1. Introduction
It has become something of a commonplace among scholars to refer to the Gospel of Peter (hereafter GP) as theologically ‘unsophisticated’ or ‘unrefined’. Paul Foster, who has published prolifically on GP in recent years, writes, ‘It needs to be acknowledged that the Gospel of Peter is theologically an unsophisticated text, and it provides minimal reflection on the heightened miraculous depictions it narrates.’Footnote 1 While here theological sophistication is tied to ‘reflection’, elsewhere ‘precision’ is key: ‘the author writes at a popular level and is unconcerned about precise distinctions between death or ascension terminology but happily confuses features of different events’.Footnote 2 Pablo Edo, in a slightly different vein, concludes his article on GP by positing some sort of ‘syncretism’ as the reason that GP is ‘a typical unsophisticated and uncritical product of the second-century’.Footnote 3 Markus Bockmuehl, who would probably agree that the writer of GP is interested in theological perspectives on Jesus,Footnote 4 articulates a similar scholarly commonplace when he writes, ‘the Gospel of Peter's Christology is diverse and unrefined without subscribing to any particular “heretical” view’.Footnote 5 This claim can take several forms; but much of it seems to be related to a general understanding of apocryphal literature as ‘popular’ or ‘folk’ literature.Footnote 6
Admittedly much of this discussion – especially Bockmuehl's comment – finds its place within a long scholarly discussion of GP's apparent docetism: i.e. the question of whether its Christology is docetic, orthodox, or neither – something unreflective on the question of how Jesus is divine.Footnote 7 But even such a framework is indicative of the fact that later ‘sophisticated’ theological norms are being imposed from without upon the text of GP. Indeed, in the discussion of docetism, Eusebius’ late third- to early fourth-century orthodoxyFootnote 8 ends up being the arbiter of the sophisticated theological tradition of the late second, or early third, century.Footnote 9 This is not the only sophisticated norm against which GP's theology is weighed, however. Foster's work especially seems to compare the sophistication of the canonical Gospels with that of GP.Footnote 10 Thus the canonical Gospels are theologically sophisticated, whereas GP – being derivative – is theologically unsophisticated.Footnote 11 While I want to be sensitive to the differences between GP and the canonical Gospels – and indeed between GP and Eusebius (and his forebears, such as Irenaeus and Origen) – this sensitivity should mean not that we ‘write off’ GP as a theological reflection, but instead attempt to understand its own theological project and theological idiom.
Although it would be a worthwhile project to locate some of the theoretical underpinnings or assumptions of the language of sophistication vs unsophistication,Footnote 12 my goal in this article is instead to reflect on what it means for an early Christian work to be theological at all. More precisely, my worry is that when we make the claim that something is ‘theologically unsophisticated’, we are really judging the work to be theologically uninteresting, or, worse, altogether untheological.Footnote 13 Admittedly, there is a countercurrent, if a small one, which would emphasise the interesting theological moves made in GP: a number of decades ago Maria Grazia Mara emphasised this, and, more recently, Tobias Nicklas has published some engaging essays in this regard.Footnote 14 My hope is to add to this small eddy of publications – in the now vast river of scholarly works on GP – and thus to present GP as a text which engages with gospel traditions in a theological mode, as it reflects upon the soteriological import of the crucifixion and resurrection.
The way I will go about this is by viewing – as many have – GP as a reception of the synoptic tradition. I will not stake a claim on what kind of ‘dependence’ is here at play; I will, however, argue that GP is a ‘rewriting’ of a sort, in which theological concerns about the resurrection play a central role. Specifically, I argue that GP's extravagant narration of the resurrection – with all the detail it adds to the synoptic accounts – is constructed on the pattern of the narration of the crucifixion. This mirroring occurs through a number of parallels, which will be adduced throughout the article. It is my contention that, aside from various apologetic reasons for renarrating the resurrection in such a way, there are also theological reasons for doing so: namely making the resurrection, like the crucifixion, into a moment of divine revelation and salvation. The author of GP, familiar with the synoptic accounts, or a synoptic tradition, in which the resurrection is not itself narrated (only post-resurrection ‘appearances’ are), fills in the gap and narrates the moment of the resurrection on the narrative pattern of the event acknowledged throughout the synoptic tradition to be salvific: the crucifixion.
