The Remembered Peter: in Ancient Reception and Modern Debate

278 Pages·2010·1.444 MB·English

by  Markus Bockmuehl

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen
zum Neuen Testament
Herausgeber / Editor
Jörg Frey (Zürich)
Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors
Friedrich Avemarie (Marburg)
Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford)
Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL)
262

Markus Bockmuehl
The Remembered Peter
in Ancient Reception and Modern Debate
Mohr Siebeck
Markus Bockmuehl, born 1961; B.A. Classics (Univ. of British Columbia); M.C.S./M.Div.
(Regent College, Canada); Ph.D. (Cambridge); Professor of Biblical and Early Christian
Studies, University of Oxford, UK.
e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151551-4
ISBN 978-3-16-150580-5
ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament)
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbiblio-
graphie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
© 2010 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen.
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Printed in Germany.
Preface

The present volume draws together a number of my most pertinent schol-
arly studies on the profile and reception of Simon Peter in second-century
Christian memory. It is the first of two projected books on Simon Peter,
both of which have their origin during an extended period of academic
leave made possible by a British Academy Research Readership in 1999–
2001.
Several of the chapters in the present work are developed from earlier
articles and essays initially published since 2004.1 All are revised and up-
dated; some significantly so. In several cases engagement with subsequent
scholarship has helped clarify or indeed change my view of things – at any
rate about the balance of probabilities. (An example of the latter is the con-
tinued debate about the New Testament site of Bethsaida.)
In keeping with the genre of collected “studies”, I have made little at-
tempt to impose a single overall argument in either form or substance. In-
evitable lacunae remain, as do occasional overlaps. Nevertheless, the run
of the material outlined in the Table of Contents reveals a recurring set of
concerns that does, I trust, add value to the sum of these parts. Part I intro-
duces the question of Peter’s presence in ancient Christian memory, as a
tool in contributing to the re-appropriation of this important centrist figure
in the early church. Part II attends more specifically to the shape of that
Petrine memory in Syria and Rome, while Part III then seeks to reconnect
this line of questioning once again to more conventional historical and
exegetical study of the biblical Peter who gave rise to that subsequent pro-
sopographical profile.
The past fifteen years or so have witnessed significant scholarly ad-
vances that impinge directly on a number of areas close to the central con-
cerns of my own work. These include above all memory studies (including
social, cultural and eyewitness memory), reception history, as well as the
increasing recognition of the fluidity of historical and cultural boundaries
between New Testament and second-century Christianity. My own reflec-
tion on Simon Peter (and other research) has benefited considerably from
these advances and Part I of this work in particular gratefully references
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1 These earlier versions include Bockmuehl 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006a, 2007a, 2007b,
2009. Revised publication here is by permission of the respective copyright holders.
(cid:2)
VI Preface
some of them. For my relatively modest purposes here it seems unneces-
sary to retrace more fully the extensive methodological ground that these
works have covered, often better than I could have done.
A second, more synthetic volume, geared towards a somewhat broader
audience, will aim to construct an account of Petrine memory that takes up
substantive insights from the present monograph but also attends more di-
rectly and systematically to the New Testament evidence itself. My hope is
to publish this within a year or so of the present volume.
It is a pleasure and privilege to express my thanks to some of the many
people without whose support this volume could not have taken shape.
I wish to thank Jörg Frey for accepting this volume for publication in
the WUNT monograph series several years ago. Henning Ziebritzki and his
colleagues at Mohr Siebeck have been exemplary in their professionalism
and efficient but personable support, which I have come to appreciate even
more since joining the WUNT editorial team myself last year. As men-
tioned above, the British Academy generously underwrote early research
towards several chapters in this project through one of its Research Read-
erships. I have been grateful for repeated travel and research support from
the Universities of Cambridge, St Andrews and Oxford as well as from
Princeton’s Center of Theological Inquiry (where my family and I were
privileged to spend two wonderful sabbaticals).
What may be of merit in the following pages also owes a great deal to
patiently sympathetic and constructively critical responses received in a
variety of seminar and invited lecture contexts. These have included
among others Aberdeen, Baylor, Gloucestershire, North Park, Notre Dame,
Nottingham, Oxford and St Andrews Universities; Asbury and Fuller
Seminaries; Wycliffe College in Toronto, Regent College in Vancouver,
and the College of St George at Windsor Castle; Wheaton College Church
and Westerly Road Church in Princeton; the Vacation Term in Biblical
Studies at St Anne’s College Oxford; as well as conferences organized by
(among others) the British New Testament Society, the Catholic Biblical
Association of America, the Institutum Iudaicum in Brussels, the Society
for New Testament Studies (SNTS), and the Tyndale Fellowship. Librari-
ans at my successive “home” University Libraries of Cambridge, St An-
drews and Oxford were most helpful at various stages of the project, as
were those at Tyndale House Cambridge, the Speer Library at Princeton
Theological Seminary (especially David Stewart and Kate Skrebutenas)
and the Firestone Library at Princeton University; the Libraries of the Pon-
tifical Biblical Institute (especially Fr. James L. Dugan) and the Pontifical
Institute of Christian Archaeology in Rome; and the Ecole Biblique and the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Preface VII
Martin Hengel of blessed memory gave of his time and inimitable en-
ergy in several extensive conversations about this project, both in person
and on the telephone, in advance of his own little book on the subject
(Hengel 2006; ET Hengel 2010). Rami Arav of the Bethsaida Excavations
Project generously hosted me during a site visit to Tell Bethsaida in 1999,
and offered most helpful feedback in subsequent correspondence. Valuable
individual comments and advice have over the years come from numerous
other friends including James Carleton Paget, Stephen Chester, Michael
Gorman, Richard Hays, William Horbury, Kavin Rowe, Graham Stanton,
Todd Still, Michael Thompson, Peter Tomson and Iain Torrance. I am also
most grateful for the helpful feedback received from the members of my
fortnightly postgraduate colloquium in Biblical and Early Christian Studies
at Oxford when discussing an early draft of material slated for the second
book mentioned above.
As always, I am grateful to a number of old friends who have continued
their long custom of unstinting hospitality during periods of intensive writ-
ing or research, including Steve and Rachel James at their Welsh cottage in
Rowen, and Albrecht and Sabine Haizmann at their home in Tübingen-
Hirschau.
I also owe special thanks to my new Keble College colleague and for-
mer doctoral student Christopher Hays for his invaluable work in indexing
and preparing the book for the press.
Mohr Siebeck’s policy for the present monograph series is that indexes
should cover ancient sources, modern authors, and subjects. Among these,
the subject index is deliberately concise and selective, intended primarily
to highlight themes that occur in multiple chapters and might not be obvi-
ous from the table of contents. The index of modern authors, by contrast,
aims to reference the contributions of most of the major conversation part-
ners, even those cited on only a few occasions. The ancient source index
should be exhaustive.
One other point would bear saying first rather than last. I share every
husband’s and father’s conflicted sense of gratitude and guilt in reflecting
on a completed professional assignment: on the one hand a deep thankful-
ness for the generous and unwavering support of my family – and on the
other hand an equally profound unease at too many hours of doubtful merit
spent in the study or otherwise away from home. At one level Francis Ba-
con may have been right to hold, in a kind of riff on a theme of St Paul,
that wife and children constitute “impediments to great enterprises, either
of virtue or mischief.” But as one who married late, reluctantly, unhappily
and without children, Bacon could not begin to appreciate that the love and
loyalty that sustain these “impediments” bear testimony to a price paid not
just by the “great enterpriser” but by his nearest and dearest too. Taken
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VIII Preface
with due seriousness, this calculus of enterprise soon subverts conven-
tional prejudices of success. This book, and my gratitude for my family’s
support in producing it, can hardly compensate for the cost to them.
In the end, perhaps, the early church’s Petrine memory itself lends a
touch of exemplary human warmth to the shape of this domestic challenge.
Although taking his itinerant message and ministry all the way from Pales-
tine to Rome, Peter was traditionally regarded as travelling in the company
of his wife (and in some later traditions a handicapped daughter), to whom
he reached out in encouragement to “Remember the Lord!” on the very day
they both bore witness with their lives.2 May study of this apostle assist
that same encouragement to remember.
M.B.
Oxford, St Peter & St Paul 2010

