Loading...In my previous post I indicated that I didn’t think Peter wrote 1 and 2 Peter. One of my main reasons for thinking so is that I’m pretty sure Peter could not write. These books were composed in highly literate Greek by someone skilled in Greek composition. To be able to compose a book took years and years of training starting with childhood. Everyone we know like that was elitely trained and connected with a wealthy family, almost always in an urban area. Not, for example, a rural Aramaic-speaking daylaborer from a remote part of Galilee.
But couldn’t Peter have “written” these books some other way — e.g., by having a secretary or scribe do it for him? I dealt with that question many years ago on the blog (based on much fuller discussions in my books Forged and Forgery and Counterforgery, if you want to see more of the evidence and logic) and still think the same thing. As it turns out, there is New Testament evidence about Peter’s education level. According to Acts 4:13, both Peter and his companion John, also a fisherman, were agrammatoi, a Greek word that literally means “unlettered,” that is, “illiterate.”
And so, is it possible that Peter wrote 1 and 2 Peter? We have seen good reasons for him not writing 2 Peter, and some reason for thinking he didn’t write 1 Peter. But it is highly probable that in fact he could not write at all. I should point out that the book of 1 Peter is written by a highly educated, Greek-speaking Christian who is intimately familiar with the Jewish Scriptures in their Greek translation, the Septuagint. This is not Peter.
It is theoretically possible, of course, that Peter decided to
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Dr. Ehrman, this is unrelated, but I’m having a difficult time with Paul since his letters are the earliest. We don’t know if he really had a vision, but do you think he really did? Since he wrote his letters and went on his missionary journey?
Does that prove that Christianity is true?
Yes, I think he had a vision. ANd no, that would not make Christianity true. As you know, people in many many religions have visions (Muslims, Mormons, Manichaeans…) But that doesn’t mean their religion is true.
Paul’s vision may have been caused by a large meteor. If the meteor was large enough, that would explain the shock wave that knocked Paul and his traveling companions to the ground, and it would explain the light being brighter than the sun. This is William Hartmann’s meteor theory and a popular account of it is available at the site below. It might also explain Paul’s zeal in that he really believed he had contact with the divine. The feeling I get from Paul’s Christology is that Jesus is extremely powerful. That is what one would expect from such an experience.
https://historyofyesterday.com/did-a-meteorite-change-christianity-120f8def8b98
I subscribe to Daily words of the Buddha. This is today’s offering:
To have much wealth
and ample gold and food,
but to enjoy one’s luxuries alone —
this is a cause of one’s downfall.
I thought it meshed with your ideas on charity you’ve been expressing recently.
Related to this… there’s an early Church tradition that Peter ended up in Rome toward the end of his life and gets up to various shenanigans with Clement & others. Is there evidence / do you think this idea originated with 1 Peter? Or was this a preexisting tradition (maybe even based on fact, who knows) that the author of 1 Peter was referencing & building upon?
1 Peter does presuppose that view; whether the author came up with it or not is another question. Almost impossible to know.
Dr Ehrman, have you ever commented on how much Paul’s writings may have influenced the Gospels or other writings in the NT?
Not much. I’ve said a few times that I think Mark may be influenced by Paul’s thinking, but that’s not to say he was influenced by his writings. The odd thing is that Luke shows no knowledge of Paul’s writings, even though he is his hero; Matthew seemst to be written *against* Paul; but again, it’s not clear if he knew any of the letters.
For these and many other NT writings, what would be some of the criticisms of the idea that someone at a later time wrote down oral traditions that he and his community believed went back to Peter–or to Matthew, Mark, etc? Maybe these communities were successors to, respectively, the original communities of Peter, Matthew, Mark, etc. I would guess that this is a major defensive move by Christian conservatives. It also seems like something the Catholic Church would be drawn to. Or maybe this would seem way too liberal to such groups?
Isn’t it generally believed that at least the gospels went through an oral phase before they were written down?
Yes, the Gospels certainly are based on earlier oral traditions. The visceral reaction to the idea that someone would forge a writing in the name of an apostle is that this is unethical and the authors of these books would not be unethical. I have lengthy discussions of the matter in my book Forged and (for a more academic audience) Forgery and Counterforgery.
At the end of the Gospel of Mary a character called Levi advises Peter “Surely the Savior knows her very well. That’s why he loved her more than us. Rather we should be ashamed, clothe ourselves with perfect Humanity, acquire it for ourselves as he instructed us, and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.”
