Peter the Apostle
PETER THE APOSTLE (d. 64? CE) was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus and, according to Roman Catholic tradition, the first pope. The earliest sources of information about Peter are such that it is not possible to draw an altogether clear distinction between those elements in the image of Peter that are derived from his role in the church prior to his death and those that derive from the Peter of later Christian remembrance and tradition. None of the surviving sources is primarily interested in Peter. Only a few, Galatians and 1 Corinthians, were written while Peter was still alive and by someone who certainly knew him. Those sources that give a more circumstantial account of Peter were written some years, often some decades, after his death. They incorporate the story of Peter into the story of Jesus and of the early church in such a way as to raise questions about the historicity of some of the details. Are accounts of Peter's prominent role among the apostles an accurate recollection of the way things actually happened, or are they a retrojection into the time of Jesus' ministry of the role that Peter would later play in the early church? No one denies that there is a substratum of fact or event behind the New Testament descriptions of Peter, but there is considerable disagreement about what that substratum is.
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