The ancient Christian Churches, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, consider Simon Peter a saint and associate him with the foundation of the Church in Rome ^[], even if they differ on the significance of this for the position of the see of Rome and of the Pope in present-day Christianity.

Some who recognize his office as Bishop of ^{[Antioch ]} and, later, as Bishop of Rome hold that his episcopacy held a primacy only of honour, as a first among equals.

²⁷ But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid."

²⁸ "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."

²⁹ "Come," he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. ³⁰ But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"

³¹ Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"

³² And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. ³³Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."

³⁴ When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret. ³⁵ And when the men of that place recognized Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to him ³⁶ and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed. (Matthew 14:22-36)

If everything Jesus asked you to do made sense, it would not take any faith to obey. -Kyle Gray

¹⁸As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁹"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." ²⁰At once they left their nets and followed him.

 

²¹Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, ²²and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
-Matthew 4:18-22 (NIV)

Tradition also locates his burial place where the Basilica of Saint Peter was later built, directly beneath the Basilica's high altar. In art, he is often depicted holding the keys to the kingdom of heaven (the sign of his primacy over the Church), a reference to Matthew 16:18. (see also Petrine Doctrine)

The Roman Martyrology assigns 29 June as the feast day of both Peter and Paul, without thereby declaring that to be the day of their death. Augustine of Hippo says in his Sermon 295: "One day is assigned for the celebration of the martyrdom of the two apostles. But those two were one. Although their martyrdom occurred on different days, they were one." The Annuario Pontificio gives the year of Peter's death as A.D. 64 or A.D. 67. Some scholars believe that he died on October 13 A.D. 64. It is traditionally believed that the Roman authorities sentenced him to death by crucifixion. According to a tradition recorded or perhaps initiated in the apocryphal Acts of Peter, he was crucified head down.

New Testament account

Calling by Jesus

Matthew and Mark report that while fishing in the Lake of Gennesaret, Simon and his brother Andrew were called by Jesus to be his followers, with the words, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:18-19; Mark 1:16-17). The Gospel of John gives a slightly different account (John 1:35-42). Andrew, we are told, was originally a disciple of John the Baptist. Along with one other disciple, Andrew heard John the Baptist describe Jesus as the "Lamb of God", whereupon he followed Jesus. He then went and fetched his brother Simon, said, "We have found the Messiah", and brought him to Jesus. Jesus then gave Simon the name "Cephas" or "Peter". Both words mean 'rock', the first in Aramaic and the second in Greek, so by giving Simon this name Jesus was calling him 'my rock' (see also: Aramaic of Jesus).

Position among the apostles

There has been much controversy surrounding the idea that Peter is often depicted in the Gospels as spokesman of all the apostles, and as one to whom Jesus gave special authority. In contrast, Jewish Christians are said to have argued that James the Just was the leader of the group. However, Jesus However, in Matt 18, stated, "Whoever is the least among you is the greatest" in reply to the disciples asking him who among them was the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Peter and the disciples were given the keys of the kingdom, that is, to preach the Gospel of Christ. It is Christ who is truly the leader of the church.

Washing of feet

Walking on water

Arrest of Jesus

Denial of Jesus

1. A denial when a female servant of the high priest spots Simon Peter, saying that he had been with Jesus.
2. A denial when Simon Peter had gone out to the gateway, away from the firelight, but the same servant girl or another told the bystanders he was a follower of Jesus.
3. A denial came when recognition of Peter as a Galilean was taken as proof that he was indeed a disciple of Jesus. Matthew adds that it was his accent that gave him away as coming from Galilee.

The Gospel of John places the second denial while Peter was still warming himself at the fire, and gives as the occasion of the third denial a claim by someone to have seen him in the garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was arrested.

Since Peter does not reappear in Matthew's gospel after his denial of Jesus, an extremely small number of scholars have suggested that Matthew viewed Peter as an apostate, and was actually criticising Peter and the groups that looked to him as founder.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus prediction of Peter's denial is coupled with a prediction that all the apostles ("you", plural) would be "sifted like wheat", but that it would be Peter's task ("you",

Empty tomb

Resurrection appearances

Role in the early church

Death

non-canonical Accounts

Sayings of Peter

In the Apocalypse of Peter, Peter holds a dialogue with Jesus about the parable of the fig tree and the fate of sinners .

In the Gospel of Mary, Peter appears to be jealous of "Mary" (probably Mary Magdalene). He says to the other disciples "Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?" . In reply to this, Levi says "Peter, you have always been hot tempered" .

Other noncanonical texts that attribute sayings to Peter include the Secret Book of James, 2 Clement and the Acts of Peter.

