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The Apocalypse of Peter depicts a scene where the punitive fate of sinners in the afterlife is described with great specificity. The Apoc. Petr. asserts that each sinner will be divinely punished "according to his works," and much recent scholarship on the work has attempted to demonstrate that the majority of these punishments correspond logically with the sins that prompted them. However, the curious depiction of the sin of sorcery being paired with the punishment of sorcerers being bound to a revolving wheel has posed a problem for scholars, for this seems to defy the pattern of intelligible correspondence between a sin and its subsequent punishment. In this article I will propose a solution to this seeming incongruity. Using the model of mirror punishment as how the author envisioned "according to his work" as functioning, along with an examination of implements considered to have been used in magic in antiquity, I suggest that a logical correspondence between this sin and its punishment becomes intelligible.
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The Apocalypse of Peter1contains a vivid scene in which Jesus gives the disciples a view of the afterlife, including a designated place of punishment for sinners. Here adulterers are hung from their loins, blasphemers by their tongues, and those who bore false witness have their lips cut off. Recent scholarship on the Apoc. Petr. seeks to interpret the majority of the punishments depicted as corresponding in an intelligible way to the sins that prompted them. Although there are various understandings of the specific logic operating behind the author's presentation, the bulk of these punishment and crime pairings appear to correspond logically: as divine judgment for each sinner "according to his work" (1 [Schneemelcher 626]; 6 "offense" [Schneemelcher 628]; 13 "deed" [Schneemelcher 633]).2 However, one of the pairings which has seemed to defy this pattern (although admittedly not the only one) is the sin of sorcery and the punishment of its practitioners. The Apoc. Petr. 12 (Schneemelcher 632-33) describes "wheels of fire, and men and women hung thereon by the power of their whirling. . . . Now these are the sorcerers and sorceresses." No one has yet proposed a satisfactory explanation for the depicted correlation between wheels and sorcery. This (and admittedly other curious...