How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee

by Bart D. Ehrman

One of the Nag Hammadi texts that espouses this kind of Gnostic separationist Christology most poignantly is the book we considered in Chapter 5 called the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which is allegedly narrated by none other than Jesus’s closest disciple, Peter. In the final portion of the text, Peter is said to be speaking with Jesus, the Savior, when suddenly he sees a kind of double of Christ who is seized by his enemies and crucified. Peter is understandably confused and asks Christ: “What am I seeing O Lord? Is it you yourself whom they take?”10 His confusion increases because then he sees yet another Christ figure above the cross and asks in his dismay: “who is this one above the cross, who is glad and laughing? And is it another person whose feet and hands they are hammering?” (Apocalypse of Peter 81).