was present in Gethsemane, and tried to offer some resistance to
the arrest of Jesus (Mark xiv. 47; Matt. xxvi. 51, Luke xxii. 50;
John xviii. 10). After the arrest he followed the Lord to the
scene of the trial, but denied him and fled. The message of the
young man at the tomb (Mark xvi. 4) was especially addressed
to Peter and it is clear that the genuine conclusion of Mark must have contained an account of an appearance of the risen Lord
to him.
Out of this mass of incidents the following are central and call for closer critical consideration.
1. The Call of St Peter.—(Mark i. 16–20; Matt. iv. 18–22; Luke v. 1–11; John i. 40–42). The account in Matthew is practically identical with that in Mark and is no doubt taken from the Marcan source, but Luke and John have different traditions. The main points are as follows: according to Mark, at the beginning of the Galilean ministry Jesus saw Peter and Andrew fishing. He called them, and they joined him. After this he went with them to Capernaum, preached in the synagogue, and healed Peter’s wife’s mother. Luke, who certainly used Mark, has partly rearranged this narrative and partly rejected it in favour of a different version. According to him the visit to Capernaum and the healing of the wife’s mother preceded the call of Peter, and this was associated with a tradition of a miraculous draught of fishes. The advantage of the Lucan reconstruction, so far as the first part is concerned, is that it supplies a reason for Peter’s ready obedience, which is somewhat difficult to understand if he had never seen Jesus before. But it seems probable that this is the motive which led to the redactorial change in Luke, and that the Marcan account, which is traditionally connected with Peter, ought to be followed. With regard to the narrative of the miraculous draught of fishes, the matter is more complicated. Luke obviously preferred this narrative to the Marcan account, but the fact that the same story comes in John xxi. suggests that there was an early tradition of some such incident of which the actual occasion and circumstances were undetermined. Luke preferred to connect it with the call of Peter, the writer of John xxi. with his restitution: probably both are of the nature of redactorial guesses, and the Marcan account must be regarded as preferable to either. The Johannine account of the call of Peter is quite different. According to this it took place immediately after the baptism of Jesus, in Judaea not in Galilee. It is connected with the giving of the name Peter, which in Mark was not given until much later.
2. The Confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi.—(Mark viii. 27–33, Matt. xvi. 13–23; Luke ix. 18–22). According to Mark, Peter, in answer to the question of Jesus, recognized that He was the Messiah, but protested against the prophecy of suffering which Jesus then added. This narrative is followed, with the exception of the last part, by Luke, who as usual is inclined to omit anything which could be regarded as derogatory to the Apostles. Matthew also uses the Marcan narrative, but adds to it a new section from some other source which suggests that the name of Peter was conferred on this occasion—not, as Mark says, at the first mission of the Twelve—and confers on him the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the right of binding and loosing. This must be probably[1] interpreted as a reference to the prophecy concerning Eliakim in Isa. xxii. 22, and to technical use of the words “binding” and “loosing” by the scribes in authoritative decisions as to the obligations of the law. It thus confers on Peter a position of quite unique authority. It must, however, be noted that the power of binding and loosing is given in Matt. xviii. 18 to the whole body of disciples. This seems to be an alternative version, also found only in Matthew. The question of the historical character of the Matthaean addition to the Marcan narrative is exceedingly difficult; but it is hard to think that if it were really authentic it would have been omitted from all the other gospels, and it perhaps belongs to the little group of passages in Matthew which seem to represent early efforts towards church legislation, rather than a strictly historical narrative. Besides it is noticeable that in one other point Matthew has slightly remodelled the Marcan narrative. According to the latter Jesus asked, “Whom say men that I am?" and Peter replied “the Messiah,” without qualification. But in Matthew the question is changed into “Whom say men that the Son of Man is?” and, whatever may be the original meaning of the phrase “the son of man” it cannot be doubted that in the gospels it means Messiah. Thus the simple answer of Peter in Mark would be meaningless, and it is replaced by “The Messiah, the son of the living God,” which is no longer a recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus (this is treated in Matthew as an already recognized fact, cf. x. 23, xii. 40, &c.), but is a definition and an exaltation of the nature of the Messiah.
3. The Conduct of Peter after the Betrayal.—The consideration of this point brings one into touch with the two rival traditions as to the conduct of the disciples after the betrayal and crucifixion of the Lord—the Galilean and the Jerusalem narratives. There is one incident which must in any case be accepted as it is found in both narratives. This is the denial of Peter. It appears that Peter did not stay with the disciples and neither returned home immediately to Galilee (according to the Galilean tradition) nor sought hiding in Jerusalem (according to the Jerusalem tradition), but followed the Lord at a distance and was a witness of at least part of the trial before the Sanhedrim. He was detected and accused of being a disciple, which he denied, and so fulfilled the prophecy of Jesus that he would deny Him before the cock crowed.
But putting this incident aside, the Galilean and Jerusalem traditions do not admit of reconciliation with one another. The former is represented by Mark. According to it the disciples all fled after the betrayal (though Peter waited until after the denial), and afterwards saw the risen Lord in Galilee. The details of this narrative are unfortunately lost, as the genuine conclusion of Mark is not extant. But Mark xiv. 28 and xvi. 7 clearly imply a narrative which described how the disciples returned to Galilee, there saw the risen Lord, and perhaps even how they then returned to Jerusalem in the strength of their newly recovered faith, and so brought into existence the church of Jerusalem as we find it in the Acts. It is also clear from Mark xvi. 7 that Peter was in some special way connected with this appearance of the risen Lord, and this tradition is confirmed by 1 Cor. xv. 5, and perhaps by Luke xxiv. 34.
The Jerusalem narrative is represented especially by Luke and John (excluding John xxi. as an appendix). According to this the disciples, though they fled at the betrayal, did not return to their homes, but remained in Jerusalem, saw the risen Lord in that city, and stayed there until after the day of Pentecost. Attempts to reconcile these two narratives seem to be found in Matthew and in John xxi.
Obviously the choice which has to be made between these traditions cannot be adequately discussed here: it must suffice to say that intrinsic and traditional probability seem to favour the Galilean narrative. If so, one must say that after the denial Peter returned to Galilee—probably to resume his trade of fishing—and he there saw the risen Lord. This appearance is referred to in 1 Cor. xv. 5, and was certainly described in the lost conclusion of Mark. An account of it is preserved in John xxi., but it is here connected—probably wrongly—with a miraculous draught of fishes, just as the account of his call is in Luke. Immediately after the resurrection there is a missing link in the history of Peter. We know that he saw the risen Lord, and, according to the most probable view, that this was in Galilee;History after the Resurrection according to
the Acts and Epistles. but the circumstances are unknown, and we have no account of his return to Jerusalem, as at the beginning of the Acts the disciples are all in Jerusalem, and the writer, in contradiction to the Marcan or Galilean narrative, assumes that they had never left it. The first part of the Acts is largely concerned with
- ↑ See, however, A Sulzbach’s article in the Zeitschr. f. N. T. Wiss. (1903), p. 190. He thinks there is an allusion to a room in the Temple where the great key was kept; this room was called Kephas, because the key was placed in a recess closed by a stone. There is also a valuable article by W. Köhler in the Archiv für Religionswiss. treating the question of the keys from the point of view of comparative religion.
