Transcript Was Peter the First Pope?

Introduction

Was Peter the First Pope? -Centre Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLgu_bPG1rI

Transcript:

(00:01) Our topic this evening I've entitled was Peter the first Pope. Um, this is really a follow-up on the lecture we did last week on the historical of Peter where essentially we were trying to get between um, all of the layers of tradition that we have about the Apostle Peter and um, when did those come in? What is the earliest that we can identify any of these traditions? Can we get at who the historical Peter was? And then can we answer some of these questions like, well, was he really uh, the first Pope as tradition has it?

(00:45) So, the person uh, who began life as Simon bar-Jonah, that is to say uh, Simon or Simeon, Shimon, son of John or Jonah who is nick- named Cephas in Aramaic for the Amer- Aramaic word for rock and Petros, Peter from the Greek word for rock. In other words, a nickname, it means something like Rocky. Simon Peter was among the most important leaders in Christianity's first generation um, and Christian tradition then includes a whole wealth of details, layers of details about Peter.

(01:29) In the got from the Gospels and the Acts tell us many stories about him. Uh, as do later apocryphal uh, acts and writings about Peter. But, for all of these later details, the historicity of the information is very, very questionable. And that's why we're trying very much to um, pin these down, see where our first sources give us some of that information.

Biblical Sources and Paul’s Perspective

(01:56) And so um, last week we looked at all of the biblical information beginning at the heart or the foundation with Paul's letters where he talks about meeting Peter in his letter to the Galatians, meeting him three different times. Uh, talks about factions that look to Peter in Corinthians and his traditions that he has heard about Peter and his letter to the Romans where he makes no mention of Peter.

(02:20) We looked at the first uh, narrative gospel, Mark, and its continuers or his who the synoptic cousins, Matthew and Luke-Acts that use Mark and also the tradition of the fourth gospel, John. And we also then looked at within the rest of the New Testament, we really get information in Peter only from two letters attributed to Peter but which the scholarly consensus is certainly for 2 Peter couldn't have been written by Peter and um, no no few scholars think that 1 Peter was written by him either.

(02:56) And so, what we're going to do uh, with this lecture is begin to look at um, the other traditions outside the Bible beginning with our earliest Christian writers in the 1st and 2nd century whose writings didn't make it into uh, canon. So, these are Papias of Hierapolis, Clement of Rome Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria and our dear friend, Irenaeus of Lyon.

(03:28) We will also look at a lot of the additional pseudepigraphal works, so the non-canonical or apocryphal pseudepigraphal works. Uh, pseudepigrapha means someone who is writing in the name pretending to be someone they aren't and that's, you know, the canonical books, 1 and 2 Peter are pseudepigrapha.

(03:46) These are extra-canonical pseudepigrapha, so someone wrote who wrote the Gospel of Peter also is claiming to be Peter writing in the first person. We also have books of the Acts of Peter, Apocalypses of Peter, Letters of Peter and so on. And then we're going to look at later um, early Christian authorities including folks like Eusebius, Origen and Jerome and how they sort of try to fill in all the details uh, and and come to a picture that we have that we kind of think of as Christian tradition.

The Silence on Martyrdom

(04:24) So, just to summarize the biblical uh, sources that we learned and we went through, we read them all last week. This time I'm not going to read any, I'm going to just summarize. So, the historical Peter is seen by Paul, so at this very foundational level, this is where we can really see, I think, the historical Peter through his direct interactions with Paul.

(04:48) However, of course, whenever we're reading um, any primary source we have to read that understanding the bias of the author and Paul is very, very biased. Um, he himself admits in Galatians that he's a rival. He says that he argued with Peter, called him a hypocrite to his face. Um, he sort of makes it clear that um, that Peter is part of a opposing faction which Paul characterizes as the circumcision faction.

(05:19) In Galatians, he says that he met Peter at least three times, twice in Jerusalem, once in Antioch. And while he calls Peter an acknowledged leader or an acknowledged pillar of the church he says, I don't I I don't know that I think they are because for me it what matters is really not what people think but what God thinks.

(05:39) And so, he really even undercuts uh, Peter's acknowledged leadership as one of the three acknowledged leaders of the church. The other acknowledged leaders in the triad that Paul mentions are John and James, James the brother of Jesus. And these form a triad. But, in contrast to later traditions from the Gospel of Mark onward which make Peter the leader of the church and uh, portray uh, Paul in Acts, actually sorry, Paul in his letters and this is also backed up in Acts uh, has Peter deferring to James.

(06:18) So, when officials from James come to Antioch, that causes Peter to change his practice and also at the Council of Jerusalem in um, in Paul's letters, James seems to be the one who is the ultimate authority among the Peter, James and John uh, triad. Paul also wants to portray Peter as uh, the Apostle to the Judeans, he says the Apostle to the the circumcised, that is to say people who have a Jewish background who were already adhering to Mosaic law and and he does that in order to set himself up as sort of like Peter's

(06:55) equal calling himself the Apostle to the Gentiles, the Apostle to those who are not adhering to Mosaic law, the uncircumcised. And that um, portrayal that Paul has uh, of propping himself up on equal level to Peter isn't really backed up. I mean, it's that particular way of doing it isn't backed up by Acts.

(07:17) Acts backs it up by by using Peter and Paul as its two protagonists but he doesn't refer to um, um, Paul with Pe- Peter and Paul with these two twin terms. Instead, what happens in Acts is that it's Peter who gets called to be an Apostle to Gentiles as well. So, Paul also notes in his letter 1 letter to the Corinthians that this church that he had planted there uh, is riven with factions and some of the factions consider Peter to be their leader, so he's their authoritative Apostle, whereas other factions uh, in that community see the Apostle

(07:59) Apollos as their kind of authoritative leader and others look to Paul as their leader. And Paul also in that letter when he is talking about traditions that had been passed on to him he includes Peter in a group known as the 12. So, we have sort of a historical sense that at the earliest stratum, this grouping of the 12 is known to exist.

(08:27) And of course, that's also backed up by the Gospels and the Book of Acts. And then Paul records a tradition that is not found in the later Gospels that the risen Christ appeared first of all to Peter and then to the 12 and then to other groups of disciples including female and male disciples. And then finally, we had this negative um, evidence in Paul's letter to the Romans where Paul lists, you know, a couple dozen um, people by name including uh, a set of apostles, uh, other hard workers in the Lord, house

(09:06) church leaders, a patron, deacon, co-workers in Christ, you know, which is his another term for someone who's almost like an Apostle and so he lists off you know, all of these leaders in the Roman church but Peter is omitted. So, Peter is not present um, at the time Paul is greeting the Christian community in Rome.

(09:29) So, already in this summary of the very few things we know of Peter from Paul's writings, obviously there is a contradictions in the portrayal of Peter that we have in the Gospels and in Acts. And so, by the time the first Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, is written around the year 70 both Paul and Peter have died.

The Gospel Portraits

(09:50) And it's not clear how much um, is known about Peter when the anonymous evangelists begin creating a narrative about him. So, they are creating narratives without the benefit of eyewitness testimony. Um and so, as a result, Mark um creates what I would say is a literary portrait of Peter. He gives us a few details including the idea that Peter is originally uh by profession a fisher on the Sea of Galilee and that he is the first disciple that Jesus called.

(10:26) Um but in part what Mark is doing is painting a what I'm saying a literary sort of portrait of Peter as the stock disciple figure. In some ways, you know, again the the the text is being written for to the reader and trying to um convert the reader to be a disciple uh of Christ who acknowledges that Jesus is the Messiah.

(10:51) And so, the journey that Peter takes as kind of the stand-in for all of disciples and for the reader is that he initially fails to understand who Jesus is, but he becomes he eventually comes to this realization that Jesus is the Messiah which the reader is also supposed to do. So, in addition to that information, Mark's gospel builds up to the passion story where Jesus predicts that Peter will deny knowing him.

(11:19) And as this when this prediction is fulfilled in the gospel, Peter then weeps and that's really the last we see of Peter in Mark's gospel anyway and the and it which leaves him unredeemed, Peter as a character. And so, the strange thing again in terms of negative uh influence or negative evidence, if um this is a very famous idea about Peter that he uh you know uh denies Jesus on the night that Jesus is turned over uh and for for execution and for trial execution.

