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In the New Testament, the apostle Peter is credited with the authorship of two letters, or epistles. Yet if you read many modern commentators on the Bible, they hold the view that Peter really didn’t write the Second Letter of Peter attributed to him, but some other later author did. In essence, they charge that this second letter is a forgery.
Why do they think this? They give three main reasons:
1. It was not quoted for a long time after it was supposedly written. The first quote is by church father Origen who lived in the late second-mid third century.
2. The style and vocabulary of the letter differs significantly from Peter’s first letter.
3. There are supposedly historical problems with a first-century date for the epistle, the critics preferring a second century date of composition.
So does this evidence conclusively show that 2nd Peter was a forgery? Not all scholars think so. Let’s take a closer look.
First of all, the early church was not likely to accept any document that they knew was a forgery. After all, one of the main criterion for receiving a letter such as this was apostolic authorship. There are several examples of known forgeries, including several in the name of Peter, that when they were discovered, were automatically rejected by the early church. For example, the Gospel According to Peter was discovered to be a forgery by Bishop Serapion (A.D. 180), who promptly rejected it as an authoritative apostolic work. Forgeries were simply not tolerated.
How about the lateness of the first quote of 2nd Peter?
- It’s true that Origen was the first to officially quote the epistle. But he quotes the book six times, and there is no trace of a doubt in his writings that it belongs in the canon of the New Testament. This would not happen casually with some recently composed document. What it means is that by his time the book was widely accepted as authentic. Church father Eusebius listed 2nd Peter along with some other books as “disputed”, the others being James, Jude, and 2 and 3 John. But he clearly indicates that the majority of the church regarded it as authentic.
- All church fathers after Origen acknowledge that 2nd Peter is canonical. Learned church father Jerome accepted 2nd Peter without hesitation even though he admitted it differed in style from 1 Peter, which he attributed to different scribes employed for each letter.
- 2nd Peter appears in some early manuscripts such as the P72 Bodmer Papyrus from the 3rd century and in the very authoritative Codex from the 4th century, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, on which many of our modern translations are based.
- One of the reasons the church fathers in the first 2 centuries may have been reluctant to quote 2nd Peter was because there were many other documents around at that time that were forgeries falsely attributed to Peter, such as the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, and others. But the fact that 2nd Peter rose above the rest of these and ultimately gained full acceptance is greatly in its favor.
- Although the first official quote of 2nd Peter was from Origen, there is evidence for an early date of composition contrary to some critic’s charges. Clement of Alexandria (150-215 A.D.) wrote a commentary on 2nd Peter, which unfortunately is now lost. Why would he have written this if the church thought that 2nd Peter was a forgery? [1] Irenaeus (130-200) quotes from Psalm 90:4 in language almost exactly matching 2 Peter 3:8, both deviating widely from the Septuagint translation in almost the exact same places, indicating that Irenaeus may have been quoting directly from 2nd Peter. Justin Martyr (115-165) also may be alluding to 2nd Peter with a passage in his Dialogue with Trypho that matches up with the wording in 2 Peter 2:1. There is evidence that the Apocalypse of Peter written in 110 A.D. depends on 2 Peter, and finally even 1 Clement (written 95-97 A. D.) has two phrases in it that have matches in 2 Peter but are not found in the rest of the New Testament. These phrases are referring to God as “the magnificent glory” (2 Peter 1:17) and “the way of truth” (2 Peter 2:2, also 1 Clement 35:5). It’s unlikely the Greek in these phrases would match so closely when they are both so rarely used. {2}
How about style differences between 1 and 2 Peter?
- As Kruger {2} describes, 1 Peter has 542 words, 2 Peter has 399 words, and they share 153 words in common, which means only about 38% are shared words, while 62% are unique to 2 Peter. While this may seem like good evidence for two different writers to some critics, consider that 1Timothy and Titus share about 40% of their words and about 60% are unique to Titus, yet both are believed by critics to have the same author, even if they don’t believe it’s Paul, (which is another debate). And also 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, both believed by practically all scholars to be written by Paul, share 49% of their words, and 51% are unique to 2 Corinthians. So differences in language are not conclusive, especially when we consider that they really seem to have two very different purposes, 1 Peter to encourage a church during persecution, 2 Peter to address the problem of false teaching.
- Attributing documents to different authors because of style has always been problematic, many times because of the subjective nature of the argument. For example, in the introduction to each letter, the only parts that match are the second verses of each. Why would a forger only copy this one part? Furthermore, this particular word combination “grace and peace be multiplied” can only be found in these two books in the entire New Testament.
How about the supposed historical problems?
- We need to ask some questions of the critics here. The documents that have been proven to be forgeries with apostle’s names attached, are always trying to introduce some new heretical teaching, such as Docetism (the idea that Jesus did not really appear in a physical body) by the Gospel of Peter, or embellishments on the future life by the Apocalypse of Peter. Yet why are there no new teachings introduced by 2 Peter if it is like the others? Why, if he was trying to imitate an eyewitness, deviate from the gospel accounts in the wording and certain details when describing his witnessing of the Transfiguration of Christ? As Guthrie [3] suggests, these variations suggest an independent tradition from Peter. (Donald Guthrie has written probably the most thorough defense of the authenticity of 2 Peter that I have found anywhere, in his book New Testament Introduction referenced below, see pages 805-857) . There also are no embellishments of the Transfiguration such as are found in the pseudo-Peter documents.
- It is sometimes said by critics that Peter couldn’t have known about a collection of “all” of Paul’s letters if he wrote 2 Peter in the first century, because they would not have been collected as a “corpus” yet.
- But Peter simply could have been referring to all the letters of Paul that were known to him at that date, since they were all written in the 50’s and maybe early 60’s.
- Neither would it be impossible for Peter to have considered Paul’s letters as scripture, since there is evidence that Paul himself claimed divine authority for his own words (2 Thess. 3:14, 1 Cor 2:16, 7:17, 14:37-39).
- Finally, why would a forger use such familar terms for Paul such as “our beloved brother” and then say his writings were “hard to understand?” The pseudigraphic letters of that day did not mention weaknesses and difficulties, but instead emphasized and embellished strengths.
The bottom line in response to the critics idea that Peter forged 2 Peter is this: It is extremely unlikely to impossible that the church fathers would not quote 2 Peter for a long time because they thought it was a forgery, and then suddenly turn around and accept it from the second century onwards as solidly canonical. The fact that it stood out as authentic amid all the false documents attributed to Peter confirms it’s divine inspiration. We can have total confidence that this is an authentic work of Peter, no matter what you may read from critical scholars.
[2] Ibid.
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[3] Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction, Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1990, p.823.
