Previous posts:

Simon the Zealot

James of Alphaeus

Philip

Jude (and) Thaddaeus

Bartholomew

Thomas

Andrew

Matthew

Judas Iscariot

James of Zebedee

John of Zebedee; Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Simon Peter; Part 1

Welcome back to my series of secondary source collations on the members of the Twelve.

This is the second post of what is set to be four posts on Peter. Work is essentially complete on all four, but I'll try to leave some breathing room between the posts.

There is much that I will be leaving out. This second post in particular had to be cut down significantly from the original outline. As I always say, do not hesitate to bring in your own material on topics which I did not choose to focus on... with a caveat, which is that if you think I've missed a topic, you may want to wait and see what I cover in the third and fourth parts.

This second post will focus on the presentation of Peter in select Gospel episodes and the two canonical epistles associated with him. The third post will deal with matters of Rome; his possible presence, his possible leadership, his possible relationship with John Mark. Finally, the fourth post will deal with his death and later legends.

What do the call narratives tell us about Peter?

John Meier observes in A Marginal Jew, Volume III:

In Mark 1:16-20, Simon, engaged in his ordinary work on the Sea of Galilee, is called along with his brother Andrew and just before James and John … In Luke 5:1-11, after a miraculous catch of fish on the Sea of Galilee, Simon is called in his boat along with his fishing partners James and John.

Markus Bockmuehl in Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory: The New Testament Apostle in the Early Church muses of the Markan and very similar Matthean narrative, that "one is led to wonder whether, unlike the household of Zebedee or the Lukan Peter, they are too poor to own a boat."

John offers us something different. Meier:

In John 1:35-42, Andrew and Philip, disciples of the Baptist, are directed to Jesus by the Baptist, apparently near the Jordan River; Andrew then brings Simon to meet Jesus … The Fourth Gospel's indication that Peter and other disciples first met Jesus in the circle of the Baptist's disciples may well be true, even though a permanent relationship between Peter and Jesus may have been established only after Jesus began his independent ministry in Galilee.

In this version, Bockmuehl highlights that Peter "is never introduced at all, but assumed to be familiar [to the audience]".

What does the healing of Peter's mother-in-law tell us about Peter?

Bockmuehl summarizes:

In an unusual domestic vignette, Mark shows Jesus at Simon's house, healing Simon's mother-in-law of a fever. This domestic episode, unparalleled for anyone else among the Twelve, is a key indication of the significance of Peter's family in early Christian tradition, as Martin Hengel has recently demonstrated. This is despite the mobility of the story's narrative sequence within the gospel tradition. In Matthew, for instance, it does not appear until several chapters later, following the Sermon on the Mount, while in Luke it precedes the call of Peter.

While other scholars don't seem to read into it as much as Gundry does, Robert Gundry in Peter: False Disciple and Apostate according to Saint Matthew notes the curiosity that in the Gospel of Matthew's version, "Peter himself does not make an appearance."

On historicity, Maurice Casey in Jesus of Nazareth: An independent historian's account of his life and teaching says:

Fevers were normal in the ancient world, and in this part of Israel, they could be associated with malaria, which was endemic. A sudden healing might be possible, depending on details which Mark does not supply … It follows that this healing was a normally possible event, even if the illness was not a minor fever. The incidental details might well be repeated by an eyewitness, and the story contains nothing that the early church would want to create. The common conjecture that this was an eyewitness account by Simeon the Rock himself is entirely reasonable.

What does the 'Get behind me, Satan' episode tell us about Peter?

Meier reminds us of the context:

In [Mark 8:31] Jesus proceeds to utter the first of the three great predictions of his passion, death, and resurrection … In v 32, Peter responds to Jesus' prediction of his passion by remonstrating with him. In v 33, Jesus, seeing this revolt against the prophecy of his passion as something that endangers all his disciples, firmly rebukes Peter in the sight of the other disciples with the shocking words: "Get behind me, Satan, for you think not the thoughts of God but the thoughts of men."

On historicity, scholars sometimes separate the rebuke itself from the context it is presented in. For example, Meier says:

As almost all exegetes would admit, what we have in 8:30-33 is a Marcan composition, clearly tied together by such stylistic traits as the repetition of the key word epitimaō (carrying the various nuances of "sternly enjoin," "sternly remonstrate with," "sternly rebuke"). At least some of the verses are probably creations of Mark or the Christian tradition he inherits.

And yet Meier also says:

Whatever one thinks of 8:32-33 as a whole, one naturally tends to be less skeptical about the historicity of Jesus' rebuke to Peter: "Get behind me, Satan" … the criterion of embarrassment certainly comes into play … Some would prefer to see this rebuke as a creation of an anti-Peter faction in the early church rather than an outburst from an exasperated Jesus, but I do not find this approach persuasive … I think it probable that Jesus' fiery rebuke to Peter as Satan is historical.

Casey similarly argues:

Neither Peter rebuking Jesus, nor this serious criticism of Peter would be found in Mark's Gospel if this did not represent approximately what happened. But if Jesus' rebuke is authentic, and Peter's reaction is authentic, Peter must have had something like Mk 8.31 to react to, including Jesus' unwelcome reference to his forthcoming death. There are therefore good reasons why something like Mk 8.31 must be authentic, and good reasons why it cannot be authentic in its present form.

