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The reconstruction of the chronological
framework may be begun where that for Paul left off,
with the point at which
Acts ends.
But mention of Acts merely underlines our previous reliance on it.
When it stops, we find ourselves almost wholly lost.
Whatever framework is
reconstructed,
it must be said at once that it is bound to be extremely
hypothetical and sketchy,
for the evidence is simply insufficient.
What we miss
in particular are the intervals,
which it is Luke's particular contribution to supply.
In fact the situation is
now reversed.
Whereas before we were strong on relative dates
but very weak on
absolute dates
(the pro-consulship of Gallic being about the only really secure
one,
and that by a fortuitous discovery),
we now are strong on absolute dates,
but extremely weak on relative ones.
Thus we have quite precise datings for two
cardinal events,
the fire of Rome, which broke out on 19 July 64,
and the
suicide of Nero, which occurred on 9 June 68.
But how, within or around that
period, happenings or writings of relevance to the Christian church are to be
placed in relation either to each other or to
these fixed points is highly problematic.
Let us begin by trying to round off the
life of Paul.
On the basis of the aorist ἐνέμεινεν rather than the imperfect in Acts 28.30 it will be recalled that Harnack argued
that at the end of two years Paul's situation changed: it was not simply that
the narrative ceased, for whatever reason.
[Cf. L. P. Pherigo, 'Paul's Life after
the Close of Acts', JBL 70,
1951, 277-84:'Since the author of Acts seems to have
known the duration of the imprisonment, it certainly seems to follow that he
knew also of its termination' (277; italics his).]
This could well be true;
but the inference is precarious, since the aorist would in any case have been a
natural choice of tense: for two years he stayed (ἐνέμεινεν) and during that
period he used to receive (ἀπεδέχετο).
Nor of course does it tell us how Paul's
situation changed - whether, as Harnack guessed, it was because he was then
transferred to stand trial (whatever the outcome) or whether, as Lake and
Cadbury argued [Beginnings V, 325-36.], the case lapsed because the statutory two-year
period expired within which the accusers had to appear.
Sherwin-White
criticizes the latter theory on the ground that there is no real evidence for
such a limit.
[Roman
Society and Roman Law, 108-19; cf. F. F. Bruce, 'St Paul in Rome', BJRL 46. ' 964, 343-5;
Ogg, Chronology of the Life of Paul,
l80f.]
Paul may have been released by an act of clemency, or simply to
clear the lists, but there is no reason to construe Acts to mean that he was
released at all. All theories which reconstruct this period either from hopes
expressed in the Captivity Epistles or from plans in the Pastorals presuppose
that the former come from his Roman imprisonment and the latter (genuinely or
supposedly) from the period subsequent to it.
If our previous argument was
sound, neither of these presuppositions holds.
In particular, the decisive
reference in II Tim.4.16 to his 'first hearing' refers not to anything in Rome
but to the first trial under Felix in Caesarea.
It is difficult to be certain
whether any of the later tradition reflects more than deductions from a
combination of Paul's hope to visit Spain (Rom. 15.23, 28) and the Pastoral
Epistles interpreted as Roman in origin.
Certainly it is the latter that
supply the basis for everything that Eusebius has to say on the subject. [HE 2.
22.]
The fragment of the Muratorian Canon (coming from Rome at the end of the second
century?) simply says that 'from the city he proceeded to Spain',
[Zahn, INT II, 621., 73-5, and F. F. Bruce, 'St Paul in Rome: 5.
Concluding Observations', BJRL 50, 1968, 272f., argue that its remark that Luke omits 'the passion of Peter,
as well as Paul's journey when he set out from Rome for Spain' suggests that it is here dependent on
the Acts of Peter which
includes both of these (Hennecke, NTApoc.,
II, 279-82, 314-22).]
but this could merely be part of the presumption we observed before
that (despite the evidence of II
Corinthians!) Paul's plans were always fulfilled.
Much the most important piece
of evidence is that of I Clem. 5.6f.,
which asserts that, after he had
preached both in the east and the west,
he reached the 'extreme west' (τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως).
I would agree with Lightfoot [AF I.2, 30f.]
and
Zahn [INT11,
72. Similarly Phengo,JBL 70,
279-82.]
that to interpret this in a writer living in Rome to mean Rome
itself is incredible.
We must assume it means Spain, and depending on the date
and weight we attach to the evidence of I Clement,
[It has often been argued that
Clement's details may be explained entirely from Acts.
But Zahn, INT II,
68-73, is still convincing to the contrary, as is Lightfoot.
For a recent defence of Clement's tradition, cf. Dinkier, TR 25, 207-14.]
it speaks in
favour of a release from Rome and further travel (though only to the west).
Beyond that we are in the dark.
Clement clearly refers to
Paul having perished in the same persecution as Peter and a 'great multitude of
the elect',
[I Clem.5f.; cf. the similar phrase in
Tacitus, Ann.15,. 44 of the
Neronian persecution.]
which cannot be other than that under Nero. [So Tertullian, Scorp. 15.]
But Paul appears to have stood alone as he 'gave witness before rulers', and
the subsequent tradition, that, whereas Peter was crucified,
[Cf. John 21.18f.; Tertullian, Scorp. 15; Praescript. 36, Adv. Marc.4.5. This is independent of the
elaboration of the tradition that he was crucified upside down
(Acta Petr. 37f.; Origen apud Euseb. HE 3.1.2).]
Paul
(as a Roman citizen) was executed, strongly suggests that this was as a result
of a separate judicial action, not of mass violence such as Tacitus describes.
Again, in the first-century Ascension of Isaiah 4.2f. it is only
'one of the Twelve' who 'will be delivered into his [viz. Nero's] hands': there
is no mention of Paul. [For the dating of this passage, cf.
pp. 239f. below. It could come from not long after the event.]
Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, says in c. 170 that Peter and Paul 'having
taught together in Italy, suffered martyrdom at (or about) the same time'
(κατὰ
τὸν αὐτὸν καιρόν).
[Quoted by Eusebius, HE 2.25.8.
If, as Munck argued (Petrus
und Paulus in der Offenbarung Johannis, Copenhagen 1950), the vision of
the two witnesses in Rev. 11.3-12 alludes to the deaths of Peter and Paul, this
would be early evidence for their simultaneous martyrdom. But this theory is at
best extremely hypothetical. Cf. p. 241 below.]
This comes to be interpreted, first in the Liberian Catalogue of 354,
[For the evidence, cf. Edmundson, The Church in Rome, 149f.]
to mean 'on the same day', namely, 29 June.
But this day is almost certainly the one
which in the year 258 saw some veneration of their joint memories, possibly the
translation of their relics from the Vatican and the Ostian Way to a catacomb
on the Appian Way for safety during the Valerian persecution.
[For a discussion of this, cf.
Cullmann, Peter, 123-31; Bruce, BJRL 50, 1968, 273-9.]
Indeed, despite the great influence of Jerome (c. 342-420), who said that they
suffered in the same year,
[De
vir. ill. 5. He based it on his own Latin translation of Eusebius'
Chronicle (see below pp. 147-50).]
the tradition still survived in
Prudentius (348-c. 410)
[Περιστεφάνων,
hymn 12, quoted by Edmundson, op. cit., 150.]
and Augustine (354-430) [Serm.
296-7.] that Paul
died exactly a year after Peter -
[Cf. also the quotation from Acta SS. Jun. 5,4230, in Zahn, INT ll, 76.]
evidence which is worthless as
a positive indicator but useful as a corrective.
When we come to the question of the date, or dates, of their
deaths, we are equally in the dark.
There are two separate issues:
(a) Did the Neronian persecution follow immediately upon the fire of Rome?;
and (b) Did
Peter and/or Paul perish in that first assault?
If we could answer 'Yes' to
both these questions, our chronological problems would be over and everything
could be dated in 64.
Unfortunately, however, it is not so simple.
Indeed if
it had been as simple as the textbooks tend to make it, it is difficult to
explain how the divergences could have arisen.
The presumption must be that
there was a tendency to conflate not only the day but the year, and that, other
things being equal, preference should be given to the less tidy solution.
But
let us first look at what evidence there is for answering the two questions.
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(a) So indelibly etched upon the common memory is the
association between the fire of Rome and the persecution of Christians that it
comes as a surprise to realize that the entire connection rests upon one
unsupported piece of evidence - a single chapter in Tacitus'
Annals (15.44).
To this important,
and excellent, source we must return in detail.
But first it is worth stressing
the point that it stands alone not only in classical but in Christian
literature - until it itself is quoted.
[This is well brought out by E. T.
Merrill, Essays in Early Christian History, 1924,ch. 4.]
In classical literature
the only other reference to the persecution of Christians is in Suetonius' Lives of the Twelve Caesars, which
because it rests so obviously on independent tradition is important
corroborative testimony.
But the persecution is brought into no connection with
the fire (which by itself, of course, is often mentioned subsequently). [E.g. Pliny, Nat. hist. 17.5; Dio Cassius, Hist. 61.16-18.]
The fire is described in Nero
38, but the persecution of Christians is alluded to briefly in
Nero 16 among a variety of public
acts, chiefly legislative.
As Hort dryly observed, [F. J. A. Hort, The Apocalypse of St John I-III, 1908, xxv.]
'It comes
between regulations about what might be sold in the cooks' shops and others
about restraining the license of charioteers and the factions of clowns.'
More
remarkably there is no memory of its association with the fire preserved in any
early Christian writer.
None of the early references to the Neronian persecution,
in Clement of Rome [I Clem. 5f.],
Melito of Sardis [In his Petition to Marcus Aurelius,
cited by Eusebius, HE 4.26.9.],
Tertullian [Apol 5.3f.; Ad nat. 1.7; Scorp. 15.],
Lactantius [De mort. persec. 2.],
Eusebius [HE 2.25.]
or Jerome [De vir. ill. 5.],
makes
any mention of the fire.
The first link is in Sulpicius Severus,
whose Chronicle [Chronic. 2.29.] was completed
c. 403 and which quotes Tacitus.
In
Eusebius' Chronicle the two
events are separated by four years.
But we must return to the evidence of
Tacitus, which is important enough to be set out in full.
After giving a
graphic and detailed description of the ravages of the fire and the immediate
relief operations for the temporary re-housing of some hundreds of thousands of
homeless (Ann. 15.38-41), he
proceeds (15.421.) to describe the rebuilding of the capital to a carefully
thought-out plan with built-in fire precautions for the future, together with
the construction by Nero of a palace for himself of unrivalled magnificence,
the celebrated Domus Aurea. [Described by Suetonius, Nero 31.]
Then, in 15.44, he goes on:
So far, the precautions taken were suggested by human prudence:
now means were sought for appeasing deity,
and application was made to the Sibylline books;
at the injunction of which public prayers were offered to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpine,
while Juno was propitiated by the matrons,
first in the Capitol,
then at the nearest point of the sea-shore,
where water was drawn for sprinkling the temple and image of the goddess.
Ritual banquets and all-night vigils were celebrated by women in the married state.
But neither human help,
nor imperial munificence,
nor all the modes of placating Heaven,
could stifle scandal or dispel the belief that the fire had taken place by order.
Therefore, to scotch the rumour,
Nero substituted as culprits,
and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty,
a class of men, loathed for their vices,
whom the crowd styled Christians.
Christus, the founder of the name,
had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius,
by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus,
and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment,
only to break out once more,
not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease,
but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.
First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested;
next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted,
not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race.
And derision accompanied their end:
they were covered with wild beasts' skins and torn to death by dogs;
or they were fastened on crosses,
and, when daylight failed,
were burned to serve as lamps by night.
Nero had offered his gardens for the spectacle,
and gave an exhibition in his circus,
mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted on his car.
Hence, in spite of a guilt which had earned the most exemplary punishment,
there arose a sentiment of pity,
due to the impression that they were being sacrificed
not for the welfare of the state
but to the ferocity of a single man.
[Tr. J. Jackson, Loeb Classical Library, 1937.
For assessments of the passage by classical scholars,
cf. B. W. Henderson, The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero, 1903, 237-53. 434-49;
H. Furneaux, The Annals of Tacitus II, Oxford 1907, 416-27.]
It is quite clear from this account
that a considerable interval of time
must have elapsed before in desperation Nero rounded on the Christians.
There
is no need to assume that the building works were
by then completed:
indeed none was finished before Nero's death,
and the Domus Aurea was
demolished, uncompleted, by Vespasian.
Yet in so far as we have any evidence
for a connection between the fire and the persecution -
and there is no good
reason to question it -
it is for a delayed reaction.
At the very least, an
interval of many months must be allowed for the various stages described by Tacitus, which from the time the fire finally died down at the end of July 64
brings us into 65 at the earliest.
Yet almost universally,
not only in the textbooks,
but by giants like Lightfoot and Harnack and Zahn,
the Neronian persecution is
dated in 64.
I myself became convinced that this could not be right, but it is
one of the many merits of Edmundson's Church
in Rome in the First Century that he exposes in careful argument what he
calls this 'fundamental error on the part of almost every writer upon the
subject'. [Op. cit., 125; cf. 123-44.]
It is characteristic of the neglect of his book that
what he says should also have been ignored ever since.
He demonstrates that it is no objection
that Tacitus' treatment of the events of the year 65 appears to begin only at
ch. 48, since it is this historian's practice, like that of others, 'to group
together so as to form a single and complete episode in his narrative a series
of events having close connection with one another but really spread over a
considerable space of time'. [Ibid., 126.]
He shows how this applies to his compression
of the Pisonian conspiracy into the events of 65;
it is described as 'no sooner
hatched than full-grown', [Ann. 15.48.]
though it actually began in 63 [Ann. 14.65.] and might well have led to the death of Nero during the fire of 64. [Ann. I5.50.]
Certainly the ambitious programme for the rebuilding of Rome described under the events of 64 [Ann.
15.42f.] could scarcely have
got off the drawing-boards ofSeverus and Celer by the end of that year.
Among the points Edmundson makes are three which, he argues,
help to date the spectacle in Nero's gardens as not earlier than the spring of
65.
The first is the weather.
One thing ... may be regarded as certain:
that such a nocturnal spectacle would not have been planned so long as the night air was chilly,
nor would Nero with his scrupulous care for the preservation of his divine voice
[Cf. Suetonius, Nero 20; Pliny, Nat. hist. 19.6; 24.18; Tacitus, Ann. 15.22.]
have appeared at night in the open on a car in the garb of a charioteer in cold weather. [Op. cit., 141.]
The second is an argument, which he admits is speculative,
that the account in Ann. 15.58
of 'continuous columns of manacled men dragged and deposited at the garden
doors', which greatly exaggerates the actual numbers involved in the trial of
the Pisonian conspirators in April 65, may have been confused by merger with
the round-up of Christians at the same time.
Thirdly, he draws attention to the
fact that the Christian historian Orosius, [Hist. adv. pagan. 7.7.] a younger contemporary
of Sulpicius Severus, who had access to Suetonius, Tacitus and Josephus, follows
his account of the fire and persecution with the words:
Soon calamities in heaps began on every side to oppress the wretched state,
for in the following autumn so great a pestilence fell upon the city
that according to the registers [in the temple] of Libitina there were thirty thousand funerals.
Edmundson comments:
These last words are a direct quotation from Suetonius, [Nero 39.]
who however as usual gives no date to the pestilence.
This is however given by Tacitus, who thus concludes his narrative of the events of 65 AD [Ann. 16.13.]:
'The Gods also marked by storms and diseases a year made shameful by so many crimes.
Campania was devastated by a hurricane ...
the fury of which extended to the vicinity of the City,
in which a violent pestilence was carrying away every class of human beings. ...
Houses were filled with dead bodies,
the streets with funerals.' [Edmundson, op. cit., 143.]
None of this adds up to a demonstration that the persecution
of Christians was in 65.
It
could have been later, though the plausibility of linking it with the crime of
arson would steadily have diminished as the interval grew. But it may help to
reinforce the strong inherent probability that it could hardly have been
earlier.
Tentatively then we may answer our first question by dating this
initial assault upon the church in the spring of 65.
[B. Reicke, The New Testament Era,
ET 1969, 249, puts it 'around the beginning of 65'.]
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(b) Did Peter and/or Paul perish in
this first attack?
One could get the impression from I Clem. 5f. that Peter and
Paul were actually in the van of the martyrs, but it is doubtful whether
anything more than eminence causes their names to be put first.
The other
sources, when they mention names at all, do not discriminate, with the
exception of Sulpicius Severus, who says:
[Chronic. 2.29.3.
Tr. J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius:
Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church to AD 557, 1957, 6.]
Thus a beginning was made of violent persecution of Christians.
Afterwards also laws were enacted and the religion was forbidden.
Edicts were publicly published: 'No one must profess Christianity.'
Then Paul and Peter were condemned to death.
[But Barrett, NT Background, 17, translates 'at that time', thus eliminating the suggested interval.]
The former was beheaded, Peter was crucified.
We shall have to come back to the legal
enactments in another context. [P. 234 below.]
The separation in so late a
document of the deaths of the apostles from the initial violence would scarcely
be significant if it were not for the somewhat confused evidence of the
Chronicle of Eusebius.
In his History [HE 2.25.] he mentions no
dates, despite dating other events in the chapters that precede and follow.
In
the Chronicle we have varying
evidence in the two versions.
[For convenient comparison in parallel
columns, cf. Schoene (ed.), II, 154-7.]
The Armenian puts the fire of Rome
(or rather 'many fires in Rome') in 63 and Nero's 'beginning of
the persecution of Christians in which Peter and Paul suffer martyrdom at Rome'
in 67.
[Eusebius' dates are expressed in terms
of the regnal years of Nero.
Working backwards, the last, Nero 14, must be 68,
with Nero 1 as 54, and this calculation is supported by Finegan, HBC, 308.
Lightfoot, AF I.I, 230, puts all the dates a
year earlier;
C. H. Turner, 'The Early Episcopal Lists', JTS 1, 1900, 187-92, a year later.
Turner ingeniously works out that Eusebius must calculate the regnal year 1 of
any emperor from about the 15th September following his accession.
Since Nero did not become emperor till
October 54 this means that Nero 1= September 55-September 56.
But on this
calculation Nero 14 becomes September 68-9
and Nero would then not kill himself
till 9 June 69 (during the
reign of Vitellius!).]
This however is rendered doubtful by a previous entry for 66, when Linus
is recorded as succeeding Peter as Bishop of Rome.
In Jerome's Latin version
'Nero sets fire to most of Rome' in 64, and the 'first persecution of Christians
by Nero in which Peter and Paul perished gloriously in Rome' is in 68, and in
the same year 'Linus becomes Bishop of Rome after Peter'.
