CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO 1 PETER

Virgil Warren, PhD PDF

CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO 1 PETER

Virgil Warren, PhD

I. Destination Geographical

A. The whole of Asia Minor except in Cilicia

1. 1 Peter 1:1 addresses all the geographical names of Roman provinces in Asia

Minor.

2. Provincial Galatia included Lycaonia and thoe parts of Phrygia and Pisidia

that did not belong to Asia.

B. Not addressed to Cilicia

1. not because overlooked

2. Cilicia was associated with Syrian Antioch.

C. Lycia and Pamphylia are not mentioned. They were two small districts whose early church history is vague (Acts 24:25), especially since they were not organized into an independent province until A.D. 74. Biggs says that they were still, in a sense, part of Galatia.

D. Route of delivery equals the order of provinces named in the salutation. Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia equal a clockwise circuit, which does not mention the cut through (southern) Galatia the second time, because Galatia was already mentioned. The route might be from Caesarea, Cappadocia, along the great highroad leading westward through Phrygia through Laodecia to Ephesus. Another great route would go past Smyrna, Pergamos, Cyzicus in Mysia, thence to Pontus.

E. Perhaps the northern half of Asia Minor is in view. Pontus and Bithynia, comprising one administrative province, are mentioned first and last. Perhaps the general direction of the epistle is in the parts where Paul had not evangelized (Acts 16:6-7), but these readers knew Paul and his letters. Beare says,

“In a general way, it may be said that these provinces included the whole of the peninsula north of the great divide of the Taurus mountains” = τὰ ἐντὸς τοῦ ταύρου (see Strabo, Geography 2:5:31).

F. Beare comments,

“The letter was addressed primarily to the Christians of Pontus-Bithynia (since the province list begins and ends with this area) and secondarily to the rest, because the persecution was most severe in Pontus-Bithynia. The order of the other three provinces would not be significant except that Cappadocia and Galatia are named jointly since they had been under a single administrator for many years.”

(Beare is looking at this from the viewpoint of A.D. 110.)

G. Reason for circulatory letter

1. General address

2. Interpreter’s lack of direct personal relations between the writer and the

readers

3. Does not enter into questions raised by a particular community

II. Readers

A. Churches not individuals

1. 5:14: “all that are in Christ” (in places of 1:1)

2. 5:1-4: cared for by their presbyters; they are the flocks of Christ, the Chief

Shepherd in Asia Minor.

3. Spoken of only in contrast to

a. their heathen neighbors: 2:12, 15; 3:1, 13-17; 4:3ff.; 4:12ff. Christians are dispersed among the non-Christians and Jews were dispersed among the Gentiles.

b. the whole church upon the earth: 5:8, 9

c. a single local church outside Asia Minor: 5:13

B. Diaspora signifies spiritual dispersion, not the Jewish Dispersion.

The letter was addressed to churches not individuals; there were no purely or predominately Jewish churches in Asia Minor. It was not sent to Ephesus:

1. Acts 18:19; 19:8, (1-7): it was because there was no church in Ephesus that Paul could find individuals without baptism and apart from a congregation of a “developed church,” yet these were “believers.”

2. Paul began preaching in synagogues wherever he went, including the whole of

Asia where he evangelized.

3. There were fewer Jews in Northern Asia Minor than in those parts that Paul evangelized. Where would be the purely or predominantly Jewish churches in this area?

4. These supposed Jewish churches did not come into existence because of the dispersion associated with Stephen’s death;they only went as far as Antioch and Cyprus (Acts 11:19).

5. People of this area from the Jerusalem Pentecostal preaching at Pentecost did not establish these churches upon returning, because they were Jews from abroad dwelling at Jerusalem (Acts 2:5; 6:9). But note also 2:8-9: dwellers and sojourners were there who became members of the Jerusalem church.

