The Akhmeni Fragment of the Apocryphal Gospel of St. Peter,
Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by H. B. Swete, D.D. (Macmillan.)—This fragment was found at Akhmtm (Chommis in Herodotus, Panopolis in Greek time) in the winter of 1886.87, in one of the graves of a Christian burying-place. It consisted of nine leaves which were bound up with fragments (containing twenty-four more leaves in all) of the Petrine Apocalypse and the Greek version of the Book of Enoch. It belongs to the seventh or eighth century. The fragment of the Gospel, which begins after Pilate's washing his hands, is about as long as the twenty- seventh chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. It carries on the story up to the going of some of the Apostles to fish in the lake of Galilee. " I, Simon Peter, and Andrew, my brother, taking our nets, departed to the sea ; and there was with us Levi, the son of
Alphseus, whom the Lord " The indications of a Doeetic tendency in the writer are plain enough. Then we read, " They brought two malefactors, and crucified the Lord in the midst of them ; but He held His peace, as in no wise suffering pain. The Lord cried aloud, saying, ` My power, my power, thou halt left me,' and having said this, He was taken up." The date of the writing is supposed to be somewhere in the second half, of the second century. Justin refers to certain aropentioveltwra of Peter.
This may be explained as meaning the Gospel of St. Mark, which has been supposed to have been written under the influence of St. Peter. But it does not appear that the term is elsewhere used in this way, and we must own that it seems to us to point with some probability to the writing of which this is a fragment. Tho other resemblances in Justin are not expressly quotations. Of course there can be no doubt about the apocryphal character of the document, and of its being considerably later than the four canonical Gospels. Professor Swete has done all in the way of editing that can be required.
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