xxi. 7, 12. It is unnecessary to point out passages in the Acts and Epistles, for“the Lord,”“the Lord Jesus,”or“the Lord Jesus Christ,”is everywhere used, and indeed no other form, it may be said, is adopted.“A Son of God”(υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ) is constantly used in the Gospels and Acts. A few instances may be given: Matt. viii. 29, xiv. 33, xvi. 16, xxvi. 63, xxvii. 40, 43, 54; Mark i. 1, iii. 11, v. 7, xv. 39; Luke i. 35, ix. 41, viii. 28, xxii. 70; John i. 34, 49, v. 25, x. 36, xi. 4, 27, xix. 7, xx. 31; Acts ix. 20. Of course, in the Epistles the expression is of frequent occurrence, as for instance, Rom. i. 4, 9, v. 10; 1 Cor. i. 9; 2 Cor. i. 19; Gal. ii. 20, and elsewhere. It is not necessary to show that“Saviour”is used, but the following may be pointed out: Luke ii. 11; John iv. 42; Acts v. 31, xiii. 23; and it more frequently occurs in the Epistles. All of these expressions are commonly employed in early Christian literature, such as the“Didache,”Ignatian Epistles, Clement of Rome, Polycarp,“Pastor”of Hermas, and the“Apology”of Aristides.The principal phrase upon which weight is laid by those who assign to the Gospel according to Peter,[pg 045]from this fragment, a later date than our canonical works, is the use of ἡ κυριακή without ἡμέρα to designate“the Lord's day”—Sunday; Dr. Swete calls it“the most decisive indication of the relatively late composition of our fragment.”76After giving some instances of a similar expression, he states the case as follows:The name was therefore familiar amongst Eastern Greek-speaking Christians from the end of the first century. But Peter not only uses it freely, but seems to be unconscious that he is guilty of an anachronism when he imports this exclusively Christian term into the Gospel history. Ἡ κυριακή has so completely supplanted Ἡ μία τῶν σαββάτων, that it is twice used to describe the first Easter Day, in a document which usually manifests precision in such matters.77It is not quite clear what Dr. Swete means when he says that Peter“uses it freely,”but it would indeed be singular if he seemed to be conscious that he was guilty of an anachronism in making use of this or any word. The question, in fact, is whether it is an anachronism or not, and that it is so is very far from proved by any arguments yet brought forward. In the Apocalypse, i. 10, we have the use of the term“the Lord's day”(ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα),a.d.68-69. In the“Didache,”which Dr. Lightfoot assigns to the first or the beginning of the second century, we meet with κυριακὴ κυρίου; and in the Ignatian Epistles, which those who believe in them date“in the early years of the second century,”there is in one place78κατὰ κυριακήν. So far from its being surprising that there should not be more authority for such an expression, however, it seems almost more remarkable that we should have any parallels at all, when we remember how few early writings are extant, and how few of these actually refer to the day thus designated. The Epistles, for this reason, may be set aside in a body, for they give no testimony either way,[pg 046]with the exception of 1 Cor. xvi. 2, where“the first day of the week”is referred to. The three Synoptics, following each other, and a common tradition, use ἡ μία τῶν σαββάτων each once, and the fourth Gospel has the same phrase twice, and the Acts once; but this use of another expression does not—in the face of the use of ἡ κυριακή in this fragment, and of ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα, in the Apocalypse—at all show that, at the same period, the latter phrase was not also current, though it may not have supplanted“the first day of the week.”The fact that Melito of Sardis,“about the middle of the second century,”wrote a treatise περὶ κυριακῆς shows how general that expression had become; and even Dr. Swete, as we have seen above, recognises that it was“familiar amongst Eastern Greek-speaking Christians from the end of the first century.”There is nothing whatever to warrant the conclusion that its use at the time when our Gospels were written would have been an anachronism, but the fact that a different expression happened to be used in a few writings. The author of the fragment employs the phrase twice only, and it is thoroughly consistent with his impressive style throughout the episode, that he should apply to the time when these astounding events are said to have taken place the appropriate term, already suggested by the author of the Apocalypse, of“the Lord's day,”instead of“the first day of the week.”There is nothing more difficult, as is proved every day in our time, than to fix the precise date at which words or expressions first came into use, and especially—in the absence of voluminous literature opposing the presumption—the denial of antiquity to a work, on the ground of its employing an expression supposed only to have come into general use a few years later than its otherwise probable date, is both rash and unjustifiable.

