Apocalypse of Peter

About this text

A vivid tour of heaven and hell given to Peter by Jesus. Graphically describes the punishments of the wicked and the rewards of the righteous.

Significance

Influenced later Christian visions of the afterlife, including Dante's Inferno.

How to Read This Historical Text

Apocalypse of Peter is included here as a historical and educational resource, not as Scripture and not as a replacement for the biblical canon. Readers may find it useful for understanding the ideas, debates, devotional language, and literary settings that surrounded Jewish and Christian communities in different periods.

Read this text with context in mind. Notice its era, category, and relationship to canonical passages, then compare its themes with the Bible itself. Some library works preserve valuable historical background, while others represent viewpoints that many Christian traditions rejected. Inclusion in this library does not mean endorsement of every claim or doctrine in the text.

For more about how The Bible Companion handles public-domain writings, Bible translations, attribution, and devotional material, see the Sources & Editorial Policy.

Key excerpts

Excerpts forthcoming. The full text is available in the public-domain library.

Continue exploring

This text is one of 19 in the Early Christian Writings (Non-Canonical) category, and one of 62 across the entire library.