A Writing of Peter that *Barely* Got Into the New Testament August 4, 2022 by Bart Ehrman In my previous posts I’ve talked about writings that claimed to be written by Peter, the closest disciple to Jesus – a Gospel, and Apocalypse, and an Epistle . These are not the only Petrine writings floating around in the early church. Among other things, we have two other (different) apocalypses, one of them unusually fascinating that was discovered only in 1945 (a Gnostic writing). None of these was actually written by Peter, and I don’t think there’s a biblical scholar on the planet who seriously thinks it was. It appears that writing books in the name of Peter was something of a cottage industry in early Christianity. That should give us pause. There are two books that also claim to be written by Peter that actually are in the New Testament. If we know that such pseudepigrapha were floating around, on what grounds should we think these two were authentic? Of all the books of the NT that have been thought to be forged – written by an author falsely claiming to be someone else – 2 Peter is by far the one most widely regarded as falling into the category. Even some more left wing evangelicals think so. My own conservative Christian mentor, the great scholar Bruce Metzger, thought it could not actually be by Peter. The common reason: the writing style is so massively different from 1 Peter that there is simply no way both were written by the same person. That, as you might realize, is a specious argument, because it presupposes that 1 Peter was written by Peter, and that cannot simply be assumed. In my view neither one was written by Peter, but I won’t get into that here. What I’m interested in here are the grounds invoked by church leaders for thinking a book was inspired Scripture. And it is a historical fact that unlike 1 Peter, which appears to have been regarded as apostolic and authoritative from early on, 2 Peter had a dark cloud circling about it for a very long time. Almost no one considered this short letter either authentic or canonical in the first three centuries of its existence. It is virtually never quoted by Christian authors; when it is mentioned it is either said to be “disputed” or is out right rejected. The grounds for suspicion or rejection are usually explicit. For one thing, since it was not widely known, let alone used, there here was little reason to push for its importance or authoritative character. Moreover, Christian leaders who did know it usually suspected it on internal literary grounds. As late as the end of the fourth century, Didymus the Blind, the prominent Christian teacher of Alexandria Egypt, explicitly labeled it a “forgery.’ But the letter eventually made its way into the canon. The reason: despite its low profile there were copies in circulation, and by the end of the fourth and early fifth century church leaders came to see its utility. For one thing, unlike other Petrine texts in circulation (not just the epistle to James), this book argues strongly for the complete unanimity of the early apostles. He openly reveres the apostle Paul and praises his letters as Scripture (3:16). Even more important, the letter addresses a view that, as we have seen, came to be hotly debated by the end of the fourth century. 2 Peter insists that salvation will not come to everyone; the wicked will be condemned. For this author, God is the judge who exacts his judgment on the earth. He had done so before, when he cast the sinful angels into the place of torment and by destroying the world in the days of Noah, and he will soon do it again. Why hasn’t the Day of Judgment, expected for years to be imminent, not yet arrived? God decided to delay action for the time being to allow more people an opportunity to repent. But those who remain recalcitrant need to pay heed: they will bear the full brunt of his divine judgment when Christ comes in power to destroy everything and everyone opposed to him. Here we have an apostolic denunciation of the idea of universal salvation. The book was not just acceptable but useful; as a result its apostolic origin seemed more plausible. The author certainly goes out of his way to argue he really is Peter. He insists he was personally present at Jesus’ transfiguration (as in the Gospels) and states that this now is the second letter he has sent to his readers. Everyone already knew his first letter (1 Peter). In the end, church leaders tacitly agreed that even though the book was not among the most important apostolic Christian writings produced, it was indeed written by Peter and so deserved a place in Scripture as a bulwark against the theological “heresy.” Other works that equally claimed to be written by the apostle (The Apocalypse, the Gospel, the Letter to James) were rejected on corollary grounds, never to see the light of canonical day. August 4th, 2022|Public Forum