(11:54) Um during that big fight that Paul's having with Peter where he's yelling at him to his face calling him hypocrite to his face, that might have been a moment um as he's denigrating Peter to say, well, Peter is the guy who who denied Christ three times. Um or in to quote Mark again that uh when when Jesus says to Peter at a certain point, get behind get behind me, Satan.

(12:19) You know, Peter Paul could also have said if that tradition was known, Paul could also have said, you know, you know, Jesus did call Peter Satan. Not that I'm saying I think he's Satan, but I heard did hear we do know that tradition. So, Paul who is not above, you know, those kind of jabs may not know those traditions is all I'm saying.

(12:37) It may be that those traditions are actually crafted after Paul's death, after Peter's death uh in the gospels. We also have to um account for or at least acknowledge that Mark has a very negative portrayal of Jesus' family. They're antagonist to the movement in Mark's gospel. And so, while Mark does emphasize a leadership triad of Peter, John, and James the same way that Paul does, Mark swaps out Jesus' brother James for a very different James.

(13:10) Uh that is James the brother of John. And so, while the historical Peter defers to the leadership of Jesus' brother James in Paul's writings, which is kind of backed up in Acts' portrayal, Mark consistently you know, doesn't talk about Jesus' brother as a um as an apostle at all or a disciple at all and instead portrays Peter as the overall leader leader of the disciples of Jesus by making the 12 the most important thing.

(13:40) And so, there is still this Peter, James, John triad, but it has a very different character once Mark's gospel is written. So, if we move now to what do we learn from the Gospel of Matthew? So, the author of Matthew who had access to Mark's gospel found it deficient enough to attempt to rework and replace it.

(14:05) And we know from the manuscript tradition that you know, the the um the Gospel of Matthew was so much more popular than Mark it almost successfully did that. So, it contains almost every word in the Gospel of Mark you know, with just some uh tiny deletions and lots of fixes actually. And so, that's very normal in books in antiquity to for a book to absorb and replace an earlier book.

(14:28) Um and so, that may have been the the goal of the author of Matthew. So, from context as we're looking at the Matthean editorial changes, the Matthean additions, Matthew's part of a community, an early Christian group that we call the Matthean community that was continuing to adhere to Mosaic law. So, what um what later um Orthodox Christians called Judaizing Christians, but actually they weren't Judaizing because the movement originally did adhere to Mosaic law and it is only because of Paul's um theology that later Christian

(15:12) communities as uh you know, ceased to obey Mosaic law. And so, this community, the Matthean community, clearly remembered Peter as an authoritative leader and so, the author of Matthew wants to rehabilitate him compared to how he is portrayed in Mark. And so, Matthean additions that are not found in Mark, for example, have Christ appearing to Peter and the 12 after um uh after Jesus' death and after the women find the empty tomb so that Christ can uh commission them to spread the gospel to all the world, for example.

(15:54) And another addition that is found only in Matthew is this key passage of Jesus handing the keys to Peter saying, "Thou art Peter, the rock and upon this rock I will um build my church and I will give you the power to bind and loose." And so, again, this is not something that the historical Jesus would have said, it's not something that Matthew found in Mark's gospel, but it's a way that um um the Matthean community which looked to Peter as a revered leader um sees there being continuity from Jesus to apostles to them.

(16:35) The author of Mark had already in my view retrojected stories like Jesus walking on water or Jesus being transfigured into celestial glory on a mount. So, those may have been circulating in the um early Christian tradition as visions that early disciples had had of the risen Christ, but because the Gospel of Mark has the author of Mark has a um an interesting apocalyptic uh worldview where they don't want to have talked about Jesus coming return already, but instead are anticipating because Jerusalem is being destroyed a imminent

(17:17) return right now of a second coming, um some of these stories were used to fill in Jesus' actual life. That at least is a one theory about where these come from. Um but that story of uh the disciples seeing Jesus walking on water, um in the Gospel of Matthew alone, that story is improved by having Peter get out of the boat and try to walk on water and at first being able to only to um realize that he doesn't have quite enough faith and start to have him start to sink until Jesus pulls him back out of the water.

(17:53) So, one of the points I have here is that, you know, already at the layer of the gospels, um the stories about Peter are involving uh are literary. So, they're involving sort of supernatural uh miracle stories. So, if we look at uh Luke-Acts, we have a similar story. So, while the Lukan community, which may have mostly consisted of converts who were not Judean, they didn't have any Judean background, so they weren't um following Mosaic law or having any kind of interest in that.

(18:34) So, therefore, they're very different outlook than the Matthean community. Luke and Acts also follows um Mark's lead of seeing Peter as the leader of the 12 before and after the death and resurrection of Jesus. And while uh Acts has James take the lead of the Jerusalem church, um because the whole focus of Acts is showing how um uh a tiny movement spread throughout the Roman Empire, Peter ends up taking a very active role in the first half of Acts in spreading the gospel.

(19:14) And again, because the author of Luke-Acts portrays the 12 and then Peter particularly and then finally Paul as inheriting Jesus' authority, Paul in the book of Acts performs the same kind of miracles that Jesus does in the gospels including, you know, the most spectacular of all, raising the dead.

(19:38) And so, in Acts chapter 9, Peter raises a woman called Tabitha uh or Dorcas is there other alternate translation of her name from the dead. And so, like I say, this and other literary miracles described in the gospels and Acts show that we are already removed from the historical Peter at this still very early stratum of the Christian tradition.

(20:02) Okay, and yet within this biblical layer, even though we're already getting stuff that's not doesn't have historicity, we still have surprisingly little sense of what is perhaps the most important tradition about Peter. In other words, that he was martyred and so that he went to Rome, uh became its bishop and was martyred.

(20:23) So, the Book of Acts is entirely silent about Peter's fate and it's not clear why. It's possible that the author of Acts doesn't know what happened to Peter. It's possible that they don't want to admit what happened to Peter. I don't know. It's not clear what what why that has happened. Uh the Gospel of John does suggest that Peter dies a martyr's death, but doesn't give any details of what that is.

(20:50) So, whether it's in Rome or not, there's nothing like that. And as we saw in the rest of the New Testament canon, really only the uh First Epistle of Peter, written again by someone pretending to be Peter, but not Peter, but nevertheless representing a 1st century tradition of what um of what early Christians understood about Peter, that connects him to Rome.

(21:16) Presumably, the text is written after the year 70 when um the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and thus the Romans become, just like the Babylonians before who had destroyed Jerusalem in uh Old Testament times. And so, and so Peter, uh or pseudo-Peter who's writing First Peter, says uh greets uh the people from your your the church in Babylon.

(21:43) So, in other words, it doesn't say Rome, but presuming that Rome is now being understood as a new Babylon having destroyed Jerusalem like the Babylonians had, that's an early our only early and our only biblical indication that Peter ever went to Rome. So, that's where we had gotten at the end of last week's lecture by looking at the evidence that we had in the Bible itself.

Early Church Fathers

(22:09) So, now let's um switch over and look at what some of the what's called the the church fathers, the early uh Christians of the first and second centuries, had to say about it. So, Papias of Hierapolis, Clement of Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus. So, Papias of Hierapolis is one of the earliest Christian authors who sought to collect and reconstruct Christian tradition.

(22:41) Papias himself says that he questioned aged informants. One of the most important of these informants is a person he calls John the Presbyter, John the Elder. And he asked them specifically about their memories of early apostles, including the Apostle Peter. So, although Papias, uh who wrote a work in five books, those books are lost, um we do have quotations.

(23:08) So, Irenaeus and Eusebius, which later church fathers, quote him and so we have couple long quotations. So, Irenaeus, when he is describing Papias, he calls him an ancient man who was a hearer of John and a friend of Polycarp. So, Irenaeus himself was a disciple of Polycarp, another early church father, bishop early bishop of Smyrna, um and also the teacher of Irenaeus.

(23:37) So, um Irenaeus, who was Polycarp's student, felt that Polycarp was um taught by someone named John. And Irenaeus conflates that John with uh the Apostle John, who he also thinks wrote the Fourth Gospel. But, Papias admits in the quotation that we have that um John the Presbyter, John the Elder, is a different person than John the Apostle since Papias asks John the Presbyter about John the Apostle.

