The Gospel of St. Peter Found.

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 102, 16 February 1893, Page 4

The Gospel of St. Peter Found.

London, December 4. Great interest in the religious world attaches to the publication in Paris of a translation of a recently discovered manuscript of the apocryphal gospel of Peter. It is a document of the early half of the second century, and the copy, discovered in an Egyptian tomb, is judged to have been made in the eighth century. This new account of the resurrection is given : — " There was a great voice from heaven, and the soldiers saw the heavens open and two men descending thence with a great light and approaching the tomb, and the stone which was put at the door rolled away of itself and departed on one side, and the tomb was open, and both young men entered it. When, therefore, the soldiers saw it, they awakened the centurion and the elders, for they, too, were hard by keeping watch, and, as they declared what things they had seen, again they saw coming forth from the tomb three men, two supporting one, and a cross following them, and of two the heads reached unto the heavens, but the head of him that was led overpassed the heavens, and they heard a voice from the heavens, saying : 'Hast thou preached to them that sleep?' and the answer was heard from the cross, 4 Yea.' " There was also found a copy of the lost Apocalypse of Peter. This is a most valuable discovery, for, as the translator indicates, it furnished the origin of most of the Christian ideas of hell. Much of the later literature on the subject is traceable to this now restored document. A single quotation Shows its nature :— " And I saw also another place of chastisement and those that were being chastised, and the angels that were chastising had their raiment dark according to tho atmosphere of that place. And there were some there hanging by their tongues, and these were they that blaspheme the way of righteousness. And I saw murderers and them that had conspired with them cast into certain narrow places full of evil reptiles and being smitten by those beasts and wallowing there thus in then torment. And there were set upon them, as it were, clouds of darkness, and the souls of them that had been murdered were standing and looking upon the punishment of those murderers and saying, ( 0 God, righteous is thy judgment.' " In the same strain the punishment of adulterers, persecutors, blasphemers, false witnesses, and usurers are described.