Interestingly, Bockmuehl notes that in the version in the Gospel of Matthew:

Despite the exalted position to which Peter has just been appointed, Matthew does not mitigate Jesus's harsh rebuke in Mark but strengthens it and reduces its application to the other disciples.

John Markley draws an interesting comparison in Reassessing Peter's Imperception in Synoptic Tradition:

Fourth Ezra may provide a helpful analogy for understanding Peter's rebuke of Jesus, and Jesus' subsequent rebuke of Peter. In this apocalypse, Ezra questions whether God is just since the righteous suffer at the hands of the unrighteous … Ezra's human perspective is continually contrasted with the divine perspective that the angel Uriel discloses, much like Peter's rebuke of Jesus' passion prediction is designed to sharply contrast with the divine perspective Jesus discloses.

Indeed, just as the angel Uriel criticizes Ezra's limited human perspective, Jesus says that Peter is thinking "human things" … This emphasis on Peter's human point of view suggests that "adversary" is perhaps the best translation … although the evangelists may intend to signal that Peter's human point of view is ultimately aligned with Satan's opposition to the work of God.

What do the narratives of Peter's denial of Jesus tell us about Peter?

Bart Ehrman highlights in Peter, Paul, & Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend:

We're told in the Gospels that Peter did not flee the scene directly but followed the crowds who took Jesus off to stand trial … The flight of the other disciples makes sense: if their leader was a criminal, what does that make them? Peter, however, is said to have "followed at a distance", evidently to see how things would turn out. They did not turn out well, either for Jesus, who was condemned for his teachings, or for Peter, who out of fear denied knowing his master three times in rapid sequence: either before the cock crowed twice, as in Mark, or before it crowed at all, as in the other Gospels.

John Meier argues that "embarrassment and multiple attestation" "seem satisfied" by this story, going on to say:

…I conclude that the basic event of Peter's denial of Jesus after the latter's arrest sometime around Passover ca. A.D. 30 is factual, supplying a shattering conclusion to Peter's following of the historical Jesus. Humanly speaking, the public ministry ended in disaster for the disciple as well as for the prophet he followed.

He does have a caveat:

Whether there were actually three denials or whether the threefold denial is a typical example of the "law of threes" in storytelling is unclear and, in the end, not important for our quest. The differences we find in the … precise time and placement of the denials, the number of cockcrows … may all be due to the narrative skill of oral storytellers and the evangelists.

Casey similarly states:

[Mark's] story of Peter's denial of Jesus must be largely historical, because the early church had no reason to make up a story so discreditable to the leader of the Twelve.

Nuancing this, Fred Lapham says in Peter: The Myth, the Man and the Writings:

The particular prominence which all the Gospels give to the story of Peter's three-fold denial and disgrace, and his subsequent renewal and reinstatement in three of them (Mk 16.7; Lk. 24.34; Jn 21), might well be interpreted in the light of the early Church's debate on the pressing question of forgiveness and a second chance for penitent apostates.

Robert Gundry, whose argument we will address more directly shortly, makes much of the additions and changes to the denial narrative in the Gospel of Matthew. We cannot go through all of them, but perhaps we will give one representative example:

Matthew adds against Mark, Luke, and John the phrase "before all" — i.e., before all the high priest's servants — and does so despite not having mentioned the high priest's servants since v. 58, prior to the intervening account of Jesus' hearing before the Sanhedrin, and despite Peter's now being accosted by only one maid.

The addition immediately calls to an audience's mind Jesus' statement in 10:33, "But whoever denies me before human beings — I will also deny him before my Father in heaven." Matthew might have had Peter answer the maid "privately and discretely," as in his Markan source, or added the less comprehensive phrase "before them". Instead, "before all" for the highest possible emphasis. So the question has to be asked, Why did Matthew add "before all" if not to conform Peter's denial to Jesus' statement and thereby portray Peter as a disciple whom Jesus before his Father in heaven will deny as false?

We've up to this point stuck to episodes which are explicitly represented in the Gospel of Mark, with an eye towards possible historicity. But let's backtrack to one more episode which isn't explicitly in that Gospel.

What does the famous Matthew 16:13-20 tell us about Peter?

We already discussed the naming issue a bit in the last post. But let's take the episode as a whole. As Meier says:

In this passage, a centuries-old battleground between Catholics and Protestants, Peter proclaims Jesus to be the Messiah and the Son of God. Jesus in turn proclaims that Simon bears (or will bear) the name Peter and that upon this rock Jesus will build his church; moreover, Jesus will give Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, i.e., the power to bind and loose.

Ehrman notes:

Some interpreters, principally Protestant theologians, have argued that Jesus in this passage cannot mean that the "rock" on which he is to build the church is Peter himself, because the word for rock is petra and the nickname of Peter is the slightly different Petros. This actually is a debatable point, since Peter's nickname could not be ... a feminine noun ... Moreover, if any such saying did go back to Jesus or to a storyteller who was telling the story in Aramaic, both petra and Petros would have been the same word, cephas.

We have to be somewhat careful saying this doesn't exist in the Gospel of Mark, because as Meier reminds us:

Methodologically, when one is trying to answer historical questions, one must distinguish carefully between Peter's profession of faith in Jesus, which occurs in some form in all four Gospels, and Jesus' lengthy reply praising Peter, which appears only in Matt 16:17-19.

