This story is narrated in the Gospel of Nicodemus and may be the meaning behind 1 Peter 3: 18-22.

The word docetai ( illusionists ) referring to early groups who denied Jesus's humanity, first occurred in a letter by Bishop Serapion of Antioch ( 197-203 ), who discovered the doctrine in the Gospel of Peter, during a pastoral visit to a Christian community using it in Rhosus, and later condemned it as a forgery.

* Gospel of Peter

Some feel it also suggests that the inhabitants of Galatia at his time were using a gospel or gospels disagreeing with Paul's beliefs, which Gospel of Barnabas could be one of them ( although the Gospel of Peter would seem a more natural candidate, as in the light of the second letter.

The fathers of Christianity included those who had been disciples of Jesus such as Peter, Matthew, James and John, as well as others who may never have met him but were either influenced by accounts of his teachings such as the Gospel writers Mark and Luke, or described having spiritual revelations of his divine nature, such as Paul of Tarsus who actively encouraged the founding of Christian communities or " churches " after his conversion.

St. Paul in opposing his enemies in Galatia names John explicitly along with Peter and James the Just ( the brother of Jesus ) as a " pillar of the Church ", and refers to the recognition which his Apostolic preaching of a Gospel free from the law received from these three, the most prominent men of the old Mother-Church at Jerusalem ( Galatians 2: 9 ).

Discusses issues of apostolic authority in the gospels and the Gospel of Peter the competition between Peter and Mary, especially in chapter 7, " The Replacement of Mary Magdalene: A Strategy for Eliminating the Competition.

In the Gnostic Acts of Peter and the Twelve, found with the Gospel of Thomas in the Nag Hammadi library, the travelling pearl merchant Lithargoel is eventually revealed to be Jesus.

He was later restored to faith by the apostle Peter ; he then became Peter ’ s interpreter, wrote the Gospel of Mark, founded the church of Africa, and became the bishop of Alexandria.

Mark the Evangelist wrote down the sermons of Peter, thus composing the Gospel according to Mark ( Eccl.

They claim that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the restoration of Jesus ' original church, has the authentic Priesthood authority, and all doctrines and ordinances of the Gospel, fulfilling many of the prophecies of Daniel, Isaiah and Malachi in the Old Testament and also the prophesies of Peter and Jesus in the New Testament.

Earlier, the Gospel of John talks about Simon Peter striking the ear from a servant of the high priest, named Malchus ( John 18: 10, KJV ).

: ` And this the Presbyter used to say is in the plural implying John the Elder would employ this argument multiple times in defense of Mark's Gospel: " Mark, being the recorder of Peter, wrote accurately but not in order whatever he remembered of the things either said or done by the Lord ; for he had neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but later, as I said, Peter, who used to make teachings according to the cheias, special kind of anecdote but not making as it were a systematic composition of the Lord's sayings ; so that Mark did not err at all when he wrote certain things just as he had recalled.

The fragmentary apocryphal Gospel of Peter exonerates Pilate of responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus, placing it instead on Herod and the Jews who, unlike Pilate, refuse to " wash their hands ".

* 1895-Africa Inland Mission formed by Peter Cameron Scott ; Japan Bible Society established ; Roland Allen sent as missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to its North China Mission.

The non-canonical Gospel of Peter is also a Passion narrative.

Another passion narrative is found in the fragmentary Gospel of Peter, long known to scholars through references, and of which a fragment was discovered in Cairo in 1884.

Serapion of Antioch urged the exclusion of the Gospel of Peter from the Church because Docetists were using it to bolster their theological claims, which Serapion rejected.

* Petronius ( centurion ), the centurion guarding the tomb of Jesus in the noncanonical Gospel of Peter

The Diatessaron ( c 160 – 175 ) is the most prominent Gospel harmony created by Tatian, an early Christian apologist and ascetic.

The harmony does not include Jesus ' encounter with the adulteress ( John 7: 53 – 8: 11 ), a passage that is generally considered to be a spurious late addition to the Gospel of John, with the Diatessaron itself often used as an early textual witness to support this.

It is equally unclear whether Tatian took the Syriac Gospel texts composited into his Diatessaron from a previous translation, or whether the translation was his own.

Where the Diatessaron records Gospel quotations from the Jewish Scriptures, the text appears to agree with that found in the Syriac Peshitta Old Testament rather than that found in the Greek Septuagint — as used by the original Gospel authors.

