Editing Apocalypse of Peter (section)

==Contents==
The Apocalypse of Peter is framed as a discourse of Jesus to his faithful.  In the Ethiopic version, the apostle [[Saint Peter|Peter]] experiences a vision of hell followed by a vision of heaven, granted by the [[risen Christ]]; in the Akhmim fragment, the order of heaven and hell is reversed, and it is revealed by Jesus during his life and ministry.  In the form of a Greek {{transliteration|grc|[[katabasis]]}} or {{transliteration|grc|[[nekyia]]}}, it goes into elaborate detail about the punishment in hell for each type of crime, as well as briefly sketching the nature of heaven.<ref>{{harvnb|Beck|2019|pp=56–59}}.</ref>

===The Second Coming===
In the opening, the disciples ask for signs of the [[Second Coming]] ({{transliteration|grc|parousia}}) while on the [[Mount of Olives]].  In chapter 2 of the Ethiopic version, Peter asks for an explanation of the meaning of the [[parable]]s of the [[Parable of the budding fig tree|budding fig tree]] and the [[Parable of the barren fig tree|barren fig tree]], in an expansion of the "Little Apocalypse" of [[Matthew 24]].<ref name="bauckham-figs">See [[Figs in the Bible]] for the New Testament's treatment of figs.  The argument that Matthew was the writer's source is that the Apocalypse of Peter shows correspondences with the Matthean text that do not appear in the parallel passages in the synoptic gospels of Mark and Luke.<br/>{{cite journal |last=Bauckham |first=Richard B. |author-link=Richard Bauckham |date=1985 |title=The Two Fig Tree Parables in the Apocalypse of Peter |url= |journal=[[Journal of Biblical Literature]] |volume=104 |issue=2 |pages=269–287 |doi=10.2307/3260967 |jstor=3260967 }}</ref>  Jesus joins the two parables in a detailed [[allegory]].  The setting "in the summer" is transferred to "the end of the world"; the fig tree represents Israel, and the flourishing shoots are [[Jewish Christianity|Jews who have adopted Jesus as Messiah]] and achieve martyrdom.<ref name="bauckham164">{{harvnb|Bauckham|1998|pp=164&ndash;168}}.</ref> The work continues on to describe the end times that will accompany the Second Coming: fire and darkness will convulse the world, a crowned Christ will return in glory, and the people of the nations will pass through a river of fire. The [[Election in Christianity|elect]] will be unscathed by the test, but sinners will be brought to a place where they shall be punished for their transgressions.<ref>{{harvnb|Buchholz|1988|pp=302–306}}.</ref>

===Punishments and rewards===
The work proceeds to describe the punishments that await the wicked.  Many of the punishments are overseen by Ezrael the Angel of Wrath (most likely the angel [[Azrael]], although possibly a corrupt reference to the angel [[Sariel]]).  The angel [[Uriel]] [[Universal resurrection|resurrects the dead into new bodies]] so that they can be either rewarded or tormented physically.<ref>{{harvnb|Bauckham|1998|pp=221&ndash;223}}; {{harvnb|Buchholz|1988|pp=292–296, 316}}.</ref><ref name="burge2010">{{cite journal |last1=Burge |first1=Stephen R. |date=2010 |title=ZR'L, the Angel of Death and the Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter |url=https://www.academia.edu/224687 |journal=[[Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha]] |volume=19 |issue=3 |pages=217–224 |doi= 10.1177/0951820710364880}}</ref>  Punishments in hell according to the vision include:
{{columns-list|colwidth=40em|
* Blasphemers are hanged by the tongue.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Those who deny justice are set in a pit of fire.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Women who adorn themselves for the purpose of adultery are hung by their hair over a bubbling mire. The men who had adulterous relationships with them are hung by their genitals next to them.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Murderers and their accomplices are tormented by venomous creatures and numberless worms.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Women who aborted their children are in a pit of excrement up to their throats, and their children shoot a "flash of fire" into their eyes.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Parents who committed infanticide have the mothers' breast milk congeal into flesh-devouring animals that torment both parents. Their dead children are delivered to a caretaking angel.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Persecutors and betrayers of the righteous have half their body set on fire, are cast into a dark pit, and their entrails are eaten by a worm that never sleeps.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Those who slander and doubt God's righteousness gnaw their tongues, are tormented with hot iron, and have their eyes burnt.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Liars whose lies caused the death of martyrs have their lips cut off, with fire in their body and entrails.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Rich people who neglected the poor are clothed in filthy rags and pierced by sharp burning stones.<ref name="punishment-bundle" /><!-- (Eth.) a sharp pillar of fire, but Beck prefers Akhmim -->
* Those who lend money and charge interest stand up to their knees in a lake of foul matter and blood.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Men who take on the role of women in a sexual way, and lesbians, fall from the precipice of a great cliff repeatedly.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Makers of idols either scourge themselves with fire whips (Ethiopic) or they beat each other with fire rods (Akhmim).<ref name="punishment-bundle" /><!-- Czachesz thinks the fire rods thing is from an unspecified punishment in Akhmim, but other scholars clearly think it was the makers of idols. -->
* Those who forsook God's commandments and heeded demons burn in flames.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Those who do not honor their parents fall into a stream of fire repeatedly.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Those who do not heed the counsel of their elders are attacked by flesh-devouring birds.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Women who had premarital sex have their flesh torn to pieces.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Disobedient slaves gnaw their tongues unceasingly.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Those who give alms hypocritically are rendered blind and deaf, and fall upon coals of fire.<ref name="punishment-bundle" />
* Sorcerers are hung on a wheel of fire.<ref name="punishment-bundle">{{harvnb|Bauckham|1998|pp=166&ndash;167}}; {{harvnb|Czachesz|2003|pp=111–114}}; {{harvnb|Buchholz|1988|pp=306–311}}.</ref>
}}

