Travels of Peter

Preface

This text is a born-digital edition of the Travels of Peter. This text is found in a single manuscript (BNF Syr. 179), which is dated to 1575 C.E. 1 The text exists only in Syriac, though it may have been composed originally in Greek.

Zotenberg's manuscript catalog identifies this text simply as an "extract from the Acts of Peter," 2 but there is no evidence to support this conclusion. Indeed, the narrative of this text is not characteristic of the genre of the apostolic Acts, and it appears to be an independently circulating narrative.

An edition and French translation of the text was previously published by Françoise Nau. 3 The current edition presents largely the same text as Nau, though with some corrections from the manuscript. This edition also renders some of the vocalization dots that appear in the manuscript, which Nau omitted. The text is written in West Syriac script, but it does occasionally include vowel pointing that is generally associated with the East Syriac script.

There is a forthcoming English translation of this text, along with a detailed introduction in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Vol. 2, ed. by Tony Burke and Brent Landau (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming).