RESURRECTION DESCRIPTION WITH A GIANT JESUS AND A SPEAKING CROSS FROM THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPEL OF PETER

Edward Pothier August 1999

In the apocryphal Gospel of Peter (quoted text below), apparently immediately after the resurrection a voice from heaven asks "Thou hast preached to them that sleep," and the cross(!) answers affirmatively.

This notion of the cross speaking (upon leaving the sepulchre with a giant Jesus and two helping men/angels!) is the basis of the title of a 1988 book by John Dominic Crossan entitled THE CROSS THAT SPOKE: THE ORIGIN OF THE PASSION NARRATIVES.

In our New Testaments there are four books commonly called Gospels: the Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The names are traditional, the documents themselves being anonymous. In none of these is there an actual attempt to describe the resurrection of Jesus itself. Even in the Gospel According to Matthew the earthquake and the angelic rolling back of the stone is just to reveal the already empty tomb, not to attempt a resurrection description with Jesus leaving the tomb then.

In addition there were other books in the early days of the church which were circulating and considered important by sections of the church. Saint Irenaeus, a late second century bishop of Lyons in France and an early Apologist, wrote a defense of the faith entitled AGAINST HERESIES in which he made a strong appeal that there had to be four and only four Gospels (AGAINST HERESIES 3:11:8). Although his arguments hardly seem convincing today, e.g. because there are four zones of the world and four principal winds, they nevertheless point out the the strong conviction that the four ones we presently have were those accepted at that time and place.

What about the value of some of those Gospels which were not accepted as canonical? Some of them are presently getting a little more "play", e.g. the recent "promotion" to almost canonical status of the Gospel of Thomas by the Jesus Seminar in their book THE FIVE GOSPELS. My personal view is that the early church's restricting the canonical gospels to our usual (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) was a good decision.

Another of these apocryphal gospels is the Gospel of Peter which exists at present in only a fragmentary state. Its portrayal of the resurrection is particularly interesting. This Gospel, unlike the canonical ones, actually attempts to describe the key moment. [This gospel has a dual numbering system with sections and verses numbered consecutively, unlike our chapters and verses in the canonical ones, where the verse numbering restarts with each chapter.]

"<9.34>Early in the morning, when the Sabbath dawned, there came a crowd from Jerusalem and the county round about to see the sepulchre that had been sealed."

"<35>Now in the night in which the Lord's day dawned, when the soldiers, two by two in every watch, were keeping guard, there rang out a loud voice in heaven, <36>and they saw the heavens opened and two men come down from there in a great brightness and draw nigh to the sepulchre. <37>That stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started to roll and give way to the side, and the sepulchre was opened, and both the young men entered in. <10.38>When now those soldiers saw this, they awakened the centurion and the elders -- for they also were there to assist at the watch. <39>And whilst they were relating what they had seen, they saw three men come out from the sepulchre, and two of them sustaining the other, and a cross following them, <40>and the heads of the two reaching to heaven, but that of him who was led of them by the hand overpassing the heavens. <41>And they heard a voice out of the heavens crying, 'Thou hast preached to them that sleep,' <42>and from the cross there was heard the answer, 'Yea.'"

This Gospel of Peter's resurrection story with the giant Jesus (shades of Oral Roberts' vision!) and the talking cross coming out of the tomb is very unlike the canonical Gospels.