Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §7.8
fallacy here, as elsewhere, is to assume that what is in view must be some kind of
literary editing process, whereas many traditions even when already written
down would still have been remembered orally.
d. As for the so-called 'Cross Gospel' disinterred from the Gospel of Peter
by Crossan and regarded by him as a source for all four canonical Gospels and
combined with an 'intercanonical stratum' to make up the Gospel of Peter itself,
152 very little need be said. Crossan's failure to persuade Koester has already
been noted, 153 and his response to Raymond Brown's critique of his own earlier
treatment 154 does not change the position much at all. 155 It is certainly true that
the Gospel of Peter itself 156 may bear witness to accounts of Jesus' Passion
which circulated orally apart from the canonical Gospels and on which both the
canonical Gospels and Peter were able to draw, each to retell in his own way and
with his own variation and elaboration. 157 On the other hand, Ron Cameron's
suggestion that 'the document as we have it antedates the four gospels of the
New Testament and may have served as a source for their respective authors' 158
pushes the 'independent therefore earlier' fallacy to an extreme. 159
152. The Cross That Spoke 17, 20.
153. Above, chapter 4 n. 172.
154. R. E. Brown, 'The Gospel of Peter and Canonical Gospel Priority', NTS 33 (1987)
321-43, in response to Crossan, Four Other Gospels 123-81; also Brown, The Death of the
Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1994) 1317-49. See also J. B. Green, 'The Gospel of Peter:
Source for a Pre-Canonical Passion Narrative?', ZAW 78 (1987) 293-301; F. Neirynck, 'The
Apocryphal Gospels and the Gospel of Mark', BETL 86 (1989) 123-75, reprinted in Evangelica
II (Leuven: Leuven University, 1991) 715-62 (here 744-49); A. Kirk, 'Examining Priorities:
Another Look at the Gospel of Peter's, Relationship to the New Testament Gospels', NTS 40
(1994) 572-95; Charlesworth and Evans, 'Jesus in the Agrapha' 503-14.
155. Crossan, Birth 55-58, 481-525.
156. Translations by C. Maurer in Schneemelcher and Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha
1.223-7, and Cameron, Other Gospels 78-82; and by Elliott, Apocryphal New Testament
154-58 (with bibliography 151-54); Miller, ed., Complete Gospels 399-407; analysis in
Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels 216-40; the Greek text is appended in Neirynck,
Evangelica II 763-67.
157. Cf. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels 220-30, 240, with reference to the Passion
narrative; Brown, 'Gospel of Peter' 333-38, whose reminder of 'a second orality', when knowledge
of already written Gospels would still depend on hearing and oral communication (335),
is apposite. On the suggestion of a common old tradition, note the hesitations of Schneemelcher,
New Testament Apocrypha 1.219. Neirynck, Evangelica II 735-40, is confident that
dependence on Mark can be demonstrated for the resurrection narrative (Gospel of Peter 50-
57), a conclusion from which Koester does not demur (239).
158. Cameron, Other Gospels 78. Crossan's earlier suggestion that literate Galilean
Christians might have assumed that Herod Antipas could be responsible for ordering a crucifixion
in Jerusalem and the people (not soldiers) be responsible for carrying it out (as the Gospel
of Peter narrates) is hardly credible (Historical Jesus 287).
159. Two phrases have usually been regarded as docetic (10 — at his crucifixion Jesus
170