6. Paul addresses churches of Galatia (Galatians 1:2; 1:8; 4:13; 1 Corinthians 16:1), not individual Christians in Galatia (note Corinth as well: Galatians 1:9; 1 Corinthians 15:1-3).

7. Paul uses the figure of mother (Galatians 4:19) to describe his relationship to

the Galatian churches.

8. Paul refers to Colossae and Laodicea as churches (Colossians 1:1, 7; 4:16,

17).

9. Paul speaks to Epaenetus (Romans 16:5) as the first convert of Asia, and the previous connection with Prisca and Aquila in 16:3-4 suggests that it was through their influence that he was converted. Aquila first came to Ephesus with Paul, so he could not have been converted previously.

10. All the churches of Asia Minor were established directly or ultimately through the labor and influence of Paul. Paul’s own testimony (Romans 15:20; 1 Corinthians 3:10; 2 Corinthians 10:15; note also Romans 15:16-23; 16:4, 16; 2 Corinthians 11:28; 2 Timothy 4:17)

11. The vices of 4:3-5 are typically Gentile: 1:18, 14; 4; 2:9, 10; 4:3.

12. 1 Peter uses Septuagint (LXX) quotations, not fresh translations of the

Hebrew.

13. The areas addressed were predominately Gentile.

14. The readers form a special group of persons, and the letter deals with a very

specific situation.

15. The readers were not intended as all the Christians of the world, but as all the

Christians in a definite part of the world.

C. Salmon suggests that Diaspora is literal—dispersed from the Neronian

persecutions.

D. Reasons for the misunderstanding now and from the time of Origen at least that

referred to the Jewish dispersion

1. Because the terms παρεπίδημοι, πάροικοι (2:1), and παροικία (2:11) had been with reference to Israel and Jewish conditions. The combination παρεπίδημοι and πάροικοι (2:11) is only one time in the Septuagint—LXX—(Genesis 23:4) as a translation of ותושב (v^etōshāb; note Psalm 39:13 [LXX = 38:12]; Genesis 47:9; 1 Chronicles 29:15; Leviticus 25:23 [where Hebrews is the same as Genesis 23:4, but LXX has προσήλυποι καὶ πάροικοι—used to designate the Israelites in their own land in contrast to God, the real possessor of the land]; compare LXX renderings of גר [gēr] as πάροικος in Genesis 15:13; Exodus 2:22; 18:3; Deuteronomy 14:4; 23:8 as μισθωτός—Exodus 12:45; Leviticus 12:10; 25:6, 40; as προσήλυτος—Exodus 20:10; Leviticus 25:35, 47. In all places except Deuteronomy 14:21, where reference is to non-Israelite resident in Israel, the translation is other than παροικοί).

2. In themselves the words are quite secular.

a. Παρεπίδημοι refers to a stranger from a foreign land temporarily resident in a place. It emphasizes the merely temporary character of the residence (in distinction from ἐπιδημεῖν: Acts 2:10).

b. Πάροικος (practically synonymous with μέτοικος, more commonly used by older writers) means resident (stranger), not a citizen who lives by tolerance of the state under state protection. It may also mean a tenant as opposed to property holder.

c. Ξένος is practically synonymous with the previous words, that is, a general word that can include all their meanings.

d. Παρεπίδημος and πάροικος do not refer to persons who before their conversion were Jewish proselytes since the passage is from the Septuagint—LXX (Genesis 23:4 and Psalm 39:13), where παρεπίδημος and πάροικος are used does not refer to strangers in Israel (proselytes), but to patriarchs in foreign land (i.e., the relation is reversed from heathen in Israel to Israel among the heathen) without fixed abode or permanent possessions and to pious Israelites who later emulated their forefathers’ pattern of life.

e. From inscriptions and literary sources, we know the existence of Jewish communities in these districts.

f. The author makes extensive use of the Old Testament in direct quotation and indirect allusions (2:9).

E. In conscious imitation of Old Testament usage, the idea was used to speak of the Christian’s relationship to this world.

