Early Christian Sources

home | contact
Consider reading the introduction and warnings before reading the material on this website.

Revelation of Peter (also called “Apocalypse of Peter”)

Brief description:

The Revelation of Peter claims to record a revelation that Jesus showed to his 12 disciples and which was recorded by Peter. The bulk of the content is a detailed description of the punishments of various sinners who receive various types of punishments according to their specific sins. It is probably a forgery, falsely attributed to Peter. Generally such works (commonly referred to as New Testament apocrypha or pseudepigrapha) are not listed on this website. However, The Revelation of Peter was quoted by several early Christian writers, especially Clement of Alexandria who seems to have considered it authoritative. It was influential enough that the Muratorian fragment lists it with the Revelation of John as one of the received books (although with a note that some do not allow it to be read in the assembly). Eusebius lists it as a spurious book in his Ecclesiastical History, however, even in Eusebius’s day (fourth century) it was still influential enough to need to be named as a spurious book. The early Christians seem to have eventually come to the consensus that this book was not authentic and for that reason it was not included in their New Testament collection. However, given the above facts, it seems to have had sufficient influence on early Christianity to justify its inclusion here. The date of this writing is unknown, however the fact that it is mentioned by Clement of Alexandria and the Muratorian fragment mean that it must have been written before the late second century. The text of The Revelation of Peter is known from a translation into Ethiopic and some Greek fragments.

Suggested first translation(s):

An easy-to-read translation that is freely available online is the one by Eric J. Beck from 2018 listed below. That translation is contained in pages 99-112 of the Ph.D. dissertation linked to below.

English translations:

Please send reports of missing translations, broken links or other errors/omissions to early@xpian.info.