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Saint Peter a Biography

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Michael Grant devotes nearly a third of this slim volume (less than 200 pages) to discussing the problems of research and the difficulty with sources before getting into anything that looks like a biography should. And perhaps that underscores the difficulty with a subject such as Saint Peter, the first among equals of the disciples of Christ. So much mythology has arisen, and there is precious little by way of actual biographical data in the New Testament. Saint Peter is 'a shadowy and elusive' character, even in the Bible.

Grant works his way through Peter's life, first during the period in which Jesus was alive, then during the Acts/early church years, including dealings with the increasing number of Gentiles and his rocky relationship with Paul. Finally Grant closes with a section on Peter in Rome, and has an interesting analysis, including why Peter rather than Paul in many ways remains the dominant apostle, if not the dominant apostolic voice. Much of the church as we know it today is derived from Pauline teachings, but the hierarchy of apostolic succession still embraces Peter as primus inter paries. Curious, as the gospels seem to have a poor opinion of him; but perhaps to be the first apostle is to have the most human failings?

Grant's book does not take on the question of papal supremacy or modern (or even earlier) political struggles -- he outlines a brief history of the influence of Peter's life, but does not do an analysis here (and says so openly).

In all, this is a good book, well written, with many notes, references and sources to seek out that will make the diligent happy, and enough detail to make the casual reader glad to have read this work.

I had high hopes when I found this book and was excited to read it. But the moment that I began the first chapter, the book became a failure in writing an inspirational and accurate account of the life of St. Peter.

It would seem paradoxical to debunk the vary sources that one sites in a book. Yet that is what the author seems to be doing. In the quest to tell the story of St. Peter, the author dismisses many of Peter's works as heresay and exaggerations. The author seemed to take the view that Peter's role in early Christianity is misleading and largely omitted after the death of Jesus. At the same time, the author gives little credibility to existing accounts of Peter in the bible. Whether one accepts the bible as accurate or occassionally metaphorical, studying the book from a historical perspective causes one to miss the point of St. Peter's life.

Even though the author was written other books in Christianity, the tone and reverence one might use in a descriptive portion of a plumbing manual. Using this as a standard, I can not imagine Michael Grant's other books are worth reading.

When I purchased Saint Peter, I was expecting a fascinating read which would shine light on the better known facets of Peters life, while at the same time revealing little known tidbits of information. To my dismay, I found neither. There was not one item in this book which was new, or a revelation to anyone who is even remotely knowledgeable as to the Saint Peter of the bible. There is no authoritative voice writing this book. There is far too much of a this may have happened, or possibly, or most likely. No This Happened statements. Mr Grant spends far too much of this book putting down religion and miracles. Thus, if you only believe 5% of what is in the bible, do not write a book about someone whom 95% of the source material comes from the biible. Leaving out the lengthy intro, and the footnotes, what you have here is basically a 100 page boring book which shows that Mr Grant is very book smart, but foolish when it comes to interpretive writing concerning religious personages. This book would have been much better had it actually been about Saint Peter, instead of stating on nearly every page how Mr Grant could put no weight or belief behind things religious or spiritial or miraculous in nature.

Michael Grant's book which attempts to uncover historical details about St. Peter makes modest claims about the touted head of the Christian church. Grant examines the Gospel view of Peter, which is not very flattering. He writes that this view had to do with the Gentile influence. Nevertheless Grant maintains that Peter did lead the early Christians in Jerusalem, although this leadership was short-lived due to what Grant bellieve to be Peter's role as mediator between rival factions. Grant can find little evidence that Peter lived and died in Rome, but he avers that this may be very likely since the tradition concerning it so strong.