The vision of heaven is shorter than the depiction of hell, and described more fully in the Akhmim version.  In heaven, people have pure milky white skin, curly hair, and are generally beautiful. The earth blooms with everlasting flowers and spices. People wear shiny clothes made of light, like the angels. Everyone sings in choral prayer.<ref>{{harvnb|Beck|2019|pp=88–92}}.</ref><ref name="Adamik2003">{{cite book |chapter=The Description of Paradise in the Apocalypse of Peter |last=Adamik |first=Tamás |author-link=Tamás Adamik |editor1-first=Jan N. |editor1-last=Bremmer |editor1-link=Jan N. Bremmer |editor2-first=István |editor2-last=Czachesz |title=The Apocalypse of Peter |date=2003 |publisher=Peeters |isbn=90-429-1375-4 |pages=78–89}}</ref><!-- Adamik is not really on this topic much at all, and more disagreeing with James on the Rainer fragment.  But oh well. -->

In the Ethiopic version, the account closes with an account of the [[ascension of Jesus]] on the mountain in chapters 15&ndash;17.  Jesus, accompanied by the prophets [[Moses]] and [[Elijah]], ascends on a cloud to the first heaven, and then they depart to the [[Seven heavens|second heaven]].  While it is an account of the ascension, it includes some parallels to Matthew's account of the [[transfiguration of Jesus]].<ref>{{harvnb|Buchholz|1988|pp=362–375}}.</ref>  In the Akhmim fragment, which is set when Jesus was still alive, both the mountain and the two other men are unnamed (rather than being Moses and Elijah), but the men are similarly transfigured into radiant forms.<ref>{{harvnb|Beck|2019|pp=94–95, 100–102}} argues these parallels to the transfiguration were later additions to the Ethiopic version, and the account is best understood as an ascension narrative; while {{harvnb|Lapham|2004|pp=201–205}} argues that the Ethiopic compiler has conflated the transfiguration and ascension together, but is mostly a transfiguration narrative.</ref>

===Prayers for those in hell===
{{see also|Prayer for the dead}}
One theological issue appears only in the version of the text in the Rainer fragment.  Its chapter 14 describes the salvation of condemned sinners for whom the righteous pray:<ref name="bauckham145" />

{{blockquote|Then I will grant to my called and elect ones whomsoever they request from me, out of the punishment.  And I will give them [i.e. those for whom the elect pray] a [[wikt:καλόν|fine]] baptism in salvation from the [[Acherusia|Acherousian lake]] which is, they say, in the [[Elysian field]], a portion of righteousness with my holy ones.<ref name="bauckham145" />}}