The Latin version is
recognized to be generally the more reliable,
[So Lightfoot, AF I. 1.232; Turner, op.
cit., JTS I, 184-7; Finegan, HBC, 155f.]
and in the reign of
Nero it usually shows greater approximation to the dates supplied by Tacitus or
Josephus.
Indeed for two only,
the earthquake at Laodicea and the murder
of Octavia,
where it is four and five years out respectively,
is there a
discrepancy of more than a year
or two.
The one thing that emerges clearly is
that Eusebius does not associate the persecution with the fire
(in both versions
they are four years apart),
but does associate the deaths of Peter and Paul
with the general persecution.
There is nothing in Tacitus actually to
rule out a four-year interval between
the fire and the persecution,
though such a gap would have made any connection
with the charge of arson incredible.
The circumstantial, and much older,
evidence of Tacitus must be preferred at this point,
with the general
persecution beginning, in all probability, in 65.
But what of the later date
for the apostles' death?
There is absolutely no way of being certain,
and
Lightfoot, despite an exhaustive discussion of the early Roman episcopal
succession, [AF 1.1, 201-345.]
declined to commit himself to choosing between 64 (as
he dated the persecution) and 67 or 68. [af 1.1.]
Wisdom perhaps should
dictate leaving it there,
and there is certainly no place for Harnack's
dogmatic assertion
that the martyrdom of Paul in July 64 is 'an assured fact'. [Chron., 240.]
But there are certain observations of greater or lesser probability that can be
made.
1. It is questionable whether Eusebius
had any basis for his dating except guesswork,
and on the date of the general Neronian persecution he was almost certainly wrong by some three years.
The
limitation of a chronicle is that it allows no room for genuine uncertainty.
In a history one can slur over one's ignorance;
in an annual record one is
forced to place things in one year or another.
As we have seen,
in his History Eusebius offers no date for
the persecution,
which may suggest that he did not have one.
There are two
reasons why in his Chronicle he
could have decided to put it at the end of Nero's reign.
In the Armenian
version (and the Latin is similar) his entry for the persecution reads:
'On top
of his other crimes Nero was the first to provoke persecutions of Christians;
under him the apostles Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom in Rome.'
Zahn
comments: [INT II, 78.]
Eusebius himself knows no more than what he says,
namely, that Peter and Paul died under Nero,
and does not intend that 67 shall be regarded as the year in which both apostles died,
as is proved also by his remark at the year preceding (66)
that Linus succeeded Peter as bishop of Rome.
It was only his way of looking at the history,
according to which the slaying of the Christians was the climax of Nero's crimes (HE 2.25. 2-5),
that caused him in his Chronicum to place the persecution of the Christians at the end of that emperor's reign.
[There may also have been the motive we have encountered before,
which reappears in the Acts of Peter and Paul
(ed. L. F. K. Tischendorf, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, Leipzig 1851, 38),
of suggesting that the death of Nero followed speedily upon his killing of the apostles:
'Know ye that this Nero will be utterly destroyed not many days hence and his kingdom given to another';
quoted by Ogg, Chronology of Paul, 199, who also doubts the evidence of Eusebius.]
The other reason, on which Harnack fastened, [Chron.,
241f.]
is
that the year 67 looks suspiciously as if it may be influenced by combining the
traditions of a twelve-year stay of the apostles in Jerusalem and a twenty-five
year 'episcopate' of Peter over Rome (30 + 12 == 42 + 25 = 67).
Unlike the date
42, it is supported by no other evidence than that of Eusebius himself, and is
therefore unreliable.
2. The evidence of Sulpicius Severus, though late, could be
based on better sources.
His reference to decrees is, as we shall see, borne
out by Tertullian.
Unlike Eusebius, he certainly had access to Tacitus, whose
account he clearly echoes.
But Tacitus had nothing about the death of Peter and
Paul, and this may be the reason for Sulpicius' adding the notice of it
apparently as a separate item at the end, following the decrees.
In any case,
if he intended an interval after the initial onslaught, there is absolutely no
indication of its duration.
It could have been but a few weeks.
3. As far as the death of Peter is concerned, the evidence
points to its being associated with the mass violence of 65.
Death by being
'fastened to crosses' is among the horrors listed by Tacitus,
and the 'Quo Vadis?' legend, [Acta Petr. 35 (Hennecke, NTApoc. II, 3171.).] to which we shall return, [P.
214 below.]
and to
which, Edmundson argues, [Op. cit.,
151-3.] considerable credibility attaches,
speaks
of Peter seeking to save his life by leaving the city,
only to be turned back
by the vision of Christ to face crucifixion.
This suggests that though he
escaped the initial round-up mentioned by Tacitus
he met his death before the
end of the purge.
There is no suggestion in any tradition that this was
prolonged beyond the year
(indeed in 66 Nero went to Greece and did not return
till 68).
So tentatively we may agree with Edmundson
that the death of Peter
took place 'some time during the summer of 65'. [Ibid., 152.]
4. By contrast there is nothing specifically to connect the
death of Paul with the Neronian pogrom.
It was apparently a judicial execution following a trial and could have
occurred at any time before, during, or after it.
For what little it is worth,
the evidence is in favour of Paul's death being somewhat later than that of
Peter.
[Cf. p. 143, nn. 17-19, above; also Acta Petr. 40, which places Paul's
return to Rome from Spain after Peter's death.
It has been argued (cf. Cullmann, Peter,
94f.)
that since the Old Testament examples
of jealousy in I Clem. 4 are in chronological order,
the mention of Peter
before Paul implies that Peter died first.
This is possible; but it would logically follow that both
died before the mass of the martyrs,
which is specifically denied by Sulpicius
Severus. Cullmann never even discusses the question of dates.]
But many modern reconstructions, unlike those of
the ancients who allowed only for a visit to Spain (which could easily have
been fitted in between 62 and the Neronian persecution),
[So Gunther, op. cit., 147, who
suggests not without plausibility (following Pherigo, JBL 70, 278) that Paul's imprisonment in Rome was terminated by
a sentence of relegatio or
temporary exile to a place of his choice.
This would account for the 'exile'
mentioned in I Clem. 5.6, which is otherwise difficult to fit in,
and is in line
with the tradition in Acta Petr.
1:
'Quartus, a prison officer, ... gave leave to Paul to leave the city (and
go) where he wished. ...
And when he had fasted for three days and asked of
the Lord what was right for him,
Paul then saw a vision, the Lord saying to
him,
"Paul, arise and be a physician to those who are in Spain" '
(Hennecke, NT Apoc. II, 279).
Subsequently, in 66, as Edmundson, op. cit., 160-2, points out,
Apollonius of Tyana was also banished from Rome
and 'turned westwards to the land which
they say is bounded by the Pillars' (Philostratus, Vit. Apol.4.47.).]
have been
affected by the desire to leave time for further journeys east so as to satisfy
the supposed requirements of the Pastoral Epistles.
[Thus Lightfoot
(Biblical Essays, 223) puts Paul's death on these grounds in the
spring of 68 (?);
Zahn (INT II,
67) in late 66-June 68;
Edmundson (op. cit., 160-3 and 240) in 67.]
There is
really no way of telling.
All we can say is that it was near enough to the death
of Peter to be regarded by Clement as part of the same attack and later by
Dionysius to have occurred 'about the same time'.
Probably we shall not be far
out in settling for some time in 66, or 67 at the latest.
It must be stressed again that all this
is no more than a very tentative reconstruction in the absence of any firm
evidence.
It can but provide a provisional framework,
which may have to be
modified by the evidence from the Petrine epistles,
to which we must turn.
top
There is no question at any rate that
the epistle claims to be by the apostle Peter (1.1)
and purports therefore to
be written during his lifetime.
It is addressed to 'those of God's scattered
people who lodge for a while in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and
Bithynia',
and, in contrast with the epistle of James,
the Christian diaspora evidently now includes a
majority (probably) who were once Gentiles (1.14, 18; 2.9f.; 3.51.; 4.3).
The
other thing that is reasonably certain is that it was written, or purports to
have been written, from Rome.
The 'greetings from her who dwells in Babylon,
chosen by God like you' (5.13) is almost universally
agreed to be a disguise for the church in Rome.
The pseudonym is indisputable
in the book of Revelation (14.8; 16.19; 17.5; 18.2, 10, 21) as it is in other
late-Jewish and Christian writings (II Bar.10.1f; 11.1; 67.7; II Esd.3.1f., 28,
31; Orac. Sib.5. 143, 159f.), and it was so
understood here as early as Papias. [Eusebius, HE 2.15.]
There is no need to spend time
discussing alternative locations in Mesopotamia or Egypt.
[A. Schlatter, The Church in the New Testament Period, ET 1955, 253-7,
and J. Munck, Paul and the Salvation of
Mankind, ET 1959, 275,
are among those who have believed that Peter
visited the Babylonian dispersion.
But
there is no other evidence for this -
while there is plenty that he was in
Rome.]
The only
question is why the disguise was felt to be necessary - as it never is, for
instance, in the writings of Paul.
The obvious answer is that it was resorted
to for the same reason as in the Apocalypse, namely, that of security (however
thin the veil).
But this at once leads into a discussion of the main, and
indeed the only, circumstantial evidence in the epistle which is relevant to
its dating, the menace of persecution that everywhere pervades it.
Let it be said at once that this
evidence proves nothing by way
of dating.
The references are such as could be explained by the kind of
harassment at the hands of Jews and local magistrates that meets us constantly
in Acts and Paul, and which might have occurred at any time or place.
This has
been emphasized by a number of recent writers, [And earlier by Zahn, INT11, 178-85.]
for instance Selwyn, [E. G. Selwyn, 'The Persecutions in I
Peter', Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas Bulletin, 1950, 39-50.]
Moule, [C. F. D. Moule, 'The Nature and
Purpose of I Peter', NTS 3,
1956-7, 1-11; Birth of the
NT, 114.]
Kelly, [J. N. D. Kelly, The Epistles of Peter and Jude (Black's NTC), 1969, 5-11, 29.]
Best, [E. Best, I Peter, 1971, 39-42.]
and van Unnik. [IDB III, 762.]
The last concludes:
Once we rule out the possibility of identifying these sufferings with some particular persecution,
we are left with no direct indication as to the 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.
Indeed F. L. Cross goes so far as to
say that 'the supposed references to persecution are false trails',
[F. L. Cross, I Peter; A Paschal Liturgy, 1954, 42.]
since he argues that the theme of suffering is supplied by the church's
liturgical season rather than by external events.
But, even granting that there is a
liturgical setting, this is surely to present a false either/or.
Moreover,
though these are salutary warnings against identifying the references with any
datable official persecution —
and still more against the dogmatism of precluding a date because there is
no record of a persecution in that particular area —
it does seem that there is
perhaps more to be said.
For the preoccupation with suffering, and with
Christian behaviour under it, is unique to I Peter.
There is nothing quite like
it in the Pauline epistles, or in any others, with the exception perhaps of
Hebrews.
But in Hebrews the persecution lies, partly at least, in the past, and
the concern is for the danger of relapse it has brought in its train. Here it
is potential, imminent or incipient (1.6; 2.12, 19f.; 3.13-17; 4.12-19;
5.8-10).
What situation is reflected in Hebrews we must go on to discuss in the
next chapter,
but that it reflects a particular situation can hardly be
doubted.
So in I Peter, at least in 4.12,
'Do not be bewildered by the fiery
ordeal that is upon you'
(or is happening to you, ὐμῖν γινομένη),
it seems evident that something specific is in
mind.
And while it is not limited to the recipients of the letter (5.9),
it is
nevertheless a new situation (4.17) for which they are not prepared (4.12).
It
may not be an official persecution,
but it is clear that things are building up
to a climax,
indeed, in the author's view, to the final climax (4.7).
Perhaps
the nearest historical parallel to the kind of social and religious harassment
that I Peter seems to presuppose is the phenomenon of anti-semitism;
and this
characteristically manifests itself in waves,
erupting from time to time in
sharp pogroms (whether or not
officially 'inspired').
It is clear too that this persecution of Christians is
not the sort that Paul mentions in I Thess.2.14-16, and which Acts chronicles
so frequently, as instigated specifically by Jews.
Jews may have been involved,
but there is nothing to say so.
It is pagans who malign them as wrongdoers
(2.12) and vilify them as spoilsports (4.3f.);
it is the criminal code and the
standards of good citizenship which they must be careful not to offend (2.12,
151.; 3.16f.; 4.14f.), not the Mosaic law or
Jewish susceptibilities.
Above all there is a wariness with
regard to the state authorities (2.131.) that suggests that Christians must be
particularly careful to afford
them no handle.
If they have to suffer, they must be sure not to put themselves
the wrong side of the law (4.141.) and so give excuse to the adversary who is
'looking for someone to devour' (5.8).
The parallel today might be a warning to
Christians in South Africa to make certain that, if they are going to oppose
apartheid (as of course they must),
they do not allow themselves to be convicted for doing wrong rather than for
doing good.
And this approach, of being, in Jesus' words, as wise as serpents
and harmless as doves, is entirely compatible with advocating and
encouraging all proper respect
for the state and its powers (2.13-17; cf. 3.15).
The situation here is not
that reflected in the book of Revelation, where the time is past when
Christians can expect that such respect will bring them justice.
Moreover, in
contrast again with the Apocalypse, there is as yet no evidence of martyrdom or
banishment, or indeed of any physical violence.
Though hostility would
obviously not be limited to insulting words (cf. 2.20, of the beating of
slaves), the attack upon them 'as Christians' seems to have consisted primarily
of slander and calumny.
As Zahn pointed out : [INT II, 180f.]
Whenever a specific injury is mentioned
which they suffered at the hands of the heathen,
it is always of this
character:- καταλαλεῖν, (2.12;
3.16), λοιδορεῖν (3.9),
and ἐπηρεάζειν τὴν ἀγαθ΄θν ἐν ἀναστροφήν (3.16); βλασφημεῖν (4.4)
and ὀνειδίζειν (4.14).
They are to silence their slanderers by good conduct
(2.15);
they are to put them to shame (3.16);
above all, they are not to answer
reviling with reviling, but with blessing (3.9).
The very first condition of a
comfortable life is to refrain from evil and deceitful words (3.10).
Even in
the passage where the suffering of Christ is held up as an example especially
to slaves,
it is not said that he refused to use his power to defend himself
against violence
(Matt. 26.51-5; 27.40-4; John 18.36; Heb. 12.2f.);
but
that when he was reviled he reviled not again,
and did not give vent to
threatening words when he was compelled to suffer (2.23).
To sum up, there is no evidence of open
state persecution.
Yet there is a sense of tension with regard to the civic
authorities
which is missing
from even the latest epistles of Paul and the end of Acts.
I believe therefore
that those are right who look for some
climacteric to which a date may be put.
Can we be more specific?
Three main
possibilities have been suggested, the situations under Trajan, Domitian and
Nero.
i. We may begin with that under Trajan
because we have a parallel which looks almost too good to be true.
In his
oft-quoted letter to the Emperor [Epp. 10.96. Trajan replies in 10.97.]
Pliny the younger, who was
governor of Bithynia-Pontus,
a province specifically mentioned in the address
of I Peter,
asks whether, in dealing with those brought before him 'as
Christians',
'punishment attaches to the mere name apart from secret crimes,
or
to the secret crimes connected with the name';
and he cites the oath by which
Christians bound themselves,
'not for any crime, but not to commit theft or
robbery or adultery'.
This seems to
parallel closely the situation described in 4.14-16:
If Christ's name is flung in your teeth as an insult,
count yourselves happy. ...
If you suffer,
it must not be for murder, theft, or sorcery,
nor for infringing the rights of others.
But if anyone suffers as a Christian,
he should feel it no disgrace,
but confess that name to the honour of God.
Many have concluded with F. W. Beare
that
'it would therefore seem unnecessary to look further for the persecution
which called forth our letter',
[F. W. Beare, The First Epistle of Peter, Oxford 1958, 14. Similarly, J. Knox,
"Pliny and I Peter: A Note on I Peter 4.14-16 and 3.15', JBL 72, 1953, 187-9; and A. R. C. Leaney, The Letters of Peter and Jude,
Cambridge 1967, 8-10. Streeter, PC,
115-36, saw the epistle as republished (under the pseudonym of Peter) to meet
this situation.]
and he dates it at the same
time.
J. W. C. Wand admits that this identification 'seems powerfully
attractive'.
[J. W. C. Wand, The General Epistles of St Peter and St Jude, 1934, 15.]
Yet both from Pliny's practice and from the Emperor's
reply it is presupposed that Christianity is already a
religio illicita and that this is nothing new -conditions that
cannot be presumed from I Peter.
[For a careful study of the nature of
the early persecutions of Christians, cf. A. N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny, Oxford 1966,
772-87.]
As Moule says,
[Birth
of the NT, 1 13f. For other points in the same direction, cf. A. F.
Walls in The New Bible Dictionary,
edd.J. D. Douglas et al., 1962, 975.]
it is
illegitimate to draw the inference from 4.15 that being a Christian is itself a
capital offence comparable with murder.
To take care that you suffer
unambiguously as a Christian no more implies this than it does in the parallel
we suggested from South Africa today.
Suffering for 'the name' is of course
already to be found in Acts 5.41; 9.14; and Mark 13.13;
and the wording of
Matt. 5.11,
'How blest are you,
when you suffer insults and persecution and
every calumny for my sake',
is particularly close to the situation in I Peter.
The term 'Christian' too had become established well before this date (Acts
11.28; 26.28).
[For a survey of the evidence inside
and outside the New Testament, cf.
Zahn, INT 11, 191-4.]
These parallels are the more significant
if, as we
have argued,
Acts and the synoptic gospels are all to be dated before the
mid-60s.
The Trajanic setting would be compelling
if there were any other reason to suggest a second-century date
or if no other Sitz im Leben
looked possible.
Otherwise it cannot be said to be necessary, or indeed
probable.
(It is notable that the most thorough English commentary on the
epistle in recent years, that of Selwyn,
does not even mention it -
Trajan
comes into the index only in a quotation from Dante!)
It will be proper
therefore to suspend judgment until we have examined the evidence for the other
alternatives.
2. The placing of I Peter under
Domitian is really a compromise for
those who can put it at neither of the other dates.
Thus Kummel, who has
already ruled out apostolic authorship, writes:
The reign of Domitian should probably be taken as the time of writing,
since the mention of the persecution 'as Christians' (4.16)
is not sufficient ground for going down as late as the beginning of the second century,
or even to the time of the persecution under Trajan.