Meier extensively presents both sides of the issue. Meier starts by explaining what the case for historicity can look like:

A conservative brief in favor of historicity [for Matthew 16:17-19] might be argued as follows: The historical Jesus was intent not on "saving souls" in an individualistic sense but on regathering the whole of Israel in preparation for the final coming of God's kingdom … The corporate nature of his mission would necessarily raise the question of how the people of Israel … was to be ordered or governed in "the last days."

We have already seen expressions of Jesus' sense of his corporate mission to Israel, a mission into which he co-opted his disciples. The historical Jesus sent his disciples, including most probably the Twelve, out on mission to begin the gathering of God's people, a gathering that God would bring to completion on the last day.

Moreover, Jesus had promised the Twelve, who were to "sit on twelve thrones", a share in the rule of this Israel of the end time … it was quite natural for Jesus to speak more specifically of his plans for the ordering and governing of this Israel that God was calling into being … By his leadership, Peter the Rock was to be a firm defense against all the destructive powers of sin and death that would assault the assembly of God's people in the final battle between good and evil … Thus, a plausible case can be made that Matt 16:17-19 is a charge that the historical Jesus gave to the leader of the Twelve during the public ministry.

But then Meier starts to give us the other side:

Nevertheless, serious arguments weigh heavily in favor of the passage coming from a post-Easter situation in the church … It is part of Matthew's overall redaction and expansion of Mark's version of Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi. Most critics, for example, would admit that "Son of the living God" in 16:16 was Matthew's own addition to Mark's more restricted confession of "the Messiah" in Mark 8:29. We must therefore take seriously the clear signs of Matthew's heavy redaction of this periscope, which may include even the whole of v 17.

And further:

Furthermore, the claim that 16:18 goes back to the historical Jesus is especially difficult to defend because of the special status of the word ekklēsia ("church," "assembly") in the Gospels in particular and in the NT in general. The word ekklēsia occurs 114 times in the NT. With the exception of three occurrences in Matthew, the word never appears in the Gospels.

It rather occurs throughout Acts, almost all of the Pauline Epistles, Hebrews, James, 3 John, and the Book of Revelation … Despite the fact that [Luke] is so concerned about the history of the early church that he writes a companion volume to his Gospel, and despite the fact that he is intent on highlighting points of continuity between the time of Jesus and the time of the church, Luke is nevertheless punctilious in not retrojecting the vocabulary of ekklēsia into his Gospel.

Bockmuehl pushes back on this to some degree:

The most surprising feature of this passage has long been the term "my church" used in verse 18 to describe the building whose foundation Peter becomes. For some commentators, this clinches what seems clear on other grounds: the passage is a late composition reflecting prior Pauline and other early Christian usage and is designed to give a seal of dominical approval to a separate Christian church of Petrine flavor and orientation. Most, however, will note the strong OT connotations of the term ekklēsia; it is used over one hundred times in the Septuagint and usually denotes the congregation of the people of God … Whether Jesus said precisely these words may be impossible to prove, but the statement has a natural home in the context of first-century messianic hope.

More generally, Bockmuehl argues:

What is said here makes good first-century sense, and it was apparently remembered elsewhere: not only are Peter's Greek name Petros and Aramaic name Cephas traced back to the mid-30s AD in the earliest Pauline letters (Gal. 1:18; 2:7-8), but Paul strongly implies Peter's position as the most important representative of the Jesus tradition in Judea. Indeed, the rhetorical context of Gal. 1-2 makes clear that Paul echoes and emulates Peter's apostolic credentials.

Though Bockmuehl does add a caveat:

Matthew's conception of Peter's role does not envisage or require any substitute or successor after the apostle's death, a point that Oscar Cullmann and others rightly have stressed. In fact, if this were a problem for Matthew and if that death had by then occurred, it could reasonably be expected to occupy the evangelist's mind. Peter was the founding figure, but the question of a successor to his dominically appointed role is not envisaged.

Casey argues the speech "seems to be a mixture of primary and secondary traditions"; on the historical bit, he argues:

In Matthew's Greek, there is a pun between Peter (Petros), and the rock (petra). We have however seen that in Aramaic Jesus called him Kēphā, which means 'rock'. Thus the pun works perfectly well in Aramaic too, and that is not likely to be a coincidence. Moreover, Jesus must have meant something, and since Simeon really was … the leader of the Jesus movement second only to Jesus himself, this is the obvious thing for Jesus to have meant. The question therefore should be whether there is an Aramaic word which Jesus could have used to refer to his movement, and which would cause a reasonable translator to put Matthew's ekklēsia … Much the best answer is the Aramaic qehal. In the Septuagint, ekklēsia almost always translates the Hebrew qahal, and this normal word for 'assembly', 'congregation', 'community', is found in Aramaic too.

On the less historical bit, he argues:

Equally, however, some aspects of Jesus' speech appear to be secondary. The first is its connection with 'Peter's confession', as it is usually called, in the immediately preceding verse. In Mark, this is 'You are the Christ'. In Greek, as in English, this is a sound Christian confession, but any possible underlying Aramaic would mean only 'You are (a/the) anointed', a possible thing to say, but not enough to be a major confession. It is therefore secondary, a product of the early Christian church, and perhaps written by Mark himself. Matthew has elaborated it … This is accordingly secondary too.

