Chapter 23

Further Revelations

The Apocalypse of Peter

Artist depiction of an angel giving Enoch a tour of the earth and its fate

Apocalypses, as we have previously seen, are a literary genre dating back to the pivotal influence of the Zoroastrian religion on Judaism during their period of 200 years of Persian dominance ending in 200 BCE—first manifested in The Book of Watchers and stories of Enoch. Each apocalypse (“revelation”) typically recounts the story of a human figure who is guided by an angel up through the heavens to God’s throne room, and is then provided with special wisdom, often in the form of visions of the future. Though the latter half of the book of Daniel is the only apocalypse that was accepted by the rabbis into the Hebrew Bible canon, and the Revelation of John is the only apocalypse eventually accepted into the New Testament, many other apocalypses were written by Jews and early Christians.

Artist depiction of Jesus teaching his inner disciples about the End Times

Rivaling the popularity of the Revelation of John among early Christian churches—even being included in some early formations of the New Testament canon—was The Apocalypse of Peter. Its account of Peter’s vision begins with the familiar story of Jesus, at the end of his earthly ministry, gathered with his disciples on the Mount of Olives, revealing to them the imminent events that will usher in the End Times.¹

Artist depiction of Peter asking Jesus additional questions about the End Time

Adding his own material to this scene, the author depicts Peter asking the savior for more details about the coming judgment of souls that will occur when the world is destroyed by fire. Jesus tells him that on the Day of Judgment, all those living shall be gathered together. The doors of hell shall open so that the dead may be gathered as well. Wild beasts and birds will be commanded to restore all the human flesh they have devoured. The archangel Uriel—who was first introduced in The Book of Watchers—will be appointed by God to oversee the resurrection of the dead.²

Artist depiction of an infographic of the many distinct sections of hell

While the righteous are taken up into heaven, the rest of humankind is destined to burn in everlasting fire, punished for all eternity. We encountered descriptions of specific forms of tortures in Hell in The Acts of Thomas, but this apocalypse predates that work and probably served as its inspiration. This writing, which may even predate The Acts of the Apostles, inaugurates the popular genre in which the author recounts imaginative and horrifying depictions of various eternal torments that are each intended to be suited to their accompanying sins.³

Artist depiction of blasphemers hung by their tongues over unending fire

Sinners, we are told, will be brought by angels into the everlasting fires of hell to be punished eternally. In his vision, Peter sees that blasphemers will be hung up by their tongues over unquenchable fire. Women who sinned by decorating their hair to incite men to commit fornication, and men who committed fornication with them, are hung up by the genitals over fire—despite their pleas of naivety, saying, “We didn’t know we would suffer everlasting punishment!” Those who committed or abetted acts of murder are thrown into a fiery pit where they are tortured by venomous beasts and plagued by endless worms.⁴

Artist depiction of murders and abettors being tortured by worms

Though none of the writings that became part of the New Testament canon have anything to say concerning abortion, it would seem that the act was viewed by some early Christians as a deadly sin. Such a notion was considered quite foreign and bizarre to nearly all other cultures in the Roman Empire and beyond. Here, though, women who purposefully terminated a pregnancy are made to reside up to their necks in a deep pit of “foulness and excrement” while forced to look at their aborted children as the infants cry to God that their mothers’ breast milk will congeal into flesh-devouring beasts that will torment their parents forever.⁵

Artist depiction of those who doubted the righteousness of Jesus being tortured with red hot irons

Additional horrors are reserved for those who harmed Christians attempting to spread the gospel. “A spirit of wrath will punish them with all manner of torment and a worm that never rests will devour their entrails.” People guilty of doubting the righteousness of Jesus will gnaw their own tongues as they are tortured with red-hot irons in their eyes. Those whose deceitfulness caused the death of martyrs will have their lips cut off and fire will shoot into their mouth and burn their innards.⁶

Artist depiction of those who caused the death of martyrs having fire poured into their mouths for eternity

Those who gathered riches instead of helping widows and orphans will be impaled together on a massive towering spike, wearing only rags and filthy clothes; while those who lent money for profit will be kept in excrement up to their knees. Worshipers of idols will spend eternity being driven by devils up a high cliff where they will be forced to jump off, then made to do the same again and again forever.⁷

Artist depiction of sorcerers and magicians on wheels in hell

Children are not spared from these appalling fates. “The angel Ezrael shall bring young boys and girls to show them all those being tortured,” writes the author, and “they shall be punished with…a multitude of wounds which flesh-devouring birds will inflict on them.” We are told that these are the ones who did not honor their parents or respect their elders. Young women who had sex before being married off by their parents “will be grievously punished and their flesh torn to pieces.” Hypocrites who gave to the poor and claimed to be righteous, but were not really righteous will spend eternity unable to see or speak, always stumbling onto flaming coals. Finally, those who were magicians and sorcerers will be hung on wheels of fire—like those seen in the similar vision of hell in the Acts of Thomas.⁸

Artist depiction of people in heaven getting satisfaction from watching their enemies suffer in hell