90-5 is, therefore, the most probable time of composition.
[INT, 425.]
The reason, of course, for selecting
the last years of Domitian's reign is that this is the only other period apart
from the latter 60s associated in the tradition with the persecution of the
church.
What in fact this persecution amounted to we must examine more closely
when we come to the book of Revelation, [Pp. 231-3 below.]
which is usually connected
with it.
But there is no evidence that it affected Asia Minor -
[Unless it be the straw at which some have
(quite seriously) grasped, that Pliny reports that a number of those he was
investigating had given up their Christianity 'some three years before, some a
longer time, one or two even
twenty years ago' (italics mine).
The last date would bring us back to c. 95.]
and in this it is in exactly the same position as the Neronian persecution -
except for the evidence of the
Apocalypse.
But equally, if the Apocalypse comes from the times of Nero,
then
its evidence, including the use of the pseudonym 'Babylon',
would support a
similar date for I Peter.
For the moment therefore we must leave this evidence
on one side.
In any case, as we have seen, the state of affairs in I Peter is
clearly not yet that of the Apocalypse.
Reicke [James,
Peter and Jude, 72.] makes the point
that
sacrifices to the emperor are not mentioned in First Peter as a problem confronting the Christians.
If the epistle had been written during Domitian's persecution
that well-known, grave issue could not have been passed over.
This is, of course, an equally valid
objection to the Trajanic date,
since Pliny specifically mentions 'supplication
with incense and wine' to the statue of the emperor as an alternative to
execution;
and of this there is no hint in I Peter.
Indeed it is scarcely
credible that under either Trajan or Domitian the writer could have linked
'reverence to God' and 'honour to the emperor' in the positive and unqualified
manner of 2.17.
There is in fact really nothing to be
said for a date in Domitian's reign except as a last resort.
I cannot resist
quoting Wand's comment in this connection, [Peter and Jude, 16.]
since it bears out what
I have come to feel at many points in the course of this investigation:
Is there not some danger of Domitian's reign becoming rather overloaded with otherwise undated bits of Christian literature?
The Apocalypse, Hebrews and I Clement, to say nothing of Barnabas and the Didache, have all been ascribed to this period.
It has in fact become the favourite dumping-ground for doubtful writings with a hint of persecution about them.
But he is too modest in his list.
The
reign has also been pressed into service to accommodate Ephesians, Luke, Acts,
Matthew, John and the Johannine epistles, and by many too James, Jude and the
Pastoral Epistles!
This is not because all these writings have common factors
(not even persecution): they are widely different.
Nor is it because we have
such detailed information of the circumstances of the reign that we can see how
and why they fit in.
Indeed, from a Christian point of view,
it is one about
which we know remarkably little.
Hence its attractiveness as a depository:
it
can accommodate almost anything.
So let us pass on, to see whether we are
really forced by lack of alternative to bring it into use for I Peter.
3. With a date under Nero the issue of
authorship becomes a decisive factor -
though in fact it is equally tied to the
other two hypotheses,
which are viable only on the assumption of pseudonymity
or original anonymity (the name of
Peter being subsequently attached).
Inevitably, however, the arguments that it
cannot be by the apostle tend to be
held (or are capable of being stated) more decisively, not to say
dogmatically, than the arguments that it
must
be by the apostle.
For it is easier to preclude authorship than to prove it.
Arguments against apostolicity are therefore often used (e.g. by Kummel) to
rule out a Neronian dating without further discussion.
Beare, who commits
himself to the statement that 'there can be no possible doubt that
"Peter" is a pseudonym', [I
Peter, 25.] effectively dismisses this date
on the sole ground that there is no evidence that this persecution extended to
the provinces.
[Ibid., 10-13. He appends some other
arguments from W. Ramsay, The Church
in the Roman Empire before AD 170, 1893, 196-295, which are about as
unsubstantiated as that writer's eccentric conclusion that it was written
c. 75-80
by Peter, who lived on into the reign of Vespasian!]
There is, to be sure, no evidence that the
persecution of Nero had repercussions in Asia Minor (unless of course the
Apocalypse does come - somewhat
later -from this period).
But the happy accident that so remote a province as
Bithynia-Pontus had an exceptionally literary governor in the second decade of
the second century whose correspondence has survived and touches at one point
on the treatment of Christians can scarcely be used as an argument that silence
elsewhere implies that there was nothing of the sort going on.
In any case, the
kind of suppressed tension which I Peter reflects, in contrast with open state
persecution, is hardly likely to have featured prominently in the history
books.
The issue is whether the terror that erupted under Nero is the sort of
which this situation could be the build-up,
whether or not it also broke out openly in Asia
Minor.
And here Tacitus' words
in Ann. 15.44 already quoted
deserve closer scrutiny.
[I am indebted for this comparison to the notable article on I Peter by
F. H. Chase in HDB III, 784f
Cf. H. Fuchs, 'Tacitus uber die Christen',
VC 4, 1950, 65-93.]
Apart from the obviously trumped-up
charge of arson, there are two counts mentioned.
One is 'hatred of the human
race' (odium humani generis; cf. Tacitus' comment on the Jews in
Hist.5.5, 'adversos omnes alios
hostile odium').
This is clearly a catch-all indictment (and the word
'convicti' seems to imply that it was framed as a legal charge) such as can
succeed only if it can feed on, and foment, latent popular resentment and
hostility (as with Hitler's incrimination of the Jews after the Reichstag
fire).
And this is precisely the kind of lurking, or rather prowling (5.8),
hostility that I Peter reflects.
Secondly, says Tacitus,
'first those were
arrested who confessed'
(primum correpti qui fatebantur).
The context shows
that this cannot mean confessed to arson, of which it is made clear they were
innocent, but to their faith.
[This is generally agreed among the
commentators. Jackson in the Loeb edition
translates 'the confessed members of the sect'.]
The situation was the same as with
Pliny:
'I asked them whether they were Christians,
and if they confessed,
I
asked them a second and third time with threats of punishment' -
though Nero's
procedures were certainly not designed to give them an incentive to recant,
but
rather to inform on their coreligionists.
Admission to being a Christian was
all that was needed.
And, says the author of I Peter,
let commission of this
crime be all that they can find against you:
'If anyone suffers as a Christian,
he should feel no disgrace,
but confess that name to the honour of God (4.16).
The parallel with
the time of Nero is as close as with that of Trajan, and, assuming that open
persecution has not yet broken out, the attitude of wary respect and duly
discriminating honour for the authorities, 'whether it be to the emperor as
supreme or to the governor as his deputy' (2.14-17), is
at this stage entirely explicable.
But such language, and even
more that of 3.13, 'Who is going to wrong you if you are devoted to what is
good?', would be incredible if the Neronian terror had already struck - or even
if Paul had by then been executed. [So C. Bigg, The Epistles of St Peter and St Jude (ICC), Edinburgh 1901,85.]
And this is perhaps a further
indication that the martyrdom of Paul did not precede the persecution.
All that is lacking (unless the
Apocalypse supplies it) is specific evidence from Asia Minor.
But is the clue
to the writer's language to be sought in the epistle's destination - or in its
source?
There is no suggestion that he speaks from personal
acquaintance with his readers.
We cannot tell whether he has ever paid them a
visit, and he holds out no prospect of one.
[There is a somewhat greater
probability that Mark sends his greetings (5.13) because he is known to them.
Edmundson, op. cit., 12 if, suggests that Mark visited at least some of them
after his visit to Colossae (Col.4.10); though cf. II Tim.4.11. In any case
there is no ground for thinking, with Edmundson, that he met Peter there. Speculations
about the interrelationship at the time of Peter and Paul
via Silvanus (Chase, HDB III, 790-2; cf. Zahn, INT 11, 160-2) are fruitless.]
Certainly he does not
claim to have brought them the gospel: that has been the work of other
preachers (1.12).
But there is the further consideration, which many commentators
have noted,
that the epistle reads like material composed in the first instance
as a homily - or more than one homily.
The unity of the epistle is not our
direct concern, but the resumption at 4.12, after a doxology, with matter that
appears to reflect a more imminent or actual situation of persecution has
suggested to some that two letters have been combined.
[So Moule, op. cit., NTS 3, 1-11;
cf.J. H. A. Hart, EGTV, 291.]
Absence of
any textual evidence for this (in contrast to the very varied position of the
doxology at the end of Romans) must weigh against any theory of
literary division; but that the
material represents addresses given on different occasions or to different
groups is entirely plausible.
Yet here the implications of the place of delivery are more relevant.
For if it is material prepared in the first instance for speaking (however much
it was adapted subsequently),
then the situation it reflects will primarily be
that of Rome rather than the obscurer parts of Asia Minor.
There have indeed been attempts to pin
the occasion down still more specifically, notably by Cross,
[1 Peter: A Paschal Liturgy, building
on, and applying to the Passover, the baptismal setting of I Peter argued by
Perdelwitz, Bornemann, Windisch, Streeter, Beare and Preisker, references to
whose works are given in the footnotes to Cross,
op. cit., 28.]
who,
however, makes no attempt to draw out the geographical implications for the
situation of suffering, which, as we have seen, he regards as a false trail.
There is no need here to go into the details of his theory that I Peter is
originally material composed for the bishop's part at a paschal baptismal
liturgy in Rome.
They have been sharply criticized,
[E.g. by Moule, NTS 3, 1-11; W. C. van Unnik, 'Christianity according to I
Peter', ExpT 66, 1956-7, 79-83;
T. C. G. Thornton, 'I Peter, a Paschal Liturgy?', JTS n.s.12, 1961, 14-26.]
though I am
inclined to think at some points he could have stated his case more cogently
and in a form less open to objection.
[Rather than the references to
suffering being occasioned purely by the church's year, I believe the preacher
is using the opportunity this provides to give teaching which is very much related to his
hearers' condition. Similarly, the sermon, while presupposing the external
actions and imagery of the liturgy, is concerned to draw out the inward and
spiritual meaning of the sacramental acts, many striking parallels for which
are to be found in the later record of the early Roman rite in Hippolytus' Apostolic Tradition. Thus in 3.3f.
the stress is on 'not in outward adornment'. The women have to plait their
hair undone for the baptism, refasten the jewellery they have taken off, and
put on their new robes: all this is part of the rite - now it has to be done
not just externally but 'in the inmost centre of our being'. So in 2.2 the milk
they have received is interpreted as spiritual (λογικόν), and in 2.5 the
structure of the church and the θυσίαι (oblations?) as πνευματικαί. Finally in 3.21 baptism is seen not as a mere
washing away of the bodily pollution but (if this is the right translation) a
pledge to God proceeding from a good conscience. But, though the different
moments of the rite provide the occasion for the teaching, there is no need
(with Cross) to assume that the sermon was tied synchronistically to them.]
But whether this theory (or any
modification of it) is necessary
as an explanation of the epistle (and clearly it is not), it is at least worth
considering the implications of some of the phraseology on the assumption that
what shaped it was the experience of the writer's own pastoral situation in
Rome rather than that of his distant, and highly diverse, readers.
I believe
there may be several hints of this, especially in the closing section of the
epistle, which may have been addressed more specifically to the immediate needs
of the local congregation as a whole.
The most striking phrase is that in
4.12 about
'the fiery ordeal that is Upon you'
(τῆ
ἐν ὑμῖν τυρώσει πρὸς πειρασμὸν ὑμῖν γινομένη).
It
is indeed difficult to apply this to a general
situation in every part of Asia Minor north and west of the Taurus mountains.
Hence the theories that it may have been added for a particular province or
church,
though there is nothing else to suggest or confirm this.
We must be
wary of taking the metaphor too literally,
since the πύρωσις takes up the metaphor of the assayer's fire in 1.7
(though why it was chosen there is still relevant).
The use of the symbolism of 'the fire of testing' (τὴν πύρωσιν τῦς δοκιμασίας) for the eschatological ordeal occurs also in Did.
16.5, as, of course, in Paul (I Cor. 3.15) and elsewhere.
Nevertheless 'the
fiery trial' would be a grimly appropriate image for the Neronian terror,
sparked
off as it was by the fire of Rome
and culminating in 'Christians fastened on
crosses,
and ... burned to serve as lamps by night'.
If this part of the epistle does
reflect a more circumstantial account of what had already begun in Rome (though
not yet in Asia Minor), there could also be an echo of it in 5.8.
There in a
vivid metaphor (cf. I Cor.i5.32; II Tim. 4.17)
the Christians' ἀντίδικος, or adversary in court,
is viewed as the devil
(incarnate in the imperial power?)
who, 'like a roaring lion prowls around
looking for someone to devour'.
Tacitus does not indeed specify the lions of
the amphitheatre,
but he does say that the Christians were 'covered with wild
beasts' skins and torn to death by dogs'.
Finally, with great hesitation, I offer
a suggestion on which nothing turns and which indeed I throw out mainly for a
classicist with more knowledge than myself to refute or confirm.
The phrase in
the following verse, 5.9, translated in the neb,
'remember that your brother Christians are going through the same kinds
of suffering while they are in the world',
or, in the rsv, 'throughout the world',
has long struck me as odd.
From
opposite extremes of the critical spectrum Bigg [Peter
and Jude, ad loc.] and Beare agree
that 'this clause is full of difficulties;
almost every word offers a problem'. [I
Peter, ad loc.]
Yet neither of them, nor as far as I have discovered anyone else, observe the
oddness in the phrase ἐν κόσμω.
It has to be paraphrased to mean either 'while still in the world' or 'in the
rest of the world' or 'in the whole world'.
Yet when Paul wants to say this to Rome,
he says it quite clearly: ἒν ὃλω τῶ κόσμω. (Rom. 1.8).
Could it possibly be a stock phrase (without the article) to mean the opposite
of 'in town'?
And if so is it a Latinism reflecting the usage of the place
where Peter's successor still makes his allocution 'urbi et orbi'?
[I confess I have made no progress in
tracing this phrase back to the first century, but I am grateful for the
negative results of my friends, particularly Dr Robert Sharpies of the
Department of Latin, University College, London.]
Was there anywhere else except 'the City where one could speak of
the provinces as 'the world' without qualification?
[This usage for Rome (as for London) is
of course well established.
Cf. the derivation of the name Istanbul,
which is a
corruption of the modern Greek for εἰς τὴν πόλιν.]
If so, it would be a
further subtle pointer to the original context of the phraseology being
supplied not by Asia Minor but by Rome.
The objection to this whole thesis is that it is inconceivable how, in Moule's words,
a liturgy-homily, shorn of its rubrics ...
but with its changing tenses and broken sequences all retained,
could have been hastily dressed up as a letter
and sent off (without a word of explanation) to Christians who had not witnessed its original setting.
[NTS 3, 4.]
But this objection loses much of its
force on two conditions.
The first is that one does not press the points
in the argument that make it into a liturgy proper
[In particular I would question the
forced interpretation of νῦν (1.12; 2.10, 25; 3.21) and ἂρτι (1.6, 8; 2.2) to indicate 'a rite in actual progress'
(Cross, op. cit., 30). 1 .6 and 8 are surely impossible to take this way in any
case.]
but treats it
more, with Reicke, [James,
Peter and Jude, 74f.;
cf. Streeter, PC, 123.] as 'a confirmation sermon' comparable, he
suggests, with Ephesians (another Asian encyclical).
Secondly, one must bear in
mind that, as I read them, the circumstances are far from normal.
The homily
turned into a circular letter is dispatched, via Silvanus, 'our trusty brother, as I hold him', with the
message 'I am saying very little in writing' (5.12), because, like Tychicus in
Eph.6.21, he will 'tell all' (πάντα
γνωρίσει).
[Cf. Acts 15.27, also of Silvanus: 'We
are therefore sending Judas and
Silas, who will themselves confirm this by word of mouth'.]
The situation is one of great urgency and danger, in
a city that must already be disguised as 'Babylon', as the Neronian terror
breaks.
When would this be?
We shall not be far wrong, I think, if we guess
the spring of 65.
Indeed if the paschal associations of I Peter, as of I
Corinthians (cf. I Cor.5.7f.; 16.8), are granted,
[See Cross, op. cit., 23-7. He cites in
particular (and so interprets): 1.3-12, 13-21, 18f.; 2.9f., 11. Cf. A. R. C. Leaney, 'I Peter and the Passover: An Interpretation', NTS 10, 1963-4, 238-51 (especially 244-51).]
whatever its literary form, we may be
more specific still.
Passover that year was late, falling on April 12.
If Edmundson is right, who argues for this same dating of I Peter, [Op. cit., 118-44.] the rounding up of Christians after the first 'confessions' became mixed up
with the retribution vented on the Pisonian conspirators.
This also came to a
head, according to Tacitus, in April 65.
We may then envisage Silvanus leaving
hastily for Pontus on his round of the Asian churches perhaps
towards the end of that month. [Cf. F. J. A. Hort, The First Epistle of Peter (1.1-2.17),
1898, 157-85, for the itinerary reflected in the order of the districts named.]
But at this point we must reckon with
factors which have seemed to many to make such a dating impossible.
They focus
mainly on the issue of authorship, but, first, what of any other indications in
the epistle, or out of it, which might suggest a later date?
As regards external attestation, there
is nothing to suggest that it was not known as early as almost any New
Testament book.
It is quoted several times (though not by name) in the epistle
of Polycarp from the first part of the second century.
Possible connections
with Ephesians, Hebrews, James and I Clement are (it is now widely agreed) too
sketchy or too general for asserting literary dependence either way.
In any case the arguments
are circular, depending on judgements made of the dates of these other
documents.
[Thus E.J. Goodspeed, New Solutions of New Testament Problems,
Chicago 1927, 115, regards I Peter as a response to Hebrews and puts both of
them in the reign of Domitian. C. L. Mitton, 'The Relationship of I Peter and
Ephesians', JTS n.s. i, 1950,
67-73, sees I Peter as dependent on Ephesians which, like Goodspeed, he also
places in the same reign. Beare, / Peter,
91., 195f., follows him. Kummel, INT,
423,
though supporting a late date, dismisses literary dependence on Romans and
Ephesians as 'improbable', 'because the linguistic contacts can be explained on
the basis of a common catechetical tradition'.]
With regard to the internal evidence,
it is remarkable how little even those like Beare who regard an early date as
impossible can point to traits of doctrine or organization to support them. In
fact, apart from asserting that the epistle's teaching on baptismal
regeneration is (at some unspecified date) 'borrowed from the contemporary Hellenistic
modes of thought,'
[I
Peter, 38. He toys (16-19) with theories of associations with the
mystery cults of Cybele, especially the Taurobolium.
