What Would an Ancient Person Think of a Talking Cross? Reading Gospel of Peter 10,38–42 as Ancient Mediterranean Religious Literature

Abstract Scholars have paid surprisingly scant attention to a strange but important element of the Evangelium Petri —namely, the walking, talking cross ( Evangelium Petri 10,38–42). Those who have given the cross proper attention have not produced convincing or sufficiently analytical interpretations of it. This article argues that the general scholarly inattention owes in part to a failure to acknowledge the “weirdness” of the text, and that to understand the role of the cross here, we must first see it as a manifestation of ancient Mediterranean religious convictions. In doing so, we observe that the Evangelium Petri draws from Greco-Roman epiphany narratives and idol discourse in order to deify Jesus and to justify his then-contemporary worship.