We come now in this “New Testament in a Nutshell” series to the penultimate book of the canon, the short letter of Jude.  I begin by giving a one-sentence ,fifty-word summary of the book, before, in this post, explaining more fully its themes and emphases.  The letter of Jude warns its unnamed readers of ungodly teachers who promote lawless living and who, along with their followers, will suffer the severe condemnation of God on the day of judgment, just like other apostates discussed in Scripture, both humans and angels, who turned to lives of disobedience.  It is clear at the outset that this letter is principally is concerned with false teachers who have invaded the Christian community.  As he says: Beloved … I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God [...]

In my previous post I provided a summary of the main themes and emphases of 1 John; now I can turn to the question of Who, Why, and When. They question of “who wrote it” has long been discussed, and almost always in relationship to the Gospel of John.  Neither book mentions the name John; neither identifies its author; and neither refers directly to the other.  Even so, as I pointed out in my discussion of John (see: https://ehrmanblog.org/the-gospel-of-john-who-wrote-it-when-and-why/ ), the Gospel was from early times said to have been written by John the son of Zebedee.  And since 1 John (along with 2 and 3 John) seemed so similar in many ways to the Gospel, it was assumed to have been written by him as well.  Hence the titles they received, as the Epistles of John. Among the shared themes of the Gospel and Epistles of John are the following: The images of light and darkness (1 John 1:5–7; 1 John 2:9–11; cf. John 8:12; John 12:46) The new and old commandments [...]

I move now in this “NT in a Nutshell” series to provide an overview of the epistle of 1 John, one of the General or Catholic Epistles.  This short, five-chapter book is normally called a “letter” even though it does not have the standard features of an ancient piece of correspondence. Normally (not just in the New Testament, but in the ancient world generally) personal correspondence used several standard conventions (just as today you might write a letter to your IRS agent and begin with Dear Mr. Elliott, even if you are not endeared to him at all: it’s a convention).  As a rule, letters had fairly fixed features at the beginning; e.g. the author names themselves, indicates to whom they are writing, extends some kind of greeting, often indicates a prayer being said for the person and/or a thanks to God for them.  Then they get down to the business of what they want to say, and typically end the letter with some words of encouragement, consolation, or admonition, an expression of hope to [...]

Now that I’ve devoted several posts to summarizing the themes, emphases, authors, and occasions of the three Catholic epistles, I can provide some suggestions for further reading: important works written by scholars for non-scholars.  I have given brief annotations for each book to give you a sense of what it’s about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while.   I have divided the list into three sections: Books that provide important discussion of one or more of these Catholic epistles, and of the problem of persecution dealt with in 1 Peter. Commentaries that give lengthy introductions to all matters of importance about the book of Acts and then go passage by passage to provide more detailed interpretation (that’s where you can dig more deeply into “what does this particular word actually mean?”; “what is the real point of this passage”; how does this passage relate to what Luke says elsewhere in his two-volume work or to what we can find in other parts of the New Testament?”; [...]

Now that I have provided a summary of the major themes and emphases of the letter of 2 Peter, I can move to the question of who actually wrote it.  It claims, of course, to be written by Simeon (i.e. Simon) Peter, Jesus disciple.  But it is widely thought in fact to be pseudonymous, more than any other book of the entire New Testament. I’d like to give a relatively fully explanation of why, and for that reason have decided to provide here a fairly heavily edited and accessible account of my discussion in Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press). ************* 2 Peter is among the least well attested works of the New Testament from Christian antiquity, although it is found already in the manuscript called P72, ca. 300 CE, along with 1 Peter and Jude, the two canonical letters with which it is most closely associated.   Still, during the first four centuries the book had an unsettled status among those interested in establishing the contours of the New Testament.  The church father Origen doubted [...]

In this “nutshell” series that summarizes each book of the New Testament in canonical order, we now come to the second letter that claims to be from the pen of Jesus’s disciple Peter.  Here is my one-sentence, fifty-word description of the book. 2 Peter is a short letter written in the name of Peter to warn readers to avoid false Christian teachers who endorse immoral lifestyles, so as to avoid severe condemnation on the day of judgment that is coming soon, even though some “scoffers” have denied it is coming at all.   Now I can expand on the major emphases and themes of the book before turning, in the next post, to who actually wrote it, when, and why.   The three-chapter letter of 2 Peter does not appear to be directed to any particular Christian community, but to Christians everywhere, or at least those who agree with him on what it means to be a follower of Christ; in his words, he write to those who have obtained “the same kind [...]