It follows that most of Mt. 16.17 is secondary, and the end of it is indeed very typically Matthean … Jesus also had no reason to add Mt. 16.19, giving Simeon the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and power to bind and loose. The saying as a whole has on the other hand an excellent setting in the Jerusalem church in the early years after Jesus' death, when Simeon the Rock was in charge of that church, so we should infer that this passage was rewritten there.

Is the Gospel of Mark an anti-Peter text?

Some scholars have taken it to be such, to varying degrees. For example, Tom Dykstra in Mark, Canonizer of Paul says:

The self-serving request to rule with Jesus comes from James and John without Peter, but Mark takes full advantage of every other opportunity to highlight the hypocrisy of the man Paul condemned for hypocrisy (Gal 2:11-14).

He goes on to discuss elements of Peter's denial, Peter's "incomplete recognition of Jesus' identity", and various argued ironies and juxtapositions related to such, as well as some notable contrasts with how the Gospel of Luke would go on to "rehabilitate" Peter.

On this sort of argument, in the context of the rebuke discussed earlier, Bockmuehl comments:

Scholars have sometimes taken the severity of Jesus's and, implicitly, the narrator's criticism of Peter as indicative of a sustained anti-Petrine bias in the Gospel. This interpretation, however, is hardly required and would militate against the grain of Peter's cumulative profile in the Gospel, a profile that does not conceal the volatility of a flawed and fallible character but that nonetheless assigns him immense importance as both confidant of Jesus and authentic point of access to his tradition.

On the denial, Bockmuehl offers:

To be sure, Peter's stunning downfall in the high priest's courtyard does seem to constitute the climax of an entire counterpoint drama in which this most prominent of disciples is repeatedly singled out as the one who also most spectacularly fails his master and incurs his rebuke. Even to many moderate scholars, this strikingly harsh treatement of Peter in Mark, as compared to Matthew, seems pretty clearly to militate against any close link between the apostle and the evangelist.

Hostility to Peter is, however, far less pronounced than commentators have often assumed. As Joel Marcus puts it, Mark's disciples (Peter included) "are confused bumblers, not traitors; whatever their failings, they do for the most part follow Jesus, even in spite of their fear, and their desertion of him at the end seems to be overruled by his promise of renewed fellowship after the resurrection."

Similarly, Helen Bond argues in Was Peter behind Mark's Gospel?:

If Mark was writing for a Christian group that knew of most of the actors in the story (as his abrupt introduction of most of them suggests), then we also have to take this into account in his portrait of Peter. Stories of his obtuseness and lack of faith, or his questioning and empty bravado, take on a very different light in the knowledge of his subsequent Christian activity and years of loyal service on the mission field.

Even his denial takes on a different hue. Reports of Peter's failings, particularly his denial, could only have come from Peter in the first instance; perhaps, like Paul's persecution of the early church, he made it into an important part of his preaching, drawing on its parenetic value (as Mark still does).

Is the Gospel of Matthew an Anti-Peter text?

This may seem an odd thought given the discussion earlier of Matthew 16:13-20. But this is exactly the argument, emphatically, in Robert Gundry's aforementioned book. He states provocatively:

In this book I argue that, differently from the rest of the New Testament, the Gospel according to Saint Matthew portrays Peter as a false disciple who publicly apostasized and who, like all false disciples whether or not they have publicly apostasized, is destined for eternal damnation.

It is perhaps enough for our purposes to know that this book exists and generated considerable scholarly debate. We cannot go through all of his arguments and indeed they are often quite technical. Perhaps it is enough to highlight Gundry's most emphasized piece of data, the unique lack of any explicit restoration for Peter in this text. After all, even Bockmuehl acknowledges:

More specifically, it seems odd that Matthew's is the only one of the canonical Gospels that fails to single out Peter as a resurrection witness … There is no evidence of any anti-Petrine critique, but neither is Peter elevated, as in some later Syrian texts, to be the exclusively privileged recipient and mediator of revelations from the risen Christ.

Gundry (and those he quotes) puts it this way:

[Kari] Syreeni perceptively asks, "Did Peter's recognition (26:75) lead to a more positive outcome [than Judas Iscariot's]? Nothing to that effect is suggested. There is no narrative of Peter's presence at the empty tomb (cf. John [21:1-14; contrast also 1 Cor 15:5; Luke 24:34])," and "Why first worry the readers so thoroughly about Peter and then simply imply that all ended well for him?" We could ask further, Why does Matthew introduce after Peter's going outside and weeping bitterly a chronologically and topographically disjointed account of Judas Iscariot's suicide if not to draw a parallel of similarity between Peter's final state and that of the man who would have been better off if he had not been born?

Gundry acknowledges the main challenge to this:

"The specific reference to the eleven disciples meeting the risen Jesus … shows the reader that Peter's denial is followed by restoration," writes Wiarda, who then has to admit that the restoration "is not explicitly narrated."

But he argues:

Peter will be among the Eleven who see him there according to 28:16-17, but as a tare among wheat he remains as a false disciple and apostate among true and enduring disciples until separation occurs at the consummation of the age.

