09 — Historical and Textual Questions
An honest inventory of what can be known about Peter and how: the sources — the four Gospels, Acts, the two epistles, the early external notices, and the thick layer of later apocrypha — weighed for what each can and cannot establish; and the reception and legacy of the apostle, in the Church’s exegesis, hymnody, and self-understanding, down to the Orthodox memory of him today. These files gather the source-critical and reception questions that the rest of the collection has touched in passing.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)
Peter is at once the best-attested of the apostles and the figure around whom the most legend has gathered. This section steps back to survey the whole evidential picture. The first file inventories the sources by their weight — the canonical Gospels and Acts; the disputed epistles; the early external witnesses (Clement, Ignatius, Papias, Irenaeus, Gaius, Eusebius); and the apocryphal Petrine literature (the Gospel of Peter, the Acts of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Pseudo-Clementines) — and asks, with Orthodox sobriety, what can responsibly be known. The second traces the reception: how the Church read and venerated Peter across the centuries, and what the apostle means in Orthodox memory.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Sources and What Can Be Known | The Gospels and Acts as primary sources; Mark as Peter’s preaching (Papias); the disputed epistles; the early external notices; the apocryphal Petrine literature surveyed and dated; the question of John 21 as appendix; an honest statement of what is secure, probable, and legendary. |
| Reception and Legacy | The patristic exegesis of the Petrine texts (Greek and Latin); Peter in the liturgical and iconographic tradition; the apostle as the type of repentance and of apostolic confession; the abiding meaning of Peter in Orthodox self-understanding, beside and beyond the primacy controversy. |
See Also
- The Confession at Caesarea Philippi — the Matthean special tradition
- Second Peter and the Authorship Question — the disputed epistle
- Peter at Rome — the apocryphal Roman traditions
- Holy Scripture — the canon and the apocrypha
References
- The four Gospels; Acts; 1–2 Peter.
- Papias, in Eusebius, HE 3.39; Eusebius, HE 3.3, 3.25.
- Bockmuehl, Markus. Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012.
- Cullmann, Oscar. Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962.