While not found in later manuscripts, this reading was likely original to the text, as it agrees with a quotation in the Sibylline Oracles:<ref name="bauckham145">{{harvnb|Bauckham|1998|pp=145&ndash;146, 232&ndash;235}}.</ref>

{{blockquote|To these pious ones imperishable God, the universal ruler, will also give another thing.  Whenever they ask the imperishable God to save men from the raging fire and deathless gnashing he will grant it, and he will do this.  For he will pick them out again from the undying fire and set them elsewhere and send them on account of his own people to another eternal life with the immortals in the Elysian plain where he has the long waves of the deep perennial Acherusian lake.|author=[[Sibylline Oracles]], Book 2, 330&ndash;338<ref name="collins1983">{{cite book |translator-last=Collins |translator-first=John J. |translator-link=John J. Collins |date=1983 |editor-last=Charlesworth |editor-first=James |editor-link=James H. Charlesworth |title=The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Volume 1 |publisher=Doubleday |page=353 |chapter=The Sibylline Oracles  |isbn=0-385-09630-5 |ref={{harvid|Collins|1983}}}} <!-- |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/the-old-testament-pseudepigrapha-vol.-1-charlesworth-1983/page/353/mode/2up - Useful for editors, but chancy as an EL because of unclear copyright on the archive.org copy. --></ref>}}

Other pieces of Christian literature with parallel passages probably influenced by this include the [[Epistle of the Apostles]] and the Coptic [[Apocalypse of Elijah]].<ref>{{harvnb|James|1931|pp=272–273}}; {{harvnb|Buchholz|1988|pp=47–48, 58–62}}; {{harvnb|Bauckham|1998|pp=147&ndash;148}}.</ref>{{NoteTag|The [[Acts of Paul and Thecla]] is another work possibly influenced by the Rainer passage, although this connection is more contested.  [[M. R. James]] detected a parallel in a passage where [[Thecla]] prays for the dead Falconilla to be delivered to heaven, but Dennis Buchholz writes that this only shows the author was familiar with similar material in the Christian tradition.<ref name="james1931">{{cite journal |last1=James |first1=M. R. |author-link=M. R. James |date=April 1931 |title=The Rainer Fragment of the Apocalypse of Peter |url= |journal=[[The Journal of Theological Studies]] |volume=os-XXXII |issue=127 |pages=270&ndash;279 |doi=10.1093/jts/os-XXXII.127.270 }}<br/>See [[s:The Apocryphal New Testament (1924)/Acts/The Acts of Paul|Acts of Paul and Thecla, 28-29]].</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Buchholz|1988|pp=51–53}}.</ref>}}  The passage also makes literary sense, as it is a follow-up to a passage in chapter 3 where Jesus initially rebukes Peter who expresses horror at the suffering in hell; Richard Bauckham suggests that this is because it must be the victims who were harmed that request mercy, not Peter.  While not directly endorsing [[universal salvation]], it does suggest that salvation will eventually reach as far as the compassion of the elect.<ref name="bauckham145" />

The Ethiopic manuscript maintains a version of the passage, but it differs in that it is the elect and righteous who receive baptism and salvation in a field rather than a lake ("field of Akerosya, which is called Aneslasleya" in Ethiopic), perhaps conflating Acherusia with the Elysian field.<ref name="Copeland2003" />  The Ethiopic version of the list of punishments in hell includes sentences not in the Akhmim fragment saying that the punishment is eternal&mdash;hypothesized by many scholars to be later additions.<ref>{{harvnb|Beck|2019|p=56}}; {{harvnb|Buchholz|1988|pp=348–351, 385–386}}.</ref>  Despite this, the other Clementine works in the Ethiopic manuscripts discuss a great act of divine mercy to come that must be kept secret, yet will rescue some or all sinners from hell, suggesting this belief had not entirely fallen away.<ref name="bauckham147">{{harvnb|Bauckham|1998|pp=147&ndash;148}}.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Beck|2019|pp=156–159}}.</ref><ref>{{cite wikisource |title=The Apocryphal New Testament |wslink=The Apocryphal New Testament (1924)/Apocalypses/The Apocalypse of Peter |last=James |first=M. R. |authorlink=M. R. James |date=1924 |publisher=Clarendon Press |location=Oxford |page=520 |scan=Page:The_Apocryphal_New_Testament_(1924).djvu/558}}</ref>