Images of Empire, Imaging the Self: The Significance of the Imperial Statue Episode in theActs of Peter
TheActs of Peter(hereafterActs Pet.) contains an account of the destruction of an imperial statue by an exorcised demon, a statue that is subsequently miraculously restored by its owner Marcellus with the help of prayer and the apostle Peter. Although scholars seldom examine this episode in significant detail, when they have addressed it, they have for the most part agreed that it is an indication of the anti-imperial stance of the text generally and an attack on the legitimacy of the imperial cult more specifically. This is perhaps not wholly surprising, given that the majority of the other apocryphal Acts of the apostles (hereafter AAA) do seem to exhibit this vein of hostility, and this corpus is often interpreted as something of a homogeneous whole.