Denial of Jesus

After the death of Jesus

Death of Peter

Clement of Rome, in his Letter to the Corinthians (Chapter 5), written c. 80-98, speaks of Peter's martyrdom in the following terms:

" Let us take the noble examples of our own generation. Through jealousy and envy the greatest and most just pillars of the Church were persecuted, and came even unto death… Peter, through unjust envy, endured not one or two but many labours, and at last, having delivered his testimony, departed unto the place of glory due to him. "

Dyonisius of Corinth wrote: "You [Pope Soter] have also, by your very admonition, brought together the planting that was made by Peter and Paul at Rome and at Corinth; for both of them alike planted in our Corinth and taught us; and both alike, teaching similarly in Italy, suffered martyrdom at the same time" (Letter to Pope Soter [A.D. 170], in Eusebius, History of the Church 2:25:8).

St. Irenaeus of Lyon (a disciple of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, who was himself a disciple of the John the Apostle, which puts Irenaeus not far from the authentic teachings of the Apostles) in c. 175-185 wrote in Against Heresies (Book III, Chapter III, paragraphs 2-3):

Since, however, it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition.

The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. Nor was he alone [in this], for there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles. In the time of this Clement, no small dissension having occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the Church in Rome dispatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace, renewing their faith, and declaring the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles…

Later traditions, originating in or recorded in the apocryphal Acts of Peter, say that the Romans crucified Peter upside down at his request, due to his wishing not to be equated with Jesus. Acts of Peter is also thought to be the source for the tradition about the famous phrase "Quo Vadis" (Where are you going?), a question that, according to this tradition, Peter, fleeing Rome to avoid execution, asked a vision of Jesus, and to which Jesus responded that he was "going to Rome, to be crucified again", causing Peter to decide to return to the city and accept martyrdom. This story is commemorated in an Annibale Carracci painting. The Church of Quo Vadis, near the Catacombs of Saint Callistus, contains a stone in which Jesus' footprints from this event are supposedly preserved, though this was actually apparently an ex-voto from a pilgrim, and indeed a copy of the original, housed in the Basilica of St Sebastian.

The ancient historian Flavius Josephus describes how Roman soldiers would amuse themselves by crucifying criminals in different positions, and it is likely that this would have been known to the author of the Acts of Peter. The position attributed to Peter's crucifixion is thus plausible, either as having happened historically or as being an invention by the author of the Acts of Peter. Death, after crucifixion head down, is unlikely to be caused by suffocation, the usual cause of death in ordinary crucifixion.

A medieval misconception was that the Mamertine Prison in Rome is the place where Peter was imprisoned before his execution.

Daughter

Religious interpretations

Roman Catholic Church

In reference to Peter's occupation before becoming an Apostle, the popes wear the Fisherman's Ring, which bears an image of the saint casting his nets from a fishing boat. The keys used as a symbol of the Pope's authority refer to the "keys of the kingdom of Heaven" promised to Peter (Matthew 16:18-19). The terminology of this "commission" of Peter is unmistakably parallel to the commissioning of Eliakim ben Hilkiah in Isaiah 22:15 and Isaiah 22:19-23.

Peter is therefore often depicted in both Western and Eastern Christian art holding a key or a set of keys.

In the same passage of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells Peter: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church." In the original Greek the word translated as "Peter" is Πέτρος (Petros) and that translated as "rock" is πέτρα (petra), two words that, while not identical, give an impression of a play on words. Furthermore, since Jesus presumably spoke to Peter in their native Aramaic language, the actual words used will have been totally identical. The traditional interpretation has therefore been that Jesus told Peter (Rock) that he would build his Church on this Peter (Rock).

On the basis of the difference between the Greek words, some Protestant scholars disagree with this interpretation. In classical Attic Greek petros generally meant "pebble", while petra meant "boulder" or "cliff". Accordingly, taking Peter's name to mean "pebble", they argue that the "rock" in question cannot have been Peter, but something else, either Jesus himself, or the faith in Jesus that Peter had just professed. In appealing to the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, these scholars claim that speculation regarding the original language/word choice of the event recorded in Matthew is irrelevant because the account in Greek is without error, and thus there must be significance to the different words chosen by the author.

Counter-arguments are presented not only by Roman Catholic apologists like Karl Keating (see ) but also by scholars of other Christian Churches, such as the Evangelical Christian D. A. Carson in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984]). They point out that the Gospel of Matthew was written, not in the classical Attic form of Greek, but in the Hellenistic Koine dialect, in which there is not the same distinction in meaning between petros and petra. Moreover, even in Attic Greek, in which the regular meaning of petros was a smallish "stone", there are instances of its use to refer to larger rocks, as in Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus v. 1595, where petros refers to a boulder used as a landmark, obviously something more than a pebble. In any case, in the Aramaic language in which the phrase will have in fact been spoken, the petros/petra distinction is inexistent. And in Greek of any period, the feminine noun petra could not be used as the given name of a male, which explains the use of Petros as the Greek word with which to translate Aramaic Kepha.