Isn’t an allusion being made here to Deut 17:18, in the context of a new King being appointed in Israel, “When he has taken the throne of his kingdom he shall have a copy of this law written for him in the presence of the Levitical priests”?
And isn’t this Levi of the Gospel of Mary supposed to be the Matthew/Levi of the synoptics?
It’s hard to know what traditions that author had in mind when writing it. And yes, it is assumed that this is the Levi mentioned in the Gospels.
But isn’t the author of the gospel of mary accepting the traditional view that this Levi/Matthew played a role in laying down the law the savior had said?
All he says is that no law should be set forth that Jesus himself didn’t give. If you want a full analysis, you might look at Karen King’s book on the Gospel of Mary.
Hello Bart, I’m looking at 1 Peter 1-2, and also the later reference to Silas. Since the letter has such a big audience, is it reasonable to suggest that there were multiple copies of Peter’s words made and distributed? Do the final greetings (mention of his son) also suggest that the writer (not necessarily the hand-writer) is known to some of the audience? I expect you deal with this in Forged so my apologies if that’s the case. Thank you for reading and for providing this blog.
It’s impossible to say if htere were multiple copies at the outset. And yes, I do deal wiht issues of “personal greetings” and the like in my books on forgery. These are almost always efforts at verisimilitude, where an author personalizes a forgery to throw readers off the scent of his deceit. It’s pretty common.
Thank you for the time taken to reply to me and for teaching me a new word (verisimilitude).
We do have the fictional corpora of letters in the ancient world, such as those from Alexander the Great to Aristotle in the Alexander Romance tradition. So pseudoepigraphical letters are not unheard of, but I’m not sure if readers in antiquity would have taken those as literally as Christians were supposed to take a letter purporting to be from Paul, for example.
Yes, epistolary fictions are *very* different from books like 1 and 2 Peter. Among the famous corpora are the Cynic epistles. I talk about the genre in my book Forgery and Counterforgery.
What is your opinion of comments saying that this “represents a widespread practice of the hellenistic world in which a later disciple wrote in the name of a respected teacher of founder of a school traditions?” [Eugene Boring, Abingdon NT Commentary].
Was this an actual practice?
You will find that everywhere in NT scholarship, and it’s painfully clear that people who say that have actually never read the ancient discussions of forgery or the scholarship on it by classical scholars. I have a very long discussion of the whole matter, a bit in my book Forged, and at some length in my book Forgery and Counterforgery.
Assuming the letter sent to “the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia” from “the brothers, both the apostles and the elders” (Acts15:23) at the first Jerusalem council is genuine – could this be an example of someone who wrote a letter on behalf of someone else and did not include their own name?
This appears to be true because the Apostles and elders in Jerusalem were likely illiterate Aramaic-speaking Jews (like Peter) who probably did not speak Greek, and the letter composed was a Greek work addressed to Greek-speaking Gentiles in “Antioch and Syria and Cilicia”.
So for this letter to be composed a bi-lingual Aramaic/Greek speaking scribe would have been employed by the Jerusalem Church to understand the message the Apostles and Elders wished to convey in Aramaic, and then compose the work in Greek – without including the scribe’s name, but indicating it was ‘from’ the Apostles and Elders instead.
No, it doesn’t look like it. (For one thing, there was no letter: but still, it’s an important question since a fiction would presuppose some kijd of practice.) The book of Acts presupposes they were all speaking Greek, so they simply composed a letter and someone wrote it down for them. The “author” of the letter (throughout antiquity) was the person who composed and dictated it.
I’m not sure Acts does presuppose the Jerusalem Church all spoke Greek. In Acts6:1 we see the author distinguish between Greek-speaking Jewish Christians and “the Hebrews” (presumably Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians) of the Jerusalem church. As it was the Greek-speaking widows who were missing out on the daily food ration, we may be safe to assume they were in the minority, which is why Greek-speaking deacons were appointed.
In Acts9:36 the author gives the name of the dead disciple as Tabitha but then gives the Greek version of her name, Dorca. This shows awareness of the disciples’ name circulating among Aramaic speakers, but also how the story is told among Greek speakers – indicating that the author was aware of how the story circulated among speakers of both languages. If they all spoke Greek, why name her Tabitha?
In Acts22:2 Paul addresses a Jerusalem crowd in Hebrew/Aramaic, probably indicating the majority language of that city. I think this shows the Author of Acts knew that in Jerusalem, the dominant language was Aramaic, not Greek.