2. Theories of Dependency and Rewrittenness
Since the Akhmim fragment was discovered and subsequently published by Urbain Bouriant, various theories have been advanced as to the relationship between GP and the canonical Gospels. In the early scholarship on the relationship between the canonical Gospels and GP, it was simply assumed that the latter knew and borrowed from the former. Léon Vaganay thus labels the author a faussaire, and comes up with several different categories for classifying these borrowings (from strong/certain borrowings to weak/uncertain).Footnote 15 Rather later, Mara, in her 1973 edition, largely follows him, but has a less pejorative opinion of his borrowing. She believes GP is intended to be not an historical account, but a theological interpretation of the synoptics.Footnote 16
This consensus was famously challenged by Helmut Koester, and then by John Dominic Crossan, who believes that GP contains a more ancient source (the ‘Cross Gospel’) upon which the synoptics are also dependent.Footnote 17 Raymond Brown defended the older consensus, bringing the criterion of agreement vs disagreement to bear: the canonical Gospels agree with GP on details, but disagree with one another.Footnote 18 Thomas Schonhoffer has more recently advanced Brown's thesis (thinking it insufficient on its own), by discussing Matthew and Luke's use of sources, arguing that if Matthew and Luke used GP, then (from what we know of their use of Mark) they would have been going against their customary way of dependence.Footnote 19 Even if Brown's argument was generally accepted before Schonhoffer's article, it is now consensus.Footnote 20
On the other hand, the nature of this dependence is far from settled. Several scholars, including Brown, have argued that the kind of dependence is an ‘oral’ dependence, and that the way in which it uses the synoptics is as a ‘popular harmonization’.Footnote 21 That is, the writer of GP does not have the canonical Gospels in front of him, and is familiar with them from oral recitation. Foster argues that this is not the case, but that GP in fact witnesses to a ‘literary dependence’, for which, in his commentary, he makes a ‘cumulative case … on the basis of shared vocabulary and other features’.Footnote 22 Bockmuehl wants to do away with such discussion of ‘literary dependence’, and instead speak about ‘literary antecedence’, because this allows for a use of the sources which is not wooden, but includes creativity and ‘independence’.Footnote 23 I am sympathetic to this approach; but, more specifically in the case of GP, as Bockmuehl writes, this antecedence and creative use equals ‘an appropriation and relecture of … synoptic tradition, not necessarily in written form’.Footnote 24 Thus Bockmuehl shifts the topic of discussion: not of literary vs oral, but of creative use of sources (whether literary or oral).
Bockmuehl's relecture coincides with a recent discussion of GP as ‘rewritten Gospel’. At least two scholars have discussed this, with Timothy Henderson's being theoretically the most thorough.Footnote 25 Henderson, following Daniel Harrington's definition of ‘rewritten Bible’, sees the value of the rewritten work as the way in which it elucidates the receiving culture.Footnote 26 The gaps that are filled, the expanded events, the deleted scenes, are all indicative of the social setting in which the ‘rewritten’ work was composed. For Henderson, this means that GP, as ‘rewritten Gospel’, is apologetic and polemical, and the apology and polemic are directed towards both Jews and Romans. This is a compelling reading of a number of GP's additions. However, it is limited in its scope inasmuch as it follows Harrington's definition. Geza Vermes’ original concept of rewritten Bible was by no means rigorously theorised; nevertheless, his intention – as he has indicated in a posthumously published essay – was for rewritten Bible to be primarily about exegesis and theology.Footnote 27 He notes that of course it can reveal something about the receiving society, but it primarily reveals the ‘rewriter’ as a close reader and exegete with religious motivations.
