generation as “fathers” falling asleep (3:4), probably indicating they had already died by the time of its writing, and thus unlikely to have been written by Peter. The term “fathers,” however, was more commonly used in reference to biblical ancestors rather than apostles (Heb 1:1; Rom 9:5).60 Support of this understanding also comes from the author’s response by referring to the flood as an example of God’s intervention in history—it would not make sense if the history envisioned here is that of the Church.61 The term, therefore, can easily have referred to the OT prophets who had prophesied the initial parousia of Jesus.
4. Reference to a delayed “parousia (revelation) of the Lord” referring to the second coming of Jesus (Matt 24:3; 1 Thess 2:19; 4:15), indicating that some long time had passed since the time of the apostle initial ministry to the audience. In response, Webb has argued, it is not simply the denial of the second coming that the opponents represent in their questioning but the concept of parousia at any period in time.62 M. Green also points out that the greatest disappointment of the delayed parousia would have been reflected more prominently in mid first century than in the second century where the effects of the shock had waned.63
5. Reference to Paul’s letters as a “collection” and to the author’s equating them to other “scripture” (3:15–16).64 The tradition or copying and sharing of Paul’s letters in the early Church may have been encouraged by Paul himself (Col 4:16) and so should not be a surprise if the author of 2 Peter is familiar with Paul’s writings. But nothing in the passage here assumes a “Collection” of corpus, as proponents of this argument assume.65 Furthermore, in the Council of Jerusalem, Peter and Paul are united against the instigators (Acts 15:7–11).
6. Reading 2 Peter (and Jude) as if it is responding to the second-century threat of Gnosticism. While 2 Peter does favor the term “knowledge” (gnosis) from which we get the term Gnosticism (a form of early philosophy that emphasized “special secret knowledge” as the means to salvation), 2 Peter’s use of the term does not fully conform to Gnostic thinking. Recent rhetorical studies of the letter however have shown that, rather than focusing on fending off Gnosticism, 2 Peter’s primary concern is with ethics as reflected in the list of virtues (1:5–7), and the pointed inquiry in 3:11 (“Given that all things will dissolved, what kind of lives ought you to live?”), driven by eschatological concerns.66
7. Identifying 2 Peter as a “Testament” genre, has been used as grounds on which to argue that it is pseudepigraphical just like other Testamentary writings.67 While this argument has been well developed by Bauckham and is widely accepted by scholars, it has significant weaknesses. In fact, as I will argue below in the commentary, you can have testamentary material in a piece of writing, without converting the entire document into a “Testament.”68 Also, 2 Peter does not follow all the conventions of a Testamentary writing.69 A strong argument against pseudeipgraphical authorship is the early church’s vigilant censorship of the canonical writings as they determined what to include in the Bible. Writings deemed to be inauthentic were eliminated from contention, irrespective of their teachings. We know for example other writings written in the name of Peter, such as Gospel of Peter, were rejected as pseudepigraphical.70 For example, the authorship of the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (ca. 160) was questioned and eventually its author, a presbyter in the Church, admitted writing it not in an attempt to mislead, but in admiration of the apostle Paul. But this was not sufficient argument to the Church leaders who proceeded to condemn and defrock him for writing in the name of the apostle. Given that this issue of morality seems to have loomed large when dealing with apostolic writings, it makes it rather challenging for one to concede Bauckham’s otherwise well crafted argument that the authorship of this letter would have come from the hand of a Petrine sympathizer.71
Arguments against Petrine authorship have continued to persist, but comprehensive (if not fully convincing) answers to each objection have been provided. The alternative theory of pseudepigraphy also has its own gaping holes making each side’s position, on the one hand plausible and, on the other, still inconclusive. Of all the concerns for the pseudepigraphy arguments, I still believe the moral issue is probably the most challenging to account for. Nonetheless, as Witherington III points out, our modern notion of authorship may be too narrow to accommodate the plausible fact found in his own proposal of 2 Peter as a form of “sapiental literature” where scribal editing of writings was done communally allowing for a composite writing to be crafted by scribes, from original kernels and other sources.72 This would allow for aspects of the letter to have originated with the Peter but with subsequent accretions over time, much in the same way that 2 Peter itself has incorporated the letter of Jude.
While advancing the concept of authorship, Witherington III’s argument does not preclude a difficulty of the time-frame of a purported writer’s death vis-a-vis his/her own writing. For instance, most pseudepigraphon were documents penned hundreds of years after the deaths of those to whom those documents were attributed (i.e., Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Assumption of Moses). And the audience would have been aware of that fact, versus the so-called NT pseudepigrapha which would be penned several years after the purported author’s death inevitably raising suspicion of authorship. Of course, this would be resolved if we accepted Bauckham’s testamentary genre which, however, as we have noted and will elaborate further below and in the commentary, has its own shortcomings. Also, it is one thing if such a writing appeared soon after the writer’s death versus, say, twenty or thirty years later, the time-frame suggested by Bauckham’s dating of the letter (80–90 CE) from the death of Peter.73
So where are we left after all this? I am still not convinced by the pseudepigraphical arguments for authorship, as it seems to me that there are significant unanswered concerns over it.74 At the very least, even the primary accusation that 2 Peter itself levies against its opponents—what it considers false teaching posing as the truth—would seem to undermine any claim of it being pseudepigraphy in the first place. On the other hand, the history of the reception of the document in the early Church does give one pause. That notwithstanding, 2 Peter was eventually accepted into the canon even as its authenticity concerns lingered. At this point then, Jerome’s amanuensis explanation would seem to sufficiently address many of the concerns 2 Peter raises about authorship, and remains as equally plausible to any of the other possibilities adduced.
Opponents
The opponents in 2 Peter are identified as false-teachers (pseudodidaskaloi —2:1) meaning they may have enjoyed a certain authority in the community as teachers. While the term is occasionally mistakenly applied to the opponents in Jude, this term does not appear in the letter of Jude in reference to the opponents in that letter. In spite of Michael Green’s insistence that the opponents in the two letters share significant similarities as to warrant a conflation, there is need to recognize that even the distinctive use of the terminology in 2 Peter, that is missing in Jude, gives a specific nuance to the characterization of the opponents in the letter as opposed to those in Jude.75 The false-teachers basically seem to have cast doubt on the apostolic teaching about the return of Jesus as a judge of creation dubbing