When, in the early fourth century, the Emperor Constantine I decided to honour Peter with a large basilica, the precise location of Peter's burial was so firmly fixed in the belief of the Christians of Rome that the building had to be erected on a site that involved considerable difficulties, both physical (excavating the slope of the Vatican Hill, while the great church could much more easily have been built on level ground only slightly to the south) and moral and legal (demolishing a cemetery). The focal point of St. Peter's Basilica, both in its original form and in its later complete reconstruction, is the altar placed over what is held to be the exact place

Feasts of St. Peter

• January 18, alternate date for the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter (see below for explanation)
  • February 22, Feast of the Chair of St. Peter (see below for explanation)
  • June 29, Feast of Saints Peter and Paul
  • August 1 St. Peter in Chains calendar prior to 1965
  • November Feast of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul

The Catholic Encylopedia notes that from very early times in the history of the Christian community in Rome, January 18 was the date on which celebrated the memory of the day St. Peter held his first service with Christians in Rome . The Feast of the Chair of St. Peter was celebrated twice, however, with February 22 being the date of the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, but "of Antioch," not of Rome.

Latter-day Saints

Writings

New Testament

Of the two epistles, the first epistle is considered the earlier, and hence more likely to be genuine. A number of scholars have argued that the textual discrepancies with what would be expected of the biblical Peter are due to it having been written with the help of a secretary or as an amanuensis. Indeed in the first epistle the use of a secretary is clearly described: "By Silvanus, a faithful brother unto you, as I suppose, I have written briefly, exhorting, and testifying that this is the true grace of God wherein ye stand" (1 Peter 5:15). Thus, in regards to at least the first epistle, the claims that Peter would have written Greek poorly seem irrelevant. The references to persecution of Christians, which only began under Nero, cause most scholars to date the text to at least 80, which would require Peter to have survived to an age that was, at that time, extremely old, and almost never reached, particularly by common fishermen. However, the Roman historian Tacitus and the biographer Suetonius both record that Nero's persecution of Christians began immediately after the fire that burned Rome in 64. Such a date, which is in accord with Christian tradition, especially Eusebius of Caesarea (History book 2, 24.1), would not have Peter at an improbable age upon his death. On the other hand, many scholars consider this in reference to the persecution of Christians in Asia Minor during the reign of the emperor Domitian (81-96).

The Second Epistle of Peter, on the other hand, appears to have been copied, in part, from the Epistle of Jude, and some modern scholars date its composition as late asc. 250. Some scholars argue the opposite, that the Epistle of Jude copied 2 Peter, while others contend an early date for Jude and thus observe that an early date is not incompatible with the text. Many scholars have noted the similarities between the apocryphal second pseudo-Epistle of Clement (2nd century) and 2 Peter. Second Peter may be earlier than 250, but there is no surviving reference to it that dates back to the first century or even the early second century, although the later church historian Eusebius claimed that Origen had made reference to the epistle before 250. Even in early times there was controversy over its authorship, and 2 Peter was often not included in the Biblical Canon; it was only in the 4th century that it gained a firm foothold in the New Testament, in a series of synods. In the east the Syriac Church still did not admit it into the canon until the 6th century.

Traditionally, the Gospel of Mark was said to have been written by a person named John Mark, and that this person was an assistant to Peter, hence its content was traditionally seen as the closest to Peter's viewpoint. According to Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, Papias recorded this belief from John the Presbyter:

Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a normal or chronological narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictional into the statements. —Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3.39.14–16

After their (Peter and Paul’s) passing, Mark also, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, transmitted to us in writing the things preached by Peter. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III. 1.2.; quoted by Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History, book 5, 7.6)

Based on these quotes, and on the Christian tradition, the information in Mark’s Gospel about St. Peter would be based on eyewitness material. It should be observed, however, that some scholars (for differing reasons) dispute the attribution of the Gospel of Mark to its traditional author. The gospel itself is anonymous, and the above passages are the oldest surviving written testimony to its authorship.

Jewish Folklore

Pseudepigrapha and apocrypha

• Gospel of Peter, a Docetic narrative that has survived in part
• Acts of Peter
• A Letter of Peter to Philip, which was preserved in the Nag Hammadi library
• Apocalypse of Peter, which was considered as genuine by many Christians as late as the fourth century
• The Epistula Petri, the introductory letter ascribed to Peter that appears at the beginning of at least one version of the Clementine literature