(24:11) So, Papias says, "If anyone had attended on the elder I'm sorry, who if anyone who had attended on the elders came, I asked minutely after their sayings. What had Andrew or Peter said? What was said by Philip or by Thomas or by James or by John? In other words, what did the Apostle John say? Or by Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples? And whatever Ariston and John the Presbyter, the Lord's disciples, were saying.

(24:42) For I did not uh think that the information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice." So, we've got two different figures, John the Presbyter and uh that original Apostle John that was a historic figure that Paul had met. So, Papias asked John the Presbyter, who's probably an elder living in Ephesus around the year 100, about the testimony of these apostles.

(25:11) And so, what we're really seeing here as Papias is trying to reconstruct all of this, there's not a lot of lore um that he knows, apparently, uh that has been survived through the end of the 1st century. And so, now he's at a distance from folks like the historical Peter and he's trying to find anybody who knows anything about it.

(25:33) So, other than asking his informants about Peter's teachings, the only surviving quotation we have from Papias uh about Peter is testimony from this figure, John the Presbyter. So, the Presbyter used to say that Mark, in his capacity as Peter's interpreter, what wrote down accurately as many things as Mark had recalled from memory, though not in an ordered form of the things either said or done by the Lord.

(26:04) For he, Mark, neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him, but later, as I said, Peter, who used to give the Lord's teachings in the form of anecdotes, but had no intention of providing an ordered arrangements of the sayings of the Lord. So, so here is one of the earliest um ideas about some of the early writings of uh the sayings of Jesus.

(26:28) So, what can we make of that? It's been very confusing in lots of there's been lots of, well, incredible books ink books of ink spilled on this. But, I'll just say in terms of what what it tells us about Peter is that Papias himself states that he was discounting written works or that at least he favored interview testimonies that he could get more.

(26:52) And presumably, that would include the anonymous text that now bears the name of Mark. If Papias had that text. So, while Papias is the source of the later tradition that Mark wrote down Peter's testimony, the consensus today is whatever Papias is talking about, that lost text that he might be referring to, it doesn't describe our Gospel which now bears Mark's name.

(27:19) So, let's go next to Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna. So, Papias was associated with a contemporary bishop, Polycarp, who is also a disciple of John the Presbyter. Like I said, he is the teacher of Irenaeus. Um and so, um uh Polycarp is one of the earliest Christian martyrs whose execution is actually well documented.

(27:47) So, in addition to um a single letter from Polycarp, the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians that survives, there is also an account of Polycarp's martyrdom. Um nevertheless, unfortunately, um in terms of what what we can say about Peter, um the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians doesn't really add anything to our traditions, except that Polycarp is making extensive use of First Peter.

Clement of Rome

(28:15) So, this is an early sense that that tradition that that letter is authentic in the tradition, anyway. It's almost certainly not, but the tradition is already um getting that wrong early on. Let's move now to Clement of Rome, um one of the few 1st century Christian authors whose writing survives outside the New Testament.

(28:41) And also from the all-important to our question of whether what whether Peter made it to Rome, you know, that he's located in Rome. So, um we have one authentic book by Clement. It's called his First Epistle because there is also a Second Epistle which um is by a pseudo-Clement, somebody pretending to be Clement. And most scholars date uh Clement's First Epistle to the Corinthians to the reign of the Emperor Domitian, that is say around the year 96.

(29:11) So, by tradition as we have it today, Clement, or Pope Clement I, is Peter's is Peter's successor and was the fourth bishop of Rome. But, we'll have to see where that tradition comes from. So, Clement was writing around the same time that the Gospel of John was being compiled and as we saw, the Gospel of John alludes to Peter's martyrdom.

(29:37) And it was also being around the same time that Acts was being composed. And of course, Acts, as we said, omits Peter's death or mentioning Peter's death. And so, that really makes Clement among or the earliest or among the earliest source for the tradition that um Peter and Paul died martyrs' deaths.

(29:57) So, Clement writes in his letter to the Corinthians, the church in Corinth that is, "Not to dwell on ancient examples. Let us come to the most recent spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation through envy and jealousy the greatest and most righteous pillars of the church have been persecuted and put to death.

(30:21) Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two but numerous labors and when he'd finally suffered martyrdom, he departed to the place of glory due him." So, Peter died a martyr's death. "Also owing to envy of persecutors, Paul is also Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and having been stoned, after preaching in both east and west, Paul gained the illustrious reputation

(30:59) due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus, was he removed from the world and went into the holy place having proved himself as striking example of patience. So, Clement very clear, both Peter and Paul were martyred.

(31:24) Nevertheless, even though Clement is writing from Rome, and like I said, is traditionally understood to be the fourth pope, he doesn't mention Rome as the location of Peter's martyrdom for sure, nor does he name Peter as his predecessor, if indeed Clement was even a bishop of Rome. He also doesn't mention that.

(31:45) Um the book of Acts ends with Paul under arrest and trial in Rome, and Paul I'm sorry, Clement's description that Paul faces martyrdom under the prefects, that could be it in Rome because Rome had a prefect, but it's not clearly said in Rome since Clement also states that Paul preached in both east and west, and that he traveled to the extreme limit of the west.

(32:12) The extreme limit of the west in the Roman Empire and their understanding of the world would be Spain, where the Pillars of Hercules the Straits of Gibraltar. You pass through those to get to the extreme edge of the world the end of the world there. So, this sort of implies that Clement understands anyway that Paul's ministry after his trial continued and he finally made it to Spain.

(32:42) So, in his letter to the Romans anyway, Paul had said that it was his idea that he was after going to Jerusalem, Illyricum, and Rome, he was intending to plant churches in Spain. It's not clear that that ever happened, but it does sort of sound like Clement at least thinks it happens or or at least he has access to the Epistle to the Romans and he assumes it happens. We don't know.

(33:06) So, Clement's failure to explicitly mention Peter as his own apostolic apostolic predecessor or episcopal predecessor is all the more interesting in my opinion because Clement is one of our earliest sources or maybe our earliest source for the developing tradition of apostolic succession. In other words, the idea that it was Jesus who appointed apostles who in turn directly appoint appointed bishops to be their successors.

(33:36) And so, in his letter again to the church in Corinth, Clement states, "The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has done so from God. Christ, therefore, was sent forth by God and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments then were made in an orderly way according to the will of God.

(34:02) Having therefore received their orders, the apostles went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand, and thus preaching through the countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits of their labors, having first proved them by the spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe.

(34:26) Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons." And he then quotes Isaiah. He says, "For thus says the scripture in a certain place, I will appoint their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith." This refers to something different though.

(34:47) In other words, than the Christian evolution of bishops and deacons, but in any event, since that's something to relating to Isaiah and the Old Testament times. So, according to Clement anyway, bishops succeeded the apostles in an orderly way. That's the plan. So, Clement's letter is addressed to that venerable church in Corinth.

(35:08) We know it's venerable because it's existing in Paul's day. Paul's writing letters to it. That church was experiencing an internal dispute and Clement hopes to resolve that dispute. And so, this fact that somebody from Rome is intervening in a factional dispute within another church, indeed in a very venerable church, is kind of an incredibly early example that the church of Rome saw itself as having a certain level of authority that other churches should look to Rome to settle their disputes.

(35:43) Nevertheless, interestingly, like I say, despite his advocacy of the authority of bishops and of apostolic succession, and despite the fact that he is counseling folks in in Corinth to settle their disputes and how to do so, Clement does not in his letter make any claim to be the bishop of Rome or like I say, to to Peter was his direct predecessor, that Peter had been bishop of Rome.

Ignatius of Antioch

(36:12) And so, it's an interesting letter. It it's gives us all kinds of interesting insights, but it doesn't show us that a bishopric had developed in Rome at the end of the first century. So, let's switch now to Ignatius of Antioch. So, as we described in Paul's letters, Antioch is home to an important early Christian community, earlier than many others, and both he Paul that is and Peter participated in that community.

(36:45) This is the site source of that location of that place where where Paul in the letter to the Galatians records fighting with Peter and calling him hypocrite to his face and so on. So, in other words, Peter was a leader in Antioch and we know that from Paul's letters and so therefore if there's another early leader from Antioch, they might have he might have access to early traditions about Peter from there.

