My LORD’s BibleThe Preaching of Peter (Fragments) 1
The Preaching (Kerygma) of Peter, a lost early-2nd-century book in Peter's name, probably from Egypt: an orthodox missionary sermon that tells its hearers to worship the one God 'not after the manner of the Greeks', with their idols and animal worship, nor as the Jews, and calls Christians a 'third race' who worship him in a new way; the risen Lord sends the twelve apostles into the world after twelve years. Known almost entirely from quotations by Clement of Alexandria (about AD 200); Heracleon and Origen also knew it, and the apologist Aristides seems to have used it. The last verse comes from 'the Doctrine of Peter' quoted by Origen, which James thought was probably the same book (it agrees with a saying in the Gospel according to the Hebrews); other fragments of a 'Teaching of Peter' that James judged different are not given. This is M. R. James's translation (1924); the quotations only, with Clement's comments cut and marked '…'. Not part of any church's canon.
2Know ye then that there is one God who made the beginning of all things and hath power over their end; and: The invisible who seeth all things, uncontainable, who containeth all, having need of nought, of whom all things stand in need and for whose sake they exist, incomprehensible, perpetual, incorruptible, uncreated, who made all things by the word of his power …
See also: Acts 17:25, Hebrews 1:3
3This God worship ye, not after the manner of the Greeks …
4Carried away by ignorance and not knowing God as we do, according to the perfect knowledge, but shaping those things over which he gave them power, for their use, even wood and stones, brass and iron, gold and silver (forgetting) their material and proper use, they set up things subservient to their existence and worship them; and what things God hath given them for food, the fowls of the air and the creatures that swim in the sea and creep upon the earth, wild beasts and fourfooted cattle of the field, weasels too and mice, cats and dogs and apes; yea, their own eatables do they sacrifice as offerings to eatable gods, and offering dead things to the dead as to gods, they show ingratitude to God, by these practices denying that he exists …
See also: Romans 1:23
5Neither worship ye him as do the Jews, for they, who suppose that they alone know God, do not know him, serving angels and archangels, the month and the moon: and if no moon be seen, they do not celebrate what is called the first sabbath, nor keep the new moon, nor the days of unleavened bread, nor the feast (of tabernacles?), nor the great day (of atonement).
See also: Colossians 2:16, Colossians 2:18
6So then do ye, learning in a holy and righteous sort that which we deliver unto you, observe it, worshipping God through Christ in a new way. For we have found in the Scriptures, how the Lord saith: Behold, I make with you a new covenant, not as the covenant with your fathers in mount Horeb. He hath made a new one with us: for the ways of the Greeks and Jews are old, but we are they that worship him in a new way in a third generation (or race), even Christians.
See also: Jeremiah 31:31
7Peter says that the Lord said to the apostles: If then any of Israel will repent, to believe in God through my name, his sins shall be forgiven him: (and) after twelve years go ye out into the world, lest any say: We did not hear.
8In the Preaching of Peter the Lord says: I chose out you twelve, judging you to be disciples worthy of me, whom the Lord willed, and thinking you faithful apostles; sending you unto the world to preach the Gospel to men throughout the world, that they should know that there is one God; to declare by faith in me [the Christ] what shall be, that they that have heard and believed may be saved, and that they which have not believed may hear and bear witness, not having any defence so as to say 'We did not hear'.
See also: Matthew 28:19
9And to all reasonable souls it hath been said above: Whatsoever things any of you did in ignorance, not knowing God clearly, all his sins shall be forgiven him.
See also: Acts 17:30
10But we having opened the books of the prophets which we had, found, sometimes expressed by parables, sometimes by riddles, and sometimes directly (authentically) and in so many words naming Jesus Christ, both his coming and his death and the cross and all the other torments which the Jews inflicted on him, and his resurrection and assumption into the heavens before Jerusalem was founded, even all these things as they had been written, what he must suffer and what shall be after him. When, therefore, we took knowledge of these things, we believed in God through that which had been written of him.
See also: Luke 24:27
11For we know that God commanded them in very deed, and without the Scripture we say nothing.