Peter

Book excerpt: This book critically examines all the early and important Petrine pseudepigrapha to identify a distinctive Petrine theology which, it is believed, was later swamped by the tide of western orthodoxy. Despite the diversity of the books and tractates, ranging from Jewish-Christian writings to avowedly Gnostic works, a remarkably consistent Petrine tradition does emerge; and Peter is shown essentially to be neither the impetuous, undiscerning, and even vacillating figure portrayed in the Gospels and Acts, nor the magisterial and pontifical figure of later Church tradition, but a visionary who was concerned above all to hold together both the moral and cognitive aspects of the Faith.