(37:10) So, Origen, Eusebius, and other third and fourth century Christians identify Ignatius of Antioch as an early second century source, and we do have seven surviving letters, but the letters we have date from a manuscript in the central middle ages and it's not entirely clear whether they're all authentic.

(37:34) In fact, a lot of debate on this still. So, if the letters we have are authentic to an early second century writer, he is the first writer to use the term Catholic, which means universal relating to the church. And so, he says, "Wherever the bishop appears, let the people be. As wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful to baptize or give communion without the consent of the bishop.

(38:06) On the other hand, whatever has his approval is pleasing to God. Thus, whatever is done will be safe and valid." So, obviously that's a very early, very strong statement of episcopal authority. Bishops you know, nothing's lawful without the bishop's permission and everything that bishops do is pleasing to God.

(38:25) So, that's a a big proponent of episcopal leadership. As bishop of Antioch, Ignatius is aware that Paul and Peter were active in Antioch, but in his letters, he doesn't share any independent Antiochian tradition that might have survived down to his day and instead quotes from Acts. So, as he's writing a letter and warning people against Judaizing, which is how he understands it in his own time frame, Ignatius says, "Let us therefore prove ourselves worthy of that name, the name Christian, that we have received.

(39:06) For whosoever is called by any other name besides this, he is not of God. For he has not received the prophecy which speaks thus concerning us." And here he quotes Isaiah again, "The people shall be called by a new name which the Lord shall name them and shall be a holy people." And so then, Ignatius says that prophecy in Isaiah was fulfilled here in Syria.

(39:32) For as we read in the book of Acts, the disciples were called Christians for the very first time at Antioch. So, the book of Acts makes the claim that the term Christian first um coined in the church in Antioch and that's what um Ignatius is um repeating. And he says that is when Peter and Paul were laying foundations of the church here in Antioch.

(39:59) Nevertheless, Ignatius also does not identify Peter as bishop of Antioch or as his predecessor. In other words, that's a later tradition records that and he doesn't use that anyway to support his own ideas of Episcopal authority. And in Ignatius' own letter to the Romans, he again mentions Peter and Paul together in a way um that has sometimes been seen to associate them with Rome, but here's how we read it.

(40:27) So, he says, "Rather uh entice the wild beasts." He's looking forward to his own martyrdom. "Entice the wild beasts that they may uh that they may become my tomb and may leave nothing of my body so that when I fall asleep in death, I may be of no trouble to anybody. I just want the beasts to eat me up all the way.

(40:46) Then I shall truly be a disciple of Christ when the world shall not see so much as my body." "Entreat Christ for me that by these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God. So, I will be a worthy sacrifice when I'm unwill will unwillingly martyred by being thrown to wild beasts." He says, "I do not as Peter and Paul issue commands to you.

(41:11) They were apostles. I am but a condemned man. They were free while I am even now until now a servant. But when I suffer, I shall be the freedman of Jesus and shall rise again emancipated emancipated in him. And now being a prisoner, I learn not to desire anything worldly or vain." So, he's very um humble and resigned to his impending martyrdom.

(41:38) Um although Ignatius here mentions Peter and Paul and he's doing that in the context of martyrdom and he's doing it in the context of a letter to the church of Rome, he nevertheless doesn't explicitly state that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome. And and again, like the only place where he explicitly locates Peter and Paul is when we just read that in the quotation where he locates them in his own city of Antioch, which is simply a repetition of a quotation from Acts.

Clement of Alexandria

(42:08) So, the connection of Peter to martyrdom at Rome is still not well established even at this stratum as you're seeing as we're even reading these earliest uh first and now second century witnesses. We'll move on then to Clement of Alexandria. So, now we're to the very end of the second century and we are um uh looking at a major Christian theologian who uh is also um the teacher of Origen.

(42:41) So, uh Clement says um uh while many of Clement's works have survived, a work where he is aware of a tradition that Peter preached in Rome is lost. But again, we have a quotation from Clement in Eusebius. And so, Eusebius says, "Again, in the same books, Clement gives the tradition of the earliest presbyters so as to the order of the Gospels in the following manner.

(43:10) So, the Gospels containing genealogies, he says, were written first. And so, the Gospels containing genealogies are Matthew and Luke. And so, um Eusebius is giving Clement saying that those are the earliest Gospels. The Gospel according to Mark had this occasion. As Peter had preached the word publicly at Rome and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out.

(43:46) And having composed the Gospel, he gave it to those who had requested it. When Peter later learned of this, he is he neither directly forbade it nor encouraged it. So, it's a witness to Peter's testimony, but specifically that he's gave it Rome, uh that Mark, a non-eyewitness to Jesus, but nevertheless a witness to Peter, wrote kind of as his own freelance basis.

(44:10) And then last of all, John, perceiving that the eternal external facts had been made plain in the Gospel, but being urged by his friends and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel. And so, this is the account of Clement to explain what we now have as the four canonical Gospels. And so, when we're looking at this, Clement seems to be repeating the same tradition from Papias that Mark wrote down Peter's testimony and Mark and Peter are connected the name the the character of Mark and Peter are connected um in all of this early

(44:44) tradition. Um but the difference here that wasn't in Papias that Clement has is that um the preaching that Peter was doing was at Rome. So, that connects Peter to Rome at least. Nevertheless, um although Clement of Alexandria is preserving a tradition about the Gospel composition that is very venerable, it actually fails to explain the synoptic problem.

(45:12) So, we've had a number of um lectures of this and we're going to have a an updated one in a month or so here. But the synoptic problem in, you know, a uh nutshell is that the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are literally dependent upon each other. So, Mark cannot represent a completely separate um witness that um Mark is simply writing down from what Peter says.

(45:37) Um if Mark was written after Matthew, Mark has to have been looking at Matthew in order to um copy out uh lines directly from it. Um and that's unlikely for a whole number of reasons. And so, most scholars conclude that the dependence goes the other way, that Mark is the first Gospel that survives, that both Matthew and Luke are working independently from Mark's Gospel, and in addition to their own unique traditions, must have access to another source.

(46:10) Um because they have shared dependency that's not in Mark. And scholars call that source Q. So, in any of it, like I say, Papias, uh Clement, some of the early church fathers have all um preserved this tradition. At the very earliest time here that we're having these traditions that are connecting Peter to Rome, um the traditions that they have about Gospel composition uh do not seem to be correct.

Irenaeus of Lyon

(46:38) So, there's errors at this layer already. Um and so, that gives brings us to Irenaeus of Lyon. And so, we really have very little other than so far as you've kind of have seen, we have Clement of Alexandria's brief testimony that Peter preached publicly at Rome. A- and it's also, like I say, muddled up in a um tradition that's itself inaccurate.

(47:04) And so, this really leads us to um Irenaeus, this disciple of Polycarp. So, Irenaeus comes from Smyrna in Anatolia, what's now Turkey, Asia Minor, and went west, relocated to uh Lugdunum, the capital of Gaul, where he became very important bishop. And he writes uh a whole very um important book uh against what he calls against heresies. And and he ultimately becomes really our essential source for proto-orthodoxy.

(47:37) We he's can see all the way up to those point. We're not getting a lot of Peter traditions, but we're going to get them full-blown now. So, Irenaeus is a significant proponent of orthodoxy. He's actively arguing against Gnostic Christianity, Valentinian Christianity. Um he is a major proponent of apostolic succession, of the authority of bishops.

(48:00) And he is a um person who is a key early um proponent of the primacy of the Roman church. So, in book three of his work against heresies as he calls them, Irenaeus says, "It is within the power of all, therefore, in every church And so, when he's talking about the different churches, all of the different um uh cities of the empire have a church, which is autonomous, led by a bishop according to what Irenaeus thinks is the proper way to be led.

(48:31) In every church who may wish to see the truth to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested through the whole world. And we are in a position to reckon up those who were apostles. I'm sorry, who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the churches and to demonstrate the succession of these men to our own times.

(48:56) Apostles designated bishops as their successors and so on down to our times. Those who neither taught and those, I'm sorry, neither who neither taught nor knew anything about anything like what these heretics rave about. So, none of the thoughts and Valentinus uh and the Gnostics and so on seem to be present as far as Irenaeus is concerned in authentic, anyway, writings of the apostles as he sees them.

