ApostateAbe

All four gospels tell of the story of Peter denying Christ. As Simon Peter seems to have become the leader of the Christian movement after Jesus, he may have been the one responsible for first inventing this story. It may have helped to explain to Christians why perhaps he initially abandoned his commitment to Jesus in the face of a death threat from Pontius Pilate.

If you read only one of the gospel accounts, then Peter comes off as a calm liar at first, increasing in defensiveness as the accusations mount. But that doesn't give the whole picture--you have got to read all four gospels to get a complete sense, and then you see that the accusations were various and incessant from the beginning, which drove Peter to be a ranting raving lunatic the whole time.

Accusation #1

• "You also were with Jesus of Galilee"
• "You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus,"
• "This man was with him."
• "You are not one of his disciples, are you?"

Accusation #2

• "This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth."
• "This fellow is one of them."
• "You also are one of them."
• "You are not one of his disciples, are you?"

Accusation #3

• "Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away."
• "Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean."
• "Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean."
• "Didn't I see you with him in the olive grove?"

Denial #1

• "I don't know what you're talking about,"
• "I don't know or understand what you're talking about,"
• "Woman, I don't know him,"
• "I am not."

Denial #2

• "I don't know the man!"
• "Man, I am not!"

Denial #3

• "I don't know the man!"
• "I don't know this man you're talking about."
• "Man, I don't know what you're talking about!"

Just kidding. Each gospel contains its own somewhat unique telling of the story, and they have differences that can't be resolved if you tried. I made an Excel table of the elements of each gospel telling of the story, and I highlighted the most striking differences in yellow.




The forum reduces the sizes of the images. Here are the URLs:

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/490...hristpart1.jpg
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/125...hristpart2.jpg

As you can see, the Gospel of Mark is the only gospel where the rooster crows twice. Also, none of the synoptic gospels agree with each other on who Accuser #2 is.

Despite the many variations, I think this particular story out of all the gospel stories probably has the most consistency among the four canonical gospels.