This post is to close out my discussion of 1 Peter, from the New Testament.  Who actually wrote it?  Spoiler alert: we don’t know, but it probably wasn’t Peter.

On several occasions on the blog I’ve talked about the issue, most recently at length in a repost earlier this year: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-peter-use-a-secretary-for-his-writings-a-blast-from-the-past/  That’s where I give the fuller story.  For now I give just the simple side of things, as I lay it out in my undergraduate textbook on the New Testament.

Following this post I will start talking about how and why the books assigned to Peter did or did not make it into the New Testament.  If you recall, the whole reason I got into this thread in the first place (which I foolishly thought would take 2-3 posts) is that I became intrigued by the question of why 2 Peter made it into the New Testament but the Apocalypse of Peter did not.  As I will explain in the next post, I have far fewer questions about 1 Peter (which, like the other two, claims to be written by Peter even though it was written by someone else who simply wanted his readers to think he was Peter).

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The Author of 1 Peter

The book claims, of course, to be written by Peter, the disciple of Jesus, and it suggests that he was writing from the capital of the empire. This is intimated at the close of the letter, where …

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