He has to admit that the
direct evidence is far too late, but still uses it to give substance to the
statement that 'one is inclined
to feel that he is indeed in the religious atmosphere of the second century'.]
he fastens on the fact that the Spirit of God
is mentioned only four times, which he interprets to mean that
a writing in which the sense of the active presence of the Spirit has fallen into eclipse as it has in First Peter betrays by that indication alone that it is the product of a later generation.
It is utterly inconceivable that to Peter, or to Silvanus for that matter, the doctrine of the indwelling Spirit was wholly unknown, or was not of the first importance for the moral life of the Christian.
[I Peter, 36.]
Seldom can the argument from silence
have been made to cover so much.
One might as well argue the same for
Colossians, which does not refer to the Holy Spirit once.
Cross, on the contrary, as a scholar at home both in the biblical and the patristic periods, has no doubt as to the world to which I Peter belongs. I quote the summary that concludes his study:
First, the theology of I Peter betrays many signs of great antiquity.
There is a marked absence of later theologoumena,
e.g. in the undeveloped doctrine of the Trinity in 1.2;
while there are indications that the ordering of the Christian ministry is that of a very early date.
[The only reference to the ministry is in fact in 5.1-4, where the author, despite claiming to be an apostle (1.1), addresses the elders as a fellow-elder, exhorting them as shepherds of the flock under Christ, the chief shepherd, who is also in 2.25 the shepherd and ἐπίσκοπος of their souls. The contrast with the epistles of Ignatius, also from Asia Minor in the reign of Trajan, is very marked. Even if (contrary to the neb) ἐπισκοποῦντες were part of the true text in 5.2, the function of ἐπισκοπή would be that of the presbyters, as in the whole of the New Testament.]
Secondly, the eschatological structure of the thought, with its close inter-penetration of future hope and present realization, suggests the same conclusions.
The ethics is still in the atmosphere of the last things,
and we find that remarkable co-presence of the End as future and yet as already here,
with no suggestion of the clear distinction between the Prote and the Deutera Parousia of Christ as we find it from Justin onwards, which is a mark of very early times.
And thirdly, the whole tone of the work.
If we ask:
'Does it breathe the spirit of the other Biblical writings which we use day by day in our Christian worship,
or is it that of later days whose ethos, however sublime, is not that of the New Testament?'
I think that most will have a ready answer; and it is this that matters most.
Whether it is the work of Peter or of Silvanus or of someone else I will not here try to say.
[Op. cit., 43f. Kelly, another patristic scholar, concurs (Peter and Jude, 30). Moule, NTS 3, 11, after disagreeing with most of Cross's thesis, ends by saying: 'I am in whole-hearted agreement with the last two pages of Dr Cross's lecture, where he argues that at any rate the theology, the ethics and the "tone" of the writing are all in keeping with an early period of the Christian Church's existence.']
In the same way, Moffatt, who argues for a late first - or early second-century date for Ephesians, the Pastorals, Hebrews and James, is equally clear that this period does not fit I Peter:
An early date is favoured by the absence of any heretical tendencies among the readers,
the naive outlook on the imminent end (4.17f.),
and the exercise of charismatic gifts (4.10); ...
and by common consent it has the stamp of primitive Christianity more than any other,
not only of the writings in the Petrine New Testament (Gospel, Acts, Epp., Apoc.),
but of the post-Pauline writings.
[ILNT, 344.]
But what, finally, of the question of authorship, which is our concern only in so far as it rules out or reinforces the daring?
First, it is worth noting that while some, as we have seen,
speak as though apostolic authorship (whether direct or through an amanuensis)
were out of the question, there are other scholars supporting it here who deny
it in other comparable cases. Indeed, if we leave out such questioned but nevertheless
widely accepted letters as Colossians and II Thessalonians, this, with the
possible exception of James, is the least
likely New Testament epistle to be pseudonymous.
Even Harnack, [Chron., 457-65.] who decided against apostolicity, nevertheless found the case of pseudonymity
'weighed down' by such insuperable difficulties that, if his own theory were
unacceptable, he said that he would opt for Petrine authorship.
This theory was
of an originally anonymous writing (from between 82 and 93 - though conceivably
some twenty years earlier) which was later (c. 150-175) attributed to Peter by
the addition of 1.1f. and 5.12-14.
These verses are certainly detachable and
may well be what originally turned a liturgical sermon into a letter.
But there
is absolutely no textual or external evidence for the theory, and it leaves
most of the problems where they are.
It has won little support, [Cf. Beare, I Peter, 24: 'It has no positive evidence to support it, and very
little
to commend it.'] and, as Chase comments in his
perceptive summary and critique of it, [HDB III, 786f.] it is another sign
(noticed by Mayor of Harnack's treatment of James) of the remnants of the Tubingen
presuppositions from which Harnack at the time had not shaken himself free:
It essentially belongs to a period of transition.
It is the product, on the one hand, of the lingering influence of an older criticism, too thoroughly bent upon negative results to retain much delicacy of perception; and, on the other hand, of a keen literary and spiritual sense of the significance of a writer's matter and manner.
The objections to pseudonymity felt by Harnack are nowhere better stated than by Chase himself: [Ibid., 785f.]
A close study of the document itself reveals no motive, theological, controversial, or historical, which explains it as a forgery.
It denounces no heresy.
It supports no special system of doctrine.
It contains no rules as to Church life or organization.
Its references to the words and the life of Christ are unobtrusive.
It presents no picture of any scene in St Peter's earlier life,
and does not connect itself with any of the stories current in the early Church about his later years.
Why, moreover, should a forger ... represent Silvanus as the amanuensis or the bearer of St Peter's letter,
though in the Acts he nowhere appears as in any way connected with that apostle,
but both in the Acts and in three Epistles (I and II Thess., II Cor.) as the companion of St Paul?
Why, above all, should a forger give to Pauline thoughts and to Pauline language a prominent place in an Epistle bearing the name of St Peter?
Attempts have legitimately been made to defuse the
suggestions of 'forger' (e.g. by Beare [I Peter, 291.] and Leaney [Peter and Jude, 1.1f.]).
The question of whether or not pseudonymity was an accepted literary convention
which deceived (or attempted to deceive) no one will best be kept for the
discussion of II Peter.
All one can say here is that whatever the intention, it
seems in this case a particularly motiveless exercise,
[Kiimmel, INT, 424, concludes: 'The fact of pseudonymity is not contradicted
by our inability to perceive the motive for it.'
But it is precisely this 'fact' that has to be established and
rendered plausible.]
which in
fact (unlike II Peter) deceived everyone until the nineteenth century.
But what are the improbabilities (Harnack) or
impossibilities (Beare and Kummel) in the way of apostolic authorship?
Apart
from the circumstances of persecution already considered, they may be
summarized briefly under three heads.
1. If the epistle were by an intimate associate of Jesus we
should expect more direct references to his life and words.
This is a very subjective expectation, and ironically it is precisely
because II Peter does contain
such explicit reference that it is discredited. Certainly the fact that any
claims or allusions are so indirect argues more strongly against pseudonymity
than authenticity.
In any case to say that it is inconceivable that Peter should not 'have referred
to the example of Jesus in some way is
not merely subjective but wrong. [Kummel, INT, 424.]
The reference in 2.23 to the example of Jesus
under trial is a clear allusion to the passion story.
Indeed it is one of a
number of passages which Selwyn [1
Peter, 27-33.] cites as evidence of 'apostolic testimony'.
[Cf. also R. H. Gundry, ' "Verba
Christi" in I Peter', NTS 13, 1966-7, 336-50, who argues that the underlying allusions to the 'words of
Christ' are specially connected with narrative contexts in the Gospels where
Peter is an active participant.]
None of these, he admits, is unambiguous, and they will strike different people
with different force.
But two others, I think, are worth repeating.
They are
1.8:
You have not seen him,
yet you love him;
and trusting in him now without having seen him,
you are transported with a joy too great for words.
It has
been well remarked that Paul never writes, nor could ever have written, such
words, with their implied contrast in status between writer and readers.
Selwyn
cites Hoskyns and Davey's comment [E. Hoskyns and F. N. Davey, The Fourth Gospel, 21947, 97.] on the similar word of Jesus to
the twelve in John 20.29:
Those who have not seen and yet have believed are what they are
because there once were men who believed because they did actually see.
The other passage is the highly ambiguous one of 5.1:
I appeal ... as ... a witness of Christ's sufferings,
and also a partaker in the splendour that is to be revealed.
It is difficult to
believe that this refers merely to the common experience of all Christians
described in 4.13
('It gives you a share in Christ's sufferings ... and when
his glory is revealed your joy will be triumphant').
A 'witness' would
naturally imply more, as in Peter's words in Acts 1.22 and 2.32.
And this is
fortified by Selwyn's interpretation [I
Peter, ad loc.] of the following phrase,
'who have also had experience of the glory that is to be revealed', as a
reference to the transfiguration, viewed (as G. H. Boobyer has cogently argued)
[G. H. Boobyer, St Mark and the Transfiguration Story, 1942; 'The Indebtedness
of II Peter to I Peter' in A. J. B. Higgins (cd.), New Testament Essays: Studies in Memory of T. W. Manson,
Manchester 1959,43. Cf. my Jesus and His
Coming, 133.]
as an anticipated vision of the parousia.
If so, the veiled allusion, in contrast with the unmistakable reference in II
Peter 1.16-18, fits with the modesty of the author's whole approach in 5.1 ('I appeal to you as a fellow-elder'),
though scarcely with the pretensions of one falsely claiming to be an apostle.
2. It is said that the Paulinism of the doctrine is incompatible with the known
position of Peter.
This 'Paulinism' has in any case been much exaggerated, when,
as Selwyn says, 'we reflect that the Epistle is without allusion to what are
commonly regarded as the characteristic ideas of St Paul' - and he lists
justification; the contrast between faith and works, gospel and law; the
distinctive Pauline connotations of grace and sin, the atonement and the body
of Christ; and much in the ethical field.
[I
Peter, 20f.
Similarly Kelly, Peter
and Jude, 11-15;
and earlier Bigg, Peter
and Jude, 16-21; 52-67;
Chase, HDB III, 788f.;
Wand, Peter and Jude,
17-21.]
For the rest he has
persuasively demonstrated that the similarities reflect the common stock of
early Christian teaching and catechetical patterns. [I Peter,
365-466.]
In any case,
apart from one regrettable but temporary lapse (Gal.2.11-14), neither in the
Pauline epistles (cf. especially Gal.2.6-10; I Cor.1.121.; 15.3-11) nor in
Acts (cf. especially 15.6-11, where Peter puts the Pauline case) is the Petrine
position regarded as fundamentally different from Paul's.
If Peter had read
Romans (which if it was sent to Rome some eight years before is more than
likely) and indeed other Pauline epistles (as II Peter 3.15 at any rate says
that he had), there is no reason why he should not reflect the thinking of one
who was on all the evidence the more creative theologian. [Cf. Zahn, INT 11, 175-7.]
But
this is not to deny that he also had a theological position, particularly in
regard to the sufferings and death of Christ, distinctively his own [Cf. Cullmann, Peter, 65-9.] - whether or not we allow any weight to the significant connections between I
Peter and the Petrine speeches in Acts.
[Cf. Wand, Peter and Jude, 26-8;
Selwyn, I Peter, 33-6;
and most recently S. S. Smalley, "The
Christology of Acts Again' in B. Lindars and S. S. Smalley (edd.), Christ and Spirit in the New Testament: In
Honour of C. F. D. Moule, Cambridge 1973, especially 84-93.
The
parallels are certainly more substantial than those between James and Acts.]
(3) Finally, there is the vital question again of language.
One objection over which time need not be spent is the fact that
the Old Testament quotations follow the LXX rather than the Hebrew text. For,
naturally, if a man is writing to Greek-speaking readers he follows 'their'
Bible.
'Besides', as van Unnik observes from experience, [IDB III, 764.] 'a
foreigner writing in another language will usually stick to the standard
translation for literal quotations and not dare to change it to suit his own
text.'
Beare's assumption [I Peter, 26f.] that there would be no occasion for Peter to have used the Greek scriptures except
in addressing Gentiles (and that late in life) is astonishing.
But, quotations
apart, could Peter have written the Greek of I Peter?
Again there is no way of
saying dogmatically.
Many of the issues are the same as those already discussed
in relation to James,
though the Greek of I Peter has perhaps a somewhat more
'classical' touch.
But against the possibility or at least the probability of
this there are two further arguments.
The first is that, according to Acts
4.13,
Peter and John were described by the high priests as ἀγράμματοι,
though whether this
means 'illiterate' or more likely, as in the neb, 'untrained' (in the Law) cannot finally be determined.
In any case, what
struck the authorities was what they were capable of despite this.
The second is that according to Papias [Eusebius, HE 3. 39.15.] Peter had Mark as his 'interpreter' (ἑρμηνευτής),
though again whether this means 'translator' is uncertain. [For Jerome (see n. 137 below) 'interpretes'
meant amanuensis.]
In
any case, the purpose of the quotation is to stress Mark's closeness to Peter,
not to provide information about Peter's linguistic abilities.
It is noticeable
that in none of Clement of Alexandria's references to this tradition [See above, pp. 108-10.] is this aspect mentioned:
Peter preaches 'publicly' in Rome (with no mention of
an interpreter) and Mark his follower 'remembers' and subsequently writes down
what he said.
But even if at one stage Peter used a translator, this incident
may come from an earlier period.
As we have seen, the only person to date it,
Eusebius, places it back in the reign of Claudius, [HE 2. 14.6-15.1.] and in his Chronicle as early as 42.
Whatever
Peter's educational limitations immediately after Pentecost,
it is
inconceivable that he can have exercised any kind of leading ministry
in
Antioch or even Jerusalem, let alone in Rome,
without the use of Greek.
Whether
this means that he could or did write the good Greek of I Peter is, naturally,
another matter.
Suspension of judgment appears to be the only prudent course,
and the fact that eminent authorities can be found on both sides of the
argument suggests humility rather than dogmatism.
But, in contrast with the epistle of James, there is the
ready way out (on which many have seized) of an amanuensis or ghost-writer
in the person of Silvanus (5.13) -
not, be it noted, Mark, who is mentioned in the next verse and whom on the
basis of Papias' tradition one would have expected a pseudepigrapher to
select.
[Jerome, Epp.120.11, uses the same word 'interpretes' for the different
amanuenses to whom he attributed the diverse styles and vocabulary of I and II
Peter. But he does not mention Silvanus or Mark.]
But the question is,
What is the meaning of διὰ Σιλουανοῦ ... ἒγραψα?
Is Silvanus the
carrier or the scribe (and therefore by extension the writer) of the letter?
It would be safe to say that he is in any case envisaged as delivering the
letter and is commended to the churches for this purpose.
But did he also write
it at Peter's dictation or behest?
On the analogy of the opening verses of I
and II Thessalonians,
one might expect Silvanus to have shared in the address
if he was part-author,
or to have added his own greeting, like Tertius in Rom.
16.22, if he was the amanuensis,
though obviously these parallels cannot be
pressed.
The bearer of Romans is evidently Phoebe,
who is similarly commended
to the congregation (16.1f.),
and it is significant that the subscription added
to later manuscripts describes the epistle as ἐγράφη ἀπὸ Κορίνθου διὰ Φοίβης.
It was her activity,
not that of Tertius,
that the scribes thought was properly described by the
preposition διά.
This is one of a number of parallels given by Chase in a
careful note on the subject [HDB III, 790.] which seems to have been
conspicuously ignored (or misinterpreted) by those who have not agreed with its
conclusion.
The only other example in the New Testament
(also as it happens
associated with Silvanus) is in Acts 15.23
where γράφαντες διὰ χειρὸς αὐτῶν must in the context (cf.15.22, 27) refer to the
sending of the apostolic letter,
via Judas Barsabbas and Silas,
and mean, as the neb rightly renders it, 'gave them the
letter to deliver'.
The same applies to the Epistle of Polycarp 14,
'I write
these things to you by (per) Grescens,
whom I commended to you recently and now
commend to you',
and to the only unambiguous instance in the letters of lgnatius:
'I write these things to you from Smyrna by the hand of
(διά) the Ephesians who are worthy of all felicitation' (Rom.
10.1).
[For discussion of this and the other instances
(Philad. 11.2; Smym.l2.1) see Chase.]
On the other side only two parallels, as far as I know, have been cited.
One is
the letter from Dionysius of Corinth [Eusebius, HE 4.23.11.] to the Romans,
where he
describes I Clement as having been written from the Roman church διὰ Κλέμεντος.
But this means not that
Clement was the amanuensis of some other author, but the representative of his
church.
Similarly in the Martyrdom of Polycarp 20
the church in Smyrna writes
to the church in Philomelium and elsewhere
'through our brother Marcianus',
and he is distinguished from Euarestus who 'wrote the letter'
and, like Tertius
in this capacity, sends his own greeting.
Marcianus again is evidently the
spokesman of the church
and thus corresponds to Peter rather than Silvanus:
he
is no one's secretary.
So Kummel seems to be right in saying that 'no one has yet proved that γράφω διά τινος can mean to authorize someone
else to compose a piece of writing', [INT, 424.]
Until this can be shown, then to rely upon Silvanus as the
real composer of the Greek is extremely hazardous.
[Selwyn's attempt, 1 Peter, 369-75, to show Silvanus to be
the common literary factor between I Peter, I and II Thessalonians, and the
decree of Acts 15.29, cannot be said to have succeeded.
Cf. the telling criticisms of the whole 'Silvanus hypothesis'
by Beare, I Peter, 188-92.]
It could be
so.
Yet Peter as the author (as the very personal address of 5.1ff. would suggest)
must really be prepared to stand on his own feet.
The doubts and difficulties
will remain, and it seems impossible that they could ever be finally resolved
either way.
In the last resort I can only say that I find nothing decisive to
outweigh the many other considerations to suggest that, whoever actually penned
it, the epistle comes from Peter's lifetime and that he is in the fullest sense
'behind' it.
I see therefore no reason from the evidence of the authorship to
go back on the previous assessment of a date for the dispatch of the letter
somewhere around the end of April 65.
top
Turning to II Peter, we move into a much more complex set of
problems and an area of the New Testament that from every point of view,
including that of chronology, is a good deal murkier.
We cannot expect it to
shed much light on anything else;
it is a question of what light other things
can shed on it.
II Peter cannot be considered except in conjunction with the
epistle of Jude, with which, all would agree, it has a literary connection of
some kind.
