Review of Das Evangelium nach Petrus: Text, Contexte, Intertexte, by Thomas Kraus & Tobias Nicklas

Review of Thomas J. Kraus & Tobias Nicklas (eds.). Das Evangelium nach Petrus. Text, Kontexte, Intertexte (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, Band 158), Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter 2007, VIII + 384 pp., ISBN 978-3-11-019313-8, € 98.00 (cloth).

From the review's conclusion, "[R]eading through this collaborative volume to answer the veritable question of questions about EvPet, this reviewer finds that consensus there is not, but that there is an underlying coherence found in this volume, one that runs quite counter to argument of the editors. Th ere is multifaceted and multilayered coherence across the bulk of the chapters that points to a second century provenance. There is a valid connection of the late 2nd, early 3rd century P.Oxy. 2949 with the late 6th, early 7th century Akhmîm fragment. Th e internal evidence, particularly when understood in terms of performance (mnemonic, group-constitutive, or counter-cultural), favors a relatively early provenance. Even while certain reception-historical claims (e.g., regarding Sib.Or. 8 or Melito) are dubious, their refutations, as arguments from silence, cannot disprove such a provenance, and other reception-historical evidence (explicitly in Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and various Apocryphal Acts, and “proximately” in Justin Martyr and UBE) corroborates it. Even traces of an anti-Jewish bias by the scribe of the Akhmîm fragment does not support the idea of a thorough anti-Jewish re-working of the contents of EvPet, especially since Akhmîm EvPet is simultaneously and cogently both intra-Jewish (favoring Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea and the sympathetic crowds) and anti-Jewish (critiquing Jewish leaders, including Herod, in unfavorable partnership with Rome in the person of Pilate), as expected in a Jewish-Christian composition."