I Can't Believe I am the First Person to Think that Clement's References to a 'kerygma of Peter' are to the Gospel of Peter!

Here are all the references known to James. My God, people have you actually looked at this stuff? If so, why on earth DON'T YOU THINK that Clement is referring to a gospel referred to as 'Peter's kerygma'?

Oh, it's because Clement never explicitly calls it a GOSPEL of Peter. Oh yeah, I forgot the cardinal rule of thumb here - we always have to assume that all the Church Fathers shared 'one Holy Spirit' and agreed on all points of doctrine. And what's more - if you suggest that the pre-Nicene Alexandrian Church Fathers were being persecuted by the Romans in order to get them to accept doctrinal concessions LIKE THE IDEA THAT THE GOSPEL OF MARK WAS AT ONCE "PETER'S GOSPEL" you suddenly become stigmatized with the label 'conspiracy theorist.'

But then we would have to ignore the entire history of Christianity as preserved in early Islamic sources which says essentially the same thing.

Oh, I forgot we already do that ...

Let me come right out and say it - Clement couldn't identify the 'Gospel of Peter' as 'Peter's gospel' because the official dogma of the Church of Rome was that the 'Gospel of Mark' was Peter's gospel. That's what I believe the evidence suggests. Now let's go through if all the ALEXANDRIAN references to the 'kerygma of Peter' MIGHT BE to a gospel written to embody Peter's teaching.

Let's start with the most basic - kerygma (Greek: κήρυγμα, kérugma) is related to the Greek verb κηρύσσω (kērússō), to cry or proclaim as a herald, and means proclamation, announcement, or preaching. As such it is certainly closely related to the word 'gospel' especially if we assume (as I certainly do) that 'gospel' goes back to the Aramaic bassorah.

Now we will get to a connection between the 'kerygma of Peter' and the Gospel of the Hebrews when we make our way to Origen's testimony. However let me for the moment allow my good friend, Professor Rory Boid explain why the concept of 'gospel' derives from the Samaritan use of the word bassorah. He writes:

The Samaritan Arabic commentary on the Torah, on Leviticus XXV:9. Slightly condensed translation. “The High Priest and the King acting together are to send heralds out on the Day of Atonement to go into all countries over the next six months blowing the shofar in every land and region [not just Canaan] with the announcement [bashâ’ir, plural of bashîrah] of the information of the approach of the Jubilee Year and the release of captives”. The Arabic bashîrah = the Hebrew bassorah. The person doing it is the mubashshir = Hebrew mevasser, or the bashîr. Notice carefully that the bashîrah is not the information, but the announcement of it. This is the connotation of the Greek euangelion. Notice that the meaning only becomes clear and sharp in the context of the SAMARITAN halachah. Please put this in the book somewhere in my name.

So let's turn that around and say that IF the Gospel of Peter was originally preserved in Aramaic it would make sense to think of the text as 'Peter's kerygma.'

Our principal source of knowledge of the Gospel of Peter is Clement of Alexandria, who makes a series of quotations from it.

Clement of Alexandria, Strom. i. 29. 182. And in the Preaching of Peter you may find the Lord called 'Law and Word'.

Twice again he quotes this phrase and there is nothing in this reference to suggest that it couldn't have been found in the Gospel of Peter.

vi. 5. 39. But that the most approved of the Greeks do not know God by direct knowledge, but indirectly, Peter says in his Preaching: Know ye then that there is one God who made the beginning of all things and hath power over their end; and: The invisible who seeth all things, uncontainable, who containeth all, having need of nought, of whom all things stand in need and for whose sake they exist, incomprehensible, perpetual, incorruptible, uncreated, who made all things by the word of his power. . . .that is, the Son.[1]

Then he goes on: This God worship ye, not after the manner of the Greeks. . . showing that we and the good (approved) Greeks worship the same God, though not according to perfect knowledge for they had not learned the tradition of the Son. 'Do not', he says, 'worship' - he does not say 'the god whom the Greeks worship', but 'not after the manner of the Greeks': he would change the method of worship of God, not proclaim another God. What, then, is meant by 'not after the manner of the Greeks'? Peter himself will explain, for he continues: Carried away by ignorance and not knowing God as we do, according ot the perfect knowledge, but shaping those things over which he gave them power, for their use, even wood and stones, brass and iron, gold and silver (forgetting) their material and proper use, they set up things subservient to their existence and worship them; and what things God hath given them for food, the fowls of the air and the creatures that swim in the sea and creep upon the earth, wild beasts and fourfooted cattle of the field, weasels too and mice, cats and dogs and apes; yea, their own eatables do they sacrifice as offerings to eatable gods, and offering dead things to the dead as to gods, they show ingratitude to God, by these practices denying that he exists. . . He will continue again in this fashion: Neither worship ye him as do the Jews, for they, who suppose that they alone know God, do not know him, serving angels and archangels, the month and the moon: and if no moon be seen, they do not celebrate what is called the first sabbath, nor keep the new moon, nor the days of unleavened bread, nor the feast (of tabernacles?), nor the great day (of atonement).