(49:22) And so, he says, "If the apostles had known hidden mysteries like the ones the Gnostics talk about, which they then were in the habit of imparting to the perfect apart and privily from the rest." So, if he they really would had been teaching uh perfecti, the uh the the people who are Gnostics, they would have then delivered them especially to those whom they were also committing the churches to leadership.

(49:48) In other words, if they really had all this secret knowledge, they would have told the bishops. And so, for Irenaeus, apostles instituted the reign of bishops in every Christian community, and if we believe what Irenaeus is saying like that, it wouldn't make any sense that apostles would share secret teachings, Gnostic or Valentinian, to anybody besides those bishops.

(50:12) However, Irenaeus understands that this reasoning is just circular unless he can actually demonstrate apostolic succession. In other words, that apostles truly had appointed bishops. And so, he continues, "Since, however, it would be very tedious in such a volume as this to reckon up the successions of all the churches, we do uh put to confusion all those, in whatever manner, whatever by evil self-pleasing, by vain glory, or by blindness, or perverse opinion, assemble in these unauthorized meetings, these heretics. So, we're going to put them to

(50:45) confusion, but we're going to do this not by tracing the apostolic succession of every single last bishopric around the entire empire. That would be tedious. We're going to do this instead by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles of the very great, very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized by at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.

(51:11) So, we're going to put that example forward as also by pointing out the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the succession of the bishops. For, it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, the church of Rome, on account of its preeminent authority. The blessed apostles, Peter and Paul then, having founded and built up the church, they then committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate.

(51:44) They They made They made Linus bishop. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the epistles to Timothy. So, in other words, there is a character in uh the Pauline epistles to Timothy, which most scholars think Paul didn't write, and that character in um in Irenaeus's mind anyway, or his understanding of the tradition if he has some traditional record of this, is the person who became the bishop of Rome after Peter and Paul appointed him to that role.

(52:18) So, after Linus, to him succeeded a guy named Anacletus, and then after Anacletus, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, Peter and Paul, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing in his ears and their traditions before his eyes.

(52:43) Nor was he, Clement of Rome, alone in this, for there were still many remaining who had received instructions from the apostles. Thus, in the time of Clement, no small dissension having occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the church of Rome dispatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians exhorting them to peace, renewing their faith, and declaring the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles, Peter and Paul.

(53:12) So, um in other words, this is our first fully articulated tradition of Peter at Rome. And so, um we have Irenaeus here very clearly um uh leaning upon the that um letter, the authentic letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthian church, which we quoted before, which clearly Irenaeus has a copy of. And so, um Irenaeus from Irenaeus is we have the tradition that Peter and Paul founded the church at Rome and then bestowed their apostolic authority on a line of bishops beginning with Linus, Anacletus, Clement, and then and then

(53:53) Irenaeus draws that all the way down to his own day. Nevertheless, there's a clear error embedded in this tradition. You probably already saw it. So, we know from Paul's letter to the church of Rome that the church of Rome was already founded and established by the time Paul wrote to them.

(54:14) So, Paul didn't find found the church at Rome. And like we saw, likewise, Peter was not yet present at Rome um at the time Paul wrote, meaning that um Irenaeus's understanding that the two had founded the church at Rome, at the very minimum, that's not accurate. That doesn't mean that they didn't end up showing up there and that may be kind of what, you know, Irenaeus kind of means, you know, as them being founders.

(54:38) In other words, that they eventually got there and became the preeminent leaders and found uh the tradition of apostolic succession. But, um we know details anyway here that don't work with his uh understanding of this tradition that he is only sharing on written down for the first time at the end of the 2nd century. So, as always, when we look at authors, they're way better at giving evidence for their own immediate context than they are at attempting to reconstruct or narrate the past.

(55:10) And so, one of the things I will say is that Irenaeus's writings definitely indicate that by his day um this role of apostles in the early church, where mendicant preachers, people who had given away all property and were moving city to city without purse or script, begging for their daily bread, preaching uh by the Holy Spirit, and expecting to be obeyed as if they were the Lord, that that had effectively ceased to exist by the end of the 2nd century, and instead, authority over individual churches had become vested in their bishops.

(55:46) And over this uh structure, Rome was starting to claim a preeminence. So, Victor the 1st, bishop of Rome at the time of Irenaeus, is able to intervene in um some of the questions plaguing other churches, especially in the Latin West, um uh as because of this preeminence, this tradition that has now uh been is now understood.

(56:13) So, therefore, by the end of the 2nd century, bishops generally understood themselves as heirs to the apostles through this line of apostolic succession. And the Roman church must have already had a well-established tradition that both Paul and Peter had made it to Rome and been martyred there. Cuz otherwise, Irenaeus wouldn't um his argument wouldn't be effective.

(56:37) In other words, the heretics wouldn't believe um his argument, which otherwise would be circular, if everybody didn't sort of understand that this tradition was true by the end of the 2nd century, anyway. Okay. And so, that gets us through our 1st and 2nd century Christian witnesses, and it's only at the very end with Irenaeus that we have some of the most important ones for Peter.

Pseudepigraphal Works

(57:02) And yet, uh we're still missing a few things. So, let's look at also um some of the pseudepigraphal books attributed to Peter that didn't make it into the New Testament. So, these include a Gospel of Peter, Apocalypse of Peter, a Book of Preaching of Peter, Book of Acts of Peter, another Book of Acts of Peter and the 12, and then found among the Nag Hammadi library, another Book of Acts of Peter, a Letter of Peter to Philip, and another Apocalypse of Peter.

(57:38) And so, most of these are dated sometime in the 2nd century or maybe into the 3rd century in the case of the last. Um and um and the only one that may have an early kernel to it is the Gospel of Peter, which we only have fragments of. So, the Gospel of Peter was known in antiquity, but its authenticity was rejected by leaders like Eusebius, which is why, presumably, it's been lost.

(58:05) So, Pseudo-Clement of Rome quotes from it. I mentioned before how Clement of Rome his his authentic letter is called the First Letter of Clement. Well, this is the Second Letter of Clement, not written by the actual Clement. So, um uh He says, "For the Lord sayeth, you shall be as lambs in the midst of wolves.

(58:29) " But Peter answered and said to him, "What then if the wolves should tear the lambs?" And then Jesus said unto Peter, "Let not the lambs fear the wolves after they are dead. And ye also, fear ye not them that kill you and are not able to do anything to you, but fear him that, after ye are dead, hath power over your soul and body to cast them into the Gehenna of fire.

(58:57) " So, there's a um in the regular traditions of sayings of Jesus in the canonical gospels, he says, "Behold," he's saying to his apostles, "I'm sending you like um uh like sheep among the wolves." And so, there is a kind of a follow-up question in a tradition that it exists in the Gospel of Peter.

(59:15) Well, wait a second, aren't the wolves going to kill us? And this is another one of these um kind of things. You can't worry about the problems of the material world. If we all get martyred, that's actually a good thing. Uh the problem is when if we were to fall and lose our souls. So, uh a major fragment of this lost Gospel of Peter was recovered by French archaeologists in Egypt in the end of the 19th century.

(59:44) So, from that fragment, which covers part of the Passion narrative, we can see that the text, the Gospel of Peter, does pseudepigraphically claim to be written by Peter. So, in one of the verses it says, "I, Simon Peter, and Andrew, my brother, took our nets and we went to the sea." So, the unlike um when we talk about the the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the canonical Gospels, when we I talk about often how they're anonymous texts, and none of in in no time does the um the author come in and say, "Well, and then Jesus came and called

(1:00:19) me, John, and I did this." Um but the Gospel of Peter is written um with as though Peter was the actual author. John Dominic Crossan, one of my favorite um historians of the um historical Jesus, early Bible scholar, argues that the Gospel of Peter preserves what seems to be an Passion narrative that's independent of the narratives that we find in the um in the canonical Gospels.

(1:00:51) And it is interesting, it includes this vision of the cross itself, who follows after angels who take Jesus' body from the empty tomb or from the tomb that becomes empty. And uh and then the a voice from heaven asks the cross you know, a question, is uh is Jesus now preaching to the um to the souls in prison, something like that. And then the cross answers, "Yes.