What that is, and what is the relationship between them and I Peter,
and whether either Jude or II Peter can sustain the claim to be written by the
persons in whose name they stand, raise acutely debated issues which may not be
burked.
But with dating as our primary concern it may be helpful to to come at
the matter from a different angle from that which has led to the concentration
of the debate on the issue of pseudepigraphy.
Let us begin by leaving on one side for the time being the
questions of authorship and literary dependence and look at the documents for
the clues they afford which are relevant to placing them in 'period'.
I
deliberately put it that way,
because neither II Peter nor Jude contains any positive indication of absolute
dating.
It is a question of where they belong in relation to other comparable
literature,
and more than usually therefore the arguments are in danger of
being circular.
If this other literature itself is dated late,
then these epistles will follow;
if early, then the same will be true.
Yet II
Peter has continued to remain an exception to almost every chronological
scheme;
and exceptions have value in proving a rule.
If it is an exception, to what is it an exception, and why?
In asking what these two documents may have to tell us about
dating, without prejudice to their interrelationship,
we must begin with one or
the other.
Since the majority of scholars give priority to Jude over II Peter,
let us start with the epistle of Jude, though keeping an open mind on the question.
Jude follows James,
whose brother he claims to be
(and there
is general agreement that it is of this James that the claim is
made),
in calling himself simply a 'servant of Jesus Christ'
(1.1; cf. James
1.1, 'servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ')
and in giving no other details
either about himself or of those with him,
or of the place of origin or
destination of the letter.
In fact it is even less informative.
While there are
clues in James that point, as we saw, to a Palestinian milieu,
there is nothing
in Jude that affords any hint of where the author is living.
And while James at
least indicates that the destination of his epistle is
not a single locality,
Jude appears to be addressing a
particular group of Christians but gives absolutely no indication of where they might be.
The one thing that is clear is the occasion of the epistle, which was of sufficient urgency to make him turn aside from other more leisurely literary activity:
My friends,
I was fully engaged in writing to you about our salvation -
which is yours no less than ours -
when it became urgently necessary to write at once
and appeal to you to join the struggle in defence of the faith,
the faith which God entrusted to his people once and for all.
It is in danger from certain persons who have wormed their way in (3f.).
The whole of the rest of the epistle,
up to the notable
doxology in 24f.,
is given over to an attack on these anonymous persons,
referred to constantly as 'these men'.
Almost all that can be said about them
is summarized in the opening description:
They are the enemies of religion (ἀσεβεῖς);
they pervert the free favour of our God into licentiousness (ἀσέλγειαν),
disowning (ἀρνούμενοι) Jesus Christ,
our only Master and Lord (4).
Their menace, in other words, is
religious, moral and doctrinal.
It is also clear from the terms in which they
are condemned and the warnings given from the past, that both they and the
writer and presumably those to whom he is writing belong to a dominantly, if
not exclusively, Jewish-Christian milieu within the
Hellenistic world.
Yet we are a long way from the 'primitive' atmosphere of the
epistle of James, where no problems of heresy or schism have seriously arisen.
Here we are in a silver-age situation, where reversion and perversion are the
dangers and where purity of doctrine and discipline are imperilled.
It is
evident too that the menace arises from a sort of gnosticizing Judaism.
Like
those in Corinth with whom Paul had to deal, these men 'draw a line between
spiritual and unspiritual persons', despising others as ψυχικοί (19; cf. I Cor.2.6-3.4; 8.1-3). Like them too, they
take liberty for licence (4; cf. I Cor.6.12; 10.23) and end up slaves of
sensuality (8, 10, 16, 23; cf. I Cor.6.9-20; II Cor.12.21). Like them, they
'eat and drink without reverence' at the Christian love-feast (12; cf. I Cor.11.17-43).
Like them again,
they flout the authority of those set over them in the Lord (8, 12; cf. I
Cor.4.8-13; 9.1-12) and themselves claim leadership (cf. II Cor.ii.i3; 12.11).
As 'shepherds who take care only of themselves' (12) they earn the condemnation
of Israel's self-styled leaders (cf. Ezek.34.8).
Yet though there are these reflections
of the situation in Corinth in the mid-50s,
things are evidently far further
gone.
In Pauline terms, the parallels are more with the Pastoral Epistles,
where we have the same falling back upon the authorized deposit of 'the faith'
(3, 20; cf. I Tim.1.3; 4.6; II Tim.1.13f.;
2.2; Titus 1.9) -
though even this was for Paul by no means a wholly new
emphasis
(cf. Rom. 6.17; 10.8; 16.17; I Cor.11.2; Gal.1.23; 6.10;
Eph.4.5; Phil.1.27; I Thess.2.13; II Thess.2.15; 3.6).
The danger from
false brethren who insinuate themselves (3),
though again not new (cf. Gal.2.4),
is especially characteristic of the later apostolic age
(Acts 20.30; Phil.3.2; II Tim.3.6; I John 2.18f.; 4.1; II John 7f.; Rev.2.20f.; cf.
Ignatius, Eph.7.1; 9.1);
and they have to be dealt with
both firmly and with discrimination
(22f.; cf. I Cor.5; II Thess.3.141.; I
John 4.1-6; II John 7-11; and Did. 2.7; Ignatius, Smyrn .4.1).
Yet if we ask what precisely these
heretics taught it is impossible to form any clear impression.
We read that
they 'deny Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord' (4).
But whether this was by
faithlessness, like those referred to in Heb.6.6 and 10.29 or II Tim. 2.12f.
(cf. Titus 1.16; Rev.2.13),
or by doctrinal error, like
those attacked in Col.2.8 and I John 2.22f. and 5.6-12,
or by dishonouring
conduct,
it is impossible to tell.
But there is no reference to theoretical
speculation and nothing to suggest any of the gnostic systems of the second
century.
[Kummel, INT, 426, concurs.]
To infer from the phrases 'our only Master and Lord' (4)
and 'the only God our Saviour' (25)
that they believed in other mediators or a second God or Demiurge is eisegesis rather than exegesis.
Their threat seems to have been far more moral and religious than theological.
If there is a parallel with other known sectarian groups it is not
(as many
earlier commentators tended to argue without our present knowledge of the gnostic texts)
with the later forms of heresy listed by Irenaeus such as the
Carpocratians,
[for the differences here, cf.
already Zahn, INT II, 292f.]
but with those gnosticizing libertines attacked in
the letters to the seven churches of the Apocalypse
who 'hold to the teaching
of Balaam' (Rev.2.14; cf.Jude 11)
and 'pollute their clothing' with immorality
(Rev.3.4; cf.Jude 23).
There are no other distinctive characteristics of
second-century Christianity.
There is no stress on the authority of the
organized ministry, or even reference to it
(in marked contrast at this point
with the Pastoral Epistles),
and the agape or love-feast still appears to be one with the eucharistic assembly.
There are
those [E.g. Zahn, INT ll, 252-5.] who have found in Jude 5 a reference to the destruction of
Jerusalem:
'Let me remind you how the Lord,
having once delivered the people of
Israel out of Egypt,
next time destroyed those who were guilty of unbelief.'
But the natural interpretation in the context
[So J. B. Mayor, The Epistle of St Jude and the Second
Epistle of St Peter, 1907, ad
loc.]
is to refer this to
the destruction of faithless Israel in the wilderness,
as in the closely
parallel warning of I Cor.10.5-10.
Again, to interpret πάλαι προγεγραμμένοι in Jude 4 of long past Christian writings is wholly arbitrary [Again with Zahn, INT, 251f.]:
it evidently refers to the warnings
that follow from 'scripture' (as the neb rightly translates).
The references in v. 9, apparently, to the
Assumption of Moses and in v. 14,
certainly, to I Enoch carry in themselves no
implication for a late date,
since both these documents were in existence well
before the middle of the first century -
though the free use made of them
indicates that they had not come under the later suspicion of apocrypha felt by
the church.
[Cf. Jerome, De vir. ill. 4.]
The only passage which suggests a post-apostolic situation is that in 17f.:
But you, my friends,
should remember the predictions made by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This was the warning they gave you:
'In the final age there will be men who pour scorn on religion,
and follow their own godless lusts.'
This could indeed imply that the apostolic age was now
closed, but it cannot be said that it necessarily does so.
From one who makes
no claim to be an apostle
(or indeed to kinship with Jesus, which later interest in the person of Jude would surely have exploited),
[Cf. the story from Hegesippus quoted
by Eusebius, HE 3.19f., whose
point lies in this link.]
it could refer to the sort of warnings of which the later apostolic age is full
(Acts 20.29f; I Tim.4.1; II Tim. 3.1-5; 4.3; I John 2.18f. - leaving out of
account for the moment II Peter 2.1-3; 3.3).
The ἒλεγον ὑμῖν would most naturally refer to oral teaching, as in
the parallel warning of Phil. 3.18f.:
As I have often told you (ἒλεγον ὑμῖν),
and now tell you with tears in my eyes,
there are many whose way of life makes them enemies of the cross of Christ.
They are heading for destruction,
appetite is their god,
and they glory in their shame (cf.Rom.16.18).
But even if reference were to written warnings, none of
these other documents
(leaving aside the Johannine epistles whose date we have
yet to consider),
excludes a dating in the 60s.
Indeed as a provisional
conclusion, on the scanty evidence of the epistle itself, I would concur with
the estimate of Chase: [HDB II, 804.]
The general tone of the Epistle harmonizes best with a date somewhat late in the apostolic age.
We shall not be far wrong if we suppose that it was written within a year or two
of the Pastoral Epistles (assuming their genuineness),
the Apocalypse (assuming the earlier date),
[I.e., a date from the Neronian rather than the Domitianic persecution.
For a discussion of this, cf. ch.viii below.]
the First Epistle of St Peter,
and the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Beyond that we cannot go until we have taken into account the link with II Peter, to which we must now turn.
II Peter affords as little direct information about its
origin and destination as Jude, and its occasion is less specific.
It purports
to be
From Simeon Peter,
servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,
To those who through the justice of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ
share our faith and enjoy equal privilege with ourselves
(1.1).
To the significance of 'Simeon
Peter', in contrast with 'Peter' in I Peter 1.1, we must return.
But on the
face of it the form looks, or is intended to look, both Jewish and primitive.
'Servant and apostle' brings together the 'servant' of James 1.1 and Jude 1 and
the 'apostle' of I Peter 1.1, but in itself is a typical apostolic greeting (Rom.
1.1; Titus 1.1) without significance for dating.
There are no indications, in
contrast with I Peter, of where the epistle was written to or from.
The
distinction implied in
'those who ... enjoy equal privilege with ourselves'
appears to be between readers and apostle,
as in I John 1.3 ('so that you and
we together may share in a common life'),
rather than between Jews and Gentiles,
as in Acts
11.17; Col. 1.25-9; Eph.2.11-3.6.
Indeed it is impossible to be certain whether
the recipients are Jewish or Gentile Christians,
though (in contrast again with
I Peter) the dominant atmosphere (as in Jude) appears to be Jewish-Christian.
In
2.20 the words, 'They had once escaped the world's defilements through the
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ', have been taken to mean that
the converts (or is it the heretics?) have come from what the neb paraphrases in 2.18 as a 'heathen
environment'.
But the language no more necessarily implies a Gentile origin
than when Paul says of his fellow-Jews in Eph.2.3,
'We too were of their
number:
we all lived our lives in sensuality, and obeyed the promptings of our
own instincts and notions',
or when the writer of I John speaks to his predominantly
Jewish-Christian readers of the evil world and its blandishments from which
they have passed.
The prevailing atmosphere, as in Jude,
is still that of the Pastoral Epistles,
reflecting the same usage of πίστις and σωτήρ and εὐσέβια,
with particular
stress on true insight and knowledge (ἐπίγνωσις and γνῶσις) (1.2f, 5f., 8; 2.20; 3.18),
which characterizes not
only the Pastorals (I Tim.2.4; 6.20; II Tim.2.25; 3.7; Titus 1.1)
but
Colossians(1.9f; 2.2f.; 3.10) and Ephesians(1.17; 3.19; 4.13)
and, in verbs
rather than nouns, the Johannine epistles
(passim
but especially I John 2.2of.).
The epistle's most distinctive phrase in this
regard is 'partakers of the divine nature' (θείας
κοινωνοὶ φύσεως) in 1.4,
but it has been shown that this,
like
the whole so-called 'Asian' style in which II Peter is written,
in no way lies outside
the range of first-century Hellenistic Judaism.
[Cf. e.g. Philo and Josephus and in
particular the Decree of Stratonicea in Caria to the honour of Zeus and Hecate,
dated ad 22
(Corpus Inscriptionum Graecorum II,
2715). For the references and discussion, cf. A. Deissmann, Bible Studies, ET Edinburgh 1901,
360-8; Mayor, Jude and II Peter,
cxxvii-cxxx and ad loc; E. M. B. Green, II
Peter Reconsidered, 1961, 23; II
Peter and Jude, 1968, 16-19; Reicke, James, Peter and Jude, 146f., 184; Kelly, Peter and Jude, ad loc.]
Indeed, like the
language of τὸ πλήρωμα in Col. 1.19 and 2.19 or σπέρμα θεοῦ in I John 3.9,
it may
well be being taken over and given Christian meaning.
[Kelly, Peter and Jude, 304, quotes C. H. Dodd's comment, The Johannine Epistles, 1946, on I
John3.2, that the writer 'is naturalizing within Christian theology a widely
diffused mystical tradition'.]
In content
it is not essentially different from the Christian's κοινωνία with the Father and the Son and his transformation into
the divine likeness claimed by I John (1.3; 3.2).
And this goal is achieved
not, as in Platonism and later gnosticism, by escaping from matter as evil, but
by moral union, having escaped (ἀποφυγόντες) from 'the
corruption with which lust has infected the world'.
The dualism, as in the Johannine writings, is not material and metaphysical but moral and
eschatological.164
The use of 'the world' is the same as that in
John (e.g. I John 2.15-17) and does not imply any depreciation of the flesh
per se.
In fact neither in Jude nor
in II Peter is there any sign of the ascetical denial of the flesh as evil (in
contrast to its indulgence as indifferent) such as we find in Col.2.18f. and I
Tim.4.3f.,
[How near the two apparently opposite
extremes are is illustrated by the story Eusebius, HE 3.29, quotes from Clement of Alexandria about the founder of
the Nicolaitans, who offered his young and lovely wife to others 'to renounce
his passion': 'It was self-control ... that taught him to say "abuse the
flesh" .']
or of the docetic denial of matter as unreal of the
Johannine epistles (I John 4.2; II John 7).
In this again the persons attacked
in II Peter as inJude stand nearer to the libertines of Corinth:
they promise
freedom but the result is sensual slavery (2.19f.).
In fact apart from their questioning
of the parousia (3.4; cf.1.16),
there is nothing that suggests that the heretics in II Peter were any different from those in Jude or more 'advanced'
in their teaching.
The 'artfully spun tales' (μήθοι) abjured in 1.16 recall
the 'myths' attacked in I Tim.1.4; 4.7; II Tim.4.4; and Titus 1.14, which are
linked with an interest in genealogies and angelology, and in the last passage
specifically called 'Jewish'.
As in Jude, we are in the sphere of a gnosticizing
Judaism, countered by warning examples from Israel's history (2.1-16).
We are
not dealing with the developed systems of second-century Christian heresies.
Summing up the teaching common to both epistles, Zahn concluded: [INT II, 283.]
While there were numerous parties and sects representing libertinistic theories and practices in the second and third centuries, there is none that so closely resembles the seducers described in II Peter and Jude as the libertinistic movement with which we become acquainted in I Corinthians, and as the Nicolaitans of whom we learn hints in Revelation.
[Rev.2.6, 15. They are evidently closely associated with those who hold to the teaching of Balaam (2.14; cf. II Peter 2.15f.; Jude 11) and with others who falsely claim both to be Jews (2.9; 3.9) and to be apostles of the church (2.2; cf. Jude 12).]
So far then there would be nothing to
cause us to date II Peter any later than Jude.
It is, however, in the
distinctive material of the epistle, particularly in three passages, 1.12-18;
3.1-4; and 3.15f., that the doubts arise.[This point is made strongly and
correctly by Green, II Peter Reconsidered, 14-21, and II Peter and Jude, 24f., against
Kasemann, 'An Apologia for Primitive Christian Eschatology', Essays on New Testament Themes,
169-95, and especially such a remark as: 'It would be hard to find in the whole
New Testament a sentence which, in its expression, its individual motifs and
its whole trend, more clearly marks the relapse of Christianity into
Hellenistic dualism' (179f.).]
1. Taken at its face value, the first passage actually
contains nothing that would in itself require us to put the writing after the
death of Peter. Yet it is the passage which has given greatest ground for
suspicion that a forger is at work, inserting biographical detail for the sake
of specious verisimilitude. Whether or not he is doing so cannot be decided
except in relation to the whole question of authorship and pseudepigraphy from
which at the moment we are prescinding.
But let us examine the details without
prejudgment.
I will not hesitate to remind you of this again and again,
although you know it and are well grounded in the truth that has already reached you.
Yet I think it right to keep refreshing your memory so long as I still lodge in this body.
I know that very soon I must leave it;
indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has told me so.
But I will see to it that after I am gone you will have means of remembering these things at all times.
It was not on tales artfully spun that we relied
when we told you of the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming;
we saw him with our own eyes in majesty,
when at the hands of God the Father he was invested with honour and glory,
and there came to him from the sublime Presence a voice which said:
'This is my Son, my Beloved, on whom my favour rests'.
This voice from heaven we ourselves heard;
when it came, we were with him on the sacred mountain (1.12-18).
Peter
(it would be otiose to keep putting the name in
inverted commas - any more than Jude or John)
here uses the metaphor of the body
as a tent
(already found in Wisd.9.15 and Philo, and of course widely in pagan
literature)
which Paul uses in II Cor.5.1-4,
and, like Paul, he combines it with
that of taking off clothes.
In his case, he knows, this putting off is to be ταχινή (swift),
which could be
interpreted to mean either 'soon' or 'sudden'.
Zahn [INT II, 212-14.] argued
strongly that it here refers to a sudden end,
and this is supported by the only
other occurrence of the word in the epistle (2.1)
and indeed in the New
Testament.
The intimation upon which it is based, 'as our Lord Jesus Christ has
shown me', appears (whether factually or fictionally) to be that alluded to in
John 21.18f., where Jesus foretells that Peter will die an unchosen death when
he has grown old (ὃταν
γηράσης).
By the seventh decade of the century this latter condition could
already be said to obtain, but the concern to leave a record of his teaching
behind him might be prompted by the expectation of an unprepared as much as by
that of an imminent death.
