Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

If you play a simple word association game with the traditional Protestant about the first thing they think of when they think of the Apostle Peter, the top three answers often include the following:

1. He denied Jesus, not only once but three times!
2. He was full of himself when walking on the water, and started to sink because he looked back.
3. He got on the wrong side of Paul in Galatians, and Paul sure set him straight!

Basically, we’ve all grown up thinking that Peter was a bull-headed, uncultured doofus who wasn’t presentable enough to be out in polite company. We generally ignore the fact that Jesus seemed to value him enough to leave him “large and in charge” of the rest of the Apostles and by extension, the work of spreading the Gospel of good news.

Rather than looking for advice from Simon “the Rock” Peter, numerous Christian leaders and believers instead consider the writings of the Apostle Paul to be the bedrock upon which we build our churches. Paul is the one we go to for advice in how to deal with problems in our congregations.  Paul is also the one we seek to be the final word when we have trouble understanding a problematic Scriptural concept. If we consider Peter to be relevant at all, it is only in that we believe he can offer us affirmation about the legitimacy of Paul.

Those who are willing to search outside of traditional canonized Scripture will find an abundance of first and second century documentation which details how the Apostle Peter bravely and consistently stood up for the true Gospel that he learned at the feet of Jesus the Messiah. Far from being a cartoonish buffoon, he was instead a pillar of spiritual strength in a time of instability and conflict. However, these “non-canonical” historical documents also relate in great detail the controversy and deep disagreements Peter had with Paul of Tarsus. In them, we truly see how Peter and Paul were actually bitter rivals who stood for two completely different and divergent “gospels”.

Not uncharacteristically, the deep controversy between Peter and Paul has been all but expunged from Christian tradition or, where it does emerge, it is thoroughly downplayed and presented as nothing more than a “minor disagreement” between two “brothers in Christ”. In Galatians 2, Paul very colorfully relates that Peter is the one in the wrong because it “appears” that he is attempting to “Judaize” the Christian faith. If we choose to believe this one-sided rendition of the story, Peter is the one who is actually “robbed” of the respect that we then pay to Paul, who is telling the story. It never really occurs to us that it is indeed Peter, and not Paul, who is in true apostolic authority during this period of leadership of the Jerusalem Church.

The general consensus among most mainstream Christian scholars is that in this “minor” controversy between Peter and Paul, Peter, the illiterate and clumsy fisherman, had to be categorically “wrong” in his disagreement with the highly educated and self-actualized Paul. From the historical record however, this controversy was not a “mild disagreement” at all—and Paul was not the one “in the right”.

One of the more renowned scholars of Christian history of our time, Bart Ehrman, in his book, Lost Christianities, sums up the situation with a perspective that seems to be more in keeping with the historical record of “what really happened” between Peter and Paul.

He states,

The controversy between Peter and Paul presupposed in [the Homilies and Recognitions] is premised on a real, historical conflict between the two, evidenced in Paul’s own writings. In particular, in his letter to the Galatians, Paul speaks of a public encounter with Peter in the city of Antioch over the issue of whether Gentiles who have become Christian need to observe the Jewish Law (Gal. 2: I 1-14). Paul reports the encounter and states in the strongest terms that Gentiles are under no circumstances to be required to keep the Law. As scholars have long noted, however, Paul does not indicate the outcome of the public altercation—leading to the widely held suspicion that this was one debate that Paul lost, at least in the eyes of those who observed it.