We shall not attempt to fix any even approximate date to the Gospel according to Peter, although we shall presently have to consider its relation to our canonical Gospels in a way which will at least assign it a position in time relative to them. Harnack, in the preface to the second edition of his article on the fragment, suspends his judgment on its relation to our Gospels, and will not even undertake a sufficient examination of this important question, so long as there remains a hope of still recovering more of the Gospel. It is devoutly to be hoped that the Cemetery of Akhmîm may still give us more of this and other important early works; but there is no reason why we should not, even now, endeavour to derive what information we can from this instalment, and the worst—or the best—which can happen is that future acquisitions may enable us to correct the errors—or confirm the conclusions—of the present. So long as we confine ourselves to the legitimate inferences to be drawn from the actual fragment before us, we cannot go far wrong.

It is frequently possible to assign well-defined limits within which early works, whose authors are unknown, must have been composed, when a more precise date cannot with certainty be fixed. Direct references to the writing, or its use, by writers the period of whose literary work is known, may enable us to affirm that it was written at least before their time; and sometimes[pg 043]certain allusions or quotations in the work itself may, on the other hand, show that it must have been composed after a certain date; and thus limits, more or less narrow, become certain, within which its production must lie. The Gospel according to Peter, as we might expect, contains none of the allusions or quotations to which we refer, and we are therefore reduced to the one indication of age—reference to, or the use of it by, early writers, leaving the approximate date to which it may be set back wholly to conjecture. As we have already remarked above, the question whether it is dependent on, or independent of, our canonical Gospels has yet to be considered; but there is too much difference of opinion regarding the date of these Gospels themselves to render this more than a relative indication. So far, the opinions of critics assign the Gospel according to Peter to dates ranging from a period antecedent to our Gospels, in their present form, to about the middle of the second century.72

The indications of style and phraseology given by the fragment have of course to be taken into account, and it may be well, before proceeding further, to examine certain peculiarities which have been pointed out by writers who assert that the composition is decidedly later than our canonical Gospels.73The writer never speaks of“Jesus”simply, but always as[pg 044]“the Lord”(ὁ κύριος). He likewise refers to him as the“Saviour”(σωτήρ) in one place, and several times as“a Son of God”(υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ). Now, with regard to these expressions, they are in constant use throughout the New Testament writings, in the Gospels themselves, as well as in the Epistles of Paul and the Epistles popularly ascribed to him. For instance, ὁ κύριος: Matt. xxi. 3, xxviii. 6;74Mark xvi. 19;75Luke vii. 13, x. 1, xi. 39, xii. 42, xiii. 15, xvii. 5, 6, xviii. 6, xix. 8, 31, 34, xxii. 61, xxiv. 3, 34; John vi. 23, xi. 2, xiii. 13, 14, xx. 2, 13, 18, 20, 28, xxi. 7, 12. It is unnecessary to point out passages in the Acts and Epistles, for“the Lord,”“the Lord Jesus,”or“the Lord Jesus Christ,”is everywhere used, and indeed no other form, it may be said, is adopted.“A Son of God”(υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ) is constantly used in the Gospels and Acts. A few instances may be given: Matt. viii. 29, xiv. 33, xvi. 16, xxvi. 63, xxvii. 40, 43, 54; Mark i. 1, iii. 11, v. 7, xv. 39; Luke i. 35, ix. 41, viii. 28, xxii. 70; John i. 34, 49, v. 25, x. 36, xi. 4, 27, xix. 7, xx. 31; Acts ix. 20. Of course, in the Epistles the expression is of frequent occurrence, as for instance, Rom. i. 4, 9, v. 10; 1 Cor. i. 9; 2 Cor. i. 19; Gal. ii. 20, and elsewhere. It is not necessary to show that“Saviour”is used, but the following may be pointed out: Luke ii. 11; John iv. 42; Acts v. 31, xiii. 23; and it more frequently occurs in the Epistles. All of these expressions are commonly employed in early Christian literature, such as the“Didache,”Ignatian Epistles, Clement of Rome, Polycarp,“Pastor”of Hermas, and the“Apology”of Aristides.