Note Hebrews 11:13-16; 13:14; Philippians 3:20; James 1:1. Christians as members of a heavenly commonwealth are temporary residents of this world without rights of citizenship, remaining here only by the suffrage of the possessors and rulers of this world. Even when they possessed land and citizenship, they still regarded themselves as strangers who sought a fatherland not on this earth. These attitudes fit well with 1 Peter 2:11, where they supply motives for a distinct manner of life in contrast to that led by the heathen. They have no compulsion to conform to whatever does not accord with Christian morality.

F. Contrary to the Christian attitude, the Jews, who were the literal Diaspora, made every effort either (1) to become citizens with full rights in Gentile communities or (2) to secure legal recognition as a separate community. (But do these practices deny their religious ancestry, and were not the foreign Jews still called the dispersion? What is the point, then, of saying that this differs from Christians who, though having no homeland, also became citizens and held property?)

G. In 1:17 Peter used παροικία to describe their whole manner of life as a sojourning; so if they were Jewish Christians dispersed from their Palestinian ancestral homeland, all they would have had to do to get release from their moral obligation in 1:17 and 2:11 was to return to Palestine.

H. Language shows that Peter’s readers are sojourners in the world because they were chosen by God, not because of external circumstances.

1. The words of 1:1 describe readers simply as Christians, and the names of the provinces that follow in the genitive could have been added directly as in “the churches of Judaea” (Galatians 1:22) in the sense of “the ones being in Judaea” (1 Thessalonians 2:14).

2. The connection between sojourners and the place names is not broken by the intervening διασπορά. Διασπορά is generic without the article and cannot further describe the readers as those elect strangers (Christians) who belong to the Jewish dispersion, because then it would be a definite dispersion and/or definite group of sojourners, so the modifying phrase would become παρ’ ἐπιδήμοις τοῖς (ἐν) ἐκ τῇ διασπορᾷ

3. The connection between verses 1 and 2 is related to character.

4. The insertion of simple place names does not preclude modification by clauses that follow (e.g., 1 Corinthians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 1:1).

5. Hence, διασπορᾶς is purely attributive (like ἐπιλησμονῆς in James 1:25; ὑπακοῆς in 1 Peter 1:14; τῆς ἀδικίας in Luke 18:6) equaling διεσπαρμένοις, and could as easily be used to refer to any Christians anywhere.

6. Διασπορᾶς is an intensifying element for ἐπιδήμιοις.

I. The contrast of the disbursement is not a return to an earthly home, but their gathering into the kingdom of Christ when the chief Shepherd shall appear, a fitting conclusion to an epistle thus begun (1 Peter 5:4ff).

J. The contrast to the Diaspora is not the Jewish, but all disbelievers and unbelievers.

K. The contrast of what the readers are to what they were is not to a people who had

lost their divine rank, but to a people who had never possessed it.

L. 2:10: Peter uses the language of Hosea 1:9; 2:1, 23 but modifies the expression οὐ λαὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (“not a people of God”) to read οἵ ποτε οὐ λαός (“who in time past were not a people”). Zahn seems to be playing on the background of Hosea’s children (note especially 1:2; 6:11), and saying that not my people refers to a repossessed Israelite race. He says of Paul who quotes the same passage in Romans 9:25, “He quotes the substance of the passage (Hosea 2:10) accurately with reference to ‘the ultimate pardon of Israel’”; and he notes Romans 11:26-31 along with Romans 9:25. The later passage strikes the same literal note of Hosea that God’s former people, who being lost, were repossessed; but in 9:24 Paul used Hosea 2:10 to argue for a prophecy about Gentiles entering the church—the same thing Peter is doing.

M. Peter addresses the readers as distinct from himself, especially in 1:10-12, where the contrast is more than between the ancient prophets and present Christians; because Peter himself would also be in the same class and would include himself with them as “we,” but he does not.