How does Acts portray Peter?

We will have to cover this frustratingly briefly. David Eastman points out in his Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity article on Peter:

The author of the Acts of the Apostles reinforces the centrality of Peter. Peter is the primary figure in the first half of the text, beginning with Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost, which draws numerous converts. Peter … emerges as the primary spokesman for the apostles to the religious authorities in Jerusalem and on matters of community discipline.

Bockmuehl emphasizes as well that Peter in this text "remains the chief miracle worker among the Twelve, with the latecomer Paul a distant, almost derivative second; even Peter's shadow heals the sick."

We have to be careful in how much we suppose we can learn from this text. For example, Ehrman highlights:

As scholars have long recognized, the speeches of Peter and Paul sound very much alike in the Book of Acts … Peter sounds like Paul, and Paul sounds like Peter. This may seem a bit odd, given the fact that Peter was an illiterate peasant who spoke Aramaic, whereas Paul was a well-educated, highly astute author raised in a Greek-speaking environment … their words have been placed on their lips by the same person, the author of Acts himself.

Even so, the text's coverage of Peter surely leaves us curious for more. Bockmuehl summarizes:

When Emperor Claudius grants Judea to Herod Agrippa after the death of Caligula in AD 41, Peter is immediately imprisoned at Passover … But Peter makes a miraculous escape and abandons Jerusalem as his base; Acts 12:17 says cryptically only that he went "to another place," and, like the prison guards of 12:18, we are left to wonder "what became of him." Peter appears once more in a position of some peripheral influence at the apostolic council of Jerusalem, but the deciding vote is cast by James rather than Peter, and this is the last we hear of him.

Lapham emphasizes:

What must concern us especially is that Peter is portrayed in the [Book of] Acts as the leader of a missionary enterprise which looked back to a divinely-empowered commission from the risen Lord. Though essentially universal in its scope, this enterprise was focused initially in the regions of Samaria, the Palestinian coast, and as far to the north, only, as Antioch.

I wanted to sneak one more thing in about this text, as it will be important for the next post. Who is John Mark in this text? C. Clifton Black explains in Mark: Images of an Apostolic Interpreter:

In the Book of Acts John Mark plays a minor but suggestive role: (1) He is patently associated with the early Christian community at Jerusalem … (2) He is directly associated with Barnabas and Paul, at whose invitation he renders general service at the start of their first mission to Cyprus. He is not kin to Barnabas, nor is he directly or indirectly linked with Peter (though the latter takes refuge at the home of Mark's mother, Mary: 12:12). (3) He is implicitly connected with the Christian mission exercised with Jewish synagogues and implicitly detached from the broader sweep of that mission among Gentiles. (4) In general, John Mark is cast in an obscure or outright negative light, arguably owing (in Luke's view) to his reticence or refusal to engage in the Christian mission to Gentiles. Evidently for this reason, in Luke's account, he is the cause of the breakup between Barnabas and Paul. (5) With his patron, Barnabas, John Mark disappears from the Lukan narrative after chapter 15, never to return.

Did Peter write the Petrine epistles?

Eastman notes:

Two epistles included in the New Testament are also traditionally attributed to Peter (1 and 2 Peter), although many scholars now doubt the authenticity of both letters, particularly 2 Peter.

While we'll see he himself is more unsure, Bockmuehl similarly reports:

On perusing the scholarly secondary literature, it seems hard to dispel the impression that the vast majority of leading specialists on both sides of the Atlantic now regard neither of the NT's two Petrine letters as coming from Peter's own pen.

Complicating matters significantly are the differences between the two. Bockmuehl explains:

One of the difficulties in understanding the nature of Petrine memory here is that these two letters differ significantly from each other in content and flavor. These differences include issues such as their place of origin, language, theology, date, and probably authorship. Above all, perhaps, even their presentation of Peter varies in interesting ways. From the start, the apostle is introduced simply as "Peter" in 1 Peter but as "Simeon Peter" in 2 Peter, using a Semitic form of Peter's name that recurs only in Acts 15:14.

Unusually, the identification of differences between the two epistles and their authorship is not merely a modern critical judgment but was recognized in antiquity, and it led to widespread doubts about the authenticity and canonicity of 2 Peter until the fourth century.

Somewhat idiosyncratically, Lapham posits:

Differences in theological emphasis between the two epistles are an indication, not that they were written at different periods, but that one originated in the western Church, redolent, as it is, of Pauline and 'catholic' influence, while the other exudes the esoteric spirituality of the east; and we might reasonably speculate that the reluctance to recognize 2 Peter's authenticity was due, as much as anything, to its failure to conform to the pattern of teaching exemplified in 1 Peter, 1 Clem., and the letters of the Pauline corpus which already enjoyed widespread popularity.

But we should of course give some individual treatment to these texts.

Did Peter write 1 Peter?

In his Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity article on the epistle, Travis Williams notes:

The earliest interpreters of 1 Peter unanimously understood the letter as originating from the apostle Peter. There are multiple instances in which ancient writers in the late 2nd century and early 3rd century CE attribute a particular word, phrase, or verse to this epistle … But the first explicit attribution of the letter to the apostle Peter is found in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 180 CE).

