Peter in the Early Church

Comprising the papers read at the 68th meeting of the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense, which was held in 2019, Peter in the Early Church: Apostle – Missionary – Church Leader reflects the abundance and striking variety of literary and non-literary early Christian traditions about Peter. Such variety has in the past led researchers to describe the figure of Peter as malleable. By adopting a wide range of scholarly ways of reading texts or posing questions, as is now characteristic of New Testament studies, the papers in this volume reflect and develop further recent challenges to the classic binaries of canonical vs. non-canonical, orthodox vs. heterodox or heretical, elite vs. popular, core vs. marginal, and “pure” vs. syncretistic. Thus in addition to demonstrating the productivity of plotting the various embodiments of Peter and their manifold interrelationships, this volume opens up new vistas and raises new questions about this most central yet enigmatic figure of early Christian memory.