(1:01:20) " Uh and so and so there there's a voice from the cross and so there is a kind of a um a passion of the cross of the cross has an important role in this uh Passion narrative in the Gospel of Peter. But also we can see there is details that on the cross Jesus felt no pain, even though he was silent, it says. And so that may indicate that the Gospel of Peter had a docetic perspective, that is uh the idea that um that Christ only appeared to be human and wasn't really.

The Acts of Peter

(1:01:55) And so, if so, you can see why um this Gospel was suppressed and lost because uh the Orthodox community would fight against docetism. So, turning now to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, um these were written toward in the second half of the second century. So, the same time that we're getting uh to the the texts, I'm sorry, the witness of Irenaeus of Lyon and also um Clement of Alexandria.

(1:02:25) Uh the earliest surviving manuscript we have of it though is a Latin translation. We have other fragments in other languages, we don't have the original Greek. While the Gospel of John gives us that first hint that Peter died a death of a martyr, and that's a tradition that we saw as known to Clement of Rome, the Acts of Peter is our earliest source of this tradition that you're probably aware of that Peter is crucified upside down.

(1:02:57) So, it becomes a very important source of the understandings of Peter's later life and martyrdom. It's actually the source for it, essentially. And so, but I want to read in some of the things that happened earlier in it as well. So, um in the Book of Acts, Peter has a confrontation with a character called Simon Magus, um who wants to buy um uh the power essentially that he sees Peter and the other apostles having so that he can do the same kind of tricks.

(1:03:27) And they uh you know, confound him in the Book of Acts. Well, Simon in the in the in the Book of uh in the Acts of Peter, Simon um then goes to Rome and Peter where he causes all kinds of confusion uh among the people there, both the Christians and the Romans. And so Peter himself goes to Rome in order to put an end to Simon's uh folly.

(1:03:53) And so that leads to a contest in Rome between Simon's magical trickery and the true miracles that are performed by Peter. So, Simon the magician promised the multitude in Rome to convict Peter and he believed not in the true God, sorry, convict Peter that Peter believed not in the true God, but was deceived.

(1:04:15) And uh when Simon did many lying wonders, uh they were they that were firm in the faith derided him. So, so again and again in this uh narrative, um Simon loses uh contests essentially or rounds of the contest to Peter, but then proposes one last test. So, Simon announces to the multitude, "Men of Rome, ye think now that Peter hath prevailed over me as more powerful and ye pay more heed to him.

(1:04:47) Ye are deceived, for tomorrow I shall forsake you, godless and impious that ye are, and fly up unto God whose power I am." I'm sorry, I only have this old translation of this with the old-timey language, but anyway, you get the sense of it. So, um Simon's going to um Simon's going to uh fly up unto God and show whose power I am.

(1:05:08) So, Simon promises essentially that he's going to expose the God of Peter, Jesus, as a fraud. Jesus of course famously ascends to heaven in uh the ends of the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Um but now Simon's going to show that he's the one who truly can ascend to the heavens because he is the one who is connected to God.

(1:05:31) And this excites the crowd, everybody shows up to see. Previously um we read in the Gospel that Simon had uh had an illusion where he appeared to be flying. So, this man, Simon Magus, standing on a high place, beheld Peter the next day on this contest and began to say, "Peter, at this time, when I am going up before all this people that behold me, I say unto thee, if thy God is able, thy God whom the Jews put to death and stoned you that chose were chosen of him, let him, Jesus, show that faith in him is faith in God, and let it appear at this time

(1:06:11) if it be worthy of God. For I am ascending up. I will show myself unto all this multitude who I am." So, this is a big contest on whether or not Jesus was the real um divine one. And so, and behold, when he was lifted up on high and all beheld him raised up above all Rome and all the temples thereof and all the mountains, the faithful looked towards Peter like, "Oh my goodness, Simon Magus is really doing it, he's ascending to heaven.

(1:06:38) " So, they got to look to Peter, "What what's going to What are we going to do?" And Peter, seeing the strangeness of the sight, cried unto the Lord Jesus. He says, "If thou suffer this man to accomplish that which she has said about, now will all they have believed in on thee be offended and the signs and wonders which thou has given them through me will not be believed.

(1:07:01) Hasten thy grace, oh Lord, and let Simon fall from the height and be disabled, and let him not die, but let him be brought to naught and break his leg in three places." >> [laughter] >> Very specific uh ask here in the dream, I'm sorry, in the in the in the prayer. And so then Simon fell from the height, he break his leg in three places, and then every man in Rome cast stones at him and went away home.

(1:07:22) And thenceforth everybody believed Peter. Uh you know, the end, happy days, [laughter] right? So, you know, although Peter wins this duel, um he nevertheless runs afoul with the Roman prefect Agrippa. It turns out that four of Agrippa's concubines, slave girls, have converted to Christianity and they've now decided to devote themselves to lives of chastity and as you can imagine that has made Agrippa very angry.

(1:07:49) This is a stock um thing to happen in sort of uh Greco-Roman Christian romances. Peter decides to flee Rome telling his followers, "Well, let none of you come forth with me, but I will go forth alone." Having changed the fashion of mine apparel, so Peter uh dons a disguise, he's going to leave the city.

(1:08:09) And then as he goes forth from the city of Rome, Peter saw the Lord entering into Rome. And when he saw him, he said, "Lord, whither goest thou thus?" And that in Latin is Quo Vadis. And so, this is the Quo Vadis vision that uh Peter has of the Lord. The Lord says unto Peter, "I go into Rome to be crucified." And Peter said unto him, "Lord, art thou being crucified again?" And he said unto him, "Yea, Peter, I am being crucified again.

(1:08:41) " And Peter came to himself and having beheld the Lord ascending into heaven, so so he has this vision of Lord coming back into Jerusalem, but the Lord ascends for real now, not like Simon Magus. Uh he returned to to Rome rejoicing and glorifying the Lord, for he said, "I am being crucified." The fate which was about to befall Peter.

(1:09:04) So, Peter realizes that Peter is going to be the one who's crucified, so he goes back to Rome to have that happen. So, um this story of uh Peter seeing Jesus entering, you know, uh Rome to be crucified, uh and asking him Quo Vadis, that's the uh source of this, you know, kind of famous novel and then 1950 classic 51 classic uh starring Peter Ustinov as Nero and as you know Peter Ustinov is a great comedic and dramatic actor who plays it to the hilt apparently.

(1:09:40) This is one of the ones that Lana and I are going to have to watch cuz I've actually never seen this all the way through but I know it's supposed to be really pretty great. So anyway, so after that vision Peter returns and tells the Christians that he's going to turn himself in to the Roman prefect Agrippa and that will of course result in his martyrdom and that causes lots of anguish in the Christian community.

(1:10:02) Peter gives a homily about the mystery of the cross and then when he turns himself in he asked to be crucified upside down. He says, I beseech you the executioners crucify me thus with the head downward and not otherwise and the reason wherefore I will tell unto them that here. And so he then when they had hanged him up after the manner he desired that is upside down he began to speak and he gives a whole long testimony of his understanding of the the mystery of the cross and why he doesn't want to have been crucified

(1:10:37) the same exact way of Jesus and so forth. So this is our earliest sources for this tradition of Peter's you know upside down execute execution crucifixion and lots of other Peter traditions and so they're coming at a very late stratum and I didn't read the whole thing to you but I think as you saw it dipping our toes into this book the Acts of Peter we can see that this text with its magic context with Simon Magus ascending and Peter with his very specific prayer of what to have happen to Simon Magus you know this

(1:11:13) is way more a Greco-Roman romance story than anything to do with history and yet like I say this is the earliest stratum for traditions like Peter's crucifixion. So and despite the fact that it's very writers like Origen and Jerome rely on this and site Simon Magus threat to Rome as one of the reasons that Peter ends up going to Rome.

(1:11:39) So again this is our early explanation of how and if Peter actually went to Rome. So now we've gotten through the biblical sources our earliest Christian texts to pay for now like I was talking about we have folks like Origen and Jerome and they are our last witnesses but they are coming very late to the story and looking at all this stuff and trying to make sense of it.

Archaeology and the Vatican Tombs

(1:12:04) Um so by the end of the second century tradition that Peter came there's by the end of the second century we can say the tradition that Peter came to Rome was well established but details of that happening are at the strata of sources that are intermixed with known errors and and romantic fantasy.