I believe that in the case of GP, Vermes’ perspective on rewritten Bible can prove helpful. While Mara, as we have seen, emphasises that GP is a theological recasting of the gospel narrative – indeed a theological recasting of the synoptics – she does not do the close work needed to demonstrate a particular theology of GP. Thus, while I will remain non-committal with respect to the debate over oral vs literary dependency (adopting in some respect Bockmuehl's approach), I see GP as a kind of reception (and perhaps rewriting) of the synoptic tradition which indicates less the ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ interests of the writer, and more the theological. (Importantly, my argument does not rely upon a particular model of GP's use or reception of the canonical Gospels.) Indeed, as Jens Schröter wrote recently, the value of these later gospel traditions lies less in their contribution to the study of the historical Jesus, and more in what they contribute to our knowledge of early Christologies.Footnote 28 In the case of GP, I argue that the resurrection is brought to the fore as a saving event, in parallel with the revelatory and life-giving crucifixion.
3. Rewriting the Crucifixion and Writing the Resurrection
In this section, I will argue not only that GP's reception and rewriting of the synoptic Gospels witnesses to the theological interests of the author, but also that, in a way, it seeks to find a resurrection narrative that is already present in the synoptic tradition. That is, GP writes a resurrection narrative – which is not narrated in the synoptic Gospels as such (only the rolling away of the stone, and resurrection ‘appearances’) – in the terms of the synoptic tradition's crucifixion account. The author of GP first provides an account of the crucifixion which harmonises the synoptic tradition, and then proceeds to narrate the resurrection according to the pattern of the narration of the crucifixion. The resurrection thus becomes – in a way entirely unlike the synoptic Gospels – a second and coordinated saving event.
3.1 The Crucifixion
The crucifixion account in GP closely follows the synoptic Gospels in many respects. In the synoptic accounts, the crucifixion, and the passion immediately preceding it, is already relatively full of details; and GP adds details or creates novel interpretations on only a few occasions. But those few occasions prove important for discerning how GP is adapting its received material. I will highlight just a few aspects of this section of the narrative: the raising of the cross, the speech of the crucified criminals, the divine signs surrounding the crucifixion, and the proclamation made upon witnessing Jesus’ death and the signs that accompany it. These changes will also be important as we look to the writing of the resurrection in GP.
First, unlike any of the synoptic Gospels, the raising of Jesus on the cross is narrated: ‘And they brought two criminals and crucified the Lord in the middle of them, and he was silent as though having no pain. And when they erected the cross (ὅτε ὤρθωσαν τὸν σταῦρον), they wrote, “This is the king of Israel”’ (4.10–11). All three synoptic Gospels also narrate both the criminals and the titulus straightforwardly, if in different orders with different nuances (Mark 15.24–6; Matt 27.34–8; Luke 23.32–8). The difference between these and GP is especially manifest in the titulus’ ‘Israel’ rather than ‘the Jews’. Although Jesus is silent in Mark 14.61 // Matt 26.63, the silence occurs in the context of the trial before the Sanhedrin – not the crucifixion – and his silence is short-lived. In the context of GP, his silence has the function of demonstrating that while Jesus (‘the Lord’) does not speak, the cross, by way of the sign erected by his enemies, speaks the truth: ‘This is the king of Israel.’
For our purposes, the other substantial difference is, as I noted, that the raising of the cross is narrated at all.Footnote 29 Although in every Gospel Jesus is ‘crucified’ (Mark 15.24–5 // Matt 27.35 // Luke 23.32), at no point do we see the cross being erected: in John 3.14, Jesus employs the verb ὑψόω – ‘lift up’, ‘exalt’ – to refer to the exaltation of the ‘son of man’, and there is a clear allusion to, or prophecy of, his later crucifixion; but this is not, of course, narrated at the moment of the crucifixion. On the other hand, the verb used at this point in GP is ὀρθόω, which is used nowhere else in the New Testament to refer to this action; but this word will become important when we turn to GP's account of the resurrection. Here, while slightly reworking the synoptic material, GP is in fact filling in a gap that is not narrated (but is, of course, assumed): the raising of the cross. Jesus, presumably attached to the cross while it is still lying flat, is hoisted upright.
