and tranquillity? And how could they have confidently summoned their parents before the judgement seat of Christ to accuse them? saying: Thou, O Lord, didst not begrudge us this light that is common to all, but these exposed us to death, contemning thy commandment.
The word rendered care-taking in these passages is a very rare one— τημελοῠχος, tēmelouchos: so rare that it was mistaken by later readers for the proper name of an angel, and we find an angel Temeluchus in Paul, John, and elsewhere. A similar case is that of the word ταρταροχος, Tartaruchus, keeper of hell, which is applied to angels in our Apocalypse, and is also taken in the Ethiopic version, in Paul, and in other writings, to be a proper name.
4. From the Apocritica of Macarius Magnes (fourth century) of whom we know little. His book consists of extracts from a heathen opponent’s attack on Christianity (Porphyry and Hierocles are named as possible authors of it) and his own answers. The heathen writer says (iv. 6, 7):
And by way of superfluity let this also be cited which is said in the Apocalypse of Peter. He introduces the heaven, to be judged along with the earth, thus: The earth, he says, shall present all men to God to be judged in the day of judgement, being itself also to be judged along with the heaven that encompasseth it.
5. Ibid. And this again he says, which is a statement full of impiety: And every power of heaven shall be melted, and the heaven shall be rolled up like a book, and all the stars shall fall like leaves from the vine, and as the leaves from the fig-tree.
This very nearly coincides with Isa. xxxiv. 4, and does not occur in our other texts of the Apocalypse.
6. In an old Latin homily on the Ten Virgins found and published by Dom Wilmart (Bulletin d’anc. litt. et darchéol. chrét.) is this sentence:
The closed door is the river of fire by which the ungodly shall be kept out of the kingdom of God, as is written in Daniel and in Peter, in his Apocalypse. . . . That company of the foolish also shall arise and find the door shut, that is, the fiery river set against them. ;
The equivalent of all the above quotations is found in the Ethiopic text, with one exception, no. 5. The Akhmim text only contains something like no. 1 b: one indication out of many that it is a shortened and, I would say, secondary text.
B
THE AKHMIM FRAGMENT
which I should prefer to call Fragment II of the Gospel of Peter. It begins abruptly in a discourse of our Lord.
1 Many of them shall be false prophets, and shall teach ways