One might hope that such a grisly and detailed tour of hell would be offset by an equally beautiful and comforting visit to the realms of heaven, but describing the eternal bliss of the righteous does not seem to be a significant concern of the author. What we do hear of the “elect and righteous who are perfect in all uprightness”, is that they will get satisfaction out of watching “those who hated them” get punished with the various eternal torments outlined above. Those suffering the tortures, we are told, will call out, repenting and begging for mercy. But an angel will tell them that the time for repentance is over, and will then increase their torments.⁹

Artist depiction of Jesus leading a procession wearing flowers into heaven

As for eternity in heaven, we are told little beyond this: the righteous will wear flowers and Jesus will accompany them into his everlasting kingdom where he will “show them eternal good things”. The apocalypse ends with Peter vouching for the truth of all that he has written, and we are reminded that God has written the names of the righteous in heaven in the Book of Life.¹⁰

The Apocalypse of Paul

Artist depiction of a nobleman unearthing the Revelation of Paul

The author of this next work apparently read The Apocalypse of Peter and decided it didn’t go far enough in its descriptions of the torments of the damned in terms of length, detail, and creativity. This apocalypse achieved even greater popularity than its Peter-focused predecessor, greatly influencing popular notions of hell ever since, and directly inspiring the Italian poet Dante Alighieri to write The Inferno some 1,200 years later. Using a narrative frame, the story begins in the author’s present day. In the city of Tarsus, a certain nobleman has purchased the very house where the apostle Paul once lived. At the urgent insistence of an angel, the nobleman breaks open the foundation of the house to reveal a marble box containing a writing titled The Revelation of Paul, which is said to be a full accounting of the apostle’s angel-guided tour of heaven and hell. The contents of this lost work are then claimed to be faithfully recounted in the text that follows.¹¹

Artist depiction of a soul being warned by an angel not to forget its body

In conversation with an angel, the apostle Paul expresses keen interest in seeing what happens to the souls of the righteous and the sinners after death. Accordingly, he is shown a just man at the point of his death. Paul is able to see all the man’s desires and all his deeds in life—even those the man himself can’t remember. Holy angels then guide the man’s soul out of his body, giving his soul a stern warning that it must remember its body so it can be reunited with it on the Day of Resurrection. The soul meets its guardian angel who has “watched it everyday”, and is then taken up to heaven where the archangel Michael—also referred to here as “the Angel of the Covenant”—and an army of lesser angels are all worshiping at God’s feet. The case for the soul’s righteousness is made before the Lord, who then passes favorable judgment on it and orders Michael to have it join the Saints in a paradise of joy.¹²

Artist depiction of heaven as described in the Apocalypse of Paul

The apostle is then brought through a pair of great golden doors into a realm where only those who have “goodness and purity of body” are permitted. There he sees a river of milk and honey whose banks are lined with massive trees that each bear all manner of fruits, and the land itself is said to be seven times brighter than silver. The angel points out to Paul the souls of those who married in life, but did not have sex. Those who remained lifelong virgins without marrying, and those who were persecuted for their faith, are said to receive seven times as great a reward. Moving on, Paul sees all the infants slaughtered by King Herod. The apostle is then brought to the “north of the city” where the Jewish patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Lot, and Job are found by a river of wine. East of the city is a river of oil—presumably a precious fragrant oil—and here Paul sees all those who praised God their whole lives and had no pride. This is the extent of what we learn of the fate of the righteous and their eternity in Paradise.¹³

Artist depiction of angels throwing sinners into the torments of hell

Leaving heaven behind, Paul is then shown the fate of an impious man who went through life eating and drinking and enjoying what life offered. This man is said to have scoffed at the notion of an eternal punishment after death, saying he’d never known anyone who descended to Hell and returned to vouch for its existence. Upon his death, “evil angels” snatch the man’s soul from his body, giving him the same stern warning about needing to remember his body so he can reunite with it at the Resurrection. Despite the sinful life he is accused of leading, his soul is nonetheless admitted to God’s presence in heaven if only for the purpose of being judged—and its very presence causes angels to complain of its stink. Standing before God, the soul begs for mercy and insists it has not sinned, but this enrages God. An angel then produces a document which is said to be a record of all the sins that the man committed from age 15 onward. Judged irredeemable, the man’s soul is then entrusted to an angel named Tartaruchus to be led down into the “lower prison” of hell to be tormented there until the Great Day of Judgment. Immediately after his sentence is pronounced, a thousand surrounding angels cry out to God, “You are just, O Lord, and just are your judgments.”¹⁴

Christian theology struggled for centuries—and has perhaps never fully worked out—the logic of immediate post-death judgments and resultant punishments vis-à-vis what occurs on Judgment Day. Having souls judged just after they die solves the questions of “Where do souls reside for the—possibly thousands of years—between their death and the Great Day of Judgment? And what are their living conditions like? Are they the same for both saints and sinners?” On the other hand, once it is accepted that souls are judged individually right after their death, and then immediately sent to Paradise or Hell, it leaves open the difficult questions of “Why is there a need for a collective judgment at the End Times if everyone has already received their judgment and punishment or reward? Why bother with the Resurrection of the dead if people are just going to be judged exactly as they were after they died? Are those souls brought out of Hell for Judgment Day simply sent right back to Hell? Is there some chance one’s judgment could change, and a person who has spent a thousand years in torment could now somehow be accepted into Heaven? Or vice versa? Are we to understand that the Great Day of Judgment is simply pomp and pageantry?” Based on early Christian writings, we are left to wonder.¹⁵