All we can say is that these are the words of a man
for whom death is much in mind, and this would fit the 60s as the period when
they were either written or supposed to be written.
What he had in mind to
leave, so that 'after I am gone you will have means of remembering these
things', is equally unclear.
Some have seen in this
[E.g. Bigg, Peter and Jude, ad loc.; Mayor, Jude and II Peter, cxlii and ad loc.]
a reference to St Mark's gospel (and the origin of the Papias legend).
But the gospel of Mark
can hardly be described as a reminder of 'these things', that is, the teaching
of the present epistle (cf. 1.12).
It would appear too to demand a writing by
Peter
(as the later pseudepigrapha
like the Preaching of Peter and the Gospel of Peter supplied).
Kelly [Peter
and Jude, 315.] thinks that 'almost certainly the reference is to the epistle itself,
though he
admits that the future, σπουδάσω (according to the most probable
reading), is difficult.
It would naturally suggest a further document.
For our
purposes we may be content to suspend judgment, noting only that if a forger is
at work he has laid some very elusive clues.
In the descriptive passage that follows, the transfiguration
is regarded as an anticipation and pledge of the parousia, in the way that we argued it was, far less explicitly,
in I Peter 5.1.
It has also been said that the word ἐπόπται, eyewitnesses,
echoes the ἐποπταύοντες of I
Peter 2.12 and 3.2;
but this is very doubtful, since there it simply refers to
pagans 'observing' the conduct of Christians.
If the word has any overtones, it
is more likely to take up the language of the mysteries and the claims of the
heretics that in their visions (cf. the dreams or trances of Jude 8) they had
direct experience of the deep things of God (cf. Rev. 2.24).
But its immediate
reference is to apostolic eyewitness, to which I John 1.1-3 also appeals in
similar circumstances.
It is generally accepted that the wording of the account of the transfiguration is independent of any of our gospel texts.
The omission
of the injunction 'hear him', common to them all,
and of any reference to Moses
and Elijah or to the three tents (σκηναί),
which one would have thought irresistible after the σκηνώματος of 1.14,
tells
heavily against the use of the synoptists by a later hand.
The only other
touch, 'the holy mountain',
which is said to betray veneration of the sacred site
(for which there is in
fact no evidence till much
later),
is hardly decisive for dating.
As regularly with Zion or Sinai in the
Old Testament,
any mountain with which theophany is associated is for the Jew
'holy'.
The really significant parallel for daring purposes is that
with the Apocalypse of Peter.
[For the full text, see Hennecke, NT Apoc. II, 668-83.]
This document is usually put in the
first half of the second century, perhaps c. 135.
It is quite palpably
dependent on the synoptic gospels, particularly Matthew.
[Thus the opening verse contains clear
echoes of Matt. 24.3:
'And when he was seated on the Mount of Olives, his own
came unto him,
and we entreated and implored him severally and besought
him,
saying unto him,
"Make known unto us what are the signs of thy Parousia and of the end of the world." '
The contrast with II Peter is at
once evident.]
This is
true too of its section on
the transfiguration (15-17),
which includes a highly elaborated account of the
vision of the appearances of Moses and Elijah
and quotes Peter's comment verbatim from the version in Matt.17.4:
'My Lord, wilt thou that I make here three tabernacles,
one for thee, one
for Moses and one for Elias?'.
By contrast its only verbal contact with the
account in II Peter is the reference (and that in the Ethiopic version only) to
'the holy mountain'.
If there is dependence either way,
it seems quite clear
that the Apocalypse is the later document.
How Harnack can have thought
otherwise
[Chron., 470-2. He dated the Apocalypse
c. 120-40 (or 110-60) and II Peter
c. 160 (or 150-175).]
must be counted as one of those aberrations of
scholarship which fresh discoveries induce,
[At the time he only had
the Akhmim fragment in Greek to go on, discovered in 1886, though this includes
most of the relevant parallels. The complete text, in Ethiopic translation, was
found in 1910. For a modem assessment, cf. C. Maurer in Hennecke, NT Apoc. II, 663-8.]
and it has long since
been abandoned even by those who view II Peter as a second-century document.
[Moffatt, ILNT, 367, was a strange exception.]
That even conservative scholars like W. Sanday [W. Sanday, Inspiration, Oxford 1893, 347.]
can have thought
that the two came from the same pen,
or like Chase [HDB III, 815f. He is followed by McNeile-Williams, INT, 247.]
from the same
school at approximately the same date,
is incredible.
Indeed if this is the
sort of thing that was being produced in the first half of the second century
it is the strongest possible argument for
not placing II Peter there.
As the writer of the article on the
Apocalypse of Peter in The
Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible says,
[M.S. Enslin, IDB III, 758.]
'one short
sample will indicate the nature of the whole',
and he quotes:
And some there were there hanging by their tongues:
and these were they that blasphemed the way of righteousness,
and under them was laid fire flaming and tormenting them.
And there was a great lake full of flaming mire,
wherein were certain men that turned away from righteousness;
and angels, tormentors, were set over them.
And there were also others,
women, hanged by their hair above that mire which boiled up;
and these were they which adorned themselves for adultery.
He comments:
That this writing, in all likelihood in no small part suggested by the canonical Revelation, and the product of perfervid imagination, aided by Orphic and Pythagorean accounts of the future, is not later than the middle of the second century is universally admitted.
He agrees in fact that it is probably earlier than the Gospel
of Peter - but interestingly never even
mentions II Peter.
Yet the same Dictionary's article on II Peter [J.C. Beker, IDB III, 769.] continues to date this epistle c.
150 ad.!
On the basis of this
passage of II Peter alone some rethinking of critical presuppositions appears
to be called for.
2. The second passage, II Peter 3.1-4, raises more
difficulties.
The writer starts with a reference, apparently, to I Peter:
This is now my second letter to you, my friends.
In both of them I have been recalling to you what you already know,
to rouse you to honest thought.
Remember the predictions made by God's own prophets, a
nd the commands given by the Lord and Saviour through your apostles (3.1f.).
The relation to I Peter must engage us later.
At this stage
one need only say that if the writer is a Christian from a subsequent age then
the reference must be to I
Peter, since this is the only other Petrine letter of which there is any record
in the tradition.
Yet it is very far from obvious that the content of the two
epistles is the same, and, if
the allusion here is to I Peter 1.10-12 (the only likely passage), then the
content of the prophecies there is the sufferings of Christ, not, as in the
verses that follow in II Peter, the state of affairs at the end of the world.
Again the pseudepigrapher does not lay his trail at all obviously.
The phrase in v.2, 'your apostles', certainly reads oddly
(quite apart from the tortuous grammar of the Greek) from one claiming himself
to be an apostle, and it has seemed to most commentators to reflect the
post-apostolic age.
Yet we may say this with certainty only if it is agreed
that Eph.2.20 and 3.5
(where the apostles are also described as 'holy')
could not have come from Paul,
writing as an 'apostle of Christ Jesus' (Eph. 1.1).
But, as we have seen, it is
impossible to be so dogmatic.
Moreover 'your apostles' need not, though it
probably does, mean more than 'your missionaries' (cf. I Peter 1.12),
and Paul (Rom.16.7; II Cor.8.23; Phil.2.25), like Acts(14.14) and the Didache (11.3),
continues to use the word in a wider sense.
But assuming that it means those of
the apostles particularly associated with you, this need not imply the end of the
apostolic age, any more than when Paul says to the Corinthians, 'If I am not an
apostle to others, at least I am to you' (I Cor.9.2).
In I Clem. 44.1 we have
a similar usage of 'our apostles' (i.e., in Rome, Peter and Paul; cf.5.3).
All
one can say is that the phrase itself is compatible with an apostolic or with a
post-apostolic date.
What is significant is that the apostles are not contrasted in any way with a
subsequent ordering of Christian ministry, as in I Clem. 44 (which speaks of
their successors) or in the epistles of lgnatius
(especially Rom.4.3:
'I do not enjoin you as Peter and Paul did.
They were apostles').
There is no more concern than in Jude with ministerial authority or its perpetuation.
But more serious as an objection to apostolic dating is the state of affairs reflected in the words of the scoffers that follow:
In the last day there will come men
who scoff at religion and live self-indulgent lives,
and they will say:
'Where is now the promise of his coming?
Our fathers (οἱ παρέρες) have been laid to their rest,
but still everything continues exactly as it always has been since the world began.'
I cannot believe that it will do to say
with Bigg [Peter
and Jude, ad loc.]
and Green [II
Peter Reconsidered, 29f.; II Peter and Jude, ad loc.]
that 'the fathers' here means
the ancestors of Israel.
The context demands the sense [So Mayor, Jude and II Peter, ad loc., strongly.] that ever
since the first generation of Christians died things have continued as they always have been, whereas the specific
promise had been given:
'This generation shall not pass away until all these
things happen' (Mark 13.30 and pars.).
It is true that elsewhere in the New
Testament 'the fathers' refers to the Israelites.
But in I John 2.131. we have
the usage of 'fathers' in contrast with the second and third generation
of Christians, which stresses their special relationship as the
founder-generation to the ἀρχή, in the way that in Acts 21.16 Mnason as one
of the 'originals' is called an ἂρχαιος μαθητής.
The death of Christians had always been a problem, as we know from Thessalonians and Corinthians, but the real crisis for the church must have
come as that first promised generation was dying out and still nothing had
happened.
By the 60s a whole generation had elapsed.
Naturally the difficulty did not then disappear.
[Cf. I Clem. 23.3, quoting what it
calls 'scripture': 'These things we did hear in the days of our fathers also,
and behold we have grown old, and none of these things hath befallen us' (cf.
II Clem. 11.2). But for the date of I Clement, cf. pp. 327-34 below.]
But
this is when the question must have been at its most acute, and there is no
necessary reason to look to a later age.
The theme of the master's delay,
reflected in the church's adaptation of the parables, is already to be found in
the 'Q,' material of Matt.24.28
= Luke 12.45, and also in Matt.25.5, whose final editing we have seen no
reason to place much after 60.
The details that follow in 3.5-13 of
the parousia teaching do not in
themselves require a late date.
The notion of the destruction of the world by fire, going back a long way in pagan literature, is now paralleled
graphically in the Qumran Psalms (1QH 3.29-35). [The passage is quoted in full by Reicke, James, Peter and Jude, 176.]
Moreover
Green is justified in pointing out
[II Peter and Jude, ad loc. He is
here, as often, following Bigg (Peter and Jude, 214).]
that the reference to Ps.90.4
is not given a chiliast interpretation
(that the world would last for as many
thousand years as there were days in creation)
such as it regularly receives in
later literature
(e.g. Ep. Barn.15.4, Justin, Dial.81.3f., and Irenaeus, Adv.haer.5.23.2; 28.3).
As he says:
If this Epistle had been written in the second century, when this doctrine was so widespread that it almost became a touchstone of Christian orthodoxy, is it likely that the author could have refrained from making any allusion to it whatever when quoting the very verse which gave it birth?
With the rest of II Peter's
eschatology,
including the coming of the day of the Lord as a thief (3.10; cf.
Rev.3.3; 16.15),
the laying bare of the earth and all that is in it (3.10; cf.
Rev.6.12-17; 16.20; etc.),
and the creation of new heavens and a new earth
(3.13; cf. Rev.21.1-4),
this theme finds its nearest parallel in the book of
Revelation (20.1-6),
rather than in the extravagances of subsequent
apocalypses,
whether Jewish or Christian (including the Apocalypse of Peter).
3. It is the third passage (3.15f.), however, that presents the greatest difficulties of all:
Bear in mind that our Lord's patience with us is our salvation,
as Paul, our friend and brother, said
when he wrote to you with his inspired wisdom.
And so he does in all his other letters,
wherever he speaks of this subject,
though they contain some obscure passages,
which the ignorant and unstable misinterpret to their own ruin,
as they do the other scriptures.
We need not spend time at this hour
refuting the Tubingen thesis that the genuine Peter could never have spoken of
Paul in terms other than of hostility. [Cf. Munck, Paul
and the Salvation of Mankind, ch.
3.]
It is however relevant to
ask whether a second-century writer would not have adopted an attitude either
of attack or adulation (rather than bewildered affection).
Typical of later
descriptions are 'the blessed Paul' (I Clem. 47.1; Ep. Polyc.n.3)
or 'the blessed
and glorious Paul' (Ep.Polyc.3.2).
'Dear brother' and similar expressions are
confined elsewhere in the New Testament to living fellow-workers
(e.g.
Eph.6.21; Col. 4.7, 9; Philem.16)
and Paul himself is so addressed by James in
Acts 21.20.
The expression therefore sounds
as if it comes from a contemporary, whether it does or not.
Indeed Mayor, who
himself argues for pseudepigraphy, says: [Jude and
II Peter, ad loc.]
There are many difficulties in the way of accepting the genuineness of this epistle;
but the manner in which St Paul is spoken of seems to me just what we should have expected from his brother Apostle.
Again, the reference to the wisdom
given to him implies not more than what Paul claimed for himself
(e.g. I
Cor.2.6f.; 3.10; Gal.2.9; Eph. 3.1-10).
The contrast is striking
with the self-depreciatory tone of the second century:
'Neither am I, nor is
any other like unto me, able to follow the wisdom of the blessed and glorious
Paul' (Ep. Polyc.3.2).
Moreover, whereas there can be no doubt that when Polycarp refers in the same passage to 'the letter he wrote to you' he means
the epistle to the Philippians, the expression in II Peter 3.15 has baffled all
the commentators.
There is no obvious identification, unless indeed the
reference to the Lord's patience with us being our salvation is meant to recall
Rom.2.4: 'Or do you think lightly of his wealth of kindness, of tolerance, and
of patience, without recognizing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to a
change of heart?' [But this is, of course, a Jewish
commonplace; cf. e.g. Wisd.11.23.]
In fact on this narrow basis alone Mayor argues
for a Roman destination. [Jude and II
Peter, cxxxvii
and ad loc.]
Yet there is no other hint that the
epistle was written to Rome or from it.
Either a genuine letter of Paul's has
been lost or the imitator again is laying baffling or careless clues.
But the real problems start with the
following phrase, ὡς καὶ ἐν πάσαις ἐπιστολαῖς.
It is legitimate, with Zahn, [INT ll, 290.] to point out that
it is not (on the most likely reading) ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς.
This would imply 'in every letter he wrote', whereas without the article the phrase
could mean little more than et passim -
though how much reliance should be placed on the presence or absence
of the article in this writer is very doubtful.
[Cf. Mayor, Jude and II Peter, xxx: 'I think we must recognize a failure to
appreciate the refinements of the Greek article on the part of those whose
mother tongue was not Greek and who may have also been influenced by the fact
that Latin had no article.' Interestingly he does not even discuss this
passage, following the longer reading (with the article) without demur.]
It is not in any
case implied that the readers knew all Paul's epistles,
nor that these already formed a collection,
let alone
a canon.
Talk here of 'the Pauline corpus' is premature.
The present tense,
'whenever he speaks', is not of itself decisive, since Ignatius uses closely
parallel language in Eph. 12.2, 'who in every letter makes mention of you in
Christ Jesus', though Ignatius combines this with phrases that make it clear
that Paul is long since dead: 'who was sanctified, who obtained a good report,
who is worthy of all felicitation'. II Peter, in contrast, whether genuinely
or fictionally, clearly implies that Paul is still alive.
The
misinterpretation of Paul's position, of which he speaks, in a gnosticizing,
antinomian direction is of course plentifully attested in his lifetime (I Cor.10.23; Rom.3.8; 6.1; etc.), and, despite Paul's disclaimer,
we may surmise between the lines of II Cor.1.13f. that his readers did find parts of his epistles hard
to understand.
So far therefore there is nothing that demands a later date.
The crucial difficulty is the
interpretation of the following phrase,
καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς γραφάς,
which certainly suggests that the Pauline epistles were already being viewed as
'scripture'.
In view of the parallels for γραφή and γραφαί in the New Testament,
[They are fully set out by Mayor, ad
loc.]
it is
impossible, I believe, to argue
[With Zahn, INT II, 277f., 29of.
His arguments are countered by Chase, HDB III.810.]
that the books of the Old
Testament are not here being
bracketed with the letters of Paul.
The sole issue is whether the words imply
that 'the writings' in question are seen as part of a canon, whether Jewish or
Christian.
This appears to be much more doubtful, and I would concur with the
judgment of Mayor (who nevertheless thinks II Peter very late) when he says: [Jude
and II Peter, 168.]
I incline to think that γραφαί is here used to denote any book read in the synagogue or congregation, including the letters of the Apostles (Col.4.16; I Thess. 5.27) as well as the lessons from the Old Testament.
Certainly this would include the kind
of apocryphal writings alluded to by Jude, one of which is described as a work
of 'prophecy' (14). The work already referred to which is cited in I Clem.23.3
('these things did we hear in the days of our fathers also ... and none of
these things have befallen us')
and which Lightfoot tentatively identified with Eldad and Modad, [AF l.2,
80f; cf. Hermas, Vis. 2.3.4.]
is introduced with the words ἡ γραφὴ λέγει,
and the same passage is designated in II Clem.11.2 ὁ προφητικὸς λόγος.
Certainly too
if the quotations in James 4.5 ('the spirit which God implanted
in man turns towards envious desires')
and John 7.38 ('streams of living water shall
flow out from within him'),
each described as ἡ γραφή,
are literal quotations,
they do not come from the canonical Old Testament.
Moreover texts from what
appear to be the Old and New Testaments are already combined as citations of 'scripture' in I Tim.5.18;
['The labourer is worthy of his
hire' could well however be a
proverbial saying, not a quotation from Jesus.]
Ep.Barn.13.7; I Clem.36; Ep.Polyc.12.1; etc.
This does not by
any means dispose of the difficulty.
Yet Green at least puts up a good case when he
argues: [II
Peter Reconsidered, 31.]
For the writer of II Peter, the term ἡ γραφή denotes writings of men in touch with God,
ὑπὸ πνεύματος ἁγίου φερόμενοι (1.21).
He constantly correlates apostles and prophets - both are led by the Holy Spirit.
In chapter I the apostolic testimony to the divine voice,
and the divine voice through the Old Testament scriptures, are regarded in the same light.
In chapter 2.1ff. the false teachers are accused of wresting the Old Testament;
in chapter 3 of wresting Paul.
Most will probably not feel that this is a complete answer.
But I am not at this stage attempting to come to a decision one way or the
other.
Having, however, started with the conviction that the so-called
anachronisms in the epistle were almost certainly insuperable, I have been
impressed, working through them, how open the verdict has constantly to remain.