While not a long book, St. Peter: A Biography makes a modest proposal that the tradition concerning this Apostle may baasically be historically true.

i think the whole chapter 1 can be shortened quite a bit. I understand the scarcity of reliable sources have to be presented. but it does not need to be so long when it can be said in a paragraph.

later, when he writes on Peter's life, it is full of sentences like "Whether (it) happened or not, we cannot be sure" (substitute "it" with Peter's martyrdom, or Jurusalum council meeting in Acts or Peter's residence in Rome in later days, etc). While I appreciate Grant's effort not to make assertion based on unproven stories, I can just say as much as a layman! duh. even tho very few events can be certain, historians are supposed to make better, educated guess. only the chapters regarding Peter, James & Paul have some meat. however, nothing new is revealed.

Grant also drops casually more than once that there're fragments of early Mark's Gospel, not in its final, cannonical form probably written before the fall of Jerusalam, found in Dead Sea Scrolls since this is new to me, i'm very interested. but he does not show what the fragments are nor does he give any reference. no follow up, no elaboration. What a tease!

Michael Grant was a prolific author who wrote several excellent books on the ancient world. While he could write for a popular audience (such as his collection of quick sketches on the Roman emperors), "Saint Peter" may rank as Grant's biggest failure. Part of the problem is Grant's writing is unusually dry in this book. Another problem is Grant simply did not focus on his subject. Writing about sources and Paul is interesting but one can not help but conclude that Grant really could not find much on Peter himself and so what could have been a solid article became an awful book with too many distractions.

Evidence and sources are a problem. There are not that many of them and Grant simply does not want to use some of the leading ones. Grant is also less than consistent with his use of evidence. For example, he discounts large parts of the New Testament as evidence. Fine but they are the main sources of information on Peter. But then, as the scene moves to Rome, Grant reads between the lines of Paul's epistles and other early Christian texts to offhandedly suggest that perhaps conservative Jerusalem based Christians (the ones who were influenced by James) alerted the authorities in Rome about Peter's activities in the Eternal City and that led to his martyrdom. While there were divisions in the early Church, this is simply too much to accept without evidence.

Grant may have simply been the wrong man to write this book. Had Grant collected legends to build a portrait of Peter, much the way Ann Wroe did for Pontius Pilate, he would have provided an excellent and useful book. Grant needed to be more interdisciplinary and his simple historical narration fails to make this an interesting or even useful work. Peter deserves better than this book and so do readers of Michael Grant based on his other works. "Saint Peter" ranks as one of my biggest book disappointments of the last decade.

This must be Michael Grant's worst effort as a author. The book overall, seem to be confused and paradoxcial. In one hand, Grant must used the Bible as his primary source and yet in the other hand, he tries to debunked what the Bible is saying. The reader learned very little about Peter Simon, Jesus' leading disciple that they couldn't find out from reading the Bible. We know little about the man and Michael Grant's book revealed nothing new or noteworthy. To be frank, I don't understand the purpose of this book.

I believed that Grant's mistake was trying to separate Peter from faith into history. Due to such limitation on the source material, it would be difficult to do such a task. St. Peter was a religious figure of faith, he cannot be nothing less than that and any effort to do so, would be contradictary.

It would be nice if Grant was more adventuresome and tried to make some educated hypothesis on Peter but he didn't do that as well. The book reads very dry, almost clinical in nature which is often opposite to most of Grant's books which have been interesting as well as fun to read. It almost seem like Grant was uncomfortable writing this book as it was for the reader reading it.

While admitting that the historical record is spotty and inferential, Michael Grant develops a "biography" of Saint Peter that leads the reader to the conclusion that much of the tradition surrounding Peter (leader of Christ's apostles, his role in establishing the Church at Rome) may well be rooted in historical fact.

Never one to stretch the evidence beyond what it can sustain, Grant is careful to present alternative theories, weigh them, and draw conclusions based on the preponderance of the historical evidence. This is a short book, but one crafted with great care.

It would easy to simply pan this book as absurd and fallacious, quote some of its lumpenprose peculiarities and contradictions for good effect, and leave it shunned on the shelf. But to get the negative out of the way quickly, the author's problem is that he does not believe a single miracle of the bible. He tries to write history on a resurrected Jesus Christ and the Simon Peter of the 'Silver and gold have I none...but rise up and walk' fame without properly confronting this crippling disbelief. How very odd for someone who flaunts his Roman Catholicism so plainly. However, I find as I pan beyond chapter one that there is a little nugget of gold to be had, which I do invite you to weigh carefully.