Why does the “Peter” of 1 Peter sound like Paul but not Peter? This is at the heart of the question of why a pseudonymous author who was claiming to be Peter would have written this particular letter.   It’s a perplexing matter in part because nothing much about 1 Peter sounds like what we would expect from Peter, as we know him otherwise from the New Testament. This will take a few posts to explain.  The following is largely taken, with edits (including the omission of the footnotes), from my longer study Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press). ****************************** Apart from the name “Peter” at the outset of the letter and possibly the reference to Rome (“Babylon”) at the end, there is nothing in the book of 1 Peter to tie it specifically to the Petrine tradition.  This makes the book decidedly different from lots of other non-authentic writings of the New Testament, the Deutero-Pauline epistles (Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus) whose authors clearly strive to sound like Paul, and [...]

When it comes to the question of whether Peter, the disciple of Jesus, was likely to have written 1 Peter, as I indicated in my previous post, a major issue to consider is the fact that in antiquity MOST people could not read, let alone write, let alone compose a sentence, let along a five-page essay, let alone in a foreign language.  But weren’t Jews the exception?  Didn’t Jewish men all know how to read and write?  It turns out, the answer is no. Again, this is taken from my fuller study, Forged (HarperOne). The fullest, most thoroughly researched, and widely influential study of literacy in Palestine during the period of the Roman empire is by Catherine Hezser.[1]  After examining all of the evidence Hezser concludes that in Roman Palestine the best guesstimate is that something like 3% of the population could read, and that the majority of these would have been in the cities and larger towns.   Most people outside of the urban areas would scarcely ever even see a written text.   [...]

Now that I have laid out the major themes and emphases of 1 Peter in my previous post, I can move on to the questions of who wrote it, when, and why.  The final issue in some ways is easiest, at least when it comes to the overarching purpose of the letter.  As we have seen, the author is concerned about Christians’ reactions to their persecutions, and is intent that they give their opponents no grounds for opposition but lead upright lives, being a “witness” to those who challenge their faith, and imitating Christ in suffering unjustly.  Whoever wrote the letter, and when, it seems reasonably safe to assume this was the major reason for it.  We will see later, however, that there may be at least one less obvious reason as well. For the issues of who wrote it and when, I provide here is largely based on my more extended study, Forged… Why The Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (HarperOne). The book 1 Peter is allegedly written [...]

In this series providing overviews and discussions of each of the books of the New Testament “in a nutshell” we come, following the canonical sequence, to another gem, the book of 1 Peter.   In this post I will focus on its major themes and emphases, and then in subsequent posts deal with a number of critical questions about it, such as who wrote it and when, and why, if it claims to be by Peter, it sounds so much like Paul. First, a one-sentence fifty-word summary. First Peter, is a letter allegedly written by the apostle Peter to gentile Christians scattered throughout Asia Minor who are suffering persecution, urging them to remain true to their faith and to suffer only for upright behavior, in imitation of Christ and in anticipation of his imminent return in judgment.   Now I can provide a fuller account of this short but intriguing book.  Here is an edited account taken from my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press. ************************ The [...]

In my previous three posts I’ve argued that the author of the book of James really does want his audience to think he is “James, the brother of Jesus,” but that in fact he was someone else.  In modern parlance, that means the book is a “forgery.”  Ancient Greek did not use the English word forgery, of course, but the terms they used for this kind of book were just as judgmental and, even, ugly. But why would someone forge this book, claiming to be James knowing he wasn’t? The first thing to notice is to reaffirm the one of the first things that we noticed (!):  the book appears to appears to attack a form of Pauline Christianity that stresses the importance of “faith alone” for salvation.  For this author, “faith without works is dead,” and if someone doesn’t live in ways that are beneficial to others and pleasing to God, they cannot be saved, however much faith they claim to have. This is especially seen in what is arguably the most famous passage [...]