In Mark and Matthew, while the criminals (λῃσταί) who are crucified hurl abuse (ἐβλασφήμουν) at Jesus, no specific words are provided (Mark 15.26–9 // Matt 27.38–9). Luke's is the only Gospel in which the criminals (κακοῦργοι) speak (Luke 23.32–3; 23.39): the one hurls abuse (ἐβλασφήμουν) at Jesus, whereas the other declares Jesus’ righteousness, in comparison to their own unrighteousness – and so also their deserved death, and Jesus’ undeserved death: ‘But the other rebuked him [the first criminal], saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same judgement? And we indeed have been condemned justly (δικαίως), for we are getting what we deserve for what we have done, but this man has done nothing wrong”’ (Luke 23.40–1). On the other hand, in GP, only the good criminal (κάκουργος) speaks, but his speech is not directed to Jesus at all; rather, this criminal hurls abuse at those who crucified Jesus (i.e. who had ‘erected the cross’): ‘And having laid out the clothes before him, they divided them and cast lots for them. But one of the criminals rebuked (ὠνείδησεν) them saying, “We, because of the evil things we did, are suffering thus, but this man who is the saviour of men, how has he wronged you (τί ἠδίκησεν ὑμᾶς)?”’ (4.12–13). He, like the good criminal in Luke, declares that Jesus is innocent, and that those crucifying him (and not the crucified criminals themselves) are unjust. This corresponds to the emphases seen in the different Gospels on the nature of the crucifixion: whereas in Matthew and Mark the crucifixion is a sign and a declaration of Jesus as the divine Messiah and Saviour, in GP, as in Luke, the crucifixion is a sign of Jesus’ justice and innocence as a human being, in relation to all humankind.Footnote 30 Again, this will be all the more evident in the contrast between the GP's narrations of the crucifixion and the resurrection.
The signs that accompany the death of Jesus are of course emphasised much more in Matthew than in Luke or Mark. Luke follows Mark more closely: darkness falls, and the temple veil is torn (Mark 15.33, 38 // Luke 23.44–5). In Matthew, on the other hand, various signs of the coming of the messianic kingdom are narrated alongside these, and coordinated with them:
From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon … Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection, they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. (Matt 27.45, 50–3)
As Foster has stated, in Matthew, these represent the coming of Jesus’ eschatological kingdom: the rending of the temple veil is coordinated with an earthquake, the breaking of rocks and the opening of the tombs – and with the resurrection of the dead.Footnote 31 But in GP these signs, as Henderson has argued, take on a different significance. Though the exact sequence of events is harder to discern in GP than in the synoptic Gospels, the rending of the veil and the darkness seem to be associated with Jesus’ death, and the resumption of daylight and the shaking of the earth are associated with his removal from the cross and the placement of his body on the ground:
And it was noon and darkness covered all Judaea. And they were troubled and distressed that the sun should not have set, since he was still alive. It was written to them that ‘the sun is not to set on one who has been put to death’. And one of them said, ‘Give him gall with vinegar to drink’. And having mixed it they gave it to him to drink. And they fulfilled everything and they heaped the sins upon their heads. And many were going about with lamps, [and] supposing it was night, they stumbled. And the Lord cried out saying, ‘My power, the power, you have left me’. And after he spoke, he was taken up. And at the same hour the curtain of Jerusalem's temple was torn in two. And then they drew the nails from the Lord's hands and placed him upon the earth, and all the earth was shaken and there was great fear. Then the sun shone and it was found to be the ninth hour. (5.15–6.22)
Henderson argues that, as seen in the Jewish leaders’ response to the signs (σημεία, 8.28), these, along with the destruction of the temple, indicate the judgement pronounced against the Jews for their complicity in Jesus’ death.Footnote 32 While this is a convincing argument, Henderson does not note that this great sin committed by the Jewish leaders is, as Nicklas notes, followed by repentance: they ‘beat their breasts’ and proclaim Jesus’ righteousness (// Luke 24.47–8).Footnote 33 Thus, as we will see momentarily, while the signs are signs of judgement, they also seem to be signs that bring about repentance – insofar as they point to the injustice of the crucifixion itself.