The principal phrase upon which weight is laid by those who assign to the Gospel according to Peter,[pg 045]from this fragment, a later date than our canonical works, is the use of ἡ κυριακή without ἡμέρα to designate“the Lord's day”—Sunday; Dr. Swete calls it“the most decisive indication of the relatively late composition of our fragment.”76After giving some instances of a similar expression, he states the case as follows:

The name was therefore familiar amongst Eastern Greek-speaking Christians from the end of the first century. But Peter not only uses it freely, but seems to be unconscious that he is guilty of an anachronism when he imports this exclusively Christian term into the Gospel history. Ἡ κυριακή has so completely supplanted Ἡ μία τῶν σαββάτων, that it is twice used to describe the first Easter Day, in a document which usually manifests precision in such matters.77

It is not quite clear what Dr. Swete means when he says that Peter“uses it freely,”but it would indeed be singular if he seemed to be conscious that he was guilty of an anachronism in making use of this or any word. The question, in fact, is whether it is an anachronism or not, and that it is so is very far from proved by any arguments yet brought forward. In the Apocalypse, i. 10, we have the use of the term“the Lord's day”(ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα),a.d.68-69. In the“Didache,”which Dr. Lightfoot assigns to the first or the beginning of the second century, we meet with κυριακὴ κυρίου; and in the Ignatian Epistles, which those who believe in them date“in the early years of the second century,”there is in one place78κατὰ κυριακήν. So far from its being surprising that there should not be more authority for such an expression, however, it seems almost more remarkable that we should have any parallels at all, when we remember how few early writings are extant, and how few of these actually refer to the day thus designated. The Epistles, for this reason, may be set aside in a body, for they give no testimony either way,[pg 046]with the exception of 1 Cor. xvi. 2, where“the first day of the week”is referred to. The three Synoptics, following each other, and a common tradition, use ἡ μία τῶν σαββάτων each once, and the fourth Gospel has the same phrase twice, and the Acts once; but this use of another expression does not—in the face of the use of ἡ κυριακή in this fragment, and of ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα, in the Apocalypse—at all show that, at the same period, the latter phrase was not also current, though it may not have supplanted“the first day of the week.”The fact that Melito of Sardis,“about the middle of the second century,”wrote a treatise περὶ κυριακῆς shows how general that expression had become; and even Dr. Swete, as we have seen above, recognises that it was“familiar amongst Eastern Greek-speaking Christians from the end of the first century.”There is nothing whatever to warrant the conclusion that its use at the time when our Gospels were written would have been an anachronism, but the fact that a different expression happened to be used in a few writings. The author of the fragment employs the phrase twice only, and it is thoroughly consistent with his impressive style throughout the episode, that he should apply to the time when these astounding events are said to have taken place the appropriate term, already suggested by the author of the Apocalypse, of“the Lord's day,”instead of“the first day of the week.”There is nothing more difficult, as is proved every day in our time, than to fix the precise date at which words or expressions first came into use, and especially—in the absence of voluminous literature opposing the presumption—the denial of antiquity to a work, on the ground of its employing an expression supposed only to have come into general use a few years later than its otherwise probable date, is both rash and unjustifiable.

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