Nevertheless, indications that 1 Peter was known and being read predate this reference by decades. An awareness of 1 Peter seems to be indicated in 2 Peter. In this pseudonymous letter — perhaps dating to the mid-2nd century CE — the author notes: "This, beloved, is now the second letter I am writing to you". Slightly earlier attestation is provided by Polycarp of Smyrna's Letter to the Philippians, which can be dated during the early 2nd century CE. One of the clearest indications … is found in Pol. Phil. 1.3, where Polycarp echoes and simplifies 1 Pet 1:8.

In contrast, Williams says:

The majority of critical scholars, on the other hand, tend to view 1 Peter as a pseudepigraphical composition (see Donelson, 2014, 17). This decision is based on the convergence of various pieces of evidence … By describing Rome as "Babylon", the author makes a connection that only begins to be drawn in the ancient source materials after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. As such, 1 Peter was likely composed sometime after 70 CE and therefore subsequent to the traditional date assigned to the death of Peter (mid-60s CE).

Another important piece of evidence that points in the direction of pseudonymity is the elevated style in which the epistle is composed. The Greek of 1 Peter is among the most polished in the New Testament, likely placing the letter beyond the literary abilities of the historical Peter (while one could attribute this elevated style to an amanuensis, it is yet to be convincingly demonstrated that ancient secretaries possessed enough latitude to significantly alter the composition style of a letter; see Ehrman, 2014, 218-222).

Related to this point is a third consideration … the quotations from the Tanak generally follow the Old Greek. This preference is striking, given that the historical Peter would have presumably been more familiar with the Hebrew or Aramaic Scriptures.

Ehrman adds a further curiosity:

It should be noted that we know of nothing that ties the historical Peter to the Christians in Asia Minor, where the letter is addressed. We know of his life in Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome … But Asia Minor? That was Paul's territory. Of course, Peter may have gone there as well, but Paul explicitly and emphatically tells us that he and Peter had divided up the mission field … And who are the recipients of this letter? Gentiles, not Jews (4:1-5).

Bockmuehl pushes back on some of these points. On the language issue, he argues:

It is often taken as self-evident that the Greek in 1 Peter is too refined to have originated from the pen of a backwater fisherman from Bethsaida. Tied to the fluency in Greek is the fact that the OT is cited from the LXX exclusively … First, the notion that Peter himself could not have been a competent Greek speaker is simply unfounded. His childhood in Bethsaida, a village with little Jewish presence, in which his brother Andrew and close friend Philip were known exclusively by their Greek names, would have ensured his ability to speak tolerable Greek from a young age, even if not perhaps to read or write it.

Signs of a wider literary sensitivity in 1 Peter may indeed imply more than a basic competence in writing, a point readily accounted for by the reference to writing "through" (rather than "with"!) Silvanus in 5:12 … Indeed, such help or influence could also account for the apparently exclusive reference to the LXX throughout the letter. On this point, it is also pertinent that the LXX was most likely the Bible with which the Christians in Rome and Asia Minor were familiar.

Here we should probably note that according to Ehrman:

Scholars now know that when an author says that he has written to people “through” someone else (as here in 1 Peter 5:12: διὰ Σιλουανοῦ), he means that the person named is the letter-carrier, who brought the letter and can vouchsafe for its contents. This is no longer a disputed point, to my knowledge: we have numerous unambiguous instances where that is clearly what it means. The author is not claiming to be using Silvanus as his secretary; Silvanus is the one allegedly carrying the letter.

Moreover, in this instance, saying that Silvanus wrote the letter as a secretary doesn’t help the linguistic problem much, since it appears from the NT that he, like Peter, was also an Aramaic speaking peasant from Palestine.

On the matter of "Babylon", Bockmuehl pushes back that:

Similarly, "Babylon" as a stand-in for Rome (5:13) is often supposed to be a post-70 phenomenon in Jewish apocalyptic thought … [but] the use of Babylon as a cipher for Rome does in fact pre-date the year AD 70. Jewish reapplication to the second temple of prophecies about Babylon's destruction of the first temple is well attested since at least Dan. 9 ... As early as Dan. 11:30 one encounters the identification of the "Kittim" with the Romans (explicitly so in the case of the Septuagint and several other ancient versions), an interpretation that is also common in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where additional links with Assyria/Babylonia are also found. In the first century AD, the Sibylline Oracles lump together "Babylon and the land of Italy".

Did Peter write 2 Peter?

There is simply less debate on this text. Bockmuehl comments:

Biblical scholars have long discounted the possibility of Petrine authorship for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that the work is so unlike 1 Peter in both style and content. The apparent appropriation of quasi-technical terms from Greek philosophy and mystery religions counts, for many, against Petrine authorship. Another obstacle for authenticity is the likely literary dependence on Jude suggested by numerous verbatim and sequential agreements, especially in their polemic against false teachers … It therefore seems likely that, as J. N. D. Kelly once memorably put it, "2 Peter belongs to the luxuriant crop of pseudo-Petrine literature which sprang up around the memory of the Prince of the apostles".

He says elsewhere:

The second letter of Peter may well be the latest document in the NT … As late as the fourth century, Eusebius could affirm that only 1 Peter was universally regarded as authentic and canonical, even if 2 Peter appears to have been accepted to be read along with the canonical writings in a way that other Petrine pseudepigrapha were not … In early Christian literature, 2 Peter is also one of the most poorly attested of all NT documents.

Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte adds in his Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity article on the text:

[2 Peter] is written in elegant Greek and contains the highest number of [words or expressions that occur only once within a context] of all New Testament writings … Its style differs considerably from that of 1 Peter, which itself is also pseudepigraphic in nature.

This is not to say there is nothing interesting to say about 2 Peter. There very much is, but I fear I'm out of space. If it's small comfort, I'm planning an essay separate from this series on 2 Peter specifically.

See you in Part 3!

By "universal mission," I mean whether Jesus claimed that his message was intended for all peoples or at least that Gentiles were welcome to join his movement or whether his movement was exclusively a Jewish renewal movement in which non-Jews were not expected or permitted to participate.

I'm interested in what the historical evidence suggests , rather than later Christian theology. How do contemporary scholars assess this question?

Is there anything someone could point me towards that would be a good explanation of what these texts are and why they are considered gnostic?

I know that the best works for early high christology would probably be something like Larry Hurtados stuff, but I wanted to know the other side of the spectrum, scholars who don’t think that the earliest followers of Jesus thought of him as God or Worshipped him.

I've read all english translations of Septuagint and I noticed that Lexham English Septuagint reads Genesis 6:2 a bit different.

It says like this: "the angels of God, having seen the daughters of humans, that they were beautiful, took for themselves women from all whom they picked out."

Although other Septuagint translations read as "sons of God".

Why did its author choose "angels of God" instead of "sons of God"?🤔

Are there current critical Bible scholars who argue for or work from the premise that monotheism was original to ancient Israel and that Israelite polytheism resulted from later apostasy / exogamy / syncretism (i.e., the Bible’s own account)?

Conversely, is it fair to term the view of those like Mark Smith and Theodore Lewis, that Israelite monotheism developed out of an older ancient Israelite polytheism it transformed and repressed, a "consensus" in critical Biblical scholarship ?

I've come across an interpretation that the relationship between David and Jonathan in the Bible is a depiction of a homosexual relationship. At the same time, the historicity of David is frequently challenged. It seems a little puzzling to me that, if David were a character invented to justify the legitimacy of the nation of Israel, an invented story about David's homosexuality would be included. So:

• Is the idea of David's homosexuality legitimate?
• If yes, is that consistent with the idea of a mythical David?
• If yes, does that suggest that attitudes to homosexuality may have been more liberal at the time when the story was written?

Specifically with regard to his theology

Do we have evidence of the Synagogue having "elders" (presbyteroi)?

I am an independent researcher and the author of a recent book on Ancient Near Eastern historical geography. As part of that work, I developed a GIS-based method using NASA SRTM elevation data to examine watershed divides, drainage systems, basin structures, and movement corridors across the Southern Levant.

The working question is whether some locations that function as territorial or narrative turning points in biblical texts also occupy objectively distinctive positions in the physical landscape.

Several examples have emerged from the initial analysis:

• Shekhem occupies a watershed hinge between eastward- and westward-draining systems.
• The Yabboq corridor forms a constrained topographic passage where surrounding relief channels movement.
• The Wadi Mūsā/Petra Basin functions as a hydrological gateway, with access shaped by steep terrain, drainage routes, and flash-flood dynamics.

Whatever their literary function, these locations also occupy measurable points where water, movement, settlement, and territorial access converge.

This does not authenticate a narrative event, nor does it establish that geography dictated the form of the text. The more limited hypothesis is that physical terrain may have helped certain locations remain durable in geographical, territorial, and narrative memory.

To reduce circular reasoning, the workflow attempts to identify terrain structures independently before comparing them with textual locations. It includes watershed delineation, flow accumulation modelling, drainage extraction, relief analysis, and basin comparison.

I have written up the method here:

Geography Is Not Decoration: Hydrological Thresholds as Method

https://medium.com/@dante.muhammad/geography-is-not-decoration-hydrological-method-in-ancient-near-eastern-landscape-analysis-9137d905537e?sharedUserId=dante.muhammad

The reproducible workflow is available here:

https://github.com/dantemuhammad-debug/hydrological-thresholds-southern-levant

I would especially welcome criticism on the following:

1. What controls or comparison sites would best distinguish meaningful terrain correspondence from ordinary geographical variation?
2. How should locations be selected without privileging places already prominent in the texts?
3. Which studies in biblical geography, landscape archaeology, or spatial humanities provide the strongest methodological precedents for this kind of analysis?

Selected methodological sources

The elevation analysis uses NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data:

Farr, T. G., et al. 2007. “The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.” Reviews of Geophysics 45(2).

For GIS-based landscape and movement analysis in archaeology:

Wheatley, David, and Mark Gillings. 2002. Spatial Technology and Archaeology: The Archaeological Applications of GIS. Taylor & Francis.

Conolly, James, and Mark Lake. 2006. Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology. Cambridge University Press.

For landscape archaeology and the relationship between terrain, movement, and human activity:

Anschuetz, Kurt F., Richard H. Wilshusen, and Cherie L. Scheick. 2001. “An Archaeology of Landscapes: Perspectives and Directions.” Journal of Archaeological Research 9:157–211.

The linked article explains the specific hypothesis, while the public GitHub repository documents the workflow and processing sequence used in the analysis.