This point is relevant to a judgement of theological sophistication or unsophistication. Foster, following his comment, given above, on the relationship between Matthew and GP, writes, ‘perhaps with less theological sophistication, the Gospel of Peter affirms the sanctity (if not the divinity) of the body placed on the ground by having the earth shake’.Footnote 34 He bases the ‘less[er] theological sophistication’ of GP on its change from the coordinated eschatological signs in Matt 27.51. But this new scene, narrated in GP's idiom, rather than being ‘theologically unsophisticated’, is merely coordinated differently. Instead of making an eschatological claim, in GP the signs proclaim divine judgement and call to repentance – which repentance we have now heard from the Jewish leaders.
This brings us to the centurion's proclamation. In GP, the centurion responds neither to the crucifixion itself (as in Mark 15.39), nor to the signs (as in Matt 27.54), nor, more ambiguously, to ‘what had taken place’ (Luke 23.47). Rather, it is the Jewish leaders – the scribes, the elders and the Pharisees – who make a proclamation about Jesus in reaction to these signs. Whereas Luke has the centurion say, ‘surely this man was just’ (Ὄντως ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὗτος δίκαιος ἦν), GP has these Jewish leaders beat their breasts, and declare, ‘If at his death these very great signs have happened, behold how just he was’ (εἰ τῷ θανάτῳ αὐτοῦ ταῦτα τὰ μέγιστα σημεῖα γέγονεν, ἴδετε ὅτι πόσον δίκαιός ἐστιν, 8.28). Although this does not initially seem like a definitive parallel – especially given the different setting of the quotation – several other points indicate that it is indeed a parallel: first, the centurion's description of Jesus as δίκαιος along with a form of ἐστιν; second, the proclamation is explicitly made in reaction to the signs, as it is in Matthew; third, the ‘beating of the breasts’, which is the reaction of other onlookers to Jesus’ crucifixion in Luke 23.48, also occurs just after the proclamation. This is thus strikingly similar to the Lukan proclamation, with the major difference being that the only narrated reaction to the crucifixion, and the accompanying signs, is placed on the lips of the Jewish leaders. At the same time, as we will go on to see, GP does include Matthew's and Mark's centurion's statement, but separates this proclamation (‘God's son’) out from the Lukan (‘righteous’) statements into two different proclamations – one in response to the crucifixion, by the Jews, and one in response to the resurrection, by a centurion.Footnote 35
3.2 The Resurrection
While in the synoptic Gospels the resurrection itself is never narrated, and only the ‘empty tomb’ and Jesus’ later appearances to the disciples are recorded, GP narrates the resurrection in the sight of both Jew and Gentile. As Henderson has pointed out, this scene is probably an apologetic response to criticisms from outsiders – criticisms which are already recorded in the canonical Gospels (Matt 28.12–14).Footnote 36 However, it seems to be much more than a defensive manoeuvre: as GP goes about narrating the resurrection, it does not do so without relying on the synoptic tradition. Instead, it creates a resurrection narrative parallel to its narration of the events surrounding the crucifixion: the event which in the synoptic Gospels is already acknowledged to be salvific. That is, GP's resurrection scene, as fantastical as it is, attends at once to the details as given in the synoptic Gospels’ empty tomb narratives and to the crucifixion scene already narrated in GP. Certainly, there are apologetic motifs: the stone has seven seals put on it to verify that Jesus really was interred in the tomb (8.33), and Romans sentries are keeping watch by twos (9.35). Nevertheless, as we will see, this event is narrated in such a way that it parallels the crucifixion as a saving event. We will proceed with describing the parallels according to the order already laid out in the previous section.
GP's resurrection scene has been commented upon very frequently in recent scholarship. The two ‘supporting angels’ have received some attention, and I agree wholeheartedly that it is worth asking the question, ‘Why would the risen Lord need angels to support him?’ Edo has recently described these angels as ‘Psychopompoi’, a description that seems fitting to me.Footnote 37 But why do they need to ‘support’ him? ‘While they were reporting what they had seen, again they saw coming out from the tomb three men, and the two were supporting the one (τρεῖς ἄνδρες καὶ τοὺς δύο τὸν ἕνα ὑπορθοῦντας), and a cross following them’ (10.39). The key to understanding the reason for the ‘support’ is the lemma itself: ὑπορθόω. Just as Jesus has been raised up (ὀρθόω) along with the cross when he was crucified, so now in the resurrection he is also raised up. The explanation for the use of this uncommon wordFootnote 38 is found in the use of the much more common, and coordinated, word ὀρθόω, used of the crucifixion. Here is our first indication that the resurrection is being narrated as a saving event, coordinated with the crucifixion which has already been narrated.