Then he adds the finale (colophon) of what is required: So then do ye, learning in a holy and righteous sort that which we deliver unto you, observe it, worshipping God through Christ in a new way. For we have found in the Scriptures, how the Lord saith: Behold, I make with you a new covenant, not as the covenant with your fathers in mount Horeb. He hath made a new one with us: for the ways of the Greeks and Jews are old, but we are they that worship him in a new way in a third generation (or race), even Christians.

Shortly after his he cites Paul 'in addition to the Preaching of Peter' as referring to the Sibyl and Hystaspes. The passage is given below as a possible fragment of the Acts of Paul.

After his quotation from Paul, Clement continues:

Therefore Peter says that the Lord said to the apostles: If then any of Israel will repent, to believe in God through my name, his sins shall be forgiven him: (and) after twelve years go ye out into the world, lest any say: We did not hear.

In the next chapter (vi. 6) he has:

For example, in the Preaching of Peter the Lord says: I chose out you twelve, judging you to be disciples worthy of me, whom the Lord willed, and thinking you faithful apostles; sending you unto the world to preach the Gospel to men throughout the world, that they should know that there is one God; to declare by faith in me [the Christ] what shall be, that they that have heard and believed may be saved, and that they which have not believed may hear and bear witness, not having any defence so as to say 'We did not hear'.

After a few lines:

And to all reasonable souls it hath been said above: Whatsoever things any of you did in ignorance, not knowing God clearly, all his sins shall be forgiven him.

vi. 15. 128. Peter in the Preaching, speaking of the apostles, says: But we having opened the books of the prophets which we had, found, sometimes expressed by parables, sometimes by riddles, and sometimes directly (authentically) and in so many words naming Jesus Christ, both his coming and his death and the cross and all the other torments which the Jews inflicted on him, and his resurrection and assumption into the heavens before Jerusalem was founded judged, even all this things as they had been written, what he must suffer and what shall be after him. When, therefore, we took knowledge of these things, we believed in God through that which had been written of him.

And a little after he adds that the prophecies came by Divine providence, in these terms: For we know that God commanded them in very deed, and without the Scripture we say nothing.

I have absolutely no doubt that the kerygma of Peter is indeed Clement secretly referring to the Gospel of Peter. I have my theory as to why the book was outlawed in the Commodian period - it clearly renounces worshiping God after the manner of the heathen. But more on this later.

I think what throws people off is the first reference which doesn't sound like a gospel passage in our canonical texts. Yet the bottom line of course is that we don't know the context that these statements were made. My guess is that they come from the conclusion of the text.

I think it is important to cite James' observation that:

The character of the heathen worship, with its mention of weasels, cats, &c., and the fact that our authorities are all Alexandrine, point to the Egyptian origin and currency of the Kerygma. We see also that it was an orthodox book. Origen even faces the possibility of its being genuine in whole or in part. The earliest of the Greek apologists for Christianity whose work we have, Aristides, takes a very similar line to the Kerygma, and is thought to have used it.

James also refers us to Origen's likely reference to the same text noting:

There are certain other fragments of a 'Teaching of Peter' which may be another name for the Preaching. Opinion is divided. Probably the first, from Origen, is from the Preaching. The others are of a different complexion.

Origen on First Principles i, prologue 8. But if any would produce to us from that book which is called The Doctrine of Peter, the passage where the Saviour is represented as saying (lit. seems to say) to the disciples: I am not a bodiless spirit (demon): he must be answered in the first place that that book is not reckoned among the books of the church: (and then) it must be shown that the writing is neither by Peter nor by any one else who was inspired by the spirit of God.

James notes that "the quotation agrees with one from the gospel according to the Hebrews" and we know that Origen often cites from this text. But this is the interesting thing I will leave with my readers - isn't it possible that the two texts are one and the same - i.e. that 'the Gospel of the Hebrews' just means 'the Gospel according to Hebrew (letters)' which could well have been written by Mark for Peter in Rome (or at least could been argued to have been the text behind Mark by the Alexandrians) ...