The Pseudo-Clementines [ancient historical Christian documents] take up the debate to show Peter supporting the ongoing validity of the Law against Paul, thinly disguised as Simon Magus.[1] The books are prefaced by a letter allegedly from Peter to James, the brother of Jesus and head of the church in Jerusalem (one of a number of letters we have that are forged [i.e. pseudepigrapha] in Peter’s name). In it Peter speaks of his “enemy” who teaches the Gentiles not to obey the Law, and he sets out his own authoritative position in contrast:

For some from among the Gentiles have rejected my lawful preaching and have preferred a lawless and absurd doctrine of the man who is my enemy. And indeed some have attempted, while I am still alive, to distort my words by interpretations of many sorts, as if I taught the dissolution of the Law. But that may God forbid! For to do such a thing means to act contrary to the Law of God which was made to Moses and was confirmed by our Lord in its everlasting continuance. For he said, “The heaven and the earth will pass away, but not one jot or one tittle shall pass away from the Law.” (Letter of Peter to James. 2.3-5)

The Law of Moses, therefore, is always to be kept by Jew and Gentile. It does not take much to recognize who Peter’s “enemy” is here, the one who opposes this view “among the Gentiles.” The apostle Paul consistently portrayed himself as the apostle to the Gentiles and insisted that they not keep the Law (e.g., Galatians 2:15, 5:2-5). As to who may have been responsible for teaching that Peter himself urged “the dissolution of the law,” one again does not need to look far: The New Testament book of Acts, allegedly written by Paul’s own traveling companion Luke, portrays Peter as taking just that position (Acts 10-11, 15). Even though Paul and Acts eventually became part of the proto-orthodox canon, for this author they are both heretical. This Pseudo-Clementine writing, then, appears to embody an Ebionite polemic against the view adopted by proto-orthodox Christianity. The attacks on Paul and on what he stood for become yet clearer in portions of the Homilies. In one section in particular, Peter is said to have developed the notion that in the plan of God for humans, the lesser always precedes the greater. And so, Adam had two sons, the murderer Cain and the righteous Abel; two also sprang from Abraham, the outcast Ishmael and the chosen one Isaac; and from Isaac came the godless Esau and the godly Jacob. Bringing matters down to more recent times, there were two who appeared on the Gentile mission field, Simon (Paul) and Peter, who was, of course, the greater of the two, “who appeared later than he did and came in upon him as light upon darkness, as knowledge upon ignorance, as healing upon sickness.” (Homilies 2.17)

A final example of this polemic comes in an imaginary scene in which Peter attacks a thinly disguised Paul for thinking that his brief visionary encounter with Christ could authorize him to propound a gospel message at variance with those who had spent considerable time with Jesus while he was still alive and well among them.

And if our Jesus appeared to you also and became known in a vision and met you as angry with an enemy [recall: Paul had his vision while still persecuting the Christians; Acts 9], yet he has spoken only through visions and dreams or through external revelations. But can anyone be made competent to teach through a vision? And if your opinion is that that is possible, why then did our teacher spend a whole year with us who were awake? How can we believe you even if he has appeared to you? … But if you were visited by him for the space of an hour and were instructed by him and thereby have become an apostle, then proclaim his words, expound what he has taught, be a friend to his apostles and do not contend with me, who am his confidant; for you have in hostility withstood me, who am a firm rock, the foundation stone of the Church. (Homilies 17.19)

Peter, not Paul, is the true authority for understanding the message of Jesus. Paul has corrupted the true faith based on a brief vision, which he has doubtless misconstrued. Paul is thus the enemy of the apostles, not the chief of them. He is outside the true faith, a heretic to be banned, not an apostle to be followed. The Pseudo-Clementines, then, especially in their older form, which came to be modified over time, appear to present a kind of Ebionite polemic against Pauline Christianity and against the proto-orthodox of the second and third centuries who continue to follow Paul in rejecting the Law of Moses. For these Ebionite Christians the Law was given by God, and, contrary to the claims of Paul and his proto-orthodox successors, it continues to be necessary for salvation in Christ.[2]

What we are never allowed to hear from the pulpit is that Peter did defend himself against Paul’s accusation in Galatians 2. We see that in reality, it was not Peter who was in error regarding the Law of God, but rather Paul himself who stood against the true teachings of Christ which came directly from a “Messianic Jew”, the “firm rock, the foundation stone of the Church,” that “Judaizing” “Super Apostle”—Peter!

