Kosh

If this has been discussed, please point me to the thread.

Does anyone have a link to indicate what evidence we have for the existence of Peter (as a supposed follower of Jesus)?

Thanks.

Toto

See recent thread on Simon Peter

Kosh

Thanks, thought I remembered something.

Vinnie

Right here. I pointed out the argument from Jesus' followers.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...19#post1541819

capnkirk

The book that Toto referenced The Legend of Saint Peter can be ordered here. I ordered and received a copy after it was recommended to me in the thread that I started on this subject a while back. It is packed with interesting information. His chapter called The Mythological Background of the Peter Figure is alone worth the price of the book.

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capnkirk

This entire post is composed of quotations and paraphrases of the material presented in The Legend of Saint Peter by Arthur Drews. (copyright 1997 American Atheist Press).

The mythological roots of Peter's receipt of the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven: In many of the mythologies of the near-Eastern cultures, rocks were thought to be beings with souls because one could strike sparks from them -- and fire and soul in the thinking of primitive peoples become comingled as one and the same idea. Thus it was possible to consecrate holy stones or alter stones, so that one could, like Jacob, anoint the rock at Bethel or Luz with oil and christen it in the name of a particular deity. The ancient Israelites also knew of the "rock-god" and amalgamated him with the idea of the sun as the divine savior-king. In the (so-called) Song of Moses (Deut 32) the "rock" of the Israelites is glorified above the rock of Israel's enemies, and one can see that the rock here is conceived to be a generative and parturient (in the throes of birth-labor) being. We encounter the rock-god once again in the passage in Daniel where he speaks of a stone being removed, without human hands, from a mountain and falling down to crush the colossus with feet of clay -- which Daniel interprets as the advent of the Messiah.

In Persian belief, with which the Jews became acquainted during their captivity, the god who was both mediator and savior bore the name Mithra, and he also served as the "son" of the sky-god, Ahura Mazda. Thus Mithra was a close cousin to Hadad, Tammuz, and Adonis, as well as to the Jewish Messiah. Associated with this cult also there was a wine sacrament, a "spiritual-drink" as Jesus is called by Paul (1 Cor 10:4) and Mithra was called simply the "Rock-god", the "Rock-born" (Petrogenes, ho ek petras, Saxigenus), Indeed, he was simply called "the Rock" (Petros, Peter).

Just as Moses (Moyses) strikes water from a rock with a staff, and just as his analog Doinysus -- who also bore the name Myses -- causes wine to frow from a rock with his Thyrsus staff, so too Mithra conjures water or wine out of rocks, and supplicants come to refresh parched palates. Indeed, so closely related is the Persian Mithra to the Jewish savior-king that he bears mystical keys -- so that like Jesus, he can unlock the gates of heaven for mankind by revealing the divine words of redemption. Accordingly, the "rock-man" of the gospels bears the same relation to the rock-god and gatekeeper Jesus as the time-god of the Persian religion bears to Mithra. Yet the Persian Mithra appears to be a reincarnation (derived from the earlier myth) of the Phoenecian sky-god (Baal Shamim) which was sympathetically disposed to humankind -- the most important form revealed of the oldest and highest sky-god. In the imagination of his followers, he serves as the supposed founder and first governor of the church.

Now it is not just the name Peter which belies the mythical nature of our character, but also the other name which he bears in the gospels. For the name Simon (Simeon) also is the name of a god. It is in fact the same name as Sem or Shamash, the names by the sun-god was called in the Near East, and whose human incarnation we encounter as the biblical personality of Simson or Samson (i.e. "little sun"). In Phoenicia, Sem was another name for Melkart (with whom the later Hercules is identified) who was worshipped In Egypt and across North Africa also.

In semi-Gentile Samaria, whose population not only carried out active commerce with the Phoenicians, but had become strongly infiltrated by Phoenician elements after the Babylonian captivity, Simon (Semo) was known by the epithet ho Megas (i.e. "the great one") and even at the time of Jesus served as the highest god. Out of this, Acts made up a Magus or magician. Simon Magus, who turned heads of the people representing himself as "some great one", the "great power of God", and was indeed considered a god and is supposed to have entered into competition with the gospel (Acts 8:9). According to Jerome (Commentarium in Matthaeum, 24), Simon is supposed to have said, "I am the word of god, the Paraclete (advocate), omnipotent, God all-in-all." Irenaeus (Against Heresies, Book I, 23), reports that he claimed that he was the same one who in Judaea appeared as the "Son", in Samaria as the "Father descended", and to the remaining peoples as the "Holy Spirit arrived". According to Justin Martyr (Apology I, 26 & 56) and Irenaeus (ibid), Simon Magus is supposed to have traveled around with a certain Helena, whom he represented as an incarnation of divine wisdom (Sophia). According to the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, he is supposed to have asserted that she had descended to earth from heaven, and was the divine Mistress, and was the essence of existence, but actually she had been extracted from a bordello in Tyre.

In reality, however the Helena of Simon Magus is Selene, the Syrian moon goddess Ashera-Astarte, who thanks to her lascivious cult was notorious throughout antiquity and was worshipped in Tyre especially (thus the story that she derived from a bordello in that city). In the (Pseudo-Clementine) Recognitions (2, 14), she is herself referred to as Luna, and her partnership with Simon Magus relates to the simple circumstance that in Syro-Phoenician thought the moon goddess, as divine intelligence (Sophia) was coordinate with the sun god, and the two together first expressed the entire essence of divinity. Perhaps herein is where we must look to find the reason for the Simon-Peter of the gospels being the only one of the disciples who was married. The idea that he actually is identical with Simon Magus emerges from the antagonism between him and the Samaritan magician, as this is expressed in Acts (ch 8). As so often is the case in the mythological way of looking at things, we find the mythical regenerate or double of a god, who wants his divotees to install him in his elder's place, caused to struggle with his older counterpart.

In the preceding, I have begun to flesh out the mythological ties surrounding the Peter of the gospels (as well as several other ties to Hebrew characters and stories), and hinted at their impact on our understanding of his construction there. I hope that I have stimulated your interest sufficiently to pursue the rest of the story.

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