Search
Advanced search
1 Peter in a Nutshell
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 […]
August 10, 2025
1 Peter: Who Wrote It, When, and Why?
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).
August 13, 2025
Did The Apostle Peter Write 1 Peter?
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.
August 14, 2025
Jesus, Essenes, Bible Translations, and 2 Thessalonians: Readers’ Questions and Answers
Here are some of the more interesting questions from readers over the past few weeks, and my responses: READER’S QUESTION Have you considered the angle that Jesus may have been a revolutionary Essene? This would explain his outward orientation instead of inward. I mean he fits right in with being a disciple of John the Baptist and has a very Essene worldview. A good amount of his followers were also followers of John the Baptist. Most of the points he makes, eating with tax collectors and sinners, doing things on the Sabbath, not obsessing over ritual purity. All of these seems strangely specifically targeted towards the essenes, which means he is very familiar and actively critiquing them. I am wondering if he could basically be what Luther was to Catholicism. As in Luther was a catholic and started a revolution inside Catholicism. Like on the surface it doesn’t fit but if he’s a counterculture within Essenism, it fits pretty well MY RESPONSE: Yes, I’ve thought a lot about it and written about it. […]
August 20, 2025
Why Does the Author of 1 Peter Sound Like Paul Instead of Peter?
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 […]
August 16, 2025
Is 1 Peter More Like 1 Paul?
In my previous post I started explaining that if you were to read 1 Peter, and didn’t see his name as the first word, you would probably never suspect it was written by Jesus’ disciple; on the contrary, it sounds a lot like something Paul wold have written. (All this is taken, in edited form, from my book Forgery and Counterforgery [Oxford University Press]; this is an academic book, but I’ve tried to make it completely legible to non-scholars.) It has nonetheless become virtually de rigueur among scholars to discount the Paulinisms of 1 Peter, as evidenced in such major commentaries as those of Goppelt, Achtemeier, and Elliott, and especially in such a full-length study as that of German scholar Jens Herzer. It should be pointed out
August 17, 2025
Why An Author Claiming to Be Peter Wanted to Sound Like Paul
In my previous posts I’ve been showing that 1 Peter does not embrace the views and priorities known to be held by Peter, but endorses views and adopts the language and concerns of Paul. And I’ve asked why an author would write a book like that. Here I give my solution, as found in my longer study, edited here, Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press). ****************************** The most widely proffered, but not fully convincing, explanation for why an author would claim to be Peter when writing like Paul is simply that he is trying to effect some kind of reconciliation between the two apostles, widely known to have quarreled publicly and widely thought to be at loggerheads about major theological and practical issues (as we will see at greater length in the next chapter). This is the view expressed crisply, for example, in the major study by Wolfgang Trilling, who stresses that the names used at the beginning and end of the letter are key. Peter himself was known to be a leading authority figure in […]
August 19, 2025
2 Peter in a Nutshell
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.
August 23, 2025
For Further Reading on James, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter
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.
August 26, 2025
2 Peter: Who Wrote It, When, and Why?
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 […]
August 24, 2025
Couldn’t 1 and 2 Peter Have Been Written By Peter’s Secretaries?
Over the 13+ years of this blog, every time I have talked about whether Peter (or any of Jesus’s other disciples) probably did or even could write one of the books attributed to him, since he (and they) were Aramaic speakers who were almost certainly uneducated and illiterate, but the books are written in highly literary Greek by trained Greek authors, I get a number of queries about whether it is possible that he (or they) may have used secretaries. For example, maybe Peter dictated and the secretary cleaned it up and put it into literary Greek for him. Or Peter gave an educated follower the gist of what he wanted to say, and the secretary composed it for him. Or Peter wrote it down in Aramaic and the secretary translated it with a few flourishes. Etc. There are a range of (other) options you could think of, if you’re familiar with how secretaries today might work. But did they work that way in the days of Peter and the apostles? And how would we […]
August 27, 2025
So Did Secretaries Write the Apostles’ Letters for Them?
Here is my second post on the use of secretaries in the ancient world, in which I discuss the issue of whether illiterate people (like Simon Peter, or John the son of Zebedee) could have had someone else write their books for them – so that 1 Peter *could* in some sense actually be by Peter even if he couldn’t write, or the Revelation of John by John. In it I continue to consider ways ancient secretaries worked. Did they compose writings for the “authors”? (To make best sense of this it would help to read the previous post, where I talk about two of the main ways ancient writers used secretaries. But hey, you don’t *have* to read it. It ain’t required!) Again, the discussion is taken from my book Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press). ****************************** It is Richards‘ third and fourth categories that are particularly germane to the questions of early Christian forgery. What is the evidence that secretaries were widely used, or used at all, as co-authors of letters or as ersatz […]
August 28, 2025
The Bible and Suffering: My NEW Course at UNC This Term
For the first time since roughly the Pleistocene Age, I am teaching a new and different undergraduate course at UNC this semester. It’s a course I taught in a very different form when I was just starting out at Rutgers, in probably 1986 or so; I haven’t taught it since, and actually don’t remember how I set it up then. But now that I am no longer teaching PhD seminars at UNC or the large Introduction to the New Testament course (Hugo Mendez is doing both of those now), I have free spots in my schedule. And the course I taught all those years ago (39?) made a big difference to me — eventually leading to my book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer. At Rutgers the course was called “The Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Tradition,” but to teach it here — since I didn’t submit it as a new course — I have to teach it under one of the current course titles […]
August 30, 2025
The Birth of Christianity (My Other Class): Check Out the Writing Assignments!