As the author has sadly recently died, it is right to say here that his prolific output has long since secured him a broad and deep reputation. He was a translator of Tacitus, and a historian of all aspects of ancient Greece and Rome, from their life and times to their religion and literature. One dud among a small library of solid works should do little harm. I can recommend his book 'Gladiators' (recently re-issued on the heels of the film of that name). It is short, easy to read, and fascinating. I also recommend his 'Roman Literature', covering: the Greek-Roman relationship; prose history and fiction; poetry; Virgil, Horace, Ovid; and the Roman influence on Christian prose and poetry.

Now to the one small-but-golden virtue of this book. The author writes as an highly critical trained historian, a man of encyclopedic knowledge. He quotes some excellent fellow historians, who are both orthodox and somewhere between up-to-date and leading edge. I would single out both Carsten Peter Thiede and Martin Hengel as being in this category. In particular, C.P. Thiede's 'Simon Peter: From Galilee to Rome' (1986) is an ideal replacement for this book. M. Hengel's 'Studies in the gospel of Mark' is bracingly orthodox, and has a rare and incisive guest article by the Homeric expert Wolfgang Schadewaldt on the reliability of the New Testament and its documents.

So must we conclude that all the value of this book is in the references and bibliography? Not quite. Grant's trained and discerning historian's eye is at sharp focus in chapter two, where he comments on the papyrus GOSPEL fragment found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in Cave 7. It is known as 7Q5 to the papyrologists: thus dating Mark's gospel to no later than AD68, but probably a lot earlier. But, woe is us, he omits the reference from his excellent bibliography! I can supply it. The easiest way to pursue this exciting precious element is probably through C.P. Thiede's, 'The Jesus Papyrus', or his more technical collection, 'Rekindling the Word: in search of gospel truth'. Thiede's 'Jesus: Life or Legend' is also excellent and highly relevant. It is odd that as an historian Grant accepts the recent trend to dating the gospels earlier and earlier (which has been going on since about the mid-70's as far as I can work out), and will take the gospels nearly back to the time of Jesus himself if things keep on. Yet he somehow does not see that the gospels are radically confirmed in reliability and accuracy by this process. I would recommend C.S. Lewis's essay 'Fernseed and Elephants' (in 'Christian Reflections') for an analysis of this peculiar mentality. And I would say to the doubters, it is not only the orthodox and evangelical who thinks this way. For a 'liberal' early redater I would suggest J.A.T. Robinson, 'Redating the New Testament' especially as he proves logically that there is nothing stopping the earliest gospels going back to the AD40s.

So Michael Grant is another welcome example of the long known truth that real historians are not like the skeptic bible critics (I do not call them scholars), who about 150 years ago decided to assign all the gospels and the NT documents to the category of 'superstitious myths and legends that grew and were embroidered as time went by', and therefore concluded that all the documents must have been written long after the disciples died. Thus the irritating miracles may be ignored. Now that Grant does not accept miracles is true; but the gospel fragment he refers to is physical evidence, and he is trained to evaluate it. For the skeptic critic any physical evidence or logic that the gospels might be what they claim to be, true and faithful records by people who lived at the time, has to be explained away by any and all means. Otherwise careers might be rudely ended, shelves full of books rendered obsolete and unsaleable. Fie on such data if it has such undesirable outcomes. But of course a historian or scholar in another area, such as Grant, or Schadewaldt, or even A.N. Sherwin-White in 'Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament', has no such concern and merely takes the New Testament and its documents as being as sound now as they ever were. As scholars they are as properly neutral and objective as it is possible to be. The fact that someone who is both an outright anti-supernaturalist and an expert historian like Michael Grant can accept the early date of the gospel of Mark on the evidence, but that the skeptics cannot, speaks volumes.

By Grant's testament, matters of God are matters of probability. By matters of God, Grant probably doesn't exist