Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory: The New Testament Apostle in the Early Church

After Jesus, Peter is the most frequently mentioned individual both in the Gospels and in the New Testament as a whole. He was the leading disciple, the "rock" on which Jesus would build his church. How can we know so little about this formative figure of the early church?

World-renowned New Testament scholar Markus Bockmuehl introduces the New Testament Peter by asking how first- and second-century sources may be understood through the prism of "living memory" among the disciples of the apostolic generation and the students of those disciples. He argues that early Christian memory of Peter underscores his central role as a bridge-building figure holding together the diversity of first-century Christianity. Drawing on more than a decade of research, Bockmuehl applies cutting-edge scholarship to the question of the history and traditions of this important but strangely elusive figure. Bockmuehl provides fresh insight into the biblical witness and early Christian tradition that New Testament students and professors will value.

Markus Bockmuehl (PhD, University of Cambridge) is the Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of Keble College. He previously taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of St. Andrews. Bockmuehl is the author or editor of numerous books, including Seeing the Word, Scripture's Doctrine and Theology's Bible, Paradise in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Views, and Redemption and Resistance: The Messianic Hopes of Jews and Christians in Antiquity.