N. Difficulties in the ethical sense

1. Dispersion is never connected with the Christian church in early Christian

literature.

2. It is not feasible to suggest that it was borrowed from the Old Testament, because then it was always linked with the wrath of God against his disobedient people (but see 1:14: “obedient children”).

O. The Jewish Dispersion is sometimes thought to be more definitely meant in that the article is omitted from διασπορά, a questionable distinction.

III. Purpose

To encourage believers he had not seen, but who knew him because of his prominence in the church. He accomplishes this as the most distinguished apostle of the circumcision bears great testimony to the Christian character of these called the uncircumcision. In 2 Peter 1:12-15; 3:1-2 (cp. 8) the two letters are books of remembrance, reminding the readers of what they already knew.

IV. Date of Writing

A. a quo: In that Mark was not in Paul’s company on any of his three journeys through Asia Minor, for the mention of Mark (5:13) to be intelligent to them, it would have had to have been written after such a time that Mark is known to have come in contact with at least some of the individuals or churches in the area. Mark is not known to have joined Paul until the latter’s Roman imprisonment in 62/63, at which general time (as we know from Colossians 4:10) Mark had not yet been known to people in and around Colossae. In Colossians 4:10 a proposed visit by Mark is mentioned. Silvanus, on the other hand, was known to them (5:12).

B. Ad quem: Lycia and Pamphylia are omitted perhaps because they were not organized into independent provinces until A.D. 14, and

C. Perhaps Pontus stands for Pontus Polemoniacus, which was a principality until A.D. 63. Afterward, it was part of Galatia. Pontus and Bithynia, both mentioned by Peter, were organized into one province in 65 B.C. Perhaps Bithynia stands for the whole region. (Tacitus, Annals 1:74; 16:18)

D. Naturally after Paul had written letters to them for 2 Peter (3:15-16)

E. The persecutions spoken of in 2 Peter seem to stop short of death with the possible exception of 4:15, but not necessarily. The evidence from within the epistle could fit with a time when the Roman government

1. Sought them out.

2. Under Nero began punishing Christians on the basis of certain acts that Christians were popularly believed to have practiced, hence before Apocalypse, Hebrews, and the Neronian persecutions. The three varieties (extents) of persecutions were (a) persecutions, (b) persecutions for the name, (c) going to seek them out. They burned Christians because arsonists were burned as punishment.

F. After 64; note 4:12ff.

G. The persecution for the name was prepared for even by the Lord himself. The persecutions under Pliny do not suggest a new phenomenon. The kind of persecutions that were befalling Peter’s readers were likely to befall Christians anywhere. Peter’s persecution remarks imply that it is a new experience (4:12?).

H. Guthrie gives main proposals: (a) 90-100 (Domitian’s reign), (b) 111 (Trajan’s reign), and (c) 62-64 (Nero’s reign).

I. Ramsey argues against a Neronian time because

1. Persecution by Nero was not “for the name,” that is, simply because they were Christians, but trials were held.

2. Christianity cannot reasonably have reached Pontus before A.D. 65.

3. Dependence on Romans and Ephesians suggests a time had elapsed for their

recognition.

J. But if persecution “for the name” had been a Roman policy for thirty years (since Vespasian), why would Pliny have had any doubt about it? “Persecution for the name” is a set expression we use; that does not mean Peter is using it as a technical term (4:14).

K. Lightfoot remarks that it was not necessary that any formal edict against the Christians should be issued. The mere negative fact that their religion had not been recognized as lawful would have been ample justification for proceeding against them as soon as it was recognized that Christianity was something distinct from Judaism. In Palestine this distinction was clear from the time of the murder of James.

L. Arguments against Trajan time (Unnils in Interpreters’ Dictionary of the Bible)

1. The sufferings were throughout the world (5:9), but all the persecutions before the third century were more or less local. Therefore, the sufferings must have been of another kind.