The Encyclopaedia Biblica, which was published in the late 1800s by the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, discusses at length how “Simon Magus” was a well-known cipher for Paul. The section on Simon Magus discusses the idea that Peter had to follow behind “Simon” wherever he went to correct his erroneous teaching.

 

That this is Peter’s task is everywhere taken for granted as a thing of course. Take for example, Homilies 14:12, where we find Peter saying that Simon is in Antioch (with Annubion); ‘when, then, we get there and come upon them, the disputation can take place’; out of a large number of other passages we may point also to 2:17 where Peter speaks of himself as having come in upon Simon ‘as light upon darkness, as knowledge upon ignorance, as healing upon disease’. According to 4:6 none but Peter can cope with Simon, and his companions complain that he has sent them on this occasion before him. In Recog. 3:65 Peter says: ‘Since Simon has gone forth to preoccupy the ears of the Gentiles who are called to salvation, it is necessary that I also follow upon his track so that whatever disputation he raises may be corrected by us’, and in 3:68 we read that ‘Simon has set out, wishing to anticipate our journey; him we should have followed step by step, that wheresoever he tries to subvert any there he might forthwith be confuted by us’… [3]

 

 Not only does Peter not support the teachings of Paul, but he is also actively coming along behind him trying to do damage control! This is a very different story than the one we are used to reading.

 

Don’t the Books of Peter Support Paul?

Most Christians will feel uncomfortable and even offended if anyone dares to question Paul’s apostolic credentials. The traditional line of defense is to shut the conversation down by quoting the books of Peter, specifically 2 Peter 3:16. Within this book and passage Peter is quoted as saying about Paul that,

“… [Paul’s] letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

Aside from the fact that “Peter” just belittled and bullied other Christians as “ignorant and unstable”, the underlying theme here is Peter ostensibly issuing a warning to anyone who disagrees with Paul’s words that:

“If you don’t believe what Paul writes, you’re an unstable ignoramus and you’re going to hell.”

Before we start quoting the books of Peter as a defense of Paul, we need to realize that there is a deep historical controversy surrounding the Petrine books. There was a strong dispute over these books for the simple reason that there were people in positions of church leadership of the late 4th century who did not believe these books were at all inspired. They were considered “disputed books” by other influential churches and leaders of the period.

Do we think for one moment that if the books of Peter were indeed well known in the first or second century and if they were indeed known to be authoritative (actually written by Peter) that the proto-orthodox church fathers would have immediately regarded them as canon along with the Gospels and the books of Paul from the very beginning?

There is a huge enigma here. There are deep and foundational reasons why these books were not widely quoted from nor used in the earlier centuries of Christianity. Either they were simply not around (which means Peter didn’t actually write them) or they were spurious—and everyone within these periods of the early Church knew they were spurious—which again means that Peter didn’t write them!

Who Wrote the Books of Peter?

As modern Christians, we need to very carefully look at the evidence. The reason why scholars note that the book of 1 Peter is not the work of the Apostle Peter is not only because of the deeply Pauline doctrines the book espouses but also because the underlying original Greek of the book is very well written. The excellence of the Greek used in I Peter is simply not the work of a simple Galilean fisherman. The sheer eloquence of the written Greek of 1 Peter is quite exceptional, some of the best Greek in all of the “New Testament”, surpassing even that of the well-educated prose of Paul!

F.W. Beare observes:

“The epistle is quite obviously the work of a man of letters, skilled in all the devices of rhetoric, and able to draw on an extensive, and very learned, vocabulary. He is a stylist of no ordinary capacity, and he writes some of the best Greek in the whole New Testament, far smoother and more literary than that of the highly-trained Paul.”[4]

True, people will indeed point to the fact that the book itself offers that Peter didn’t write it, but rather Peter “dictated” it to “Silvanus”.[5] This easily explains why the Greek can be so well notated. But who is this Silvanus? The Silvanus of 1 Peter is the very same Silvanus found within Paul’s own letters![6] “Silvanus” is simply the proper name of “Silas”; the same Silas found traveling with Paul within Luke’s Acts of the Apostles.