A little further on in the narrative, we read, ‘And they were hearing a voice from the heavens saying, “Have you preached to those who sleep?” And a response was heard from the cross, “Yes”’ (10.41–2). This is, of course, one of the more frequently commented upon sections of the resurrection narrative, with Mark Goodacre and Paul Foster engaging in debate surrounding it a number of years ago. Goodacre wanted to amend ‘cross’ (σταυρόν) to ‘crucified one’ (σταυρωθέντα).Footnote 39 Foster was right to deny this; and, indeed, the peculiarity of the speaking cross is further explained when we understand that GP's narration of the crucifixion is informing that of the resurrection. In the crucifixion, the Lord is silent, while the cross witnesses to the truth of the matter: the ‘King of Israel’ is being crucified by his own people. In the resurrection, the cross again witnesses to the truth: that the Lord has brought victory over death, even to those who have already died. Further, the correlation of two criminals with the two angels,Footnote 40 while admittedly a little thinner, carries this same witnessing function: whereas the good criminal had spoken of the justice of Jesus and the injustice of the crucifixion, the angels, without speaking, witness to Jesus’ divinity: ‘And the head of the two reached as far as heaven, but that of the one being led by them surpassed the heavens’ (10.40).
Certainly, the correspondence between the signs at the crucifixion and those at the resurrection – for which there is no verbal correspondence – is a little more tenuous. Nevertheless, we do see that while darkness accompanied the crucifixion as a ‘sign’ (5.15; 8.28), now light characterises the resurrection: we hear twice that the day has dawned, and the angels ‘have much light’ (9.34–6).
Apart from the parallel ‘raisings’ (ὀρθόω/ὑπορθόω) of Jesus, the most compelling evidence that these two events are intentionally coordinated divine salutary events are the proclamations that follow upon the saving acts and their coordinated signs. We have already seen that Jesus was proclaimed righteous by the Jews at the crucifixion, according to a Lukan sort of proclamation. In reaction to the resurrection, however, a couple of persons accompanying the Markan–Matthean centurion (Matt 27.54 // Mark 15.39) make a Markan–Matthean type of proclamation: ‘Seeing these things, those who accompanied the centurion rushed by night to Pilate, leaving the tomb which they were guarding, and related everything which they saw, being greatly distressed and saying, “Truly this was God's son”’ (11.45). As in the case of GP's Lukan proclamation following the crucifixion, so also in the case of the resurrection the Lord's identity is announced ‘offstage’, heightening the parallel. Here, rather than the Jewish leaders proclaiming it to one another, Gentile authorities proclaim to one another, and fully acknowledge, Jesus’ divinity. Indeed, just as the crucifixion is a sign of judgement against the Jews (per Henderson), and also a sign of Jesus’ righteousness among the Jewish leaders/Israel, so the resurrection is a sign of Jesus’ divinity to all the nations: Jew and Gentile alike.
4. Conclusion: Two Saving Events
In Mara's edition of GP, she argues against Vaganay's characterisation of GP's author as a faussaire that GP is concerned not to reinterpret the synoptic Gospels historically, but to interpret the events theologically.Footnote 41 We have now seen one significant way in which her claim is correct: the crucifixion and the resurrection are written, or rewritten, as parallel accounts of saving events. A narration of the resurrection is added into GP precisely because it is so conspicuously missing from the Gospel of Mark and the synoptics that follow that outline – and, indeed, from the Gospel of John (whatever its relationship to the synoptics). No doubt this gap is filled for apologetic reasons, but we have now seen that various aspects of the narration of the resurrection demonstrate interesting theological perspectives, and perhaps motivations as well. Thus the resurrection is written on the pattern of the crucifixion as it is present in the synoptic tradition.