2. In 2:13ff. a very positive relation with the state authorities is implied, which is important in that the governors and emperors are not decried (as in Revelation); and it is supposed that they will praise the Christians.

3. The sufferings belonged to a personal sphere rather than against Christians per se.

“Once we rule out the possibility of identifying these sufferings with some particular persecution, we are left with no direct indication of date. The situation reflected in the letter could have happened at any time in the first or second century wherever a Christian group was found.”

V. Author (Internal)

A. Of particular note is 5:12.

1. As far as words are concerned, γραφεῖν διά τινος might refer to

a. Amanuensis (see below)

b. Bearer (note Acts 15:23: γράψαντες διά τινος

2. The statement (διὰ Σιλουανοῦ ὑμῖν τοῦ πιστοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, ὡς λογίζομαι, δι’ ὀλίγων ἔγραψα παρακαλῶν κτλ.: “Sylvanus to you the faithful brother, as I account [him], through few [words] I wrote, exhorting,” etc.) is of utmost importance.

a. Peter could not express his deliberate opinion as to the trustworthiness requisite for the task without implying a degree of suspicion as to the person in question (?).

b. He could have satisfied that suspicion by reading the letter.

c. The order putting Silvanus first may be significant for emphasis. Perhaps

it means that Silvanus’ part in the writing was more significant than usual.

d. If he were only the bearer of the letter, it is questionable whether he needed to be mentioned, for they would know the bearer on his arrival.

3. Peter must be considered primary author instead of Silvanus or the point of writing would be destroyed: the circumcision apostle’s praising the Christian Gentiles.

4. Perhaps Silvanus knew Greek better than Peter did.

a. Peter did not speak his own language with refined precision—Matthew 26:73; Mark 14:70; Luke 22:59.

b. He struck his own countrymen as ignorant and unlearned (Acts 4:13), a view that Luke seems to agree with.

c. Primitive tradition represents him as making use of Mark as interpreter (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3:39:15; Irenaeus 3:1:1; 10:6).

d. Basilides the Gnostic pretended to have learned some part of his teaching from Glaucias, “the interpreter of Peter” (Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 7:17:106). This, though fiction, testifies to the early belief of the church that Peter shrank from, or was rather inept at, literary composition in Greek.

e. The epistle shows no trace of Hebraisms; so it is not a translation.

f. But the fact that Mark is called the interpreter of Peter is clearly intended to authenticate Mark’s gospel, and it is straining the language to suppose that Papias meant to imply Peter’s linguistic inability. The objection that Peter got his Greek knowledge from books is interesting in that any modern-day scholar who should so assert is himself in that position and ought to be careful about judgments of superior Greek style.

5. “Through Silvanus”

a. Can mean more than bearer

Dionysius of Corinth (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4:23:11) speaks of the Epistle of Clement as ἡμῖν διὰ ἐκδήμεντος γραφεῖσαν, meaning clearly that Clement was the mouthpiece or interpreter of the church of Rome.

b. Silvanus could have been both bearer and amanuensis.

c. An interpreter might at least be more than an amanuensis:

(1) Peter dictated in Aramaic with the interpreter expressing the

substance in his own Greek.

(2) Peter may have dictated in Greek in the extent to which he could speak it and the interpreter corrected and polished the expression. (Note Josephus in Contra Apion 1:9.)

(3) The interpreter received only general instructions with a free hand to carry out the work subject to the author’s approval.

6. Perhaps the extensive use of an amanuensis has something to do with the

literary difference between 1 and 2 Peter.

a. A different amanuensis

b. Peter wrote 2 Peter himself (?).

7. The writer was not a forger.

a. Why would he choose such out-of-the-way epistles as these? hence, the

authenticity of the salutation.

b. A later pseudonymous writer would have been more inclined to lay stress on the relationship of Peter and Jesus as later Petrine apocryphals do to give them an air of authentication.

c. As in later Petrine apocryphals, we would expect a forger to quote more of the words of Jesus for authentication.