These passages certainly do not prove a first-century date: but they do not
prove a second-century date either.
Moreover they leave unresolved the question
of authorship -
for the absence of demonstrable anachronisms could merely
indicate the skill of the imitator.
Nor of themselves do they determine the
epistle's relationship to I Peter or to Jude.
To these wider issues we must now
turn.
For only then shall we be in a position to resolve more closely the
question of dating.
The one thing on which virtually everyone is agreed is that
I and II Peter cannot be written by the same hand.
Even those who accept the
apostolic authorship of both concede, with Jerome,
that the difference of style
demands an amanuensis with great liberty of expression for the composition of
one if not of each -
though a difficulty of this theory is that the greatest
evidence for Petrine colouring in theology and expression comes in the epistle
that might refer to an amanuensis (Silvanus), whereas the other mentions none.
Attempts have been made to minimize the differences between
the two.
Thus Green [Ibid., 12.] quotes, via Mayor, B. Weiss' judgment that
'the Second Epistle of Peter is allied to no New Testament writing more closely
than to his first
(he presumably did not count Jude!).
[A Manual of Introduction
to the New Testament, ET 1887, II, 165.]
Yet this is also true of the book of
Revelation and the gospel of John,
but the differences of style and cast of
mind have convinced most critics that they cannot be by the same man.
Apparently impressive comparisons of word-counts have a habit of breaking down
and tend simply to prove how variously statistics can be presented.
[Thus Green adduces the
findings of A. E. Simms, 'Second Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter', The Expositor, 5th series, 8, 1898,
460-71, that I and II Peter are as close on word-score as I Timothy and Titus,
where few would question unity of authorship:
I Timothy has 537
words and Titus 399, with 161 in common;
I Peter has 543 words and II Peter 399,
with 153 in common.
It sounds impressive until we look at the figures which
Green does not quote from Mayor
(Ixix-lxxiv) that show that in the vocabulary of I and II Peter "the
number of agreements is 100 as opposed to 599 disagreements, i.e., the latter
are just six times as many as the former' (Ixxiv).
It looks as if both sets of
figures cannot be right (they may not be as far as I know: I have not counted).
Yet though the former is for the total number of words and the latter for each
individual word (however often it is used), Simms' proportion of 153 shared
words out of a combined total
for both epistles of 942 is still only a proportion of about 1:6
(indeed
slightly less).]
One is inclined to apply Kelly's comment [Peter
and Jude, 235.] on A. Q,. Morton's disclosure,
[A.Q,. Morton, 'Statistical Analysis and New
Testament Problems', in The Authorship
and Integrity of the New Testament (SPCK Theological Collections 4),
1965, 52f.]
also
seized on by Green, [II Peter
and Jude,
17.]
that the computer reveals the two epistles to
be linguistically indistinguishable:
'Most readers of Greek would agree that
this conclusion illustrates the limitations of the method.'
[On the place and limitations of the
computer in biblical criticism, cf. Bruce, BJRL 46(1964), 327-31.]
Of course there are
similarities of diction [For a detailed list, see Mayor, Jude and II Peter, Ixix.] -
it would be astonishing if there were
not -
but, with the exception of the opening salutation 'grace and truth be
multiplied to you' (I Peter 1.2; II Peter 1.2),
most of them are fairly inexact
or of the kind that might be found almost anywhere in the New Testament.
[The next nearest parallel is between ἀμώμου καὶ ἀσπίλου in I
Peter 1.19 and ἂσπιλοι καὶ ἀμώμητοι in II Peter 3.14.
But, apart from the fact that one refers
to Christ and the other to Christians, the words (in reverse order) are not
even the same.
ἀ,ώμητος is a
hapax
legomenon in the New Testament and suggests a different hand.
The
nearest true parallels for II Peter 3.14 are Col. i.22; Eph. 1.4; I Tim. 6.14.]
They certainly do not add up to what Green calls 'the extreme similarity in
turn of phrase and allusion'. [II Peter
and Jude, 13.]
Zahn, surveying the same evidence,
concludes that 'the agreements in thought and language' are 'very few'. [INT II, 271.]
Since Green cites Mayor's comment that in grammar and style
'there is not that
chasm between them which some would try to make out', [Jude and II Peter, civ.]
it is only
fair to give the full conclusion of his exhaustive examination: [Ibid., cv.]
On the whole I should say that the difference of style is less marked than the difference in vocabulary,
and that again less marked than the difference in matter,
while above all stands the great difference in thought, feeling, and character,
in one word of personality.
I have laboured this because I wish to
go on to support Green in his critique of pseudonymity.
But that the two
epistles can in any immediate sense be the product of the same mind,
let alone
of the same pen, seems to me highly improbable.
Chase, to whom Mayor [Ibid.,ix.] paid
the deserved tribute of saying,
'I have found ... his articles on Peter and
Jude in Hastings' Dictionary of the
Bible by far the best introduction known to me',
assessed the matter
thus: [HDB III, 813f.]
The difference between the two Epistles [viz., I and II Peter] in literary style and tone and teaching
are, as it appears to the present writer, so numerous and so fundamental
that no difference of amanuenses or 'interpreters' can account for them
unless we are prepared to admit that, in the case of either one or both of these letters,
the substance and the language alike were left absolutely in the hands of the apostle's companion.
So what is the alternative?
There would
appear only to be one.
'Scarcely anyone nowadays doubts that II Peter is
pseudonymous', says Kelly; [Peter and Jude,
235.]
'though it must be admitted', he goes
on,
'of the few who do that they defend their case with an impressive
combination of learning and ingenuity.'
Now if 'their case' is confined to
doubting pseudonymity (as opposed to asserting identity of authorship),
I
believe indeed that there are points to answer which the proponents of pseudonymity pass over too hastily.
There is an appetite for pseudonymity
that grows by what it feeds on.
Thus M. Rist,
['Pseudepigraphy and the Early
Christians' in Aune, Studies in the NT and Early Christian Literature,
75-91 (89).]
believing that possibly
two-thirds of the New Testament writings are pseudonymous,
[As we have seen, van Manen went
further and said of the Pauline epistles:
'They are all, without distinction, pseudepigrapha'
(EB III, 3625).]
says,
'This, alone, [sic] shows the influence of pseudepigraphy in the early church.'
[Op. cit., 89. Similarly Nineham, in
Cross, Studies in Ephesians,
22, appeals to the 'very common ... practice of pseudepigraphy', citing inter alia, from the New Testament,
the book of Revelation (but this makes no claim to be by John the Apostle) and, from outside the
New Testament, II Clement and the Epistle of Barnabas. But these latter are anonymous, and do not themselves
purport to be by the writers to whom tradition has ascribed them: in this they
are comparable with Hebrews, rather than Ephesians or I and II Peter.]
If you believe it is everywhere, you cease to have to argue for it anywhere.
Perrin writes:
'Pseudonymity is almost a way of life in the world of the New
Testament and also in the New Testament itself.' [nti, 119.]
Certainly it is among New Testament scholars!
There is also a tendency to lump
together very different categories of pseudepigraphy.
[Even Mayor, usually so discriminating,
is guilty at this point.]
Thus Jude, for
instance, readily accepts,
at any rate for the sake of the argument,
that what
we call I Enoch was written by 'Enoch, the seventh from Adam' (14).
The
convention of ascribing apocalypses to patriarchs,
like psalms to David or
wisdom to Solomon or prophecies to Daniel,
was of course fully established.
Indeed the novelty about the New Testament Apocalypse is that it is neither
anonymous nor pseudonymous.
Later, too, not only apocalypses but gospels, acts
and epistles were freely ascribed to long dead apostles
(and to no one more
than Peter).
But there is no firm evidence for this until the mid-second
century.
In heretical circles too there were documents claiming to be by
apostles (like the gospels of Thomas and Philip),
but these were never accepted
as such by the church.
If we ask what is the evidence for orthodox epistles
being composed in the name of apostles within a generation or two of their
lifetime, and for this being an acceptable literary convention within the
church, the answer is nil -
unless Ephesians, the Pastorals, I and II Peter, Jude,
and any other canonical books
one cares to add,
are their own evidence.
In each instance we have examined so
far the case cannot be said to have been made.
It really is necessary to have
at least one hard example established on its own merits before relying on the
cumulative argument.
II Peter could well be that example and it is certainly
the most promising.
But, as Green [II Peter Reconsidered, 32-7: II
Peter and Jude, 30-5; cf. earlier Zahn, INT II, 270-3.]
and Guthrie [D. Guthrie, 'Epistolatory
Pseudepigraphy', in NTI,
671-84; 'The Development of the Idea of Canonical Pseudepigrapha in New
Testament Criticism', VE i,
1962, 43-59, reprinted in The
Authorship and Integrity of the New Testament, 14-39.
The latter article
is a reply to K. Aland, 'The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian
Literature of the First Two Centuries', J
TS n.s. 12,1961, 39-49, also reprinted in
Authorship and Integrity, 1-13.]
quite
legitimately argue,
it would go against the stream of such evidence as we have
rather than with it.
There is no doubt of what Paul thought
of those who circulated letters claiming to come from him (II Thess. 2.2;
3.17):
he knew of no harmless
literary convention.
Later Green quotes two instances which elucidate the
church's attitude at the end of the second century.
First, Tertullian [De bapt. 17.] tells us that the author of the Acts of Paul and Thecia was deposed from the
presbyterate for the sole reason that he had tried to pass this work off under
Paul's name.
The author of these Acts, like the author of II Peter, was orthodox;
he, like the author of II Peter, made strenuous efforts after verisimilitude.
He was, furthermore, inflamed with the noblest pietas, love of Paul,
and it was with the best of intentions that he wrote.
Yet he was deposed - for forgery.
[II Peter Reconsidered, 34.]
Secondly, Serapion, Bishop of Antioch, wrote a book Concerning the So-called Gospel of Peter, from which Eusebius quotes: [HE 6.12.3.]
For our part, brethren,
we receive both Peter and the other apostles as Christ,
but the writings which falsely bear their names (ψευδεπίγραφα) we reject,
as men of experience (ἒμπειροι),
knowing that such were not handed down to us.
Though the motive of his condemnation of it was the docetic
heresy that he heard it was spreading,
the criterion of his judgment, to which
he brought the expertise in these matters that he claimed,
was its genuineness
as the work of the apostle.
And this was the criterion employed a little later
by Origen in relation both to II Peter and to II and III John. [Eusebius, HE 6.25.7-10.]
He
is doubtful of their genuineness;
but there is no suggestion that if they had
been pseudepigraphs,
or he had known them to be such,
it would have made no
difference.
Nor does he or any other Christian writer hint that there had earlier
been any such convention.
The fathers may have been uncritical (though hardly Origen) and been deceived,
but there is no evidence that they were willingly
deceived.
In view of the significance usually attached to the lack of external
testimony for individual books of the New Testament, it is surely much more
significant that at no point is there the slightest external testimony to the
collusion in innocent falsification to which appeal is so constantly made for
documents like Ephesians, the Pastorals, James and I Peter.
II Peter and Jude
may still be the exceptions, but they have to be demonstrated as such.
Moving then from the general presumption to the particular
evidence,
what is to be said?
The very weakness of the external attestation for II Peter
(albeit far stronger than that for any rejected writing)
[For the evidence, cf. the full surveys
in Chase, HDB III, 799-807, and
Mayor, Jude and II Peter,
xcv-cxxiv.
Eusebius, HE 3.3.1f., while placing II Peter among ἀντιλεγόμενα,
or disputed books,
has no hesitation in classing the Acts, Gospel, Preaching,
and Apocalypse of Peter among the spurious (τὰ
νόθα).]
suggests
that Origen was not unjustified in doubting its genuineness -
though these
doubts are the most powerful evidence that the issue was not one that was not
thought to matter.
Certainly the epistle could be an attempt to silence
latter-day scoffers and heretics in the name and authority of the chief of the
apostles - although why anyone should resort for this purpose to the mantle of
Jude is far from clear.
[Cf. Streeter, PC, 179f.:
'Jude is a person so obscure that no one, desiring to give weight to his own views by
publishing them under an authoritative name, would ever have thought of him,
until and unless he had used up all the greater figures of the Apostolic Age.
The epistle must therefore be the authentic work of a Christian leader actually
named Judas.'
He identifies him with a bishop of Jerusalem early in the reign
of Trajan,
regarding the words 'brother of James' as a marginal note
incorporated into the text.
There is of course no evidence for this, but as a
last resort it is perhaps less incredible than pseudepigraphy.]
But it is fair comment that no other proven pseudepigraphs have this and no
other motive.
All, including the other pseudo-Petrine literature, had other
axes to grind:
They attempted to claim apostolic authority for heretical teaching, or to embody the secret tradition of the apostle concerned, or else to provide a romance, a sort of religious novel, or, perhaps, to answer some of the questions posed by a third generation's insatiable curiosity. [Green, II Peter Reconsidered, 37.]
II Peter does none of these things.
Moreover, there are
relevant questions to ask of this particular case.
Why, for instance, does the
author mention Paul in such brotherly terms
and yet appear to be entirely
uninfluenced by his theology -
in marked contrast apparently with the author of
I Peter?
One would have expected him (like Ignatius and Polycarp) to quote or
echo something from all those letters of his he claimed to know.
As we have
seen, he does not even identify the letter to the church to which he is writing
-
in contrast again to Clement, who when writing to Corinth reminds his readers
of I Corinthians (I Clem.47.1-4)
and echoes its teaching (49.5).
Were the
epistle genuine, 3.15 could indeed allude to a lost letter, as might the
reference in 3.1 to his previous epistle
(on the analogy of I Cor.5.9).
But
neither of these options is open to a pseudepigrapher, if he wishes to carry
conviction.
He must in the latter case have been referring to I Peter.
Why then
did he make so little use of it?
Boobyer [G. H. Boobyer, 'The Indebtedness of II
Peter to I Peter' in Higgins, New
Testament Essays, 34-53.]
makes a strenuous effort
to show how he did use it -
and on the hypothesis of pseudepigraphy this has to
be done.
But he himself quotes R. Knopf [R. Knopf,
Die Briefe Petri und Juda (KEKNT 12), Gottingen 121912, 254.]
and Windisch [H. Windisch,
Die katholischen Briefe (HNT 15), Tubingen 31951, 99.]
for the judgment that the two epistles have little or nothing in common;
and
the connections which he finds are strained.
Nor, as we have seen, does the
author of II Peter make it clear to what other document he might be referring
in 1.15 -
unless he proposed to compose one himself and never did.
To drop
hints for the purpose of identification which merely baffle is scarcely a convincing procedure.
The
argument that the personal references in II Peter are too blatant to be
credible
(or, conversely, that in I Peter they are too obscure) is inevitably
subjective.
Moreover, one would expect clues to be laid both of place and personalia which would help to add verisimilitude
(like the many such details
in the Pastorals or the reference to Tychicus in Eph.6.2if.).
But there is
nothing -
except the curious form of the name 'Simeon Peter' in 1.1,
which
corresponds neither to the address of I Peter, the natural model for a copyist
(as in the salutation of 1.2),
nor to that of any later Petrine pseudepigraph.
In particular, the absence of any reference to Rome, the obvious place of
origin to claim on both historical and ecclesiastical grounds, is puzzling.
It is relevant too to ask about the
circumstances in which such a pseudepigraph might be composed.
We have already
noted a number of points which make a second-century date look unlikely (the contrast
with the Apocalypse of Peter and later gnostic systems, the lack of reference
to chiliasm, and the absence of any concern for organization and the
ministry).
It is noticeable in fact that in recent commentaries the date is
steadily dropping.
Kelly [Peter
and Jude, 336f.] opts for 100-110,
Reicke [James, Peter and Jude, 144f.] for c. 90.
The latter's choice
of the reign of Domitian is this time neither because of references to
persecution (of which there are none), nor because of the break between the
church and the synagogue (of which again there is no sign - or, for that
matter, of any post-70 situation), but ironically because in his reign prior to
95 the church had peace!
II Peter and Jude, he thinks, are concerned to preserve
a positive attitude to the state against those who would foment rebellion.
Obviously their authors wish to oppose
certain propaganda for political freedom, propaganda which they regard as
hostile to the social order, and to which the Christians have been exposed by
the magnates and their parties.
This fits especially well into the latter half
of Domitian's reign, during which the aristocrats and the senators of the
empire fought with desperation against Domitian's tyranny (Suetonius,
Vit. Dom. 10).
[Ibid., 145. He adds that the epistle
of James 'seems to reflect the same
political
situation'.
Yet it would scarcely be possible to find two documents which on the face of it are much more
dissimilar in the conditions they presuppose.
However Reicke now tells me that he would like to reconsider all
these datings.]
Yet it is not at all 'obvious' that the
persons under attack in these epistles were concerned
for political freedom.
The only evidence is that they 'flout
authority' (κυριότητα) and 'insult celestial beings (δόξας)' (Jude 8; II Peter
2.10).
Political disaffection could no doubt be so described on the spiritual
level,
but there is no suggestion that this in fact is what is in mind.
On the
contrary, it is the spiritual authority of the church they are challenging.
They have 'rebelled like Korah' (Jude 11), that is, against the ordinances of
God and the leaders of his people (Num.16).
[Cf. the 'murmurers' (γογγυσταί) of
Jude 16 with Num.16.11 (and I Cor.10.10).]
This is what κυριόστης means in Did.4.1,
and the
rejection of it there is linked with schism (4.3) -
as in the split created by
the insubordination of Diotrephes in III John 9f.
who 'does not accept our
authority'.
Neither II Peter nor III John is to be dated by reference to the political scene.
Yet the further back II Peter is pushed
into the first century
(where all the parallels suggest it belongs),
the harder
it is, as with the Pastorals, to satisfy the basic condition of pseudepigraphy,
namely, that the readers should, willingly or unwillingly, accept the deception.
Indeed a comparison with the problem of the Pastorals is instructive.
There we
argued for the important difference between pseudepigraphy proper
and the view
that the letters or charges were composed for Paul in his name and with his
authority.
Under the former hypothesis the persons of Timothy and Titus and all
the details of news and travel plans are part of the fiction
(or genuine
fragments incorporated to enhance the fiction).
Under the latter hypothesis the
persons and situations are entirely genuine but, for whatever reason,
Paul may
have got someone else to write the letters on his behalf, though probably
dictating the personal messages.
It has been suggested - I believe improbably -
that this agent might be Luke.
But it is the relationship that matters,
and
this relationship is not that of pseudepigraphy,
nor is it the role of an
amanuensis played by Tertius in Romans (16.22).