I suggest that we can learn even more about the crucifixion and the resurrection than just that they are coordinated salvific works, as I have already indicated throughout the paper in a limited way. They also serve different saving functions, and they reveal the person of the Lord, and his saving work, to different audiences. First, as in the Gospel of Luke, in GP the unjust crucifixion of this just man, along with the miraculous signs accompanying it, serves as a demonstration of the Lord's righteousness, and in turn his rightful status as the ‘King of Israel’. Just as the Jewish leaders proclaimed this, and repented and beat their breasts, so the reader is meant to recognise the righteousness of Jesus – and the justice of his claim to be Messiah and Lord – and the injustice of those who crucified him. It is an event that saves by bringing one to repentance, and to a recognition of the Lord's righteousness and sovereignty. Further, the primary audience for whom the crucifixion and accompanying signs are narrated are the Jews. These narrative elements are meant, along with the knowledge that the temple has been destroyed, to bring Jews to repentance, and, I would suggest, also to faith.Footnote 42 In this sense, the crucifixion becomes not merely a polemical event, as Henderson has it, but an evangelistic and protreptic one: it is meant to persuade in favour of Jesus’ righteousness.
GP's corresponding saving event of the resurrection becomes, on the other hand, a sign of Jesus’ divinity: he is accompanied by angels, his head reaches the heavens, he is declared God's son. Whatever other apologetic functions the narration of the resurrection might be seen to achieve, it is certainly also a demonstration to all – not only the Jews in the case – that Jesus is divine, and is the Lord and son of God. Henderson is right that this is apologetic: both Jews and Romans witness the resurrection of Jesus, which fact leaves no doubt that he was truly raised from the dead. But, in this way, Jesus’ resurrection also becomes a proclamation of Jesus’ divinity not just to the Jews, but to all the nations: he is finally seen to be in all its fullness the ‘son of God’. The Lord is ‘raised up’ for all to see, not only as high as the cross in a demonstration of his righteous kingship, but as high as the heavens as a sign of his divinity and his sovereignty over all the earth. And this Lord is not only God and King, but also the one who has himself overcome death, and who has preached and offered his salvation to both the living and the dead.
We must readily admit that GP is not always written in a ‘sophisticated’ manner. It can hardly be judged elegant according to ancient rhetorical conventions, and the narration itself is a bit confused and scattered: for example, it frequently lacks transitions, and sometimes does not provide the subject of the verbs at crucial junctures. Nevertheless, it still represents an attempt to read the gospel tradition theologically, as a tradition which witnesses to the person of the Lord and to the salvation that he offers. That is, this otherwise apparently unsophisticated work represents a profoundly theological reading of the canonical Gospels – or at least of a tradition in keeping with the contours of the synoptic Gospels. Indeed, it does the work of filling in the gap in the Markan narrative outline, a tendency which is also seen, earlier than GP, throughout the rest of the New Testament in the proliferation of witnesses to the resurrection (i.e. ‘appearances’), as, for example, in the Emmaus episode (Luke 24.13–15), and even in Paul's early account of the proclamation of Christ (1 Cor 15.5–8). We can readily imagine that the author of GP, like other early Christian texts,Footnote 43 has paused, and asked himself, ‘Didn't Jesus prophesy about his own resurrection (Mark 8.31)? So – where is it? How did it happen?’ At the same time, GP's resurrection narrative, by the very fact of its imitation of the crucifixion narrative, proclaims the resurrection to be a saving event like the one which is already alive and well in the synoptic tradition: Jesus’ death as a ‘ransom for many’ (Mark 10.45 // Matt 20.28). Thus, although Mark leaves the resurrection unnarrated, we find that GP attempts to do as little violence as possible to the Markan outline which it has received: even the resurrection which is not narrated in the synoptic Gospels ends up looking a lot like the crucifixion as it is narrated in the same.
In conclusion, while I have not set out to argue that GP is a theologically sophisticated Gospel – if this can even be considered a valid category – I have demonstrated that the author of GP is a theological reader of the synoptic Gospels. Not unlike those apocryphal traditions about the harrowing of hell (of which we also have a hint in GP (10.41–2)),Footnote 44 GP reads the gaps it finds in the synoptic Gospel tradition to discover the salvation wrought by the Lord.