(1:12:33) And so the historical Peter um you know the historical Peter did not found the church at Rome as we saw in the letter to the Romans and he was likely never the sole leader of the church in Rome but it is possible that he came to Rome and it's possible that he died at Rome. Um and so we do have another thing and then you might some of you may have been screaming this at me while I've been giving this lecture is didn't they find Peter's tomb under the Vatican? And so the answer to that is yes but you know the earliest identification of the tombs of both Peter and Paul in Rome

(1:13:09) and their present locations those also date from this same moment in history the end of the second century in other words the time period of Clement of Alexandria Irenaeus and so forth. The fourth century Christian historian Eusebius quotes from a lost source that he dates to the bishopric of Zephyrinus of Rome so that's the year 199 the very end of the second century.

(1:13:34) Eusebius says it was confirmed likewise by Caius a member of the church who arose under Zephyrinus bishop of Rome. So Caius in a published disputation with Proclus the leader of the Phrygian heresy speaks as follows concerning the places where the sacred corpses of the aforesaid apostles Peter and Paul are laid.

(1:14:01) So Caius says in that letter but I can show the trophies of the apostles for if you go to the Vatican which is the traditional location of Peter's tomb or to the Ostian way the traditional location of Paul's tomb you will find the trophies of those who laid the foundations of this church. So already then at the end of this time period just like we have in Irenaeus Peter and Paul laid the foundations of the Roman church and they were both martyred in Rome and they also have a location of their corporates their remains

(1:14:39) and those are the places that we know today. So having identified these locations by the year 199 Eusebius says well those same tombs tomb shrines had been maintained all the way up to his day. So Eusebius says it is therefore recorded that Paul was beheaded in Rome itself and that Peter likewise was crucified under Nero and this account of Peter and Paul is substantiated by the fact that their names are preserved in the cemeteries of that place to the present day.

(1:15:10) But really what is what it's confirming is that as of the late second century we have that and that continued to be the case by the time we get to Eusebius. And so this tradition became the basis when the imperial government started patronizing the church for the Emperor Constantine's decision to build the Basilica of St.

(1:15:36) Paul's outside the walls on the traditional location site of Paul's tomb on the Via Ostia and then to also build old St. Peter's Basilica on the Vatican at the site of the old Circus of Nero. So archaeology in the 20th century uncovered the second century Necropolis that was known to Caius as of the year 199 and was still known to Eusebius in the year 314.

(1:16:01) And then going into the remains within this Necropolis were bone fragments that date to the first century belonging to a man who was perhaps 60 or 70 years old who very well might be Peter or just as easily might be any other different martyr from the first century many of whom would have been old men and there were lots of people killed under Nero and persecutions and so forth who then at the end of the second century or maybe sometime in the second century people in Rome identified with Peter when the tradition that Peter had been

(1:16:38) martyred there had finally developed. So we can't say either way one of those two. So a strong case can be made that Peter ended his life preaching at Rome was martyred under Nero was buried on the Vatican and his remains are still there preserved and we might actually have them identified. But an equally strong case can be made that Peter's importance after the time of Paul declined and and we lost track of him and then only grew again after the composition of the Gospels beginning with Mark leading to a moment in the late first

(1:17:15) century and the early second century when people like Papias are trying to track down what happened to them and develop traditions that Paul ended up going to and dying at Rome and those traditions could have been well established by the time we get to the end of the second century and people have identified him with the tombs that they have of other martyrs there.

(1:17:41) So regardless of whether Peter ended up wherever he ended up our sources for first century Christianity show a chaotic evolution as the office of bishop evolved and only slowly displaced other the earlier mendicant apostles. So we would can't go through all of this but we our lectures on the historical apostles are good one to look at for this as is um our lecture on the Didache a really important first century text for understanding the evolution of leadership offices within the first century church and so in terms of the

The Evolution of the Papacy

(1:18:22) question was Peter the first Pope it's really only at the end of the first century that bishoprics really begin to assume the later status that they have by the time we have people that we've already read second century writers advocating for Episcopal authority and so forth. Um it's it's very much more hesitant in the first century text the Didache.

(1:18:47) And even on top of bishoprics the papacy itself evolved um even more slowly to become recognizable as we might see it today. So the certainly the outfit that the statue here has is very anachronistic. It's a medieval outfit as opposed to ancient. So just in terms of the question about you know was Peter a Pope so the practice of calling the bishop of Rome Pope this derives from the word papas just meaning father so it's initially kind of of and it also took time to evolve.

(1:19:24) Using the word Pope was not initially exclusive to Rome as you're calling different beloved leaders Popes. Um in fact the earliest uh references we have to people someone being called that refer to the patriarchs or bishops of Alexandria, the heirs in their tradition anyway of St. Mark who continued to use that title.

(1:19:47) So Pope uh Tawadros II of Alexandria, the leader of the uh Egyptian uh you know uh church um goes by the title Pope. So that continued even in the Latin West where different bishops might be called using the title Pope and all the way up through the 10th century uh the Archbishop of Milan uh which had a really important tradition that dated back to um the importance of St.

(1:20:18) Ambrose was using apparently calling himself the Pope and got rebuked by uh reform papacy for using that title and it's only when the Gregorian reform gets into full swing under Pope Gregory VII himself that it's restricted throughout the Latin West and only the bishops of Rome could be called Pope. So we can just see how slow the evolution anyway is of um of that.

(1:20:43) That's when we get to the the real understanding I think of what the papacy is under the Gregorian reform as we now understand it. Nevertheless, there were all kinds of early precedents for primacy. We saw whether Clement was a bishop of Rome or not, he was writing from Rome and intervening in other churches at the end of the first century.

(1:21:02) In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, we're still in the pre-Constantinian church, the bishops of Rome frequently intervened to have the final say in disputes among other bishops. So at the time of Irenaeus, Pope Victor I held a council in Rome in the year 193 in order to settle the Quartodeciman controversy. In other words, what what is that? It's a great name.

(1:21:27) But anyway, the Eastern churches um including ones where um Irenaeus had come from had a tradition of celebrating Easter on the day of Jewish Passover instead of according to the more complicated calculation that people in were doing in Rome. Um Irenaeus, who we saw as such a great proponent of papal primacy, he attended that council and while the Pope ruled uh against the Quartodeciman uh people in Anatolia, he argued that excommunication was too strong given that the Quartodeciman practice among these churches supposedly had apostolic authorization. So Irenaeus um

(1:22:07) again traced that those churches' authority to John. Probably again incorrectly in terms of the Apostle John. Other leaders, including Eusebius, agreed but Victor's actions anyway are an important early precedent of the primacy which also drew an early complaint about claims to primacy. Another example includes Bishop Cyprian of Carthage in the 3rd century who asked Pope Stephen I to settle dispute about the return of Chris- Christians who had lapsed during the Decian persecution.

(1:22:45) Um and dispute over this led to uh the Dona- Donatist schism in the African church. So in making that appeal, Cyprian argued that the Church of Rome {quote} is the root and matrix of the Catholic Church, the universal church, and that Rome is the direct heir of Peter and other bishops are merely indirect heirs.

(1:23:05) And so in other words, it's already we're already seeing not not universal but um widespread precedents for this later idea of primacy. And so what I would say instead of the question was Peter the first Pope or you know, did did the historical Jesus actually say the line I'll give you the keys and so forth, say probably not either of those, but what we can say is by the beginning of the 4th century in a diverse church that had been run by semi-autonomous bishops, the bishops of Rome had done a reasonably good job

(1:23:41) especially in the Latin West of making their case for being the first among equals and indeed the final arbiter among all of those autonomous bishoprics. And so kind of some of the origin of what it means to be uh the first Pope. And grab4 says could it be that Paul mentions that Jesus appeared first to Peter because he was the first male disciple and one of the 12 and Paul disregards women as authoritative witnesses.

(1:24:10) So so I mean yeah, we have to try to read into when we have like a a tradition like this or a statement like this that that it's a tradition that has been passed on to Paul, he says um but we don't have any confirmation of that from anybody else and he's the first one to write it and yet then it contradicts um the traditions that already then uh exist when we get to the Gospels, specifically especially um not so much Mark but the uh which has a short ending originally and doesn't include this, but um but definitely the traditions that we

(1:24:46) have uh in Matthew, Luke, and John which have women and specifically either Mary Magdalene as the sole um person to have receipt to have seen the risen Christ first or Mary Magdalene and other women at the same time as we have in Matthew and Luke. Um I mean could it be? So sure, it could be.