While the casual reader will merely figure that Peter solicited the services of Silas to write a letter, such a concept stirs rebuttals of deep dissent within scholastic Christian circles. Considering the deep conflicts over the keeping of the Law between the Apostles (including Peter) and Paul’s “group” (which included Silvanus), the heavily contradictory Pauline theology being espoused by the books of 1 & 2 Peter, and the admission that Silvanus was not just the stenographer, but the literary architect of the Greek of 1 Peter, educated scholars find it difficult to see how this book is anything other than a complete work of not just pseudepigrapha, but outright fraud. In other words, Peter did not write it nor did he dictate its contents.

The Jerusalem Church was large and well known, and attracted a good measure of well-educated people. Peter had at his disposal any number of people within Jerusalem to whom he could dictate his letters in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, or Latin. He did not need Silas—and in fact would have likely regarded Silas as being part of Paul’s rogue group. Other Bible scholars are of this same understanding:

“One cannot save Petrine authorship by arguing that Peter employed a secretary. If one argues that this secretary was Silvanus, the traveling companion of Paul (eg. Selwyn 1958) or an anonymous amanuensis of the Roman church (Michaels 1988) the letter then becomes the product not of Peter, but of the secretary, since it is the latter’s language that the epistle exhibits (see Beare 1970).”[7]

Other evidence contained within the book itself is also against I Peter being a book that was actually written or even dictated by Peter. W.G. Kümmel observes:

“I Peter presupposes the Pauline theology. This is true not only in the general sense that the Jewish-Christian readers, the ‘people of God’ (2:10), are no longer concerned about the problem of the fulfillment of the Law, but also in the special sense that, as in Paul, the death of Jesus has atoned for the sins of Christians and has accomplished justification (1:18 f; 2:24). Christians are to suffer with Christ (4:13; 5:1), obedience to the civil authorities is demanded (2:14 f), and the Pauline formula en xristw is encountered (3:16; 5:10, 14). The frequently advanced proposal that I Peter is literarily dependent on Romans (and Ephesians) is improbable because the linguistic contacts can be explained on the basis of a common catechetical tradition. But there can be no doubt that the author of I Peter stands in the line of succession of Pauline theology, and that is scarcely conceivable for Peter, who at the time of Gal 2:11 was able in only a very unsure way to follow the Pauline basic principle of freedom from the Law for Gentile Christians.”[8]

The book of 2 Peter exhibits even deeper problems. From the Reformation era, not even Calvin believed Peter actually wrote 2 Peter. In the modern era, William Barclay notes that it is difficult to believe that 2 Peter was actually written by Peter. William Barclay notes within his Daily Bible Study Series:

“It is the well-nigh universal judgment of scholars, both ancient and modern, that Peter is not the author of Second Peter. Even John Calvin regarded it as impossible that Peter could have spoken of Paul as Second Peter speak of him (3:15-16), although he [Calvin] was willing to believe that someone else wrote the letter at Peter’s request.”[9]

It is clear that these books have been in deep dispute since the Roman Catholic Church added them to their Bible! Even our own modern scholars concur to this day that they were not written by the people whose names appear on them. However, mainstream Christianity continues to insist that these very Pauline books are valid books written by the Apostle Peter. Today’s evangelists and preachers continue to ignore the very deep historical disputes over such books as completely immaterial while continuing to insist that such issues have been settled and are therefore no longer issues for our laity to review and study.

The overshadowing issue in this situation is that Peter doesn’t need Paul to be authoritative, but Paul definitely needs Peter and the rest of the Apostolic leadership of the Jerusalem Church to lend credence and authority to his other NuGospel, his NuJesus and his other “spirit”. The existence of letters ostensibly written by Peter extolling Paul and the Law-less Pauline NuGospel really amount to nothing more than what Luke attempted to do with his Acts of the Apostles; that is, somehow lend a modicum of Jewish / Hebraic legitimacy to Paul’s Hellenistic / Mithraic version of his Jesus.