I am (also) this semester teaching one of my favorite undergraduate courses, The Birth of Christianity, which more or less covers the history and literature of Christianity from just after the New Testament period up to the mid to end of the 4th century, focusing mainly on issues of the second and third centuries. For that class students have a short writing assignment every week; they come up with a 2-page response to a set of prompts usually based on reading they’ve done of ancient texts, and then we discuss their views in class. I’ve always had students do “position papers,” as I call them, in which they have to take a stand on a somewhat controversial issue connected with a topic, as a way to get them to THINK about the issue ahead of time. For these papers I’m not looking for “the right answer,” and simply mark them Satisfactory (if they’ve clearly thought about the issue and established some views about it) or Unsatisfactory (if they more or less blew it off). Students […]
August 31, 2025
Paul’s Letter to the Galatians “At a Glance” and Questions for Reflection
I see that I have fallen behind in this series on the “New Testament in a Nutshell” in my posts that provide a bullet-point overview of each book (“at a glance”) and the kinds of questions I ask my students to reflect on after they have studied the text. Catch-up time! Here I deal with the letter to the Galatians. If you want to review the earlier nutshell posts on it, you can find them here: Galatians in a Nutshell Galatians: Who, When, and Why? Galatians: For Further Reading At a Glance: Galatians The letter to the Galatians is written to a group of churches in the Roman province of Galatia, in Asia Minor. Paul had established churches there; but after he left, other missionaries arrived proclaiming a different version of the gospel. These other missionaries insisted that Gentiles had to become circumcised and keep the Jewish Law to be fully right with God. Paul’s angry response begins with an autobiographical sketch designed to show that his version of the gospel came directly from God […]
September 2, 2025
1 Thessalonians at a Glance, and Questions for Reflection
I now provide a bullet point list that summarizes “at a glance” Paul’s very first surviving letter (and therefore the earliest Christian writing of any kind that we have!), along with some questions to reflect on based on this very interesting text. It’s a short but fascinating letter; if you don’t remember it very well, give it a re-read; and do see what I’ve said about it in this “Nutshell” series, see the posts here: 1 Thessalonians in a Nutshell 1 Thessalonians: Who, When, Why 1 Thessalonians for Further Reading Here now is a quick overview/summary of key points:
September 3, 2025
Paul’s Letters to the Philippians and to Philemon, “At a Glance” and with Questions for Reflection
I have been providing bullet-point summaries of the books of the New Testament, based on my fuller “nutshell summaries,” along with some questions to think about in reflecting on the books. With this post I will complete the undisputed Pauline epistles, that is, the seven letters that by virtual consensus are considered to be authentically from Paul’s hand, by dealing with two, the letters to the Philippians and the only one of these letters to an individual, Philemon. Again, if you want to refresh your memory on the books, they are short (Philemon is a single page!) and not complicated to re(read); you can find my posts on them here: Philippians Philippians in a Nutshell Philippians: Who Wrote It? When and Why? Philippians: For Further Reading The Most Widely Discussed Passage of Philippians Philemon Philemon in a Nutshell Philemon and the Morality of Slavery Philemon: For Further Reading
September 6, 2025
Questions: Did Paul state that Jesus was put in a tomb? Is Jesus like Pagan gods? Is the hope for a messiah like the belief in Santa?
Here some more of the excellent questions I have received from readers, and my responses. QUESTION: Dale Allison has said that the word for buried in 1 Corinthians 15 means to be buried in a mass grave, tomb or stone cave but it does not mean in a shallow grave where bird eat the corpse. Is this true? RESPONSE:
September 4, 2025
My Next Book: Creating the Bible — How We Got the Canon of the New Testament
Now that my book Love Thy Stranger is done, in press, being prepared for publication (March 24! You can preorder it with a price guarantee from Amazon already), and, as far as I am concerned with, over and done with, I have moved on to the next project, or projects. I THINK it will be two — a trade book for general audiences and an academic book for scholars, both on how we got the canon of the New Testament. My tentative title, which will no doubt be changed roughly 79 times before we come up with the final one, is CREATING THE BIBLE: How We Got the Twenty-Seven Books of Christian Scripture. Three years ago or so I wrote up a prospectus for my publisher, Simon & Schuster, and shared it with blog readers. I thought it would be a good time now to put it up again along with a couple of relevant posts just to get the juices starting to flow (before I return in a few days to the “New Testament in a Nutshell Series”!). […]
September 7, 2025
Why Wasn’t Peter’s Apocalypse Included in the New Testament?
As I indicated in my previous post, I’m planning to write a book (after the one on charity in early Christianity) explaining how we got the canon of the New Testament. Who choose the books? On what grounds? And when? In this post I thought I’d show the kind of think I’ll be interested in, by explaining a particularly intriguing issue of “what got in” and “what got out” that I worked on a good bit a few years ago when writing my book Journeys to Heaven and Hell (Yale University Press), and then blogged on. It involves one of the books that did not make it into the canon (there are several!) allegedly written by Peter. Unlike most of the others, though, this one nearly made it. In the end, it was axed. But why? Not for a reason most anyone would suspect (or at least no one had suggested in writing before my book). Here’s how I explain it all in the prospectus I sent to my publisher, Simon&Schuster when I was proposing to […]
September 9, 2025