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2 See Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 7.11.63; cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.30.2.
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Table of Contents
Preface ............................................................................................................. V(cid:2)
Table of Contents ........................................................................................... IX(cid:2)
List of Abbreviations ................................................................................... XIII(cid:2)
Part One: Simon Peter Re-Remembered ................................................ 1(cid:2)
Chapter 1: Re-Introducing the “Remembered” Peter ..................................... 3(cid:2)
The Intrinsic Case for Peter .............................................................................. 5(cid:2)
Why We Need a Fresh Approach ..................................................................... 8(cid:2)
How We Know Simon Peter .......................................................................... 12(cid:2)
From Memory to Tradition ............................................................................. 17(cid:2)
“Living” Memory and the Birth of History .................................................... 18(cid:2)
“Living” Memory – The Proof of the Pudding............................................... 22(cid:2)
Conclusion: Memory and History .................................................................. 29(cid:2)
Chapter 2: Assessing Peter between Jesus and Paul ..................................... 31(cid:2)
The Elusive “Third Quest” ............................................................................. 32(cid:2)
What’s New in the New Perspective? ............................................................ 34(cid:2)
E. P. Sanders ................................................................................................... 36(cid:2)
Peter and Sanders’ Paul ............................................................................. 37(cid:2)
Peter and Sanders’ Jesus ............................................................................ 39(cid:2)
Sanders on Peter, Paul, and Jesus .............................................................. 41(cid:2)
John Dominic Crossan .................................................................................... 41(cid:2)
Peter and Crossan’s Jesus .......................................................................... 42(cid:2)
Peter and Crossan’s Paul ............................................................................ 43(cid:2)
Crossan on Peter, Paul, and Jesus .............................................................. 47(cid:2)
N. T. Wright ................................................................................................... 48(cid:2)
Peter and Wright’s Paul ............................................................................. 48(cid:2)
Peter and Wright’s Jesus ............................................................................ 49(cid:2)
Wright on Peter, Paul, and Jesus ................................................................ 51(cid:2)
James D. G. Dunn ........................................................................................... 51(cid:2)
Peter and Dunn’s Paul ................................................................................ 51(cid:2)
Peter and Dunn’s Jesus .............................................................................. 54(cid:2)
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