The Gospel According to Peter: A Study

In 1886, Egyptian archaeologists unearthed a Greek manuscript that would shatter comfortable assumptions about early Christianity: the Gospel according to Peter, an account of Jesus's trial, crucifixion, and resurrection that diverges from the canonical Gospels in unsettling ways. Walter Richard Cassels wrote this study in the immediate aftermath of the Akhmīm discovery, making him one of the first scholars to confront what this text meant for Christianity's foundational narratives. The Gospel of Peter places the crucifixion at the hands of Herod Antipas rather than Pontius Pilate, and its resurrection account reads like a fever dream of earthquake and rolling stone. Cassels situates this problematic text within the broader landscape of early Christian literature, examining its relationship to both accepted Gospels and the swirl of competing writings that early Christians debated. This is scholarship from an era when the boundaries of the New Testament were still being understood as historical questions rather than divine certainties. For readers interested in how Christianity's boundaries were drawn, and what was excluded in the process, Cassels provides a meticulous window into a pivotal moment in biblical scholarship.