446 CHAPTER 26 APOCALYPSE OF PETER (GREEK) DAN BATOVICI 1. INTRODUCTION The Apocalypse of Peter is one of the oldest Judeo-Christian apocalyptic books, composed around the middle of the second century, 1 narrating the second coming of Christ, the eschatological conflagration, a catalogue of torments in a tour of hell, and a description of paradise in a succession of visions offered to Peter. This apocalypse poses several problems for the modern reader, the first difficulty being the fact that there are several ancient texts that are referred to today as the Apocalypse of Peter, with no connection of contents between them: a) the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (or Revelation of Peter) found in the Nag Hammadi codex VII (NHC VII, 3), probably originally composed in Greek; 2 b) the so- called Arabic Apocalypse of Peter, otherwise a modern collection named the Book of the Rolls in manuscript Mingana Syr. 70, written in Syriac script; 3 and c) the early Christian Apocalypse of Peter, composed in Greek but surviving for the most part in Ethiopic. The subject matter of this chapter is this last-mentioned text, the apocalyptic text that was com- posed and was known under this title in early Christianity. 1.1 Language A riddle that has shaped the history of research devoted to this apocalypse is posed by its textual integrity. While it was composed in Greek, there are precious few extant Greek fragments with only small sections, and the complete text is only preserved in Ethiopic, itself presumably translated from a now lost Arabic version. Only one Greek witness, the so-called Akhmȋm codex, spans over several pages. However, since the quotations from the Apocalypse of Peter preserved by early Greek fathers confirm the Ethiopic text and not that of the Akhmȋm Codex, it becomes evident that the latter is a different recension and therefore an edited text, secondary to the one preserved in Ethiopic. As a result, this book is sometimes referred to as the “Greek (Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter” in schol- arly literature. 1. “At present there is a general consensus that it must date from the last decades of the first half of the second century AD, given its mention by Clement of Alexandria” (Jan N. Bremmer, “Orphic, Roman, Jewish and Christian Tours of Hell: Observations on the Apocalypse of Peter,” in Other Worlds and Their Relation to This World: Early Jewish and Ancient Christian Traditions, ed. by T. Nicklas et al., JSJSup 143 [Leiden: Brill, 2010], 309). 2. On which, see The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (Nag-Hammadi-Codex VII,3), TU 144 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012). Besides this Coptic version, there are several Arabic Apocalypses or Revelations of Peter, with no connec- tion to the book discussed here. 3. Alphonse Mingana, “Apocalypse of Peter,” in Woodbrooke Studies, vol. 3, fasc. 6 (Cambridge: Heffer and Sons, 1931), 93–449. Alin Suciu is currently editing yet another Arabic text that is a revelation to Peter.