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).

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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 the church; Mark and Silvanus were Paul’s coworkers for the church of Asia Minor.  And strikingly, all three were closely tied with the church in Jerusalem, whence their mission started.  And so the letter is meant to effect a broad reconciliation of Paul with the other apostles and the Jerusalem church, and to show that these Jerusalem apostles embraced Paul’s teachings, rather than reject them.

There is much to commend this view, as we will see.  But the problem with it and with others of is that it refuses to consider the actual content of the letter of 1 Peter in order to explain its pseudepigraphic function.   Surely this is not the best way to proceed.  The subject matter of the letter must have some bearing on the reason it was written.

The letter is rich with themes and subthemes, but the one issue that ties together most of its sundry parts is the emphasis on suffering and endurance.  The term “suffer” (paschō) occurs more frequently in this short five-chapter epistle than in any other book of the New Testament – more than Luke-Acts combined, though suffering is a major concern there as well.

For the author of 1 Peter, Christ suffered for the sake of others (1 Peter 2:21-24; 1 Peter 3:18), and his followers will follow in his steps and suffer as well (1 Peter 2:21; 1 Peter 4:1, 13).  The believers’ sufferings do not come from imperial authorities, so far as we can tell; these are to be obeyed as those who keep the public order (1 Peter 2:13-14).  Instead, the opposition is unofficial and local, former friends and colleagues who are upset that, with their change of heart and lifestyle, the “Christians” no longer participate with them in their social and civic lives.  These opponents of the Christians strike out at them in response (1 Peter 4:1-6).  The Christians are to give no cause for persecution.  They are to engage in no wrong-doing to warrant opposition (1 Peter 2:12; 1 Peter 3:16-17; 1 Peter 4:12-19).  But they are always to be ready to explain why they live and believe as they do when called to account for it (1 Peter 3:15-16).  Christians are constantly to recall that they are “exiles” in this world and will, as a result, be mistreated in this foreign land.  But their real home is above, where they can expect an imperishable inheritance and great reward if they persevere to the end (1 Peter 1:1, 1 Peter 3-9, 11; 1 Peter 5:9-10).

The question of why this letter was forged must relate to the question of why it was written.  It was written, presumably, to provide comfort and encouragement to Christians scattered in various places (the fictional designation: five provinces of Asia Minor) who were experiencing opposition and persecution at the hands of their former companions among the pagans.  Why, as a subsidiary matter, was it written in the name of Peter in the style of Paul?

It may be worth observing, in this connection, that the book of Acts shares the dominant concern of 1 Peter with the problem of Christian persecution and suffering, and at the same time is completely committed to the question of the unity of the church, as manifest in the unity of the apostolic band.  The presentation of the life, ministry, and proclamation of Paul in Acts is, in no small measure, affected by the author’s concern to show that Paul aligned himself in toto with the Jerusalem church.

And so, in contrast to Paul’s own claims in Galatians, Acts indicates that immediately after his conversion he went to Jerusalem to meet with the apostles (Acts 9); in further contrast with Galatians, where it appears that Paul needed to use some rhetorical force to persuade the other apostles to agree with his law-free gospel, the author of Acts portrays Peter as the first to recognize that Gentiles do not need to observe Jewish Law to be followers of Jesus (Acts 10-11).

The Jerusalem conference itself  is a virtual love fest in which James, Peter, Paul, and everyone else who matters is in complete agreement (Acts 15).  Yet again in contrast to Galatians, where the fall out in Antioch appears severe and possibly permanent (Gal. 2:11-14), in Acts Peter and Paul are portrayed as in complete harmony.  So aligned  are they that it is virtually impossible to distinguish their public proclamations: Peter sounds like Paul and Paul sounds like Peter.

These ultimate concerns of Acts, involving both external circumstances of the church (persecution and suffering) and internal affairs (complete harmony of the apostles), are intimately related.  The harmony of the church in the face of suffering demonstrates that God is at work in the community, despite the hardships that it faces; he is creating a harmonious body in the midst of attempts at disruption.

In fact, hardships are overcome, in no small measure, through the unified efforts of the Christians in the face of it.  Where there are splits and divisions in the community, the power of the group is threatened to dissipate (Ananias and Sapphira in ch. 5; Simon Magus in ch. 8; the “men from Judea” in ch. 15).  It is only through the forceful and God-driven power of harmony that internal problems are resolved, allowing the church to stand as one in the face of external opposition.

In short, suffering requires a unified front. 1 Peter shares with Acts this concern of Christian endurance in the face of persecution.  It is allegedly sent to the churches of Asia Minor, where the disharmony of the apostles was particularly well known, as evidenced in Paul’s comments about his controversy with Peter in his letter to the Galatians, sent to one of the provinces named in 1 Peter 1:1.

The letter of 1 Peter, directed to suffering, at the same time shows that the apostolic band is harmonized.  Much as we find in the speeches of Acts, Peter is made to sound like Paul, embracing theological views very much in accord with his apostolic companion.  By inverse logic, the words of Paul are now shown to sound like the voice of Peter.  There is no split in the leadership of the church, at the highest levels.  Peter and Paul, later shown to be unified in their sufferings in Rome, are shown to be at harmony in a letter allegedly written from Rome.  It is Peter, writing as if he were Paul, who urges the Christians to stand firm in their trials, to suffer only for the name of Christ, not for any wrong-doing.

In short, 1 Peter is a book that shows Peter and Paul standing face-to-face and agreeing point-by-point.  If Christians are to face an antagonistic world with a unified front, then the unity of the ultimate leaders of the church – the apostles themselves  – is particularly important.   To show the deeply rooted harmony of the church in the face of ongoing opposition, an unknown author wrote a book of encouragement, claiming to be Peter, but sounding like Paul.  This is a forgery that ostensibly deals with suffering of the Christians and that implicitly deals with necessary corollary, the unity of the apostolic band.