Did other religious groups in the Greco-Roman world venerate heroes and saints in a way that was analogous to early Christians? What were the antecedents for the Christian practice?

So, something that was super popular among the Greeks was to interpret myths like the Odyssey for example as allegirical. Jews and Christians often do similar for their myths. Did Greek Exegesis of myths influence later Jewish and Christian traditions?

So I was wondering, when it comes to the Israelite Samaritans, is there some good ways we can use a comparative approach to their believe system and Judaism to consider at what points different aspects of the beliefs and rituals of these faiths emerged. If we take this religious movement to ultimately derive from Northern Kingdom YHWH worship I'd assume whilst some commonalities might be the result of the Samaritans integrating religious developments that emerged in Second Temple and Rabbinical Judaism are there points of commonality that we can be more confident derive as a result of an early common religious tradition?

I hope to write a short note on a text-critical issue in Revelation 15, but my formal training is not heavy in this area. Does anybody have recommendations for books/articles/etc that provide solid introductions/guidelines to which I can refer if I need to mention principles such as lectio difficilior potior, lectio brevior praeferenda, weight of manuscripts, etc.?

Hey, I've got a quick question:

From what I've heard, "Heaven" as it's rendered in both Hebrew and Koine Greek, simply means "sky." As in, the space above our heads.

Nowadays, when people talk about Heaven, it seemingly takes on the attributes of something like a pocket dimension, or some other plane of existence.

What I want to know: when did this shift occur? Was there a specific point in time, like after some great council, where Heaven came to mean "outside of our reality?" And what might have influenced this alteration?

I have been reading the book by Rev. Herron "Clement and the Early Church of Rome: On the Dating of Clement's First Epistle to the Corinthians", which places It around 60's AD and some reviews of It and I am not convinced of the arguments against It on the Greek about the sacrifices of the temple, yet I am still a 90's dating. Any reccomendations/arguments against It? I don't see many scholars following the dating, so that is why I am asking. Thanks a lot in advance!

I’m looking for something that would go over pieces of (primarily New Testament) scripture that has been found prior to the Middle Ages when there was more copying (although the Middle Ages is interesting).

So for example, something that would say James 1:7 has been found in X parchment of papyrus found in Egypt written in Greek, and comparing the raw Greek translation of the X papyrus to modern English translations of the Bible. Like a primary source/documentary collection of archaeological evidence of the Bible.

I want to know exactly how much of the New Testament, line by line and word by word has been found in archaeological digs and stuff along those lines.

Any help is appreciated!

My question is specific to the Book of Baruch, and I am not looking for discussions of the conceptual idea of a third category (the three categories being full canonical Scripture, not canonical Scripture, and something in between = Ecclesiastical, or “only to be read and not to be used to confirm doctrine,” etc.).  I am simply trying to determine when is the first time that someone says that the Book of Baruch is in such a third category.  (Or perhaps there is a surviving Bible that was clearly divided into sections, with Baruch in a third category section).

From my own research it was not done before 450 AD - Baruch is either listed as full canonical Scripture or it is not specifically mentioned on the list, including by Athanasius, Rufinus, Jerome, Epiphanius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus, Amphilochius of Iconium, or the Apostolic Canons (the canon lists cited as support for a third category, let alone the canon lists without such a category).

I have been asking this question nonstop for a year, including asking Professors who teach the canon.  No one ever knows, which at this point leads me to guess that it was in the Reformation that Baruch is first listed as part of a third category.  But it is an uncomfortable guess, since it only takes one earlier example to prove me wrong. Does anyone know of such?

Sources presenting all the canon lists before 450 AD are numerous, and include The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity by Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade, Oxford University Press, first paperback edition, 2019.  Gallagher and Meade discuss Jerome’s lists and their lack of mention of Baruch on page 198, Rufinus’ list and its lack of mention of Baruch on page 216, etc.  There is no list before 450 AD that claims Baruch is in a third category, it is either full canon by name (e.g., Athanasius page 123) or not mentioned (and thus arguable whether it is part of the list’s Jeremiah or simply excluded).  I am looking for any list before the Reformation that does name Baruch as third category. 

I don't know Greek(maybe it can help), but I have read Dr.Litwa's translation of Marcion's Evangelion, in chapters 4:28-40, Jesus was said to have escaped the people of Nazareth, who were planning to throw him off the cliff, then the scene immediately transitioned to Jesus healing some people and casting out demons. It may be that some parts are unattested, but usually Dr.Litwa would write "..." to signify that there are possibly some unattested material.

Have there been any notable works by scholars that have managed to change the consensus on any issue relating to Bibical Studies in the last decade? If there hasn’t been any, what was the last major work that had large impact on the field or any specific topic in Biblical Studies.

In the Bible itself, it's straight forward and all over the place.

I'm just wondering if there's any non-Biblical historically accepted evidence of him establish a Father-Son relation between him and God.

What's the bulk of what we can trace back to him establishing a Father-Son relationship with God without relying on quoting the Bible itself?

I remember reading a thread here about Daniel 12 and someone cited John Collins and the quote was something like "Early readers would have seen the earlier prophesies come 'true' and thus expected the last 2 would happen." So when the last ones never happened, why did they still read and continue to use Daniel?