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In 4 Ezra, Ezra pleads for humanity and God replies that Ezra cannot love creation more than he does. The Apocalypse of Peter echoes this: Peter wishes the damned uncreated, and Christ rebukes him for claiming more compassion than God.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
4 Ezra 8:47
2 Esdras
Pseudepigrapha
43 The farmer’s seed may never come up because it is given no rain at the right time, or it may rot because of too much rain. 44 But man, who was formed by your hands and made in your image, and for whose sake you made everything - will you compare him with seed sown by a farmer? 45 Surely not, O Lord above! Spare your own people and pity them, for you will he pitying your own creation.’ 46 He answered: ‘The present is for those now alive, the future for those yet to come. 47 You cannot love my creation with a love greater than mine - far from it! But never again rank yourself among the unjust, as you have so often done.
Apocalypse of Peter 1:10
Revelation of Peter
Early Christian
9 He showed me in his right hand the souls of all people, and on the palm of his right hand the image of what will be accomplished at the last day: how the righteous and the sinners will be separated, how those who are upright in heart will fare, and how the evildoers will be rooted out for all eternity. We saw how the sinners wept in great affliction and sorrow, until everyone who saw it with their eyes wept too — whether righteous or angels — and he himself also. 10 And I asked him, saying to him: Lord, allow me to speak your word concerning the sinners: it would be better for them if they had not been created. The Savior answered and said to me: Peter, why do you speak this way, that not to have been created would be better for them? You are resisting God. You would not have more compassion than he does for his own image, for he created them and brought them forth out of nothing. Now because you have seen the lamentation that will come upon the sinners in the last days, your heart is troubled; but I will show you their works, by which they have sinned against the Most High. 11 See now what will come upon them in the last days, when the day of God and the day of the decision of the judgment of God comes. From the east to the west all the children of men will be gathered together before my Father, who lives forever. And he will command hell to open its bars of adamant and give up all that is in it.
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Notes and References
“... Peter’s expression of compassion — ‘It would have been better for them if they had not been created’ (3:4) — was traditional in such a context in the apocalypses (compare especially 2 Enoch 41:2; 4 Ezra 7:62-64, 116-117; compare 4:12), but he is able to call it ‘your [Christ’s] word concerning these sinners’ (3:4), because it occurs in the Gospel saying about Judas (Matthew 26:24). In spite of this attempt to ascribe this expression of compassion to Jesus Christ himself, Peter is then rather severely rebuked by Christ, who criticizes the expression as opposition to God (3:5). The point is that Peter seems to be implying that if God were truly compassionate he would not have created those who will be damned. But Peter cannot be more compassionate towards God’s creation than the Creator himself is (3:6). This response to a plea for mercy to the damned is also found elsewhere (4 Ezra 5:33; 8:47; Apocalypse of Paul 33; 40). It is possible that the Apocalypse of Peter is here dependent on 4 Ezra, but also possible that both works draw on common tradition ...”
Bauckham, Richard
The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses
(p. 233) Brill, 1998
* 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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