Resolution of these scholarly questions remained very difficult so long as no complete version of the Diatessaron in Syriac or Greek had been recovered ; while the medieval translations that had survived — in Arabic and Latin — both relied on texts that had been heavily corrected to conform better with later canonical versions of the separate Gospel texts.

The Diatessaron was used as the standard Gospel text in the liturgy of at least some sections of the Syrian Church for possibly up to two centuries and was quoted or alluded to by Syrian writers.

Frequently such versions have been constructed as Gospel harmonies, sometimes taking Tatian's Diatessaron as an exemplar ; other times proceeding independently.

The Diatessaron is thought to have been available to Muhammad, and may have led to his faulty conclusion in the Qur ' an that the Christian Gospel is one text or one book alone, without reference to the canonical authors or New Testament corpus ; he calls this supposed text the Injil.

With the gradual adoption of the Vulgate as the liturgical Gospel text of the Latin Church, the Latin Diatessaron was increasingly modified to conform to Vulgate readings.

The older mixed Vulgate / Diatessaron text type also appears to have continued as a distinct tradition, as such texts appear to underlie surviving 13th-14th century Gospel harmonies in Middle Dutch, Middle High German, Middle French, Middle English, Tuscan and Venetian ; although no example of this hypothetical Latin sub-text has ever been identified.

This Latin Diatessaron textual tradition has also been suggested as underlying the enigmatic 16th century Islam-inflected Gospel of Barnabas ( Joosten, 2002 ).

The name ' Diatessaron ' is Greek for ' through four '; the Syriac name for this gospel harmony is '' ( Ewangeliyôn Damhalltê ) meaning ' Gospel of the Mixed ' while in the other hand we have '' ( Evangelion de Mepharreshe ) meaning ' Gospel of the separated '.

Other students have noted a range of textual similarities between passages in the Gospel of Barnabas, and variously the texts of a series of late medieval vernacular harmonies of the four canonical gospels ( in Middle English and Middle Dutch, but especially in Middle Italian ); which are all speculated as deriving from a lost Vetus Latina version of the Diatessaron of Tatian.

* a layer derived from earlier source materials, almost certainly transmitted to the vernacular author / translator in Latin ; and comprising, at the least, those extensive passages in the Gospel of Barnabas that closely parallel pericopes in the canonical gospels ; but whose underlying text appears markedly distinct from that of the late medieval Latin Vulgate ( as for instance in the alternative version of the Lord's Prayer in chapter 37, which includes a concluding doxology, contrary to the Vulgate text, but in accordance with the Diatessaron and many other early variant traditions );

The success of Tatian's Diatessaron in about the same time period is "... a powerful indication that the fourfold Gospel contemporaneously sponsored by Irenaeus was not broadly, let alone universally, recognized.

Harris is convinced that the author borrowed from the canonical accounts, and he lists other literature that may have incorporated the Gospel of Peter, with special emphasis on the Diatessaron.

Perhaps his primary importance to the historian of Syriac literature lies in the zeal with which he strove to replace the Diatessaron or Gospel Harmony of Tatian with the four canonical Gospels, ordering that a copy of the latter should be placed in every church.

Also the earliest Gospel harmony, the Diatessaron of Tatian ( 160 – 175 AD ) refers to this incident which those standing on Golgotha witnessed.

The storyline of Jesus of Nazareth is a kind of cinematic Diatessaron, or “ Gospel harmony ”, blending the narratives of all four New Testament accounts.

Included among the topics on which he wrote are: the Apology of Aristides ( 1891 ), the Didache, Philo, the Diatessaron, the Christian Apologists, Acts of Perpetua, The Odes and Psalms of Solomon ( 1906 ), the Gospel of Peter, and other Western and Syriac texts, and numerous works on biblical manuscripts.

Diatessaronic texts such as the Liege Dutch Harmony, the Pepysian Gospel Harmony, Codex Fuldensis, The Persian Harmony, The Arabic Diatessaron, and the Commentary on the Diatessaron by Ephrem the Syrian have provided recent insights into Aramaic origins.

If so, it is unclear how much Tatian may have borrowed from this previous author in determining his own narrative sequence of Gospel elements.

To be sure, Justin's disciple Tatian placed the Gospel of John on the same level as the synoptics, but he also broke with the church on account of profound differences in faith -- poisoned, so Irenaeus thought, by the Valentinians and Marcion ( AH 1.

Works include the Evangelienbuch ( Gospel harmony ) of Otfried von Weissenburg, the Latin-German dictionary Abrogans, the magical Merseburg Incantations, and the Old High German translation of the theologian Tatian.