8. Ignorance makes it impossible to say what kind of relations existed between him and the communities he wrote to, because we know nothing of Peter’s activities from the time of the Conference on Circumcision till his being in Rome. We know he made missionary tours with his wife (1 Corinthians 9:5), and we find him in Antioch (Galatians 2:11ff).

9. He does not express his affection, as Paul does.

10. Peter mentions Mark in 5:13, who is known in external literature as

connected with Peter.

11. “As I account him,” and so on, may have been inserted to allay any suspicion on the part of the readers of a letter from a Palestinian Jew with such perfect literary style.

B. General arguments against Petrine authorship.

1. If he were a disciple of the Lord, he would refer more to the words of Jesus.

But the writer is more concerned with the cross and resurrection, because they created the new situation of grace, than with the earthly career of Jesus. It is the crucified, risen Lord, rather than the teacher of Galilee who is of prime importance. The words of Jesus are not the point so much as the significance of his most important deed—where He was not verbally teaching. The whole presupposition is that the Apostle would have written as we would expect him to.

2. Too Pauline rather than Judaic

The common elements between 1 Peter and Paul are better explained as the common ground of the preaching: the truth. Liberals are ever too impetuous to judge the true life of Christianity in terms of its apostates. But as a matter of fact, Peter the person of the New Testament did not stress obedience to the Mosaic Law. The conference on circumcision makes this fact evident.

3. The Greek is too good.

Silvanus is the amanuensis.

4. The writer’s habit of quoting the Old Testament in ways that point to the Septuagint (LXX) rather than to the Masoretic Text is peculiar for a Palestinian Jew (?).

a. The Masoretic Text was one of many texts (note Dead Sea Scrolls), but was chosen for its value in the second century.

b. Peter’s text may have resembled the LXX more closely than the Masoretic

Text.

c. Peter as a foreigner writing in another language should suit his readers, not himself, especially when it comes to literal quotations. Their text would have been the LXX.

VI. External Testimony to Authorship

A. 2 Peter 3:1

1. Even if denied Petrine authorship, it is nevertheless the earliest testimony of 1 Peter’s existence and that it existed under the name of Peter. (Some want to make 2 Peter written first, however, with the reference to a lost epistle).

2. Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 3:25:2) puts 1 Peter among the ὁμολογούμενα, books placed in the canon without any doubt.

3. No book of the New Testament has earlier, better, or stronger attestation, though Irenaeus is the first to quote it by name (ca. A.D. 170): 4:9:2; 16:5; 5:7:2.

4. All the catalogues of the New Testament given by Westcott in Appendix D of his Canon and in the Cheltenham List contain the book.

5. Absent from the Muratorian Canon

6. Absent from Marcion’s list

a. Even though Marcion was from Pontus

b. Probably he knew of the work but did not receive it because Peter was a

Jew.

7. Origen (Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 6:25:8) shows that by his time the epistle formed an undisputed part of the canon.

8. 1 Peter was omitted from the Syriac at first though admitted later when other catholic epistles were not.

VII. General Doctrinal Content

A. Peculiar material

1. The preaching of Christ in Hades (= Matthew 27:51, 52; Ephesians 4:9?)

2. The inspiration of prophecy by Christ (= 2 Corinthians 3:7ff?)

B. It is the same as the Pauline materials as to content.

VIII. Rome as the Place of Writing (Babylon = a cryptogram for Rome: Revelation 14:8; 16:19; 17:5; 18:2, 10, 21)

A. We do not know of Peter being in this direction except for the word Babylon.

B. Babylon itself was a desolate place at this time.

C. From sources we know that Peter, Silvanus, and Mark were associated.

D. We know that Babylon is elsewhere used to mean Rome (Revelation 17-18; Apoc. Bar. 1:1; Origen, Sib. 5:158).

E. Peter would want to go to Rome: all roads led to Rome.

F. That Babylon meant Rome was the early universal interpretation from the time of

Papias (cir. 60-130).

