The former Jesuit turned biblical critic John Dominic Crossan believes that the Gospel Passion narratives are based on a common source, the "Cross Gospel", which no longer exists in that form. This Cross Gospel was a concoction of the early Church, retelling Jesus's Passion by way of disparate Old Testament verses. Its aim was to prove that Jesus, even through death, was nonetheless the Messiah, by way of showing that every element of the Passion was predicted by Scripture. (Crossan p. 10)
If anything Crossan's thesis should appeal even more to me than to Crossan. Crossan also thinks that the Gospel of John depends on Mark (p. 22). I think that the sources of John and Mark were independent of each other, and that Mark was later revised to counter John's source. But proto-Mark and proto-John still share major details of the Passion. Crossan's thesis if true removes a major obstacle from my own thesis, an obstacle Crossan does not face.
However Crossan also thinks that the Cross Gospel is a stratum of the Gospel of Peter, an apocryphal Passion told from Peter's point of view. This Gospel is now found in the Akhmim Fragment.
This project will assume Crossan's base theory that there was a Cross Gospel, that it was "prophecy historicised", and (if only for the sake of argument) that all five evangelists - including Peter - had access to it. Under Crossan's criteria, where a Passion event matches Scripture, the version of that event that matches Scripture most closely and/or explicitly is the version closest to the Cross Gospel story.
This project will investigate how closely each of the evangelists follow this model of the CG. In the end, I hope to uncover whether it is more likely that Peter depended on the CG directly, as Crossan believes; or else if it came from more prosaic sources like the known Gospels.
Two of the examples Crossan uses seem to show Peter reflecting the Cross Gospel, but in fact the parallels are better explained otherwise.
LXX Psalm 68 is the scriptural proof text for "vinegar and gall" in the death of the Messiah. In that psalm, it is enemies who provide the wine. Mark 15:23 has enemies gave vinegar to Jesus, and against Jesus's wishes. In 15:36, the wine is given out of curiousity, and while still not friendly is at least neutral. Therefore 15:23 is particularly important to those who require the scriptural antecedent, and 15:36 is not. The Cross Gospel would have agreed with Mark 15:23 and Luke 23:36 against Mark 15:32 and John 18.
The Gospel of Peter 5 seems to side with Mark 15:23, Luke, and the CG, in that the enemies (the Jewish leaders in Peter's case) have selfish reasons to help Jesus out and are not doing him any favours. Peter also sides with Luke 23:46 against Mark 15:32 in having only one cry from Jesus - the coherent one in Mark 15:31 - and placing the wine before that latter event.
But Peter sides with Luke and Mark 15:32 against Mark 15:23 in placing the wine during the crucifixion rather than immediately before it (15:24 in Mark). In fact, Peter goes further: with Mark 15:32, against even Luke, it places it after the darkness. The wine in Mark 15:32 is secondary to Mark and therefore the CG that supposedly preceded it, an insertion based on proto-John. If Peter is solely based on CG readings, it should match Mark 15:23 or even Luke 23:36; why does it place the wine incident so close to Mark 15:32?
On the other side, the Cross Gospel would have agreed with John (who had a narrative source for his Passion too) against the other three in that someone's legs went unbroken. Here again, Peter takes the side closer to the CG. However, Peter links the anecdote with the thief defending Jesus, and has the centurion spare "his" legs - the owner of which is left ambiguous. John explicitly links the legs with Jesus and their sparing with Scripture. Again, the canonical version beats Peter as a Cross Gospel reading - at least for the leg anecdote.
Moreover, the link between leg-breaking and the repentant thief is absent from John, and Peter was ambiguous about whose leg was actually broken. This hints that Peter was the one who made that link, and that the two anecdotes were originally disconnected. In addition, the story of the repentant thief has no grounding in Scripture; this alone disqualifies it from the CG as defined above. The story has two themes to it that appeal to Luke particularly - repentance for the sinful, and salvation for the poor - so a more economical proposal is that Peter was borrowing from Luke here.
The content of Jesus's cry is similar in Peter 5 and in Mark 15; but Mark cites the Psalm directly where Peter cries out about his power. Here again Mark 15 has the CG reading closer than Peter's.
Crossan does not exactly bolster his case when he compares Peter with Matthew, either (pp. 171-183). There he posits that Matthew used Peter concerning the guards at the tomb, but also that Peter was developing a still-earlier tradition, now seen in Mark, Luke, and John, in which there were no guards.
This project took as a starting point that the Cross Gospel existed, and neither proves nor disproves that portion of Crossan's thesis. But assuming it did exist, this project has I believe shown that the Gospel of Peter does not reflect it in any way independently of the four canonicals. The Gospel of Peter is a harmony of Luke, modern Mark, and some version of John. Nothing more.
Any thoughts? e-mail me :^) zimriel@sbcglobal.net
The first version of this project was written 13 May 2002. 2 June, took into account the changes to the "Vinegar" page. 13 July, 31 Dec: worded better.