Transferring the analogy from
the Pastorals to II Peter, the distinction is not so clear,
because there are
no details by which to assess the genuineness of the situation,
as distinct
from the identity of the writer.
But it is an analogy that I believe it is
profitable to pursue.
For it seems to have been assumed without question
that
there is no third term between Petrine authorship
(whether through an
amanuensis or not) and pseudepigraphy.
And both of these alternatives, I
believe, are open to almost equal objection -
though if faced with the choice
I
think I should have, with even such conservative scholars as Chase, Mayor and
Hort,
to plump for pseudonymity.
[Cf. the characteristic remark of
Hort's quoted by Sanday, Inspiration,
347,
and cited by Mayor, Jude and II
Peter, x, that,
'if he were asked he should say that the balance
of argument was against the epistle;
and the moment he had done so he should
begin to think that he might be wrong.']
But at this point I should like to return to the
relationship between II Peter
and Jude.
That there is some literary connection is indubitable,
if only because all the parallels between the two
epistles are virtually in the same order,
as a glance at any reference Bible
will show.
Three main explanations have been advanced:
Jude is using II
Peter
(Spitta, [F. Spitta, Die zweite Brief des Petrus und der Brief des Judas, Halle 1885.] Zahn, Bigg);
II Peter is using Jude (the vast majority of other scholars);
Each is using a common source
(E. I. Robson, [E. I. Robson, Studies in the Second Epistle of Peter, Cambridge 1915.]
Reicke, Green [Especially in his later book, II Peter and Jude, 53-5.]).
The claims for priority can often be argued
either way, as in the synoptic gospels
(e.g. is smoothness or roughness,
expansion or condensation, more likely to be original?).
But it would seem
that, on the assumption of direct dependence, II Peter is likely to be
secondary,
if only because it is difficult to see any good reason for writing
Jude at all with so little fresh matter to add.
The hypothesis of a common
source,
'a sermon pattern formulated to resist the seducers of the church', [Reicke, James, Peter and Jude, 190.] is attractive,
but like that of 'Q' it is defensible only if it is necessary.
There would appear to be no other evidence for such a document as, it is
claimed, there is for catechetical summaries, scriptural testimonia,
apocalyptic flysheets, or such a moral tract as seems to underlie the 'two
ways' material of the Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache. [Cf. pp. 323f. below.]
Moreover, what again was the point of producing the epistle of Jude if there was
so little material in it independent of its source?
It should also be observed that, though the order of the
common matter is the same,
the degree of verbal correspondence is a good deal
smaller than in those sections of Matthew and Luke
that demand a literary and
not just an oral connection.
The relevant passages are conveniently set out in
parallel columns in Moffatt's Introduction
to the Literature of the New Testament.
[Op. cit., 348-50; also, in translation,
in Leaney, Peter and Jude,
101-4.
The complete Greek texts of Jude and II Peter are printed in parallel by
Mayor, Jude and II Peter, 1-15.]
It will be seen at
once that, though the themes and many of the words are the same, there is no
direct copying.
As Guthrie, who supplies the statistics, [NTI, 926f.] says,
If II Peter is the borrower
he has changed 70% of Jude's language
and added more of his own.
Whereas if Jude borrowed from II Peter,
the percentage of alteration is slightly higher,
combined with a reduction in quantity.
The relationship is much more like that of Ephesians and
Colossians.
It is the relationship not of a wooden imitator but of a creative re-shaper of the themes -
or it represents a single mind
writing at much the same time in a somewhat different context.
It was the
latter alternative that commended itself there,
and I am astonished that it has
apparently suggested itself to no one here.
Let me then propose a hypothesis.
Jude begins by saying that he was fully engaged in writing
to his readers about their common salvation
when he was forced to break off
to
send them an urgent appeal to close ranks against the danger of false teachers
from within (31.).
I suggest that what he was composing, in the name of the
apostle, was II Peter.
This was to be a general letter and testament, a 'recall
to fundamentals' as the neb styles
I John.
But, corresponding to the briefer II John to a more specific and
somewhat less advanced situation,
Jude also first wrote off a hurried letter on
his own authority to counter the immediate menace of the new heretics.
This he
then incorporated (for the most part in a single block in ch. 2) in the more
studied style of the formal encyclical.
This would explain the fact that there
is no discernible difference in the situation between the two epistles.
Both
are written to predominantly Jewish Christians in danger of 'losing their safe
foothold' (II Peter 3.17),
though not from persecution but from error.
This
similarity was noted by Mayor: [Jude
and II Peter, clxxiv.]
The moral corruption described in the two epistles is the same even in its minutest points;
the cause of the corruption is the same,
the misinterpretation and misuse of Paul's doctrine of God's free grace (Jude 4; II Peter 2.19; 3.16; cf. Rom.3.5-8).
The agents use the same methods and are described in the same terms.
He proceeds to detail them.
Yet it does not appear to him to
require explanation how or why the situations are identical at an interval, on
his reckoning, of at least fifty years. [He dates Jude 'nearer 80 than 70'
(cxlv), II Peter in 'the second quarter of the second century' (cxxvii).]
Moreover, apart from the
less spontaneous and more pretentious level of writing in II Peter which often
overreaches itself, the vocabulary and style are indistinguishable. [An equivalent might perhaps be the difference in formality between Galatians and
Ephesians.]
Mayor again in an exhaustive study of the 'grammar and style of Jude and II
Peter' [Jude
and II Peter, xxvi-lxvii.]
observes no point at which the usage of the two epistles
diverges.
This is surely very remarkable, especially when compared with the
strained efforts to show the similarities between I and II Peter.
The only
difference is the format in which the message is couched.
When writing in his
own name Jude says,
Remember the predictions made by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ (Jude 17);
when writing with Peter's apostolic authority he says,
Remember the predictions made by God's own prophets' (II Peter 3.2).
Jude is
representing Peter rather than impersonating him.
But he leaves his own
signature.
For he calls him what he
called him - Simeon.
The only other person who is recorded as retaining this
Hebraic use is his brother James (Acts 15.14):
it was in the family.
In one sense this hypothesis is merely
taking further the alternative at which Chase hinted when he said that no
difference of amanuensis would be a sufficient explanation unless 'the
substance and the language alike were left
absolutely in the hands of the apostle's companion' (italics
mine).
In other words, he would not be an amanuensis but an agent.
The
relationship perhaps was best described by Origen, [Apud Euseb. HE 6.25.13f.]
who saw this
as a possible (though we should think needless) way of holding that the
anonymous epistle to the Hebrews could still be Pauline:
I should say that the thoughts are the apostle's,
but that the style and composition belong to one who called to mind the apostle's teachings
and, as it were, made short notes of what his master said.
If any church, therefore, holds this epistle as Paul's, let it be commended for this also.
For not without reason have the men of old time handed it down as Paul's.
But who wrote the epistle, in truth God knows.
He then goes on to record suggested guesses of who the agent might be - Clement of Rome and (again!) Luke.
Now if such a solution is possible to
the problem of the Pastorals,
whether or not it is
necessary,
it cannot be ruled out for II Peter.
And in this case
one may produce the identity of the agent with a good deal more plausibility.
For with Jude the glove fits precisely - even when he is wearing a different
hat.
Whether Silvanus also stood in the same relationship to I Peter it is
impossible to be sure,
for we have nothing which comes solely from his pen by
which to test it.
But it is improbable.
For in I Peter 5.12 the 'I' of the
writer is clearly distinguished from that of the amanuensis
(if indeed this is what Sia means).
The relationship is subtly but fundamentally different.
As we have seen, the
amanuensis can insert his own greeting (Rom. 16.22; Mart. Polyc. 20.2).
But, like the
political speech-writer or composer of an episcopal charge,
the apostolic
delegate must submerge his identity.
The hypothesis would also help to
explain the doubts and hesitations over II Peter in the church -
in
striking contrast with the remarkably good attestation of the minor and
apparently less authoritative epistle of Jude.
[Cf. Streeter, PC, 179: 'So far as external evidence is concerned, Jude is one
of the best authenticated of the catholic epistles.']
For the latter
authenticated itself - and there really is no case here for pseudonymity,
unless
again the Greek is, arbitrarily, deemed to be beyond a brother of the Lord.
But
II Peter is very puzzling.
Try
to fit it into the style or the situation of I Peter and it is bound to appear
doubtful.
Indeed, unless it is written by an agent, it must be written by a
pretender -
and for that, as we have seen, there is precious little motivation
or plausible setting.
What then may we say is the setting of
II Peter?
I believe that Zahn was correct in refusing to see in 3.1 a reference
to I Peter
(though I think he was incorrect in dating Jude so much later).
For
the contents of I and II Peter are patently different, whereas the situation
presupposed by Jude and II Peter is the same.
The latter epistles are addressed
to predominantly Jewish Christians in acute danger not from persecution but
heresy;
whereas I Peter is addressed to predominantly Gentile Christians in
acute danger from persecution but with no mention of heresy nor whiff of a gnosticizing menace.
To what then is the allusion in II Peter 3.1, where the
epistle is described as being the 'second letter' to the same persons on the
same subject? I believe two explanations are possible.
Either it will refer to
a lost letter,
for which indeed there is sufficient precedent in Paul's
extended correspondence with the church at Corinth.
Or - and this is a solution
I commend for serious consideration -
it refers to the epistle of Jude,
which
would certainly qualify as far as description of contents is concerned.
[Another possibility that has been
canvassed
is that II Peter is composite, chs. 1-2 or 2 constituting the
previous letter.
But for such a division there is no evidence,
either in the
manuscript tradition
or even, as at
I Peter 4.12, in the suggestion of a fresh start after a closure.]
If then it is asked how the earlier letter could be described as one which the
same 'I' sent to the same readers,
we should remember that in Jude 3 the author
said 'I was fully engaged in writing to
you ' what on this hypothesis is II Peter.
The references are merely
reversed.
The principal and his agent are as one man.
This may seem strange to
us -
though is it really so unusual in literary or official circles today?
But
it was established Jewish doctrine that,
as the Mishnah puts it,
'a man's agent
is as himself'. [Ber.5.5.]
Whichever alternative is adopted, the
necessity is removed, as Zahn saw, for having to find a setting for II Peter after I Peter.
The most notable
difference between Jude and II Peter on the one hand and the book of Revelation on the other is that, while they
all speak of a similar danger from gnosticizing Judaism, the former two breathe
no air of persecution.
In this they stand much nearer to the attitude to the
civic authorities in the Pastorals (cf. I Tim.2.1f.) and the closing chapters
of Acts. Indeed the atmosphere of II Peter, with the apostle's warning of
danger from error and perversion 'after my departure', is closer than anything
else to Paul's speech in Acts 20.29f. and to II Tim.4.6-8.
Though in their
contexts both μετὰ
τήν ἐμὴν ἒξοδον in
II Peter 1.15
and μετὰ
τὴν ἀφιξίν μου in Acts 20.29
must carry allusion to the apostles'
deaths,
there is no reason why they should not also mean at the literal level
'after I have left you'.
The same applies to 'the time of my departure' (ὁ
καιρὸς τῆς ἀναλύσεως μου) II Tim.4.6.
II Peter 1.14 has been taken to imply that Peter is writing (or is
purporting to write) on the point of death,
though, as we have seen, this is by
no means necessarily the implication of ταχινή.
In any case, we have argued that the similar language of II Tim.4.6-8
(reflected also in Acts 20.24f.) came from 58 -
a number of years before Paul's
death.
May it not be that II Peter also represents that apostle's parting
testimony to the Christians of Asia before he leaves for Rome?
For there is
absolutely no suggestion that II Peter comes
from Rome, unlike I Peter.
Where he was at the time of its
writing or why he had an occasion to use an agent (unless he was on a
missionary tour, whereas later he was settled in the capital) it is useless to
speculate.
Unfortunately, unlike Paul, he had no Boswell in Luke.
Yet it seems
highly improbable that neither Acts nor Paul's Caesarean correspondence would
have mentioned his presence in Jerusalem in 57-9 had he been there.
Nor could
he credibly have been in Rome in 57 without the exhaustive greetings of Rom. 16
including him.
Moreover Acts 28.15-31 could scarcely have been written as it
is, especially when the Jews say in 21f,
'We have had no communication from Judaea,
nor has any countryman of ours arrived with any report or gossip to
your discredit',
if Peter was there preaching to 'the circumcision' (cf. Gal.
2.9) either on Paul's arrival in 60,
or, in all probability, during the two
years following.
If we ask to what area the internal evidence points for the
epistle's destination, the only parallels we have for the kind of gnosticizing
tendencies found in II Peter and Jude are either in Corinth (I and II
Corinthians) or Asia Minor (Acts 20, Colossians, I and II Timothy, I and II
John, Revelation 1-3).
We may be fairly sure that Peter had been in Corinth in
the early 50s (I Cor.1.12; 3.22),
and the reference in I Cor.9.5 to him and
the Lord's brothers,
as examples familiar to the Corinthians of missionaries
who had brought their wives,
could suggest that even then he had had with him Jude,
the only
one of the brothers whom we know to
have been married.
[Cf. again Eusebius, HE 3.19f.; 3.32.5, quoting
Hegesippus.]
For all along Peter seems to have been
particularly closely associated with the Lord's brothers (Acts 1.13f.; 12.17;
15; Gal.1.18f.; 2.9, 11f.; and cf. Mark 16.7 with Matt.28.10; John 20.17).
Corinth therefore is a perfectly possible destination for II Peter and Jude -
in which case 'your apostles' will be Paul and Silvanus and Timothy (II Cor.1.19),
and Peter's disavowal of 'artfully spun tales' in his preaching to them
will parallel Paul's disclaimer of 'the language of worldly wisdom' in I Cor.
1.17; 2.1.
Nevertheless it seems improbable that Peter would have addressed so
distinctive (and divided) a church as Corinth without any hint or mention of it
(contrast again I Clement).
For II Peter and Jude share the same anonymity of
audience as the Johannine epistles and appear to reflect more scattered
communities.
In date too the emergence, as far as our evidence goes, of such gnosticizing tendencies in Asia Minor in the latter 50s and early 60s better
fits the period we are looking for, and the 'Asian' style which II Peter in
particular affects [Cf. Deissmann, Bible Studies, 366-8.] points in the same direction.
Let us then surmise that Peter and Jude, wherever they may
be (together or apart), are addressing a final word of apostolic testament to
Jewish Christians in Asia Minor prior to Peter's departure for Rome for the
last time.
Can we put any date to this?
We have already seen reason to think
that he cannot have gone to Rome before 60 (and probably 62).
There is ground
too for believing that Jude is unlikely to be writing after 62.
For he
introduces himself simply as 'brother of James'.
This in itself give no
indication of whether James is alive or dead.
But if he had already suffered
martyrdom at the hands of the Sanhedrin,
an event to whose impact on the Jews
even Josephus testifies, [Ant.
20. 200-3.]
quite apart from its traumatic effect on
Christians,
[Cf. again Hegesippus, and the space
Eusebius devotes to his testimony in HE 2.23.]
it would seem incredible that no hint of the tensions
it created
or of any posthumous epithet, such as μακάριος (as in I Clem. 47.1)
or ἀγαθός (as in I Clem. 5.3)
or, particularly in his case, δίκαιος,
[Cf. Hegesippus, apud Euseb. HE 2.23.4: 'He received the name of
"the Just" from all men, from the time of the Lord even to our own;
for there were many called James.']
should have crept into a
letter written to Jewish Christians by his own brother.
Indeed, as I have said,
the most notable absence from these epistles is any reference to persecution,
or for that matter any echo of the Jewish war, let alone the fall of Jerusalem.
If these facts are taken into account, then 62 becomes a terminus ad quem,
and we may
date Jude and II Peter in fairly close succession (as Jude 3 indicates) between 60 and 62.
[So Bigg, Peter and Jude, 315-17: 'Jude is practically contemporaneous with
II Peter.'
But then he has to say, quite arbitrarily, that 'the two Epistles
were addressed to different Churches'.]
Since Peter is about to leave, we may put them nearer to the
end of that period than the beginning, let us say in 61-2.
Now this is precisely the period to which II Peter was
assigned by independent reasoning by Zahn.
[INT II, 210. He actually says 60-3, but then he dated Paul's arrival in Rome in 61.
He ignores the relevance of the death of James, regarding Jude as written quite
separately - as late as 75.]
I confess that when I
first read him I was incredulous. I expected when I began this chapter that II
Peter would either remain a pseudonymous exception (and have to be slotted
somewhere into the late first century) or would belong to the gap (if any)
between I Peter and the apostle's death.
So early a dating will still probably
seem incredible to many.
Indeed, if the Pastoral Epistles are placed, as Zahn
placed them, [INT II.,
67. He dated them in 65-6.] in the mid-60s (let alone much later), it
is implausible.
But if, as we have
argued, these come from 56—8, then there is nothing improbable about putting II
Peter some five years later.
Yet all this is likely to carry conviction only
if, as we have also argued, the gospels and Acts too come from before this
date, and if the other comparable documents to which we have been referring,
the Johannine epistles and Revelation, are not much later.
The dating of Peter
and Jude is, as I warned at the beginning, bound, on any chronology, to reflect
that of other documents.
Yet I believe they have more light of their own to
shed than their unpromising matter might at first suggest.
To sum up, then,
we may say that Jude and II Peter were written,
in that order,
to predominantly Jewish-Christian congregations in Asia Minor
c. 61-2.
Whether Peter then set out
for Rome as he hoped or was delayed in Jerusalem to assist, as Eusebius
suggests, [HE 3.11.] 'with all the surviving apostles and disciples of the
Lord' in finding a successor to James, we cannot say.
But there is nothing
improbable about that.
By 64-5 at any rate he was evidently in the capital,
from where, we have argued, he adapted preaching material, prepared for the
church in Rome under the urgent shadow of the Neronian persecution in the
spring of 65, for dispatch as an encyclical to different and more mixed
congregations in northern Asia Minor, which there is no firm evidence to suggest that he had ever visited.
[Eusebius' statement in HE 3.1.2 that 'Peter, it seems,
preached in Pontus and Galatia and Bithynia, in Cappadocia and Asia', is
obviously only a guess derived from I Peter 1.1.]
The Petrine epistles therefore throw no further light on the closing months or
years of Peter's life and do nothing to modify the provisional conclusions
which previously we reached.
But whether he or Paul, who appears unlikely to
have been martyred by the time of I Peter (cf. 3.13) and may well have been out
of Rome at the time (possibly in
Spain), perished soon afterwards will have some bearing on the dating of the
remaining books of the New Testament yet to be considered.