G. There is no local tradition that any one of the apostles except Thomas was associated with those parts.

H. The earliest Syriac tradition connects Peter, not with Babylon, but with Rome.

I. Perhaps for reasons of prudence “Babylon” was used for “Rome” to protect the writer from police efforts, since Rome was a center of vicious action against Christians.

J. The Eastern church until a late date did not claim Peter in its origin.

K. The place was sparsely populated, especially in the period after the migration of A.D. 41 (earlier than 1 Peter) and the resultant massacre of large numbers of Jews at Seleucia (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18:9). The Jews moved because of persecutions and pestilence. Besides, about 50,000 were slain, which was the greater part.

L. Very early tradition associates Peter with the West, not the East.

M. Mark and Silvanus are known to have been in the West at the time of Paul’s imprisonment (Colοssians 4:10), but nothing suggests their ever being in the East.

N. A Jewish settlement in Mesopotamia Babylon, until much later in the Christian era, was their home from the time of the Babylonian captivity till the times of the Talmud (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15:3:1; Philo, De Legatio ad Caium, p. 1023).

O. If the order in which the name of the provinces is given refers to the messenger’s order of travel, it is of note that the travel ends in the West.

P. In 2:5 Eusebius speaks of 1 Peter 5:13, saying that Babylon is a metaphor for Rome. In connection with so stating, he mentions Papias as giving also the story of the writing of Mark’s gospel.

IX. Reasons Given for Babylonian Place of Writing

A. Peter tended to be literal.

B. Babylon was not used that way before the time of the Apocalypse.

X. Purpose

A. It is an exhortation to live in accordance with the hope they had received in Christ (see 2 Peter 3:1-2).

B. Tenney says, “The occasion for this letter was the ominous shadow of persecution. The letter was a warning and an encouragement preparatory to the coming emergency.”

XI. Beare’s Arguments Against Petrine Authorship

A. It was written during the time of Trajan; hence, not Petrine.

B. A Jew did not write it, because to the Jew the Torah was the heart of religion, but to this writer the substance of the earlier writing lay in its testimony to the sufferings of Christ. Instead, his expressions, which can be found to parallel certain aspects of mystery religions, mean that the writer knew them as a devotee (!)

C. It shows dependence on Paul instead of the words of Christ, with whom Peter was especially associated.

D. Peter would have known the Septuagint only if he had learned Greek later in life, and he would have known it only in a literary fashion, but the writer of this epistle knew the Old Testament only in literary fashion and only in Greek.

E. The letter is the work of a man of letters.

XII. Concerning the Break Between 4:11 and 4:12

A. Perdelivitz said that there was a break.

1. Doxology and a new address in 4:11 and 4:12 respectively

2. A certain amount of repetition before and after the break

3. The persecutions of 4:12 are actual facts; in 1:6; 3:13ff they are only

possibilities.

4. Are not sufferings both present and future? Furthermore, what prohibits the view that the present sufferings exist but in the future will grow worse? Τhe difference is in degree. May we ask whether the possibility of suffering in 1:6 and in 3:13 are possibilities by chance rather than by time (not that there are none until the future, but that a given individual has a possibility of suffering now and a likelihood later)?

5. Even a definite break means nothing. Perhaps we may regard 4:12 as a postscript with 5:12-14 as the salutary close.

B. Arguments against such a break as indicating that the first was a baptismal catechism (1:3-4:11) and the second an exhortation (4:12-5:14)

1. It is hard to see how baptism fits in the structure of the epistle.

2. The distribution of various sections according to a liturgical pattern appears

forced.

3. Some supposed parallels on closer inspection turn out to be superficial.

4. Sufficient to say that the connection here between Petrine materials and

baptismal language testifies only to the common Christian vocabulary

5. A certain amount of repetition belongs to this writer’s style.

christir.org