Artist depiction of apostates and slanderers in a boiling river of fire

Here in The Apocalypse of Paul, as in several other early depictions, starting with The Book of Watchers, Hell is not depicted as a place deep under the earth, but rather it is located in a remote area of our planet’s surface. The angel now guides Paul across the “ocean that surrounds all the earth” and into a dark realm, until they reach the first area of torment for the damned, a river boiling with fire. Those forced to stand in the river up to their knees are said to be people who left the church due to idle disputes. Those for whom the fiery river reaches up to their navel are those who have participated in the Eucharist, but then fornicated and sinned. Those immersed up to their lips are church members who slandered each other, while those drowned up to their eyebrows are those who plotted spitefully against their neighbors.¹⁶

Artist depiction of a fornicating church presbyter torn apart again and again forever

In an area to the north, Paul hears voices weeping and crying out, “O Lord, have pity on us!”, but no pity is shown to these souls who “did not hope in the Lord” during life. They reside at the bottom of an abyss, and each time a soul is thrown into it, it takes 50 years for it to reach the bottom. The angel observes that Paul is feeling sorry for these people, and so chides him for imagining he knows better than God how such souls should be treated. Paul is next shown an old man—a church presbyter who committed fornication—who is now eternally tortured by angels who use iron devices with three hooks to tear at his bowels. Beside him, a deacon who stole donations and committed fornication, has worms coming out of his mouth and nostrils as he screams, “Have pity on me!” Meanwhile, a bishop of the church who did not show care for widows and orphans, is pushed into a fire that reaches up to his knees while evil angels strike his face with stones, preventing him from even saying, “have pity on me!”, and a church scripture reader who did not keep the precepts of God now forever has his lips and tongue sliced with a great fiery razor.¹⁷

Artist depiction of people who practiced evil magic arts drowning in a pit filled with blood

In another area, those who practiced “evil magic arts” are relegated to a pit filled with blood, while women who “defiled their virginity” unbeknownst to their parents now have burning chains around their necks and are led off by “four terrifying angels” to “unceasingly pay the proper penalties.” Those who harmed widows and orphans, meanwhile, reside in a place of ice and snow—naked, with their hands and feet cut off. Those who pledged to keep a fast, but broke the fast are now hung over a stream of fresh water with many fresh fruits just beyond reach. People who had sex with prostitutes hang by their eyebrows or by their hair over a river of fire. And those who had sex with people of the same gender are smeared with blood and dust in a pit of sulfur and flames.¹⁸

Intriguingly, Paul is then led away from these places of torment to a different great pit held closed by seven seals. Paul is given authority to remove the seals, and when he does, a stench is released which is “impossible to bear”. The people kept here, the angel explains, are those who claim that “the holy Mary is not the mother of God” and that “the Lord did not become man out of her”. This, it would seem, bears evidence to there still being pockets of Christianity that, in the mid to late 100s CE, had not accepted the story of a historical Jesus. Those who continued the original Christian worship of a heavenly Lord Jesus and either rejected the gospels outright or considered them merely parables for higher truths are here singled out for even more horrible fates.¹⁹

Artist depiction of an angel opening the entrance to a particularly foul smelling region of hell

Along with such believers, this special pit is also home to those who deny other Roman church doctrines: those who say that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are not actually the flesh and blood of Jesus; and those who claim there is no bodily resurrection of the dead. At the close of Paul’s tour of hell, a remarkable thing happens that is unparalleled in any other known early Christian writing. Gabriel and then Jesus himself descend over the pits of torment. Seeing the savior and the archangel, those inside cry out as one for mercy. But whereas God has made clear that the time for such mercy is past, here Jesus announces he is instituting a new policy: for the sake of Gabriel and Paul, all the denizens of hell will be allowed a single day of rest, once per year, on the anniversary of Jesus’s death.²⁰

Artist depiction of biblical patriarchs and Mary in the Garden of Eden

Before the apocalypse ends, Paul is briefly returned to Paradise which is now described in terms making it clear that it is one and the same as the Garden of Eden from the book of Genesis. Many famous residents come to greet Paul, including the holy Mary, Moses, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Elijah, and other patriarchs and prophets, each one blessing him. Ending his writing on a viciously anti-Jewish note, his guiding angel then relates to Paul that when the impious and unfeeling Jews crucified the Son of God, all the beings of heaven lamented and mourned. And this is why the everlasting fires and worms of Hell have been prepared for them.²¹

Continue Reading:

Chapter 24: Christians in a Roman World

Footnotes

1
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
2
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
3
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
4
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
5
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
6
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
7
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
8
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
9
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
10
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
11
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
12
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
13
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
14
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
15
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
16
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
17
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
18
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
19
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
20
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.
21
Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA.