David Rhoads has contributed to New Testament scholarship in many areas: history of New Testament era, (1) literary criticism, (2) diversity in the New Testament, (3) environmental concerns, (4) and most recently performance criticism. (5) He has also been an outstanding, creative classroom teacher and advisor of doctoral candidates. It is difficult to find a topic that fits into this multi-faceted friend's scholarly contributions that combines historical criticism, literary criticism, and Davids stress on the importance of diversity in the New Testament. (6) I settled on looking at the variety of issues that early Christian texts associate with Peter. He appears in New Testament texts, patristic texts, and in a surprising number of non-canonical New Testament apocryphal documents to support an amazing variety of interests. In that respect he is an archetypal figure in early Christianity--and serves to support different stresses in Christianity to this day. (7) The Pauline Peter
