The Importance of Peter in Early Christianity

The Importance of Peter in Early Christianity

The Importance of Peter in Early Christianity

Paul Barnett

Copyright © 2016 Paul Barnett

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First published 2016 by Paternoster

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Contents

Preface

List of Abbreviations

1. Peter the Paradox

2. Simon, Son of John

3. Jesus' Call to Simon (c.29)

4. Jesus in Public and Private (c.29–33)

5. Peter's Fall, Restoration and 'Conversion' (c.33)

6. Peter, Apostle to Israel (33–42)

7. Peter, President of the Council of Apostles (33–42)

8. The Eclipse of Peter in the Land of Israel (42–8)

9. The Crisis in Antioch (c.48)

10. Peter in Antioch (48–52): Redemption in Jerusaem (c.49)

11. Peter Travelling West (c.52–c.56)

12. Peter in Corinth (c.54)

13. Peter in Rome (c.56–c.64)

14. Peter's Letter from 'Babylon' (c.63)

15. Martyrdom of Peter (c.64)

16. The Gospel of Mark, Peter's 'Memoirs' (65–70)

17. Peter, Jesus' Shepherd in the World

18. The Importance of Peter

19. Epilogue

Appendix A: Peter Remembered in the Second Century

Appendix B: The Apocryphal Peter

Bibliography

Endnotes

For Donald and Rosemary Cameron Generous Friends

Preface

My interest in Peter was sharpened by Martin Hengel's luminous Saint Peter: The Underestimated Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010 ET) and by research for Paul in Syria: The Background to Galatians (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2014).

These prompted the writing of The Importance of Peter in Early Christianity.

Among helpful resources were the two texts by Markus Bockmuehl, The Remembered Peter, WUNT 262 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) and Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012). Also very informative were Pheme Perkins, Peter: Apostle for the Whole Church (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994); Timothy Wiarda, Peter in the Gospels, WUNT 127 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), Larry Helyer, The Life and Witness of Peter (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2013). There have been other influential texts, including Oscar Cullmann's classic, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr (New York: Meridian, 1958 ET).¹

How to approach such a study? I decided to follow Cullmann in tracing Peter chronologically, although mindful of the gaps, including Peter's 'dark' years after the Incident in Antioch in c.48.

Crime fiction underscores the importance of a timeline. Many questions are prompted when one establishes a chronology, even if it is approximate. What might it have meant in Galilee c.29 for Andrew and Simon to become followers of John the Baptist? What was happening in the wider world including Judea c.48 when James despatched envoys to put pressure on Peter to withdraw from table fellowship with Gentile believers in Antioch?

Broadly speaking, during the decade 33–42 Peter established Christianity in Israel as the first missionary in that land. The climax was his witness to Samaritans and his evangelism and baptism of Gentiles.

From c.48 to c.52 Peter was head of the church in Antioch, the church second only to Jerusalem at that time. His famous dispute with Paul should not obscure the significant contributions he would have made in that church. He joined Paul c.49 in Jerusalem in successfully opposing attempts to impose circumcision on Gentiles.

For the next few years (c.52–c.56) Peter with his wife left Antioch and travelled westward, ultimately reaching Rome, via a stay in Corinth.

Finally, c.56–c.64 Peter was in Rome as the founding apostle of the church at the heart of the Roman Empire. From Rome ('Babylon') Peter wrote his majestic, though brief, encyclical to congregations scattered across five Roman provinces in Anatolia.

Through the brief but reliable information of Clement in c.95 we know that Peter was killed as part of Nero's pogrom against the Christiani in 64, as chronicled by Tacitus.

Abbreviations

1

Peter the Paradox

Peter is a paradox

On the one hand, he comes before us in the gospels as dull, obstinate, over-confident but weak. Peter is the disgraced disciple who, having volubly asserted his life-and-death loyalty to the Master, publicly denied him and left him to die alone and friendless.

Yet each of the four gospel writers finds ways to present Peter as the pre-eminent disciple. He is the first we meet and the last we meet. He is on record in each gospel as the first to declare Jesus to be the Christ.

