The Apocryphal Acts Of Peter

This is the first modern collection of studies on the most important aspects of the Acts of Peter, the source of the famous novel Quo Vadis ? by Henry Sienkiewicz. The collection of essays discusses many aspects of the Acts of Peter: its relationship with the Acts of John and the Acts of Paul, but also important themes such as the fascinating figure of Simon the Magician, Agrippa and his concubines. It looks at the nature of the theos aner, the role of women, the place of magic, the performance of miracles, the famous death of Peter upside-down, the regulae fidei and other early credal formulations. Finally it discusses the transmission and Latinity of the Acts, and the date and place of its publication.

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The Acts of Peter, one of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles that detail the exploits of the key figures of early Christianity, provides a unique window into the formation of early Christian narrative. Like the Gospels, the Acts of Peter developed from disparate oral and written narrative from the first century. The apocryphal text, however, continued to develop into a number of re-castings, translations, abridgements, and expansions. The Acts of Peter present Christian narrative in an alternate universe, in which canonization did not halt the process of creative re-composition. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Thomas examines the sources and subsequent versions of the Acts, from the earliest traditions through the sixth-century Passions of the Apostles, arguing the importance of its "narrative fluidity": the existence of the work in several versions or multiforms. This feature, shared with the Jewish novels of Esther and Daniel, the Greek romance about Alexander the Great, and the Christian Gospels, allows these narratives to adapt to accommodate the changing historical circumstances of their audiences. In each new version, the audiences' defining conflicts were reflected in the text, echoing a historical consciousness more often identified with primary oral societies, in which the account of the past is a malleable script explaining the present. Although the genre most closely comparable to these works is the ancient novel, their serious historical intent separates them from the later, more self-consciously fictive novels, and maintains them within the realm of the earlier historical novels produced by ethnic subcultures within the Roman empire.

Five major apocryphal Acts survive from the early period of the Christian church, the so-called Acts of Andrew, Paul, Peter, John, and Thomas. The Acts of Peter deals primarily with the conflict between the apostle Peter and Simon Magus, and the apostle's martyrdom. It employs traditional stories and the literary conventions of its day in a free manner to assure believers that they have ample reason to remain loyal to Christ, or return to faith if they have faltered. (back cover).

The publication of the apocryphal Acts in Greek and Latin by Lipsius and Bonnet as well as Schmidt have opened a large, but very little cultivated field of ancient Christian literature. The oldest of these Acts are those which are treated in the present volume. They give us a picture of Christianity towards the end of the second century. They are important for the history of the Christian cultus in the second and third centuries, and by their description of the divine service in the houses they supplement [the] picture delineated in the Acts of the Apostles. They are also important for the history of Christian poetry which commences among the Gnostics; in short: though these Acts contain both 'truth and fiction,' they cannot be ignored . . . . --from the Preface

The Acts of Peter is one of the first apocryphal acts of the apostles. It survived, written in Latin, on the Codex Vercellensis Evangeliorum. It was then translated into English by M.R. James.

For each chapter Klauck offers a explanation of the background and the structure for each of the works presented, and a detailed analysis of the content, and a bibliography all while incorporating the results of the most current international research.