Theos-Talk Archives (February 2005 Message tt00784)

"In the Sepher Toldos Jeshu,* a Hebrew manuscript of great 
antiquity, the version about Peter is different. Simon Peter, it 
says, was one of their own brethren, though he had somewhat departed 
from the laws, and the Jewish hatred and persecution of the apostle 
seems to have existed but in the fecund imagination of the fathers. 
The author speaks of him with great respect and fairness, calling 
him "a faithful servant of the living God," who passed his life in 
austerity and meditation, "living in Babylon at the summit of a 
tower," composing hymns, and preaching charity. He adds that Peter 
always recommended to the Christians not to molest the Jews, but as 
soon as he was dead, behold another preacher went to Rome and 
pretended that Simon Peter had altered the teachings of his master. 
He invented a burning hell and threatened every one with it; 
promised miracles, but worked none. 

How much there is in the above of fiction and how much of truth, it 
is for others to decide; but it certainly bears more the evidence of 
sincerity and fact on its face, than the fables concocted by the 
fathers to answer their end. 

We may the more readily credit this friendship between Peter and his 
late co-religionists as we find in Theodoret the following 
assertion: "The Nazarenes are Jews, honoring the ANOINTED (Jesus) as 
a just man and using the Evangel according to Peter."** Peter was a 
Nazarene, according to the Talmud. He belonged to the sect of the 
later Nazarenes, which dissented from the followers of John the 
Baptist, and became a rival sect; and which -- as tradition goes -- 
was instituted by Jesus himself."
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/isis/iu2-03.htm


Perry