A surface reading of the New Testament suggests that Peter was a relatively unimportant figure in early Christianity. He was central for the first decade in the history of the early church but then more or less disappears. Paul mentioned Peter in only two of his thirteen letters.¹ In Paul's most important letter, Romans, written in c.57 when Peter was supposed to be in Rome, the name 'Peter' does not appear.

The only texts that bear Peter's name are two short epistles, whose authenticity and dating are uncertain in the minds of many. Apart from that there are only retrospective references to Peter in the second century by church leaders and in the apocryphal texts like the Gospel of Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter.²

Some scholars even think Peter disappeared altogether from the Christian scene in the late 40s, did not reach Rome, did not become the founding apostle of the church there.³ One study on Peter needed only four pages to tell his life story.⁴ Martin Hengel's book title suggestively calls Peter 'the underestimated apostle'.⁵

It is this paradox, however, that provides a clue to answering the question: was Peter important or unimportant in early Christianity? Consider the possibility that Simon Peter accomplished little or nothing in the decades after the resurrection. In that case, his name would have survived in the gospels but merely as one among others, whose chief distinction was his disgrace.

The other possibility is that Peter became a distinguished figure throughout the thirty years between the first Easter and Peter's death and that his distinction demanded that each gospel attributed pre-eminence to him. This possibility is, in our view, a matter of high probability.

What, then, were Peter's achievements throughout the post-resurrection years?

First, it was his leadership of early Christianity (33–42) upon which he must have continued to build even throughout his latter, 'dark' years (c.48–c.64). The elevated quality of his First Letter and the Gospel of Mark, both associated with him, are evidence of a significant and maturing mind.

Second, it was under Peter's leadership in Jerusalem during the first decade of Christian history that the idea of a Jesus biography was developed. This was manifested both in the 'traditions' embedded in 1 Corinthians, which together trace Jesus' 'story' from the Last Supper to the resurrection appearances, and in the reported summaries of Peter's preaching in Acts 2 – 10.

From the gospels it is clear that Jesus was regarded as a rabbi, but he was proclaimed in early Christianity biographically as the Christ, not as a rabbi. The Mishnah (c.200) remembers the great rabbis for their judgements and parables with little biographical detail, but it was the opposite with Jesus. Neither the early 'traditions' nor the summaries of Peter's preaching mention even one legal judgement of Jesus, but are entirely occupied with who he was, what happened to him and what he did.

This preoccupation with the verbal biography merged into written biography, the gospel format. The gospels do indeed report judgements and parables of Jesus, but these are always subsidiary to the overall biography.

The Mishnah directs our attention to the rabbis as interpreters of the law, but the gospel tradition, spoken and written, directs our attention to Jesus the person, and to commitment to him. This incomparable distinctive of early Christianity must be attributed to Peter. Apart from Peter's influence Jesus might have been remembered as an unorthodox rabbi who gave unusual judgements about the law.

The memory of and respect for the fisherman from Bethsaida in the three decades after the first Easter secured his place in the gospels written in the second half of the first century. This respect for Peter continued after his death into the following century.

2

Simon, Son of John

Readers of the gospels know four things about Peter. They know that Jesus renamed Simon the fisherman 'Peter' (= 'Rock'); that he was the dominant disciple; that an imaginable personality emerges from the narratives; and that despite his emphatic assurances of fidelity he publicly disowned his Master.¹

What do we know of this man's earlier life, before he began to follow Jesus?

Bethsaida Julias

According to the Gospel of John, Simon's original home was Bethsaida² whose exact location, however, is disputed. The most likely option lies beneath a large mound (known as Et-Tell or Tell Bethsaida) on the eastern side of the Jordan where it makes its northern entry into the lake. The alternative is the small village nearby on the lakeside (known as El-Araj). It is possible, though, that the lakeside settlement was a satellite village of the riverside 'city'.