(1:25:11) But the problem with um problem with that kind of thing with with history is when we do could it be's is that um you know, that's we don't have any way to know on that. So that would be an argument where we can say we're not sure where Paul gets this tradition, we're not sure that um we're not sure that that was a universal tradition, we're not sure that maybe uh maybe Paul is is giving it for different different reasons of bias that way.

(1:25:35) But but we can't know. Um Fred Church, thank you so much for your support. Appreciate it. Um Winston Barquez says could we say that the historical development of the institution of the papacy traced itself back to the triple confession of Peter in John's Gospel? So so you there the papacy traces itself um you know, in all kinds of ways authoritatively to the scriptures and and so papacy um has also made it very clear that papal authority is not theologically grounded on whether there even was a historical Peter or whether Peter made it to Rome or any

(1:26:18) of those things. Uh that's not or at least especially not whether Peter made it to Rome and is buried in Rome. Um the idea of papal primacy is that is not the basis of of the claim even. Um and instead and and in general I think um the focus on what historians are reconstructing in historicity is like you're I think maybe pointing out a little less important than um than use grounding in the scriptures.

(1:26:45) And so um like I said, most uh scholars of the historical Jesus don't think that that uh keys passage in Matthew would date to the historical Jesus, but it is canonized in the Gospel of Matthew and so it's still very relevant within a church whose life is the uh is about canonized scripture and sacred story uh Gospel and theology rather than uh what historians do to try to find whatever historicity is under- underlying uh those sacred scriptures and so on.

(1:27:20) So yeah, I would think that that is one of the things that the papacy is building itself on. Um My Space Plays says is there any evidence supporting the claim that uh that Peter ever made it to Rome that doesn't mention uh Peter founded the Church of Rome? So so essentially we yeah, so it doesn't they don't all say that Peter uh founded the Church at Rome.

(1:27:50) So like we're saying that that's when we first get our real um uh our real understanding of the tradition with Irenaeus who is making making that claim. But as we saw within the um within the biblical tradition even, so when we have the uh the letter of 1 Peter um the letter of 1 Peter says uh you know, it says your sister church in Babylon sends you greetings.

(1:28:17) So um and so the idea of that is like I said, that it doesn't say for sure that that means you know, we're not talking about the literal Babylon, but it almost certainly is I would say 100% that it's talking about Rome and it's a spirit- it's understanding Rome as a new spiritual Babylon because Rome the Romans have just destroyed Jerusalem.

(1:28:36) And so that is a reference that without saying that Peter founded the church in Rome um which is equating and locating Peter in Rome um even though it is a um a letter of someone pretending to be Peter who's not, at least is reflecting a 1st century tradition that is associating Peter with Rome. Um so yes. Um Pabs uh Pabs SG says does Orthodox tradition explain how why Peter's role changed from Apostle to Bishop when he arrived at Rome? I mean Eastern Orthodox? Yeah, Eastern Orthodox tradition.

(1:29:13) Um so um so so there is a um, so, there is this sense that um, I think we even saw it in Irenaeus that um, that it locate you get you get the first apostolic founder in a place who becomes um, Peter according to tradition in Irenaeus and then Peter appoints a a bishop. And so, and so, when they're calling Peter the first bishop, in some ways um, Irenaeus doesn't make that claim that he's the first bishop.

(1:29:45) He's saying he's the apostolic leader who can, you know, who essentially authorizes the first bishop. And so, I think that within Orthodox tradition and within Latin tradition both Greek and Latin tradition, there's this this understanding that of apostolic authority that different apostles went to different places.

(1:30:04) So, um, and John ends up in Ephesus and maybe is the first, probably according to tradition in Ephesus was the first bishop of Ephesus. I mean, you can go back and find every one of the lists. The um, there's a traditional list of the bishops of Antioch which will start with the Apostle Peter again since Peter was in Antioch and bishop of Antioch according to tradition before going to Rome.

(1:30:26) Um, and other other uh, cities claim that the apostles got there and became the bishops there. So, um, in South India um, is one of the places that claims that the Apostle Thomas made it all the way there and became their first bishop. And so, the idea of it is though that a first bishop in those kind of cases is still an apostle and they're not thinking of apostle in that very different way that apostles were and I'm making a big distinction between them because of the actual historical development, not the way um, not the way

(1:30:57) this this claimed later tradition of apostolic authority which isn't so historical. I mean, that's that is a tradition based thing that is created after the bishops are already in charge. And so, I'm making distinction of the actual historical development between apostles and bishops as they're understood in the first century sources.

(1:31:18) Not today. Um, Robert Sosha says, "If uh, Peter isn't the first Pope, then who was the first Pope that can be historically confirmed?" That's interesting. Yeah. Um, Well, so, Clement is the first person in who's a leader who uh, can be historically confirmed as being there, who's later understood to have been the bishop, but he doesn't claim to be bishop and so, we don't know for sure that he's the bishop.

(1:31:45) Um, we have a bunch of uh, So, we we have a bunch of Rome is a place where the bishopric seems to have evolved in a more complicated way where there's some kind of group leadership for a while and certainly there is traditions that people like Marcion and Valentinus at the end of the first century, the beginning of the second century are going to Rome and so many people are going to Rome and vying to be made bishop.

(1:32:10) And so, within those stories we will have, you know, sort of see the the first places where we can um, talk about people who want to be bishop and who didn't get any bishop and who maybe in the sources are also um, being identified as who got to be bishop in their place. Um, but again, those are those sources are probably we're probably getting that from people like Irenaeus at the earliest.

(1:32:34) And so, depends on how long we, you know, how close we think of when we think Irenaeus' um, information uh, becomes, you know, switches from the spectrum of tradition to history probably. You know, among other things. And so, Irenaeus is our source for the whole line and so, how much of it does he know from actual records or from people who've been alive? How much of it, I mean, is it does it go all the way back and it it it is a firm tradition or not? So, it's we it's depends on how much we believe uh, Irenaeus' uh, information is good in

(1:33:07) a lot of cases. Uh, Darth Rama says, "It was a great lecture. Alas, I still don't understand why Peter was given such an exalted status." Well, so, so, again, and we don't see it in in Paul's writings. So, he may not have been given again, an exalted status in the first generations. Um, but what ends up happening in Mark, um, Peter assumes that role and maybe um, like I've suggested a couple times because Mark doesn't want to emphasize the role of Jesus' brother, James.

(1:33:47) Uh, and so, therefore um, gives Peter you know, kind of the lead role while simultaneously um, uh, you know, while simultaneously you know, knocking him a few times by having Jesus uh, rebuke him and having him betray or not betray, but um, deny Jesus. And so, um, anyway, so, I think that once that uh, once the gospel narratives exist and they become come so important to Christian understanding of uh, where Christianity came from and and themselves and once the bishops looked to the authorities of apostles in order

(1:34:27) to um, in order to justify their growing authority. Um, I think Peter inevitably assumes this exalted status. So, it's not something that he necessarily had uh, in life, but it's something that he has in reflection. Leandro says, "While I was talk, while John was talking, um, they ran a poll, does Q exist?" Q being the hypothetical source that Luke and Matthew were using in addition to using Mark as a source.

(1:34:57) And so, of our viewers, uh, 75% um, said yes and 25% said no. So, you guys are not all convinced. >> [laughter] >> And Leandro asked, "Should we do a lecture on the Farrer hypothesis?" So, I'm like I've said it like I kind of queued up at the beginning of the lecture. I said that we're going to um, I'm going to do another updated lecture on Q and so, we'll we'll mention the other hypothesis.

(1:35:21) Um, I I, you know, just as a uh, as a uh, you know, my own biases here is that I'm pretty convinced by the Q as you know since I I I take it as wrote each time, but I do try to remember and and present this is a hypothesis, right? All right, folks. This was an absolutely wonderful as a two-parter.

(1:35:42) I think uh, we really covered this topic. Um, don't forget to like and share this video, subscribe to the channel. That helps us uh, spread these to other people. That helps us just as much as donations do. Next week we're going to talk about Saint Patrick, Celtic Christianity as we celebrate Saint Patrick's Day.

(1:36:00) See you then.