Authorship of Peter's Epistles
Some modern scholars say that the two letters in the Bible attributed to Peter, which both claim internally to be from Peter, are written with a different styles and therefore must be written by two different people. Some even say that since Peter was an uneducated fisherman he could not have written either letter.
In the age of e-mail and smartphones we tend to forget how things used to be. In fact, many people can't remember a time before computers. People don't write letters anymore. Many people today have never written one unless it was for school. Why take the time to write letters that will take days to be delivered when an e-mail or text message is faster to write, will arrive instantaneously, can be sent to multiple people at once, and can check your spelling for you?
My mother was a secretary back when people still wrote letters (not that long ago really) and secretaries back then needed a skill which is now mostly antiquated called “shorthand”. Busy executives didn't write their own letters, they dictated them and shorthand made dictation easier. “The history of shorthand is prodigious and dates as far back as Ancient Greece (the Akropolis stone) in the mid-4th Century BC while Hellenistic tachygraphy (shorthand of ancient scribes) dates back from at least the 2nd Century BC onwards.” [https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept10/2010/11/03/shorthand-–-can-you-write-as-fast-as-you-speak/]
When my mom’s boss dictated a letter to her and she typed them up of course she put the boss’s name on it. It was part of her job to correct the boss’s grammar and format the letter properly. The boss didn’t necessarily have to be good at writing as it was the secretary’s job to make the letter sound good and she could edit it as long as she got the boss’s points across. She might have added her initials to the bottom of letters to indicate that she was the typist, but she didn’t take credit for the content of the letters. If a letter needed to be translated to another language there were other people to do this.
So, is it somehow fraudulent for somebody to write a letter and put another person’s name on it? Not if that’s what you are being paid to do as the person’s secretary or translator.
Furthermore, suppose my mom went on vacation and her boss needed to dictate a letter? Of course, another secretary in their company filled in for her. The result might be that the formatting and style of the letter was different.
Now, as a leader in a growing religious movement, Peter would have had to communicate with people in other cities, and in the first century literally the only way to do that was through letters since there was no e-mail, no internet, no telephones, and no telegraph. How could he possibly run a growing organization without talking to anyone?
If it is true that Peter was uneducated, maybe even illiterate, then he must have dictated those letters to a secretary (or secretaries). In fact, “It is known early that Peter used Mark, Silvanus (= Silas, who also wrote for Paul), and a guy named Glaucias (according to Clement of Alexandria) to write for him.” [https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tomhobson/2018/06/is-second-peter-a-fraud/] So, any stylistic differences between his letters could easily be attributed to this fact.
Some also say that since Second Peter calls Paul’s letters scripture (Greek: graphḗ, literally “writing”) it must have been written much later than Paul’s letters and therefore could not have been written by Peter. But how can anyone know that Peter would not have promoted Paul’s letters, and indeed his own, as sacred or inspired?
In conclusion, I have not yet seen any arguments that have convinced me that any Biblical author is a liar or fraud. Let the scholars have their debates, but God will judge. In the meanwhile, we should heed the warning of Second Peter to avoid false prophets and teachers.
In the age of e-mail and smartphones we tend to forget how things used to be. In fact, many people can't remember a time before computers. People don't write letters anymore. Many people today have never written one unless it was for school. Why take the time to write letters that will take days to be delivered when an e-mail or text message is faster to write, will arrive instantaneously, can be sent to multiple people at once, and can check your spelling for you?
My mother was a secretary back when people still wrote letters (not that long ago really) and secretaries back then needed a skill which is now mostly antiquated called “shorthand”. Busy executives didn't write their own letters, they dictated them and shorthand made dictation easier. “The history of shorthand is prodigious and dates as far back as Ancient Greece (the Akropolis stone) in the mid-4th Century BC while Hellenistic tachygraphy (shorthand of ancient scribes) dates back from at least the 2nd Century BC onwards.” [https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept10/2010/11/03/shorthand-–-can-you-write-as-fast-as-you-speak/]
When my mom’s boss dictated a letter to her and she typed them up of course she put the boss’s name on it. It was part of her job to correct the boss’s grammar and format the letter properly. The boss didn’t necessarily have to be good at writing as it was the secretary’s job to make the letter sound good and she could edit it as long as she got the boss’s points across. She might have added her initials to the bottom of letters to indicate that she was the typist, but she didn’t take credit for the content of the letters. If a letter needed to be translated to another language there were other people to do this.
So, is it somehow fraudulent for somebody to write a letter and put another person’s name on it? Not if that’s what you are being paid to do as the person’s secretary or translator.
Furthermore, suppose my mom went on vacation and her boss needed to dictate a letter? Of course, another secretary in their company filled in for her. The result might be that the formatting and style of the letter was different.
Now, as a leader in a growing religious movement, Peter would have had to communicate with people in other cities, and in the first century literally the only way to do that was through letters since there was no e-mail, no internet, no telephones, and no telegraph. How could he possibly run a growing organization without talking to anyone?
If it is true that Peter was uneducated, maybe even illiterate, then he must have dictated those letters to a secretary (or secretaries). In fact, “It is known early that Peter used Mark, Silvanus (= Silas, who also wrote for Paul), and a guy named Glaucias (according to Clement of Alexandria) to write for him.” [https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tomhobson/2018/06/is-second-peter-a-fraud/] So, any stylistic differences between his letters could easily be attributed to this fact.
Some also say that since Second Peter calls Paul’s letters scripture (Greek: graphḗ, literally “writing”) it must have been written much later than Paul’s letters and therefore could not have been written by Peter. But how can anyone know that Peter would not have promoted Paul’s letters, and indeed his own, as sacred or inspired?
In conclusion, I have not yet seen any arguments that have convinced me that any Biblical author is a liar or fraud. Let the scholars have their debates, but God will judge. In the meanwhile, we should heed the warning of Second Peter to avoid false prophets and teachers.
Comments
Post a Comment