Texts in Conversation
In the Apocalypse of Peter, children accuse their parents and are given to Temlakos. In the Banquet of the Ten Virgins, Methodius repeats their plea and angel care as inspired writings without naming Peter.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Apocalypse of Peter 1:29
Revelation of Peter
Early Christian
28 Near this flame is a pit, great and very deep, and into it flows from above every kind of torment, foulness, and discharge. Women are swallowed up in it to their necks and tormented with great pain. These are those who have caused their children to be born prematurely, and have corrupted the work of God that created them. Across from them is another place where their children sit alive, and they cry out to God. Flashes of lightning go forth from those children and pierce the eyes of those who, for the sake of sexual immorality, caused their destruction. 29 Other men and women will stand above them, naked; and their children stand across from them in a place of delight, sighing and crying out to God because of their parents, saying: These are the ones who have despised and cursed and transgressed your commandments and delivered us to death. They cursed the angel that formed us, hung us up, and begrudged us the light which you have given to all creatures. The milk of their mothers flowing from their breasts will congeal, and from it will come flesh-devouring beasts, which will come forth and turn and torment them forever with their husbands, because they forsook the commandments of God and slew their children. As for their children, they will be delivered to the angel Temlakos. And those who slew them will be tormented eternally, for God wills it so. 30 Ezrael the angel of wrath will bring men and women, half of their bodies burning, and cast them into a place of darkness — the hell of men. A spirit of wrath will chastise them with every kind of torment, and a worm that does not sleep will devour their entrails. These are the persecutors and betrayers of my righteous ones.
Methodius Banquet of the Ten Virgins Discourse 2 6:5
Methodius Symposium Discourse 2
Early Christian
Or by whose providence was it that the foetus was not suffocated by damp when shut up within, in the connection of the vessels? Or who, after it was brought forth and had come into the light, changed it from weakness and smallness to size, and beauty, and strength, unless God himself, the Supreme Artist, as I said, making by his creative power copies of Christ, and living pictures? Whence, also, we have received from the inspired writings, that those who are begotten, even though it be in adultery, are committed to guardian angels. But if they came into being in opposition to the will and the decree of the blessed nature of God, how should they be delivered over to angels, to be nourished with much gentleness and indulgence? And how, if they had to accuse their own parents, could they confidently, before the judgment seat of Christ, invoke him and say: You did not, O Lord, grudge us this common light; but these appointed us to death, despising your command? For, he says, children begotten of unlawful beds are witnesses of wickedness against their parents at their trial.
Date: 270-310 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... Sozomen in the fifth century, HE 7. 19 (ed. J. Bidez and G. C. Hansen, GCS 50 (Berlin, 1960), p. 331), refers to its being used in public worship on Good Friday. (It is not listed in the Gelasian Decree.) Thus it is clear that the book was popular and widespread in use in the early centuries of Christianity and hovered on the edges of canonical scripture. [...] Citations from the ancient apocalypse have been identified in Clement of Alexandria, Methodius, Macarius, and possibly in Theophilus of Antioch (and these are set out below): Macarius and Clement name the source. A fourth-century Latin homily cited below (A 7) also gives the source of a quotation as the Apocalypse of Peter. The citations have been verified by the discovery and publication of the text. ...”
Elliott, J. K.
The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation
(p. 593) Clarendon Press, 1993
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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