Beneath Tell Bethsaida lie the remains of civilizations going back through the Hellenistic era to the Iron Age. In 4 BC Herod the Great bequeathed the region known as Trachonitis and Gaulanitis to his son Herod Philip, and with it the 'village' Bethsaida. According to Josephus, Philip then raised the village of Bethsaida to the status of a city by adding residents and strengthening the fortifications.³ Given Philip's Hellenistic (non-Jewish) sympathies it is likely that these 'added' residents were not Jews. There are hints that many of the inhabitants of this tetrarchy were 'Syrians'.⁴Later, in c.30, Philip renamed this city 'Julias' in honour of the late wife of Tiberius Caesar.

Philip's two 'cities' were Caesarea Philippi and Bethsaida Julias, but the latter was the tetrarch's favourite. He erected his tomb in this city and in due course died and was buried there.

Although the archaeological surveys of Bethsaida Julias have not revealed Graeco-Roman institutional architecture – theatres, amphitheatres, gymnasia, palaces, law courts, aqueducts or public baths – it is reasonable to assume that these were part of a 'city' that Herod Philip was known to have loved.

Although Bethsaida means 'house of the fisher' there is no strong evidence that fishing was its main industry, although it probably was in the lakeside satellite village. Animal remains found in Bethsaida Julias point to livestock husbandry as the basis of its economy. The discovery of the remains of pigs confirms the impression of a Bethsaida Julias as a predominantly Gentile city.

Jesus singled out Bethsaida, with Chorazin and Capernaum, as three places where he did his 'mighty works', but which did not repent. They formed a triangle of towns, separated by just a few kilometres. Whereas Chorazin and Capernaum were intensely Jewish towns centred on the synagogue, by sharp contrast Bethsaida was a Gentile 'city'. Simon Bar-Jonah was to witness several of Jesus' miracles in those towns, but the people displayed no great interest in his message of repentance.

By the time we meet Simon in the gospel narratives he and his brother had relocated to nearby Capernaum in the tetrarchy of Galilee, on the north-western side of the lake, a town mostly dedicated to fishing.

We do not know why Simon and Andrew (with families?) moved from Bethsaida to Capernaum. It seems that Philip's progressive intensification of Bethsaida Julias as a 'Greek' city, with a diminishing Jewish population, would have been reason enough for Simon and Andrew to relocate to Aramaic-speaking Capernaum, an exclusively Jewish town.⁵

At the same time, however, Simon's exposure to Gentiles in Bethsaida Julias may have prepared him to engage with Samaritans and Gentiles in the period after the resurrection. Although he was a strictly observant Jew, as leader of the Jesus movement after the resurrection he showed remarkable flexibility in welcoming non-Jews into membership of the new-covenant people.⁶

Language

No remains of a synagogue have been found in Bethsaida, and surviving inscriptions are primarily in Greek. Evidently Bethsaida was known to be a Greek-speaking city since, as we recall, the 'Greeks' who sought to see Jesus in Jerusalem first approached Philip who was from Bethsaida.⁷ According to Gustaf Dalman (1855–1941), a pioneer in fieldwork in Palestine, 'Anyone brought up in Bethsaida would not only have understood Greek, but would also have been polished by intercourse with foreigners and have had some Greek culture'.⁸

Although Simon's name was Hebrew (see below), his brother's name Andrew was Greek, as was Philip's, their fellow-disciple from Bethsaida.

Although Greek seems to have been the dominant language in Bethsaida, it is almost certain that Aramaic was also spoken there. Palestine had been part of the Aramaic-speaking Persian Empire and then part of the Greek-speaking kingdoms following Alexander's conquests. Aramaic and Greek continued for many years after those empires were succeeded by Roman occupation. Latin, however, did not become part of Middle Eastern linguistic culture like Aramaic and Greek.

It is almost certain that Simon, Andrew and Philip were bilingual, fluent speakers of both Aramaic and Greek. While able to speak Greek it is doubtful that Simon, a humble fisherman, would have been able to read or still less to write Greek. Which was Simon's 'first' language, Greek or Aramaic? The bifurcation of the early church into 'Hebrews' (Aramaic-speaking) and 'Hellenists' (Greek-speaking) points to Simon Peter as Aramaic-speaking; he was the leader of the 'Hebrew' cohort.

Evidently Galileans spoke Aramaic in a distinctive dialect.