peters denial

my study for preparation of Art & Faith on Tuesday.

Luke 22:31-34  & 55-62

Mark 14:27-31 & 66-72

Matthew 26: 33-35 & 69-75

John 18: 15-27

-Source: The Four Portraits of Jesus    Mark L. Strauss

p. 191

"While facing death, fear, and dread Jesus remains faithful to his calling.  In Gethsamane, he is "deeply distressed and troubled" and "overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."  In agony, he prays that this cup of suffering may be taken away, yet he remains submissive to the Father's will.

In contrast to Jesus' faithfulness stands the failure of the disciples.  When Jesus predicts that they will all fall away, Peter and the rest vehemently deny it.  yet in Gethsemane, they cannot stay awake and pray.  When Judas arrives with a mob to arrest Jesus, everyone deserts him and flees.  Peter shows some courage by following at a distance but then fails miserably by denying him three times.  The narrator uses this sandwiching technique to contrast Jesus' confession before the Sanhedrin (14:55-65) with Peter's denial that he even knows Jesus (14:53-54, 66-72)."

pg. 236   - mentions disciples failure in contrast with the steadfastness of that of the women who are beside Jesus.

Source: IVP BIBLE BACKGROUND COMMENTARY new testament

on Matthew-

"ancient sources typically regarded the rooster as a reliable reporteer of the advent of dawn, and night guards, shepherds and others who were awake at night were also familiar with other crowings, which depending on the time of year, varied between 11:30 pm and 3:30 am.  The point is that the denial was imminent."

"As a servant in an aristocratic household near the temple, this woman had no doubt been at the temple and could have gotten a good look at Jesus' disciples in the temple courts.  "I do not know what you say" is the standard form for denial in Jewish legal texts; calling a known person "the man" was sometimes used contemptuously."

"Galilean accents differed from Judean accents; Galileans were careless with their vowels and failed to clearly differenciate with the various guttural consonants.  The high priests servants and temple guard would have lived in Jerusalem and viewed themselves as Judeans.  some scholars have suggested that Judeans associated Galileans with revolutionaries, but evidence for this suggestion is at best ambivelent given the mistrust between urban and rural dwellers, however it is not unlikely that many Jerusalemites looked down on Galileans. But the point here is simply that the hearer assumes - rightly- that disciples of a Galilean teacher were themselves Galileans.

" The 'curses' Peter utters are not vulgar words; rather, he swears by various things that he does not know Jesus, invoking cuses on himself if he is lying. No one considered the uttering of such curses good religious behavior.

"for most people in the ancient Mediterranean, roosters crowing marked daybreak. Those who were awake much earlier may have recognizedd an earlier Palestinian rooster crowing between 12:30 and 2:30 am.

MARK's commentary is the same but cites : 2nd century A.D. Roman writer Apuleius and Maccabees 5:23.

LUKE's commentary:

"Wheat would be sifted to separate the genuine wheat from other items that had gotten mixed in with it; for the image, see Amos 9:9. For winnowing away the chaff, see Matthew 3:12. The background is presumably Job 1:6-12 where Satan tries to prosecute Job before the heavenly court."

"Peter's trespassing on private property- that of the high priest himself- required serious commitment from a Galilean fisherman. The guards were probably members of the temple guard, waiting to see the results of the trial inside. They may have planned to stay up late for Passover anyway."

" According to later rabbinic teaching, Jewish people were permitted to deny their Jewishness, especially by evasion to save their lives. direct denial that allowed God's name to be reproached , however was considered shameful. Peter probably does not know these specific rules but they may illustrate his cultural setting, which did not always regard denial as severely as Jesus regards it. Like most people, Peter is influenced by his culture and does not yet grasp the radical demands of Jesus in practice."